Chapter 4

Jay’s turn:

Lena was still giggling when we left the hotel, heading to dinner.

“You act like you’re proud of yourself for that one,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” she giggled. “All the stuff going on, just for a second I let myself loose. Lightened up. You didn’t mind, did you?”

“No, it’s good to see you happy.”

I’m liking the smiling, a little bit sassy, version of Lena. I was somewhat concerned about her previous passive nature. It’s not exactly the thing you want to carry anywhere on a big construction project.

“I’ve packed, you know...”

I swiveled my head to look at her.

“Packed?”

“Uh-huh. I sort of told Mom and Dad that you were my ride to the new job after graduation.”

“What about those post-graduation parties and stuff?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

She gave it to me. “I didn’t go to the pre-graduation parties. Why would I want to go to the ones after graduation? Oh, I know ... I could get drunk or stoned or both, end up with no panties, wondering who did what to me ... That’s gotta be fun...”

“It’s not always like that,” I said.

“Sometimes it is. I know a girl at church ... At school she decided that maybe, just that one time, she’d go to a party. Got invited by a second-string football player. She was flattered.” Lena sighed sadly. “She’s pregnant. Wants to think that her ‘date’ was the daddy, but some punch spiked with Lord knows what, she was semi-conscious. The gossip is that she was quite the attraction at the party for several guys.”

I guess my look gave me away.

“Lena ain’t that. So much for ‘go with a crowd. You’ll be safe.’ Brandy wasn’t safe.”

“Lena’s smarter than that,” I said, really wanting to believe that. “But seriously ... packed?”

“Uh-huh. So after I get my diploma, if you want to drag me up there with you, I’m ready.” She paused. “Of course, if you’d planned on something else ... I know you said they’d let you start training me in the middle of June. And you said something about a vacation. So I can wait if I need to.”

There was a slight change in inflection on ‘if I need to’.

“I was going to take a couple of weeks.”

She turned her head demurely. “I’ve never been on a real vacation. We never could afford it. We went on a weekend some summers, spent the night at a hotel, did a water park or something. What’s your idea of a vacation?”

“I’m a history buff. History ... I was thinking of Civil War battlefields. Not the kind of thing that a lot of people do.”

“So you spend your day walking around a battlefield...” she started.

“Walk over the ground, knowing that hundreds of men died there in a war fewer and fewer people understand. I usually read up on the battle before I visit.”

“And you do this by yourself.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Not exactly what you tell some woman – ‘Hey, let’s take a vacation and spend it thinking about people dying... ‘ So I do it for the person I know who’ll understand. That would be me.”

“You’re just saying that, aren’t you?”

“Saying what?”

She sighed. “How did you know?”

“What are you talking about, Lena?”

“My high school research paper was on the Civil War, post-Gettysburg.”

“Seriously?”

“You can read it if you want. I made an ‘A’. You know, your dad used to talk about how you would’ve been a historian if it had made sense as a career. I sort of got interested. Couldn’t understand how somebody would get into history like that. I sort of understand now.”

“Uh...” I spoke, trying to buy a little time to understand the conversation and collect my thoughts. “So you’re saying that YOU would like that trip?”

“I would,” she affirmed, head bobbing. “But if it’s a solitary thing for you...”

“Wasn’t specifically, but like I said, who would I even ask?”

“Me.”

“Lena, you know that it’ll be a series of overnights in hotel room after hotel room.”

“You get somebody who knows about divisions and regiments and grapeshot and abatis ‘n stuff like that...” She smiled shyly. “And you can get rooms like the one you have right now, with two beds. Jay, I dress chastely at home in the evenings. I won’t change that, okay. I won’t tease you or anything. I’ll be good.”

I thought about that. Apparently Lena was of the conventional mindset that if a woman wanted to tease a man, she’d have to don some frilly negligee or something. That’s not it at all, not for me. I’m trying to suppress an image of Lena NOT teasing. What would she wear to do that? I’m thinking a set of chemical hazard coveralls, complete with full head coverage.

She noted the pause. “You’re thinking, aren’t you. Forget I said anything.”

“No, no, no ... We can do this...”

“If it’s not working, I can get a bus ticket home,” she said.

“No, I think it’ll be a good shakedown for us ending up in that apartment. Compared to a hotel room for a couple of weeks, that apartment will seem positively palatial.”

“Palatial,” she repeated. “Vocabulary. I can use mine, too, I guess.”

“I like it better that way.”

“So! After my graduation, we load up in your truck and take off for...”

“Vicksburg,” I said. “Then Corinth. Shiloh. Then Chattanooga.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I have my money. I can help pay for all this,” she said.

