The Beach Girls Read Free Page A

bear stealing a picnic, and climb into the big noisy old brass bed. It does no harm. Whenshe had the bad flu last year, Gus took care of her, gentle as a woman.
    “Is coming down now that damned Annabelle,” Gus rumbled. “Maybe next week. I got a card. Husband and kids too. ‘Papa, please come live with us.’ What they want—a baby sitter. Yah.”
    We polished off all the groceries and went back to the beer. The ice was all gone and you had to paw around in the ice water to find one of the few cans left. Bud and Ginny Linder were sitting close, as usual. They don’t paw each other in public. But they sure sit close. They live aboard the
Free and Fancy
, a big custom schooner under maybe its fifth ownership. They started out from Maryland to sail her around the world, but about six miles off Elihu Beach, a year and a half ago, a little tornado on a clear day ripped the sticks out of her and smashed everything topside. Bud jury-rigged a spare jib and got her in. They’re good kids. Bud now manages a gas station and Ginny works in an office-supply store. They’ve put every dime and every minute back into the
Free and Fancy
. But now Ginny is a little bit pregnant, so maybe they won’t go around the world the way they still claim they will.
    Along came one of those silences, and right in the middle of it, Judy Engly cut loose over across the way in charterboat row. She’s sort of a plump, sulky-looking little girl. Been married now to Jack Engly nearly three years. No kids. Jack skippers his own boat named
Judy’s Luck
. They live aboard. When there’s women in the charter party Judy crews for him. Otherwise he picks up one of the boys hanging around looking for a day of crewing.
    Even when you know just what it is, it isn’t so damn easy to take. I’ve seen tourists go right up in the air and land with their mouth open and their eyes bugged out. She starts low, like moaning, and goes on up until she’s yelling at the top of her lungs. Then it goes up into a long screech like somebody’s killing her and fades down like a siren into a sort of gurgle and some more moanings. And finally silence.
    We sat it out. When it was over Anne Browder laughed in a nervous kind of way. Joe Rykler did a little soft cussing. Lew Burgoyne said, “God damn it, it ain’t decent! Afore Jack ever lays a hand on that little ole girl he oughtto pack up her mouth with a towel. And there ain’t no woman in the world ever enjoyed it that much. She’s just bragging on him. I wisht to Christ they’d move off someplace into a shack in the middle of a piney woods.”
    “The guy it’s toughest on is Rigsby,” Joe Rykler said. “It about kills him to hear the proof that somebody else is getting something he can’t—”
    “Now, Joe,” Anne Browder said.
    “Am I saying something out of line?” he protested.
    Alice cleared her throat. “I’ll tell you all one thing. Jack Engly is a big, sweet, shy guy. But I’ve seen the way he can horse a two-hundred-pound fish onto the dock. And if he ever catches that damn Rigsby snuffling around Judy, Rigsby is going to be just as sorry about the whole thing as a man can get.”
    Judy’s standard demonstration had taken the edge off the evening. It seemed to make people sort of restless. Joe wanted to go over to one of the joints on the beach. Christy said she was too tired. Lew wanted to go down into town and I decided I’d go along with him. In the end it was only Joe and Anne Browder who went over to the beach, taking off in that little blue Volkswagen that Anne and Amy Penworthy own jointly and call Herman. This was an unusual thing as it is the first time I can think of that Anne went off alone with any one of us, or any man for that matter.
    I’d tried to line Anne up a couple of times but …

TWO
Joe Rykler
     … I had about given up on Anne. That’s why it practically caught me off guard when I suddenly realized she was, in effect, accepting a date with me.
    That was our first