content warning: offensive nguage

  “Let’s not go all the way to Fort Myers.”

  Mackie slowed down. Without looking toward his date, he asked, “Where then?”

  “Turn on the Vanderbilt Beach road,” Kris told him.

  Even in the dark, she could see the boy shrug. “You aren’t going to ask me to get my car stuck in the sand, are you?”

  Kris had to giggle. “Maybe.”

  Mackie took a left off the highway, toward the Gulf. He was driving an older Dodge this evening, another used vehicle from his father’s car lot. One never knew what he might show up in.

  “The sandy roads should be firm enough with all this rain,” he remarked. “You do intend to go to the party at the pass, right?”

  “Does everyone know about it?” Kris asked.

  “Let’s hope the cops don’t.” The beaches at Wiggin’s Pass were remote and well outside city limits. A deputy might cruise by but would be unlikely to drive his patrol car in. But he could and that could become a disaster for an athlete like Mackie, headed off on a schorship. Even then, though, there would probably just be a warning to clear out.

  And a confiscation of any alcohol, of course. They turned at the beach road and headed north. Saw palmettos lined the way, low, dark masses in the dusk, with a spindly pine rising from them here and there. Here and there also stood a house. This area was finally beginning to fill in, after long being on the fringes of Naples’s development.

  “Somewhere along here,” muttered Mackie, apparently to himself. There was more than one unpaved road toward the beach and the inlet, and each was probably as good as another. “Yeah.” He turned the big Dodge carefully into the sandy way, spshing through a shallow puddle. The palmettos were close now, a wall on either side of them.

  Not for long. They gave way to clumps of tall grass. Kris could hear music from somewhere ahead. It sounded thin. A car radio most likely.

  “More than I expected,” said Mackie, as his headlights revealed the crowd. Some of the other cars had their lights on, motors running, radios pying. There was a driftwood fire, not very rge. Not much wood was left around here to pick up. Moths could be seen darting through the light.

  There would be mosquitoes and sand flies too. That was a given. Her date pulled the big Dodge into an empty space.

  “Hey, Mackerel,” someone called.

  “Hi, Doughnut,” Mackie called back. “Wasn’t expecting you here.”

  “Wasn’t expecting me either. What the heck ’re we doing in this pce?”

  Doughnut. William Booth had picked up the nickname on his first day at Lake Park Elementary, when his mom had packed him a doughnut in his lunch. Jelly-filled, she remembered. Red jelly. That was what, third grade? The schools were just becoming integrated and Kris had never known a bck kid before.

  His parents and everyone else in their neighborhood off Goodlette Road called him Willie. She’d never liked to use that name; he was always either Doughnut or William to her. Most of the guys from the football team had taken to just calling him Booth.

  Mackie was one of those guys. He might be William’s best friend. His best white friend, maybe she should say. Or not. Kris simply wasn’t sure about it. She was a bit on the outside when it came to these guys—these athletes—despite dating more than one of them. They were a tight-knit team.

  A team no longer. They would be going their ways now. Harold Macklin off to—where? Some college up north. He might have told her which one. William had been offered schorships. Recruiters had come and visited. Not from anypce big. Small colleges, offering a partial ride. He was a pretty impressive athlete but just a bit on the small side. Not that there was anything wrong with being small!

  There was beer but the vaunted keg was not in evidence. Coolers with cans. That was just as good. Better maybe. How would they have kept a keg cold on a hot Florida summer night? It was a pretty good night. All the afternoon’s clouds had blown away to rain on someone else, leaving only the stars. Kris thought she’d like to walk down to where she could see them over the Gulf.

  Ha, she was already bored by this party and she’d just arrived! Mackie had a can in his hand, standing with a bunch of his buddies. He wouldn’t even notice if she disappeared. Any one of those pathways through the grass would take her to the beach. They weren’t that near to the pass itself, were they? It was hard to sure of that in the dark. Things looked different.

  Someone was behind her. Her heart might have tripped just a little faster for a moment. Running. Not attempting to be sneaky at all. She turned around to see William jogging after her.

