Saucer in the Dunes

3 A New Friend

Boys mainly use animal intuition when making friends. You don't have to waste too much time figuring people out the way you do as a grown-up. You know when you meet someone whether you like them or not. If you were unsure if you liked them or not immediately the second time you met them, you would be sure. I was sure I liked Ronnie the instant I met him. I was even more sure the second time I met him. It was my first official morning in my new home, and already I had someone I was going to be able to call a friend.

"Hey man!" he called from down the sidewalk.

I waved my recognition.

There was something about how he acted. Back home, I might have been afraid of a boy his size because back home, all the boys his size were bullies. They hung out in groups and didn't waste their time talking to smaller boys like me who never cared much for sports, wisecracking adults, or stealing candy from the drug store.

There was something different about Ronnie. He didn't talk down to me. The way he talked, it seemed we were both stuck being kids in the same town, so why not make the best of it. There was nothing fake about him. What you saw is exactly what you got.

I leaned back in the kitchen door and told mom bye. She was washing dishes. I knew she would kiss me or something like that, but she didn't. She just smiled and told me to have fun and be home for lunch. That was it. Unbelievable, for my mom anyway.

"Say, man, your folks must do all right. That is one of the nicest houses around here. The man who lived here, Mr. Brookins, was a nice old man. He used to be a school teacher a long time ago. He went to live in Savannah with his daughter. Every Halloween, he gave out the best candy. He was always passing us all change and stuff for ice cream when he was around. Sometimes he would let me mow his yard and pull the weeds out of the flower beds for some money. I hated to see him go, but at least somebody young moved in. It's cooler when younger people move in. Not too many young people move down here. There's a bunch of Indians that moved down, but they stay mainly over on their land. They come over sometime and play baseball," he stopped to tie his shoe.

"And boy, can they hit the hell out of a baseball, even the little kids. It must be they have better eye-to-hand coordination or something. I figured we'd go down to the beach first and see who all's down there. It's on the other side of town."

"The beach?"

"Yeah, we all call it that," he smiled.

"It's a place in Walker creek that makes a wide bend out past the road. There's a lot of sand there and stuff, even more sometimes after it rains a while. It's a good place to go swimmin', and there's a bunch of rocks and stuff to jump off of. We had a tire swing, but fat ass Tony Durley broke it last summer and we ain't had another tire to put back up."

Ronnie tapped my arm.

"I got a job at a gas station twice a week, though, so I'm going to get another one pretty soon. Hey, maybe you can help me put it up this summer."

"Okay." I agreed.

When Ronnie quit talking, I asked him about any radio stations he might listen to down there. Much to my surprise, Ronnie's face lit up with excitement.

"Hell yeah, man! Dynamite Don!"

I shook my head. Of course, I had never heard of him. Back in Atlanta, we had Skinny Bobby Harper. He was crazy and fun to listen to.

"Dynamite Don, WFOM 740," he said.

"Not much else to listen to around here unless you like Gospel or preaching, and I don't. There's a country and western channel too, but I don't remember what it is. You'll pick up 740, though. My mom picks it up in her car. They play the Braves games too."

I like talking with Ronnie. He just seemed happy to have someone his age to talk to. I explained all about my little radio and how I would listen at night back home. I could pick up a ton of stations in Atlanta.

"You want to stop at Ronson's and get a Coke and a Moon-pie and take 'em with us?"

"Yeah!" It sounded great.

Even though I had already eaten, the prospect of junk food so early in the day made me feel as if I was nearly starving. We rounded a corner, walked past several more shops, and then crossed another street in front of Ronson's Hardware. I followed Ronnie in, and we went straight to a big red cooler to the left, just inside the door. He opened the sliding door and stuck his arm down deep.

"You gotta get all the way to the bottom to get the ones with ice on 'em," he said, pulling out two bottled Cokes, then shaking his arm, slinging water onto the cement floor.

He then went to a red metal rack holding big clear glass Lance jars and removed the lid.

"Get two Moon-pies," he said, "but make mine a banana."

I reached in and got two banana Moon-pies.

We took our food to the front counter, stopping only to gaze into a display case full of knives of all shapes and sizes. Mr. Ronson, a tall, heavy, grayish man with a wrinkled brow, stood holding a clipboard and talking on the telephone. He covered the receiver with this hand when we came up.

"What do you say there, Ronnie?" he said quietly, still listening to the phone.

"Same old same old, Mr. Ronson."

"Want any beef jerky?"

"You like beef jerky?" Ronnie asked me quickly.

"Sure!" I blurted out, not even really sure what beef jerky was.

Mr. Ronson pulled two long pieces of dried-looking meat out of another glass jar on the counter and wrapped them in paper, then put them in a small sack with the Moon-pies. Ronnie pulled some change out of his pocket and paid for everything, even the deposit on the Coke bottles. I never even thought about getting food, much less buying it, so Ronnie's gesture was both surprising and life-saving at the moment because I only had a quarter in my pocket!

I thanked him, but he insisted it was no big deal and that we could square up if I helped him find and stash glass coke bottles I saw. Ronnie explained that Mr. Ronson gave him a deposit back on every bottle he returned and that he had a couple of good stashes. He had more, but the Durleys had broken a bunch he had hidden behind the post office. He didn't hide them there anymore. He returned bottles nearly every week. I promised to do so. It was the least I could do.

"You know Kurt, someday you'll have to show me your radio. I'd really like to have one myself."

"I'll go one better. If my dad says it's okay, I'll let you borrow it."Ronnie slapped me on the back, and we both took a swallow of our Coke's and walked towards the center of town so I could see everything worth seeing before we went to the beach.