Twisted Ones

by Packer, Vin

  Chapter Seven

  BROCK BROWN

  The Memorial Day weekend was three days away.

  Clara Brown wanted to be sure that nothing would interfere with the trip to the Adirondacks which she and Robert had planned. She knew that her husband was worried about Brock, about what had happened two nights ago. He sat across from her at the table, frowning, only picking at the stew she had prepared for their lunch.

  She said, “Bob?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Are you thinking about Brock again?”

  “I’m sorry, Clara.”

  “Bob, it’s the first time he’s ever gotten into any trouble,” she said. “Besides, he really didn’t get into trouble. It’s all straightened out now. It was just a misunderstanding.”

  Clara Brown didn’t really believe that. Whatever Brock had been doing on the Rubins’ back porch when Mr. Rubin caught him, Clara Brown did not believe Brock’s story that he was only trying to warn the Rubins that someone was stealing their plants. Mr. Rubin had found him trying the door that led into the Rubins’ house. Brock said a man—a big, bushy-haired man—had run down their driveway carrying a plant, and that Brock had startled him in the dark, and that then he had gone to warn the Rubins.

  Estelle Rubin had been very nice about it. She had thanked Brock, and told Robert Brown that she was sorry there had been some confusion about the matter; and she had said that she had found her poor petunia all smashed in the driveway. But Sam Rubin had acted doubtful and suspicious. Why would a big, bushy-haired man want to steal a petunia plant, he wanted to know, and if what Brock said was true, why hadn’t Brock just rung the Rubins’ doorbell?

  Brock said he was too upset to think straight.

  “What were you doing down by the Rubins’ at midnight anyway?” Robert Brown had asked.

  And Brock had answered. “I was just taking a walk. Clara and I had had a little quarrel, and I was just simmering down. Just walking around. You saw me when I left the house, dad.”

  Robert Brown said, “That was about ten-forty-five. What were you doing for an hour and a quarter?”

  “I told you, dad. Just walking around.”

  Maybe he really was telling the truth. Clara didn’t know. But Brock’s story certainly sounded fishy.

  Robert Brown put his fork down at the lunch table and sighed. “I hope it was simply a misunderstanding,” he said.

  “Of course it was, Bob. Brock wouldn’t have any reason to be snooping around the Rubins’ house.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “What would he want to snoop around the Rubins’ house for?”

  “I don’t know, Clara. But why were his clothes so dirty? That’s what I don’t understand. You know how Brock is about keeping everything clean. The knees of his pants were dirty, remember?”

  “He explained that. He said he knelt down to see what the bushy-haired man had dropped.”

  “The plant was dropped on the driveway, Clara. That’s a gravel driveway.”

  “I don’t think we should dwell on the matter, as though Brock was a criminal or something, Bob.”

  “Bushy-haired stranger!” said Robert Brown. “It sounds phony. Like that murder case a few years back, when that fellow killed his wife.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Clara. “They didn’t believe he was innocent either. There was a bushy-haired man in that case, and no one believed it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Of course! Of course I did! All through the trial, I could just feel it in my bones.”

  “Well, I wish I could feel it in my bones about Brock.”

  “Bob, you know something. You’re just spoiled, that’s what.”

  “Spoiled?”

  “That’s right. Brock’s such a good boy, you’re just not used to having the slightest little thing go wrong where he’s concerned.”

  “Clara, the Rubins are our neighbors. I do all Sam Rubins’ work for him. Only last Monday, I sold him a new set of tires.”

  “Sam’ll get over it.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Estelle was as nice as pie to me today. She waved and smiled when I got off the bus, and she was as nice as pie.”

  “I just wish I knew if Brock was telling the truth. I’d be sore as hell at Sam Rubin for thinking Brock was up to something, if I could just believe Brock.”

  “I believe him.”

  “And you believe a bushy-haired man took one of the Rubins’ plants.”

  “There are plenty of nuts loose, Bob. They’re not all locked up in the loony-bin.”

  “He’d have to be a nut to cut through somebody’s screen just to steal a plant.”

