“I wish the boys were here to point out things and show me things and tell me about things.”
“I’ll point out things.”
“You don’t have to. You just walk ahead a little way and let me look at your back and your can.”
“You walk ahead.”
“No you.”
Then she came up to him and said, “Come on. Let’s run side by side.”
They jogged easily along the pleasant firm footing above the breaking waves. She ran well, almost too well for a girl, and when Roger forced the pace just a little she kept up easily. He kept the same pace and then lengthened it a little again. She kept even with him but said, “Hi. Don’t kill me,” and he stopped and kissed her. She was hot from the running and she said, “No. Don’t.”
“It’s nice.”
“Must go in the water first,” she said. They dove into the surf that was sandy where it broke and swam out to the clean green water. She stood up with just her head and shoulders out.
“Kiss now.”
Her lips were salty and her face was wet with the seawater and as he kissed her she turned her head so that her sea wet hair swung against his shoulder.
“Awfully salty but awfully good,” she said. “Hold very hard.”
He did.
“Here comes a big one,” she said. “A really big one. Now lift high up and we’ll go over together in the wave.”
The wave rolled them over and over holding tight onto each other his legs tight around hers.
“Better than drowning,” she said. “So much better. Let’s do it once more.”
They picked a huge wave this time and when it hung and curled to break Roger threw them across the line of its breaking and when it crashed down it rolled them over and over like a piece of driftwood onto the sand.
“Let’s get clean and lie on the sand,” she said and they swam and dove in the clean water and then lay side by side on the cool, firm beach where the last inrush of the waves just touched their toes and ankles.
“Roger, do you still love me?”
“Yes, daughter. Very much.”
“I love you. You were nice to play.”
“I had fun.”
“We do have fun don’t we.”
“It’s been lovely all day.”
“We only had a half a day because I was a bad girl and slept so late.”
“That was a good sound thing to do.”
“I didn’t do it to be good and sound. I did it because I couldn’t help it.”
He lay alongside of her, his right foot touching her left, his leg touching hers and he put his hand on her head and neck.
“Old head’s awfully wet. You won’t catch a cold in the wind?”
“I don’t think so. If we lived by the ocean all the time I’d have to get my hair cut.”
“No.”
“It looks nice. You’d be surprised.”
“I love it the way it is.”
“It’s wonderful short for swimming.”
“Not for bed though.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You’d still be able to tell I was a girl.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m almost sure. I could always remind you.”
“Daughter?”
“What, darling?”
“Did you always like making love?”
“No.”
“Do you now?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that if I had a good look both ways down the beach and there was no one in sight we’d be all right.”
“It’s an awfully lonely beach,” she said.
They walked back along the sea and the wind was still blowing and the rollers were breaking far out on the low tide.
“It seems so awfully simple and as though there were no problems at all,” the girl said. “I found you and then all we ever had to do was eat and sleep and make love. Of course it’s not like that at all.”
“Let’s keep it like that for a while.”
“I think we have a right to for a little while. Maybe not a right to. But I think we can. But won’t you be awfully bored with me?”
“No,” he said. He was not lonely after this last time as he had nearly always been no matter with whom or where. He had not had the old death loneliness since the first time the night before. “You do something awfully good to me.”
“I’m glad if I really do. Wouldn’t it be awful if we were the kind of people who grated on each other’s nerves and had to have fights to love each other?”
“We’re not like that.”
“I’ll try not to be. But won’t you be bored just with me?”
“No.”
“But you’re thinking about something else now.”
“Yes. I was wondering if we could get a Miami Daily News.”
“That’s the afternoon paper?”
“I just wanted to read about the Spanish business.”
“The military revolt?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
“Sure.”
He told her about it as well as he could within the limitations of his knowledge and his information.
“Are you worried about it?”
“Yes. But I haven’t thought about it all afternoon.”
“We’ll see what there is in the paper,” she said. “And tomorrow you can follow it on the radio in the car. Tomorrow we’ll really get an early start.”
“I bought an alarm clock.”
“Weren’t you intelligent? It’s wonderful to have such an intelligent husband. Roger?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“What do you think they will have to eat at the Green Lantern?”
