“Nah,” I said. “Private joke. You wouldn’t get it.”

8

But we got it, poundcake became our name for it, and we ate plenty that fall.

We were discreet, but of course there were people who knew what was going on. There was probably some gossip, but no scandal. Smalltown folks are rarely mean folks. They knew Sadie’s situation, at least in a general way, and understood we could make no public commitment, at least for awhile. She didn’t come to my house; that would have caused the wrong kind of talk. I never stayed beyond ten o’clock at hers; that also would have caused the wrong kind of talk. There was no way I could have put my Sunliner in her garage and stayed the night, because her Volkswagen Beetle, small as it was, filled it almost wall-to-wall. I wouldn’t have done so in any case, because someone would have known. In small towns, they always do.

I visited her after school. I dropped by for the meal she called supper. Sometimes we went to Al’s Diner and ate Prongburgers or catfish fillets; sometimes we went to The Saddle; twice I took her to the Saturday-night dances at the local Grange. We saw movies at the Gem in town or at the Mesa in Round Hill or the Starlite Drive-In in Kileen (which the kids called the submarine races). At a nice restaurant like The Saddle, she might have a glass of wine before dinner and I might have a beer with, but we were careful not to be seen at any of the local taverns and certainly not at the Red Rooster, Jodie’s one and only jukejoint, a place our students talked about with longing and awe. It was 1961 and segregation might finally be softening in the middle—Negroes had won the right to sit at the Woolworth’s lunchcounters in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston—but schoolteachers didn’t drink in the Red Rooster. Not if they wanted to keep their jobs. Never-never-never.

When we made love in Sadie’s bedroom, she always kept a pair of slacks, a sweater, and a pair of moccasins on her side of the bed. She called it her emergency outfit. The one time the doorbell bonged while we were naked (a state she had taken to calling in flagrante delicious), she got into those threads in ten seconds flat. She came back, giggling and waving a copy of The Watchtower. “Jehovah’s Witnesses. I told them I was saved and they went away.” Once, as we ate ham-steaks and okra in her kitchen afterward, she said our courtship reminded her of that movie with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper— Love in the Afternoon.

“Sometimes I wonder if it would be better at night.” She said this a little wistfully. “When regular people do it.”

“You’ll get a chance to find out,” I said. “Hang in there, baby.” She smiled and kissed the corner of my mouth. “You turn some cool phrases, George.”

“Oh yes,” I said, “I’m very original.”

She pushed her plate aside. “I’m ready for dessert. How about you?” 9

Not long after the Jehovah’s Witnesses came calling at Sadie’s place—this must have been early November, because I’d finished casting my version of Twelve Angry Men—I was out raking my lawn when someone said, “Hello, George, how’s it going?” I turned around and saw Deke Simmons, now a widower for the second time. He had stayed in Mexico longer than anyone had thought he would, and just when folks began to believe he was going to remain there, he had come back. This was the first time I’d seen him. He was very brown, but far too thin. His clothes bagged on him, and his hair—iron-gray on the day of the wedding reception—was now almost all white and thinning on top.

I dropped my rake and hurried over to him. I meant to shake his hand, but hugged him instead. It startled him—in 1961, Real Men Don’t Hug—but then he laughed.

I held him at arm’s length. “You look great!”

“Nice try, George. But I feel better than I did. Meems dying . . .

I knew it was going to happen, but it still knocked me for a loop. Head could never get through to heart on that one, I reckon.”

“Come on in and have a cup of coffee.”

“I’d like that.”

We talked about his time in Mexico. We talked about school. We talked about the undefeated football team and the upcoming fall play. Then he put down his cup and said, “Ellen Dockerty asked me to pass on a word or two about you and Sadie Clayton.” Uh-oh. And I’d thought we were doing so well.

“She goes by Dunhill now. It’s her maiden name.”

“I know all about her situation. Knew when we hired her. She’s a fine girl and you’re a fine man, George. Based on what Ellie tells me, the two of you are handling a difficult situation with a fair amount of grace.”

I relaxed a little.

“Ellie said she was pretty sure neither of you knew about Candlewood Bungalows just outside of Kileen. She didn’t feel right about telling you, so she asked if I would.”

“Candlewood Bungalows?”

“I used to take Meems there on a lot of Saturday nights.” He was fiddling at his coffee cup with hands that now looked too big for his body. “It’s run by a couple of retired schoolteachers from Arkansas or Alabama. One of those A-states, anyway. Retired men schoolteachers. If you know what I mean.”

“I think I’m following, yes.”

“They’re nice fellows, very quiet about their own relationship and about the relationships of some of their guests.” He looked up from his coffee cup. He was blushing a little, but also smiling.

“This isn’t a hot-sheet joint, if that’s what you’re thinking. Farthest thing from it. The rooms are nice, the prices are reasonable, and the little restaurant down the road is a-country fare. Sometimes a gal needs a place like that. And maybe a man does, too. So they don’t have to be in such a hurry.

And so they won’t feel cheap.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Very welcome. Mimi and I had many pleasant evenings at the Candlewood. Sometimes we only watched the TV in our pajamas and then went to bed, but that can be as good as anything else when you get to a certain age.” He smiled ruefully. “Or almost. We’d go to sleep listening to the crickets. Or sometimes a coyote would howl, very far away, out in the sage. At the moon, you know.

They really do that. They howl at the moon.”

He took a handkerchief from his back pocket with an old man’s slowness and mopped his cheeks with it.

I offered my hand and Deke took hold.

“She liked you, although she never could figure out what to make of you. She said you reminded her of the way they used to show ghosts in those old movies from the thirties. ‘He’s bright and shiny, but not all here,’ she said.”

“I’m no ghost,” I said. “I promise you.”

He smiled. “No? I finally got around to checking your references. This was after you’d been subbing for us awhile and did such a bang-up job with the play. The ones from the Sarasota School District are fine, but beyond there . . .” He shook his head, still smiling. “And your degree is from a mill in Oklahoma.”