The Big Rock Candy Mountain

by Wallace Stegner

  There was his pride in his grades at school, his caddying at the golf club and his growing interest in the game of golf. There were his fear of girls, his tormenting dreams, his adolescent agonies, his constant furious expenditure of energy in the effort to be a top scholar, an officer in the ROTC. His whole private life took up his time, and the life in his home he noticed only when it irritated or balked him. Moves from one house to another meant to him only the necessity of finding new cross-lot ways to school.

  It was only in retrospect that the moves had any significance, only when he thought of what his mother’s life must have been all that time; and even there, he realized, his memories were probably colored by a sentimental pity that had little relation to his mother’s real feelings. She never complained, except humorously, about the life she led. Probably much of the time she was almost contented except for her constant nagging worry that Bo would get into trouble that he couldn’t get out of. But there was nothing really unhappy about her life, in spite of its rootlessness, until the spring when Chet was seventeen.

  2

  It was cool in the locker room after the sun outside, and it felt good just to sit and feel the tiredness run down his arms and legs. His spikes scratched a little on the cement floor as he hunched his shoulders to lean forward with elbows on knees. His mind was full of visions.

  They would have that one in the papers all right. Through the open windows he could hear the last ragged yell for West High, and the babble of voices and clack of spikes coming down the hall. The cheers he had got as he trotted off at Muddy’s wave, not even stopping to lean into the huddle and give three for his beaten opponents, were still sweet in his ears, but he did not look up as the doors slammed open and the team swarmed in. Hands hit his back, knocking him further down in his slump on the bench, but he paid no attention. His eyes were fixed on the floor in a steady, completely-faked look of despondency or exhaustion.

  Hands seized his bowed head and roughed it, and he looked up as if mad. Muddy Poole, the coach, stood there grinning. “Great stuff, Chet,” he said. “You really got in there and pitched that one.”

  Chet glowered, then winked. “Guess I smacked a couple too, didn’t I?” he said. He could see the newspapers now. “Mason Holds West to Three Hits.” “Chet Mason, star portsider of East High, held the strong West team to three meager bingles yesterday while his mates were collecting eight off the combined offerings of Rudd and Jenkins to win, 5-0. Two of East’s hits were rousing doubles by Mason which drove in three runs ...”

  Muddy shook his two hands at him and went in behind the lockers. Shoes were dropping all over the room, bodies were squirming out of sweat shirts and pants, somebody yelled as a flipped sock garter spatted against his skin, and in an instant there was a towel fight in the aisle, Pinky DeSerres and Jerry Knowlton cracking them off like bullwhips. Pinky took refuge behind Chet, using him as a shield, and Chet watched his chance to smack him a beauty across the rump. He saw the red mark start and swell almost before the yelping Pinky was out in the aisle again and being chased toward the shower room.

  Van Horsley, the catcher, came out from the lockers in jock strap and socks. His face was waggling in astonishment. “Looky,” he said. “Look what that potlicker Rudd almost did to me when he beaned me in the fifth.”

  He pulled his supporter down and showed the aluminum crotch guard, dented as if someone had hit it with a mallet.

  “Oh well,” Chet said. “Nothing there to get hurt.”

  “Yeah,” Van said. “I guess I can take care of myself. What’ve you got you’re so proud of?” He ripped Chet’s buttons and ducked the return kick.

  “Come on,” he said, reappearing with a towel. “You can’t sit around here all afternoon and gloat. There’s a couple hot numbers waiting outside.”

  “I got a date.”

  “I know it,” Van said. “She’s waiting with my date by the gym door.”

  “She is, ha?” Chet said. He dug a sweaty towel from his locker and started for the showers. “Well, let her wait.”

  But he took only a short shower, and he was dressed before Van.

  The girls were sitting on the steps in the afternoon sun, amusing themselves by tossing scraps from scattered lunch boxes to the seagulls that coasted with cocked heads over the lawn. Laura Betterton, slim and quick, brown-haired, brown-eyed, waved her hand at Chet and started over. She was older than the high school girls, wasn’t a high school girl at all, but a student at a business college downtown. “Oh Chet,” she said, “I think it was just simply swell!”

