Chapter 37

We'd had a short jump into Corpus Christi, and had gotten in early without a whole lot to do that afternoon. It was about time for the new True magazine to be out, and I could always enjoy spending a couple hours with it. I was thinking about heading into town to see if I could find a magazine stand or something; if I couldn't find True I figured I could find Argosy or one of those other men's magazines that were popular in the fifties but somehow disappeared along in the sixties. It would be something to do for a while. I hadn't gotten past the thinking about it stage when Arlene came by my Ford. "Hey, Mel," she said, "I hear they have a pretty good beach over on Padre Island. How about if we go and check it out?"

I hadn't had much time alone with Arlene since the season started, so needless to say I thought it was a great idea. If nothing else, it might give me a chance to see if the engine was still running, so to speak. It didn't take us much time to get on the road in the Ford, heading for the beach.

I was just a little surprised at the place – it was big and flat, and the sand was hard, like at Daytona Beach. There was no problem driving on it. There weren't a lot of people around, but I decided to head south for a bit so we could be off by ourselves. After three or four miles I found a place that filled the bill pretty well. "Looks like this is the place," I told her.

"Out in the middle of nowhere, isn't it?" she said. "Guess there's no bathhouse in walking distance."

"Don't see one," I said. "I haven't changed into my swimsuit, either. Guess I should have thought of it."

"Well, hell," she replied. "You just change on one side of the car and I'll change on the other. I mean, it's not like there's going to be anyone around watching."

That's what we wound up doing, just stripping off our clothes and pulling on our swimsuits on opposite sides of the car. There was no one around anywhere, and I suppose we could have just done without the swimsuits at all – after all, I'd been skinny dipping with Arlene that time up in North Dakota or wherever it had been, except that it had been at night. Even so, the temptation was there to steal a glimpse in the rear view mirror, but I was honest and didn't bother. In a couple minutes we were done, and I went back to the trunk to get a blanket that I kept there, and saw that Arlene was wearing that French bikini that she'd worn back at Ft. Lauderdale. "You look even better with that on now than you did back in February," I told her.

"Well, it was the only swimsuit I had," she shrugged. "I wouldn't want to wear it around the guys, but I guess I can with you."

We didn't walk far away from the car to spread the blanket out – there was no reason to, since one place was about as good as the next. But before we got on it, we decided to go get wet. The water was warm and nice, with that special tang of salt. We splashed and played around for a while, just for the fun of it, and then headed back up to the car and spread out on the blanket. This thing had come down so quickly that I hadn't even thought to throw in any towels and didn't have any in the car, so we didn't have a lot of choice but to just sit out in the warm breeze and the sun to dry off.

We hadn't had any real difficulty keeping a conversation going all the way down to the beach from the track, mostly because we'd been talking about our recent races, and racing in general. But now, we were alone, and I think we both found it hard to say anything. "It's not the same, is it, Mel?" she asked after a while.

"What?"

"Not the same as it was back at Fort Lauderdale, is it? Maybe it's just the being with the gang, out on the road, but when we were at Fort Lauderdale a couple months ago I don't think we were anywhere near as afraid of each other as we've seemed to be the last few days."

"Yeah, that's true, I guess," I told her. "Back then, it was just us, even though there were other people around. Now, even though we might as well be on a desert island somewhere, we know the crew is right there, or at least will be right there in a couple of hours."

"That's about the size of it, isn't it?" she said. "I know when we were back at Fort Lauderdale we were holding back from each other, mostly because we both knew that you wouldn't be there long. I know I hated like hell to see you leave, and wished that you could stay with me."

"I hated to leave," I told her, and explained how I'd almost turned back several times on the way up to Daytona Beach, and how hard it had been to make that drive.

"I wish you had," she sighed. "I almost felt as if we were on the verge of something when you left. As much as I hate to say it, I don't feel that way now. I wish now I'd spent the winter with you close by, even if it had been up in Livonia."

"Couldn't agree more," I said. "I thought any number of times that I ought to have just gone ahead and decided to spend the winter around where you were at. I don't have a Florida teaching certificate but that wouldn't have mattered for substitute teaching. But at least in Livonia I had the other guys to share expenses with, and I wouldn't have had that in Florida. But I kicked myself for that decision any number of times."

