Free Jolly by John Weston

“And about three to get back?”
    “Depends on the circumcisions.” Jolly shut the car door and ran up the path toward home as the Blue Goose’s tires cried.
    “Hi, Mom,” Jolly said in passing on his way to the bedroom.
    “Hi, Jolly-Bo. How was school?”
    “OK.”
    His mother came to the door of the bedroom, a large wooden spoon in her hand. She pushed her old wobbly glasses down on her nose and peered over them. “You-all going out tonight after supper?” She pronounced the “r” like an “a.”
    “No. I don’t think so.” Jolly considered the advisability of telling her about his proposed plans for the following night. He decided for it. “We’re going down to S.V. tomorrow night.”
    “What for?” She took off her glasses and wiped them carelessly on her gingham apron.
    “Luke and I are taking some girls to the dance.”
    “The Skull Valley dance?”
    Jolly heard the edge tighten about her lips. “You-all got no business at that dance.”
    “Aw, Mom. I went when I was six, for chrissake. Excuse me.”
    “You better watch your language, young man. It’s a crying shame the way you talk. Hang that shirt up. And that was different. You didn’t know anything that was going on when you were six. Anyway, I think you were at least eight before I let you go.”
    “OK, Mom, OK. You gonna stand right there? I’m changing clothes, you know.”
    She didn’t leave, but she turned her head to face the other room. “Who are the girls?”
    “Just some girls at school. You don’t know them.”
    “Do they go to our church?”
    “No. I think they’re Methodists, or Episcopalians, or something.”
    She turned her head back toward him and stepped closer. “You been smoking again, haven’t you. Don’t tell me different. I can smell you from here to kingdom come. It’s a crying shame. Smoking and dancing and staying out half the night and I don’t know what all. Lord have mercy, I wish your father was here. He’d put a stop to it. Put on some shoes. I want you to run to the store for me ’fore supper.”
    “I don’t need shoes on to go to the store,” Jolly said, happy to change a subject he wished he had never mentioned. “It’s only two blocks. What do you want?”
    “Here’s a little list. And don’t buy those vegetables ’less they’re good an’ fresh. Now run along,” she said, moving back into her kitchen, wooden spoon poised.
    Jolly found a pine cone in the path leading from his house. He kicked it with his bare toes twice before it bounced away into a shrub. He walked in the dirt easement between the sidewalk and the street down to Mrs. Adlow’s house. There he stepped up on her low brick wall and with exaggerated waving of arms balanced himself to the corner of the first block.
    “Off that wall, young man,” called Mrs. Adlow from her flower bed at the angle of the wall.
    Jolly stood atop the wall and gazed down on her. “Your petunias are beautiful this year, Mrs. Adlow.”
    A smile overtook the unnatural frown on her face. “Why, thank you, Jolly. Do you really think so? I was afraid they weren’t going to do so good this year. They got a late start. Mr. Adlow said they’d never amount to a thing, but I told him that if anybody could make ’em grow, I could, so I just got out here and—”
    Jolly jumped off the wall and continued his own thoughts, leaving Mrs. Adlow’s ruffled petunias to hear hers.
    His thoughts returned to Di Carson, and as he reviewed her known file, he wondered again why, when you diagrammed complex sentences and parenthesized the American Revolution with dates, you used your head, but when you thought of girls, and boys and girls, you used your stomach. Maybe after tomorrow night… Well, if anybody would, Di would. Everybody said so. Weren’t she and Babe Wooten known in the locker room as the dirty duo? He swung precariously from a too-young aspen limb that bent out over the sidewalk. Would he know what to do if she would, he wondered. Everybody