Chapter 11: Cruising

That was pretty much it for grand romance for a few weeks. School was ending the following Thursday, and Saturday Kelly and her mom were flying out of Atlanta to London. Neither set of parental units were allowing us to date on school nights, not even during the last week of school. We were able to go out on Friday night, and we got in some quality time then, but that was it. She was going to be gone the last week of May and the first two weeks of June. She got sort of tearful and clingy and swore that she would write and call every day. I smiled at that. “Kelly, no you’re not! You’re going to be too busy seeing things and taking pictures and having fun.”

“Grim! I love you!” She had started telling me that when we were up at the lake.

“I know you do, and I love you, too. Seriously, though, you’re only going to be gone a few weeks, not years.”

“Will you miss me?”

It was getting a little old by then. “Well, maybe. Maybe I’ll have to give Tilly Swenson a call and soothe my heartache...”

“You pig!”

I just laughed and wrapped my arms around her and calmed her down. Then I promised I wouldn’t call Tilly, although I did leave open the option for Samantha. She protested that, too, and I made it a game, asking about other girls around the school, and kissing her every time she complained. Eventually I promised to cry myself to sleep every night thinking about her.

“You’d better!”

Actually, I was kept too busy for that. Now that I was sixteen and out of school for the summer, Grandpa put me to work out in the feed mill itself, operating my idiot stick. When I wasn’t running that implement of precision work, I was also employed stacking bags of feed on pallets or unloading bags from pallets. Uncle Dave, Dad’s brother and Grandpa and Grandma’s only other child, also worked at the mill. He pretty much ran it, with Grandpa overseeing everything. Dad told me once that his brother was probably going to take it over when Grandpa retired. Anyway, Uncle Dave was always finding new things for me to clean or stack or unstack. I wasn’t going to hit summer training camp weak and flabby, that was for sure. Spend all day lifting hundred-pound sacks of feed and you’ll either be strong or dead. I was so tired that I didn’t even dream about Kelly; I just zonked out and snored.

I did ask Dad if he could teach me to drive his truck and haul the boat around. I already had a pretty good idea how to load and unload the boat from the trailer when he had it backed down at the ramp at the landing. He just stared when I asked.

“The truck? My truck? Since when did you get the idea you were going to drive my truck?” he asked.

“Dad! I don’t want to drive your truck. I want to be able to put the boat in the water without making it a family affair.”

That made him raise his eyebrows. “You want to explain that?”

“Dad! I was just ... I was thinking about taking Kelly on a few boat rides around the lake.”

“Oh, Christ!” he muttered. “You just want to get her on a boat in a bikini! Don’t tell me about seeing the sights!”

I grinned at that. “Is that a bad thing?”

“We’ll see. I’ll think about it.”

Mom must have worked on him some because the next Saturday he relented. We were all going out on the lake for the day and doing some fishing - well, Mom was going, but she didn’t fish, she read a book and worked on her tan - and Dad relented and let me drive his truck. He also issued dire warnings and threats if I so much as came close to getting a scratch on either the truck, the trailer, or the boat. Specifically, he told me that if that were to happen, I would never need to worry about a refill on the three-pack of rubbers he had got me, because I would be lacking the equipment required to use them.

In any case, when we left the house, he tossed me his keys and told me to get in the driver’s seat. Mom was relegated to the back cab with Jack and Bobbie Joe, and Dad got in her seat and complained the entire time we drove over to the county road building. “You’re going too fast! You’re too close! You need to brake sooner!” Endless complaints.

My brothers were laughing at me from the back seat. Mom said, “Jack, he’s doing fine. We are getting passed by kids on skateboards!”

That just got Dad to stewing about my watching for people walking around or on skateboards.

In any case, we arrived at the county road building and Dad climbed out and supervised hooking up the trailer. I had to back up the truck at a snail’s pace until it was just right, and then I got out and cranked the hitch jack until the hitch dropped down onto the ball. Then he had me drive the truck around the yard at the county highway department, practicing making turns and backing it up. Finally, shortly before the sun set for the day (or so it seemed at the time) he gave me permission to drive over to the boat landing. Mom and the boys climbed back in and off we went. If he had made me go slow before, now we were being outraced by grandmothers in walkers. We got to the ramp, and he supervised me backing it down and unhooking the boat, and then let Mom and the boys take the boat while he supervised me parking the truck and trailer. At this pace, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to do this until I could afford my own truck and boat! I simply kept my mouth shut.

