“Okay,” the boy said. “I dare you to do it. That’s all there is to it. Just a dare.”
“In that case, I guess we have to do it. I’ll take your dare.”
They seized the boat, raised it, and half-running, staggering, hurried to the water’s edge.
“Leave one paddle behind,” his father said loudly above the noise of the waves. They would have to shout now to be heard. Until the trial of the boat and themselves was finished they would have the noise of the waves all around them. The boy looked at his paddle. The two paddles were heavy, hand-carved Indian ones his father had bought out West, richly whittled.
“Don’t want to lose both,” his father said.
The boy threw his paddle up the beach. His father was already in his cockpit, so the boy shoved the boat out until it floated well in the shallow water; then he settled, empty-handed, in the cockpit behind. He watched his father lean forward and briskly begin stroking with the paddle. The boat was headed at a slight angle into the surf and the first wave broke over them, only a little one, almost spent, but the boy could feel the wildness as the boat bounced and shivered from the impact and water splashed into the cockpit. He gripped tightly and leaned over as his father paddled into the surf, jockeying the boat amid the uproar and the chill spray. He could feel now the power of the waves as they were slammed, spun around, whirled and dashed in a white fury, and he could see his father working, paddling, the muscles in his arms taut and pulsing. It was like a dream of falling downstairs. The shapes of the waves, like huge blue animals stampeding, were all around them, and the boy closed his eyes, partly from the fierce sting of the salt. When he opened them it was calm again. They were outside the breakers, and his father, laughing above the noise, paddled in a wide circle. The cockpit was full of water and the boat was heavy. The boy fumbled at his feet and found the tin can and began to bail as fast as he could while his father continued to paddle aimlessly around.
“We made it!” his father shouted. “I never thought we would without capsizing, but we made it.”
“Here we are!” the boy shouted.
“How about that!”
While the boy bailed, he looked at his father. The big man, stripped to his trunks, his chest heaving from his effort, his head spray-drenched and glistening in the sun, seemed strangely different. It hadn’t been as the boy imagined it would be. Thinking about taking the boat in the surf, talking about it all summer long, until finally wheedling his father’s promise, he had only pictured how it would be coming in with the waves, the glory and hectic joy of it. He looked back into the turbulence they had come through and he felt something close to fear, for he knew now. And he felt a curious admiration for his father. They had done this thing together. He passed the bailing can to his father and hunched down, breathing deeply.
“Ready?” his father said when he had finished bailing.
“All set.”
His father headed the boat straight for the shore and began to paddle. They caught the crest of a wave and the boy felt it seize the boat, carrying them in a high rush forward. He could feel the wave mounting slowly under them as they sped along, and then they poised almost motionless for a breathless instant on the brink, shot forward in a dazzling flash of foam; it seemed they were falling, falling until they shuddered to a stop as the keel dug into the sand in shallow water. They leapt from the boat and dragged it ashore, fell exhausted on the soft sand. The boy lay on his back looking into the dizzy brightness of the sky and thought he could feel the earth turning under him.
“That wasn’t so bad,” his father said. “That wasn’t so bad at all.”
“That was good,” the boy said. “Did you ever have a ride like that?”
“Better than a roller coaster.”
He lay there beside his father with the sun and the breeze drying his body and he felt marvelously light as if he were floating on his back in calm water and nothing, not even the percussion of the surf, could interrupt his spent tranquillity. The air seemed full of tunes his blood could dance to.
“All right,” his father said. “I had mine. Now it’s your turn.”
The boy felt his guts knot and tighten like a fist.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” he said. “I might wreck the boat.”
“I’ll take that chance,” his father said. “You ought to try it once. After all, it was your idea.”
