by Lynn Hall
“Oh, yeah.”
“I’ve been trying all afternoon to call you, Floyd, but I couldn’t get an answer.”
“I was down helping my buddy at his store. Tom Naylor, you know.” He attempted some kind of last-minute dignity.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. All your grades for your summer school work are in my office now. It looks as though we didn’t quite make it this time, Floyd. I’m really sorry. I know you tried. But it will be better for you in the long run if you repeat your freshman classes.”
Silence hung between them.
“I flunked again.”
“I’m afraid so, Floyd. But I don’t want you to get discouraged. You’re going to make it. People mature at different speeds, you know. It doesn’t mean you won’t catch up with the others in the end.”
Floyd said a short hard word, but silently.
“I’ll be in my office tomorrow afternoon, and I’d like you to stop by if you can, about two o’clock, and we’ll work out your class schedule. All right?”
“Yeah.”
There was an awkward, straining pause. “Fine then, Floyd. See you at two.”
Floyd sat deep in the davenport and his own hated flesh, sickened by his imagination. The rest of the world gathered speed and moved away from him. His younger brothers and sisters caught up with him and slipped ahead, out of sight, out of the family and into worlds of their own. The best person he knew, Tom Naylor, evaded him and became frighteningly far away while Floyd fought and thrashed and ran and stayed exactly where he would always stay. In ninth grade. At sixteen.
He pushed himself up out of the davenport. It was too much for him to handle. Everything was too much for him. He couldn’t lose ground like this, slip back into last year when everyone else was going away from him. Yet he couldn’t do anything else.
What he wanted most of all at that moment was to bawl like a baby, but not alone. It had to be with someone who would hug his shoulder and murmur sympathetically and then make everything all right again. The ache of his need settled in his stomach and made him want to eat.
The house was filling up now. A car stopped outside and deposited the overalled bulk of his father, who had, as usual, stopped off at the hotel for a few rounds with some of the others from the silica mine where he worked. He came into the house exhaling Scotch and a vaguely musical good humor. Four or five streaky-faced youngsters slammed through the door behind him, swarming around Floyd on their way toward the kitchen without really seeing him.
Floyd followed them. His mother was obviously not home, but no one thought to comment on it. A couple of loaves of bread were torn open at the kitchen table, along with the usual clutter of open jelly and peanut-butter jars, cereal bowls with the morning’s cornflakes pasted to their sides, pop bottles and beer cans with necklaces of flies at their mouths, curled packages of drying bologna and cheese, and almost every kind of cracker box.
Floyd found a knife on the table, swished it savagely through the air to discourage the fly that rode in its butter, and began elbowing his way through the smaller children toward the bread. He heard neither their whining nor their shrill laughter. He didn’t notice when Teddy and Butch, wrestling for possession of a knife that dripped with jelly, knocked him in the back and left a trail of grape on his shirt.
He ate four sandwiches, opened a can of baked beans, dumped them into one of the used cereal bowls, and ate them, then opened a beer and buttered several graham crackers. When they were gone, he began to feel a little better. He belched and then, encouraged by audience reaction, repeated it again and again with silly faces that brought the kids’ giggles to shrieks. Long ago Floyd had mastered the art of swallowing air in such a way as to produce quite a good belch. It was his claim to fame within the family.
But tonight the good feeling of making the little kids laugh began to fade almost as soon as it came, so he left the kitchen and went to the bedroom he shared with Mike and Butch. The bad thoughts were coming to the surface again. He shut the bedroom door and sat down amid the tangle of sheets piled on the bed.
Flunked. Failed. It had happened again. Crushingly painful memories pressed in on him. Fat, awkward, stupid little Floyd Schleffe on the opening day of school, going into the fifth-grade room while all the kids he knew and had grown used to shuffled into the sixth-grade room across the hall, Mrs. Greene’s room. Wearing his agony like another layer of fat, he had hunched his way into Mrs. Lorwold’s room, where the younger kids whom he had always looked down upon were watching his progress, stifling their giggles, closing themselves away from him behind the barrier of their superiority. Not only was he brought down to their level, he had sunk beneath it. He belonged across the hall in Mrs. Greene’s room, but here he was exactly where he had been a year ago. Mrs. Lorwold had been kind, and eventually he had worked his way into the class, but not as a fully accepted member. His was the clown’s role.
