Sarah slept.

7

In Valparaiso Indiana I stopped at a bank branch and withdrew what little money I had left, two-thousand seventy-one dollars and twelve cents.

“May I ask why you’re closing your account with us Mr. Derrick?” said the heavy- set grey haired mannish looking teller with glasses.

“They’re giving out free toasters at my new bank.” I smiled.

“We give you fifty dollars to open accounts here.”

“Yeah, but these are really nice toasters.” I said.

After sporting a scornful frown the teller counted out my two-thousand seventy- one dollars and twelve cents and then stuffed and handed me an envelope filled with green bills before dropping a dime and two pennies into my open palm.

Sarah woke when I got back into the car. The rocking motion of the road had kept her adrift for over four hours.

“Where are we daddy?” She craned her neck to look through the passenger window.

“We’re in Indiana.” I smiled at her, “Are you hungry?”

She rubbed her eyes, “Yeah, can we eat inside, like a date?” she said through a yawn, the word “date” sounding like a groan.

“Sure.”

“Why are we in Indiana?”

“No reason.” “How far away is it from our house?”

“Not far enough.” “Daddy….tell me how far.” “Forty miles.” I quipped. “Wow. That’s a lot.”

We stopped at a diner housed in a silver mobile home style structure and I, having a healthy appetite for the first time since Catherine’s death, ate bacon and eggs over easy and home-fries and buttered rye toast with black coffee. Sarah ate pancakes with a whipped-cream smile and maple syrup and white toast and an orange juice. I looked at a map and plotted a route to Louisville Kentucky as a diversion for the authorities. Sarah sat slumped on the red cushion of our booth trying to shake the sleep-dust from her head. The sizzle of food frying on the grill and the crackle of grease percolating in the deep fryers was muffled by the voices of the brunch crowd and the occasional ring of the service bell which signaled the waitresses that an order was ready “Table six!”

“Where are we going daddy.” This time

Sarah suppressed her yawn. “For a ride.”

“Yeah, I know,” Her eyes crimped and her lips pursed in exasperation, “But where?”

“We’ll call it a vacation.” I finished cutting up her pancakes and returned her plate to her, “How would you like to play dress-up tonight Sarah?”

“Daddy, you don’t play dress up.” She grinned, brown sap dribbling down her chin.

“I know, but tonight I’m going to dye my hair and buy some funny clothes.” I gauged her reaction. She smiled a big smile. “And I’m going to grow whiskers until I have a beard and mustache.”

“You’re going to grow them tonight.”

I laughed, “It might take more than one night, but I’m not going to shave for a long time.”

“You’re gonna look funny daddy.” She pursed her lips and held back a chuckle. “Can I dress up too?”

“Are you going to grow whiskers?”

“No! I can’t grow whiskers! I’m a girl!”

“Grandma has whiskers.” I smiled

“I know.” She giggled.

“I have some special lotion that will make you grow whiskers.”

Sarah scrunched her face and drew her eyebrows into a frown.

“Well maybe we can dye your hair instead. What color would you like?”

“Pink!”

“Pink? Are you crazy? You don’t want pink hair do you?” Sarah giggled, “How about if we dye your hair red?”

“Okay! Can we cut it too?” She brushed aside her giggle as if through wet locks and sat up straight donning a serious hopeful expression.

“Sure, but just a little bit, okay.” Sarah had been begging me to let her cut her hair for months. Her best friend, Gretchen Fuchs, in second grade, had had her hair cut to shoulder length, a bowl cut Catherine had called it, but I loved Sarah’s long Beautiful hair and I was reluctant to let her cut it. Now I had no choice.

When we got back onto the highway, heading south now on Interstate sixty-five, Sarah fell quickly asleep and I tuned the radio to a local light rock station. The Eagles were singing “You Can’t Hide Your Lying’ Eyes” and the guitar rhythm carried me back to an earlier day with Catherine when we had both defied our parents by sneaking off to the Eagles concert at the Richfield Coliseum; the night when we first made love. I was grounded having been caught with a pack of cigarettes, which I claimed I was holding for a friend but was not. Catherine’s Aunt (her summer guardian), having heard that I smoked cigarettes, forbade her to go out with me again. But I had already purchased the concert tickets prior to my sanction and I was on my best behavior at home hoping to beg for a last minute reprieve, a furlough, in order to go to the concert with Catherine. But my last ditch effort failed and I resigned myself to my room, that is until Catherine tapped on my window.

“Come on. I got us a ride.” Catherine’s face was made up with blue mascara and red lipstick and black eyeliner. She wore a pair of pink satin shorts which highlighted her slender bronzed legs and a pink cotton blouse, tails tied about her waist to show off her narrow midriff, that was cut tantalizingly low offering me a rare peak at her cleavage and I couldn’t help but think that… made-up as she was… if I didn’t go with her that night that someone was going to steal my flower away.

“I can’t. I asked my parents and they said no.” I said, the tone of dejection dribbling from my tongue.

With the twang of the south engraved in her tonsils she challenged my budding manhood,

“Don’t be a wimp. Climb out your window and come on.” She pointed to a faded blue Oldsmobile Cutlass that I recognized as belonging to her Uncle Albert and I could see my best friend Tommy Sullivan sitting in the back seat.

Tommy was as much in love with Catherine as I was, but he had backed off of his pursuit on my behalf, a token of our childhood bond. I wasn’t so sure of his will power, though, given the atmosphere of a seventies rock concert and the evening’s most Beautiful blossom in full bloom that night. So I turned my little black and white television on at an audible volume and wedged my desk chair beneath the handle of my bedroom door and I slipped outside through my window, risking unimaginable retribution, to be with my girl.

That night after the concert, the sound of “Hotel California” still ringing in our ears, we dropped Albert’s car off in the street (coasting to a stop in front of his house with the headlights off), and said goodnight to Tommy and we walked down the street to the ball-field a block away from my house and we made love on home-plate, the very spot where I had stood just a few years earlier when I parked my first home-run in little-league baseball.

We were clumsy as we kissed, stoned on marijuana for the first time, and we sank to the ground as our lips melded together. To that point we had groped at one-another during rare private moments of our courting through thin layers of denim and cotton, occasionally evoking a soft sigh, a brush ever-so-close to the pleasure that we had only experienced alone behind locked door.

I remember sliding my hand crudely across Catherine’s soft inner thigh, the tremor of inexperienced impatient anticipation quaking my fingers, and up the leg of her pink satin shorts as she sat on her knees facing me in a tongue-tied embrace, and through her white cotton panties damp with anticipation I first felt the folds of her flower, the soft rolls of her plump nether protectors of the forbidden opening and with the effort it takes for a bee to steal the nectar from a blossom I felt her shudder and tremble as she pressed her forbidden opening to my fingers and her open mouth to my shoulder. From there we frantically undressed, groping and grabbing and pulling, until in just as short a time I ejected my seed prematurely on Catherine’s naked thigh, the mere brush of her most tender place with my erect penis too much for my mind to constrain.