  Chet looked at her, looked away vaguely. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “West’s not so hot. L.D.S. is the tough one in this league.”

  “But only three hits!” Laura said. Her enthusiasm embarrassed him.

  “Been feeding the gulls?” he said.

  “Yes. Aren’t they tame?”

  “Show you something.”

  He scouted around till he found a scrap from a lunch box, tied a length of string on it, and walked onto the lawn. Three gulls hung over his head, crying, and he made elaborate gestures of protecting his head from droppings. The three watching him laughed. “Watch him how,” Chet said. He tossed out the scrap, keeping hold of the string, and a gull swooped and grabbed and flapped up again. Chet let him get about fifteen feet up before he pulled the string. The gull turned almost a complete somersault, a startled squawk was yanked out of him along with the scrap, and in a confusion of feathers and indignant cries he lit out straight for Great Salt Lake.

  They were all laughing. “I think you’re mean,” Laura said.

  “My hero!” Van said.

  “Aw, shut up.”

  “I thought you were the hero,” the other girl said. She was taller than Laura, rather thin, with a bright spot of rouge on each cheekbone.

  “Sure,” Chet said. “Van got heroically injured in the front line trenches.”

  “What do you mean, trenches?” Van said. He was burbling with secret laughter, and his girl’s face wore a sly, sidelong smile that she couldn’t quite conceal. Laura was looking at Chet and didn’t seem to be listening.

  Van, Chet was thinking, was a real slicker. His hair was always Sta-combed back, he could toss the old bull around, his suit was pretty snazzy, pinch-waisted coat with four pearl buttons set close together under the breastbone, bell-bottom pants with straight-across pockets and a broad belt band. The next suit Chet got was going to be one like that, even if his old man did call them “four-button pimp suits.” There was no percentage in going around looking like an old sack of laundry. You had to have style, like Van. Van had a stripped-down Ford bug, too.

  “Where we going?” Van’s girl said.

  Chet looked at Laura, and she took his hand and tucked it under her elbow. “I don’t care,” she said.

  “I’m hungry,” Van said. “Let’s go have a dog.”

  “I know what,” Chet said. “You got your car, Van?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go out to Saltair.”

  “Is it open?”

  “Sure. Opened the fifteenth. I’m going to work out there soon as school’s over. We can get in anywhere for nothing. I know all the guys.”

  “I ought to call home,” Laura said.

  “Okay,” Chet said. He looked at Van’s girl. “How about you?”

  “I ain’t got no home,” she said, and puckered her face into a gamin’s grin.

  “Me neither,” Van said. “Come on, let’s go over to Mad Maisie’s and get a dog and call.”

  Ten minutes later they piled into Van’s red bug, a home-made racing car with a souped-up carburetor and a Rajah head and a Ruxtell axle. It had no muffler, no top, no fenders, no windshield, no seats except folded blankets.

  Chet and Laura were in the back cockpit. They went down South Temple as if propelled by rockets, slowed a little crossing the business section, and swung out past the fair grounds and the airport on the Saltair Speedway. The speedway was a dirt road, but smooth
and straight across the salt flats. Chet and Laura ducked further down out of the tearing wind, their eyes close to the sign scrawled in white paint across the red metal: “No mugging aloud.” They looked at each other and smiled, and he slid his arm around her. Her hair blew across his face, tickling, as she relaxed against him.

  Van was horsing the bug all over the road, unable to see much for the glare of the dropping sun, and pretending not to be able to see anything at all. He drove on the left side, held his course in the face of approaching cars until his girl shrieked, and then swung wildly toward the right-hand ditch. Other cars almost went off the road avoiding him, drivers turned and yelled, and one car even started to turn around in the road.

  “Hey!” Chet said. “He’s after you.”

