“Not here. When daddy fishes he usually puts in at the state park.”
“No launch fee. If you launch your boat here you have to go in and pay.” Kerry sucked on a bottle of beer.
The hamburger and fries were salty and Shannon had finished a second bottle of beer. “Does all beer taste like this?”
“Mostly. Bud’s the best though.”
“My parents don’t drink.”
“What about your brother?”
“Will does, but not so Momma can tell.”
“I could get you a Coke or a Mountain Dew.”
“I’m fine,” Shannon said. She would have to tell him she wasn’t allowed to date. Her mother would be crazy when she got home and Shannon wasn’t there. Things would get worse if she smelled beer, but somehow that time was far away and hazy to Shannon. Nothing seemed quite real to her anymore, like her life was playing on a television with bad reception. Things would come into focus for a while if you fiddled with the antenna, but when you backed away from the set, crazy jagged lines cut across the screen and all the people faded out. It seemed like things were only real if you were right up on them.
Lightning bugs were rising from the grass, signaling their intentions. Kerry swiped at one that floated by and caught it up. He opened his cupped hands for Shannon to see. Her brother would have wiped the poor bug across a rock to watch the fluorescent streak fade, but Kerry opened his hands and let the insect fly away. While his arms were still extended, he reached up and spread his fingers through her hair. She could smell the lightning bug on his hands. He kissed her gently. It was wet and slow and soft.
Hills hugged the perimeter of the lake and blocked the sunset. Moist air hung heavy on their skin.
“Let’s get in the truck so you don’t get cold,” he said.
On the bench seat, he leaned into her, and his kiss became needy and forceful. She was scared, but he moved his tongue into her mouth and she touched it with hers and a tingle traveled from her stomach down to her private place. She put her arms around him and her tongue in his mouth. He never tried to touch her breasts as Shannon had expected. They kissed for fifteen minutes, until they were sweaty and breathless. She looked at her watch and said she had to go home. When he reached to start the truck she noticed his muscled, tan arms, although she told herself it was probably just a farmer’s tan.
On the ride back to town she sat close to him. “Want to go around once?” he asked. Cruising was the weekend pastime in Falling Rock. You either went to the skating rink, the bowling alley, or a high school ballgame, or you drove around Main Street. Boredom led to lots of trips to Big John’s, car accidents, and unintended pregnancies.
They drove the stop-and-go traffic of Falling Rock’s main drag. It was Friday night and vehicles crept around a circuit from the Dairy Queen to the post office and back. Boys on car hoods and tailgates had brown bottles half hidden between their legs, cigarettes pinched tightly in fingers. Girls gathered in circles in parking lots. Kerry drove with his left hand and put his right arm around Shannon. Cars honked and boys gave the thumbs up to Kerry, who smiled and nodded.
“You want to go around again?” he asked her. When she said yes, she knew she was sealing the deal. Shannon could feel his heart beat in his leg, steady against her touch. After fifteen minutes she said, “I really have to go home. I’m in trouble already.”
As they approached, her slender weatherboard house glowed in the waxing moonlight. Shannon’s mother was at the kitchen window above the sink, backlit by a shaft of light that carried her actions through the darkness to dance on the yard.
“You better stay in the truck,” Shannon said.
“No. I’ll see you in.”
“My momma’s gonna cuss you out.”
“That’s okay. I been cussed before.” Kerry’s eyes and hair were so different from the men in Shannon’s family. They were the dark warm brown of the worn buckeye her grandfather carried in his pocket. But more different was this boy’s soft nature. He was kind and he had manners. She liked that.
Virginia was patterned through the cracked glass of the door, her eyes burning into the kids on the porch. She stepped outside. “Where you been? I been worried sick.”
“I’m sorry, Momma.”
“You’d better start talking.”
“Kerry gave me a ride after school. He showed me the lake and we had some supper. Don’t be mad. We lost track of—”
“You’re Tim Rucker’s boy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He removed his cap.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Do you know my Shannon’s only fourteen?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m almost fifteen.”
Virginia ignored her. “I don’t allow her to ride around with boys.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She scanned them. “You smell like beer.”
“I tasted it, that’s all.”
“That what you’re doing? Giving my little girl beer?”
Kerry cast his eyes down and shuffled his feet.
“Thank you for bringing her home. Now it’s time for you to go. Shannon, get on in the house.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Kerry said.
“We just lost track of time,” Shannon said.
“I said for you to go in the house,” Virginia said. “You’re not too big for me to still take a switch to.”
Shannon rolled her eyes and went inside. What she heard next made her skin prickle with shame for the second time that day.
“Don’t you come sniffing around here again,” Virginia said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me. All I want out of you is to see your taillights going off down my road.”
Through the front window sheers, Shannon saw Kerry pull on his cap as he walked back across the yard. She darted up the stairs to her bedroom. Her mother slammed the storm door. Shannon waited for the cracked glass to fall out, but it held inside the frame.
“Don’t think this is over,” Virginia yelled up the stairs. “You’re grounded. Do you hear me? Grounded for two weeks.”
In her room, Shannon gave her mother the finger. She flung herself onto her bed, buried her face in the thick bedspread, and screamed into the mattress. She stayed that way until it became difficult for her to breathe, until her face was sweaty and her lungs strained for oxygen.
When she could stand it no longer, she rolled onto her back, out of breath, her forehead clammy. She lay there, pulling in fresh air and thinking. She had two years before she could leave. Actually, twenty-three months until she started college. Those months would go by easier if she had a boyfriend. Kerry Rucker was cute, not her ideal guy, but more appealing than Shannon had imagined. Her mother couldn’t stop her. But it would be a fight.
3
The smell of loose powder women wore to church wafted from the folds of the cardboard boxes Will carried. He deposited them in the small room off the kitchen that would now be his aunt Patsy’s bedroom. Virginia had been sleeping in that room the last few months. She said it was cooler downstairs, but Will knew his parents’ big bed probably seemed strange and empty to his mother. Yesterday, she’d moved her things back up.
“Thank