In any case, we all got out on the boat. This boat had a small cabin, which Dad said was the smallest room he was likely to see this side of a coffin, but which he still thought was tremendous. Mom carried the cooler below and put a few things away, and changed into her swimsuit and Dad had me drive the boat around the lake for a bit. That wasn’t too bad, since he already knew I knew how to drive a boat. Afterwards he and Mom lazed around on the front end of the boat, while Jack and Bobbie Joe and I drove it around and did some fishing. After lunch I drove up the east side of the lake, trying to find the O’Connor property. I thought I might have found it, but I decided the next time we were up there we would hang a flag or something so we would know for sure.

At the end of the day, we reversed the whole process by backing the trailer down into the water and loading up the boat, and then heading back to the county road building. Still, I hadn’t killed anybody, including Dad, so we repeated the process the next weekend. He still drove me nuts, but the whole affair went a lot faster. He grumbled a lot, but Mom said it would be fine if I took Kelly on a boat ride when she got back. She offered to chaperone, of course, and Dad just snorted and laughed at that.

Kelly returned on Friday, June 15, and I think she called me as soon as she got home. That was about eight in the evening, and she demanded I drop everything and come right over! I wondered what was up. I borrowed the car from Mom and headed over to Kelly’s. I had barely knocked on the door when she opened it and dragged me inside, to throw her arms around me and kiss me.

“I have missed you so much!” she said.

I hugged her back. “Me too!” I saw Mrs. O’Connor looking harried in the kitchen. “Welcome back, Mrs. O’Connor!” I called out.

“Thank you, Grim. It’s good to be home.” She looked in the refrigerator and grimaced. “Kelly, I have to go out for a bit and get some groceries. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Okay, Mom.” She turned to me and hugged me again. “Did you miss me?”

I shrugged. “Well, a little, but the varsity cheerleaders came over to help me cope...”

“Ooooh! You are a rat!”

Mrs. O’Connor laughed from where she was going out the front door. “Good one, Grim. She deserved that.” Then she was out the door.

I sat down in one of the armchairs and Kelly sat down on my lap and threw her arms around my neck. “Well, I missed you, anyway.”

“I missed you, too,” I responded sincerely. We kissed a little, but nothing was going to happen with Kelly’s mother coming back soon. “How was the flight? Flights?”

Kelly sighed. “Long! And then it takes forever to get through the airport and go anywhere. We’ve been up since early this morning, and that’s London time! That’s five hours ahead of us!” I was slowly visualizing this, and then it got even more confusing. “The flight itself is almost ten hours long, but we made up some time coming back to America, so we landed about five hours after we took off.”

“Uh, huh,” I replied.

“And then it took us another hour to get our luggage and get through the airport and get our car...”

I just nodded and made sympathetic noises. Otherwise, I just held Kelly on my lap, and she laid her head against my chest. After a bit, she stopped talking. When Mrs. O’Connor came home, she found us like that, with me holding Kelly on my lap, and Kelly sound asleep.

She came in holding a couple of small Piggly Wiggly bags. “I just picked up some milk and eggs and bread. I’ll make a bigger list tomorrow ... Oh!”

I smiled at her. “She’s out like a light,” I whispered.

Mrs. O’Connor nodded. “It’s been a very long day,” she whispered back. “Give me a second to put this stuff away.” She took the bags into the kitchen. They both had the Piggly Wiggly pig on them and proclaimed that Mrs. O’Connor was ‘big on the pig!’ I always laughed when I saw that.

She came back in and flopped down on the sofa. “I feel like going to sleep myself!” she sighed.

“How was the trip?” I asked.

“Good. It was very nice. We flew to London for a week, and then we went over to Ireland, and then back to London. I’m sure that Kelly will give you a complete breakdown of it. I think she took a million photos.”

I smiled. “Sounds like her.” We chatted a few minutes more.

Kelly slept through all of this. Mrs. O’Connor said, “She needs to go to bed. Let’s wake her up.”

Instead, I put an arm under her legs and leaned forward to get a bit of balance, and then carefully stood up, still carrying Kelly. “I’m okay,” I said.

“Grim...”

I smiled. “I’ve been carrying hundred-pound sacks of feed all summer. Kelly’s a lot more pleasant.”

Mrs. O’Connor gave me an amused snort at that and led me upstairs to Kelly’s room. I deposited her on her bed and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. She just murmured sleepily.

Kelly’s mom turned the light off in the bedroom as closed it behind her as she left. I followed her back downstairs. “I’ll be going. Tell her to call me tomorrow and I can come over.”

