“Punish him,” Lou said. “I could go to the police but I won’t go to the police with a thing like this. My wife’s name does not get mentioned in connection with a ... a ...” He stared up at the boy. “I would love to punish you. I would. But ...” He raised his bandaged hand.
“I’ll punish him, Lou. You’ll see. Come down here, Rudy. This is your father talking. Come down. Now.”
“No, Sid,” and Esther grabbed for her husband.
Sid pushed her away. “Come down, you! I got a belt here. I got a strong belt and you’ll see, Lou. Sid Miller is a man of his word.”
The boy looked at them, glancing quickly from face to face: Lou the observer, crippled and safe; Dolly smiling, about to be avenged; keening Esther, on her knees now, beginning to writhe; Sid the inflicter, innocent blue eyes bright. Isn’t it wonderful, the boy thought, shuddering, descending the stairs toward them, his own eyes filling with tears; I’ve made everyone happy at last.
XIII
THE OPEN CONVERTIBLE BULLETED down the dark highway. Branch sat hunched behind the wheel, driving with his left hand, using his right to lock the sleeping girl against his body. Annie Withers had a pretty face (unusual for an Oberlin coed) but a bad figure (S.O.P.). Her hips were large and her arms were too short and, worst of all, her legs were knotted and thick, dancer’s legs. Branch flicked a fingertip across her small breast and she stirred, blinking up at him. He smiled, so she closed her eyes.
The speedometer read eighty, but Branch fixed that fast, jamming his foot floorward. Eighty-three, eighty-five, now ninety. The wind screamed. Branch increased his pressure on the gas pedal and at ninety-five the customary panic built inside him, wetting his palms. God, how he longed to brake, to slow, to crawl. It was out of the question, naturally; Branch Scudder drove fast. Everybody knew that. At one hundred miles per hour, the Thunderbird began resenting; the motor roared, matching the scream of the wind.
Up ahead lay Oberlin and Branch felt, as he always did upon approach, smug. Students were forbidden cars and they glanced longingly at his black carrier, just as he had glanced at other cars when he had been a student there, four years before. When he reached the edge of town, Branch slowed. Annie Withers woke, opened her eyes, blinked slowly, then self-consciously ran her fingers through her short brown hair. “We here?”
“We are.”
“How’s the time?”
“Peace. You’ve got till one-forty. It is now—” and he looked at his watch—“one-twenty-three.”
Annie curled up against him, her arm around his waist. “Wow,” she said. “Too many martinis.”
“You college kids. No capacity.”
“Amen.” She snuggled up tighter as Branch drove through the quiet town. When they were almost at her dorm, she walked her fingers up his cheek, across his forehead, then up again, where his hair should have been. “Bald men fracture me,” she said.
“I am not bald. I have a receding hairline.”
Annie squinted at his skull. “Very.” She kissed his cheek. “Face it, Branch old man: you’re bald.” Branch pulled up in front of Harkness dorm. Spaced along the dorm wall, deep in shadow, couples grappled. Annie gestured toward them. “How common.”
Branch nodded. “Absolutely no class.” Taking her roughly in his arms, he kissed her.
Eyes closed, Annie said, “You’re a killer, you know that, Baldy?”
“Brat,” Branch said, and he kissed her again.
“I’m smearing you,” Annie whispered.
“Smear me, I’ll live.” He kissed her and held her close and massaged her small breasts. She whispered his name and he smiled, holding her until it was time to go in. He got out of the car, opened the door for her, then swatted her as she exited.
“Beast.”
“You love it.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Y’know I do.” She locked her arms around him and they walked slowly toward the entrance. Several other couples stood clustered by the door. “Aren’t they ugly?” Annie whispered. “All that hair.”
Branch smiled, conscious of the other boys, of how young they looked, how pure. And he knew they were conscious of him too. He was Scudder from West Ridge—the Guy with the Car. Branch kissed Annie on the forehead, held the door open for her, waved through the glass. Then he turned, jogged to his Thunderbird, got in, turned on the ignition, gunned the motor several times (it was expected of him). Then he released the brake and roared out of the quiet town.