The next day they started early in the morning before sunrise and by breakfast they had done a hundred miles and were away from the sea and the bays with their wooden docks and fish packing houses and up in the monotonous pine and scrub palmetto of the cattle country. They ate at a lunch counter in a town in the middle of the Florida prairie. The lunch counter was on the shady side of the square and looked out on a red bricked court house with its green lawn.
“I don’t know how I ever held out for that second fifty,” the girl said, looking at the menu.
“We should have stopped at Punta Gorda,” Roger said. “That would have been sensible.”
“We said we’d do a hundred though,” the girl said. “And we did it. What are you going to have, darling?”
“I’m going to have ham and eggs and coffee and a big slice of raw onion,” Roger told the waitress.
“How do you want the eggs?”
“Straight up.”
“The lady?”
“I’ll have corned beef hash, browned, with two poached eggs,” Helena said.
“Tea, coffee, or milk?”
“Milk please.”
“What kind of juice?”
“Grapefruit please.”
“Two grapefruits. Do you mind the onion?” Roger asked.
“I love onions,” she said. “Not as much as I love you though. And I never tried them for breakfast.”
“They’re good,” Roger said. “They get in there with the coffee and keep you from being lonely when you drive.”
“You’re not lonely are you?”
“No, daughter.”
“We made quite good time didn’t we?”
“Not really good. That’s not much of a stretch for time with the bridges and the towns.”
“Look at the cowpunchers,” she said. Two men on cow ponies, wearing western work clothes, got down from their stock saddles and hitched their horses to the rail in front of the lunch room and walked down the sidewalk on their high-heeled boots.
“They run a lot of cattle around here,” Roger said. “You have to watch for stock on all these roads.”
“I didn’t know they raised many cattle in Florida.”
“An awful lot. Good cattle now too.”
“Don’t you want to get a paper?”
“I’d like to,” he said. “I’ll see if the cashier has one.”
“At the drugstore,” the cashier said. “St. Petersburg and Tampa papers at the drugstore.”
“Where is it?”
“At the corner. I doubt if you could miss it.”
“You want anything from the drugstore?” Roger asked the girl.
“Camels,” she said. “Remember we have to fill the ice jug.”
“I’ll ask them.”
Roger came back with the morning papers and a carton of cigarettes.
“It’s not going so good.” He handed her one of the papers.
“Is there anything we didn’t get on the radio?”
“Not much. But it doesn’t look so good.”
“Can they fill the ice jug?”
“I forgot to ask.”
The waitress came with the two breakfasts and they both drank their cold grapefruit juice and started to eat. Roger kept on reading his paper so Helena propped hers against a water glass and read too.
“Have you any chili sauce?” Roger asked the waitress. She Was a thin juke-joint looking blonde.
“You bet,” she said. “You people from Hollywood.”
“I’ve been there.”
“Ain’t she from there?”
“She’s going there.”
“Oh Jesus me,” the waitress said. “Would you write in my book?
“I’d love to,” Helena said. “But I’m not in pictures.”
“You will be, honey,” the waitress said. “Wait a minute,” she said, got a pen.”
She handed Helena the book. It was quite new and had a grey imitation leather cover.
“I only just got it,” she said. “I only had this job a week.”
Helena wrote Helena Hancock on the first page in the rather flamboyant untypical hand that had emerged form the mixed ways of writing she had been taught at various schools.
“Jesus beat me what a name,” the waitress said. “Wouldn’t you write something with it?”
“What’s your name?” Helena asked.
“Marie.”
To Marie from her friend Helena wrote above the florid name in the slightly suspect script.
“Gee thanks,” Marie said. Then to Roger, “You don’t mind writing do you.”
“No,” Roger said. “I’d like to. What’s your last name, Marie?”
“Oh that don’t matter.”
He wrote Best always to Marie from Roger Hancock.
“You her father?” the waitress asked.
“Yes,” said Roger.
“Gee I’m glad she’s going out there with her father,” the waitress said. “Well I certainly wish you people luck.”
“We need it,” Roger said.
“No,” the waitress said. “You don’t need it. But I wish it to you anyway. Say you must have got married awfully young.”
“I was,” Roger said. I sure as hell was, he thought.
“I’ll bet her mother was beautiful.”
“She was the most beautiful girl you ever saw.”
“Where’s
