She was looking at him very strangely. “Hermie, what was the matter? I thought you were going to fall off.”
“I don’t think your ladder’s very good.” A poor workman blames his tools.
“But I was holding it so steadily. And still your legs were shaking.”
“Maybe it was my old malaria kicking up.” Everything that goes up has to come down.
“What?”
“I said I think those boxes’ll be all right.” Enough with the fucking proverbs.
She stared at him for another moment, fixing him with those two orbs, fashioned in heaven, to look upon fools. Then she let the subject drop and found her purse. “I think, this time, you must let me pay you.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
Just the same she pressed a dollar bill into his pitifully small palm. “I could never have gotten those boxes up there by myself.”
He took the dollar bill, and seeing no table nearby, he simply laid it on the bed. No sooner had he done that than he realized that was the way in which a man treated a whore. You just put on the bed whatever you care to pay, and if she doesn’t argue, it’s a deal and you bang her. But in this case—what an insult! One dollar. One lousy dollar! At least if he had a checking account— He wanted to put his heart alongside the dollar, but it would have been inconvenient.
From the look on her face she was not exactly acquainted with the legend of the money on the bed. She smiled. “Please, Hermie. I have no other way of paying you.”
He could think of a couple ways but the words came out of him so gentle and so candid. “It’s okay. I like you.”
“That’s very sweet, Hermie. I like you, too.”
“I mean—I don’t like many people.” If the conversation continued along those lines, Hermie would shortly be proposing marriage. Actually, as he thought about it, how much older than himself could she be? Maybe six, maybe seven years. He could quit school, work in a factory until he was old enough, and then get his commission in the Army. She’d like an officer. Pete was only a sergeant. Better still, in the Navy a fighter pilot could be made a full commander before he was even twenty-three years old. If the war lasted much longer, he could come out an admiral and an ace. Then they could pick up the threads of their life where they had left off. A small house near the Academy. With a white picket fence and a cannon on the lawn, and stacked cannonballs, and an American flag. He could teach flying to younger lads. Or he could barnstorm the country, flying under bridges and through tunnels in his jaunty Lindbergh flying cap. He could see her moving in closer. He could smell her, feel her. The sweet plum-ripe lips were puckered and moving in. He steeled himself and got his own lips ready for the mooring. But at the last possible second, she pulled out of her dive and the kiss struck him on the forehead so directly between his eyes that he went temporarily cockeyed and into a deadly spin. But the softness of her lips, the warm wetness of them on his forehead, pulled him out of the spin because he wanted to live, he had so much to live for. How he got outside and on the beach would forever be a mystery to him.
He must have left her house via the fourteen stairs to the beach because that’s where he was walking, alone, trying to piece it all together so that it might make some sense. He had no idea how long he had been walking like that, glorying in the music of her and in the smell of her, when he saw the shadow coming at him—from out of the sun. The gull. Its silhouette moved swiftly, its wings spread in a devastating gliding dive. He sidestepped, but the blast still caught him, smack on his shirtfront, actually knocking him a few steps back. Four inches farther to the right and the shit would have pierced his heart. Instead, it just broke apart across his chest, a load of gull turd that splattered in the pattern of the filthy rising sun of Japan. It took no more than a few seconds. Then the bird was gone, squawking away in winged triumph. Hermie shook his fist at it. “You fuckin’ dumb bird!” But the damage had been done. There was no sense in crying over spilled shit. He rubbed sand on the glob, but it just made things worse, caking up like cement. Whatever that bird had been eating, if it put its mind to it, it could shit a superhighway. What annoyed Hermie more than anything else was that he had always heard that birds couldn’t shit in flight, that they had to land first. It was another legend of his youth shot to hell. Lay it alongside Santa Claus and the Easter rabbit. Hermie wondered if it all wasn’t part of some kind of weird reincarnation. Maybe it was Johnny Stella come back to get him. Johnny Stella, who had challenged him to a three o’clock fight in the schoolyard, only to suffer a fantastic lucky punch from Hermie that knocked out two of his best teeth. Johnny Stella, who later got killed by a bus while riding his bike across Flatbush Avenue where it intercepted Church. Hermie yelled at the empty sky, for the gull was long since gone. “I know who you are, Johnny Stella! Try it again, boy, and you’ll wish…you came back as Joe Louis! Ya dumb shit!”
