April Love Story (12 page)

I’d rather see more of you than of the barnyard, I thought. More of you and less of sweet potato pie. “I didn’t mean all those nasty cracks,” I said. He looked skeptical. “Well, I did mean them, back when I said them,” I admitted. Lucas looked back up at the college campus. “But I’m sorry for them now, Lucas. I just want to be friends, okay? I—I retract every insult I ever dished out.”

Lucas smiled at me, his usual nice courteous smile. The one he directed equally at teachers, his mother, the geese, and me. “I guess I tossed out a few insults, too. It’s okay. Forget it.”

We were silent for a while.

“There are a few hours left before we need to head home,” said Lucas. “You want to go buy that paint? Or drive around and see what other stores there are? Or go to that amusement park, or what?”

I took a plunge. “Is this a date?” I said. “Or just a ploy to stay off the farm for a while?”

Lucas grinned. “It’s just a ploy to—”

I felt tears coming into my eyes. Lucas broke off. When I finally looked at him, the silence had filled the car to the point of suffocation. We were as separated in our seats and seatbelts as if we’d been on opposite sides of a classroom during college boards.

“It’s a date,” said Lucas.

“T
WEETSIE RAILROAD,” SAID LUCAS,
turning into the parking lot. “You’d sure think they could have come up with a less ridiculous name than that.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I kind of picture a tiny yellow engine with a little plinking motor, pulling miniature cars up a steep mountainside.”

“Sounds like Switzerland. Probably the meadows will be dotted with goats.”

“No, please,” I said, “anything but goats!”

We pulled a tarp over our purchases and locked the VW carefully. “Although potential thieves of manure forks are probably few and far between,” said Lucas. We climbed steep stairs, bought tickets, and went up more stairs to a wide, graveled area, featuring old-time stores, pretend horses tied to the rails with real kids riding them, and at the station, about to leave, the train.

“I guess it isn’t miniature,” said Lucas.

“Doesn’t seem to be yellow, either,” I said. It was a big, black steam engine, pulling several handsome cars. The engineer pulled its whistle and the air was filled with a huge whooshing TOOOOT that was as romantic to me as a sliver of silver airplane in the sky—a sort of carefree gypsy sound. “You can just feel yourself going somewhere,” murmured Lucas. We watched the train pull out. There weren’t many passengers, and all of them were crowded into the last car, which was the only one with glassed-in sides. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t like the open cars. The train chugged off.

“I wouldn’t normally think of a train as pretty,” said Lucas, “but Tweetsie Railroad is definitely pretty.”

We crossed the tracks and walked up a steep asphalt path to a large building with an open-sided snack bar. “Oh, good,” said Lucas, “I’m starved. You know, I was sure your mother would pack some enormous picnic basket for us to take along, so we’d have plenty of good, solid, nutritious food, and wouldn’t be tempted to waste precious quarters on greasy, junky, store-bought food. You could have knocked me over with goose down when she handed me a twenty-dollar bill and told me to buy whatever meals we needed. Why’d she do that?”

Because this is a date that she arranged, I thought, and as you just reminded me, a real date includes money, a car, and a girl. For someone who is supposed to be such a whiz at adding things up, your track record is kind of poor, Lucas. I said, “I guess to give us a treat.”

“It sure is a treat.” He got each of us a little tray of French fries and a small Coke.

Down in Boone the wind had merely been brisk, an energetic, rather companionable, wind. Here it whipped through my jacket as if I were clad in a bikini. It was so cold it hurt. No wonder the train’s passengers rode in the enclosed car!

We tried a little round table in the back of the snack area, but the wind seemed to be having a convention in that corner.

We tried a ledge outside the snack bar where the sun shone, but the sun was no match for that wind.

Finally Lucas found a little pocket between two huge planters. We sat on the ground and let the wind whistle over us. Between wind whistles was the intermittent TOOOOT of the train now on the other side of the mountain. “I’m freezing,” I whispered.

“You don’t have to keep it a secret. I’m sure everybody else is, too.”

“I’m also not very comfortable.”

Lucas sprawled himself a bit more, his back against the row of railroad ties that formed the planter. “Here. Sit in my lap. Body heat, you know. Very good source of heat. Free. Requires no splitting, cutting, or hauling.”

