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grimaced, but I smiled pleasantly. “She’s fine. She’s going to sunbathe today.”
    “That girl always did love her tan. How’s she fixed for baby oil?”
    “Okay, I guess. She didn’t ask for any.”
    “Iodine?”
    “No, ma’am, we’re just here for ice cream cones. Do you have butter pecan today?”
    She looked behind her. “I surely do. And I’ll come over to the counter and fix y’all’s cones in just a minute.”
    She moved over to Mrs. Quinn, standing with her new baby in the next aisle, and spoke quietly to her. “Well, thank the Lord, that’s a relief. Look yonder, you see Clovis Carter heading out of here all shame-faced?”
    Suralee and I rose up to look, too. There was a young black man, accompanied by a white man, leaving the store. They stared straight ahead, not ashamed-looking, it seemed to me, but stony-faced.
    “What did he do?” Mrs. Quinn asked. She hiked her baby up higher on her shoulder, held him closer.
    “Well, I’ll tell you,” Mrs. Beasley said. “He came in here with that white boy and they sat themselves right down at the lunch counter. Clovis sat
right next
to the widow Henderson, like to give that old woman a heart attack. She left, of course, didn’t even finish her pie. And then they just sat there, even when I asked them nice as can be to please leave. My husband came over and told them they could sit there all day but they wouldn’t get so much as a nod. Still didn’t move. Finally, Sally came out from the kitchen and spoke to them. I think she told Clovis his hanging around would only make trouble for her. Can you imagine, one of his own asking him to leave! Anyway, after almost two hours, well, they’re finally gone.”
    “It’s a shame, all these things happening,” Mrs. Quinn said. She shook her head and moved down the aisle, and Mrs. Beasley turned her attention to us.
    “Look here, now,” she said quietly, “the new
Seventeen
just arrived, and I’m going to give y’all a copy. Free of charge.”
    Suralee turned around quickly to face her.
    “You’ll have to
share
it,” Mrs. Beasley said, looking pointedly at her. “But I’ve got to ask y’all not to tell my husband I did that. Can you promise me you won’t tell?”
    Suralee and I nodded together, and with a sarcasm Mrs. Beasley didn’t grasp, Suralee crossed her heart. Old Mr. Beasley with his hairy knuckles and pee stains and bent back and stale breath and toilet paper stuck to his face every day from cutting himself shaving! Who cared what he said? But we would honor our promise.
    Mrs. Beasley had never given us a magazine before, and it seemed to me that her generosity was in direct proportion to her unease about what had happened with Clovis Carter. But I didn’t care—we were getting a new magazine free of charge.
    When Shooter began viciously barking outside, we stood and looked out the window. A man we’d never seen before must have tried to pet the dog, and now he was recoiling, hands held up before him, surrender-style. “Whoa! Message received!”
    Shooter didn’t bite, but he was not friendly. He lived for Suralee, listened to her exclusively and devotedly. She never put him on a leash, and he followed right behind her and waited outside any place she went in—including school—for as long as it took her to come out. He would doze and snap at flies, stare with intense, tight-muscled concentration at things going by that interested him, but he would never move until she told him to. Most people in town knew him, and they also knew to leave him alone.
    The man stepped inside the store, took off his black cowboy hat, and headed for the counter. Mrs. Beasley walked quickly toward him, and Suralee and I exchanged glances. He was very handsome—tall, lean, a nice head of black hair styled in a high pompadour. “Elvis!” Suralee and I said together, and then I smacked her, saying, “Jinx; you owe me a Coke,” before she could. Not that either of us ever delivered on our debt.