  “You read about nuts in the newspapers every day, Bob. Every day you read about another nut.”

  “I suppose so, Clara. I suppose so.”

  “It’ll do us both good to get away for awhile. Do you suppose it’ll be warm enough for shorts in the mountains?”

  “Probably not.”

  “That’s good, because I don’t have any that fit anymore. Since last summer, I’ve gained about ten pounds. Imagine?”

  “Clara?”

  “What?”

  “Do you honestly think Brock will be okay while we’re gone?”

  “I’m not worried one single bit about Brock,” said Clara Brown that May noon, “not one single bit.”

  And that much was true. Whatever the truth was about the other night, the wife of Robert Brown saw nothing even remotely ominous in Brock’s recent behavior. In Clara’s mind, the very worst explanation she could come up with, for Brock’s being on the Rubins’ back porch, was that Brock might have been trying to see in their windows. There were two windows on the porch, and Brock could very well have been looking in them. Estelle Rubin was always running around in her backyard wearing practically nothing at all, and she might very well have aroused Brock’s curiosity. After all, he was a shy, bashful boy … What did Brock know about women?

  Clara thought it might even be possible that Brock had cut the hole in the screen so he could go and look in the windows, and that he might have heard Mr. Rubin coming and thrown the plant out on the driveway and invented that story. Put dirt on his clothes and made up that story about the big, bushy-haired man, so that the Rubins wouldn’t know he’d been spying on them.

  That was the very worst Clara could imagine, and it seemed to her that even that was not really very serious. Brock had never done anything wrong before, and if the worst was true, he never would again. She had never seen Brock as frightened as he was that night, with Sam Rubin scowling at him, and Brock quaking, with his face drained of color. In the long run, Clara supposed, it was a good thing. It had taught Brock a lesson.

  “I suppose it would be silly to postpone our trip,” said Robert Brown, picking up his fork, “I guess I am spoiled. Brock’s a good kid.”

  Robert Brown, at high noon that day in late May, was at last reconvinced of this. Brock’s story about the bushy-haired stranger could very well be absolutely true. Only a few days ago, the garage had gotten a call to pick up a green Mercury on a back country road. It had been stolen, it turned out, and the thief had tied a ten-dollar bill to the steering wheel with a rubber band. Then just abandoned it, in the middle of nowhere. Clara was right. There were a lot of nuts around, even right here in Sykes, New York.

  • • •

  At Sykes High, the class in general psych had seven minutes to go. Brock Brown had not heard a word Dr. Mannerheim had said. His mind was striped with thoughts of the night at the Rubins’, and Carrie Bates. Carrie sat across from him, and she was coming on again. She had been “on” the whole hour, staring directly at him, turned sideways in her seat, so that it was obvious to Brock and everyone else in the class. Some of the guys were snickering and glancing back in Brock’s direction, and the girls were busy scribbling notes furiously to each other. At the very beginning of the hour, Brock had found a note on his desk. It said:

  “You look like Montgomery Cli
ft … C. B.” He had not bothered to answer her note, nor even to look in her direction. It had angered him that he had been unable to keep the flush of color from spreading across his face to his ears, as he read the note; and he was furious with himself for grinning the way he had to. He hadn’t wanted to smile. It happened without his being able to control it—the same way it happened when anyone told him someone they knew had died, or someone they knew was very sick. He’d just stand smiling, without being able to do anything about it. The other night, he had even smiled when Mr. Rubin caught ahold of his shirt collar and said: “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” Brock had answered, trying to shrug his shoulders, with that silly grin on his face. His knees were shaking under his trousers, and his stomach had flipped over with fear, but he just said, “Nothing,” and grinned at Sam Rubin.

  “You were trying to break in here, weren’t you?”

