Clemmie (12 page)

She wanted a ride on the merry-go-round. She sat primly sidesaddle on her wooden horse, one on the outside. Craig took the one next to hers. They went up and down in opposite rhythm, suspended from the shiny brass poles. Craig realized he had made a tactical error. The husky boy took the horse directly in front of Clemmie’s. Sweat
stuck his khaki shirt to his thick back muscles. Both the boy and Clemmie reached daringly for the rings. Clemmie whooped each time she snared an iron ring, and the boy grinned back at her. Near the end of the ride he reached and Craig saw that it was a gold ring. The boy almost took it and pulled his hand back. Clemmie hooked it and yelped and waved it at Craig, her face alight. “Free ride! I got a free ride!”

The boy spun around, laced his hands behind his neck, leaned against the brass pole, crossed his legs, resting them along the rump of the wooden horse, and grinned at Clemmie as he went up and down in perfect balance. Craig felt depressed, asinine in his work shirt and billed cap. He felt as though he should be riding in one of the unmoving swan chairs with the aunts and grandmothers. He paid for another ticket and endured Clemmie’s free ride. The boy ahead of her showed off until the attendant made him stop his acrobatics. Clemmie squealed with delight at each new trick, and Craig found himself mildly despising her.

When they got off, the boy, bolder now, sauntered along beside Clemmie and said, “It’ll get a lot better later on. You going to the dance?”

Clemmie turned to him a little too sweetly and said, “We are, aren’t we, dear?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me and my brother got some damn good corn stashed in the car if you folks want a drink. It goes down smooth.”

Craig stopped walking, holding Clemmie’s arm. The boy came to a stop, his eyes on Clemmie.

“No thank you,” Craig said.

The boy looked at him. He shifted his feet uneasily. He half shrugged and said, “See you around.” He moved away slowly, holding his shoulders very square.

“Honey! It would have been real corn. I’ve
never
had any.”

“Too bad.”

“What’s making you so
grim?
”

“Maybe I’m the sensitive type. Maybe it offends me to watch you waggling your butt at a plow jockey.”

Her eyes narrowed and she thrust her chin forward. “We came here to have a
good
time. You’ve spoiled the game. You’re acting like a—” She stopped suddenly and eyes went wide and her mouth widened in a pleased smile and
she took hold of his wrist hard and gave it a little shake. “Oh, you great lamb! You’re jealous! Over that big baby with his cute muscles.”

“That big baby is going to get full of corn, and when he does, he’s going to be as easy to stop as a runaway truck.”

“But we have to go to the dance.”

“No thanks.”

“Please. If there’s any kind of trouble, we can leave right away. Now I want root beer. A big mug with that creamy foam on top, and then I want to go on that ferris wheel and hold hands and be kissed when we’re right at the very top. Then after that I want to go see those awful things in the bottles. Come on.”

He kissed her when their chair was at the very top of the wheel. It was full dark. They could see all the lights of the fairgrounds, see traffic on the pike. He felt good again, and felt ashamed of the way he had acted.

The dance was held in an open pavilion. Electric bulbs in paper Japanese lanterns were strung criss-cross under the eaves. It cost fifty cents a head to get into the pavilion. The man at the small gate stamped the back of your hand. There was a low wall around the four sides, and folding chairs aligned against the wall, facing inward. The band was on a raised platform in one corner. They would play one set of round dances, sodden, thumpy, uninspired fox trots and waltzes, then a set of square dances. The band came alive for the square dances, fiddles squalling, caller yelling incomprehensible directions through the metallic blur of the P.A. system, spectator heels thumping the wooden floor, the dancing groups stamping in unison.

He danced a round set with her and was surprised to find she was not easy to dance with. She had a tendency to lead, and she was more resistant than pliant in his arms. They sat out the square set, and she watched avidly, leaning forward on her chair, heel tapping, lips parted.

When the next square set came she said, “Let’s try!”

“Not for me. I don’t know what he’s saying or what to do next.”

“They all know. We can do it.”

“Let’s just watch. God, it’s fascinating.”

The groups were forming. He looked away from her for a moment. When he looked back she was gone. The husky
boy was leading her onto the floor. She looked back at him with expression and gesture to show that she was helpless.

