Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [85]
Betty Raye had wanted to get a job after graduation but she was not equipped to do anything that required intimate dealings with the public or being outgoing in any way. The job at the cafeteria seemed just right for her. All she had to do was stand there and dish out portions of whatever vegetable the customers pointed to. She did not have to talk a lot, so she was very happy she got the job. Now her world consisted of offering beans, okra, creamed corn, black-eyed peas, or whatever was on the menu that day and going home. Not knowing she might have been a debutante, she was perfectly content being a vegetable girl. And who knows—she might even work her way up to the desserts someday.
Anna Lee stayed in Chicago that summer to do her student nursing and after the valentine fiasco Bobby gave up on girls forever. When he was not at the swimming pool he spent most of his time reading Zane Grey cowboy novels, which Betty Raye brought home from the library for him. He was so caught up in reading about the romance of the Old West that by June he had finished them all, from The Riders of the Purple Sage to The Thundering Herd, and he took great comfort that most real cowboys did not even have girlfriends.
The Lady Bowlers
WHEN THE CAR full of women pulled up in front of the house and tooted the horn, Dorothy called out, “Sweetie, your bowling team is here.” In a few seconds Betty Raye came out dressed and ready to go and said good-bye to all as she ran down the stairs. Everybody was out on the porch eating ice cream, including Monroe, and Bobby waved at the car and said, “Good luck tonight.”
“Thank you,” they said and drove away.
As they turned the corner Doc stood up and walked over and tapped his pipe on the side of the house. “I’m glad they asked her to join. She needs to get out once in a while.”
Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. I think it’s been good for her.”
Dorothy got up to take her bowl back in the kitchen and agreed. “I do too. I just hated seeing her sit at home every night, a young girl like that.”
“I just wish some nice boy in town would ask her out,” Mother Smith said, “somebody her own age.”
Jimmy grunted. “There’s nobody around here worth going out with, if you ask me.”
Monroe, sporting a new crew cut, his red hair shooting out of his head like wires, said, “I’d take her out . . . if she’d pay for everything,” and thought it was the funniest thing anyone had ever said, punching Bobby in the ribs.
Bobby punched him back. “She wouldn’t go out with you, you cootie head.”
Jimmy said to Doc, “See what I mean?”
He did not say so, but Jimmy often thought that if he had been younger and had not lost his leg, things would be a lot different. He wondered why the boys who had fallen all over Anna Lee, who would not give most of them the time of day, never paid the least bit of attention to Betty Raye. He was pretty well disgusted with the whole lot of them. When Jimmy had slipped the valentine under her door, he had said to himself, If the local Romeos are so dumb that they cannot see what a fine girl she is, then, by God, he would see to it that the day would not go by without her knowing there was at least one person in town who thought the world of her. Not while he was around at least.
Jimmy was also right about one thing: The bowling team had been good for Betty Raye. A few months before, when Ada and Bess Goodnight had come marching