Chapter Three: The Party

There were five McEvoy kids, including the two sets of twins. I suppose that someone had observed back when they were popping into the world that Mrs. McEvoy seemed to "litter" once a year, so the unkind collective "McEvoy litter" appellation stuck. Worse, the first two kids were twins, Frank and Henry. Everyone immediately called Henry "Hank," of course. Then came Marlon, who as he grew stayed skinny as a rail. He became "Plank" in the effort to keep the family names sounding alike. Then the twins Suzanne and Elma came along, who became "Lanky Shanks" or just "Shanks," and "Tank," both fitting, if not particularly nice nicknames in their fourteenth years.

Hannah and I met the McEvoys Frank, Hank, Plank, Shanks and Tank as they drove their go-to-school wagon to our post out front of the house. Charlotte, Terry and Mike continued on to the corral and ran their horses in before joining the party.

After we tied their wagon to the post, Hannah walked with Hank and Frank, one smiling galoot on each arm, around the house to the party. Frank also went by "Fat Frank," unfortunately. The truly awesome collection of festering adolescent wounds and black stubble on his face didn't help matters either. He fairly oozed oil, probably for the same reason a cheesecloth squeezed around churnings oozes. But he was clever, quick of mind and tongue, and more than held his own in the battles of wits that often accompanied cruel name-calling contests. I liked him and thought of him as someone who did pretty well, considering what he looked like. It struck me as typical of Hannah that she wouldn't be put off by appearances either, and that it wouldn't bother her to be seen with someone as unattractive as Frank. On her other arm Hank, his twin, was as ordinary as you could please, just short of handsome, Helen had remarked once. Plank, tall, thin, pale and smelling faintly of decay and foot powder, walked a step behind them, trying to take part in their laughter and silly gabbling. I felt a little badly for him, because he was pleasant enough, but in his eternal coveralls and scuffed boots he was something out of the Sunday hill billy comics. It was easy to see he'd have liked Hannah to have another arm, but he was, if anything, even more backward than I. Although a lonely person and therefore a kindred spirit, I thought he had it in his power to improve things by just deciding to do so.

Elma and Suzanne each had one of my arms. Except for whiskers, in a lot of ways Elma, or Tank, was like her brother Frank. She had a sharp wit and an honest view of her own unattractiveness. That didn't stop her from enjoying herself. Tank liked to eat and talk. That was it, and she was good at both. Although cheerful and gregarious, her enjoyment of things was pretty much limited to the gustatory and the company of the adults instead of us kids.

"We're here now, you can start the party, Carl."

"Yeah, we've been holding it up for you, Elma. I'll give everyone the go-ahead." She laughed, pleased with our simple repartee. I grinned too. One more happy partier.

Shanks squeezed my arm as she snaked-hipped along my other side. "Now that you're fifteen, do you think your momma will let you take someone to the movies, Carl?"

For a second I thought she was being snippety, but quickly realized that she was just too sweet-tempered to be that way. She was about as opposite Elma as you can imagine. Tall and contoured sweetly enough that even I noticed, long of leg and pretty in a brown and carefree sort of way, she was reputed to be ecumenical in the distribution of her virtue. True or not, no one ever complained about her sweet nature. At least, no boy did. There were probably girls who would have cheerfully gutted her like a fish.

"I won't be fifteen until Monday, Suzanne. But I don't think Mom would object."

"Well," she hinted broadly with a smile, "If you should ever want to, I'm sure plenty of us girls like the movies."

Elma cut in, long-suffering exasperation in her voice. "Put a sock in it, Shanks. Carl doesn't cotton to your flirts. Do you, Carl?"

"Nope. Not me, Elma. I don't know a flirt from a flounder." Both girls laughed. I didn't know why, because I gave what I thought was an honest answer. Even so, I enjoyed them both. I knew when I invited them that they would add some fun to the party.