The boy tested the weight of the paddle in his hand. It felt heavy. The trouble was you could never finish anything and just leave it that way. His father was giving him the chance to prove himself and he knew he must take it, that was vital, whether he failed or not. He settled himself into the cockpit when they were afloat and paddled. As he fought the boat forward into the surf he knew now what it had been like for his father because now he only had time to act, neither to think nor plan ahead, only to feel what the waves were doing and move instantly in response. The waves rolled over them and he fought in a happy fury until one caught them, smashed over them, and sent the boat reeling back to the shore.
“Bail it out and try again.”
“I don’t know if I can do it.”
“There’s no harm in trying.”
The boy seized the tin can and bailed. It was an awful thing, he thought, to be about to do something that he knew he couldn’t. It was different when you didn’t know. He was thinking, as he bailed, that maybe being a man would be like that, going ahead with something and doing it because you had to even when you knew what the outcome would be. After you once knew, there was no outside mystery anymore. There was only the secret of yourself to worry with. He felt suddenly as frail and fragile as a china doll.
He tried again, pointing into the surf, paddling as fast as he could. He fought, his body tensed against the cold and the power, his eyes squinted against the spray. He could see his father, sitting, leaning forward, completely relaxed, and he felt urgently alone. They made a little progress; he could see the calm area behind the waves he was striving for, and he struggled for it. Then it was like a shape from a dream: in a timeless moment a wave bulked high above them directly ahead and he could feel the boat slipping back under him in the trough and see his father turning in the cockpit shouting words he couldn’t hear as the wave broke over them, turning and turning, and he jumped free of the cockpit, crashed against the sand and rolled in a shower of bright lights, came up gasping for air, hurt, tasting blood in his mouth. He saw the boat dashed empty on the sand and then he saw his father come up out of the foam still shouting, his face twisting in pain. He moved to where his father was, grasped him under the arms, strained to pull him up. A wave broke over them and he heard his father scream. Somehow, dragging and pulling, he managed to get his father to the beach. His father lay still with only his head on dry land, breathing hard, white-faced.
“It’s my leg,” he said finally. “I think I broke my leg.”
The boy looked quickly, furtively at his father’s legs stretched limp in the water. They had never seemed so long and thin. He had never really imagined his father as possessing flesh that could be injured or bones that could break.
“Which one?” he heard himself asking. “Which leg is broken?”
“The right one,” his father said. “Run up and get the bottle. I need a drink.”
The boy raced up the beach to the rucksack, fished the bottle out, and returned with it. He stood tensely watching while his father drank.
“Just what the old doctor ordered,” his father said. “Go and see about the boat.”
He ran down the beach to where the boat had been dashed ashore. The frame was broken in several places, but the canvas wasn’t ripped. It would float all right. He got under it and, gradually, slipping in the wet sand, using all the strength he had, he tipped it over and the water poured out of the cockpits. With most of the water out, the boat was lighter and he was able to pull it farther ashore, high and dry. When he came back, his father was propped up on his elbows looking at his leg.
“
It’s a nice clean break,” his father said. “Not bad, but we have got some trouble.”
The boy began to shake and he could feel tears in his eyes and the taste of tears in his mouth. He didn’t want to cry but the tears came. He tried to speak but he couldn’t.
“Take it easy,” his father said.
“It’s my fault,” the boy said. “I dared you to do it and it’s my fault.”
“The hell it’s your fault. I took the dare didn’t I?”
“I didn’t mean for anything like this to happen,” the boy said, still crying. “I didn’t mean for anything to happen. I just wanted to show you. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“What did you want?”
“I can’t explain it.”
“Try it,” his father said roughly. “This one time tell me what you wanted.”
“I can’t put it in words.”
“Try, dammit! It’s important to me, believe it or not. Dammit, try and put it in words.”
The boy stopped crying and squatted down on his haunches. He looked at the sand, thinking.
“I just wanted to show you I was a man,” he whispered. “I wanted to prove it.”
His father laughed. He leaned his head back and laughed above the roar of the surf.
“In that case,” his father said, “it was worth it. Because now you’ve got the chance.”
The boy looked at him, wondering, and waited.
