by Jack Ketchum
Is this what an accident does to you? I wondered.
Except for the bright green eyes it was almost like meeting Meg’s opposite. Where Meg was all health and strength and vitality, this one was a shadow. Her skin so pale under the reading lamp it looked translucent.
Donny’d said she still took pills every day for fever, antibiotics, and that she wasn’t healing right, that walking was still pretty painful.
I thought of the Hans Christian Andersen story about the little mermaid whose legs had hurt her too. In the book I had the illustration even looked like Susan. The same long silky blond hair and soft delicate features, the same look of sad longtime vulnerability. Like someone cast ashore.
“You’re David,” she said.
I nodded and said hi.
The green eyes studied me. The eyes were intelligent. Warm too. And now she seemed both younger and older than nine.
“Meg says you’re nice,” she said.
Smiled.
She looked at me a moment more and smiled back at me and then went back to the magazine. On the radio Alan Freed played the Elegants’ “Little Star.”
Meg stood watching from the doorway. I didn’t know what to say.
I walked back down the hall. The others were waiting.
I could feel Ruth’s eyes on me. I looked down at the carpet.
“There you go,” she said. “Now you know each other.”
Chapter Eight
Two nights after Karnival a bunch of us slept out together.
The older guys on the block—Lou Morino, Glen Knott, and Harry Gray—had been in the habit for years now of camping out on warm summer nights at the old water tower in the woods behind the Little League diamond with a couple of six-packs between them and cigarettes stolen from Murphy’s store.
We were all still too young for that, with the water tower all the way over on the other side of town. But that hadn’t stopped us from envying them aloud and frequently until finally our parents said it would be okay if we camped out too as long as it was under supervision—meaning, in somebody’s backyard. So that was what we did.
I had a tent and Tony Morino had his brother Lou’s when he wasn’t using it so it was always my backyard or his.
Personally, I preferred my own. Tony’s was all right—but what you wanted to do was to get back as far away from the house as possible in order to have the illusion of really being out there on your own and Tony’s yard wasn’t really suited to that. It tapered down over a hill with just some scrub and a field behind it. The scrub and field were boring and you were resting all night on an incline. Whereas my yard ran straight back into thick deep woods, spooky and dark at night with the shadows of elm, birch and maple trees and wild with sounds of crickets and frogs from the brook. It was flat and a lot more comfortable.
Not that we did much sleeping.
At least that night we didn’t.
Since dusk we’d been lying there telling Sick Jokes and Shaddap Jokes (“Mommy, mommy! Billie just vomited into a pan on the stove!” “Shaddap and eat your stew.”), the six of us laughing, crunched into a tent that was built for four—me, Donny, Willie, Tony Morino, Kenny Robertson and Eddie.
Woofer was being punished for playing with his plastic soldiers in the wire-mesh incinerator in the yard again—otherwise he might have whined long enough and loud enough to make us take him too. But Woofer had this habit. He’d hang his knights and soldiers from the mesh of the incinerator and watch their arms and legs burn slowly along with the trash, imagining God knows what, the plastic fire dripping, the soldiers curling, the black smoke pluming up.
Ruth hated it when he did that. The toys were expensive and they made a mess all over her incinerator.
There wasn’t any beer but we had canteens and Thermoses full of Kool-Aid so that was all right. Eddie had half a pack of his father’s Kool unfiltereds and we’d close the tent flaps and pass one around now and then. We’d wave away the smoke. Then we’d open the flaps again just in case my mom came out to check on us—though she never did.
Donny rolled over beside me and you could hear a Tasty-Cake wrapper crush beneath his bulk.
That evening when the truck came by we’d all gone out to the street to stock up.
Now, no matter who moved, something crackled.
Donny had a joke. “So this kid’s in school, right? He’s just a little kid, sitting at his desk and this nice old lady schoolteacher looks at him and notices he looks real sad and says, what’s wrong? And he says, waaa! I didn’t get no breakfast! You poor little guy, says the teacher. Well, don’t worry, no big deal, she says, it’s almost lunchtime. You’ll get something to eat then, right? So now let’s return to our geography lessons. Where’s the Italian border?”
“In bed, fucking my mother, says the little kid. That’s how come I didn’t get no fucking breakfast!”
We laughed.
“I heard that one,” said Eddie. “Or maybe I read it in Playboy.”
“Sure,” said Willie. Willie was on the other side of me over against the tent. I could smell his hair wax and, occasionally and unpleasantly, his bad teeth. “Sure,” he said, “you read it in Playboy. Like I fucked Debra Paget. Right.”
Eddie shrugged. It was dangerous to contradict him but Donny was lying between them and Donny outweighed him by fifteen pounds.
“My old man buys it,” he said. “Buys it every month. So I hock it off him outa his drawer, read the jokes, check the broads, and put it back again. He never knows. No sweat.”
“You better hope he never knows,” said Tony.
Eddie looked at him. Tony lived across the street from him and we all knew that Tony knew that Eddie’s dad beat him.
“No shit,” said Eddie. There was warning in his voice.
You could almost feel Tony edge away. He was just a skinny little Italian guy but he had some status with us because he already had the downy dark beginnings of a mustache.