  Van looked back, raised his eyebrows, and yanked down the gas lever. The bug tore up the straightaway, the wide-open exhaust roaring so loud that no one could hear what anyone else yelled. They hung onto the bucking seats and laughed. By the time they reached the salt works the other car had dropped back out of sight.

  “Safe at last!” Van yelled. He pulled his girl over to him and hugged her, let go the wheel to use both arms, grabbed it again just as the bug was careening toward the ditch. Laura was frowning. “He’s crazy!” she shouted, close to Chet’s ear, and he nodded. He had been a little scared himself when the other car started to chase them. The old man would raise some hell if he wound up in jail.

  There were not many people at the Moorish pavilion built on piles out into the lake. It was too early in the season, and the Coney Island of the West was having a moderately dull Saturday afternoon. Chet took them around to the bathing houses, winked at the attendant, and got them all in for a swim free. At the hot dog stand he ordered four hot dogs and got eight.

  Laura hung onto his arm above the elbow, and he liked the way her hand didn’t go more than halfway round his muscle. On the roller coaster a little later she hung onto him in panic, and he scared her pants off, he told Van afterward, by standing up on the first steep pitch.

  They toured the Fun House, rolling drunkenly in front of distorting mirrors, yelling encouragement when Van’s girl got caught in a whole battery of air blasts and had her skirts blown up around her ears. Her efforts to keep them down were not very successful, and Van dug Chet with an elbow. “Did you see that?” he hissed. “No pants!”

  “Not bad!” Chet said. He hadn’t seen anything, because he had been watching Laura edge along the walk with her dress clutched down in both hands so that only the hem blew. Van’s girl was standing at the other end laughing. “That’s a dirty trick,” she said, but she was still laughing when they went outside.

  The sun was flat along the lake, and the heavy brine sloshed against the piles. From the left came the shriek of a girl on the roller coaster, and the roar of a car avalanching down the first incline. Ahead of them the barker was just helping two couples out of the square-ended barge at the mouth of the Tunnel of Wonders. He saw Chet and waved.

  “Hi,” Chet said. “Packin’ ‘em in?”

  “Not so fast. Hasn’t really got going yet.”

  “How about a ride?”

  The boy looked right and left across the pavilion. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll shoot you through.”

  Van’s girl pretended to hesitate. “Are there any blow-holes in there?” She looked at the watery tunnel, the water dotted with wrappers from candy bars, gum, Eskimo Pies, popcorn.

  “What’s the diff?” Van said. “It’s dark in there.”

  “That might be worse,” she said, and stepped into the barge. The look she flashed back over her shoulder at Van made Chet shift his feet. Van was getting there, all right. He was a little uncomfortable with Laura at his elbow. She wasn’t any little cheap chippy like Van’s squaw, but just for a minute he almost wished she was. You could get away with plenty in that tunnel with a swamp angel like Gladys.

  They slid smoothly, silently, into the mouth of the papier maché tunnel. The opening was a blurred glow behind them, and then as the flume curved the glow was gone and they moved in velvet blackness.

  “Eeee!” Gladys said. “This is spooky!”

  Sitting in the rear seat, Chet couldn’t see either Van or Gladys, couldn’t even see Laura a foot away. He felt for her hand, got it, felt her crowd against him. His lips felt stiff. Up ahead he heard rustling, a giggle, soft exciting noises. Van’s voice, an insinuating whisper with a burble of laughter in it, said, “How’d you like to walk home from here, baby?” and Gladys’ voice said, “I could swim, I guess.”

  “That’s what the mermaid thought,” Van said. “You know what happened to her.” The voices stopped, and there were only the soft noises that Chet listened to with held breath, trying to interpret them. He swallowed and leaned sideways until his lips felt Laura’s hair. She turned up her face and they kissed. In the hot velvet black the kiss lengthened and tightened, and their bodies crowded together. An alcove with a dim red light and a phosphorescent death’s head broke them apart momentarily. The barge crawled on, around another bend. In just a minute the surprise lights would Rash on. Chet kept his arm around Laura’s waist but raised his head, focussing on the dark ahead. Van’s activities up there fascinated him. Would the lights catch them dead to rights? He squinted so that he wouldn’t be blinded when it happened.