As we rounded the corner of the house and found the rest of the partiers, Terry Kraft stepped up and claimed Shanks. Terry was dark-eyed and jet-maned, about sixteen years old, five foot nine and a hundred and sixty pounds, and eyes followed his tightly packed, compact frame around as he moved through the partiers. He was good at sports, especially baseball, worked hard on his family's farm, and was a solid favorite with the female set. Even usually irreverent Helen smiled goofily and giggled when he stopped to talk with her. He was a friend in a galoot-to-galoot sort of way, someone I ran across in school regularly.

Mike Barnes had cornered Helen and, from the smile on her face, her attention. A rangy, loose-jointed seventeen-year-old, at an athletic five ten or thereabouts he was a shade shorter than I. He was soft-spoken through a perennial smile, laughed easily, and had only good words for anyone. He was everyone's favorite friend, charming without the slightest inkling that he was doing it. His family had recently moved into that new Cloud Meadows tract north of town and he'd assimilated himself into the school community without even the obligatory fight with the class bully. No one seemed to know a lot about his background, although it was also true that no one seemed interested in expending the energy to find out since he was so clearly exactly what he seemed to be.

Easy-going and disarming as he was, it became clear to me at the party that Helen had caught his eye. That didn't surprise me any; most of the other fellows spent time refreshing their eyeballs with her image as well. So it was hard to worry about him in comparison to some others, even though his eye seemed to wander her way more often than most and he seemed to be in her company a good part of the time. What was there to worry about? Of all the fellows there, who would I most trust in her company? Mike. No question. He was a gentleman.

After greeting and shaking hands with everyone I'd missed, I went to get some of the food. I found myself in line beside Charlotte. There was plenty of food to choose from. Sitting at one end of the long serving table was a big clay pot of boiled sweet corn and another of baked potatoes. Then there were bowls of lettuce and sliced onions and scallions and various types of tomatoes and shredded cabbage and squash and other stuff from the garden, and whole loaves of hot bread. Wedges of sun-ripened melons added slashes of bright color to the table next to two bowls of different kinds of potato salad, a cast-iron Dutch oven of hot baked beans, and a tray of bright silver eating tools. At the other end of the serving table, naturally, was the main course, the hot pig carcass.

I understood that Charlotte might tolerate my company, so we carried our over-filled plates and Nehis to the corral and sat down with our backs against a post to eat. She had done something different with her hair, I recall, something much nicer than the practical ribboned tie-ups she usually wore to school. Her deep red tresses hung down in loosely coiled springs which bounced and riffled lightly in the breezes as she walked. Somewhere, judging from the freshness of its power, she had found time to refresh her scent. It was a flowery sort, maybe Lilly of the Valley or something similarly noticeable, but it carried something else too. I found it just a little disturbing in exactly the sort of way a girl would like a fellow to be disturbed. I wondered why she had done that.

As we ate I thought about her perfume and other changes that had remolded her from the frazzle-headed, frazzle-brained giggling blusher of a girl of earlier times to the mannered, almost serenely elegant young woman who sat next to me. I noticed that the evidence of too much bacon in her diet had vanished, or maybe, more accurately, had moved to where it would do the most good.

I also noticed that her swiftness to blush was untamed. My traveling eyes watched the blush creep up her neck and a forkful of hot beans pause on their way to her mouth, then I almost dropped my plate when I found her eyes. Liquid green, sharp-edged as a shattered bottle, they carved a hole in me so swiftly I almost gasped. I looked away, but not before I saw a twitch at the corner of her lips.

It was good to know that, despite the blushing, she hadn't been offended by my survey.

We stumbled into simple conversation, our eyes safely watching the other partiers. It took some time for my heart to unsqueeze itself, but finishing off the plate of food provided plenty of that.

"That's some powerful perfume, Charlotte. Watch out for the honeybees."

"OK, Honeybee." Snicker.

"Buzz buzz," I buzzed in rejoinder, grinning and going along with the joke. "Where's that flower I smell? Wait! Is that it? The one with the red moss on top and the -" and I stopped, because I could see that she was waiting to hear how I was going to describe the rest of her. I didn't know how to go about that without risking raising an eyebrow or two. "It's nice," I ended lamely. "Don't pay no attention to my teasing."

She didn't, it seemed. "Did you enjoy taking today off, Carl?"

