Chapter 17

Polly stood on the shady front porch of the general store, her head cocked to the side, looking at the screened door with "Monarch Bread" lettered on a metal bar across its middle. She took a deep breath, smoothed down her cotton skirt, flicked back her shingled hair, tightened her slipknot belt, squared her small shoulders and went inside, smiling.

Sammy looked up from his accounts book and saw a woman come in, a shadowy figure in a short, narrow skirt and block-heeled shoes with a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head. She did not look like any of his usual customers. The shadowed female walked directly to the counter where he sat, heels clicking rapidly and stood with fists on hips. "Hi, Sammy," she said with a grin.

"Polly, my God," he cried, dropping his pencil on the floor, "What are you doing here?" He slammed his book closed and took her offered hand. "It's good to see you." Her hand was slim and warm. They shook and he held on.

"I hope so," she said, suppressing a grin and pulling her hand free. "I noticed that you've got some breakfast cereals now, corn flakes and those bran things." She pointed high over his head and then gave him a tight-lipped smile. "Oh, and look, there's a rack full of thread and some packages of needles too. My goodness." She licked her lips and grinned.

"What happened?" asked Sammy, still perched on his uncle's old stool. "Where did you go?"

"Back home," she said, still looking around. "I finished school, third in my class, but of course there were only eleven of us at Miss Evelyn's Academy. Should have been twelve," she said, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "but Eve Horman, you wouldn't know her, her father's a minister, she ran off with a feed and grain salesman."

"I don't understand."

"We didn't either. She was so mousy and she usually smelled like moth balls." She sighed and looked about the store, hand on elbow, finger to lips, while Sammy watched her, not knowing what to think, but admiring her grace and poise, her lean shape. He knew it was an act, but it was an enjoyable one, easy to watch. He relaxed and suppressed a grin.

"Mother never liked Washington, too stuffy, all those nasty cave dwellers. It was Daddy that wanted me to come here and go to school." Polly hopped up on the counter and crossed her legs so that her silk clad calves were right in front of Sammy's nose. "I didn't like that seminary much either. Very stuffy."

He got up off his stool and stood to face her. She was as pretty as ever, flawless skin and happy eyes, and he felt a sudden stirring from remembered kisses. He backed away until his buttocks pressed the shelf behind him, feeling slightly trapped in his own store.

"Do you have a doughnut or maybe a piece of pie?" she asked sweetly. "I came out here on the trolley car and didn't have time for breakfast. Is it always this hot in August?' She fanned herself with her fingers and blinked at him.

Sammy reached behind him and handed her one the small pies the Baltimore bakery was introducing. She slid it out of its wax paper envelope and looked at it suspiciously, lips pursed.

"Can you get me something to drink, please," she said, taking a very small nibble and catching a piece of crust that fell toward her lap.

Feeling somehow confused, Sammy hurried out to the porch, opened the insulated box beside the kerosene pump, noticed that the iceman had not delivered yet, and fished a bottle of Coca Cola out of the cool water. He opened it and brought it to the girl.

"Could you dry it off, please," she said sweetly. "This is a new dress, don't you love it; it's so sleek, they call this color fuchsia." She crossed her legs the other way and adjusted her skirt while Sammy dried the bottle on his apron.

Polly wiped a crumb from her lips, swallowed some of her soft drink and smiled at Sammy. "You still look surprised. I don't suppose you have any straws?"

"I am surprised. Did you get the letters I wrote?"

"Well, I've been thinking," the girl said, resting the bottle on the dimpled knee which peeked from her raised hem. She finished the small blackberry pie and licked her lips, rubbing a finger back and forth across them. "I've been thinking about us." She drank some more Coca Cola, briefly closing her eyes as she titled up the bottle. Sammy admired her slim throat and wondered briefly if girls did not have Adam's apples.

"You have?" Sammy said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and wishing a customer would come in or a deliveryman or somebody. Looking at Polly seemed to make it difficult for him to think. He wondered if the boy out front was watching them. Looking at Polly made his palms itch and his penis throb. Sweat trickled down his back as the slowly rotating ceiling fan moved hot air about, swirling dust in the shafts of sunlight. Behind him the cat on the windowsill got up, stretched and went back to sleep.

"Yes, it was a long winter, and I decided not to write you. The senior class was so busy. Busy, busy, busy. Lot's of parties and things." She fluttered a hand aimlessly. "I didn't know what to say, you see, I was rather confused for a while. And my French teacher was awful, just awful." She sighed and slumped her lean shoulders.

"Did you see the soap over there, bleach too, Babbit's cleanser," Sammy pointed, "and the scrub brushes?"

"Um," she said, blinking twice, "so I had plenty of time for thinking. The snow was up to here, as high as this counter. Why don't we go over and sit down since you're not busy."

She slid to the floor, displaying a good bit of leg, and he followed her to one of the old tables and sat across from her, admiring the way her dress seemed to flow about her lithe body. The tip of her tongue touched her berry-blue lips, and she smiled again, her eyes crinkling.