“Now listen to me,” his father said. “You’ve got to go back without me. Tell your mother to call a doctor and get Joe Soens to come out with his motorboat and pick me up. Tell him to bring somebody. It will take two.”
“All right.”
“You’re going to have to drag the boat over the dunes by yourself. That’ll take maybe an hour if you work steady at it. The tide will be running out and it will be hard work paddling across the bay. Can you do it?”
“I think so.”
His father’s hand seized his arm and the boy could feel the strong fingers digging deep in his muscles, but it didn’t hurt. He felt numb.
“Can you do it?” his father asked fiercely.
“Yes,” the boy said.
“All right,” his father said. “That’s all I have to know.”
The boy ran down the beach and started to drag the boat toward the dunes, inching it along the sand. He looked up for a moment and saw his father wriggling on his back, getting clear of the water. He saw the tall man in his lonely effort and he felt a new and troubled joy, a joy too deep for guilt or tears or any of the knowledge of childhood. It was a strange and precious feeling, as small as the first moment of a catching flame, but hard too, and brimming with an inner glow like a jewel. He kept dragging the boat, pacing himself, measuring his strength because he had a long way to go.
We roar all like bears and mourn sore like doves; we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.
ISAIAH 59:11
A GAME OF CATCH
ON THE WAY to the beach the brothers began to argue. Naomi sat between them in the front seat of the convertible, Tee Jay’s car, and ate candy bars. Naomi didn’t drink or smoke, but when she was away from the girls’ college where she was the basketball coach, when she was away from it all on a day like this, going to the beach without a worry in the world, she would stuff candy. Sometimes she ate so much she got sick. Tee Jay knew all about it. He was the one who brought a whole box of Baby Ruths along just for the trip. Courtney, the crazy one, brought her a flower. When they tooted the horn for her in the alley behind the gymnasium and she came running out of the back door smiling at them, it was Tee Jay who handed her a box of Baby Ruths. He knew about her sweet tooth. Courtney got out of the car to let her in and gave her the gardenia, one fifty-cent gardenia.
“What’s this for?” Naomi said. “Are we going to a dance or something?”
“I don’t know,” Courtney said to Tee Jay. “Are we?”
Tee Jay ignored him. Half-smiling, he kept staring into Naomi’s eyes, until she looked down at her flat shoes.
“Don’t look at me,” Tee Jay said. “It’s his idea.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Courtney said. “Why don’t you eat it? For dessert, after you finish the candy, I mean.”
Naomi laughed and clapped him on the back, hearty, comradely. What else could she do? That Courtney was something, you never knew what he might think of next. You never knew how to take anything he said. Besides, he was just out of the State Asylum. He had been in and out a couple of times. They said he was cured now, but you wouldn’t know it. You couldn’t be sure about a thing like that.
They drove along the highway to the east coast, and the brothers were arguing as usual. Naomi chewed candy and let the warm air trouble her hair. It was dark and cut close, but with the breeze fingering it, combing it, she imagined it was long and blowing in a dark cloud like smoke behind her, long and mysterious as Lady Godiva’s. Floating on her skirt between the firm bulge of her thighs, the gardenia was already turning brown at the edges, but it was sweet.
“I don’t care where you read it,” Tee Jay was saying. “It sounds like crap to me.”
“I’m telling you that something like that, a murder, is just love in disguise. He might have just kissed them. It would be the same thing.”
“Books! Books! That’s all I get from you. Do you believe everything you read in a book?”
“He’s got a thing about books, you know,” Courtney said to Naomi. “Do you know the only book Tee Jay ever read? I mean read, all the way, every word from the beginning to the end.”
“Don’t try and involve me in the discussion,” Naomi said, her mouth rich with chocolate.