"You mean from school? Tell you the truth, I worked six times harder here today than I would have at school. Helen too. You should have heard her. Boy!"

"I was going to bring your assignments and homework, but our teachers said your mother had already picked them up. Call me if you're missing anything."

I felt especially good that she'd thought of that and taken the effort to help. "I will, Charlotte. Thanks."

"Are you going to swim?"

"Sure. How about you?" Glancing carefully over at her to see if it was safe to look up.

"Yes. Where should I change?"

Another movie ran in fast-forward behind my eyelids. "You girls can use Helen's room. We guys will use the barn." I pointed stupidly at the only building for miles in any direction that resembled a barn. She flashed pretty teeth at me, not knowing that a piece of pickle was stuck between her incisors. My chest constricted anyway. I looked again at the remaining food on my plate.

A few minutes later she stood and, probably bored with my monosyllabic grunts, carried her empty plate to the house. I watched her go, wondering if she could feel my eyes. I didn't blame her for escaping my taciturn and bumbling shyness for the less inhibited company of the others. I wished I knew how to be like that, to say witty and amusing and intelligent things and keep people's interest.

After the socializing and eating, the girls went inside and changed into swimsuits, and we guys went to the barn to do the same. Certain predictions and plans concerning the girls were made there among us eagerly boastful hopefuls. Then the swimming hole suffered the hoots and roustabouting of the collected youth, allowing splashing and dunking and horse fighting, which Jerold eventually won with Helen perched on his shoulders. Mike and Carrie grappled it out with them at the end, but Mike wasn't as big as Jerold, and Carrie was a little more substantial than Helen, so the outcome was pretty much predetermined. Those that bit the gritty water early on wound up rooting for the diminishing collection of surviving combatants. I, of course, watched with others like myself from the safety at the edge of the hole. Asking a nearly naked girl, as I thought of them, to climb up on my shoulders in that manner was a little more than I could bring myself to do. I wondered how Helen and Carrie and Hannah and Charlotte and Shanks could bring themselves to straddle a guy's neck like that and not think about the obvious.

I envied them the fun of their frolicking, wanted to be that relaxed and apparently unaware, but I seemed to be acutely aware of way too much. Helen would tell me later that I seemed the same as always, an old fuddy-duddy who didn't know how to have fun.

The musicians showed up at the height of the swimming. Soon the sounds of instrument tuning filled the afternoon, then the accordion warbled out its organ-like notes. Satisfied, the musicians shifted into "Buffalo Gals." Dad and Mom began the dancing and were quickly joined by Charlotte's parents, then Jerold and Hannah's father and Carrie's mom paired up too. Doc Sarver had arrived alone, and while he enjoyed the visiting and the food and drink, he never set foot on the dance grass.

Soon some of the kids joined in and dancing was officially part of the party. Wet swimsuits remained the outfit du soir, something that even today I marvel at. That was pretty modern thinking on the part of the adults those days, allowing us to dance in that attire.

When the music calmed down to a more leisurely pace Hannah stepped up to make good on her offer to teach me a step or two. Trapped, I acceded to the inevitable and did my best to follow her instruction, but it was distracting to have her in my arms like that. I did learn something, though, that afternoon: it's not a good idea to dance in a wet bathing suit with a pretty girl. At least, not in public. Halfway through the first dance number Hannah quickly backed away from me, both of us blushing but not commenting.

Trying to hide my humiliation, I waltzed her over to the edge of the crowd and kept my back to them as long as I could. Hannah did her best to pretend not to notice as she tried to teach me some dance steps out there on the fringe of the universe, gracefully avoiding my eyes and trying to look down only at my feet while making sure there was plenty of air between us.

As humorous as it might seem, it was excruciatingly embarrassing then. She and I hardly spoke at all, except for "Now concentrate, Carl. One, two, three . . ." and so on. Both of us were vastly relieved when the music stopped and we could go different ways. I immediately went back to the swimming hole and submerged.