So I sat in his lap, and Lucas opened his coat buttons and when I leaned back against his chest he partly wrapped me in his coat as well as my own. It required considerable dexterity to drink our Cokes from this position, but I had no complaints and if Lucas did he didn’t mention them.

Those French fries—the first I’d had in over a year—were hot, salty, greasy, and absolutely yummy.

“I can’t decide why they’re so good,” said Lucas. “Do you think it’s just that we haven’t had them in so long? That all the wholesome food we’ve been eating left our tastebuds wide open to the seduction of real honest junk food?”

“Don’t you wish,” I said, referring to the position more than to the cuisine, “that we could eat like this every day?”

Lucas assumed I meant the French fries. “No, actually, I don’t. I used to have such a rotten complexion, Marnie. I only liked my face from the eyebrows up, because my forehead was smooth. I used to keep my face in a book all the time because then all you could see of me was my handsome forehead.”

“You do have a nice forehead.”

“Thank you. I can’t prove it was the food, but my face cleared up when we got to the farm.”

“I’ll eat your French fries for you, then.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. When I’m on a junk food binge I don’t share with anybody. In fact, I think I’ll buy us another round to eat on the train.”

We got the food, but the train wouldn’t go out again for another half hour so Lucas decided we should take the chairlift up the mountain. I decided I should stay at the bottom and wait for him.

“Chicken,” said Lucas.

“I am not. If there’s one thing I’ve found out about chickens, it’s that they’re dumb enough to do anything. Even ride on a chairlift.”

“Come on, hop in, it’s perfectly safe.”

I held back. The attendant yawned. “It is safe, Miss,” he said, bored. “You won’t … well, okay, you missed that chair, we’ll put you on the next one, they don’t stop for more than a second, so you … well, you missed that one, too, the people behind you in line are starting to get a little edgy, Miss, if you could just—”

“Marnie, get in,” said Lucas, shoving, and I was in. “What are you afraid of? This isn’t more than fifteen feet off the ground.”

“It’s flimsy.”

“It’s a very thick cable.”

“Looks like string to me.”

The attendant slammed a tiny, thin, useless bar across our laps and the lift jerked and we flounced several feet forward. There was another jerk while the next passenger got on and another flounce forward. “Let’s not do this,” I said.

“I think they probably frown on people vaulting out of the chairlift, Marnie. Sit tight. Nothing will happen.”

“I should have taken out life insurance.”

“Even if you did fall, it’s just a little way to the ground.”

“That isn’t ground down there, Lucas, those are the lethal tips of trees eager to impale me.”

Lucas laughed, shifting over next to me. The lift now quivered left and right, as well as front and back. I squealed. The wind, which had merely been fierce on the ground, tore around us with the brutality of a young hurricane. “And this is April,” I moaned. “What’s it like in January?”

“I am beginning to think you are not cut out to be, say, a ski instructor, Marnie.”

“Lucas, I am
freezing!”

Lucas pulled me next to him, something I’d have cooperated with if I hadn’t been sure than any movement would tip us both out, and wrapped my left side with his arm. I closed my eyes, pressed my face into his chest, and listened to his heartbeat. Lucas took advantage of my cowardice to remove my French fries from my death grip. He ate them as calmly as if we were in a cafeteria. “Marnie!” he yelled over the wind.

“What?” I muttered through the thick wool of his sweater. My sweater, which I had knit for him.

“Relax! Enjoy yourself!” shouted Lucas.

“I am, I am.”

And I was.

I was freezing. My legs were cold, my cheeks were cold, my neck was cold, even the fillings in my teeth were cold. I knew the lift would break the next time the cable twitched and we’d both go to gory deaths on some spiky trees.

And tucked under Lucas’ arm, listening to his heart, I was having the most wonderful time of my life.

I was actually sorry when we had to get off the lift at the top of the mountain. Getting off turned out to be much easier than getting on. More incentive, I guess.

We toured an old mine shaft. Lucas would comment on this or that and I would go “mmmm” or “aaah,” but all I was aware of was that my left hand was getting frostbite and my right hand was snuggled in Lucas’. He had taken the hand all on his own. I hadn’t offered it or anything. “So how do we get down?” I said at last, watching the flouncing chairlift from a nice, safe distance.

