The End of Summer

It's August and hot and damp and Lorraine and Jackie are roaming around underneath the bleachers at the baseball park trying to eat their Sno-Kones before they melt to nothing. Every now and then Lorraine stops and leans forward as if washing her hair in the sink, or doing some sort of waist-whittling exercise, holding the collapsing paper cone in the tips of her fingers while she licks the sweet green ice. Lime. She closes her eyes. It seems to taste better that way. The dusty ground near her sneakers is dappled dark with the drips. Jackie squeals as her grape cone lists left; her mouth is a purple bruise. There are other kids fooling around down there under the stands, running and yelling and carrying on, eating hotdogs, playing catch. Whenever the crowd in the stands cheers, Lorraine ducks out from their hiding place to check the progress of the game; it's close, but her brother's the catcher for the home team, and the home team always wins.

A group of older boys lounges nearby, smoking; every now and then the cute one with the tattoo looks in their direction. Lorraine can see the edge of the tattoo, squarish, red white blue, peeking from under the rolled cuff of his shirt--are there stars too, some sort of flag? my country, love it or leave it? some silly banner proclaiming how much he loves his mama? Southern boys. Pretty crazy. He holds an orange transistor radio close to his ear, waggling his head to the beat. Sometimes he closes his eyes. Lorraine strains to hear too, thinks it's Little Eva--Come on baby, do the locomotion! She imagines his eyes are very blue.

Jackie pokes at her arm and Lorraine laughs; she makes a face at Jackie but she makes sure the boy sees that she's turning away. He's leaning on a baseball bat like it's a cane, like he--elegant gentleman--hasn't got a care in the world, and she wonders what team he's on and if he's any good. If he's a good dancer. The girls spend hours in Jackie's living room doing the shag and the locomotion and the twist, bloody crucifixes and sad-eyed Virgins blessing them from the dark crowded walls. The house is small and full of Jackie's brothers and sisters, but rarely her parents, who are always at work. Her father, a car salesman, sometimes parks the newest model out front for the weekend. Latest offering: a long-nosed, jet black Ford Mustang. Sooner or later everyone in the neighborhood drifts by for a look. Lorraine's recently moved to town from up north and after suffering through the usual adjustments, much of them at Jackie's, it has begun to occur to her that there is more than one way to explore the mysteries involving God and faith, for instance. Likewise school . . . boys . . . other things. The walls in her own house two blocks down are white and invitingly bare; bright paintings and prints remind her family of how beautiful the world can be, and her mother is usually somewhere nearby cooking or ironing or folding clothes. An old Chevrolet reclines in the driveway.

Jackie says her rosary daily and wears a plaid uniform to school downtown, but one of her brothers, Johnny, aged sixteen, drives Lorraine's bus to and from the brand new public junior high every day. It's a long ride; he takes the corners too fast and he doesn't admonish the kids when they lean out the windows of the bus to yell at the negroes living in the ramshackle settlements that separate the new school from the rest of Charleston. He seems unperturbed by the noise and commotion in the rows of seats behind him--pinging rubberbands, spitball fights, the cussing. He concentrates on the road, seems lost in his own world. Lorraine studies the back of his head as...