by ALEXANDER_
CHAPTER II
The downstairs light was on. It always is, so I didn’t think anything about it.
“Moxie,” I yelled.
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Usually there’s a gravelly meow and Moxie emerges from somewhere, or I hear him softly padding down the stairs.
But there wasn’t a sound. “Moxie, come on, boy. Dinnertime.” I moved towards the kitchen, and then I heard him. The stairs come down near the kitchen and he was lying at the bottom. It was a kind of low cry. He was lying on his side. There was blood around his mouth. He was trying to get up, but his back legs wouldn’t move.
“Oh, God, Moxie. What happened to you?” I bent down and tried to move him, which was dumb, dumb, dumb. But I wasn’t thinking. He gave a cry. More blood oozed out. I stroked his head and then went to the phone. I tried the only vet in the area that I knew of. There was no answer and no answering service although I dialed it three times and let it hang. Then I got the operator and she tried a couple more cm the other side of the county. One was away on vacation and his office was closed. His stand-in was away for the weekend. She tried another. He was on duty and couldn’t leave. He told me to try and get Moxie there in a car and gave me instructions as to how I should lift him. I called Justin. But there was no answer. I didn’t know what to do.
I stood there, wondering which of the neighbors to call first, which one had a car here. The thing about our summer community is that you don’t need a car once you’re here. That's supposed to be the beauty of it. Men bring their families here, leave them, and drive back. Often they take their own vacations out in long weekends, but by Sunday night most of them have gone. I tried one or two. Either r>e> weren’t home or didn’t have a car. I rang the Lansings, In case they had returned. But there was no reply. I tried to make my mind work efficiently, but I was watching Moxie, who was obviously dying. I tried a couple more
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places. The Brandons didn’t have a car and Maurice had already left. The Goulds didn’t answer. I dialed Justin again. No answer. I knew, because he told me, that he often took walks at night.
Of course the local directory was no good. People are only here for the summer and their names aren’t listed. I never used the telephone so I couldn’t figure how Mother knew to call people until I remembered that she has a personal book—a blue one—in which she wrote down all the numbers she needed. I opened the drawer under the telephone and threw all the directories on the floor. There was the local one, one for Manhattan, one for Westchester, one for Connecticut, one for Boston. The yellow pages. But no little blue book. I decided it would probably be in her room—or Gloria’s. Gloria was forever on the phone.
I took the stairs two and three at a time and went first into Mother’s room. Turning on the light I zipped through everything that was visible, blessing her, for once, for her neatness. Meg’s room came next. I switched on the light and gave a quick look. Meg is not neat. As I looked through her books and magazines I flung them onto the floor and then went through her drawers. No book. I knew I didn’t have it so I went back past Mother’s room to Gloria’s.
The moment I opened the door I knew that Moxie had been in here and done something bad. I switched on the light. Right in the middle of the bed he had given his all. The blue book was there all right, on Gloria’s dresser.
I took it and was headed for the stairs when I heard sounds. There was a voice talking and then a loud metallic squeak. It could only come from my room and my bed. I veered off, thrust open the door and switched on the light.
Peerless Percy and Gloria were there. And I didn’t need
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any advanced class in sex education to know what they were doing.
Gloria gave a gasp. “Get out,” she shrieked.
Percy turned. “Cripes!” He made a snatch at his pants.
But I wasn’t looking at either him or Gloria. I was staring at his tan Mexican boot on the floor right in front of me. There was blood drying on it and in the blood were stuck some ginger hairs.
Rage exploded in me. “You—you! ...” The words jammed in my throat. Then I got my voice. “You kicked Moxie. You’ve nearly killed him! Did you know that, you creep—you lousy stinking slob?” A fury I had never known possessed me.
Percy is four years older than I am and on his freshman hockey team. There was a baseball bat in the comer. I picked is up and waded in.
I don't remember too much of what immediately followed. Gloria shrieked again and kept on shrieking. I kept trying to land one on Percy and succeeded in whacking him do the shoulder a couple of times. At first he kept saying ne didn’t mean to hurt Moxie, but I wasn’t listening. Then ne got mad. He won, of course. He could hold my arm long enough to keep me from braining him, and with some judicious biting Gloria managed to get the bat from my hand. I still fought and got in a couple of kicks, but he finally socked me and I fell against the bed’s headboard.
Listen, kid,” he said, feeling the arm where I had left I *felt. “Just thank your stars I don’t really teach you a lesson You freaking brat. You deserve one.”
I was panting and trying hard not to cry. “You jerk! You tilled my cat. That’s all you’re good for, kicking helpless animals.”
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Gloria had run out. Percy was struggling into his boots.
“It’s your fault letting him mess up the house. The place stinks.”
My head was aching where it had cracked against the headboard. Also that blind, blazing rage had receded. What was I doing here, with Moxie downstairs? I sprang up. Percy pushed me back on the bed. “Not so fast,” he said, straightening his shirt. “You’ll go when I say.”
“Moxie’s down there. I’ve got to get him to a vet. Let me by.”