Hermie bumped into Oscy, who looked into the sky at the nothingness that Hermie had been screaming at. Oscy had a pair of binoculars around his neck that he lifted and trained on the sky, which he scoured like a lookout. Seeing nothing, Oscy dropped the glasses and smiled at Hermie. “You yelling at clouds again, Hermie?” Benjie was standing alongside Oscy and was also smiling.
Hermie had no patience for the pair of them. “Yeah, I always yell at clouds. It wards off evil.” He tried to walk away. Who needed their aggravation? Hadn’t his heart been hurt enough? Once by love. Once by shit.
But Oscy was blocking his way, a very dangerous undertaking in view of Hermie’s taut and confused emotional state. “You were in there a long time, Hermie.”
Benjie looked at his Ingersoll. “Twenty minutes.” Then he smiled at Hermie’s shirt. “What’d she do—shit on you?”
Hermie was so furious that it didn’t matter that he could squash Benjie’s small brain in the huge palm of one of his hands. “Benjie, you’re on borrowed time.” Then, without warning, Hermie felt a long wave of sudden nausea. He got dizzy and had to sit down. His head was furry, crazy, sick. It was either love or cholera, preferably the latter, which was curable.
Oscy knelt beside him, very concerned. “Hermie? You sick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you feel good?” Oscy was nervous. He never saw Hermie like that before.
Hermie rubbed his temples. “I think I’m nauseous.”
“Maybe you better sit down.”
Hermie looked up, pissed off. “I am sitting down! Jesus Christ, Oscy!”
Oscy was baffled. “Then maybe you oughta lie down.”
“Maybe you oughta shut up.” Hermie drew up his knees. That’s what you were supposed to do. Draw up your knees and put your head down, and magically, the nausea goes away. Of course, should you puke in that position, you’re going to be the most unpopular guy in the locker room for a week. He examined his left leg. That strange tingling. “I think— Oscy? I think she bit my leg. See any lipstick down there? My eyesight is failing.”
Oscy knelt and examined the suspicious limb. “Just a couple scabs.”
Hermie tapped one of the scabs. “I don’t remember this one.”
Oscy was very definite. “No. You had that one yesterday. And you had that Band-Aid, too. I’m certain.”
“How come you’re so sure?”
“Because I notice things.”
“Scabs and Band-Aids?”
“Yeah. I’m weird, okay?”
“Well—don’t you see any new scabs? Or fresh Band-Aids? Take your time.”
Oscy examined the leg much more closely, fingering the scab, lifting the edge of it. “No. I don’t think they scab up so fast. And this Band-Aid—it’s a couple days old.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because there’s a date stamped on it! Fuck you, Hermie! What the hell am I doing examining your scabs? I’m no intern!”
Hermie’s nausea was fading; but he was still a bit light-headed, and his knee still tingled. “Jesus—do you think I have infantile paralysis?”
“My neck? No.”
“Then you don’t have it. Infantile paralysis starts with a crick in the neck.”
“Then what does it mean if your leg tingles?”
“Adult paralysis.” That was Benjie’s invaluable opinion.
Oscy became deadly serious. One of the best ways to become deadly serious in that crowd was to ignore Benjie, which he did. “Try to remember what happened, Hermie? From the beginning.” It was Oscy of Scotland Yard. Bulldog Oscy.
“Well,” said Hermie, trying to reconstruct it in sequence, “the way it was—we had coffee.”
“When did she shit on your shirt?” That was Benjie. He said it and jumped backward, making certain he was out of Hermie’s punching range. But he hadn’t counted on Oscy, who knocked him on his ass.
“Benjie, we’re trying to get to the bottom of this, so shut up.”
“Fuck you, Oscy.” Benjie stayed where he had fallen. It was not only safer but more comfortable. Also, he could time how long he’d lie there.
Oscy refocused on Hermie. “Go on, Hermie. What else?”
“Well, after the coffee, I put the boxes in the attic, and while I was on the ladder—” Time froze right there as Hermie ran the action through his mind again. The way she opened his pants and played with his prong. The ecstasy and the mad passion of it all. Then, considering who his audience was, he decided to skip all that. “And when I came down—she kissed me.” Of that much he was certain. Of the rest, he had no concrete proof. It wouldn’t stand up in court. Only in his pants.
“Kissed you?” Oscy’s mouth hinged open like a wounded drawbridge.
