Time Done Been Won't Be No More by William Gay Read Free Book Online Page B

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CHARTING THE TERRITORIES OF THE RED
    W HEN THE WOMEN CAME BACK from the rest area, slinging their purses along and giggling, Dennis guessed that someone had flirted with them. He hoped they’d keep their mouths shut about it. He was almost certain that Sandy wouldn’t say a word, but you never knew about Christy.
    Well, we got flirted with, Christy said. She linked an arm through his and leaned against him, standing on his feet, looking up at him. The sun was moving through her auburn hair, and there were already tiny beads of perspiration below her eyes, on the brown, poreless skin of her forehead. She smelled like Juicy Fruit chewing gum.
    Dennis unlaced his arm from hers and stepped back and wiped his wire-rimmed glasses on the tail of his shirt. He was wearing jeans and a denim shirt with the sleeves scissored out at the shoulders. He glanced at Wesley. He put the glasses back on and turned and looked at the river. Moving light flashed off it like a heliograph. I guess we need to get the boats in the water, he said.
    Wesley had both of Sandy’s hands in both of his own. Her hands were small and brown and clasped, so in Wesley’s huge fists they looked amputated at the wrists. Who flirted with you? Wesley asked.
    Sandy just grinned and shook her head. She had short dark hair, far shorter than Wesley’s. Wesley was looking down into her sharp attentive face. The best thing about her face was her eyes, which were large and bluegreen and darkly fringed with thick lashes. The best thing about her eyes was the way they focused on you when you were talking to her, as if she was listening intently and retaining every word. Dennis had always suspected that she did this because she was deaf. Perhaps she didn’t even know she did it.
    Sandy had once been beaten terribly, but studying her closely Dennis could see no sign of this now. Perhaps the slightest suggestion of aberration about the nose, a hesitant air that she was probably not even aware of. But her skin was clear and brown, the complex and delicate latticework of bones intact beneath it.
    Nobody was flirting with us, she said, smiling up at Wesley.
    If they did you flashed them a little something, Wesley said.
    If I couldn’t get flirted with without flashing them a little something I’d just stay at the house, Christy said. She was giggling again. The big one said his name was Lester, she told Wesley. But don’t worry, he was ugly and baldheaded.
    Lester? What the hell kind of redneck name is Lester? Was he chewing Red Man? Did he have on overalls?
    You know, Wesley’s not the most sophisticated name I ever heard, Christy said. Nobody’s named Wesley, nobody. Do you know one movie star named Wesley?
    It occurred to Dennis that Christy might be doing a little flirting herself, although Wesley had been married to Sandy for almost two years and he supposed that he was going to marry Christy himself, someday sooner or later.
    I don’t know any movie stars named anything at all, Wesley said. I’ll make him think goddamn Lester. I’ll Lester him.
    Wesley wore cutoff jeans and lowcut running shoes with the laces removed. He was bare to the waist and burnt redblack from the sun so he looked like a sinister statuary you’d chopped out of a block of mahogany with a doublebitted axe. He’s been in the water, and his jeans were wet, and his hair lay in wet black ringlets.
    Nobody was flirting with anybody, Sandy said carefully. She enunciated each word clearly, and Dennis figured this as well was because she had been deaf so long. Now she had an expensive hearing aid smaller than the nail of her little finger, and she could hear as well as anyone, but this had not always been so.
    Are you all going to get the boats and stuff? Christy asked.
    Let’s get everything down from the camp, Dennis said. We can pick the girls up there.
    Then let’s go, college man, Wesley said.
    They followed a black path that wound