“There was a bear here,” Dyman said. “It was pregnant, and afraid.”
He had driven Raylee into Del Puerto Canyon, the windows down, their hair wild in the hot wind. The fields of alfalfa and beans lay in brown and green squares. On the eastern horizon, the Sierra Nevada rose white-peaked against the blue sky.
Raylee was nervous at first about accepting Dyman’s invitation. He was new in town. She’d only met him a couple of times for Cokes and fries at the A&W. But when he looked at her with those blue eyes, and said, How about you and me take a ride? she couldn’t resist. She climbed into his old Chevy pickup eager for adventure.
They’d headed west into the rolling hills that lay along the border of the town. Dyman had stopped to buy two bottles of beer on the way. The beers hissed as he opened them with a bottle opener from the glove box. He handed Raylee one and put one between his legs as he drove. They were bitter and cold. The radio in the pickup didn’t work, but Dyman had a transistor radio, and Raylee held it up so they could catch KFIV in Modesto on and off. They drove several miles into the canyon before Dyman pulled over by a dry creek bed.
They stood at the top of a hill in the scrawny shade of a manzanita, gazing out over the wheat-colored grass dotted with scrub.
“The bear was searching for water,” Dyman said. “She wanted to drink, and then to rest. She was about to give birth.”
Raylee laughed and sat down under the manzanita, angling her back against the spindly trunk.
“There haven’t been bears here since . . . well, I don’t know that there ever have been. You have to go to Yosemite for bears.”
Dyman crouched and ran his fingers through the short yellow grass.
“It was two hundred years ago. She raised her head right here and sniffed the air.”
Raylee studied the patch of crisp grass. Dyman stood up and gazed out over the hills.
“I have a gift,” he said. “I can see traces of things that happened before. Things most people can’t see.”
He swigged the last of his beer and heaved his bottle. It spun across the sky and thudded in the grass.
“You see, everything leaves a trail. Nothing ever happens without a part of it remaining behind, like a footprint. Voices, for example. You ever wonder what happens when you stop speaking? The sound is there one moment and the next it’s gone.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t just go into your ear and disappear?”
“No. It stays in the air, spreading out in ripples. Same with sights, smells, movements. None of it ever goes away completely. It all keeps expanding out through the universe.”
She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. She pictured the sound of Dyman’s voice moving through the air in vibrating circles.
“It’s been proven,” he said. He told her how some scientists at Stanford were trying to record gamma rays from outer space, and when they played the tape back, they could hear the voice of Abraham Lincoln.
She wanted to ask how the scientists knew it was Lincoln, but she didn’t want Dyman to think she didn’t believe him. She liked the way he stood, his weight resting on one hip. His legs were long and lean. She was glad when he strolled over and slid down next to her, stretching one of those long legs out, bending the other at the knee. He faced her, resting on one elbow.
“I’ll bet you never met someone like me before,” he said. “There aren’t too many men around who can read the past.”
She wished she could think of something smart to say.
“We shouldn’t ever do anything mean,” she said finally.
Dyman raised an eyebrow.
“If everything we do lasts forever, then we should never do anything to hurt someone.”
Dyman laughed and turned away, shaking his head.
“What?” She wondered why he would make fun of her when she was agreeing with him. “Just imagine those ripples of meanness spreading out all over the place.”
“You’re a kick in the head, you know that?” Dyman laughed again. She wished he’d stop.
“I wouldn’t want scientists a hundred years from now listening to me tell one of my girlfriends she looked fat in her gym suit.” Now she was trying to be funny, but this time, Dyman didn’t laugh.
“You’ve got pretty eyes,” he said. “I’ll bet every boy you ever met told you have pretty eyes.”
But none of them had.
Dyman leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head.
“I wouldn’t expect you’d understand much about reading the past,” he said, watching the sky. “It takes a certain kind of thinking to get it. You don’t strike me as a girl with that kind of brains.”