He half stood up to go after her when the music started. He sat down again. He watched her. She was in a set with the huskies from the dodge-em rink, four of them, and three slim young girls. Of all the groups, they were the wildest, the most muscular. The girls were swung completely off the floor, hurled from man to man with a roughness almost brutal. Clemmie handled herself without confusion, controlled and graceful. When the other girls flapped like rag dolls, Clemmie could not strike a pose without grace. He looked at all the flushed faces. He looked out into the night. On the dark side of the pavilion three men passed a bottle around, each wiping the neck on the palm of his hand, keeping it tilted for long seconds. After the second circuit they tossed the bottle away. It gleamed in the light.

After the set the boy came back with Clemmie, flushed, proud and swaggering, just slightly unsteady on his feet.

“Craig, this is Mickey.” Craig was not set for the childishness of matching grips. His knuckles ground together and he barely kept from wincing visibly.

“Clemmie can really fling that thing,” Mickey said. “She’s got it. By God one time there she got aholt of me and if I wasn’t set right I’da got flang out into the weeds.” He squeezed Clemmie’s arm. “Clemmie, you got a muscle on you there. Where’d you get all that?”

“Pa says a girl’s got to be strong. He had me chinning myself when I was so high.”

Mickey lowered his voice. “Come on out, folks. I know where my brother is.”

Craig was very dubious about it, but he fell in with it. They went around to the dark side of the pavilion. Mickey spoke to a group of half-seen figures under the trees. “Ralph? Get on over here, boy. Bring the juice.”

Ralph came over. He was an older, shorter, wider version of Mickey. “This here is Clemmie and this is her friend Craig. I want they should sample some of that smooth corn.”

“You got a cup for the girl?”

“I can drink out of the bottle.”

She took the pale, unlabeled bottle. She wiped the neck professionally, tilted it high. Craig could see her pale
throat work, and he counted five swallows. She lowered it and said, “Haaah.”

Ralph said, “Mickey, you got you a drinkin’ woman here. Here you go, Mr. Craig.” He took the bottle from Clemmie and gave it to Craig. He tilted it up. It was lukewarm, and it burned like battery acid. Three swallows was all he could manage before he felt his gag reflex threaten to work. Mickey took the bottle, carefully braced his feet, tilted it and finished it.

“Well damn you,” Ralph said. “You’re a damn hog, Mickey.”

“Go get another jug. You saving it all for yourself?”

Ralph disappeared into the shadows. The band was plodding its way through
Paper Moon
. Ralph came back with another bottle thumped the bottom of it with the heel of his hand and pulled the cork with his teeth. “My turn,” he said, and drank sparingly.

He held it out toward Clemmie.

“Well, just to be sociable,” she said. And again she drank five full swallows.

“Damn me!” Ralph said, awed.

Clemmie giggled. “Smooooth,” she said. “Smoooth as a hay rake. Here you go, Craig.”

He held his tongue over the mouth of the bottle and pretended to drink, working his throat. He handed it to Mickey, but Ralph snatched it away. “No more for him for a time. This Mickey here, he’s got to show off. You go sweat out some of that last jolt and then you can have some more.”

“Gimme that,” Mickey said thickly.

“Boy, you make a grab and you get it. Right across the head.”

The band came to the wooden end of
September Song
. The fiddles began to make anticipatory sounds. Mickey grabbed Clemmie’s hand and said, “They’re going to play
our
song, baby,” and hurried her away.

Ralph said sagely, “It might take another ten minutes before that little lady falls flat on her can. Then again it might only be five. This batch runs about a hundred twenty-proof. Friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to cut my own brother out of any business, but if he and them Hernons and Dill Quinn get her off in a dark place for her to pass out, they’ll sure enough line
up on her. Girl slugs herself like that, she’s taking her own chances. And she won’t get much chance off in the brush. None of my business, but I figured I’d tell you. Another knock?”

“No thanks.”

He pushed his way through to the group between square dances. Clemmie looked glazed and unsteady. He took her by the arm and said, “Sorry to break it up. We got to take off.” And he hurried her off the floor, paying no attention to the shouts of annoyance behind him. Clemmie came along woodenly, without protest, stumbling frequently so that her weight came against him. She whined about going so fast.