  “I don’t trust some of these guys so much, Kris,” he said, almost apologetically. “You mind if I come with you?”

  “Sure, Doughnut. You can make the Mackerel jealous.” Not that she cared. For all she knew, this might the st time she ever went anywhere with Harold Macklin.

  He ambled along at her side for a few seconds. “This party’s for Arnie, right? Poole?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “We just heard there was a party and came. Didn’t know who it was for.” William hesitated. “Wasn’t invited, either.”

  Kris snickered. “Are you afraid someone’s gonna throw you out, Doughnut?”

  The boy only ughed at that. Then, “Arnie’s going into the navy before the draft gets him. I’ve been thinking of signing up for the marines myself. Get ahead of things and choose my path.”

  A path to getting shot, thought Kris. “Going to college would work just as well.”

  “If it was just me.” She waited for him to say more but that was it. If he expected Kris to try prying it out of him, William Booth was mistaken.

  Instead, she said, “I wouldn’t want you to end up like Donny.”

  Donny Weeden’s fg-draped coffin had come home this winter. All the kids had known Donny and remembered him dropping out to join the army. All the kids knew Donny’s mom too; she taught civics and business csses at the high school. Donny had never been a good student. It had been his opportunity to prove himself.

  Damn. Kris felt a sudden anger and wasn’t completely sure why. It was all just such a waste.

  They were at the edge of the beach, proper, where grass ended and only white sand extended to the water. The Gulf was dead-calm, the sky completely clear, the nearly full moon rising at her back. There were the stars she’d walked over here to see, extending down to the barely visible horizon, bck sky meeting bck water.

  “Do you think there are sharks in the water?” she asked. “I’d like to go in.”

  Doughnut’s expression clearly showed he thought she was crazy. “This near the pass? No way, girl!”

  “Hmm. Okay, I’ll just go down and get my feet wet. If there are itty-bitty sharks they can attack my toes.” Kris had left her shoes in Mackie’s Dodge. Fts for the intended casual date tonight, though she wore heels when she could get away with it, being such a runt. Her dress was as mini as she felt comfortable wearing, cotton, and floral patterned. She could have swam in it. Or even doffed it.

  That would certainly have scandalized Doughnut! He was a pretty strait-ced guy. He peeled off his own sneakers, worn without ces on his bare feet. There were holes worn through the ends of them by his toes. Kris couldn’t see that here but had noticed it before.

  They went in only to their ankles. Without thinking about it, she reached over and took her friend’s hand. Had she held it since they were little kids?

  “Whatcha doin’, boy?” asked someone. Two guys approached them. One of them Kris knew from school. Knew his name and that was pretty much it. Hadn’t he hung out with Joey sometimes? The other? No idea. “This boy botherin’ you?”

  “No, but you are,” she shot back at once. Probably she shouldn’t have, she realized at once. She often had second thoughts of that sort.

  “Ditch the nigger,” the other one said, the one she didn’t know. “We can show you what real men are like.” Both snickered at that.

  “Maybe we should show him he shouldn’t be messin’ with white girls,” said the first. Jim something, wasn’t he? “Should we teach you a lesson, boy?”

  In better light, they might have seen Doughnut’s muscles and been less belligerent. Admittedly, he was not a tall guy. We short people are always underestimated, Kris thought.

  “Get lost,” came Mackie’s voice. “You’re bothering my friends.” Her date did look rge, looming out of the dark.

  “Okay,” said one or the other. “We didn’t mean no harm. Let’s go get another beer,” he told his buddy. Both disappeared into the night.

  “This is what you get for stealing my date, Doughnut,” said Mackie.

  “She stole me, Mackerel. Forced me to come down here!”

  “It’s the truth. I intended to ravage him right here on the sand.”

  Both boys ughed at the absurdity of it, but Doughnut looked a tad embarrassed. “It’s a good thing you did come along,” he said, as they headed back to the party. “I had friends with me and they wouldn’t have thought twice about jumpin’ those red-necks.”

  A part of Kris thought she might have liked to see that.