After the evidence of my embarrassment subsided I resurfaced and went back to the barn. No more of that, I thought, gritting my teeth. I pulled on my Levis and shirt, then rejoined the party, the only fully-clothed partier. I wondered how those other guys managed. I suspected that they and their partners all suffered (or enjoyed, possibly) the exact same situation. But I was the only one to announce it with my clothing change. I might as well have hung a sign around my neck.

Terry eventually relieved me of my totally unjustified suspicion that I was the center of attention. With a couple hours yet to go in the party, he dressed and pleaded bellyache, then took to his horse to go home. As we gathered around him to wave our sympathetic good-byes he reached down and swung Shanks up behind him, then galloped off with her at a breakneck rate, thereby dashing the post-party plans of most of the other gentlemen. Her brother Frank ran into the drifting cloud of dust after them shouting thunderous objections and improper invective, shaking a fisted fork with one hand and balancing a heaped platter of potato salad and steaming hog with the other, but to no avail. Dad quickly borrowed Mike's horse and galloped off, and sometime later here they came, Dad leading their horse by the reins, abashed looks on their faces. I'd like to have heard what he had to say when he caught up with them.

So, as things sorted themselves out, I spent more time watching and circulating harmlessly than anything else. It was safer, and it allowed me to keep an eye on Helen, who seemed able to have a good time even with Jerold.

I joined Tank, who was sitting and sipping a soda with the adults. Together we watched the rest of the kids having a high old time dancing and tomfoolering.

"Now that Hannah learnt you to dance, are you going to ask me to dance?" She asked after a moment. "Or are you already wore out?"

I sighed, shook my head. "If you were watching, Elma, you saw Hannah give me up for a lost cause."

"Well, that's good. Saves me tellin' you no." She smiled, I saw out of my sideways glance. "Lucky you."

I was struggling with how to reply like a gentleman to such a self-effacing remark when Mom came and sat down beside me on the bench. "Tired already, Carl?"

Mom was the most beautiful woman I ever met. Years later Helen would look just like her. She would feel genuinely flattered when I told her that, and with good reason. Mom was just thirty-two, almost three months older than Dad. I hoped to one day meet someone like her.

"Worked hard today," I reminded her.

"I think there might be a young lady or two who would allow you a dance, if you think you're up to it." Her eyes shifted back and forth between my left one and my right one. Her smile was adoring, shining on her favorite son. She probably thought she was doing the females at the party a favor by prodding me to grace them with my presence.

"I might learn to dance someday," I hedged reluctantly.

"I'll teach you right now, if you want."

Well, you can imagine what I thought of that. She saw the look on my face and laughed. Tank snickered past the pork in her mouth. Mom looked over at Dad, who was just then talking with Mrs. Simon and Mr. Farley. I saw him shake his head just a little, then Mom got up and smoothed her skirt.

"It's your party, Carl, and we want you to enjoy it. Relax and have a good time, whatever that means to you. These -" and she tilted her head at the half-naked hooligans on the lawn - "are your friends. You've known a few of them all your life. They've come to your party. Their feelings might be hurt if they thought you didn't have a good time." Then she stepped over to join Dad and the others.

"Yeah," Tank said helpfully. "You better have a good time or else we won't come next year. Unless you have food like this again, of course."

I sat and watched the dancers and thought about ways I could just disappear.

As the party progressed I saw that Helen spent most slow dances with Jerold on the fringe of the crowd, just as Hannah and I had that one time. But unlike Hannah and myself, no amount of air separated them. His thick arm around her narrow waist kept them snugly against each other. Other dances, the ones that weren't slow, she spent with the other galoots, twirling and heel-and-toeing. But with Jerold it was her arm around his neck and her head against his bare and hairy chest as they swayed together during the slow dances, moving their bare feet and tangling their bare legs just enough to be barely dancing.

The hair on the back of my neck rose. I didn't like it a bit.

I casually wandered over to the edge of the crowd to watch more closely. The dancing went on, Helen seemingly unconcerned that she was pasted up so snugly against him. Finally, unable to watch another moment, I went over and tapped him on his shoulder.

"May I cut in?" I knew enough about dancing to know this was proper form. I tried to keep from grinding my teeth audibly.