“I can’t stand it again,” he murmured. Another public failure, another overwhelming proof to the world of what Floyd Schleffe was and was not. Already he felt exposed. When his mind began moving forward, imagining what the first day of school this year would be like, the projected humiliation was more than he could think about all at once. Self-preservation sent his mind veering off in search of something positive.
Maybe it won’t be quite so bad this year, he thought. This year I’ve got something I didn’t have in fifth grade. I’ve got Tom. Anybody who’s a friend of Tom Naylor can’t get laughed at too much. Tom is so smart that when they see him and me running around together maybe they’ll kind of forget that I flunked.
No, he argued, I’ll be a freshman. Tom will be a senior. Last year it wasn’t too bad with just two grades between us, but now with me being a freshman again, will he still want to run around with me?
The panic was rising again, the nightmare feeling of straining as hard as he could to run, but being held in place by something he couldn’t fight. He tried to cry a little, but it didn’t take away the panic-pressure.
He remembered the camaraderie of those two evenings last spring when Tom had come to his room and they had talked. Those were probably the best nights he’d ever spent, and he felt sure Tom had enjoyed the closeness just as much as he had.
That’s what we need, he thought. Another night just sitting around up here talking about life and sex and stuff. I know what! I’ll show him my dirty pictures, let him know I’ve never showed them to anyone else in my life. Then he’ll know he’s my best friend. Maybe later on I can tell him about—school—and he’ll say, “Don’t feel bad, Floyd. You’re my buddy, and I won’t let anyone make fun of you.’’
For a moment he sat, savoring the imagined words. Then, quickened by anticipation, he moved around the room, smoothing the bedclothes, wiping the dusty dresser top with his sleeve, and pitching dirty clothes into the closet. He found a fairly clean shirt and a pair of trousers that looked all right except for a dangling belt loop, and put them on. He combed his hair down with a wet comb. Then, with a quick look to be sure the packet of pictures was still in the back corner of his dresser drawer, he left the house and started down the hill.
As he walked through the river-scented twilight, the old thick aloneness came around him again, as real as the bulk of his body, and as hated. It was made of the knowledge that if he wanted to be close to anyone he would have to make the overtures himself, and he would have to blind himself to nuances of face and voice that might mean the other person was wishing he wasn’t there.
A car pulled slowly up the hill toward him. He waved as it detoured past and went on. He felt like the black Scotty. Years ago there had been a Christmas present, a pair of tiny plastic dogs mounted on magnets, one black and one white. If you put them together correctly, they snapped and joined, but if you made one dog approach the other from the wrong direction, the other dog moved away. It would keep moving just a little bit away from your dog, and you couldn’t force them to touch.
Ordinarily Floyd
liked this after-supper time. It was heavy with promise for the coming evening. The fact that his evenings almost never lived up to the twilight promise did not diminish the excitement of that hope. Night was when the good things might happen. A girl might let him touch her, or Tom might come home with him to sit around and talk; the darkness might eat away the aloneness mass around him and let somebody in close.
“I’ll show Tom my pictures,” he recited, to steady himself, “and I’ll tell him they’re just our secret. I’ll tell him he’s my best friend, and if I get up the nerve, I’ll tell him about flunking.”
But when he got to the corner by The Cottage, he lost his courage. In some way he didn’t fully understand, it was very important that Tom not be too busy for him tonight. Not tonight.
With relief he saw the bait stand. I’ll stop over there for a minute first, he thought.
He climbed the low flood dike on the far side of the river road, stepped over the railroad tracks, and crossed the miniature park toward the bait stand. Yellow bug lights illuminated the small wooden stand and gave it a mildly carnival-like atmosphere.
Floyd opened the cooler that stood outside the building, and fished out a Fudgsicle. Leaning on the scarred board counter, he looked through the screen into the familiar interior of the stand. Orv was in there, good old Orv, one of Floyd’s favorite people.
