Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist Read Free Book Online Page A

drink a lot. In Saint Louis we had this club called The Four Roses that met every Monday at Donna Duston’s house to get drunk. I thought it up, the club I mean.”
    â€œWell, here’s your cigarette,” he said. He took the package from his pocket and offered her one, holding it near his chest so she had to get in close to take it.
    â€œOh, God,” she said. “Oh, thank you so much. I’m about to die for a ciggie. I haven’t had one in days. Because my father dragged me up here to make me stop smoking. He’s always trying to make me do something I don’t want to do. But it never works. I’m very hard-headed, like him.” She took the light Johnny offered her and blew out the smoke in a small controlled stream. “God, I love to smoke,” she said.
    â€œI’m glad I could help you out,” he said. “Anytime you want one when you’re here you just come on over. Look,” he said. “I’m going somewhere you might want to see, if you’re not in a hurry to get back. You got time to go and see something with me?”
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked.
    â€œSomething worth seeing,” he said. “The best thing in Clay County there is to see.”
    â€œSure,” she said. “I’ll go. I never turn down an adventure. Why not, that’s what my cousins in the Delta always say. Whyyyyyyy not.” They drove up the mountain and parked and began to walk into the woods along a path. The woods were deeper here than where Rhoda had been that morning, dense and green and cool. She felt silly walking in the woods in the little high-heeled sandals, but she held on to Johnny’s hand and followed him deeper and deeper into the trees, feeling grown up and brave and romantic. I’ll bet he thinks I’m the bravest girl he ever met, she thought. I’ll bet he thinks at last he’s met a girl who’s not afraid of anything. Rhoda was walking along imagining tearing off a piece of her dress for a tourniquet in case Johnny was bit by a poisonous snake. She was pulling the tourniquet tighter and tighter when the trees opened onto a small brilliant blue pond. The water was so blue Rhoda thought for a moment it must be some sort of trick. He stood there watching her while she took it in.
    â€œWhat do you think?” he said at last.
    â€œMy God,” she said. “What is it?”
    â€œIt’s Blue Pond,” he said. “People come from all over the world to see it.”
    â€œWho made it?” Rhoda said. “Where did it come from?”
    â€œSprings. Rock springs. No one knows how deep down it goes, but more than a hundred feet because divers have been that far.”
    â€œI wish I could swim in it, “Rhoda said. “I’d like to jump in there and swim all day.”
    â€œCome over here, cheerleader,” he said. “Come sit over here by me and we’ll watch the light on it. I brought this teacher from New York here last year. She said it was the best thing she’d ever seen in her life. She’s a writer. Anyway, the thing she likes about Blue Pond is watching the light change on the water. She taught me a lot when she was here. About things like that.”
    Rhoda moved nearer to him, trying to hold in her stomach.
    â€œMy father really likes this part of the country,” she said. “He says people up here are the salt of the earth. He says all the people up here are direct descendants from England and Scotland and Wales. I think he wants us to move up here and stay, but my mother won’t let us. It’s all because the unions keep messing with his mine that he has to be up here all the time. If it wasn’t for the unions everything would be going fine. You aren’t for the unions, are you?”
    â€œI’m for myself,” Johnny said. “And for my kinfolks.” He was tired of her talking then and reached for her and pulled her into his