I received an amused smile in return. “As tired as she is, that might be Sunday. I’m as tired as she is!”

“I’m sure.” I turned towards the door.

Mrs. O’Connor stopped me. “Grim, hold on a sec.” I turned to face her. “Grim, Kelly and I talk, about just about everything. I know she’s growing up, too fast really, but she’s set on growing up. Please, don’t hurt her.”

“I promise, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Grim.”

Kelly slept most of Saturday, so I invited her over on Sunday for supper. Her Mom dropped her off around noon, just after we got home from church, and she brought over a big plastic bag. Inside were some postcards that never got mailed, a couple of maps showing where they had been, and a few souvenirs. Of course, since that wasn’t anywhere near sufficient, “As soon as the film gets developed, I’ll bring the pictures over and show you, too!”

“Sure thing, you bet,” I agreed. It sounded dreadful, but I figured saying something like that might be counterproductive. In any case, I spent a lot of time that afternoon listening to her talk about London and Belfast. It sounded very rainy.

It was that way in Georgia, as well. We were coming off several days of rain, and it was still sort of cloudy and questionable. No way was Dad going to let me take Kelly out on the lake in the boat in that kind of weather. We were clear weather sailors. I mentioned to Kelly that if she played her cards right, she might get a boat ride next weekend.

“Oh?” she asked.

I nodded. “While you have been touring Europe, I got Dad to let me practice driving his truck and the boat around. If the weather is good next weekend, I can probably get him to let me and you take it out and go out by ourselves.”

“That would be so cool! When you went out, did you go up to our place?”

I gave her a bit of a perplexed look. “I’m not completely sure. I mean we went up there, but I wasn’t sure which lot was which. Next time we go up, we’ll need to tie a flag or something up there, see if I can find it from the lake.”

“Do you think we could actually take the boat up there and get out there?”

“Probably, but I’d want to take it slow. The lake seems deep enough there, but you have to be careful about getting too close to the shore. We’ll need to take some rope up to see if we can tie the boat off to a tree or something.”

“Cool!” she said. Then she glanced over at the other side of the family room, where Jack was watching the TV. She lowered her voice and whispered, “When do you think we can go out and be alone? I have really missed you.” She squirmed around a bit on my lap, which made me a little crazy. “I really want to be alone with you!” She finished that with a flick of her tongue against my neck.

I was ready to kick Jack out and ravish Kelly right there on the carpet, but that probably wasn’t a good idea. “Well, I work days, so probably not until Saturday. We can probably go out after I get out of work and Mom gets home and I can borrow her car.”

She groaned. “Oh, Grim, I want to spend some very private time with you! Can you come up during the day? My mom is at work until five.”

“Uh...” How was I going to pull that one off? I had to work over at the mill!

“Grim, you know, you’ve never been in our swimming pool. Remember that swimsuit of mine which you liked?” She leaned in closer and whispered directly into my ear, “I have one that’s even smaller!”

I was starting to breathe hard at that point, and that wasn’t the only thing that was hard! “I’ll see what I can do!” I promised her.

Kelly licked my neck a little more, which made me promise her several more times that I would really, REALLY, REALLY try to get a day off this week. Later that day, after I drove Kelly back home, I cornered Dad in his office and told him I needed to take a day off from the mill. He simply arched an eyebrow and pushed the phone over to me and told me to call Uncle Dave. He said it was okay, he’d just work me twice as hard on Tuesday.

“Thanks, Uncle Dave.” I hung up the phone.

Dad looked at me. “Going to see Kelly?”

I nodded. “That’s the plan.”

“Better figure on your bike then. Your Mom and I both need our vehicles. And listen, not that I want to know what you are up to, but don’t do it here! I don’t need your brothers interrupting you two! You get me?”

That sounded purely horrible. “I get you!” I agreed. I left his study and found a different phone and called Kelly. I told her I could come over in the morning. She told me to get there around ten, just to make sure her mom was out of the house.

I had a hard time that night sleeping while thinking about tomorrow.

The skies were still gloomy the next morning, but I was surely going to chance getting wet to be alone with Kelly. Jack and Bobbie Joe were curious why I wasn’t going over to the mill, but I ignored them. I left the house around nine-thirty and pedaled my way to romance!

I got to Kelly’s place and was relieved to see no car in the driveway. I leaned my bike up against the side of the house and walked around to the front door. Kelly saw me through the picture window and had the door open by the time I got there. She pulled me inside and wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, I have missed you so much!” she told me.