“I’m a virgin, Kitty!”
At the sound of her name, the small calico cat curled up on the sofa opened a lazy eye. She blinked once, yawned and shut her eye in disinterest.
Kathleen Fields didn’t mind. The cat she had brought home from college two years earlier was the only one home, so the animal had to suffer her complaints.
“I’m boring. My life is boring!” Kathleen opened the roll of red and green Santa Claus wrapping paper and stretched it out on the dining table. In the far end of the living-dining room, Joe and Hoss Cartright were deep in a sibling argument. Even without her father at home, Kathleen had—out of habit—turned on the television set at nine o’clock. The noise provided by Bonanza’s familiar opening music was welcome in the silent house.
“I was twenty-one last week and I haven’t slept with anyone,” she continued her monologue. “Frank will probably propose after Christmas and then I’m in for a really boring life in this really boring town.”
Kathleen snipped a large sheet of paper from the roll. Oh, she loved Frank Smith and did plan to marry him. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was her. She’d never been anywhere except to England last summer on a six-week study tour with her college drama team. Even that had been well chaperoned. She hadn’t taken advantage of the luscious, long-haired English boys or the Guinness in the pubs. She’d kept her nose in her books, as always, coming home with the expected “A” but no real-life adventure.
That was her trouble. She didn’t take risks. She was a good girl. After high school, she’d gone to college at the University of Tennessee, where her parents had met and wanted her to go. She was on schedule to graduate this spring with an elementary education degree, just like her mother’s. She’d had one boy friend since age sixteen, and they’d never done anything but kiss and make out a little. They were “saving themselves” for marriage.
That was the way it was supposed to be, wasn’t it?
“I wish I’d worn flowers in my hair,” Kathleen said with a sigh.
It was hard to be a good girl when so many of her contemporaries were burning bras. Sex, love, and rock ‘n’ roll were the watchwords of her generation. But stuff like that didn’t happen in Legend, Tennessee. Her hometown was far removed from the reality of the modern world.
Folding the edges of the paper around the box containing her grandmother’s pink flannel bathrobe, Kathleen bit her lip more in disgust than in concentration. In her heart she knew she was a fraud.
Times were changing. Kids and clothes and music were changing. Starting with the British Invasion of the Beatles and Rolling Stones a few years earlier, life seemed to have sped up. Nothing was sacred and nothing the same.
Yet deep down the Cultural Revolution scared the heck out of her.
Her life was a terrible paradox of wishing for freedom and fear of trying it. Just because it was new, didn’t make it better.
Kathleen Fields, Magna Cum Laude, had never explored marijuana or LSD. Heck, she’d never even tried smoking regular cigarettes. She was too timid to espouse radical views and too straight to protest the Vietnam War, because, frankly, she didn’t agree with those ideas or understand enough to know what to believe. Yet the changing world was exciting, watching it from the sidelines like she did—seeing the sit-ins on campus or attending a political rally for presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey in October.
Kathleen tied a red ribbon around the box and attached the card. Then she placed the box in a pile of gifts at the other end of the table. Her parents had wrapped their presents before leaving town, so all Kathleen needed to do was wrap hers.
She’d given Frank his cuff links and sweater before he left to spend the holiday with his roommate’s family in New York. Her gift from him, a polished mahogany jewelry box with dark green velvet interior, was wonderful. Yet the gleam in Frank’s eyes and the slight smile on his lips had told her there was more to come, something he’d hinted about for over a year.
Kathleen sighed a big sorry-for-herself sigh and cleaned up the mess on the table. It was strange being home alone at Christmas. Frank was gone. She had promised to house-sit for her parents and also keep an eye on Harriett Winchester’s house next door. Her neighbor was leading members of the Legend senior class on a two-week tour of France and Italy. Her father, the high school principal, and her mother had gone along as chaperones.
Retrieving a bottle of Coke from the refrigerator, Kathleen popped the top and tossed the cap in the trash can. She grabbed a bag of Fritos, and returning to the living room, turned up the volume on the TV before plopping cross-legged on the sofa beside the cat. Fritos were her downfall. Whenever she was lonely or depressed they were an all too easy comfort food.
Kathleen crunched the salty chips, sipped the soft drink and mindlessly watched the flickering screen. Little Joe was riding to rescue a pretty town girl when the roar of a motorcycle speeding down Maple Street snapped Kathleen out of her TV trance. Its vibration rattled the glass in the living room window.
When the sound of the engine stopped abruptly, curiosity got the best of her. Kitty jumped down and scurried into the kitchen. Kathleen untangled her legs and climbed to her feet. She clicked off the lamp by the sofa, leaving the colorful lights from the Christmas tree as the only illumination in the room. Then she went to the window and carefully drew back the lace curtains.
The front porch was empty. She couldn’t see beyond it. Where had the motorcycle gone? Kathleen turned away from the window wondering.
She walked back to the sofa and turned the living room lamp back on. The doorbell rang. She froze.
Who would be at the door at this hour? It was almost ten o’clock, for heaven’s sake! This was Legend, not a big city, but a girl home alone couldn’t be too cautious.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s Grant Winchester, Mrs. Fields.”
