“Stitch, I believe you could sweet-talk the devil.”
“He’ll get a chance in hell.”
—You guys got it all wrong. I’m not bad. I just play the part. You got to play the part.
—Well, she says, there was this boy. I loved him. I was crazy about him. Of course he never knew it because I was too shy and he was a class ahead of me in high school and it was silly. But he was very different from the others. He was gentle and different. He was beautiful, I thought. I loved him so much I wanted to be him. I wanted to be inside his body. This is awful to say, but in those days I used to stay awake in the dark in my room to watch him undress. He lived next door. Wasn’t that scandalous?
—No, I say. Not if you loved him.
“Do you think she was telling the truth?”
—I figure she made up the last part, but what the hell, she talked like she believed it. Stitch, I say to myself, just keep your buttons on. You’ve got it made.
—Well, she says. The war came along and he was killed in it, just before the liberation of Paris. I was in college then and I cried and cried thinking about that beautiful boy dead.
—And that’s the other reason you’re here.
—Yes, she says, if you put it that way.
—I’m glad you’re here, I say. I’m glad.
—Why? she says.
—If you weren’t here, how would I know you?
—But you don’t know me.
—Yes I do, I feel I do.
“What were you feeling, Stitch?”
—Quit interrupting.
—You don’t really know me, she says. You don’t know me at all. And she starts to cry.
—Maybe I don’t, I say. Maybe not. But I want to. And I give her a nice quiet Hollywood kiss.
“For Christ’s sake, Stitch, is that all?”
—Slow down, soldier. I have to look at the river and the buildings and the lights.
—This is the music you used to think about, I say.
—Yes, she says, it’s so beautiful.
—You want to see the wickedness too?
—All right, she says. I guess it would be all right with you along.
—So I take her to this clip joint in Pig Alley. Cheap champagne, nekked women, and dirty jokes. She acts shocked. —I don’t see how they can walk around like that with no clothes on in front of men. —They get used to it, I say. It don’t bother them. —I could never get used to it, she says. I’d be so embarrassed. —Yes you could, I say. You’ve got a nice figure. Nothing to be ashamed of. —Then I concentrate on getting her drunk which is no big problem. When she’s drunk out of her mind, I take her to a cheap hotel. She don’t say nothing until we get in the room.
—Where are we?
—Take off your clothes.
—No, she says. No.
—Okay, I say, I’ll do it for you.
—She fights me like a bitch, scratching and biting, but she don’t holler. She don’t make a sound. She just fights.
—All right, I say, when I get her stripped down. You see. You got a nice body.
—Don’t touch me.
—You look better than any of them girls.
—No, she says, no, I’m ugly and old and flabby and nobody loves me.
—I love you.
“Tell her, Stitch!”
—I love you.
—No you don’t, she says.
—Yes I do, I keep saying. And all this time I’m playing the old tune on her just like you play a guitar.
—I’m a virgin, she says. Please, I’m a virgin.
—Yeah? I say. Well, so am I.
“So what happens?”
—What do you think, soldier?
“Was it any good?”
—It’s always good. I just close my eyes and she’s a movie star. When she finally turned loose of herself she’s like a rabbit. Crazy! She was carrying on so I thought they was going to throw us out of the hotel. You see, nobody was ever good to her before I guess. Nobody ever treated her like she was somebody.
—The next morning, first thing, before she has a chance to start feeling sorry for herself, I ask her to marry me. I tell her I love her and I want it to be proper and all. I tell her that just as soon as my furlough is over I’m going back and get the chaplain’s permission and we’ll get married.
“Did she fall for that?”
—Didn’t she? It’s all like a dream come true, she says. And she runs out and buys a whole lot of clothes. I got to admit they made an improvement. You keep telling a pig she’s wonderful and they start believing it. Hell, I almost believed it. By the end of the time I almost started to like the bitch.
“That’s too much for the heart.”
—I even started to feel bad about spending all her money. She even bought me a suit of clothes. I felt kind of bad, not real bad.
“Stitch, you’re just too softhearted.”
—Yeah. She even come down to the station to see me off on the train.
—Don’t leave me, Pete, she says.
—I’ll be back in two or three days.
“Maybe she’s pregnant.”
—Maybe.
“What would Irma say if she found out what you was doing on your furlough?”
—You guys! That’s the first thing I done when I got back, was to tell Irma.
“What did she do?”
—She cried for the poor woman. Irma’s always sorry for the women. She said I was terrible. She said I ought to be killed and she hated me. She said she was going to find that girl and make me marry her. She said everything. Then we hopped in the sack and she was all over me like a tiger.
“That don’t make any sense, Stitch. That’s crazy. It don’t make a damn bit of sense.”
“The trouble with you,” Stitch said, “is you don’t know nothing about women. If you don’t know nothing about the subject, the best thing is to shut up.”
Stitch looked so damn mean for a minute nobody moved. One guy held a card in midair. Everything was frozen like a photograph. Then Stitch started laughing and cleaning his fingernails with his switchblade.
“You poor simple bastards,” he said, and he kept on laughing.
