High school was a disappointment at first, as it wasn’t much different from grammar school which I had eight years of, nine counting kindergarten. We stayed within our own gang, not meeting many new people. We did the same thing as before, but now nobody cared. The work wasn’t any more interesting, only harder, and although I stunk at algebra, Zock pushed me through.
So by the time spring came around, there wasn’t much to show. Then, on the night of the third of April, something happened and I’m not sure yet for better or worse. But I date my high school career, such as it was, from that night, for to all intents and purposes, it began then.
Spring vacation it was, with me living at Zock’s house since my parents were up East someplace where my father had been invited to give a couple lectures dealing with Symbolism in Euripides which, I must admit, doesn’t sound any too racy. Zock’s folks were off at a party and there we were, a soft warm night, both of us feeling itchy, and nothing to do. Just who got the idea first I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter though, for we both wanted to and, almost before we knew it, we were standing in front of his old man’s liquor cabinet. At this time, neither of us knew for beans about alcohol. There never was any at my house, only dry wine, and Zock had never cared much, one way or the other.
“Well, Zocker,” I said. “How do we start?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“And how do we know when we get there?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Then you must be pretty stupid,” I told him, grabbing a nearly full bottle of rum and pouring myself a glass. Zock took out a bottle of Scotch, a wise move and one that accounted for his better condition through the night and next day or two.
We started swilling it down, sitting in two easy chairs, facing each other and laughing. I drained the first glass pretty fast. It didn’t affect me at all, but halfway into the. second, I began feeling rocky.
“Yes sir,” I said. “You can say that again.”
Zock looked across at me. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Well, don’t say it again if you want to. I’m a liberal.”
Which confused him, I think, so we didn’t talk for a long time but concentrated instead on our drinking, gulping it down. And I must admit that, pretty soon, I was in my cups, as my mother would say.
“My mother would say I’m in my cups now. How about that. In my cups. Isn’t that the stupidest expression?”
“Isn’t what the stupidest expression?”
“Aren’t you listening to me?”
“I’m trying,” Zock said. “But you’re not coming through very clear.”
“If my father knows so much about Euripides, why isn’t he rich?”
“Who’s Euripides?” Zock asked, which stumped me awhile.
“I am,” I said finally. “That’s who.”
“Well, if you’re Euripides,” Zock said. “Why aren’t you rich?”
“Maybe I am,” I told him. “Maybe I’m the richest guy in the world. Maybe I’m so rich I can’t stand it.”
“I don’t believe you,” Zock said.
“It’s the truth,” I said. “I am so rich I can’t stand it. Do you know what I blow my nose on?”
“Ten-dollar bills?” I shook my head. “Twenty-dollar bills?”
“Wrong.”
“What, then?”
“My shirtsleeves,” I said. Which I still think, considering the conditions and all, was pretty funny. But not so funny that you’d fall off your chair laughing at it. I did, though. I hit the floor and stayed there, waving that empty bottle.
“Rise,” Zock said.
“I could if I wanted to,” I said. “I just don’t want to.”
“Here,” Zock said. “I’ll help.”
Well, he tried. That much you have to say for him. He did try. He even made it out of his chair. But crossing the floor beat him and he fell down on top of me.
“That’s a helluva thing to do,” I told him. “Falling on one of your own guests.” We rested there awhile, our heads spinning around. Then Zock spoke up.
“You know what, Euripides?” he said. “I think we made it.” Which was the truth. For if ever two people were drunk, it was us.
“What’ll we do now?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Something.”
“Great idea,” I told him and we tried getting up. Neither of us could, alone, but together we somehow managed to make it and stagger out of the house into the street.
“Well,” I said when we got there. “What now?” He didn’t answer me right away so I waved my hand in front of his face. “What now?” I said again. “Answer my question.”
He waved his hand in front of my face. “Beats me,” he said.
“Well, you sure aren’t very bright. Nothing but a moron.”
