I first saw him coming up the sidewalk past the city ice plant. He didn’t see us until he reached the corner, at the intersection of West and Dickson. I swear his eyes got so big you would have thought they’d pop out of his head. I nudged Bernie to check the kid out but he wasn’t very interested and just grunted.

I thought the little guy was kind of cute, really, and I could tell he was fascinated by us. He meant no harm staring; we were probably something he’d never seen before. He was intrigued, that’s all.

“He’s like all of them around here,” Bernie growled as we turned up Dickson towards the university. “He’ll grow up to be just another inbred cracker yelling at people like us.”

“Oh, Bernie,” I said, “they aren’t all like that. And they’re not crackers here, that’s Georgia.”

“Hmph,” Bernie grumbled.

“Remember that old country couple when the car broke down?” I reminded him. “They were really nice to us.”

The boy was walking along the other side of the street, keeping up with us but pretending like he wasn’t and like he wasn’t watching us for all he was worth. I smiled at him but he turned his head away really fast. That tickled me.

“Don’t encourage him,” Bernie said, “these idiots will think we’re going to reefer him to death or something.”

“Bernie, you’re completely neurotic,” I laughed. “You’ve got to stop smoking before we go out down here. It’s not like home, nobody notices us there.”

“That’s for sure,” he sighed, “I can walk around the city anywhere and there’s no damned Okie bugging me.”

“They’re Arkies,” I told him, “and besides we don’t have to stay, we can go home any time we want.”

“Don’t start that again,” Bernie said all frustrated, his hands whipping so wild in the air the little kid across the street stopped in his tracks and watched us with his mouth wide open. “Just don’t do it, man. It ain’t cool. You dig. I came down here to be with the people and to get some material to write about. I ain’t going till then, dig?”

“I dig,” I said, thinking what a silly thing it was to leave New York where we had friends and nobody called us names and to come to some out of the way southern town to study people that we, at least Bernie anyway, couldn’t stand for a second. All this for art, I thought. What a load of baloney.

I smiled over at the little boy again and thought I saw a smile flicker on his face. He might even have been digging me, the little fart. Maybe he was small for his age or something and was kind of getting off on a strange looking chick. That was okay, too. That didn’t bother me.

“Come on,” Bernie mumbled in that way of his I sometimes call “New York Wimpy” when I’m teasing him, “let’s get on to a cafe and eat, we got a lot of work in the library tonight and I wanna write some later, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, sneaking another peek at our small shadow, “let’s go.”

When we turned onto Arkansas Avenue headed for Joe’s Shoat Diner, a real life greasy spoon kinda joint with great food up past the north side of campus, I saw the boy for the last time. He had a funny look in his eyes, I thought, like he was unhappy we weren’t going his way anymore. I gave him a quick wink and a wave but he acted like he didn’t see me. He was a cute kid and I liked the way he was interested in us. It made you think all the people down here weren’t the same; that maybe some of them might be something different than a dumb hick someday.

* * *

Boy was I surprised when I saw them right down there on Dickson and West. Jeez, right in the middle of town, or sort of, at least real near the university anyway. I couldn’t wait to tell Troy and the other guys. I bet they never seen any of them. I never noticed them till I was nearly at the corner past the ice plant and then I stood there a second until they turned up Dickson and headed towards the university. I had heard of them or something but I hadn’t seen any of them.

The woman was all dressed in black just like the man except that she didn’t have one of those little caps or hats like he was wearing and like you see on French painters in books sometimes. She was really kinda pretty and I would’ve liked to have seen her boobs but I just walked up Dickson like I was heading that way and acted like I didn’t see them or anything. Ever now and then they acted like they saw me watching but I quick turned away so I wouldn’t be noticed.

The guy she was with was pretty weird. I mean he had that little French painter’s hat and was wearing dark sunglasses even though it wasn’t that bright. He acted kinda huffy towards her and he for sure never looked over at me. He had a mustache and his beard was growing out, which is weird for here, and he walked funny, kinda like he was bopping along or something like that. You could tell just looking at him that he wasn’t from around here. He must have been from up north or back east but I couldn’t tell really, all I knew is that he wasn’t from this area.

But now the girl, she was okay. She was all the stuff he was but she was neat looking, too. Her black sweater made her push out real tight-like in the front and it looked real good. Her pants were good and tight, too, and made her bottom stick out a little, though not too much. I looked a couple of times at that. She kept looking at me and she smiled ever time and once I kinda smiled back but it was pretty embarrassing and I looked away real fast.

They were real different and I liked that, in a funny sort of way. Even the guy, ‘cause I figured it must be something to be that weird in a little town like this. I hadn’t seen anybody else be it. I wondered who they were and where they really came from. I knew for a certainty that they were going to the university.

Boy, they were something unusual alright, and that was pretty darn neat. And the girl, kinda being nice looking, was pretty cool. She seemed real calm about everything, just walking along checking everything out and not letting anything bug her. I felt that way when she would smile at me. You could tell she was a nice person. I shouldn’t’ve thought dirty things about her but I couldn’t help it. She was real pretty.

Right past the UArk Theatre, they turned on Arkansas Avenue and that’s when I had to stop following them. The guy just went on but the woman turned back and looked at me again. She smiled me a real nice smile and waved. I sorta smiled back I guess and then stopped and watched them go up the street until they disappeared.

I felt kinda bad when they went out of sight and lonely like when you look up in the sky and see a plane going over and you wonder who’s on board and where it’s going. Kind of a funny sadness though, where you feel good and bad at the same time. It’s hard to say, I don’t know.

Anyway, that was the way I felt and since I didn’t have to go home right away I walked back to the UArk and stood out front for a few minutes looking at the preview pictures. After a little bit I took off down University Street past the cemetery and headed home in a kind of roundabout way.

All the way back I thought about those two people I’d seen. For the longest time I could picture them in my mind real good. They were different, unusual. After awhile, though, I couldn’t see them so clear in my mind’s eye and their memory kinda faded over the years. But it never left me completely. Now and again I wonder about them; wonder where they went, what happened to them, who they became. Yeah, I still wonder about them – sometimes.