He was crazy that way. As long as he was happy, we decided to go ahead and play cards.
THE RIVALS
THEY PADDLED ACROSS THE BAY, the boy in the cockpit behind, studying the man, watching the twitch across his shoulders as he leaned forward and the quick smooth action of his arms, the deft, almost rippleless stroke of the paddle. He tried to time his own motions exactly with his father’s. The paddles rose and fell together in bright synchronization as the little canvas boat, delicate as a kite on its slight frame, moved swiftly on the still water. The boy saw beads of sweat thick on his father’s neck and, as he paddled, he could feel the cool crawling on his own skin of sweat drying in the breeze. Up ahead, across a mile of water, he could see the white line of the outer beach, a frail sandspit humped with irregular dunes, protecting the bay from the Atlantic. Though he couldn’t see the waves breaking on the other side yet, he heard the noise of them like vague thunder.
“Hold it,” his father shouted over his shoulder. “I’m pooped.”
The boy checked the swing of the paddle in midair, leaned forward in the cockpit, and relaxed. The boat bobbed idly with them like a fishing cork.
“They sound big,” his father said. “They sound like real rollers to me.”
His father had twisted around in the forward cockpit to look at him and grinned. He wants to get out of it, the boy thought. I guess he doesn’t want to go through with it.
“They sound the same as they always do to me.”
“Well,” his father said, “let’s see when we get there.”
That’s exactly like him, the boy thought. He would go that far, all the way to the edge of the ocean and then turn back. He wants to go back now, but he knows, he can feel it, that I think he won’t keep his promise. So now he’ll go that far and then seem to mak
e up his mind that it’s too rough today. He’ll look at the surf and shake his head and say it’s too bad we’ll have to wait till next summer. Next summer will be too late.
“You know something?” his father said. “I had the oddest notion just when we could first hear the waves. I remembered something out of a clear blue sky that I had forgotten for years. I remembered riding up to the line as a replacement in Normandy, during the war. I was sitting in the cab of the truck because I was the only officer in the group. We turned a curve in the road and for the first time I could hear the sound of artillery firing up ahead of us. It was the strangest feeling because right up until I heard that sound, I hadn’t made up my mind that I was really there or that there was a real war on.”
“I bet you were scared, weren’t you?”
“Well, yes, you might say so,” he said. “But it was more than just being scared. I don’t know how to explain it. You can be scared and it’s only a physical thing, like being tired or sick at your stomach. This was different. It was that all of a sudden I knew it was me in the cab of the truck, nobody else but me, me alone and nobody there to see me, just me.”
“It sounds like you were pretty scared to me.”
“I can’t explain it,” his father said. “If you don’t understand, I can’t explain it to you. You’ll have to find out for yourself someday.”
He’s been drinking, the boy thought. I can smell it. He gets to talking like that when he’s been drinking. When he’s drunk he starts to tell all about the war. And it’s been like that most of the summer. He’s going to treat this day just like any other day. He don’t care. He don’t care that it’s the last day before we go home and maybe we’ll never have another chance to try the boat in the waves. On top of that he’s scared.
“Ready to go?” the boy asked.
“Okay,” his father said. “Anytime.”
They sat up straight in the cockpits and the boy poised, waiting, caught the least sign of movement from his father’s back and bent forward. The two paddles flashed and knifed in the water and he could feel in his hands the keen surge of the boat. He could hear the sound of the waves louder now, and looking ahead, squinting against the midmorning sun, he saw first the far horizon where white clouds jutted like a rock coast. He followed the blue below them until he saw and felt the enormous bulk of the ocean, huge and slow, and then, abruptly at the far line of the outer beach a splatter and a flash of pure whiteness.
“I see them!” he shouted. “I see them breaking!”
“Yes sir,” his father answered. “They’re still there all right.”
When they were at last in shallow water the boy eased himself out of the cockpit, careful to keep from rocking the boat, and, once his legs were free, leapt aside into the waist-deep water. He hurried, thrashing around in front of his father, and grabbed the short line they used to tie it to the dock, and he pulled the boat up to the edge of the sand. He stood on the beach, feeling the coarse sand that stuck to his wet feet, and watched his father climb awkwardly out of the forward cockpit. His father stretched luxuriantly and smiled.
“That little old boat is hard on you when you’ve got long legs,” he said. “Sometimes it’s tough to be tall. They don’t seem to make anything the right size.”
The boy, slightly built, small for his age, merely nodded.
“Well,” his father said, “maybe you won’t have to worry about it. You take after your mother more.”
“I haven’t stopped growing yet.”
“You never can tell,” his father said. “I knew a fellow that grew almost a foot after he was your age. It’s the exception, though.”
“All set?”
“I guess so.”
They picked up the boat and balanced it on their shoulders, his father in front to lead the way across the dunes. It was heavier than you thought. It seemed so light and frail in the water, but the weight of the boat, slanting from his father’s shoulders to his own, dug harshly into the boy’s flesh. I won’t quit, the boy thought. I’ll go all the way to the far beach without stopping if that’s what he wants to do.
