Dirty Faces- Book 1

Chapter 17: Twelve

Chapter 17: Twelve

Leslie blinked awake as the robins began their morning song. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then gasped. The first rays were just peeking from behind the mountains. Her companion was sleeping so peacefully she hated to wake him, but she had to get home quickly. 

"Kody, wake up." 

"Mm?" 

"I need you to wake up." 

"Mm why?" 

"We fell asleep and my parents'll be getting up soon. I need to go home." 

His eyes flew open and he sat shot up. "Fell asleep? I can't believe I did that!" 

He got to his feet, jumped off the truck bed, and helped her down, as if he'd never been asleep at all. "Let's get you home." They got in the truck and sped up the rough path and back onto the dirt road. An old farmer was taking a mule- drawn wagon loaded with watermelons into town to sell, moving at a snail's pace and tying up the road. Kody jerked the wheel and passed the wagon in the grass, then stomped the gas.  

"Easy now," said Leslie. "Don't want folks to think we're out running 'shine on a Saturday morning." 

"Well, your folks seem to like me but something tells me finding your bed empty because you been out all night with me might change that." 

"Probably so." 

When he came to the coal camp, he parked the noisy truck at the end of the street and they jumped out and ran for her house. Once they'd reached it, they darted around the side of the house and came to a stop below the opened bedroom window. The sprint left them panting and they laughed quietly at the ridiculousness of the situation as they tried to catch their breath. 

"OK," he said once he'd caught his. "Up you go." 

He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up off the ground to reach the window. She leaned down to whisper in his ear. "You know, Jack may well stretch the truth a bit from time to time, but for the record, I happen to think you're a fine dancer." 

He smiled. "See you later?" 

"See you later." 

She reached up and got hold of the ledge and pulled herself into the window, stepping as lightly as possible onto the creaky wood floor. Once inside, she pulled back the curtain and watched him make a run for his truck.

 *****

Jack and Ginny had been sitting at the kitchen table when Kody came dragging in. When he'd been an hour late to help Jack and Uncle Bill bale hay, Jack had come to the house looking for him, expecting he'd just overslept. But when he got there, he found only Ginny, who hadn't waited up and therefore had no idea he wasn't home until Jack woke her. 

He'd had a hard time looking at either of them, felt like they were picking him apart, scrutinizing him, making up their own stories as to where he had been. Jack had been trying all day to pry details about the previous night out of him but he had managed to brush him off. 

Now late into the hot afternoon, Jack and Kody sat on Aunt Betty and Uncle Bill's back porch, drinking ice cold sweet tea on a break from working. Ginny and Aunt Betty had gone in to fix supper and Uncle Bill was off enjoying his pipe somewhere.  

"So you mean to tell me," Jack was saying, "that ya took her to the crummy ol' diner that can't even serve up a decent hamburger, snuck her out and kept her out all night but didn't even do nothing, didn't even kiss the girl-"