Short Stories: Five Decades

by Irwin Shaw

  “Some,” Eddie said carefully. He pulled down a grape leaf and cracked it between his hands, held up the two parts and looked at them critically.

  Lawrence didn’t say anything, but Eddie sensed a feeling developing in the grape arbor, like a growth. “I gotta save my money,” Eddie said harshly. “I got a date. I got thirty-five cents. How do I know she won’t want a banana-split tonight?”

  Lawrence nodded again, indicating that he understood, but sorrow washed up in his face like a high tide.

  They sat in silence, uncomfortably, listening to the rustle of the grape leaves.

  “All the time I was practicing,” Lawrence said, finally, “I kept thinking, ‘I would like a strawberry ice cream soda, I would like a strawberry ice cream soda …’”

  Eddie stood up abruptly. “Aaah, let’s get outa here. Let’s go down to the lake. Maybe something’s doing down the lake.”

  They walked together through the fields to the lake, not saying anything, Lawrence flexing his fingers mechanically.

  “Why don’t yuh stop that fer once?” Eddie asked, with distaste. “Just fer once?”

  “This is good for my fingers. It keeps them loose.”

  “Yuh give me a pain.”

  “All right,” Lawrence said, “I won’t do it now.”

  They walked on again, Lawrence barely up to Eddie’s chin, frailer, cleaner, his hair mahogany dark and smooth on his high, pink, baby brow. Lawrence whistled. Eddie listened with disguised respect.

  “That’s not so bad,” Eddie said. “You don’t whistle half bad.”

  “That’s from the Brahms second piano concerto.” Lawrence stopped whistling for a moment. “It’s easy to whistle.”

  “Yuh give me a pain,” Eddie said, mechanically, “a real pain.”

  When they got to the lake, there was nobody there. Flat and unruffled it stretched across, like a filled blue cup, to the woods on the other side.

  “Nobody here,” Eddie said, staring at the raft, unmoving and dry in the still water. “That’s good. Too many people here all the time.” His eyes roamed the lake, to the farthest corner, to the deepest cove.

  “How would yuh like to go rowing in a boat out in that old lake?” Eddie asked.

  “We haven’t got a boat,” Lawrence answered reasonably.

  “I didn’t ask yuh that. I asked, ‘How’d yuh like to go rowing?’”

  “I’d like to go rowing if we had a …”

  “Shut up!” Eddie took Lawrence’s arm, led him through tall grass to the water’s edge, where a flat-bottomed old boat was drawn up, the water just lapping at the stern, high, an old red color, faded by sun and storm. A pair of heavy oars lay along the bottom of the boat.

  “Jump in,” Eddie said, “when I tell yuh to.”

  “But it doesn’t belong to us.”

  “Yuh want to go rowing, don’t yuh?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Then jump in when I give yuh the word.”

  Lawrence neatly took off his shoes and socks while Eddie hauled the boat into the water.

  “Jump in!” Eddie called.

  Lawrence jumped. The boat glided out across the still lake. Eddie rowed industriously once they got out of the marsh grass.

  “This isn’t half bad, is it?” He leaned back on his oars for a moment.

  “It’s nice,” Lawrence said. “It’s very peaceful.”

  “Aaah,” said Eddie, “yuh even talk like a pianist.” And he rowed. After a while he got tired and let the boat go with the wind. He lay back and thought of the night to come, dabbling his fingers in the water, happy. “They oughta see me now, back on a Hunnerd and Seventy-third Street,” he said. “They oughta see me handle this old boat.”

  “Everything would be perfect,” Lawrence agreed, picking his feet up out of the puddle that was collecting on the bottom of the boat, “if we only knew that when we got out of this boat, we were going to get a strawberry ice cream soda.”

  “Why don’t yuh think of somethin’ else? Always thinkin’ of one thing! Don’t yuh get tired?”

  “No,” Lawrence said, after thinking it over.

  “Here!” Eddie pushed the oars toward his brother. “Row! That’ll give yuh somethin’ else t’ think about.”

  Lawrence took the oars gingerly. “This is bad for my hands,” he explained as he pulled dutifully on the oars. “It stiffens the fingers.”

  “Look where yuh’re goin’!” Eddie cried impatiently. “In circles! What the hell’s the sense in goin’ in circles?”

  “That’s the way the boat goes,” Lawrence said, pulling hard. “I can’t help it if that’s the way the boat goes.”

  “A pianist. A regular pianist. That’s all yuh are. Gimme those oars.”

  Gratefully Lawrence yielded the oars up.

  “It’s not my fault if the boat goes in circles. That’s the way it’s made,” he persisted quietly.

