Testing the Current

by William McPherson

  Tommy decided he’d avoid the front porch for a while, so he went around the corner again to the side porch where hardly anyone ever sat, and stood there watching Daisy approach the ninth hole, sink her putt, and walk toward the clubhouse.

  “Let’s have lunch,” she said to him when she came up the steps. “Will you have lunch with me, Tommy?”

  That would be fun. “Yes,” he said, “I’d really like to. Thanks.”

  “Let me go into the locker room and wash up. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Tommy was sitting at a table in the lounge when she came out. “What ever did you do to Mrs. Appleton?” she asked him. “She’s having apoplexy in there.”

  “I dropped a cat in her lap,” Tommy said. “What’s apoplexy?”

  “It’s a fit,” Daisy said, “a first-class, grade-A genuine fit,” and she burst into laughter. “It serves the old bag right,” she said. She looked at Tommy. “I’ll bet that’s why you did it.”

  “No,” Tommy said, “I just wanted to see what she would do.”

  “Well, you certainly saw. You certainly did see. But don’t worry about it. She’ll survive, stronger and nosier than ever.”

  Tommy laughed. He really liked Daisy. He liked the way she joked with him. No one else joked with him like that. Maybe his brothers sometimes, but no one else, not even Mrs. Steer. Mrs. Steer said things once in a while—like Mr. Sedgwick’s an idiot—but she said them differently.

  “What would you like for lunch?” Daisy asked him.

  “I’d like a toasted cheese sandwich and a root beer float,” Tommy said. “Can I ring the bell?”

  “Sure,” Daisy said. “Ring the bell. I think I’ll have the very same thing.”

  Ophelia came out when she heard the bell and put the sandwiches on the grill and started making the floats. “Mrs. Appleton still alive?” she asked Daisy.

  “The last time I saw her she was,” Daisy said. “Unless she’s had a relapse.”

  While they were eating, Bob Griswold came into the clubhouse and came over and joined them. “Did you hear what Tommy did?” Daisy asked him. “He dropped one of those mangy old cats in Mrs. Appleton’s lap and she had a stroke! She’s still in the ladies’ room with her harpies fluttering over her. Isn’t that rich?”

  “God is just,” Bob Griswold said, and he clapped Tommy on the back. “Do you think she’ll survive?” he asked Daisy. “We could maybe help her along. Slip a cat in the ladies’ room door.”

  Tommy was very excited. They thought what he’d done was funny. Tommy loved it. He loved being funny. He loved making them laugh. He thought he’d drop another cat in Mrs. Appleton’s lap sometime, but Daisy said no. “Really, no. Don’t overdo it,” she told him. “Once was enough.”

  “Once is never enough,” Bob Griswold said.

  Daisy gave him a look. “In this case, once is quite enough,” she said. “Not more than enough, not less than enough, but quite enough.”

  They had finished their lunch by that time, and Daisy was going to play another nine holes in the afternoon. But before she did, Daisy and Bob left in Bob’s car. They sped out of the driveway without pausing, and headed not in the direction of town but the other way, out along the river.

  Tommy’s mother finished her foursome a little while later. Tommy could hear her voice and the voices of the other ladies as they came into the clubhouse. When his mother came out of the locker room, she called his name. “Tommy? Tommy?” He thought he’d better answer. “I’m in here,” he called from the cardroom off the lounge. His mother came in. “I’m surprised at you,” she said. “I could hardly believe what I just heard. I’ve never seen Mrs. Appleton so upset. She’s getting ready to come out. When she does, you’re going to apologize to her.”

  “I won’t,” Tommy said.

  “You won’t? What do you mean, you won’t?”

  “I mean I won’t,” Tommy said. “I won’t apologize to her. I hate her.”

  His mother’s golfing partners came into the lounge just then. “Emma, we’re ordering lunch,” Mrs. Rodgers called out. “We’re starving. Don’t make us wait.” So his mother had to go into the lounge and have her lunch with the ladies, and Tommy went back out to the side porch where the cats were playing again. He stayed on the side porch until he heard Mrs. Appleton get into a car with one of her friends and drive off.

