Charlie Smith - Ginny Gall

He lay back in the grass with the letter pressed to his face and for a few minutes inhaled its smell into his body. Part of her was on the inside of him now, filtering through the pipes and tracks, easing in among the muscle and bone, settling into little culverts and housings, finding shelter, seeping into his being. We leave these little trademarks and gizmos and reliquaries behind us. Little stacks of dust in a corner. That others snuff up and take away. Now I am one of them.

He turned over on his stomach and, propped on his elbows, read the letter again. She had sneaked away, that was a fact. But maybe because she felt too much to speak to him. Yes, she felt something strong. But maybe not. Maybe she was used to boys approaching her, used to giving them rides in her car. We didn’t even go to a beautiful spot, or beautiful enough. And what was an africano girl doing owning her own car? This was Bee-luther-hatchee, not Chicago. Not even Shelby, where they had a college. It was Ginny Gall. Bad things happening over on this side of the universe.

He jumped up, fierce in feeling now, ready to go save her. It was not a boy’s notion, or only a boy’s. The grass surged heavily under a freshening breeze. He shuddered — like a mule, he thought, old Stubbornness, twitching off flies — and a hooting, wailing thing slid off from him, peeling away into depths inside. It trailed a whole lifetime of griefs behind it like knots pulled tight in greased rope, headed toward a howling. He staggered and had to catch himself to keep from falling. What is this? His body, the inside of it, seemed to have slid down, dropped, concentrated itself in a heap, a muddle. He didn’t want any of this now. Not now, not any time. But here it was. Something sharp as a hawk cried Run! — run for your life! But before he could act it threw ropes around him. He was being squeezed to death. In a blur he saw his hand out waving, or falling, in front of him. He could feel his forehead burning. I’m a crazy person. She was headed at high speed away from him but she was not diminishing in size. Wadn’t that funny. He paced a circle in the grass, catching switches of it, crumbling the feathery tops. Gradually the influence subsided. Somebody over at the camp hooted. Another let loose a high cackling, hateful laugh. Delvin got up and looked over that way past a broken-down fence and a few thin chokecherry trees. Nothing unusual. Down at the far end of the gully, where it passed under a low railroad trestle, he saw some men waiting. They were figuring to hop the westbound that would still be moving slowly after picking up freight in Eula. He thought of joining them. He loved riding on top of a car in good weather, watching the country pass. But he could catch a train any day.

Ah, jeez — he felt like lying down and not getting up. He wanted to run after her without stopping until he found her. Just to get a look at her. What was it — five days since he met her? Before Tuesday he hadn’t in his whole life had one single thought about her, didn’t expect her, wasn’t looking, and now he’d do anything just to touch her hand again. A breeze charged the thin hair on his arm. He closed his eyes. He was an inch away from her. Then she was gone like a bird flown. He ran his fingers along his arm but they were only his fingers. His eyes stung.

The train, pulled by a scuffed green locomotive, rumbled out of a woody area just east and came smoothly on around the big curve before the straight run to the trestle. He watched as the men got to their feet and stood brushing off their patched pants, resettling bindles and soogans, jostling or joking or just standing alone looking. They were like passengers at the special open-air station — like fleas, he thought bitterly, returning to the dog. Sometimes the bulls got after you, but lately, so he’d heard, there’d been no real trouble of that kind. It was news you couldn’t count on. The train rolled clacking over the trestle and the men began to find their way onto the gondolas and into open boxcars, climbing ladders or pulling themselves through the doors. Many of the gunnels were already taken. In cities you could board a standing train, but there was sometimes more risk. No hobo names on the weigh bills. He wanted to run along and join the boys.

He took a few steps in that direction, folding the letter as he walked and sliding it into his breast pocket. He was about to start running, but he stopped himself. A bitterness that had risen into his throat subsided. The men were scattered across the cars. Some he knew. A baraby wearing a patched crushhat, Parly from Denver, gave a slow looping wave and made a finger sign of good times. Delvin gave a small cocked wave back. He could still make the train, but he didn’t try.

He wasn’t sure why he stopped himself and maybe he was making a mistake. It was right, when something said go, for you to go. He believed this, or thought he did. He wasn’t sure. Something about the letter, about what had happened in the last two days — he’d come on another sense of things. Small but particular, not a dominion, but an understanding. He couldn’t tell what it was but he knew he wasn’t going to make a sprint for the train. He waved again, a larger wave this time, and made a sign of good luck to the nomads settling into the open doors of the cars. In the west the sky was blue and streaked with long fish-tailed clouds.

As he walked back into town he felt a twice-settled weight in him, the dashed freshness of missing the train and the heavier bundle of this new loss. But it wasn’t a loss, the second one, this woman or girl who had driven away in the gray sweet-smelling morning in her own car. She wanted him to write her. He wanted to get back to his museum job and regular place in the world and now he did that.

The professor was glad to see him. He put him to wiping with a dry rag the glassine folders they stored the extra photos in. Delvin was happy to do this. He finished and then went out back to the little table and wrote a letter that he walked down to the post office and mailed. In it he told her how happy he was to meet her. He told her he would carry her with him everywhere and neither of them could help it one way or the other, that they were in each other’s life now and don’t worry he welcomed her into his.

He wanted them to put the letter on its way immediately and thought of carrying it himself part of the way. Her home was in the extreme western part of the state, other side from the way the professor said they were headed. They were on their way through the eastern towns and north then to Tennessee and on the professor said to Roanoke where he had people he liked to spend a couple of weeks with in the hottest part of the summer. Delvin was planning to get off in Chattanooga.

Back at the van he sat in the shade under the little orange awning writing another letter. Later a few boys came by, paid their nickels and he took them through the exhibits. They liked the pictures of baseball players. He didn’t show them the murder photographs and it was because he didn’t want them to feel bad. He didn’t want to be part of anybody feeling bad just now. One of the boys said the little painted reed baskets looked like Indian ware. Well, Delvin said, there was cross-marrying among Indian and colored folk, that was a fact. Another boy said he had Indian blood. The others began to joke at him and they made their way out of the van laughing. Delvin stayed inside. He needed to study the photos a while. This was something he did regularly. After supper he sat at the little fold-up table inside the van and studied photographs by the light of the coal oil lamp. The professor was off trying to get a donation from one of the churches. This was one of many such nights.

The next day they were on the road, headed for Cary. Then on to Dumont and then to Cromville. They drove past the long finger lake, Rommy Run. Inland gulls, white and gray, their sickle wings catching the late afternoon light, wheeled over the dark green waters of a little cove. They made it to Depburg by dark.