if we go to church sales and the used furniture stores, we'll find stuff. Not here. Cross the James into Surry County, home sweet home. I know we can find stuff over there. And then there's my mother, Princess Rat Pack. I can pry some stuff loose from her."
"Did I ever tell you you're my best friend?"
"Not often enough." Jinx sat on the windowsill in the living room, looking out the wide open windows. She sighed. "I don't care about going to the football game. I'll go home with you."
"Your mother won't be happy."
"My mother has a deep primal fear that I will not properly socialize. I don't have a date for the game, so I might as well go home and see if I can get stuff out of her once she gets over the shock of seeing me. Her college days," Jinx said, "were an endless round of dates, parties, dances—jeez. I'm not her. She was a beauty."
"Ah, Jinx, you're great looking."
"You've been looking at me since we were born."
"Tell yourself you're great looking. Attitude is everything." "You've got enough for both of us. But really, my mother drives me
crazy. She still thinks the purpose of going to college is to get married. I can't say that your mother is far off that, except she has the sense not to push. Plus you have Charly."
"Because Aunt Bunny pushes enough. It was different for them, I guess. You know, they still think you're only as good as the man you're with."
"We should have gone to the University of Wyoming or Montana. We stayed too close to home."
"Yeah." Vic sat opposite Jinx on the windowsill. "But it would cost a fortune to go to school out of state, and those places are really far away. I'd love to see them, though."
"We could run away." Jinx almost meant it.
"Tempting. Damn, it's senior year, and I have no more idea what I'm going to do than . . ." Vic's voice trailed off.
"We get our degrees. If our GREs are good, we can push on. Not that I much want to, but it delays making a decision," Jinx said.
"Aren't you taking the Law Boards, too?"
"Yeah. If worse comes to worst, I can join your dad's law firm." "That's worst, all right."
Frank Savedge, a country lawyer, drew up wills and did the paper work for land transactions.
Vic stretched out, her feet touching Jinx's thigh. "You know, I sometimes wonder if we won't wind up like our mothers."
"Yeah, me, too. The feminist movement is something that hap-
pened in New York and Chicago. It ain't here, and it's already 1980." "Nah, when it's four-thirty in New York, it's 1940 in Williamsburg." They both laughed at the old joke.
"That's what your mother says." Jinx got up and fetched a Coke for herself and another for Vic. In the sticky heat of late summer, nothing else could quench the eternal thirst.
"You know, I do think of running away sometimes. Funny that you said it. But I don't know if I could leave Southside. It gets in your bones."
"I could leave. In a heartbeat. And so could you. Besides, we could always come back," Jinx sensibly added, holding the frosty glass to her forehead. "We need a thunderstorm."
"Sistergirl, we need more than that."
B
unny McKenna, R. J.'s sister, carried an expensive pair of Leica binoculars wherever she went. When R. J. joked that her sister probably slept with those binoculars, Bunny always replied that
they were more exciting than her husband, Don.
An avid bird-watcher, she'd suddenly whip the binoculars to her eyes and mutter, "Green heron." It could be quite unnerving.
On this languid September afternoon as golden light splashed over the dock at the Savedge place on the bank of the James, Bunny had al ready identified thirty-two different species of birds, many of them waterfowl. She also named the people in the sailboats gliding by. Each passerby earned a tart comment.
R. J. was sitting by the dock in a blue rowboat. Armed with her toolbox, she was handily replacing an oarlock.
Bunny, black binocs to her eyes, again swept her gaze down the river. "Why doesn't Francie put him on a diet?" She
Krista Lakes, Mel Finefrock