Walking Dunes (35 page)

He came out of the water and took a length of fabric from one of the boxes in the back of the station wagon, and used it to wipe his legs and feet and hands. All the while, Beth Ann followed him around like a dog. She had picked up his clothes. Silently, she handed them to him, and he dressed.

He started the car and dug out fast. He turned right on the highway and headed towards the sandhills.

“It's good you did that,” Beth Ann said in a few minutes. Her voice was clear, almost piping, like a child's.

He drove as fast as the car would go, which obviously was not as fast as a Kimbrough car, because Beth Ann did not protest. He pulled off at the base of the hills and they got out and headed off into them. He trudged ahead of her, until she called to him to wait for her. She had taken off her expensive flats and carried them. His shoes and socks were gritty with sand. They came over a small crest and down into a valley between the dunes. From here, there was sand in all directions, sand and sky and stars.

If he had been alone, he would have lain in the sand and thrown his arms out and given himself up to the night. He would have slept and waited for morning.

He kissed Beth Ann hungrily. He knew he was frightening her. He felt her body grow tense. Her hands on his back dug into his flesh, not with passion, but for balance.

He began to sob. Soon his body was racked. He fell away from Beth Ann, to his knees in the sand. He put his face in his hands. He wept for all the sadness, the cruelty, the awful
resolution
of his friends' lives.

He wept for himself.

In a little while he was tired, and dry. He sat back, his eyes closed, his hands on the sand by his hips.

“Davy,” Beth Ann said softly.

He opened his eyes. A few yards away, she was taking off her clothes. She did this slowly, letting her blouse drop off her shoulders like liquid, letting her slacks fall down around her feet. She stood above him in her white bra and panties. Her hair was loose around her face and shoulders. She smiled at him, then ran past him and started up the dune.

He crawled up onto his knees facing in her direction, part of his weight on his hands flat in front of him. He felt the force of gravity holding him there.

She reached the crest of the dune, and walked along it slowly, putting one foot in front of the other carefully, toes pointed, like a performer on a high wire. She stopped, reached behind and unhooked her bra, and let it fall down onto the sand below her. Her white panties gleamed. Her breasts shone, as fish do deep in the sea.

“Davy, Davy,” she called. She held her arms out. “Come up here with me, Davy.” She was long and slim and straight, like a blade of prairie grass.

He said nothing. There was a long moment. She pulled her arms back to her body slowly, crossed them in front of her breasts. “Davy,” she called again, her voice quavering. She stuck her head forward a little.

He sat back on his heels, staring at her. She looked ghostlike, beautiful, up there. He felt dizzy. As he stared at her she seemed to be receding, as if the dune ebbed, like a wave on the sea that once was here. She floated away. He blinked, and the dune was there again, in front of him. She was riding its crest.

“You come down here,” he answered. “You come to me.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1992 by Sandra Scofield

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1205-8

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