It would be clichéd to say her heart stopped, but that’s exactly what happened. For several seconds Kathleen stood in the middle of the living room floor unable to move. She hadn’t seen Grant since 1962 when they were fifteen and going steady.
Flashbacks of her first boyfriend swept through her mind. What a mess their innocent crush had caused. Her grandfather and Uncle Pete had made such a terrible stink about her going with Grant, reviving that stupid old family feud. His parents and hers had forbidden them to see each other. They defied them for a while, the only risk Kathleen had ever taken, until Uncle Pete caught them together at The Point.
To say all hell broke loose over one silly kiss was an understatement. Someone fired shots at the Winchester’s house and that’s when their innocence died. Mr. Winchester decided Legend had gotten too provincial for him. He pulled up stakes and moved his family to California. That was the last time she’d seen Grant.
“Mrs. Fields, I’ve come to visit my aunt. Do you know where she is?”
Oh, my! He thinks I’m my mother. She couldn’t let Grant stand out in the dark. Kathleen flipped on the porch lights. She unlocked the door and opened it.
“Harriet isn’t home,” she said before her mouth dropped open.
The boy she remembered was gone.
In his place stood a tall, black-haired hippie with a scruffy beard and John Lennon styled granny glasses. He wore faded blue jeans, black leather boots, and a green combat fatigue jacket probably purchased at a military surplus store. His jacket was open, revealing an army shirt and a peace symbol on a gold chain around his neck.
The irony of the peace sign against the second-hand uniform wasn’t lost on Kathleen. Realizing she must look dumbfounded, she shut her mouth, but remained unable to speak.
“Hey, man? Is that you, Kate?”
Only then did she consider her appearance. She wore an orange UT sweat shirt over black leggings with clashing pink fuzzy slippers on her feet. When she’d known him before, she’d spent hours on her hair, rolling it at night on big, round wire rollers. She’d endured hours under the plastic cap of a portable hair dryer and more hours teasing and spraying her hair to achieve the perfect bouffant hair style that was so popular in the early sixties. Her major concession to current fashion was to let her straight brown hair grow long and part it in the middle.
She gulped. “Yes!”
“Neato!”
In one leap, he crossed the threshold, grabbed her around the waist, picked her off her feet and swung her around.
“Grant!” She giggled. “Stop! Put me down!”
He did, abruptly.
Looking up at him, still in his arms, Kathleen sensed the energy flowing from him. She stared into his blue eyes gazing at her over the wire rims of his glasses. Her hands tingled. Her breath labored in her chest. She was totally blown away.
“Damn, you’re gorgeous,” he said. “I like what you’ve done to your hair.”
She felt the heat sweep up her cheeks. “You’ve changed a little yourself.”
He grinned down at her. “You think?”
Her eyes widened and she grinned back at him. Lifting a timid hand, she touched his beard. “This is different.”
“Yeah, I can grow it now.” He winked and let her go. “Mind if I come in?”
She dropped her hand and stepped back. “Sure.” Turning to avoid the awkward feelings surging through her, she shut the front door.
He filled the room, Kathleen decided, when she turned to face him. He was bigger than life, different, and dangerous because of that difference.
She swallowed her nervousness. “I’m afraid Harriet has left town for the holidays.”
“Damn!” He dragged his fingers through his tangled hair. “I didn’t count on that, but I should have known she wouldn’t be home.”
“She’s gone to Europe with the senior class.”
“Damn.”
He looked suddenly confused. Perturbed. As if he hadn’t expected a monkey wrench tossed into his plans.
“I’m sorry she’s not here.”
Grant let out a breath. “I need to talk to her.”
“Oh.” What more could she say?
He glanced at the television. “Can we turn that off?”
“Okay.” Phyllis Diller had replaced Little Joe and Hoss. Kathleen turned off the set.
“I can’t stand that mindless drivel,” he said.
“There’s not much on CBS either, and ABC has a movie.”
He frowned. “Kate, television didn’t earn the term ‘boob tube’ for nothing.”
“I guess so.”
Boy, he really had changed if he didn’t like TV, Kathleen thought as she watched him from across the room. He suddenly seemed preoccupied, distant. She didn’t know what to say given how they’d parted six years ago. It crossed her mind that he didn’t have any place to stay since Harriet wasn’t home.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Head out, I guess.”
“Now? At ten o’clock?”
“Not much choice.”
“Were you driving that motorcycle I heard earlier?”
“Sure. Came all the way from California on it.”
The idea of a cross-country trip on something as dangerous and naughty as a motorcycle excited her. He sounded as if it didn’t matter that it was the dead of night and mountain roads were often unforgiving, even though it wasn’t cold outside. “I’m sure your aunt won’t mind if you stayed at her house for a while,” Kathleen suggested.
He considered it for a minute, giving her a good once over, his gaze sweeping up and down her body. She shifted her weight and tugged the bottom of her sweatshirt as if that would hide more from his appraising eyes.
“How can I do that?”
She cocked her head and smiled. “Because I have the key.”
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