Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

11. CHAPTER ELEVEN (continued)

Said Fanny, "I want to scramble up to the top of one of those dunes--the high one--and just sit there."

And that is what they did. A poor enough Sunday, I suppose, in the minds of those of you who spend yours golfing at the club, or motoring along grease-soaked roads that lead to a shore dinner and a ukulele band. But it turned Fanny Brandeis back a dozen years or more, so that she was again the little girl whose heart had ached at sight of the pale rose and, orange of the Wisconsin winter sunsets. She forgot all about layettes, and obstetrical outfits, and flannel bands, and safety pins; her mind was a blank in the matter of bootees, and catalogues, and our No. 29E8347, and those hungry bins that always yawned for more. She forgot about Michael Fenger, and Theodore, and the new furs. They scrambled up dunes, digging into the treacherous sand with heels, toes, and the side of the foot, and clutching at fickle roots with frantic fingers. Forward a step, and back two--that's dune climbing. A back-breaking business, unless you're young and strong, as were these two. They explored the woods, and Heyl had a fascinating way of talking about stones and shrubs and trees as if they were endowed with human qualities--as indeed they were for him. They found a hill-slope carpeted with dwarf huckleberry plants, still bearing tiny clusters of the blue-black fruit. Fanny's heart was pounding, her lungs ached, her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes shining. Heyl, steel-muscled, took the hills like a chamois. Once they crossed hands atop a dune and literally skated down it, right, left, right, left, shrieking with laughter, and ending in a heap at the bottom. "In the name of all that's idiotic!" shouted Heyl. "Silk stockings! What in thunder made you wear silk stockings! At the sand dunes! Gosh!"

They ate their dinner in olympic splendor, atop a dune. Heyl produced unexpected things from the rucksack--things that ranged all the way from milk chocolate to literature, and from grape juice to cigarettes. They ate ravenously, but at Heyl's thrifty suggestion they saved a few sandwiches for the late afternoon. It was he, too, who made a little bonfire of papers, crusts, and bones, as is the cleanly habit of your true woodsman. Then they stretched out, full length, in the noon sun, on the warm, clean sand.