I shot past him and down the stairs. Moxie was still alive, but only just. I knew there was no use. His eyes were beginning to glaze. All I could do was wait it out with him. I sat on the floor beside him, stroking him and talking to him.
Percy came down and past without saying anything. When he got to the door he turned.
“I’m sorry about Moxie,” he said. “I only used my boot when he went for Gloria with his teeth and claws. He’s your cat, man. You let him take over the place. It was my boot, but you did it as much as me.”
I didn’t say anything.
Moxie died about an hour later. Percy was telling the truth. It was his boot. But it was as much my fault as his. I sat there on the floor for a long while. Then I got an old laundry bag from the hall closet, put Moxie in it, and took him out behind the garden up the hill. There was a bright moon, but I slipped a flashlight in my pocket anyway. I also took a shovel from the basement.
I dug a grave up the hill under the big sycamore tree, so I would always know where Moxie was buried. It took much longer than I had thought it would, although I didn’t care.
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But the soil is rocky and it had been a dry summer. Then I came back to the house and cleaned up the mess on the floor.
Then I went upstairs.
When I got to my room my bed had been smoothed. In the middle of the blue spread were some sheets of paper clipped together, with a note in Gloria’s handwriting:
I've been saving these for you.
They were duplicated news clippings. And they told me everything I had always wanted to know about my father.
I stood there, reading. Some of it, of course, I knew: graduate engineer M.I.T., Navy pilot Korean War, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Navy Cross, both of which I had in New York.
What I didn’t know was that he had died of chronic alcoholism in Sydney, Australia, where he had been living on skid row for some years.
I suppose I could have called Justin, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly. For one thing, the minute I read the news clipping I remembered, mostly, what had happened in church that evening long ago. I had gone with my father. Then I had gone to sleep. When I woke up two men were hauling him out. They hadn’t seen me. I remembered his head, sagging
between them. I remembered that it was cold, the bunches of candles making one blurred light, and I remembered running down the church aisle after the men, screaming at them. It was dark when I got outside and found Father sprawled on the pavement.
Tonight, Moxie, this morning, that evening—all went together, like one of the new flicks. It made sense of Father, Mother, and me. Mostly me.
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I put on a pea jacket, stuffed the papers in my pocket, and put the flashlight in the other. Then I left the house and started on the long climb up to Justin’s.
I didn’t think on the way up there. Pictures slid in and out of my mind in no particular order: the church this morning with Justin, Father’s blond head in the sun with me on his shoulders, the same head sagging between the two men and the way it looked on the pavement outside, Moxie with blood coming out of his mouth, Gloria and Peerless Percy on the bed, the sycamore tree in the moonlight, Justin—on the rock, in the water, sitting opposite me in the kitchen, the feel of his skin under my hand, the way he looked in my dream. The pictures of him were like a rope pulling me up there. I don’t think I actually thought going up there would solve anything—what was there to solve? But it’s as far as my imagination went.
Mickey came thundering down when I went through the gate and gave a couple of loud barks, but as soon as he smelled me he loped over and licked my face.
The door was unlocked. I didn’t turn on the light. Moonlight filtered into the hall from the dining room on the right. I went upstairs and into Justin’s room. There were no curtains, or at least they were drawn back. I could see his bed quite easily. He was asleep.
“Justin,” I said. And then more loudly, “Justin.”
I was going over to the bed when he moved and sat up. “Who is it?”
“It’s me. Charles.”
He switched on the light beside his bed and then sat up. “Charles! What’s the matter?” His shoulders looked brown against the white pillow.
It all spilled out like a lanced boil. “Moxie’s dead.
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That creep Percy kicked him downstairs. He and Gloria were . All the words for it had gone out of my mind, which was funny, because nobody I knew was backward about using them. “They were on my bed. . . . It’s my fault. Moxie had made a big mess on Gloria’s bed. I guess that’s why they were on mine. I should have stopped him going all over the house. But everybody was away. Gloria left me this—” I pulled the news clipping out of my pocket. “You know why I don’t have a father? Because he’s a drunk. He died on skid row. He just walked out and left me. Him and his putrid medals. He walked out on me. I always thought it was Mother’s fault. That’s why I wanted—” I saw Justin reach for his robe and pull it around him as he got up. “Easy, Charles. Easy.”
But it was too late for that. The gasps seemed to come up from my knees, shuddering through my body. Justin reached me and put his arms around me and held me while I cried out of some ocean I didn’t know was there. I couldn’t stop. After a while he lifted me up and carried me to the bed and lay down beside me, holding me.
I could feel his heart pounding, and then I realized it was mine. I couldn’t stop shaking; in fact, I started to tremble violently. It was like everything—the water, the sun, the hours, the play, the work, the whole summer—came together. The golden cocoon had broken open and was spilling in a shower of gold.'
Even so, I didn’t know what was happening to me until it had happened.
When I woke up I was alone and in the bed rather than on it, which was the way I had gone to sleep. The sun was streaming in the window. My pants, sweater, and jacket
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were over a chair. I had on my shorts. The first thing I remembered was Moxie. Then I remembered about my father. Then I remembered coming here, and what happened after.
