Ice Cold Orange Soda

Ice Cold Orange Soda – Summer 1953

by Susan King

            They’re coming around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. It will be hot this end of July day with the cottonwood trees dropping those fuzzy balls of white all over the lake.

            The small boy and girl planned to take their guests over to the shade by the boathouse where it’s cool and there’s a breeze off the lake.

            The children filled their toy pails with water and rocks then left them there along the beach. It’s time to concentrate on the adults who are coming to the lake.

            They checked the soda machine in the boathouse. “Plenty of grape. No. They don’t like grape. “Plenty of root beer.” “No.” “Plenty of Coca Cola.” “No. They don’t drink that.”

“Well,” the girl replied, exasperated, “What do they want?”

            “Oranges. They like oranges. We have Nehi orange soda.”

            A giant car with a huge shiny grill spewed sun glare as it pulled slowly down the dry chocolate rocky gravel road toward the boathouse where the children waited wrapped in beach towels wet and dripping creating puddles all around them.

            A man and a woman got out of the car.

            Together they stood under a slim elm tree. The woman was pretty and delicate—a princess. The man was solid with a square jaw, a big firm handshake, a quick smile wearing a thick black suit that looked hot enough to suffocate him.

            The children directed them to the bench by the boats in the shade then went to fetch the ice cold orange soda from the frosty soda machine.

            The man and the woman needed to quench their thirst, and get revived from the sweltering heat. The temperature made the woman more beautiful in her billowy flowered red dress that clung to her body in the soft wind.

            It made the man sweat even more to look at her. There was a kind of magic about them, a circle where no one else entered because no one knew the secret word.

            The man removed the suit jacket he wore and placed it carefully on the bench where no cottonwood fluff might blow on it. Then he reached out and took the cold soda from the boy. He looked at the orange Nehi soda, then at the boy and said, “I’d rather have a beer.”

            A short blunt dagger ripped through the girl’s heart. All day she watched the boy make the preparations. He didn’t play or suck on grape popsicles all day like the girl did.

            Instead, he anticipated that moment when the man and the woman would relax and be happy.

            But, it wouldn’t come—that moment—just like those stupid sunnies that hid in the shadows under the dock and you can never catch them. You can throw all the bread you want at them and those sunnies will never, but never, come out.

            The sun started to go down. The bottles of orange soda were empty now lying in the grass by the bench where the man and the woman left them.

            The boy picked up the empty soda bottles and put them away in the wooden case.