She flinched, but she couldn’t be angry. It was true, she wasn’t all that smart.
“You’re a small-town girl through and through,” Dyman said. “I could tell by just looking at you. That’s another thing I can do—judge people right off. One glimpse, and I’ve got them pegged.”
“I’m leaving town soon as I graduate,” she said. She wanted him to know that she wasn’t as boring as she might seem. “I’m going to beauty school. I’m going to get a job in Modesto, or maybe even Sacramento.”
But all Dyman did was stretch and jerk his head to the side to crack his neck.
Raylee spotted a lizard sitting still and gray as the stone it was resting on, and thought of pointing it out, but she was worried Dyman might think that was too small-town. From far away, the sound of a car engine rose and faded. She surveyed Dyman’s profile.
She wanted to tell him about herself. About the last letter she’d gotten from her mom, almost two years ago now. About how beautiful her mom was, how she was too glamorous for their dumpy little town, and that’s why she’d moved to San Diego. About how her father got drunk and called her bitch and slut and once slammed her head against the wall so hard she’d blacked out. Secrets she hadn’t even told her best friends.
“Did she die?” she asked.
“What?”
“The bear. She was going to have babies, and she was scared, so I was wondering if she was all right.”
Dyman grinned. “You’re a trip, you know that?”
She wondered if being a trip was good or not.
“Even your name,” Dyman said. “Raylee. What kind of name is that?”
“I don’t know. It’s my name.”
“Whoever gave you that name didn’t have a lick of sense.”
“My mother gave me my name.”
“Well, I’m changing it,” Dyman said.
“Changing it? To what?” She wasn’t sure how to think about this. It was kind of bossy telling her she shouldn’t be called what she’d been called all her life. But then a new name might be nice, like a fresh start.
“How about Lenore?” she said. “I love that name. If you want to call me Lenore, that’d be cool.”
But he waved her suggestion away. “How about . . . I know—Manzanita. That’s just like you, like a manzanita tree.”
“Manzanita?” She turned around to get a good look at the thin trunk with its glossy red-brown bark.
“You’re skinny, like a Manzanita, and your hair is almost the same color.”
“I don’t know,” she said. But he was smiling at her, and his eyes were blue as lupine. He reached over and stroked her arm with the softest touch of a single finger. He tugged playfully at the fine hair on her forearm, and ran his fingers between hers.
“Can you tell me something?” she asked.
“Shoot.”
“Is being a trip something good or something bad?”
He smiled, and for a horrible moment she thought he was going to laugh at her again.
“I know I’m small-town, but there must be something good, too,” she said.
“Well, Manzanita,” Dyman said. “I think you are about the most special girl I ever met. Small-town or no, you are one special girl.”
The words floated around her like butterflies.
“And that small-town stuff? That will go away. Just takes time is all. Three months out of this backwater, and no one will ever call you small-town again.”
She smiled. She felt the rough grass against her calves, the sun burning her face, the narrow trunk of the manzanita against her back, and it was all good. She felt Dyman’s fingers intertwined with her own.
“A special girl,” she repeated out loud.
Dyman leaned toward her and put his lips to her ear. “I want you to be my girl, Manzanita Alves,” he said. “Do you want that? Do you want to be my girl?” He was stroking her arm, his fingers like the brush of a bird’s wing.
Other boys felt her breasts like they were searching for something to anchor themselves to. They grimaced when they came, as if they were in pain. Bobby Henderson had grasped her butt and moved it this way and that, barking, “Do it like this.” Before they did it, they gave her beer, and when they were done, a cigarette and a ride home.
But Dyman entered her gently, sighing as if he were walking into a grove of lilac trees.
“Oh, girl,” he moaned in her ear, his breath moist. “Oh, girl girl girl.” When he held her breast it was as if he were cupping honey in his hands. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, she saw a smooth white cloud overhead, spreading out like a pool of milk.
For more on Jill Jepson, please see our Authors page.
Amarillo Bay 