“Okay?”
“Sure,” the boy said. “Let’s go.”
They struggled forward, slipping in soft sand, the long unwieldy boat troubling their arms. The boy, with his face pressed against the canvas, couldn’t see where they were going. He watched his father’s feet in the sand ahead and kept in step. They began to climb a dune and he felt the weight settling on his shoulders as they climbed. His arms ached from the strain and the sharp keel cut into his shoulders until he wanted to cry out. But he wouldn’t. Then he felt that they were on level sand again and suddenly he could feel the wild chill of the full sea breeze, the top of a dune.
“Want to set her down and take a breather?”
“Not unless you do,” the boy said.
“Well, I’m tired,” his father said. “I’m not as young as I used to be. Let’s set it down. Watch your feet.”
They lowered the boat and the boy smiled to himself. The taste of sweat on his tongue was like the light salty taste of blood after a fist fight, the clean taste of a minor victory.
“That’s a real nice ground swell,” his father said, scanning the surf. “Those waves are rugged.”
“How come we came up this dune?” the boy asked. “It would have been easier if we’d gone around.”
“It’s the same distance any way you go. It doesn’t make any difference.”
The boy looked out at the surf. It was perfect. Farther out the ocean was calm, but bulging with a ground swell which, as it neared the shore, was broken into huge comers. They started as ragged lines, swelled and surged, rising, rising, until it seemed that the whole sea was rising behind them and would sweep over the entire sandspit. Just at that moment with a brilliance that made him gasp the waves broke into an explosion of white, followed by the deep resounding sound of the tide.
“It’s still coming in,” the boy said. “It’s still high tide.”
“That’s a blessing.”
From the tone of voice the boy detected irony, the last inscrutable mask of the adult world. It seemed to him that whenever his father was forced into some corner of truth, just at the moment when you might face the real flesh and blood of him, he simply turned aside, donning a kind of false face behind which he felt wholly secure. It was an odd perception. He seemed to glimpse his father in a Halloween mask, pathetically cocksure of himself, like the emperor in the fairy tale, strutting in his expensive, fine-spun, invisible new clothes.
Without a word they picked up the boat and went down the dune, through a blond patch of sea wheat and onto the coarse, rock-strewn outer beach. They set the boat down facing the sea and sat down beside it. His father, looking into the extravagant surf, lit a cigarette.
“You want one?”
“No thanks,” the boy said.
“You can have one if you want it,” his father said. “I know you smoke now. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out. If you want a smoke just ask me. I don’t care.”
“I just don’t feel like smoking now.”
“I’ve forgotten about being your age,” his father said. “I guess half the pleasure was in the secrecy.”
“I just don’t feel like smoking now.”
It had popped into his head to say, They say it stunts your growth, but the words wouldn’t come. It seemed like when you thought of something smart to answer back, your tongue just wouldn’t form the words for you. And he had an idea that if he once, only once, let loose and spoke the truth from his anger and envy, the words would come like a great flood, like vomiting. How could he ever make his father understand then, drowning, overwhelmed in all that rage? The boy felt ashamed, wishing and wishing and not knowing what to do. He sat woodenly and looked into the surf.
“I could use a little pick-me-up,” his father said. He stood up, fumbled in the cockpit for the rucksack they used to carry dry towels and sometimes sandwiches. His father opened the r
ucksack on the sand and took out a pint bottle. He grinned and took a long pull.
“Better be careful,” the boy said. “You might get a cramp.”
“You can’t imagine how this beach was during the first year of the war,” his father said. “Between the storms and the submarines it was a regular graveyard. I remember coming out here one day and finding the whole beach just covered with bunches of green bananas. It was such an odd sight I wanted to laugh.”
One drink, the boy thought, and he starts to talk about the war. It’s funny that he thinks anybody cares. Mother doesn’t care, that’s for sure. How many times does she have to tell him that’s all over now, that’s ancient history, why don’t you talk about something somebody cares about?
“What do you think?” his father said. “Think we can make it all right?”
“If we’re careful,” the boy said. “Once we get out beyond the surf the only thing we have to worry about is keeping up with a wave when we’re riding it in.”
“I don’t know,” his father said. “This boat is pretty flimsy. A good wave might break it to pieces.”
“We could fix it easy enough.”
“It’s pretty rough out there. I don’t think you know how hard it is to handle a boat in the surf.”
“We can try it. How can you tell something before you’ve even tried?”
“I don’t know,” his father said. “It’s tricky. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. Your mother would never forgive me if I let something happen to you.”
“What could happen? I can swim.”
“Most anything could happen if we capsized.”
“What’s the matter? Are you scared?”
Now at last he had said it. It had come out in the open, not, as he had feared, in a tirade or childish tantrum, but in the form of a simple question, as definite and keen as the cutting blade of a jackknife. His father put out his cigarette in the sand and looked away. After a moment he looked back at the boy, grinning.
“That seems like a funny thing to say,” his father said. “I was worrying about you.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
“It seems kind of silly to me to make such a big issue out of nothing. Try and be reasonable.”
Evening Performance Page 10