Jerold gave me an unsmiling look. "You want to dance with your own sister? What are you, simple?"

Actually, I was. But that wasn't his business. "It's our party, and I think we should dance at least once, don't you Helen?" I looked at her with my best you'd-better-give-the-right-answer look.

Jerold looked down at her, still squished against him. She looked back up at him. "If you don't mind, Jerold." She peeled away from him, revealing that he was in the same state I'd been in with Hannah. So angry I could hardly speak, I forced myself to calm for a moment as I danced away with her in my newly-taught but unlearned club-footed manner. Jerold's look followed us, and it didn't even hint at being pleased.

Safely out of earshot at the far edge of the crowd, I gave her what for. "How can you rub up with him like that, Helen? He'll think you're fair game for late night visits!"

"None of your business, Mister Peeping Tom. Quit spying on me! If we want to rub up and have late night visits, that's up to us!"

"Oh, no it isn't," I frothed back at her. "First off, since you're only through a thin wall from my room, a visit like that would wake me, and I like my sleep, so that alone makes it my business. Second, Dad would shoot him after I did. Thirdly, you're not even officially thirteen yet. You're not old enough to even begin to think like that! And lastly, if you don't stop it I'll paddle you right here in front of your friends."

She leaned back and looked at me, and I could tell she was giving what I said some thought. "Really? You'd paddle me?"

The picture somehow seemed amusing, and I found myself almost laughing. "Well, maybe I'd bash ole Jerold's face in, instead. Save your paddling for later."

She shook her head in emphatic denial. "Fat chance. He'd pound you into pudding."

"He might have to work pretty hard at that," I bragged unconvincingly. She made a wry face.

"Pudding," she assured me. "Blood and bone and gristle pudding. You're big, but he's a monster. And older and meaner."

My sister was a perceptive sort and I saw no reason to argue with her assessment just then, especially since I agreed with it. "Well, if you don't want me pounded into pudding, you've had your last dance with him tonight."

We danced a moment longer without speaking. "All this," she asked, "for what? My honor?"

"Do what you want with your honor," I offered in my best free-thinking manner, "when you're old enough to decide such things for yourself. In the meantime I have to watch out for you."

"And that includes getting pounded into pudding if I flirt with Jerold?"

"I don't think what I just saw was flirting, Helen."

"But you would get pounded into -"

"Yes. Now, if you want to see that happen, just dance with him again. It ought to be fun, getting up in the middle of the night to change the bloody bandages on my face. You'll enjoy that. I'm sure Mom and Dad would add that to your chore list once they heard the whole story."

We danced another quiet moment or two. "When did you decide to be this - this watchful, Carl?"

"I never had cause to decide before. So I guess I just now decided."

"Well, I'll have to think about it. I didn't expect -"

"You should have. When have I ever not looked out for you?"

"But this is different. Isn't it?" Pale blue eyes in the after-sundown gloom, slightly puzzled, slightly surprised, she said later, that I was behaving with such firmness.

I nodded. It was different. But also, it wasn't. "I don't think it's much different, Hon."

The dance ended and everyone clapped like they were supposed to. Another started, and Terry asked her to dance. I watched them twirl off into the crowd, not sure she was any better off with him than with Jerold. The music was fast, though, and all that legal close and clingy stuff that slow dances allowed wasn't likely.

Jerold never got another dance with her. I sat out the rest of the dances keeping an eye on him, as handy an excuse as I needed. He danced with girl after girl, even got his face slapped by - of all people - Shanks. She stalked off in a contained fury, leaving him holding his cheek in surprise and the nearby dancers laughing. He didn't dance with Carrie or Charlotte, although I saw him ask them both more than once. He asked Helen once more, and she shook her pale curls and turned him down. He argued briefly, she shook her head again and gestured at me, directing his attention at me in the waning evening twilight.

"Carl won't let me," I'm sure she was telling him. "Ask him." It was fine with me if she was telling him that. Better than fine, even.

His look should have chilled my bones, but all it did was make me smile. I understand you, I thought. You're harmless from now on, you ungentlemanly bully.

I hoped I was right.