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Show 57 off through the crowd like it was wheat, out the door and he was gone. The crowd flowed together again and the deputy couldn't get through. There was still a circle around where Buck had gone down, voices high and excited, and then Buck rose up in it streaming blood but not one bit diminished, bloody from nose and mouth and at least one front tooth missing, but still coming up with that impudent grin bigger than ever. My god, he was as stupid as that guy he had kicked. And now, nearly a year later, he was strutting around the J.P.'s court as if in the meantime he hadn't picked up a single grain of sense. On the other hand, I was there completely unjustly. Bob Newcome had had a birthday party at the Lions' clubhouse on the north side of Escalante: for $10 you could hire the hall, for another $10 get a small band of high school boys, a fancy deal, only the rich could afford it. Guests had been invited as couples, I'd been asked to bring Liz Brown and I had the '39 Chevy, only a year old and still smelling new inside. It had a decent heater, unlike the Pontiac, and even a fan mounted on the steering post to blow warm air against the windshield, with rubber blades so the driver didn't lose his fingers. Elizabeth was a Rainbow Girl and thoroughly approved of by my mother. Her father was a lawyer, her mother socially luminous, her older brother in med school. I had been in love with Liz since grade school and she had always accepted my devotion, along with that of a few others. Her hair was the color of a pale yellow rose, long and silkily flowing. Her skin was the color of an even paler yellow rose, almost white and without a blemish. Her eyes were cool blue. Her features were delicate, sharply defined, perfect; her breasts were high, firm, pointed; her rear had an impudence of its own. When she smiled at me I felt both spineless and colossally potent. Taking her to that party was the high point of my junior year The party ended at midnight and we all left together, a string of cars |