"I suppose," she sighed. "As far as I was concerned it was a crappy, boring winter, except for the weather and the time you were down there. There were times that your letters were about the only thing that kept me going. I didn't have much in the way of friends down there, and it got pretty damn lonely. About all I had to keep me going was the thought of getting back together with you and getting out on the road racing again. Now that we're back together, well, I'm happy to not be there, but there isn't the magic that I thought there'd be."

"I guess I feel pretty much the same way," I told her. "I think I'm holding back, afraid of doing something that I shouldn't be doing, mostly to keep the guys on the crew from getting upset. I don't know why I should feel that way. Hell, we went for a couple years having Hattie with us, and nobody ever resented Chick over it. I don't think anyone resents Rocky for deciding to stay behind with Ariel. In fact, we're pretty happy for him. She was something of a wild one, but she seems to have settled down with him."

"Yeah, I think I'm holding back, too," she sighed. "If it weren't for all the time I spent in the Army in Korea with all those guys around I probably would feel differently. I mean, here we are, out in the middle of nowhere, not wearing much in the way of clothes. I can't tell you why our hands aren't all over each other, except that somehow it doesn't feel right."

"I guess I pretty much agree," I sighed. "Don't get me wrong, there's not much more I'd like to do right now but to have my hands and my lips all over you, but it just doesn't seem like the right thing for us to be doing right now."

"That's it exactly," she nodded. "I don't think I'd feel the same way if it was just you and me, not you and me and the MMSA. But right now, I don't think there's much else that we can do but do what we're doing."

"Right," I agreed. "It sure makes the season seem just that much longer."

"Yeah," she sighed.

I leaned back and thought about it for a moment, trying to figure out what both of us were really saying. I guess I had been right to think that we were getting close to something back in Fort Lauderdale. It was clear to me that we weren't going to get much closer to anything while the season went on, and as much for her reluctance as it was for mine. We were just going to have to pussyfoot around each other until the season was over with, and then maybe this time we'd find a place to winter over where we could be a little closer together. That wasn't all as appealing as it sounded on the first thought; after all, I'd been getting progressively more uncomfortable with continuing to race when I should be settling down and finding a real job, most likely teaching some place.

At one time I'd considered leaving the crew when we got back to Livonia along in the summer and spending some time looking for a decent job. It was still an option; in fact, if I was planning on finding a regular teaching job for the coming winter I'd about have to do it. But it was clear to me, as well, that if I left the crew and left Arlene behind, it would probably be the end of that. Maybe by midsummer Arlene would be about to the point where she would be willing to leave the crew with me – after all, she would have been with us for a year by then, and maybe that would be enough for her to wash Korea out of her system. Or, it might not be, and who was to know until we got there?

I felt like I ought to put the conundrum to Arlene, and see what she thought about it, but I couldn't find a way to bring it up in the way that I wanted to. "Maybe we can find some place we can stay together next winter," I suggested as a way to work around to my thoughts.

"Well, at least close to each other," she replied, sending the message to me pretty clearly that she wasn't talking about living together, or even sharing space. "It doesn't have to be Fort Lauderdale, either. It wouldn't break my heart if it was someplace warm."

"Yeah, that flying white stuff gets old after a while," I said as a way of diverting the subject away from something that suggested having sex. "You're a northern girl, you know what I mean. Every time it snowed up in Livonia last winter I couldn't help but think of you down there in sunny Florida."

"The radio stations and the newspapers down in Florida like to spend a lot of time talking about how bad the weather is up north," she giggled. "I think they make it worse than it is. To hear them you'd think the glaciers are returning. I kept imagining how you must be freezing up in Michigan. In a way, I kind of missed it. Somehow the year wasn't complete without the snow."

"I don't know," I sighed. "I'm not a month past having snow on the ground and it doesn't feel right to be looking forward to it again." I hunted around on the blanket for my pack of Luckies and my lighter, found it, and offered her a cigarette. She took one, and I lit both of them, then tried again to get around to the subject that was on my mind. "I'll tell you what, I've been a substitute teacher for three winters now, and most of the time it's been a pure pain in the fanny. I think I can enjoy teaching if I'm actually teaching something, but I'm not looking forward to another winter of babysitting in Livonia. More and more I think that it's getting to be time for me to be getting a real job."