  “No, Mr. Rubin. I was trying to warn you.” He had had no time to think up a better lie. Everything had happened suddenly. Brock was not sure why he had tried the Rubins’ door on the screen porch, but he was afraid about it. He remembered only that he had decided to go back there and get his seventy-two cents, which he had left on the ledge for taking the plant. After all, he really hadn’t taken the plant. It was there in the driveway. When he left the bushes, where he had gotten sick to his stomach, he had wanted his money back. That part didn’t make him afraid. He was entitled to his money; it was his own money.

  But what had happened next worried him. Next he had seen the knob of the door that led into the Rubins’ house. He had put his hand on it, let his fingers curl around it and feel the brass, and he had thought: I have to go in there…. What had he wanted to do? That was what he couldn’t figure out, or remember anymore. It had something to do with the fact his clothes were soiled. That wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t made himself dirty. The plant was responsible for that—the hole in the bottom of the flowerpot, and the dirty water that leaked out of it. But why did he want to go inside the Rubins’ house? To get them for it? Had he thought something about getting them for it? That was the creepy part. That was what shook him up. And he was all shook up; boy cat, all shook up.

  • • •

  Brock had his sunglasses on in the classroom. He had decided to leave them on all day. They looked good. He was wearing dark brown against tan today, and the frames of his sunglasses added to the over-all effect. They were shell frames, brown ones. Before he had left the house that morning, Clara had asked: “Who are you being today, Brock?”

  “What does that mean exactly, Clara?”

  “Movie star, international spy, who?”

  “I’m that quiz kid on Cash-Answer,” he had told her. “I just won 44,000 dollars for knowing the jugular vein is the trunk vein in the neck.”

  “Congratulations,” Clara had said.

  “It was nothing at all.”

  “Anyway, Brock, you look very handsome. You’re a very handsome boy. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

  “You did, if you’re anyone.”

  “Come on, Brock, let’s patch things up.”

  “You mean, before Memorial Day, Clara? So you can go away with a clear conscience?”

  “I’m not the one with a guilty conscience.”

  “You don’t have any conscience.”

  “What is it, Brock? What’s gotten into you the last few days?”

  “I guess I just hate housework,” Brock had said. “I guess I’ll just be glad when you and dad have a baby, and a girl comes in to do the housework.”

  “Don’t try to be funny, Brock. I told you I didn’t mean that about hating housework.”

  “Maybe I really am crazy, Clara. Maybe I’ll get so crazy I’ll just burst and bleed to death, unless someone comes along and applies a tourniquet.”

  “Will you ever forget anything?”

  “No, I have a very good memory. Just like that little quiz kid.”

  “Well, you better remember to stay away from people’s back porches while your father and I are away in the mountains,” Clara had said.

  Brock had thought about that while he drove to school that morning. He hadn’t had a headache since the night at Rubins’, but what if he got one over Memorial Day weekend? What then? It would be okay. His father would leave him extra money. He said he was going to leave him some money; and what if he did get a headache? There were worse things than taking somebody’s car for a ride, or taking somebody’s goddam flowerpot! He’d never take a flowerpot again. Everything would have been all right, if he hadn’t picked out that goddam flowerpot. It couldn’t happen to him again in a million thousand years … Could it?

  Brock knew plenty of guys that wouldn’t even give a second thought to what had happened at the Rubins’. Compared to other guys, Brock was a crazy angel, about as shook up as Clara, and she was a lump of clay. Other guys were running around in their dirty cars doing things to girls. Pawing them and mauling them. More than that, too. Brock had seen the inside of Derby Wylie’s old Ford, and it was knee-deep in rubbish. Old newspapers and magazines, and buttons pinned all over everywhere saying sexy things like: “I want yours!” and “Give it to me, baby!” … Brock sighed. Sure, Brock knew about other guys. Rock ‘n’ roll and run around the way they did, and Carrie Bates went right along with them. Brock wasn’t that kind of guy.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Mr. Rubin had wanted to know.

  And all he could do was answer, “Nothing.” Grinning like that.

  He wished he could stop thinking about it. Something else bothered him. When his father had said, “What were you doing for an hour and a quarter?” Brock had wondered about that himself. Was there something he couldn’t remember? The part in the bushes, when he had got sick to his stomach, was fuzzy. He thought he might have been crying, but that was too crazy. He wouldn’t cry. Had he gone somewhere, or had he done something he didn’t recall?