It was less than ten miles from Oberlin to West Ridge, and he could make it in eight minutes if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to. (Sweet Jesus, did he not want to.) One mile out of Oberlin, the road forked. The main road was, of course, the better of the two, straighter, brighter, faster. But the back road passed the Pelican.
Branch took the back road.
It was deserted, so he took his foot off the gas and coasted down to thirty. Happily, he kept that pace, sometimes dropping down as low as twenty-five until, ahead of him through the trees, he saw the neon outline of a pelican fluttering its purple wings. Branch slowed, conscious already of the pounding of his heart. When he drew even with the Pelican, Branch put his foot on the brake.
The Thunderbird stopped on the highway.
Keeping the motor running, Branch wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, rested his chin on his white knuckles, staring at the bar and the noiseless purple bird flying overhead. For an instant, Branch shut his eyes, trying to envision the inside of the bar. He saw it then, as clear as his mother’s smile, which was remarkable, considering he had only been inside the bar once in his entire life, more than a year ago, the 23rd of April, a date that, like his birthday and Pearl Harbor, he knew himself incapable of ever forgetting. (He had heard about the Pelican all his life, though—whispers here, half phrases there. It was not that kind of place—there simply weren’t sufficient personnel to support that kind of place in this part of Ohio—but it was the kind of place where, if you were looking for that kind of thing, you went.)
Branch gripped the steering wheel tighter and listened to himself breathe. He was afraid, just as he always was whenever he stopped to stare in at this purple place. Why do you keep coming? Branch wondered. You’d rather die than go back inside, so why do you keep coming? And then he thought of Aaron and something Aaron had said to him once: “You like punishment, don’t you, Scudder?”
“Yes, Aaron,” Branch said out loud. He stared a moment longer, then jammed his foot down on the gas, gunning the Thunderbird viciously, roaring down the empty road toward West Ridge and home.
Still afraid.
But then, fear was more or less his constant companion. He was afraid of so many people, everybody but Rose, really, although sometimes he even wondered about that. He had been afraid of Aaron. He had been afraid of the Army itself, yet on his Separation Day, two years ago now, Branch had been sad. Rose had driven down to Chicago to pick him up and all the way back she fairly bubbled about some wonderful mysterious surprises awaiting him in West Ridge and Branch had smiled as expected, but he was sad. He would miss the Army, or some things about it. As soon as his training in X Company was finished, he said goodbye to Aaron and the South and took a train to 5th Army headquarters in Chicago. There, life was easy. He clerked, swam in Lake Michigan and shared an apartment with a terrible-tempered sergeant named Rattigan. When Rattigan was transferred to Japan, Branch kept the apartment alone for a while, until Peter Beaumont arrived. Peter Beaumont was a private, sweet and simple, from Los Angeles. He was married, but his wife stayed in California, so she was no bother. On top of everything else, Branch liked Peter. That was why his Separation Day was sad.
Rose’s wonderful surprise, which she pointed out proudly as soon as they reached West Ridge, was this: On the glass window of the real-estate office there were now two names where before there had been but one. WEST RIDGE REAL ESTATE. And underneath: BRANCH SCUDDER. ROSE SCUDDER. “Yours above mine, baby,” Rose had said that day. “Yours above mine,” and she waited for h
is smile. He gave her one, but the cost was considerable, because he had never functioned (his word) in West Ridge. He had learned the game from a counselor at boy’s camp, practiced his skills on a college tour of Europe, refined his style in the Army. But never had he functioned in West Ridge.
Never near home.
Branch went right to work learning the business. He and Rose shared the inner office that had once belonged to his father. He caught on quickly. Rose was proud of him and that was pleasing, but it was not enough. He spent evenings at Oberlin, helping the Dramat with their fall production, and it was a success and that was pleasing, but it was not enough. The Black Prince shared his nightly dreams and that was always pleasing, but even that was not enough, for the Black Prince was dreaming and West Ridge, Ohio, was no dream.
