Amerika by Brauna E. Pouns, Donald Wrye Page A

known Devin Milford all her life. He and Peter had been inseparable from the first grade on. Although they’d always been friendly to her, there came a time, when she was fourteen or so—a gangly tomboy with budding breasts that she tried to ignore—when they admitted her to their world. When kids started dating, she quite naturally paired off with Peter. He was popular,'a star athlete, a leader. Devin, even then, was different. He and Peter had been co-captains of the Milford Wildcats football team their senior year. But Devin kept to himself much more than Peter did. Even though others looked to him for leadership, he remained somehow aloof. He read a lot more than anyone else and had ideas that seemed strange to seniors in high school. Amanda was drawn to Devin, but there was something unsettling about him. He was always finding something wrong, something to attack. Amanda had never been critical; she liked t hin gs the way they were. She never felt uneasy at the thought of living in Milford, where she’d been born and had grown up, for the rest of her life.
    Devin had been attractive, of course, lean and hard, with those dark, watchful eyes and that wide, sexy mouth. A lot of the girls were afraid of him. He had a worldly swagger to him, as though he’d formed opinions of things no one else even knew about, and that was unsettling to “nice” girls like Amanda, still a virgin when she started college after two years of going steady with Peter.
    They’d all gone to the University of Nebraska. Amanda pledged Chi Omega and proudly wore Peter’s Kappa Sig pin; Devin, typically, rejected the fraternity system and took an apartment off campus. Amanda and Peter went to one party there but left early when some of Devin’s long-haired and bell-bottomed friends started smoking marijuana. Even then, Amanda realized that Devin represented a world not beyond her ken, but beyond her nerve—a world of Charlie Parker albums, vodka punch, rude but vivid talk. She was attracted by Devin’s moody isolation, his vast self-sufficiency, but they’d drifted apart in college, with different interests and different circles.
    Then, the summer after her freshman year, Peter had gone off to work in the oil fields. Boys who worked double shifts were saving as much as four hundred dollars a week. Amanda had been home that summer, working in her father’s hardware store, and Devin had been home, too, shingling the bams at his father’s farm.
    They talked at the Fourth of July parade and she invited him to drop by her house. He did, and the next Saturday he asked if she wanted to go fishing. There was a little lake about two miles west of the Milford farm where nobody went much, and they walked there and fished, not too seriously, and talked and joked. He told her he was thinking about enlisting in the marines, which made no sense to her at all, with so many people being killed in Vietnam. Devin said he was sick of all the controversy, from people who’d never even been there, and he thought he’d go see for himself.
    They sat on the end of the little dock, watching the sunset, darkness settling around them. Neither of them said anything about leaving. They just kept talking and she began to feel like she’d never felt before. She was spellbound. He was so beautiful, serious one minute, funny the next, and she just wanted to go on looking at him and listening to him forever.
    They sat until the moon shimmered over the calm lake. Finally he said, “I better get you back.”
    She answered, “No—not yet, please.”
    That night she gave him gladly what Peter had never asked for, but always thought would be his.
    It went on like that for a week. They spent each night at the lake or in a bam near his house, making love and talking about everything but the future. She knew from the first that she and Devin had no future, that he was quicksilver, soon to dart away.
    Then 'she got a letter from Peter saying he was coming home. She told Devin