Page:Jay Little - Maybe—Tomorrow.pdf/60

 "I'd love to hear it, Lois Sue. That is if you want me to."

He waited patiently. He was so tired and wanted to be away but he could tell she was pleased, even if she didn't say so, even if she did tell him not to say anything until it was published, she was pleased.

From the leather-strapped case she took out a paper, and read:

"Why are you so silent, sitting there

So far away in dreams …

And yet …"

His eyes lingered on her and then moved slightly. Had she written these words for him, was she asking him this question?

He told her he liked it very much. Standing there with her, he remembered the time a baseball had hit him in the mouth. He had been watching the game and seeing the ball coming toward him, had tried to catch it. Quickly and suddenly, the light had spilled over the rim of the world, the sun drowned in a dense smoke, and the pain he had felt was intensified with tongues of flame.

"Catch it in your hand, not your mouth, Sissy," Joan Sears had yelled at him. Joan Sears, in tight blue jeans, had yelled those words at him. Joan Sears with short, tangled hair. Jo, they called her now.

He had gotten up, his face heavy with pain, and now, with this momentary irritation on his mind, he recalled a scene from his childhood and this girl who used to be called Joan.

She was the first girl he had seen naked. He saw again the clump of mesquite trees, bordered by high sinie weeds and grass, they used to play under. The narrow path ending under twisted branches of lace-like trees was all so clear again. He recalled the sentence "Let's play Tarzan. I'll be Tarzan and you be the girl I fight for, huh, Gay?"

As if carried back to the scene on the very air of the hall, he recalled her tearing off the percale dress, remembered the blue forget-me-nots dotting the fabric. He had gazed at her nude body in amazement after she had discarded the pink under-pants, and scampered up the tree's low hanging branches naked. There was nothing there … had something happened to her?

"Girls are different from boys," she had answered his question. "Put on my dress and I'll save you from the monkeys." Innocently 50