Branch grew desperate as winter grew near.
He decided to spend a few days in Chicago with Peter Beaumont, but Rose stopped that. “Ya get out of the Army all of a sudden you can’t wait to go visit. Well go! Go! Go on, go!” He had never been able to match her when she chose to overpower him, so he stayed. There was an actor at Oberlin who might have served him, but what if he talked? Branch knew the answer: it would kill him. And Rose? What if she ever found out about him?
That answer Branch knew too, but it was so hideous he never named it.
So what was he to do? Nothing. He could do nothing. But the cost. The cost. Branch began overeating, stuffing great slabs of food down his dry throat, following it with tankards of beer. But his throat remained dry. He had always tended to flesh and now the tendency flowered: a double chin appeared; the layers of flesh below his hips blistered, camouflaging his hip bones. Some nights he would slave at the office till his bloated body ached; some nights he helped at the college, building sets, trimming budgets, anything, anything.
But every so often he would drive by the Pelican and wonder.
Cruise (noun).
To cruise (verb).
Cruising (participle).
Branch loathed the word in any form. The humiliation (he, Branch Scudder, fumbling after some stranger, praying for a pick-up in some scummy bar), the danger (the police: anyone might be the police), the ever-lasting lying (“My name ... ? My name ... ?”) and, most hideous of all, the hovering stench of guilt.
He hated being “that way,” hated having to guard the secret. There were days, as he walked along the streets of West Ridge, that he wanted to scream it out, scream it out, just to end it, just to get it at last over and done. I’m just like anybody else. I want love. Is that so terrible? Love! I want love!
And so, in the name of love, at precisely thirty-five minutes after nine o’clock on the night of the 23rd of April, Branch drove (was driven) into the glow of the mute purple bird.
He parked in the middle of the lot and got out of the car and thought he was remarkably calm until he took a step and realized how close he was to not being able to walk. As he crossed to the front door of the bar his panic built wildly, and he was panting as he touched the knob. He froze there for a while, left hand out. Then he turned back to the car and had actually taken a step in that direction before whirling around, yanking at the bar door, shoving it open, stepping inside.
The place was almost deserted. A fat man and woman sat at the bar, talking to the bartender. In the far left corner a jukebox glowed. In the back a crippled little man was making pizza.
And to the right, engaged in a solitary dart game, stood Mr. Saginaw.
Branch could not help smiling as he hurried to the bar. Mr. Saginaw was head of the chemistry department at West Ridge High, a popular teacher, lean and witty and dry. And a bachelor. That was the fact that always preoccupied the students. Why was old Saginaw a bachelor? How they strained their adolescent imaginations for reasons: He had once been married but his wife had been killed tragically; he had once been engaged to a beautiful girl who left him stunned and weeping at the altar; he had loved a Catholic who returned his devotion but her husband was a fiend who would not die. Branch shook his head and signaled to the bartender for a glass of cold beer. Why was old Saginaw a bachelor? Seeing him here, at this time, in this place, made it all so obvious, so painfully plain. Because he was queer. That was why.
Another couple came in, younger than the fat pair, and apparently acquainted, for in a moment the four of them were laughing together. Sad old Saginaw still played his darts and the bartender busied himself drying glassware, the cross of his trade. Branch glanced at his watch. If no one came in soon, he would go. The jukebox sounded “Stardust” in response to the crippled pizza man’s nickel. (A romantic, Branch thought. Well, so am I.) He finished his beer and ordered a second, a third, a fourth. Come on, Somebody—No don’t no don’t—yes please—no please—Somebody—no Nobody—
The door to the Pelican opened and Somebody walked in.
Branch glanced up, then back to his beer. Somebody was walking in his direction, and then the stool two down from his was occupied. By what? A thin young man with a scar. A long, puckered scar curving from the right eye down across the bony cheek to the thin mouth. A thin young man with a scar and black hair piled high, curl on curl.
Go away, Branch thought, but he smiled at the scar.