  “Aaah, shut up!” Eddie pulled savagely on the oars. The boat surged forward, foam at the prow.

  “Hey, out there in the boat! Hey!” A man’s voice called over the water.

  “Eddie,” Lawrence said, “there’s a man yelling at us.”

  “Come on in here, before I beat your pants off!” the man called. “Get out of my boat!”

  “He wants us to get out of his boat,” Lawrence interpreted. “This must be his boat.”

  “You don’t mean it,” Eddie snorted with deep sarcasm. He turned around to shout at the man on the shore, who was waving his arms now. “All right,” Eddie called. “All right. We’ll give yuh yer old boat. Keep your shirt on.”

  The man jumped up and down. “I’ll beat yer heads off,” he shouted.

  Lawrence wiped his nose nervously. “Eddie,” he said, “why don’t we row over to the other side and walk home from there?”

  Eddie looked at his brother contemptuously. “What’re yuh—afraid?”

  “No,” Lawrence said, after a pause. “But why should we get into an argument?”

  For answer Eddie pulled all the harder on the oars. The boat flew through the water. Lawrence squinted to look at the rapidly nearing figure of the man on the bank.

  “He’s a great big man, Eddie,” Lawrence reported. “You never saw such a big man. And he looks awfully sore. Maybe we shouldn’t’ve gone out in this boat. Maybe he doesn’t like people to go out in his boat. Eddie, are you listening to me?”

  With a final heroic pull, Eddie drove the boat into the shore. It grated with a horrible noise on the pebbles of the lake bottom.

  “Oh, my God,” the man said, “that’s the end of that boat.”

  “That doesn’t really hurt it, mister,” Lawrence said. “It makes a lot of noise, but it doesn’t do any damage.”

  The man reached over and grabbed Lawrence by the back of his neck with one hand and placed him on solid ground. He was a very big man, with tough bristles that grew all over his double chin and farmer’s muscles in his arms that were quivering with passion now under a mat of hair. There was a boy of about thirteen with him, obviously, from his look, his son, and the son was angry, too.

  “Hit ’im, Pop,” the son kept calling. “Wallop ’im!”

  The man shook Lawrence again and again. He was almost too overcome with anger to speak. “No damage, eh? Only noise, eh!” he shouted into Lawrence’s paling face. “I’ll show you damage. I’ll show you noise.”

  Eddie spoke up. Eddie was out of the boat now, an oar gripped in his hand, ready for the worst. “That’s not fair,” he said. “Look how much bigger yuh are than him. Why’n’t yuh pick on somebody yuh size?”

  The farmer’s boy jumped up and down in passion, exactly as his father had done. “I’ll fight him, Pop. I’ll fight ’im! I’m his size! Come on, kid, put yer hands up!”

  The farmer looked at his son, looked at Lawrence. Slowly he released Lawrence. “O.K.,” he said. “Show him, Nathan.”

  Nathan pushed Lawrence. “Come into the woods, kid,” he said belligerently. “We kin settle it
there.”

  “One in the eye,” Eddie whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “Give ’im one in the eye, Larry!”

  But Lawrence stood with eyes lowered, regarding his hands.

  “Well?” the farmer asked.

  Lawrence still looked at his hands, opening and closing them slowly.

  “He don’t wanna fight,” Nathan taunted Eddie. “He just wants t’ row in our boat, he don’t wanna fight.”

  “He wants to fight, all right,” Eddie said staunchly, and under his breath, “Come on, Larry, in the kisser, a fast one in the puss …”

  But Larry stood still, calmly, seeming to be thinking of Brahms and Beethoven, of distant concert halls.

  “He’s yella, that’s what’s the matter with him!” Nathan roared. “He’s a coward, all city kids’re cowards!”

  “He’s no coward,” Eddie insisted, knowing in his deepest heart that his brother was a coward. With his knees he nudged Lawrence. “Bring up yuh left! Please, Larry, bring up yuh left!”

  Deaf to all pleas, Lawrence kept his hands at his sides.

  “Yella! Yella! Yella!” Nathan screamed loudly.

  “Well,” the farmer wanted to know, “is he goin’ to fight or not?”

  “Larry!” Fifteen years of desperation was in Eddie’s voice, but it made no mark on Lawrence. Eddie turned slowly toward home. “He’s not goin’ to fight,” he said flatly. And then, as one throws a bone to a neighbor’s noisy dog, “Come on, you …”

  Slowly Lawrence bent over, picked up his shoes and socks, took a step after his brother.

  “Wait a minute, you!” the farmer called. He went after Eddie, turned him around. “I want to talk to ye.”

  “Yeah?” