Double Wedding Ring Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’d know where the heck Vietnam is.”
    â€œOkay. I’m a slack-ass. So where is it?”
    â€œIndochina.”
    â€œOh.” They sat in the dark for five minutes, listening to the season’s first crickets. “Where’s that?”
    â€œLook it up.” Tag figured he was under no obligation to reveal—even to his best friend—that he knew too much about this tiny spot that was beginning to create such a big stink.
    â€œIt wouldn’t be bad if we could go together,” Crash said.
    Tag wasn’t so sure. Six months after he’d shipped out, Elliott didn’t write much, and when he did, his letters sounded funny. Spooky funny, that is. Tag had been reading about Vietnam in the Birmingham paper whenever he could sneak away from the store and get to the library without anybody noticing. From what he was reading, Tag wasn’t so sure he wanted to end up rotting in the jungle in a place called Vietnam.
    â€œI think I’ll save my money,” he said. “Buy me a car.”
    He didn’t mention the things he thought about doing with the car. Driving to Hollywood and learning to be a stuntman for the movies. Or driving over to Hueytown, Alabama, to see about working on the pit crew for a stock car driver. The way Tag figured it, he had lots of options.
    â€œSave what money?” Crash said.
    â€œI’ll get a job.”
    â€œYou’ve got a job. And your old man doesn’t pay you diddly.”
    â€œA real job.” Tag hated working for his old man. Hated Hutchins’ Lawn & Garden. He figured lawns and gardens were fine for women, but men had other business. “Construction, maybe.”
    â€œIf you don’t want to join up, maybe you ought to go to college. Before the draft gets you.”
    Tag rolled over on his belly. He wasn’t about to tell Steve Foster—known as Crash because he’d managed to do exactly that to three cars within one month of getting his driver’s license—that college was the one thing he really wanted to do. He gazed across the street at Crash’s house, a big white two-story with a weeping willow in the front yard. Crash’s old man had the Cadillac dealership for the whole county, which made him practically a millionaire compared to storekeepers like Tag’s old man. Tag wondered if he had the brains to get as rich as old man Foster, then figured it didn’t matter, anyway. Tag Hutchins wasn’t going to college and get all brainy. No prayer of that.
    â€œWho needs college?” he replied to Crash’s question. “Say, what’s that?”
    â€œWhat?”
    Propped on his elbows in the cool, dew-damp grass, Tag pointed to a front window upstairs at Crash’s house. A light was on, and the ends of filmy yellow curtains drifted out the open window. Inside, someone moved back and forth across the room, all graceful arms and legs. The backdrop for the movement was some kind of classical sounding music, which also floated out the open window.
    â€œOh, that. That’s Susie.”
    â€œWhat’s she doing?”
    â€œDancing.”
    The fluid movements of the slender body that was framed only fleetingly by the open window looked nothing like the Jerk or the Swim or the Monkey. This looked like his mama’s gladiolas swaying in a summer breeze.
    â€œSusie? No kidding?”
    â€œYeah. What a dope, huh? She does that every night. Mom yells at her, but Susie doesn’t pay any attention. Every night, she practices those dumb dances. Then she comes out on the porch and works on this blanket she’s making.”
    Tag had known Crash’s little sister practically all his life. He couldn’t remember when the skinny, freckle-faced girl with the long blond ponytail hadn’t been a pest, spoiling things, tattling on them. But this person floating back and forth in front of the upstairs window bore no resemblance to that gawky, goofy kid.