“There’s a minibus for people who are afraid of chairlifts,” he said. I felt a deep gratitude for the Tweetsie Railroad managers, who had known this sort of thing would come up from time to time.

The instant the minibus drew to its stop, we saw the train below us getting ready once more to pull out. “Wait for us!” screamed Lucas. I personally did not feel such an urgent need to catch the train, but Lucas didn’t let go of my hand, and rather than have my arm jerked out its socket, I ran with him. We tore down the steep paths and across the tracks right in front of the train. “It won’t leave when we’re in its way,” explained Lucas. “They hardly ever like to kill the customers.” We leaped on the first passenger car and wilted against its sides, panting and huffing. The train gave a final TOOOOT and pulled slowly and noisily out of the station.

“There’s a glassed-in car at the rear,” said the ticket officer. “Everybody else is down there to keep out of the wind.”

“We’re tough,” said Lucas. “A little wind doesn’t bother us.”

“Bothers me,” I said, still trying to catch my breath.

“I’ve always wanted a train car all to myself,” said Lucas. “This is one very minor childhood fantasy come true.”

“Don’t have it to yourself,” observed the ticket officer. “There’s a girl with you.”

“Another fantasy,” said Lucas, and both he and the ticket man grinned.

We both wanted a window seat, but I certainly didn’t want to sit in a different row from Lucas, so I sat next to him. The train curved around the mountainside. In places the trees closed around us, dense and green with new spring leaves. In others were vistas over wide meadows to the pretty little valley below.

“Marnie,” said Lucas.

“Yes?”

“What did we decide this is?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a train, Lucas.”

“No, no. This afternoon.”

I drew a blank. I didn’t know what he meant.

“A ploy to stay off the farm,” said Lucas, “or a date?”

There was no train, no wind, no people, no scenery then. Just looking at each other, and trying to decide what to say, what to think. I decided that since speech was often a shortcoming between us, I’d forget it. I sat in Lucas’ lap again, and handsome as his forehead might be, that wasn’t where I kissed him.

“I guess it’s a date then,” said Lucas when we stopped to breathe.

We laughed and stopped the laughter with more kisses. It wasn’t like junior high. We didn’t miss. We didn’t get each other’s chins damp or feel silly. It was warm, soft and—

“KKIIIIIYYYYY-YIIIIIYYYYY-YIIIIIYY-YYY!!!”

Huge, whooping screams filled the air. I was so startled I leaped out of Lucas’ grip, found myself half standing, half crouching, hanging onto the seat back, and staring into the leering eyes of a masked horseman who had drawn up next to our railroad car. Men on horses dashed back and forth, screaming, yelling, and shooting. I was paralyzed.

“That’ll teach you to kiss,” said Lucas, laughing so hard he choked. “They caught you. You won’t do that again in a hurry, will you?”

“Lucas, what is this?”

“It’s a game. Everybody in school has been here a dozen times. Didn’t any of them ever tell you what happens when you ride Tweetsie Railroad?”

“No. I thought you just rode around the mountain.”

“You do. You also get robbed. Every time the train goes out, bad guys hold up the good guys. Those are college kids making a little money screeching and shooting and riding horses.”

I was so embarrassed I could have died. Every one of those riders knew they had really terrified me. Where their mouths showed under their masks, they were laughing, congregating around our car. I flopped into the seat beside Lucas and shrank down out of view.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Lucas. “Your mind was on other things.”

“And yours wasn’t?”

“I was a little distracted. But I knew it was coming.”

“Do they actually rob us? I’m a little short on gold. They’ll have to settle for the cherrywood bracelet your father carved for me.”

“I wonder if they need any more robbers,” mused Lucas. “I can’t ride a horse, but if I can learn how to farm, I guess I can learn that. Sounds like a much easier way to earn money that sweet potato pie making.”

I just slumped, letting my pulse slow down, and hoping my cheeks weren’t permanently blushed. Lucas slumped down to match my position. There can’t be anything more awkward than being half on a floor, half on a hard, wooden bench, wind whistling through your hair, gunshots going over your head. It turned out, however, to be a very acceptable position for another kiss. And another, and another.

I knew for sure that Lucas no longer put me in the sister category.