“I was about to say the same of you.”
We were both about to say a lot more when suddenly somebody had us by the shoulders and there was a policeman. Not smiling.
“Good evening to you, officer,” I said.
“What’s the fight about?” he asked.
“Fight?” I said, really confused.
“I saw you,” he said. “And if you don’t stop, I’ll have to take the both of you in.”
“But we weren’t fighting,” I insisted.
“All right,” he sighed.
“Absurd, officer, absurd!” Zock broke in strong. “We are the best of friends.”
“Then go home,” he told us, letting go. We started back for the house but I don’t think Jesse Owens could have made it, because we hadn’t taken more than a step or two when he grabbed us again and herded us into his police car.
The trip down wasn’t too eventful except that I managed to throw up all over the back seat, which didn’t strike him very funny. Zock and I laughed though, all the way there. At the station it got pretty confusing. The man behind the desk kept asking us our names and Zock kept asking him what he wanted to know for, since it wasn’t any of his business.
“Please, boys,” he said over and over. “Please. Co-operate.”
“Absurd,” Zock said over and over. “We are the best of friends.”
Then he began standing on his rights as a citizen and finally he started quoting poetry while I tossed in a couple baseball statistics I had handy.
The upshot of it all was that we spent the night in jail.
Which, as I said earlier, made my reputation. Because, when we finally did get back to school, we were famous. Zock preferred not to capitalize on it and wouldn’t even answer any questions. So everybody came to me and the more I told the story, the better it got. And in less time than it takes to tell, I was the school character. I was voted class clown when I graduated and it can all be traced back to that warm April night when Zock and I got drunk, both for the very first time.
So our gang became the most talked about in the school, even though we were only freshmen, and got the reputation of being the wildest, which we weren’t. I really basked in glory that spring and summer and early fall. Time went zipping by, one day much like the next, and the only thing I remember plain was what happened that summer afternoon.
I was out in the back yard throwing rocks at the big trees on the far side of the ravine, connecting three times out of four, which is better than most can do. Zock came over and stood around awhile, watching.
“If only there was some way of making money out of this,” I said, “I’d be rich.” He didn’t answer but just stood there, watching me throw, listening to the thud of the rocks as they lambasted those tree trunks.
“Don’t be shy,” I said. “I’m really nice enough, once you get to know me.”
He cleared his throat. I waited. Then he started talking. “This isn’t my idea,” he began. “I want you to know that my mother put me up to it. But the thing is, you’re supposed to come to a party at my house a week from Sunday. Two in the afternoon. And wear a necktie.”
“Ridiculous,” I an
swered, hitting a big oak across the ravine. “I won’t come.”
“My mother may never get over it,” Zock said. And then: “What if we forget about the necktie?”
“I might,” I told him. “You going to be there?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“If you can take it,” I said. “Then so can I.”
“Fine.” Zock laughed. “You just won me a double allowance.”
“What’s the party for?”
“My cousin Sadie,” he answered. “She’s getting married.” I didn’t say anything. “To some yokel from Michigan Law School,” he went on. “She’s getting married in three weeks. And you will come?”
“Naturally,” I said, throwing a handful of rocks all at once. “I’ll be there.”
Naturally, I wasn’t. I decided it that afternoon out by the ravine where I stayed, throwing rocks, until dusk set in. At dinner my mother gabbed about the party, since she and my father were invited too, and what should I wear and did I have a summer jacket that looked decent? I went along with her, nodding when she said what a wonderful party it was going to be and wasn’t I lucky to get an invitation. There was no point in telling her then. So I waited.
Until the day before. That afternoon I ran around, getting red and sweaty, after which I dashed home and told her I didn’t feel so well. She bit, felt my forehead, told me to go right up to bed. I grumbled, as was expected, but wild horses couldn’t have kept me from the sack right then. I moaned a lot during the evening and listened to the White Sox on the radio. When it was time for sleep she gave me a couple aspirin and turned out the light.