She had been listening vaguely to their words, but it was all so morbid. They were arguing about some old man who had gathered his whole family together for a photograph, sat them down in a tight group on his front steps, his wife, his grown children, even his grandchildren. When he had them all ready and posed for the picture, he excused himself for just one moment and went back in the house. He returned with a shotgun, and before any of them could even move, he fired both barrels into them point-blank. He was reloading the gun to shoot himself when the next-door neighbor came running over and knocked him out with a shovel. The papers were full of it. They were always full of things like that. And Naomi couldn’t care less. Trust old Courtney to bring up the subject. Trust him, too, to try and get her in the argument.
“I’ll tell you the only book Tee Jay ever read all the way through. It was called The Bitter Tea of General Yen.”
“So what,” Tee Jay said. “It wasn’t a bad book.”
“How would you know? What have you got to compare it with?”
“Look,” Tee Jay said. “You’re the one with the college education. I’m the one that went to work. I don’t have time to read a lot of books. All I do is pay for the books you read.”
“It doesn’t take a lot of time to read a book,” Courtney said.
“It takes too much time for me.”
Naomi licked the candy off her fingers and reached forward and turned on the radio. When it warmed up, she twisted the dial until she found some music playing, then she turned it up as loud as it would go. It roared over and around them like a storm, scattering music to the four winds. She saw their mouths still moving furiously, but they couldn’t hear each other if she couldn’t, sitting between them. Courtney leaned close and whispered in her ear.
“Flaming Youth,” he said.
“What?” she mouthed.
“Flaming Youth,” he whispered again. “It’s a sort of a joke.”
Then he stuck out his wet tongue and fluttered it in her ear, and she jerked away from him. If it had been anyone else in the world but poor Courtney, she would have slapped his fresh face. Tee Jay, who was turning down the radio, missed the whole thing.
“Reach in the glove compartment,” he said. “Hand me my cigarettes.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t smoke,�
�� Naomi said. “You know how I feel about it.”
“Who cares how you feel?” Tee Jay snapped at her, taking the pack from Courtney. “Maybe I don’t like candy. Maybe it makes me sick to watch people who eat candy. I don’t have the right to object, do I?”
“Candy is altogether different,” Naomi said. “If God had intended for you to smoke, He would have made you a chimney.”
“Yeah? Yeah?” Tee Jay said, lighting his cigarette. “Maybe you’d like to walk to the beach. If God had intended for you to ride, He would have put wheels on your ass.”
Naomi glared straight ahead.
“It makes me sad to be the only one who isn’t indulging in something, some lonely, stupid, solitary, ineffable private vice.”
And with that curious remark Courtney simply put his hand in her lap and took the gardenia. He held it under his nose, sniffed it, and then began to chew the white bitter petals.
“Don’t swallow it!” Naomi cried. “What’s the matter, are you crazy?”
She blushed then, realizing that it had just slipped out like that.
“Oh no,” Courtney said, his mouth white and full of flower. “I used to be, but I’m not anymore. I’m just as sane as everyone.”
Inexplicably, Tee Jay laughed.
“How does it taste, boy?” he said.
“Not too bad,” Courtney said. “On the other hand, don’t feel that you’re missing out on anything.”
“You better be careful,” Naomi said. “I’ve heard they’re poison.”
“You’ll never know for sure until somebody tries one,” Courtney said. “That’s science for you.”
After that they rode without talking, just listening to the music on the radio. Naomi felt a lot better now that they had stopped arguing. The only trouble was still Courtney. He kept putting his hand on her leg. That would be all right, just resting there, but he wouldn’t leave well enough alone. After a while, all of a sudden, he’d stiffen all his fingers at once and start edging up her thigh like a spider, sort of on tiptoes or tipfingers. When his hand got too close for comfort, sneaking toward the ultimate destination which Naomi, in spite of all, to her dying day, would call her privates, plural, she would have to take his hand firmly in hers and remove it. Then the whole process would begin all over again. Courtney kept looking straight up the road, and so did she. She didn’t want to make a scene, and she knew if Tee Jay noticed anything, he’d stop the car and beat Courtney up.
Evening Performance Page 11