  His mother gave him a stern lecture on the way home that afternoon. “You’re never to do such a thing again,” she said, “and you will apologize to Mrs. Appleton the next time you see her.”

  The next time he saw her, Tommy did. “I’m sorry I dropped the cat on your lap, Mrs. Appleton,” he said, but he wasn’t. It was a lie. He wasn’t sorry at all. And Mrs. Appleton was still mad, too, Tommy could tell, though she said she accepted his apology. “What else can I do?” she sighed to no one in particular. Later Tommy heard her tell one of her friends, “I’ve never had such a fright as that boy gave me. She just lets him run wild, just run wild.” She was talking about him, but Tommy didn’t care. Mrs. Appleton talked about everybody, and she never had anything nice to say about any of them, either.

  Tommy hadn’t gone to the cemetery on Decoration Day, when his father went down with the geraniums to plant on Tommy’s grandmother’s grave. His father took David with him to help. Tommy couldn’t go because he was still supposed to stay off his foot as much as possible. He’d just had the operation a couple of days before. His mother stayed home too, to watch him. He didn’t go to Chicago the weekend after he’d dropped the cat on Mrs. Appleton’s lap, either, when his parents went down for John’s graduation. David stayed home with him that time, and David thought it was hilarious that Tommy had dumped the cat on Mrs. Appleton. Tommy hoped even his mother might think it was a little bit funny, but she never let on at all. But Tommy did go to the picnic the last day of school. Dr. Randolph came over to his house that morning and took the bandage off his foot and told Tommy he was fine, that his toe had healed just fine and he didn’t have to think about it anymore. The picnic was fun. Everybody brought a sandwich, and Miss Case had made Kool-Aid and a cake, and Leo was still being nice and didn’t try to pick a fight with anybody.

  On his way home, Tommy saw Paul Malotte playing by himself in his yard. The Catholic school always ended earlier than the public school. Paul was shooting marbles under the big tree where there was no grass and the dirt was packed. It was a good place to shoot marbles. Paul’s yard wasn’t grassy and green all over, like Tommy’s. A lot of it was dusty, and they had their big vegetable patch in the back. Tommy walked over to talk to him. Paul was still trying to be very good because of his First Communion. He’d been to Communion every Sunday since, and every Saturday he went to confession, too. There’d been only about three Sundays since, though. Tommy didn’t have a First Communion. In Tommy’s church you didn’t take Communion until you’d been confirmed, and that didn’t happen until sixth grade, when you were twelve, and had learned your catechism. You had to learn it by heart, just as Paul did, and then you were confirmed and then you could take Communion, just like the grown-ups, and drink the wine from the cup. It was real wine, too, but it wasn’t something for children.

  “What happens when you make your First Communion?” Tommy asked him.

  “You stick your tongue out,” Paul said, “and the priest puts Jesus on it and you let it melt and swallow it. You’re not supposed to chew it.”

  “Come on,” Tommy said. He didn’t believe a word of it. Jesus on your tongue!

  “No, it is Jesus,” Paul said. “He lives in a little house on the altar, and the nuns take care of it but only the priest can touch it. Nobody else can touch it at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s the sacred Host,” Paul said. “It would be a sacrilege to touch it. It’s the body and blood of our Lord. It really is. The Church says so.”

  “It is not,” Tommy said. “It’s bread and wine.” He didn’t care if the Church did say so, even if, as Paul said, th
e Church was the one true church, not like Tommy’s. He didn’t believe that, either.

  “No,” Paul said, louder. “It just looks like bread and wine, but it really isn’t. It’s really the body and blood of Jesus. I learned all about it. It’s not what it looks like,” he said, wiping his nose with his hand.

  “What does it taste like?” Tommy asked him.

  “It doesn’t taste like anything,” Paul said. “It tastes sort of like paper.”

  “Then it can’t be the body and blood of Jesus,” Tommy said. “That’s just a story.”

  “Yes it can too!” Paul cried. His nose was running. He was getting mad. “It’s not just a story. It’s a mystery, and you have to take it on faith.”

