The Bluestone Review 2025

Prose

I knew that Danny Turley and Doug Griffith and that bunch were somewhere around. Guys who had already graduated but who the Army wouldn’t take. Danny had somehow managed to get himself a car and he drove it up and down the state road in town and all around the neighborhood, shifting gears and squealing the tires. My grandpa had told me to steer clear of those boys; that they were heading for trouble, sure as the world. Every now and then I would get up the nerve to go two blocks over and walk by Janet Thompson’s house. I’d been inside it a few times when we were little kids, just playing. But now it was a kind of mysterious place, one I hoped to be inside of again, but not in the same way. Her house looked different than the others: the yellow light in the windows, the neatly-shoveled and swept walkway and porch steps, the red mailbox by the door. But when Wendell came home there was no more time for walking around. Wendell was the only one of us who wasn’t afraid to dance and when the girls found out he was back in town the evening traffic at White’s Confectionary picked up right away. He’d head over there right after dinner and order a soda and fill the jukebox with nickels and have the music going strong before the girls started to filter in. For the first few weeks he wore his uniform nearly everywhere. He’d learned new dances in France and the girls were wild for him to teach them. In a few weeks it became obvious that he had a strong preference for Beverly Thompson. I had my eye on her sister.

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