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Your eyebrows are white. Isn t it funny we re both
blonde?
We might be sisters, I said.
You know, I don t know anything about you. How old
you are, what your middle name is, the things you like
and don t like. Do I?
When I write my memoirs I ll send you a copy.
Did you play football?
Yes.
Hill Girl 111
In high school? Or in college?
Both.
You certainly are talkative. Why do I have to worm
everything out of you? I ll bet you were a good football
player.
I played in the line. Nobody ever asked me to dedicate
a stadium. I was down in the fine print, listed as Crane,
RT.
What does RT mean?
Right tackle.
Did you carry the ball and make lots of touchdowns?
No. Not in that conference.
Why not? she demanded. You probably could have
carried it better than anybody.
I grinned. I don t know. Nobody ever gave it to me. I
guess I wasn t popular.
You re making fun of me.
Let s forget about football. Nothing s as dead as last
year s football games.
It was still dark when we rolled out of town on the
highway. I stopped and put the top back and the wind felt
cool on our faces. I watched the tunnel the headlights
made in the night and turned now and then to look at
Angelina. She always sat with her hands in her lap, the
way she had before, only now there wasn t any sullen
defiance in her eyes and they would smile happily at me
when I looked around.
In another half hour it was growing light. We came
over a hill and started down into the river bottom ahead
of us and the east was flushed. It was still and cloudless
with the summer morning s promise of heat to come, but
the air was cooler in the bottom and there were patches
of mist near the ground. I stopped the car off to the left
side of the road at the end of the bridge and we could see
the river below in the gray light. There was a big pool
there under the bridge and a long sand bar below where
the water went over shallow and clear. The big white
oaks out across the bottom were hazy and dark in the
scattered patches of mist and on the ones nearby we
could see the gray-brown rings that marked the high-
water levels of the winter floods. A mockingbird was
Hill Girl 112
coming awake and his song was the only sound above the
low gurgle of the water over the sand bar below us.
It s pretty, isn t it? she asked.
Yes, I said. There s something about rivers.
There was no traffic along the road and we had the
whole long bottom to ourselves, just the two of us and the
mockingbird. Neither of us said anything for a long time
as we sat there in the early-morning light watching the
river, and the silence remained unbroken even after I
was aware that we were no longer looking at the river,
but at each other. She had turned toward me and sat
with her head tilted back against the top of the seat and
her cheek pressed against the leather, her eyes on my
face. I looked down at her a long time and I had never
known anything like it before and I knew what it was
going to be like with us from this time on and then I had
my arms around her and was kissing her, feeling the
wildness of it and trying to be gentle with her at the
same time. Her eyes were closed and I kissed them.
Do that again, Bob, she said softly. I love it when
you kiss me like that.
It might have been what she said. Or it might have
been some sudden and perverse awareness of the fact
that I was making love to her in the car this way and of
whose car it was. I don t know which it was, but my arms
stiffened and I felt sick down in my stomach the way you
do when you take a foul punch. That thing Lee had said
Jesus, but she enjoys it. She ll beat you to death in the
seat of a car.
She felt me stiffen up and she looked up at me
questioningly as I shoved her back and got on my side of
the seat under the wheel and fished out a cigarette.
Bob, what is it? she asked, her eyes troubled.
Nothing, for Christ s sake, I said. I just wanted a
smoke.
Something happened. Please tell me.
I just suddenly remembered your advance billing.
You re supposed to be terrific in the car seat.
I don t know what you mean. What s made you change
all of a sudden?
I don t know why I couldn t shut up and leave it there,
But the thing had hold of me and I couldn t stop.
Hill Girl 113
What the hell are we being so lovey-dovey about,
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