“You get to see all of ’em?” asked Kenny Robertson. “Jeez. I hear there was one with Jayne Mansfield.”
“Not all of ’em,” said Eddie.
He lit a cigarette so I closed the flaps again.
“I saw that one, though,” he said.
“Honest?”
“Sure did.”
He took a drag on the cigarette, being very Mister Cool about it. Willie sat up next to me and I could feel his big flabby belly press softly into my back. He wanted the cigarette but Eddie wasn’t passing just yet.
“Biggest tits I ever seen,” he said.
“Bigger than Julie London’s? Bigger than June Wilkdnson’s?”
“Shit! Bigger than Willie’s,” he said. Then he and Donny and Tony cracked up laughing—though actually it shouldn’t have been all that funny for Donny because Donny was getting them too. Small fatty pouches where the muscle should be. Kenny Robertson, I guess, was too scared to laugh. And Willie was right there beside me so I wasn’t saying anything.
“Har-dee-har-har,” said Willie. “So fucking funny I forgot to laugh.” …- w .
“Oh that’s cool,” said Eddie. “What are you, in the third grade?”
“Eat me,” said Willie.
“I’d have to push your mother away, spaz.”
“Hey,” said Kenny. “Tell us about Jayne Mansfield. You see her nips?”
“Sure you do. She’s got this great body and these little juicy pointy nips and these great big tits and this great ass. But her legs are skinny.”
“Fuck her legs!” said Donny.
“You fuck ’em,” said Eddie. “I’ll fuck the rest of her.”
“You got it!” said Kenny. “God. Nips and everything! Amazing.”
Eddie passed him the cigarette. He took a quick drag and then passed it on to Donny.
“The thing is,” Kenny said, “she’s a movie star. You got to wonder why she’d do that kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing?” Donny asked.
“Show her tits that way in a magazine.”
>
We thought about it.
“Well, she’s not really a movie star,” Donny said. “I mean, Natalie Wood’s a movie star. Jayne Mansfield’s just sort of in some movies.”
“A starlet,” said Kenny.
“Naw,” said Donny. “She’s too fucking old to be a starlet. Dolores Hart’s a starlet. You see Loving You? I love that scene in the graveyard, man.”
“Me too.”
“That scene’s with Lizabeth Scott,” said Willie. “So what?”
“I like the scene in the soda shop,” said Kenny. “Where he sings and beats the shit outa the guy.”
“Great,” said Eddie.
“Really great,” said Willie.
“Really.”
“Anyway, you got to figure Playboy’s not just a magazine, either,” said Donny. “You know, it’s Playboy. I mean, Marilyn Monroe was in there. It’s the greatest magazine ever.”
“You think? Better than Mad?” Kenny sounded skeptical.
“Shit, yes. I mean, Mad’s casual. But it’s just for kids, you know?”
“What about Famous Monsters?” asked Tony.
That was a tough one. Famous Monsters had just appeared and all of us were crazy for it.
“Sure,” said Donny. He took a drag on the cigarette and smiled. The smile was all knowing. “Does Famous Monsters of Filmland show tits?” he said.
We all laughed. The logic was irrefutable.
He passed the smoke to Eddie, who took a final drag and stubbed it out on the grass, then flipped the butt into the woods.
There was one of those silences where nobody had anything to say, we were all off alone there somewhere.
Then Kenny looked at Donny. “You ever really see it?” he said.
“See what?”
“Tit.”
“Real tit?”
“Yeah.”
Donny laughed. “Eddie’s sister.”
That got another laugh because everybody had.
“I mean on a woman.”
“Nah.”
“Anybody?” He looked around.
“My mother,” said Tony. You could tell he was shy about it.
“I walked in one time, into her bathroom, and she was putting her bra on. For a minute I saw.”
“A minute?” Kenny was really into this.
“No. A second.”
“Jeez. What was it like?”
“What do you mean what was it like? It was my mother, for chrissake! Madonn’! You little pervert.”
“Hey, no offense, man.”
“Yeah. Okay. None taken.”
But all of us were thinking of Mrs. Morino now. She was a thick-waisted, short-legged Sicilian woman with a lot more mustache than Tony had but her breasts were pretty big. It was at once difficult and interesting and slightly repulsive to try to picture her that way.
“I’ll bet Meg’s are nice,” said Willie.
It just hung there for a moment. But I doubt that any of us were thinking about Mrs. Morino anymore.
Donny looked at his brother.
“Meg’s?”
“Yeah.”
You could see the wheels turning. But Willie acted as though Donny hadn’t understood. Trying to score points on him.
“Our cousin, dope. Meg.”
Donny just looked at him. Then he said, “Hey, what time’s it?”
Kenny had a watch. “Quarter to eleven.”
“Great!”
And suddenly he was crawling out of the tent, and then he was standing there. Peering in, grinning.
“Come on! I got an idea!”
From my house to his all you had to do was cross the yard and go through a line of hedges and you were right behind their garage.
There was a light on in the Chandler’s bathroom window and one in the kitchen and one in Meg and Susan’s bedroom. By now we knew what he had in mind. I wasn’t sure I liked it but I wasn’t sure I didn’t, either.