And the scar smiled on him in return.
“Beer,” the man with the scar said.
Branch finished his draft. “Make that two.” He glanced over his right shoulder to where Saginaw played his solitary dart game. As he returned his glance, his eyes met the eyes over the scar. There was no flicker. Nothing.
Yet.
The bartender earned his keep. Branch picked up his glass and turned it slowly in his hand. He did not speak, nor did the scar, but the air was filled with the impending inevitable conversation.
“How do you figure the Indians?” Branch said. God! Talking about baseball. He, Branch Scudder, who couldn’t even catch (though he seemed to remember his father once trying to teach him), was talking about baseball. But he went right on; baseball was safe. “Think they have a chance?”
“They gotta beat the Yankees.”
“That’s the truth.”
“They got pitching, all right.”
“Sure. But the hitting’s something else again.”
“That’s the truth.”
Branch nodded and gulped down his beer. He raised his hand and the bartender came over. “One more. Two?” and he looked at the scar. A shake. “Just one.” The bartender took the glass. “How do you figure the Indians?” Branch said. “Think they have a chance?”
“Who gives a shit about the Indians,” the bartender said.
Branch paid him and he walked away. “Un-American, wouldn’t you say? A Communist?”
“Somebody oughta notify Eastland about him.”
“Absolutely,” Branch agreed and they smiled at each other. “You from around here?”
A muscular man entered the bar. He sat across from Branch, absently fingering a tattoo on his forearm. The man with the scar took in the newcomer, then turned back to Branch. “Just passing through,” he said.
“Same here. Just passing through.”
They sipped in silence for a while. A slight, effeminate boy came in and the man with the tattoo smiled. They moved to the jukebox and put in a coin. Mantovani began to play.
“Pretty,” the man with the scar said.
Which, Branch wondered, the boy or the music? He nodded, noncommittal.
“Headed for Cleveland?” the man with the scar asked.
“Wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Good town, Cleveland.”
“If you like good towns.”
“You can have fun in Cleveland, if you know how.”
“I hear.”
“They got some good bars in Cleveland, not like this.”
Branch nodded.
“You know the Raven?”
“The Raven?” Branch had heard of it; it was that kind of bar.
“It’s a bar.”
“Oh.”
; “You can really have a time for yourself at the Raven. It swings.”
“I think I’ve heard of it,” Branch allowed. He finished his beer. The fencing made him thirsty. Why don’t we just come out and say it? Why don’t we cut the crap and just come right out in the open and say it?
The bartender came over and Branch was about to order when the man with the scar said, “Dos cervezas, amigo.”
The bartender muttered as he filled the glasses.
“Gracias,” Branch said.
“De nada.”
“Name’s Aaron,” Branch said, holding out his hand.
“Evelyn,” the man with the scar said.
Branch looked at him.
“I know, I know, it’s a girl’s name. My father was a joker. Besides, there’s Evelyn Waugh. A lot of Englishmen are named Evelyn. It’s very big over there.” I guess.
“That’s what I’m told, anyway.”
“Hello there, Evelyn.”
“Hi.”
“Evelyn from Clevelyn.”
“Hey, that’s good.”
“De nada.” Branch’s eyes roved the bar: the laughing foursome, the baseball-hating bartender, the Mantovani-loving couple across, sad old Saginaw with only his darts for company—“ ‘Chemistry’ comes from ‘alchemy,’ a science which tried to prolong life; please prolong mine by staying awake during my lectures.” Branch gave a little laugh.
“Aaron? Aaron?”
Branch turned. “What?”
“What’s so interesting about him?” The man with the scar indicated Saginaw.
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
“We were talking about my name, remember? About how it’s a girl’s name.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Boy’s name, girl’s name, it doesn’t really matter, I don’t think. I mean what difference does it make? Boys and girls, they’re really not so different, are they?”
“No. No,” I’m just like anybody else.
“I mean, you weren’t laughing at me just because my father gave me a name like that.”
Boys & Girls Together Page 43