  A mystery, Tommy thought. He knew about mysteries. He knew Paul was starting to feel bad, too, and even though he didn’t play with Paul very much, or think of him as a real friend, he didn’t want him to feel bad, either. Paul had enough things to feel bad about, Tommy thought, with his father dead and his family so poor. He’d better stop teasing him. There were nice things about Paul. He was good at marbles and had a lot of them that he kept in a pouch, and he could throw his jackknife in the dirt and make it stick there, too. Sometimes Paul let Tommy try it, and Tommy got so that he could do it almost as well as Paul. That was fun. “Let’s play,” Tommy said. “Do you want to play?” And he and Paul played a game with Paul’s jackknife that they called “Piece of Pie” because you drew a circle in the dirt and that’s what it looked like, a pie. Then you threw the jackknife and drew a line from the center of the pie to where the knife stuck and you put the other guy’s marble in it. That was the piece of pie. When Paul threw the jackknife, he put one of Tommy’s marbles in his slice. The game went on like that. The idea was to make the wedges as thin as possible so that you got more of the other guy’s marbles. Usually Paul won, and he would slip Tommy’s marbles into his pouch. But he didn’t always win. Tommy won sometimes, and Jimmy Randolph won a lot. He was older, though.

  Amy saw them playing from her front yard and came over to watch, and then Jimmy Randolph rode by on his new bike. He rode back and forth several times, just showing off, Tommy thought. Finally Jimmy stopped because he wanted to get in the game and win some marbles. Tommy was sorry that Jimmy and Amy had come over because he’d just gotten the conversation back to Paul’s First Communion and confession. They were delicate subjects that Tommy was interested in, and it was easy to hurt Paul’s feelings and then he wouldn’t talk about it. So Tommy was being very sympathetic. Paul had told him that before you made your First Communion you had to go to confession to tell God your sins. The first time he’d done it he was real scared. Then the priest told him to say some prayers and he was forgiven. The prayers were penance. They didn’t have that in Tommy’s church. You told God your sins all by yourself and He forgave you, and you didn’t have to do anything for it, just be sorry. In fact, Tommy had never even done it; he’d never told Him. In Paul’s church you told the priest, but Paul said you pretended you were talking to Jesus. You knelt down and it was dark and you couldn’t see the priest, just his shadow. He couldn’t see you either, but Paul said he thought the priest knew who you were anyway. It was almost like talking to Jesus, though, because the priest would never tell what you’d said, not even on pain of death. It was the sacred vow that he’d made.

  “How do you know what to confess?” Tommy asked him.

  “They tell you,” Paul said. “The nuns tell you what you’ve probably done wrong, and then you tell it to the priest.”

  “Well, like what do you say?” Tommy asked him.

  “Oh,” Paul said, “you have to tell him if you’ve stolen anything”—Tommy knew about that, and he knew that Paul had done it, too, but he didn’t mention it this time—“if you’ve disobeyed your mother or the teachers, if you’ve had any impure thoughts.”

  Impure thoughts. That was a new one. “What does that mean?” Tommy asked. Jimmy Randolph and Amy were there now.

  “It’s like bad thoughts,” Paul said, “sort of like committing adultery. You can’t spend a lot of time washing yourself in the bathtub, or spying on your sister when she’s getting dressed.” Paul giggled. He had a dirty giggle, as if he’d been spying on his sister. He probably had.

  “Then Lily Slade has impure thoughts all the time,” Jimmy said. “She always wants to get me to take my pants down, but I won’t do it. Tommy did, though.” Jimmy pointed his finger at him, laughing.

  “That’s a lie,” Tommy said. It was a lie, too. Jimmy took his pants down first, and he said he’d seen Jenny do it too and she had hair. That was more than Tommy had ever done. He had taken his pants down with Amy Steer, though. Amy did too, but Jimmy didn’t know that and Tommy wasn’t about to tell him. Anyway, it had been a long time since he’d done it. Amy was leaning against the tree. She didn’t say a word.

  “Ha, ha,” Paul said. “You’ll go to hell. You took your pants down in front of Lily Slade and you lied about it, too. Hell, hell, double hell,” he sang. “You’d better tell the priest you’re sorry.”

  “Hell, hell, double hell,” Jimmy Randolph chanted after him, pointing his finger at Tommy. “Hell, hell, double hell.”