“Yeah. Here.” Hermie pointed between his eyes. “See any lipstick?”
Oscy leaned in, taking Hermie’s head in both hands and turning it toward the sun. Another two inches of turn and Oscy could have taken the head home with him as a paperweight. His eyes widened as he looked at the blotch of smudged red between Hermie’s eyes. It was unmistakably—“Lipstick.” He sniffed at the crimson patch. “Definitely lipstick. Probably strawberry or something in the red family.”
Hermie yanked his head free of Oscy’s viselike grip. “I like her kissing me, Oscy. Not you!”
Benjie was leaning in, giving his own personal estimation of the forehead under discussion. “It’s a mosquito bite. No—it’s blood. She’s a fuckin’ vampire.” He jumped backward again. Out of reach of Hermie and Oscy. He smiled. You don’t catch Pearl Harbor napping twice.
Oscy stood above Hermie and never looked so pleased. “Hermie, I think you struck gold. I really do.”
Hermie wasn’t really listening. He was musing at his leg again. “That really looks like a fresh Band-Aid. I’m sure she changed my Band-Aid. Strange.” The Band-Aid seemed to emanate a neon glow. It was alive with love. Or with germs with flashlights.
Oscy addressed Benjie in a very official manner. “Benjie—we’ll need that book again.”
Benjie began to back away slowly, the kind of move that invariably preceded his running for his life. “Yeah? Well, you can just whistle. You drooled all over it the last time. I don’t wanna get blamed for any warped pages.”
Oscy advanced at the same rate that Benjie retreated. “My field glasses for your dirty book. You’ll have a wonderful time identifying enemy aircraft. You can be a hero.”
Benjie saw the distance between them narrowing, and his tone became proportionately conciliatory. “Come on, Oscy. Nothing flies over this island but birds.”
“Maybe they’re enemy birds.”
“No go.”
No contest. Oscy not only caught Benjie, but in one swift motion, he had the leather strap over Benjie’s neck and was slowly twisting it like a tourniquet. “It’s a fair swap. What’s more, you can have the glasses for two days, and I only need the book for one lousy afternoon. What’s more, if you don’t like my offer, I’m gonna break your nose. So whaddya say?” Benjie was in no condition to argue. He was barely in position even to speak, as his face was turning bloody purple and his eyes were bulging like a bullfrog’s. Oscy relaxed the tourniquet slightly, and Benjie fell gasping to his knees, where Oscy proceeded to knight him. “In the name of the United States of America, I award you these field glasses. Good hunting.”
“Fuck you, Oscy.” It wasn’t even a gasp. It was a whisper, under a rock, in the next county.
Oscy smiled and tugged on the strap, and Benjie got to his feet like a dog tagging on a leash. “Come on, Hermie,” Oscy called. “Benjie’s been nice enough to offer us his filthy book.”
“Fuck you, Oscy—yaaaaaaagh.”
Hermie got to his feet and followed his two friends up the beach. But even as he walked, he kept looking down at the Band-Aid which kept glowing. It just didn’t look like the kind of Band-Aid he normally used. It had to be a different one, an off brand.
“Fuck you, Oscy.” It was far off, away from Hermie. But it was like a radio beam. Blindfolded, he could follow his friends up the beach. It was sixty-three “Fuck you, Oscy’s” to Benjie’s house.
14
They sat in the grassy-clumped yard behind Benjie’s bungalow, just Hermie and Oscy, like expectant fathers. Oscy paced about very anxiously. Hermie just let it all roll off him, pleased that his fate was no longer in his own hands. It was at times like that in Hermie’s life that Oscy always proved so helpful. Oscy was a great decision maker. It was Oscy who had determined that they could leap the seven feet that separated the roofs of the two apartment buildings. It was Oscy who had said that they could run blindly out of Jaeger’s icy alley and safely belly whop between the moving front and back wheels of the moving Macy’s delivery truck. And it was Oscy who had said that Hermie could take Johnny Stella if he’d just run out and throw the first punch for psychological purposes. Hermie looked up into the afternoon sky to see if that same Johnny Stella was still hovering around. He wasn’t. Probably off somewhere, eating wet cement for his next shit. Hermie touched his shirtfront. It had hardened to the consistency of linoleum and had wrinkled into a petrified waffle. If his mother couldn’t iron out those wrinkles, Hermie could never wear that shirt again except to accordion player rallies. Oscy ceased his pacing. Benjie’s back door was opening. Oh…so…slow.