  The gray tunnel walls leaped instantly out of the dark, the square ends of the barge were there, the water with floating papers and bits of popcorn, and the two: Their heads jerked apart as if pulled by ropes, and Gladys’ hands grabbed downward. Chet saw the white gleam of skin, heard Van’s startled grunt, and then the light went off and dropped them into blackness blacker than before.

  “What the helll” Van said. “That’s kind of hard on the heart.”

  Chet laughed out loud, and startled them all with the thunderous reverberation in the tunnel. “I thought that’d catch you,” he said.

  “You might have said something, if you knew it was coming,” Gladys snapped.

  “Oh bushwah,” Chet said. He was a little disappointed. They had only been necking, then. But her skirt was up over her knees. Van must have been giving her a working over.

  Laura’s body moved against his, and he bent to kiss her again. There was a light throbbing all through her, as if she were shivering. He slipped his hand up over the swelling of her breast, and when her hand came up again to push it down he whispered, “It’s all right. There’s nothing but little red lights from now on. There’s three or four minutes more.”

  She let his hand stay, and he forced her up against him in a fierce embrace, forgetting the soft noises from the front seat. When they coasted around the last bend into the growing glow of light he was taken by surprise. He straightened and looked at Laura. In the half dark her eyes had a curious shine, and her lips were parted. Before she shifted over on the seat and with a pat or two made herself demure she squeezed his hand once, hard. On the front seat Van and Gladys untangled.

  “Holy cow!” Van said. “Let’s go around again.”

  “Want to go again?” Chet said. Laura shook her head at him quickly.

  “Oh, come on,” Van said. “I never got much of a look at the wonders last time.”

  Laura rose teetering and stepped out on the platform, clinging to Chet’s hand. He looked back at Gladys and Van in the barge. “You go ahead,” he said. “We’ll meet you.”

  “Where?”

  “At the car?”

  “All right. When?”

  “I don’t care. Say an hour?”

  “Okay,” Van said. He dug thirty cents out and held it up to the barker, and Gladys settled herself on the seat, tilting her head away from him to look at him with her sidelong smile.

  Alone, Chet stood a little uneasily watching Laura. The shine was gone from her eyes. She looked quiet, almost severe. “What do you want to do?” he said.

  “Couldn’t we go somewhere and just talk?”

  “How about going swimming again? We could float a
round and have a regular old gab fest.”

  “All right,” she said. “It was hot in that tunnel.”

  Lights were on all over the resort, an umbrella of white dazzle. The potted palms moved a little in the first night wind; the cement floor of the pavilion was still radiating warmth from the sun. At the bathing concession the attendant was just closing his shutters.

  “Sorry, Chet,” he said. “I got to be checked in and have everything closed up by nine.”

  “Hell, you could let us go out,” Chet said. “I don’t need any lifeguard.”

  The boy hesitated. “Come on,” Chet said. “It’s no skin off you. I’ll be quiet.”

  “Oh, all right,” the boy said. He looked curiously at Laura as he passed out two keys with rings of elastic on them, two towels, and two gray cotton bathing suits. “You’ll have to undress in the dark,” he said. “I can’t leave any lights on.”

  “That’s okay,” Chet said. He held the gate open for Laura and raised his hand to the attendant. “I’ll do as much for you some day,” he said.

  Going back through the rows of dressing rooms Laura clung to Chet’s arm. “Are you sure it’s all right? We could have gone and sat in the car.”

  “Sure it’s all right. Everybody hangs together out here. It’s okay.”

  He found her dressing room for her with the help of a match, and by the door he pulled her to him and kissed her again. “You’re pretty nice,” he said.

  “Am I?” Her head was back, cocked, and her eyes glinted a little in a flake of light wavering across from the pavilion. “You’re pretty nice yourself.”