  “I’m going home,” Tommy said. Amy had already left. She didn’t like the conversation.

  It really was a mystery, Tommy thought, as he walked toward his house, the chant still ringing in his ears, but it must be nice, to have somebody tell you that the bad things you’d done were forgiven and that no one but you and God and the priest would ever know that you’d done them, and the priest could never tell, not even if you’d murdered somebody, not even if you’d stolen something from somebody. Tommy thought he would like the Catholic school. Amy went there, but she wasn’t a Catholic and didn’t have to take religion with everybody else. Mr. Steer saw to that. It was just like Mr. Steer—contrary. He wouldn’t let Amy go to the public school, but he wouldn’t let her take religion in the Catholic school. He wouldn’t let Amy be baptized, either. Tommy had been baptized when he was a baby. He’d seen his christening dress. It was the same one his brothers had worn, and it was real long. Tommy didn’t like it.

  When Tommy told Mrs. Steer about the mysteries that Paul had told him, Mrs. Steer said that it was all a lot of superstition and she didn’t like their talking about it. Mrs. Steer didn’t like religion, either, and she didn’t like it when Tommy had tried to get Amy to go to Sunday school with him. Mrs. Steer was nice about it, though, and Tommy didn’t care if Amy belonged to the Church or not. He just wanted company, and he thought Amy would like the stories from the Bible, the stories about David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah, Absalom, the wise King Solomon, John the Baptist, and the rest. But both Mr. and Mrs. Steer thought the stories were too bloody. There weren’t all bloody, Tommy thought, and some of them were really interesting when the teacher told them to you. Sunday school was over for the year, anyway. It always ended at the same time as regular school.

  Tommy and his family moved to the Island a few days after Tommy’s parents came back from John’s graduation. John was getting the summer off—“for good behavior,” his father said—but David had to keep on working, at least until August, when maybe he could have some time off too. Because David was going to work every morning—he had to be at work a lot earlier than his father—and would be sleeping most nights in town, and because his mother would be spending a lot of time there because of all the details connected with her anniversary party, they weren’t packing up and closing the house the way they usually did, with sheets draped over all the furniture. Moving was a simple matter this time, with none of the bustle of earlier years. They just packed up a few clothes and went. And the week after that, one of the Indians started rowing Tommy back over to the shore two mornings a week for his golf lesson from Emil, the pro. The lessons were as bad as Tommy had feared, but at least Emil was nice and didn’t make fun of him. Tommy wished that he were old enough to be trusted in a boat by himself, but he wasn’t; the c
urrent was too swift, and the eddies dangerous. At least he got to walk to the country club by himself, though, up from the dock and across the road and cutting across the fairway to the clubhouse and the pro shop, where he met Emil, if Emil wasn’t already waiting for him by the practice tee. Sometimes John and Emily rowed him over—they played golf a lot—and sometimes his mother went with him if she was playing or going uptown on some errands, and sometimes Daisy rowed him over. She and Phil had the Addington cottage now, since Mrs. Addington had moved in with her mother last summer, but they weren’t always there. And once in a while, after Mr. Wolfe arrived, he would row him over.

  Although Tommy didn’t enjoy the lesson, he did like washing the balls and setting them up on the little colored tees, and he did finally learn to hit the ball with the mashie so that it would go up in the air—usually, anyway—and land somewhere out there in the general direction of the hole. Emil said he was doing great, but Tommy knew better. He was doing about as great as Mrs. Appleton, who seemed to spend every single summer day rocking on the porch with her friends, who were all like Mrs. Appleton but not quite so bad, maybe. At least they weren’t afraid of cats. He could see the women watching him as he practiced his lesson. He wished they wouldn’t look; it made him feel silly. He didn’t mind so much if Buck watched him. Buck never sat on the porch—he couldn’t because the Negroes weren’t allowed to—but he used to sit on the grass sometimes near the practice tee, watching Tommy learn. Buck said he’d never learn, but he knew plenty of other things that were more interesting than golf. Tommy was glad that Buck had arrived for the summer. Tommy showed him the kaleidoscope his mother had given him for his birthday. “Pretty,” Buck said, holding it up to his eye. “Real pretty. What’s it do?”