  While he was sitting there in psych thinking this, another note landed on his desk. Carrie Bates had passed it to the boy in front of him, and the boy had reached back and dropped it by Brock’s inkwell. This time, Brock wasn’t even going to read it. He might not be perfect—he knew he wasn’t—but he wasn’t like the other guys, he wasn’t that bad. Carrie Bates could come on all she wanted. She could turn herself inside out. Brock wasn’t going to have anything to do with any girl! No one could ever accuse him of that!

  He took the note and stuffed it into his pants pocket. His hand brushed against the key he had there. All right, he had a key! Was he a criminal because he had taken a key! He didn’t even know where the key fit, did he? He only knew that while his father and Clara and Mr. and Mrs. Rubin were all arguing in the Rubins’ living room that night, he had seen the key on the hall table. He had put it in his pocket. That was all. Maybe it didn’t even belong to the Rubins. Maybe someone had left it there. He wasn’t sure it was a key that would fit any of the Rubins’ locks … But why had he taken it? Why did he want it? What was he keeping it for?

  I, Brock Brown, boy cat and all shook up, have this key—

  No, that wasn’t what he meant. What he meant was that he was afraid. The Memorial Day weekend was only three days away, and he was afraid. He really needed a head-shrinker this time. Now he really needed one. So for the second time during that hour, Brock Brown decided that he would wait after class, wait and talk to Dr. Mannerheim. Just for a second. Just for a half a second.

  • • •

  Dr. Clyde Mannerheim, that noon in late May, was starving. He was always hungry this last hour before lunch, but this morning he had overslept and missed breakfast. A cup of coffee had had to suffice, and the last minutes of the hour were dragging now, seemingly interminable.

  Mannerheim was not a real doctor, not an M.D. He was a Ph.D. He had majored in art history at Princeton, and after he had gotten his M.A. in the same subject, his interest had focused on psychology. For one thing, there were very few positions of any real challenge in
the art history field. He could do museum work, or gallery work, or teach, but none of those prospects made him enthusiastic. Psychology did. Mannerheim had wanted to become a clinical psychologist, or perhaps even a psychologist with a private practice, an analytic psychologist. He had finished up his Ph.D. in art history, and then turned to courses in psychology. When the money ran out, he had only eighteen hours of psychology behind him. He could have found a better position teaching art history, but Clyde Mannerheim had dreams of going on with his studies in psychology, of taking summers off to pursue this dream, and he had accepted the offer from Sykes High as a temporary stopover on the way.

  Teen-agers were fascinating creatures—full of inhibitions, guilty over everything that was natural to life, and unashamed of everything that was unnatural. What was that weird, unnatural dance they all performed so expertly? The fish. Gyrating and undulating as though that were their whole purpose on this earth; yet gasping and turning red if ever he mentioned a word like “intercourse” in his discussions. He did not even have to mean sexual intercourse. The word intercourse alone was enough to set them off. Bernard Shaw had been right—youth was wasted on the young. They went through their teens drugged by their super-egos, doped up on wicked fairy tales their parents passed on to them about the male and the female; poisoned by the examples their mothers and fathers presented to them—some of them never recovering from it, but forever doomed to the mediocre idea that sex was a sinful act, permissible only under the dullest circumstances of an equally dull marriage. Those who did recover from it often found that by the time they did they were middle-aged; there was a divorce or two behind them, and unpaid analyst bills.

  It was just a wonder to Clyde Mannerheim that the young ever survived their youth.

  When the bell finally rang that hour, Mannerheim gave a sigh of relief as the students whipped out the door. He was fishing in his desk drawer for his bag of sandwiches, prior to going to the teachers’ lounge to brew coffee and eat his lunch in peace. His wife was pregnant again, and he had decided to cut down on the cafeteria expenses, so every day he brought his lunch. His hand was just touching the brown paper bag in the bottom drawer when a voice spoke.