“Uh, well, okay ... The room doesn’t cost any more for two than it does for one. Breakfasts are usually free. Then we’ll argue...”

“Take me to buy some clothes before dinner, then.”

“Why?”

“I think that ‘bouncing around a battlefield’ clothes will also be great for work clothes, right?”

“Right.”

“Let me go shop a bit.”

“Okay.”

She giggled. “It won’t be bad. I know what size jeans and shirts I wear. I bought a couple of pair last month. I’ll get a couple more. Then we can eat. There’s a Chinese restaurant...”

“Yeah, that’ll work.”

She’s true to her word. We went to the store she specified, NOT at the mall, I followed her inside because I didn’t relish sitting outside in my truck, waiting. She walked right up to the rack of jeans, grabbed a couple of pairs.

“Hold these,” she ordered. I did.

She surveyed a rack of blouses, picked a couple. “Hold these, too.”

“Okay.”

Then she slid over into the lingerie department.

“Hold up, there, cowgirl,” I said. “I ain’t carrying your panties around.”

She giggled. “Oh, you DO have limits, then.” And she picked three pair. Pastels. Hip-huggers. I bit the inside of my mouth.

A package of socks went on top of my pile, then as we headed out to the cashier, she stopped at the perfume counter. She eyed the fanciful array of bottles, picked one. Spritzed one wrist. Rubbed it against the other, then offered that to me. “Yes or no?”

“Nobody I know of wears that.” I didn’t add that I was not recently close enough to a woman to really smell her perfume, but... “Yes. Very nice.”

She grabbed a package. “My splurge. Let’s go.”

We checked out, did the restaurant, then went into the movie theater. Okay, Lena’s a high school girl, there’s only two theaters in town, and they’re popular among her age group both as places of employment and as social venues.

Two girls and a guy came up.

“Hi, Lena,” one of the girls said. “Last movie before graduation?”

“You betcha,” Lena popped. She grabbed my hand. “This is my benefactor, Jay Harris. Jay, this is Kitty, and this one is Eileen, but she spells it A-I-S-L-I-N and this is Jeremy.”

“Uh, what’s a benefactor,” Aislin asked.

“Somebody who comes home for her graduation and makes sure she has a good summer job,” Lena said. “I’m going to be a documents analyst for a construction company.”

“Uh ... What do they do?” Jeremy asked.

Lena had asked me this, wanting details. “Drawings, revisions, change orders, documentation packages. At twenty-four bucks an hour after I train for a couple of weeks.”

“Duuuuude,” Jeremy replied. “I need a benefactor.”

“Lena’s helped my dad for the last few years of his life. This is karma,” I said.

Inside the theater, we found a pair of seats at a comfortable distance back from the screen.

“Benefactor?!? Where’d THAT come from?”

“Too much time reading literature,” she said. “Perhaps we could’ve had MORE fun if I’d said ‘sugar daddy’.”

“You have an evil streak.”

“Yeah. Uh-huh. Like they won’t take ‘benefactor’ and get ‘sugar daddy’ out of it on their own.”

By the end of the movie they’d have gotten more fuel to move from benefactor to sugar daddy as Lena (perfectly innocently, I’m sure) slumped sideways and leaned her head on my shoulder.

I dared not to do what most of me desperately wanted to do – put my arm around her.

Afterward – “You didn’t mind, did you?”

“Mind what?”

“Me leanin’ on you like that.”

“Not at all.”

“I was tired. There you were. Just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Rather flattering,” I said.

“Flattering? Jay, you know who you are. You’re good people. Your dad was good people. I’m lucky you don’t have a Missus Jay. I don’t think she’d approve of dragging me along on your vacation.”

We drove her home and I walked her to the door. Neat-looking thing, is Lena. As we pulled into her driveway, she asked, “Do you have plans for tomorrow evening?”

“No. Got something in mind?”

“Not yet. You sure I’m not keeping you from doing something you really want to do?”

I couldn’t say that I really wanted to have her around, so I said “Let’s compare notes in the morning. You have rehearsal at one, don’t you?”

“Yeah. We need to rehearse how to get a diploma and run like the blazes,” she said. “And the next night ... Graduation.” She turned to me. “When can we leave after that?”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“Kinda,” she said.

“You’re in a hurry to take off across the country with some random guy...”

“Jay, you are HARDLY random. We’ve talked for hours and hours. We’ve run the roads together. I’m looking forward to taking off on a trip with my best friend who just happens to be a guy. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, except how it looks to your mom and dad.”