“You’ve got to be all right for tomorrow, Raymond,” she said. “It’s not every day you get invited to a party.”
“Gosh, no,” I told her. “I’ll feel fine tomorrow. I wouldn’t miss that party for the world.”
The next morning I really hammed it up. I snuck an extra blanket under my bedspread, making sure I’d sweat plenty, splashed water in my eyes, getting them good and red, plus various other tactics. When the afternoon rolled around, I knew my mother wouldn’t have let me out of bed even if the house had been burning down. So I fought the good fight, moaned about how much I wanted to go, and in general earned the Academy Award for malingering. Finally, when I thought I couldn’t stand it much longer, she and my father left, and I was alone.
I turned the radio on, threw the covers off, and lay there, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Then I started to swear, but that never does much good. So I snuck downstairs to the living-room, to the big window that faced out on Zock’s house.
I saw it all, from first to last, standing there in my pajamas that hot summer afternoon. About the only time I missed was once when I heard my mother coming up the walk so I had to beat it back to bed, barely making it, smiling bravely until she left again.
It was a garden party Mrs. Crowe gave. With punch. There was a big bowl of it set on a table in the back yard. When I started looking just a few were present; Zock, my folks and his, plus some I didn’t know, probably other cousins who made the trip out for the occasion. It appeared about as dull as you would expect Mrs. Crowe’s parties to be, what with that big cut-glass punch bowl right smack in the middle of the lawn and other goodies spread around, little sandwiches, etc. Nothing much happened until suddenly everyone hurried around to the front of the house because of the honking from the convertible that had just driven up.
And Sadie Griffin got out. Dressed all in white with her golden hair tumbling down her back, her skin tanned from the summer sun. She smiled and started kissing everybody, throwing her arms around them, so I dashed to the kitchen for a glass of water, hurrying back in time to see her half turn, hold out her hand. And there he was.
He was tall and dark-haired and even from my distance you could tell that a giant size bottle of hair oil would last him about three days. If he went easy. And he was wearing a blazer, complete with crest and gold buttons. On a hot summer day the son of a bitch was wearing a blazer. With gray pants and white bucks and a red striped tie. His name, I found out later, was Alvin. Everyone called him Al, but you can bet if I’d ever met him, it would have been Alvin right down the line. He took her by the hand, Old Hair Oil did, and together they walked around to where the punch was, smiling at each other all the time.
More people came, lots of them, some of them wives from the college dragging their husbands. They all just stood around gassing, except for Zock’s father, who kept going inside for liquor, bringing out drinks for the menfolk, as Mrs. Crowe called them, and thank God for that. Everyone looked pretty stupid from where I was, like actors in the old silent movies who gestured with their arms, raised their eyebrows, moved their lips but you couldn’t hear a thing they were saying.
After a while I got tired standing, so I brought a chair up to the window, out of sight, staying there for hours, sitting and watching, my chin in my hands. And I was like that when I heard my mother again, close by, coming up the walk. Shoving the chair back, I ran for the stairs.
I made it only to the halfway landing when she spoke to me. And this time it wasn’t my mother. It was her.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t come to the party,” she opened, and I turned, stared down, said nothing. She was standing in the middle of the foyer, away from any windows, almost in shadow, but not quite.
“It’s really a wonderful party,” she went on. “And I am sorry you couldn’t come. I asked for you especially.”
“That’s the breaks,” I said.
“Your mother told me you weren’t feeling well.”
“She told you right,” I said. “I’m sick.”
Sadie Griffin started coming up the stairs.
“I’m sick,” I said again. “So you better not come close.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said.
“You might catch something,” I told her, backing up the rest of the stairs. “You’d have to postpone your wedding.” She kept on. “You wouldn’t want to have to postpone your wedding.”
She got to the halfway landing but by then I was at the top, away from the railing by the wall.
