Bess was with Doyle Hanlon. Ten minutes before the strains of “Goodnight, Sweetheart” were struck up, and while Jim Arliss was dancing with Donna, Bess and Doyle and Earl Ingbretson walked out of the Dakota and piled into Doyle’s car.
Bess had taken Donna aside and told her that she, too, was welcome to ride home in Doyle Hanlon’s car. But Donna said no. She’d danced most of the past two hours with Bob Arliss, who was a nice boy and sober, so she would let him take her home.
“I’ll stop in the Loon tomorrow and let you know how it went,” she said, examining her lipstick in a mirror no bigger than her thumb.
So, at a quarter to one, Bess squeezed into the car again between the two men. They’d all been up since early morning and would have to be up in the next day’s early morning, so conversation was less antic than during the drive over.
Doyle and Earl discussed a ten-day fishing trip that Earl and his family were taking to Leech Lake. His wife, Barbara, wasn’t worth a tinker’s dam with a rod and reel, Earl said, but he was damned if he was going to do without a fishing trip this year. Barbara had known he liked to fish when she married him.
“Why don’t you go alone?” Bess ventured.
“What kind of vacation would that be for her?”
“You’re a son of a bitch,” Doyle said without rancor.
Although seated benignly, hands folded, Bess was thrashing around in her mind, panicked, ecstatic, and depressed. She felt compelled to jump out of the car and run across the fields, to save herself. Simultaneously she wanted never to get out of the car at all, but to cling to the steering wheel or door handle until someone dragged her bodily from it. An aching had taken hold of her. She was a little delirious, she thought.
Doyle braked for the stop sign where the road met County Road 14, then swung right, heading toward Harvester. No stop sign had stood at this crossing the night that Archer missed the turning, if “missed” was the right word. Resting her head against the back of the seat, Bess closed her eyes, shutting out the cottonwood grove and the Jessup farm.
They drove slowly into Harvester, now mostly closed down. “Anyone want to stop at the all-night?” Doyle asked.
“I gotta get home,” Earl said. “The old lady’s gonna have a fit.” But his house was dark when they stopped to let him out. Barbara hadn’t waited up.
Earl opened the car door. “Behave,” he said. Was that something he always said, or was it meant for Doyle? Did Doyle often misbehave?
Doyle Hanlon turned right at Eighth Street, in the direction of Bess’s house. “You know where I live?” she asked. Why was it hard to speak?
He nodded, and they drove in silence. At Eighth and Third Avenue, he said, “Could we ride around for half an hour?”
“It’s pretty late.”
“Don’t be afraid. I just want to be with you. You can say ‘Take me home’ any time, and I will.”
Bess said nothing. Doyle Hanlon had power over her. This must be what people meant by “chemistry” between a man and a woman. Chemistry had her in its grip.
Slowly, because they were not going anywhere, they rode up and down country lanes, windows wide open, while the radio played softly, a powerful station from far away—Chicago or somewhere. A clear-channel station.
On the gravel roads, the Mercury’s headlights picked out jackrabbits and raccoons, and in the tall, dusty grass, they caught little burning eyes staring out. Across air heavy with clover and black earth, fields of corn whispered.
Drifting as far north as Ula, Doyle swung the car back toward Harvester. If he had driven to the far side of the earth, Bess would not have had the starch to say “Take me home.”
He reached for her hand and she gave it to him, her heart swooping and curveting wildly in the sky.
Five miles from town, he pulled the car to the side of the road, stopping beneath a row of box elders, part of an old grove. Yes, she had expected this.
With the engine off, the sound of crickets was deafening. In the distance a farm dog barked, and close at hand a rotted fence post creaked. Doyle took her hand again.
“I want to kiss you good night,” he said. “And I won’t be able to do that in town.”
Would he think that she let just anyone kiss her? She wanted to explain that she didn’t, but she could think of no way to put it that wasn’t trite, so she said nothing. For the first time she did not critically analyze a kiss as it was happening but let its warm syrup pour through her and, when it ended, felt a keen privation.
“I want to see you again,” he told her. “Will you meet me at the Lucky Club tomorrow night? Tonight,” he amended, glancing at the dashboard clock.
She didn’t answer. He looked at her so solemnly that she turned away from him, feeling weighed down by his gaze. After a moment, he started the engine and they continued back to town.
Stopping at the corner of Second Street, several houses from Kate’s, he cut the lights but not the engine. When he looked at Bess, she smiled and touched his hand, which lay on the steering wheel. He smiled gravely back.
“You don’t have to decide now,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be working.”
“At the Loon?”
“Seven-thirty to three-thirty.”
“I’ll come in for coffee. Is that all right?”
“Of course.”
She hurried across the intersection and up Second Street to Kate’s house, watching Doyle Hanlon’s taillights disappear. Trembling, she ran up the steps and inside, letting the screen door quietly close behind her. She mustn’t wake Aunt Kate, who would ask what she had been doing.
Closing the door of her room with care so that a tiny click was the only sound, Bess threw the rumpled clothes from the bed onto a chair. Without turning on the light, she undressed, tossing her things onto the same chair and climbing into bed without a gown. She kicked the sheet and spread to the bottom of the bed and lay exposed to the darkness. Pretending that her hands were Doyle Hanlon’s, she ran them over her face and breasts and down her belly.
Celia, is this what happened to you?