“How’s it going, Orv?” he asked as he slapped down the money for the Fudgsicle.
Orv didn’t get up from his perch on the corner of the bait chest, but he did smile at Floyd, and that helped. They talked easily about nothing, two people who shared a small existence and saw each other just about every day. There was little to say, but they made the most of what there was.
“Hot as hell today.”
“Sure was.”
“Damn humidity, that’s what does it to you.”
“Lots of boats on the river tonight, Orv. You do a pretty good business today, did you?”
“Not bad. Schmidts came up from Chicago with a bunch of friends, fishing. I think they was drinking more than they was fishing, but they bought a mess of bait.”
Floyd snorted softly and worked at his Fudgsicle.
“Hey, I heard something today,” Orv said suddenly, pleased to have remembered this bit of news in time to keep the conversation from dying completely. “You remember Ward Alexander? He got discharged out of the Air Force.”
The way the older man emphasized “discharged” made Floyd think there was more to the story, something good, maybe. “How’s come he’s out so soon? It hasn’t been but about a year since he went in, has it?” He wrinkled his face in an effort to remember, but Ward Alexander had been several years ahead of him in school and Floyd had never kept track of him.
Orv slid down from his seat and came closer to Floyd. His stale breath mingled unnoticed with Floyd’s own. A quickening excitement shook Floyd. He knew he was going to hear something good.
“They say he got a medical discharge,” Orv said, “but I got a pretty good idea it wasn’t no flat feet, or nothing like that.” He leaned back and waited for understanding to dawn on Floyd’s face. It didn’t dawn.
“Why? What do you think it was?” Floyd said. The Fudgsicle was dripping over his knuckles, but he didn’t notice.
Orv looked wise, scoffing, aloof. “That kid’s fruity, always was. Queer as a three dollar bill.”
Floyd stared, and slowly understood. “You mean he’s really queer?” The thought aroused and delighted him.
Orv nodded, pulling down the corners of his mouth in grand disdain. “That Ward always was an odd kid, never had nothing to do with the girls. I says to myself when he joined the Air Force, I says, they ain’t about to let somebody like that stay in the service. They’ll find out about him and kick him out on his can, and now here he is, just like I said. ‘Medical discharge.’ Hah.”
A group of men approached from the direction of the docks and handed Orv a string of fish to be kept in his freezer overnight. Before they were gone, another customer came, so Floyd moved away from the stand and began to plod up toward the dike and the lighted windows of The Cottage, beyond.
He had been warmed, momentarily, by Orv’s confiding in him and by having something that bad to think about someone else. But now Orv was too busy to talk any more, and the old need was coming up again in Floyd. It lodged at the base of his throat.
He stood for a fearful moment on the crest of the dike, thinking about what to say to Tom to get him to have time to talk tonight. At last he let go of his breath and started toward The Cottage.
3
Tom and Charlotte sat at the kitchen table and dreamed out through the window while the remains of their supper cooled around their elbows. It was a broad double window that showed them the side of the hotel across the street, a good stretch of the river, and just about all of Buck Creek’s activity.
It was a good place to sit after supper on a summer evening, when the day traffic of bicycles, truck campers, and cars with empty boat trailers rattling behind them, was gradually displaced by the night traffic—the handful of familiar cars in front of the hotel bar and pre-driver’s-license youngsters clustered under the streetlight. They sat on their bicycle seats, pushing lightly from tiptoe to tiptoe in an effort to find that perfect point of balance that would hold the bike upright, motionless. They didn’t want to ride anywhere, but they needed the bikes for something to hold onto in the presence of one another.
The kitchen was not quite as light as it had been when they sat down to eat, but neither Tom nor Charlotte felt a need to do anything about it. Tom had a sleepy, bloated sensation of having eaten more than he wanted, and of having nothing to do that he didn’t want to do in the evening ahead. There was nothing much that he did want to do, either, but at least he wasn’t going to have to force himself through any chores. It was a momentary luxury.