Obviously, it was exciting. We weren’t supposed to leave the tent. If we got caught that would be the end of sleeping out and plenty of other stuff as well.
On the other hand, if we didn’t get caught it was better than camping at the water tower. It was better than beer.
Once you got into the mood of the thing, it was actually kind of hard to restrain yourself from giggling.
“No ladder,” whispered Eddie. “How we gonna do this?”
Donny looked around. “The birch tree,” he said.
He was right. Off to the left of the yard, about fifteen feet from the house was a tall white birch bent badly by winter storms. It drooped halfway down to the scruffy grass over what was nearly the middle of the lawn.
“We can’t all climb it,” said Tony. “It’ll break.”
“So we’ll take turns. Two at a time. Ten minutes each and the best man wins.”
“Okay. Who’s first?”
“Hell, it’s our tree.” Donny grinned. “Me and Willie’re first.”
I felt a little pissed at him for that. We were supposed to be best friends. But then I figured what the hell, Willie was his brother.
He sprinted across the lawn and Willie followed.
The tree forked out into two strong branches. They could lie there side by side. They had a good straight view into the bedroom and a fair one into the bathroom.
Willie kept changing position though, trying to get comfortable. It was easy to see how out of shape he was. He was awkward just handling his own weight. Whereas, for all his bulk, Donny looked like he was born in trees.
We watched them watching. We watched the house, the kitchen window, looking for Ruth, hoping not to see her.
“Me and Tony next,” said Eddie. “What’s the time?”
Kenny squinted at his watch. “Five minutes more.”
“Shit,” said Eddie. He pulled out the pack of Kools and lit one.
“Hey!” whispered Kenny. “They might see!”
“You might be stupid,” said Eddie. “You cup it under your hand. Like this. Nobody sees.”
I was trying to make out Donny’s and Willie’s faces, wondering if anything was going on inside. It was hard to see but I didn’t think so. They just lay there like a pair of large dark tumorous growths.
I wondered if the tree would ever recover.
I hadn’t been aware of the frogs or crickets but now I was, a percussive drone in the silence. All you could hear was them and Eddie pulling hard on the cigarette and exhaling and the occasional creak of the birch tree. There were fireflies in the yard blinking on and off, drifting.
“Time,” said Kenny
Eddie dropped the Kool and crushed it and then he and Tony ran over to the tree. A moment later they were up and Willie and Donny were down, back with us.
The tree rested higher now.
“See anything?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Willie said. It was surprising how angry he sounded. As though it were Meg’s fault for not showing. As though she’d cheated him. But then Willie always was an asshole.
I looked at Donny. The light wasn’t good back there but it seemed to me he had that same intent, studied look as when he’d been looking at Ruth talking about the hootchie-koo girls and what they wore and didn’t wear. It was as though he were trying to figure something out and was a little depressed because he couldn’t get the answer.
We stood together silently and then in a while Kenny tapped me on the shoulder.
“Time,” he said.
We ran over to the tree and I slapped Tony’s ankle. He slid down.
We stood there waiting for Eddie. I looked at Tony. He shrugged and shook his head, staring at the ground. Nothing. A few minutes later Eddie gave up too and slid down next to me.
“This is bullshit,” he said. “Screw it. Screw her.”
And they walked away.
I didn’t get it. Eddie was mad now too.
I didn’t let it worry me.
We went up. The climb was easy.
At the top I felt this great rush
of excitement. I wanted to laugh out loud I felt so good. Something was going to happen. I knew it. Too bad for Eddie and Donny and Willie—it was going to be us. She’d be at the window any moment now and we’d see.
It didn’t bother me at all that I was probably betraying Meg by spying on her. I hardly even thought of her as Meg. It was as though it wasn’t really her that we were looking for. It was something more abstract than that. A real live girl and not some black-and-white photo in a magazine. A woman’s body
I was finally going to learn something.
What you had was a case of greater priority.
We settled in.
I glanced at Kenny. He was grinning.
It occurred to me to wonder why the other guys had acted so pissy.
This was fun! Even the fact that you were scared was fun. Scared that Ruth would appear suddenly on the porch, telling us to get our asses out of there. Scared that Meg would look out the bathroom window straight into your eyes.
I waited, confident.
The bathroom light went off but that didn’t matter. It was the bedroom I was focused on. That’s where I’d see her.
Straight-on. Naked. Flesh and blood, and someone I actually even knew a bit slightly.
I refused to even blink.
I could feel a tingling down below where I pressed against the tree.
A tune kept running around and around in my head—“Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans … I believe to m’soul you’re the devil in nylon hose …” And so on.
Wild, I thought. I’m lying here in this tree. She’s in there.
I waited.
The bedroom light went out.
Suddenly the house went dark.
I could have smashed something.
I could have torn that house to bits.
And now I knew exactly how the others had felt and exactly why they’d looked so mad at her, mad at Meg—because it felt like it was her fault, as though she was the one who’d got us up here in the first place and promised so much and then delivered nothing. And while I knew this was irrational and dumb of me that was exactly how I felt all the same.