I lay in bed a long time thinking about it, and the more I thought about it, the worse I felt about myself, about Justin. And yet. . . somewhere, for a long time, I had known— not that this would happen, but that something would happen, and then everything would be over.
After another long while Justin came in. I didn’t want to look at him.
He put a glass of orange juice on the table beside the bed. “Good morning.”
I didn’t say anything. He went to the window, stared out for a bit and then turned around, leaning against it, his arms crossed.
“Do you want to talk about it now or later?"
I sat up and drank some juice.
“Are you worried? About yourself?”
Right on. But I still didn’t say anything, I wanted to be left alone. I wanted somehow not to have to think about it or talk about it.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Justin. Let’s just leave it.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. For you. Your first impulse is to run. So you’ll run from this and then spend unnecessary years worrying about it. There’s nothing about it to worry you. You reacted to a lot of strain—and shock—in a normal fashion. At your age, anything could trigger it.”
“You mean it doesn’t have anything to do with you?”
“It has something to do with me, sure. But nothing of any lasting significance. It could have been anyone—boy or girl. It could have been when you were asleep. You must know that.”
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Yes, I knew that. And I knew all about the male and female in everybody, too. But I was remembering other things. The times, lying on the rock, two of them, that I reached over and touched him. I had touched him. Not the other way around. It scared me so badly I couldn’t think of anything else.
“You’re snowing me. I don’t believe you.’’
“I’m not snowing you. I know what I’m talking about.’’ “I bet you do.”
There is nothing in that morning’s conversation that I am not bitterly ashamed of. But of all the things I said I am most ashamed of that and what I said next.
“What does it make you?”
“I’ve known what I was for a long time.”
And so had I. Without knowing I knew it, I had known. What did that make me? I stared at him. “Then why did you—’’
“Did I what, Charles?”
That was what I couldn’t bear. He hadn’t done anything. I’d done it all. Always I had reached across to him. And the more I thought the more I remembered the times he had stopped me. What had I been going to do? I knew, I could tell, I was hurting him. But I was also frantically doing something else, something I do very well: I was turning it all off.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said again.
I’ll never really know whether or not that was, in its own strange way, a last appeal to him, a plea for help before I blew up the last bridge between us.
But I know now that Justin had reached his limit. He couldn’t help me anymore.
“All right, Charles. Have it your way. I’ll be downstairs if you want me.”
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* * *
Justin had said, The only thing you can’t be free from is the consequences of what you do. I was trying not to think about that while I loitered over showering and dressing. But the evidence of at least one act—giving Moxie the freedom of the house—was staring at me. More evidence materialized around noon with Barry. I had just gone downstairs. Justin was working at his desk. I was trying to think of something to say. At least I’m glad about that. I was trying. Then I heard a car door slam and looked out the window.
“Bany’s here,” I said.
“I’ve been expecting him.”
I hardly had time to absorb that when Barry walked into the room. Justin stood up.
“Hello, Barry.”
“Hello, Justin.”
They shook hands. Justin said, “You’ve come for Charles.” “Yes. We had a predictably hysterical call late last night from Gloria. Apparently she had managed to talk her father into letting her come back a couple of days ahead of time because, she assured us, she knew he wanted to get back to California. My ow
n view is he paid her to leave early. Anyway, I think she was eager to get her version of last night’s debacle in first. She said Charles would be here, having wrenched something out of her boyfriend who had got it out of his kid brother.”
“With counteraccusations, I take it.”
“Of course. Nothing that could trouble a mother’s heart was omitted. I knew it was a mistake to have our phone repaired.”
The two men exchanged looks:
Barry turned to me. “I’m sorry about Moxie.”
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I didn’t say anything.
“Think you can pass that exam? There’s a letter from the school telling you to report there two days from now.’’ “He can pass,’’ Justin said.
“Okay, son. Let’s go.’’
I turned to Justin. “Good-by,’’ I said. Then I added, “Thanks.”
Justin was looking tired and strained. But he smiled. “Good-by, Charles. Vaya con Dios."
“What does that mean?” I asked Barry as we got in the
car.
He started the engine. Mickey, sitting on his haunches on the grass, gave a halfhearted “Whuff!”
We started to roll down the path.
Barry said, “It means, ‘Go with God.’ ”
CHAPTER I2
I took the repeat exam at St. Matthew’s and passed, and was back for the beginning of the school term ten days later. Mother and Barry, it turned out, had been married while they were apartment hunting. The period between the exam and the beginning of term was taken up with buying clothes and Mother worrying about moving into the new apartment. I had been braced for a lot of questions I didn’t want to answer from Mother, and for the usual man-to-man garbage that both previous stepfathers had tried on. But no one said anything about anything.
I didn’t think about Justin then or later at school. I was very busy and we were kept hopping. Sometimes, when we hit something in class that he and I had talked about, I could feel him pressing at the edge of my mind. But I quickly
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switched to something else. It was no sweat at all for about two months.