Chapter 13
Five people missing from the group in the parking lot. Four accounted for. Well, maybe Tina had gone off on a wildcat expedition, scouting for local talent. She'd been known to do things like that. Tina didn't care. He made a grimace at his mental use of the phrase. Somehow, it bugged him. Pat Emory didn't care and look at her. Tom Jack didn't care and look at him.
Maybe people could care, should care. Maybe they should try for something more in life than just kicks. He walked through the parking lot and checked cars. He knew the number of cars which had come to Lundy Beach in the caravan and one was missing. He did some figuring and narrowed it down to Pat Emory's convertible. Pat damned sure wasn't using it. Maybe Tina...
He didn't know why it was so important that he find Tina. Perhaps it was because he'd been scared it was her when he first heard about the drowner. He started driving. He'd find her and let her know the party was over. He'd tell her that all the cats were getting ready to cut out, all those who could make it, like everyone not dead and in jail. He looked for the convertible at the pavilion. Things were closing down and it was easy to see that it wasn't there. He drove to the beer joint up the beach and it wasn't there. He started driving through the residential area, thinking that Tina might have found a local cat with a pad.
He ended up driving the sandy tracks of the back roads. It gave him time to think, at least. He was feeling sort of sad and a review of things seemed to be in order. His life, for example. He hadn't done a hell of a lot with it. His old man had already spent enough money for his schooling to pay for a couple of degrees and he didn't have a damned thing to show for it. Him, an artist? That was a laugh. He couldn't paint a barn. He knew something about oil, but not the kind you put on canvas. He'd worked on his dad's drilling rig in the summers. He could almost smell the aroma of the Texas prairie and the good, crude smell of raw petroleum and the smell of the smudge pits burning.
He was thinking of home when he saw his lights reflect in the tail lights of the convertible. He could see someone in the car when he stopped alongside.
"Hey, Teen?"
"Old Ern," Tina said.
He killed the engine and turned out the lights, and his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. He walked over to the convertible. He saw her nude breasts. She was smoking a cigarette, and when she puffed on it, the glow lit her face.
"I thought you were my friends coming back," Tina said.
That was, indeed, what she had thought when she saw the lights of Ernie's car. She had been sitting there a long time, smoking and thinking. When she thought they were coming back she panicked at first. Then a numbed lack of concern took her because what happened didn't make any difference. What had happened didn't matter, and it didn't matter a hell of a lot if it happened again.
"Friends?" Ernie asked.
"Five of them," Tina said casually. "Some real swingin' studs."
Ernie felt sick. He walked around the car and got in on the other side. He had to shove her skirt and blouse over. She was completely nude, sitting with one leg crossed over the other.
"Don't you think you should put some clothes on?"
"Whatever for, old Ern? You'd just have to take them off again before you could-" She used explicit, four letter words to describe the action.
There was something about her. It wasn't the same old Teen, the gal who didn't give a damn, who just didn't care, who knew the score.
"You had five friends?" he asked cautiously.
"And didn't I! Five. Count 'em. Five. One, two, three, four, five." She giggled. It was very un-like her. It was strange. "And seconds, man."
He knew, then. She sounded very much like Jean Loras had sounded, that deceptive calmness.
Something had happened to her and she was punishing herself by being crude about it. He touched her tentatively. She grabbed him roughly. He gently took her hand away and held it against his chest. "Hey, Teen," he said softly. He'd seen enough destruction tonight.
"Let's get on with it, Ernie. I'm waiting."
"Not now," he said gently.
"What's the matter? You chicken about a wet deck?"
"Hey, Teen," he said again, searching for words. He wanted to tell her that he cared now. He wanted to tell her that he would help her. She pulled her hand away from him and sat in silence.
"How's the party coming, Ernie?" she asked at last, overly casual, her voice under tight control.
"Not good." He debated telling her. "Things happened."
"like?"
"Pat Emory is dead. She drowned."
Her head jerked toward him. "Pat?"
"And Tom Jack is in jail for raping Jean Loras."
"And then there were two," Tina said. "Just you and me, Ern, but we don't care, do we?"
"Teen, I said Pat is dead. And Tom Jack is in deep trouble, and that goddamned dopey, sad David..."
"Ole David doesn't care," Tina said lightly.
"Dammit, he does care," Ernie said. "He's all shot down about it and Jean is, well you can imagine, a thing like that happening to a girl."
Tina laughed, brittle and high. "A thing like what? like getting screwed? Big deal. She should have been in my shoes tonight, then she'd really be shook up. She would have loved it, I'll bet. I took them all and-" her voice was rising. "I took them and I took them and I took them!" The last was almost a scream and Ernie was reaching for her. He tugged her into his arms. She made sounds like gagging but the tears wouldn't come.
"God, what's happening to the world," Ernie said. "It's all falling apart.