Charlotte sighed and stirred. Still looking out the window with her chin on her hand, she said, “Well, how do you like it by now? Buck Creek.”
She asked lightly, but Tom knew her well enough to know that she wanted very much for him to like her hometown. He was glad he could answer honestly.
“I like it fine. You said I would, and I do. Not that there would be any future for me here after college.”
“No, of course not,” she murmured.
“But still, it’s fun living here for now. It’s an experience.”
“You don’t miss—Wheaton? You never say anything.”
“Oh”—he paused, not wanting to overdo it— “I miss the guys, having somebody to do things with, you know.”
Her eyes teased him. “You don’t miss any girls?”
He grinned. “Girls are a lot easier to find than friends are. No, I’ve got my eye on one or two girls here that I intend to work on when school starts.”
“Well, you’ll find some nice friends, too, don’t worry about that.” She hesitated, then went on more carefully. “Is that all you miss about Wheaton?”
Tom reached for a cheese-filled celery stalk, not because he wanted it, but just because it was there. “If you mean, do I miss Dad, I’ll have to admit I really don’t, very much. I saw so little of him when you were—when he was living with us— that it doesn’t seem like much of a change now.” He ended on a soft, half-embarrassed laugh.
“Good. I’m glad you feel that way. You never said much, and I just wondered.” With sudden self-conscious briskness she looked at her watch and got up. “Do you realize how long we’ve been sitting here? Sewing Club starts in just a few minutes.” She began shuttling dishes from table to counter.
Tom unfolded himself and stretched until his fingertips touched the tiles of the ceiling.
“You just run along and leave the dishes to me. You don’t want them to start the gossiping without you. Where is it tonight?”
“At Miriam Short’s. That means fancy refreshments. You’re a doll, you know it?”
She patted his face in a self-conscious gesture as she hu
rried from the kitchen; her hand felt warm and dry and kind against the bones of his jaw.
Tom began looking through the cupboards for suitable containers for half a casserole of scalloped potatoes and two pork chops. The actual washing of the dishes he didn’t mind—in fact, he rather enjoyed it—but the clearing up wore him out.
In a few minutes Charlotte reappeared, hair combed, lipstick on, bulky knitting bag under one elbow.
“Why don’t you just leave the shop lights on till about eight, unless you get customers, of course, which you probably won’t on a Thursday night. You don’t need to hang around any later than that, though, if you feel like going somewhere. Car keys are on the television.”
“Yes, yes, run along,” he said, waving her away with one hand while he aimed a stream of pink soap into the dishwater. “Have a wonderful evening talking about whoever isn’t there.”
The door banged, and a sweet blueness settled around him. He longed for the evening to bring something that he knew it wouldn’t bring, excitement of some kind or contact with another mind. If he were still in Wheaton on an evening like this, in a mood like this, he would call Phil and they’d go someplace dark and quiet and talk about what it might feel like to die, or argue the old question of the tree falling in the forest: if there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
He went to the table with a sponge to round up the crumbs. Beyond the window Floyd Schleffe was walking slowly down—Tom held his breath—down past The Cottage toward the bait stand. Swiftly Tom wiped at the table and ducked back into the safer center of the kitchen, away from the window.
“Not tonight, please,” he asked of whatever power might control Floyd. Tonight what he needed was a friend of the mind, and Floyd Schleffe’s dense crudeness only intensified the need.
The dishwater was so hot he could feel the skin grow numb beneath his fingernails. Without really thinking about the task, Tom enjoyed the slow automatic achievement of china gleaming in the drain basket beside his arm. His mood of aloneness made him begin to think with pleasure about the start of school in less than two weeks. Senior year. Last and best chance to make it all the way in the state music contest, which might open the way for a music scholarship for college. In the meantime, it was going to be good, this senior year. He could feel it all through him. He knew his way around the school and its customs by now, and yet he would still be new enough to be of some interest among the girls. Karen. Probably something solid would develop from the tentative mutual interest that had begun last spring between him and the big, quiet, intelligent girl whose eyes made him feel that he could say anything to her and she would understand.