He got through the main gate and headed toward the far end of the parking lot. He looked back and he saw two of them running after him. He took Clemmie’s wrist and managed to get her into a fumbling run. But she soon tripped and fell heavily. When he had picked her up, they had come up to him, and they slowed, advanced warily.

Mickey was in the lead, thumbs in his belt, shoulders rolling. One of the other huskies from the dodge-em rink was a step behind him.

“What are you busting up the set for?” Mickey asked.

“We have to go.”

“Clemmie don’t want to go. She’s having a ball. Right, Dill?”

“She sure is.”

“Clemmie, you come on. We’re going on back. You want to go home, pops, you go right on. We’ll see she gets home.”

Clemmie, at the moment, was beyond response. She sagged against the side of an old Hudson. Mickey moved around Craig, moving closer to the girl. Dill circled the other way. They were hard young animals, sensing the helplessness of the bitch in heat. Dill slid in quickly and grabbed Clemmie and pulled her off to one side. Craig spun toward them and Dill said, “Take him, Mickey. I’ll get her on back.”

He turned as Mickey rushed him. Mickey swung ponderously, with a strange slowness, and Craig realized he was both drunk and muscle bound. He caught two roadhouse blows on his arms, but the third hit the point of his left shoulder. It was like being hit with a rock. His arm sagged. There had been a course, long ago, in unarmed
combat, at Benning. He had not realized that he could remember any of it. He hit Mickey in the throat as hard as he could. Mickey gagged and floundered. He kicked at the kneecap with the side of his shoe. Mickey gasped and went down onto one knee. Craig laced his fingers, slapped them down on the back of Mickey’s neck, pulled his head sharply down into the upflung piston of a knee.

He turned and ran headlong after Dill and the girl. Dill was pulling her along. They were in silhouette against the main gate lights. Another couple had just left the fair. They were each carrying a small child and two other children trailed them. Dill tried to go faster, then turned, letting go of Clemmie. He turned and swung in one quick fluid motion. Craig ran into the punch. It hit him flush on the forehead. His neck was wrenched; his feet left the ground. He landed flat on his back. He lay still for several seconds, until a white light in his head faded away and he could see the stars overhead. He got up with an effort. Dill was walking around and around in a small circle, shoulders hunched forward, hugging his fist against his stomach. Clemmie stood slack-faced and swaying. Craig moved toward Dill. Dill turned and walked toward the main gate, still hugging his hand, not looking back. The couple with the kids were hurrying toward a far line of cars and looking back toward them.

Clemmie came along with him. He found the car and got her into it. She was going to need all the air she could get He put the top down. He was weak and trembling from the exertion of running and fighting. His forehead throbbed. His left arm felt deadened. It ached in a dull way when he moved it. By the time he got out on the highway, Clemmie had slid down in the seat and gone to sleep. She did not awaken all the way back.

On Wednesday morning at the plant Craig felt disgusted with himself and ashamed of himself. It required a serious effort to respond properly to the anticipated comments about his bruised forehead.

“Dropped the soap on the floor and went after it too fast and hit my head on the edge of the sink.” It seemed to be a slight improvement on the tired story of running into a door.

It was a day when it was hard for him to concentrate. His attention span seemed as short as a child’s. At one point during the morning he was talking with John Terrill about the feasibility of a gravity conveyor between the first and second floor of A Building, and whether or not Maintenance might be able to knock something together that would serve the purpose.

Terrill was in his early forties, a small man who, unlike most small men, moved slowly, talked softly, and got a great deal done. He had broad production experience. Craig sat on the corner of John Terrill’s desk. He suddenly realized that John had asked him a question, and that he had been nodding and looking attentive for several minutes without hearing a word.

“How’s that again?”

“What’s the matter with you? Did that thump on the head put you to sleep?”

“It’s one of those days, John. I’m sorry.”

“Here it is again. I said the conveyor will be better than loading racks and taking them down in the elevator, but unless we can get enough room for the racks, and room to load them, it isn’t going to help. Here. Take a look. We can knock out this wall, move this stuff back. This is light stuff. It doesn’t need special footing. Just unbolt it and move it, set new bolts and tie it down.”