"I took five of them," Tina said in a choked voice, her bare body rubbing against him as she moved back and forth. "I took five of them and I still couldn't. You hear me, I couldn't. I couldn't! Oh, God, Ernie, I still couldn't!'
She found the tears then. She put her head on his shoulder and her tears wet his shirt while he stroked her back. His face was pressed into her fine, dark hair and he said senseless things, comforting things. He said things about helping her and he said a lot of other things.
"Help me?" she asked finally, her voice coming out jerky because of her sobbing. "Oh, if only you could."
"I can." Because no one had ever asked him for help before. "We're a lot alike, Teen, you and I."
"No," she said.
"But we are. I think we're alike in that we found something tonight we do care about. You're tearing yourself apart about something, Teen, so you care, and I've seen a dead girl and a sad-assed guy and a girl in shock. You asked me to help you, Teen."
He pushed her away from him and looked at her face. "Didn't you ask me to help you?"
"Yes," she admitted in a small voice.
"You've got to tell me how I can," he said.
She told him. He listened and his heart was sick for her. All those goddamned useless years of pain and frustration. All the shame which she had never admitted until now, all the dirty things and tonight capping it all. He looked at her in wonder as she talked and he felt more than pity. He felt a kinship, a closeness. They were a lot alike, the girl who threw herself away, tried to destroy herself in promiscuity, and the man who threw himself away for less reason than she'd had. Of the two, she was in deeper trouble. She stood on the verge of something, ready to take a leap into something. Where could she go? Into the sea, like Pat Emory?
He held her tightly after she stopped talking. She looked up at him fearfully. His face was grim.
"Ernie?"
He started. "All right," he said. "I'm thinking what we're going to do."
"We?"
"Community talk. Yeah, we. First thing is you've got to admit that I'm captain of this ship, right?"
"I suppose."
"All right. First hear this. I've told you and I've told you that you're out of your skull. You admit that? You admit you're loose somewhere?" She nodded her head.
"All right. That's step number one. You're going to listen to me now."
"Yes," she said meekly.
"All right. First the head shrinkers, and while that's going on I'm going to stick tight to you to see that you don't do anything kooky. You're going to get sick of seeing me around, Teen. You'll scream at me and tell me to leave you alone but I'll be there. I'll be there every minute to watch you like a goddamned screw or something. You hear me?"
"Yes," Tina said.
"Look, it might be a good idea if you lay off, uh, that stuff for a while. You dig?"
Tina had to smile. What the hell, was he going modest? That stuff?
"You make like a vestal virgin, Virgins Anonymous or something. You dig?"
"I dig, master."
"You gonna be a wise guy about it?"
"No, Ernie," she said meekly.
"And when we get the bugs out of your skull, then you and I are going to buckle down and do something with this damned world.
He paused, taken aback by his frankness. He was being true to himself, too, admitting that he needed some changes, not just Tina.
He watched her put on her blouse, and he was a little sad because he knew that was the last time he was going to see of those fine breasts for a long time, if ever. He was still a little sick about Pat and Jean and David and Tom Jack. He was a little sick about Tina and what had happened to her, too. But he didn't blame her. He didn't blame her any more than he blamed Pat or Jean Loras. He only wished that he'd been sharp enough to see it coming and head it off. But, un-like David Wofford, he recognized the impermanent nature of memory. Anything can be erased.
Tina looked at him as she slipped into her skirt and zipped it up. She still felt dead inside, but there was a tiny ray of hope, somewhere. She felt almost as if Ernie's concern for her had already started working on the bug in her head. She had, at least, made a start. Sitting alone in the dark after taking the five boys, she had, at last, admitted that something was wrong with her. She had made a start. The rest would come, quickly, she hoped. At least she would do her best.
It was rough. She found it hard to do her best all the time. There were times when she said, to hell with it, and thought about going out to find a man to try it just one more time, but she didn't. It was rough on Ernie, too. But he tried because he knew something then and he cared about something. It happened that Tina's best and Ernie's best were good enough. On the way to Texas, Mrs. Tina Harper was seduced by her husband in a nice motel room. She threw her bridal suit on the floor carelessly because it had been so very, very long, and because she felt that glorious tension.
For the first time in her life, she gave herself whole-heartedly to a man, because that man had known her for what she was, and he loved her in spite of it. And for the first time in her life she gave, instead of trying to take. She gave and she gave and she began to receive. That glorious tension expanded and grew until there was an explosion of release which she felt was almost audible in its intensity, and she blossomed into fire and lightning. She cried out in wonder and felt the glory of full womanhood. It exploded around Ernie Harper in muted, muscular, vaginal throbs, and she sobbed with happiness and joy.
After they were settled at the little southwestern school which had a good program of study for Petroleum Engineering, after Ernie made the Dean's List with his first report card, the Harpers received a tiny announcement card from Mr. and Mrs. David Wofford. Just over a year after that night on Lundy Beach, Jean Loras Wofford gave birth to a seven-pound two-ounce baby girl. Ernie wondered if they had been able to forget.