“I’ve told Al about you,” she said. “He was very anxious...”
“I’ll bet,” I cut in.
“You’d like him,” she went on. “He’s”—and she threw her arms out wide—“wonderful.”
“He’d be more wonderful if only he’d use a little grease on his hair. That’d probably make him perfect.”
At which she laughed and started talking softly up to me. “When I was fourteen,” she whispered. “I had an algebra teacher named Mr. Dillon. He was short and not very handsome, but...”
“Can the crap!” I said which, vulgar as it was, did the trick, for right after, she turned to leave.
“I only came over to say hello,” she finished. “And to hope you feel better soon.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Good-by, Euripides.” She waved, and she was gone.
As soon as I heard the front door close I went to my room, switched on the ball game, got under the covers, and lay there sweating until my parents came back. The next week Sadie Griffin got married. Neither Zock nor I ever mentioned her again.
The rest of the summer went fast, me spending most of my days with the gang. Just wasting time, for want of something better to do. And I probably would have gone on like that indefinitely, if Felix Brown hadn’t come to school that rainy fall day which now seems so long ago.
I was standing by the main door of school with some of the others, watching for any new faces that might wander past. All of a sudden “Buttons” Dooley, standing behind me, said: “Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it.” I turned around and when I saw what he was looking at, I just stared.
Because Felix Brown came walking in, big as a mountain.
At the age of sixteen, which is what he was then, Felix Brown stood over six feet five and weighed close to 250 pounds. When he took off his black raincoat you could almost see those muscles rippling
under his shirt and I thought that if there was anyone I never wanted to meet in a dark alley, I was looking at him.
He walked over and asked “Buttons” where to go to register. “Buttons” kind of gaped, pointed, and said: “Over there, sir. Through that door.”
“How about that, Rip,” he asked me after Felix had walked away, “did you see the size of that nigger?” I nodded.
“He’s not so damn big,” said Johnny Hunkley, who weighed about the same as Felix but was, as has been pointed out, a slob.
“Then I don’t know who is,” I answered, and I walked away.
I already said how I became a wheel at school by spending one night in jail. Felix didn’t even have to do that. He just strolled around school that day, wearing a dark-red corduroy shirt and Army pants, and by the end of classes, he was a legend. Boys flocked up to him, introducing themselves. Girls followed him with their eyes as he moved along. For Felix was a very handsome boy. With fine features and really beautiful skin, not black, but kind of cocoa-colored. He was built the way everybody wants to be but never is; shoulders a yard wide, slim hips, no waist at all. And he moved with a terrific rhythmic walk, graceful, like a panther.
By the end of his first week in school, Felix was a very popular guy. Those that knew him said he wasn’t dumb at all, like you’d expect, and they almost bragged when they said it. As if it was a gold star for them just because they happened to sit next to him in geometry. Which is understandable, I suppose, for I have noted that people like a chance to show they aren’t prejudiced, even when they are. So that later they can say: “I had a good buddy once in college who was a Catholic,” or “I once went out with a Jewish girl and she was a real lady.” I’m not trying to turn this into a sermon so I won’t say any more, and besides, being a white Protestant, no one has ever said such things of me. Still, I have no doubt but that I am correct in my observation.
Getting back to Felix. Everyone expected him to go out for the football team, which stunk, excepting Johnny Hunkley, who was probably the best tackle in the whole state of Illinois. But Felix didn’t. Until one day in Assembly Coach Haggerty got up and made a big speech about how we needed players as Johnny Hunkley couldn’t do it alone, and anyone who was big enough to play and didn’t was chicken. After that, the pressure was really on, so one afternoon Felix went out for football. But only for one afternoon. Because they put him at fullback and in the course of a single scrimmage he accidentally injured two players and also got into a hassle with the coach, an easy thing to do, for Haggerty was something of a moron.
The Novels of William Goldman: Boys and Girls Together, Marathon Man, and the Temple of Gold Page 121