Benjie came out, accomplishing the deed with superhuman stealth. For as everyone knew, beyond every such door there was a mother. Benjie had something with him. An object. It was wrapped within the folds of a green, Indian-patterned bathrobe. And it was tied into knots via the fringed bathrobe sash. Oscy grabbed the bundle and set it onto the ground. He had a difficult time untying the sash because Benjie had utilized every knot he’d learned in Cub Scouts. “Why’d the hell you put in so many knots, you moron!”
“I wanted it secure. I don’t know.” Benjie was very concerned with what might be coming out the door at him. “Can you hurry up?”
“No, I can’t hurry up, you dope. Thanks to you, we might be here all day.” Oscy puzzled over the knots, green velvet spaghetti, still alive.
“If my mother—”
“Hermie, do you have a knife?”
Benjie stiffened. “You cut my sash, Oscy, and I call the cops for burglary. That sash is all I have to keep my bathrobe closed.”
“What’re you hiding, your belly button?” Oscy worked feverishly to unravel the Gordian knots.
“Fuck you, Oscy.”
“Oh, shut up.” Oscy finally solved the knots and unfolded the robe. Inside was the eugenics book. Oscy removed his sweat shirt and smoothed it out on the grass. The exchange was speedy. The book was moved from bathrobe to sweat shirt within the blink of a bug’s eye. Quickly Oscy knotted his sweat shirt’s sleeves about the book. Then he picked up the whole bundle and motioned for Hermie to follow him.
Hermie trailed after Oscy, turning only once to look at Benjie, who was sitting on the top step of his back porch, training Oscy’s binoculars on them. Hermie then perceived an image of Benjie that he’d take with him to the g
rave. It was of Benjie, at dawn. On the beach. Searching the skies for enemy birds. And as each bird flew over, Benjie would make a note of it on his pad. “5:15 a.m. A bird… 5:27 a.m. Another bird… 5:41 a.m. Another bird… 5:47 a.m. Another fucking bird… 5:48 a.m. Fuck you, Oscy.”
Hermie followed Oscy along the path, watching how delicately Oscy carried the sweat shirt, as though it contained the head of John the Baptist. It had been decided that the abandoned chicken coop was not suitable for the work that had to be done. It was too public a place. Instead, they decided on Hermie’s room. The deciding had been decided upon by Oscy. Instinctively Hermie didn’t care to do in his room whatever Oscy had in mind. But Oscy had decided that since Hermie stood to be the beneficiary of whatever it was that was going to happen, Hermie also had to assume the greatest risk of discovery.
When they reached the house, Hermie went first because he knew the trail and was best acquainted with the dangers therein. He chose the back door which, like every door on the island, was a squeaky screen door. Yet Hermie manifested a certain mastery over that back door. For one thing, he oiled it periodically to help keep it quiet. The back door, then, was always his exit whenever there were people on the front porch he didn’t care to converse with, like his family.
Anyway, with trepidation and on little cat feet, Hermie passed beyond the screen door with Oscy and John the Baptist silently behind. The back flight of stairs had next to be navigated. Hermie went first, silently pointing out to Oscy the one squeaky stair. They passed over it in practiced Cheyenne silence. At the landing they made the turn and carefully trod toward Hermie’s room. Slowly, Hermie turned the knob, so well oiled, like the back screen door, that some of the oil trickled into his palm. No matter. No damage. He swung the door open. Silence. Smoothness. No sweat. Much success. Bravo.
“I just cleaned.”
Oscy and Hermie exchanged a look. It was the voice of the phantom mother. She was somewhere in the house. In a light bulb somewhere. Or in a picture on a wall. Or in the paint. She of the thousand eyes and thousand ears. She who floated weightlessly throughout her domain like the Ghost of Christmas Past. She who in one chilling phrase could say it all. “I just cleaned.” Three little words that simply meant: “I know you’re here. Don’t get the house dirty. Don’t sit on the beds. If that’s Oscy with you, don’t let him lean his sweat shirt against anything. Don’t take anything from the refrigerator because everything in there is catalogued and marked and dinner is in a few hours and if you spoil your appetite with a snack you can just stay in tonight so just don’t.”
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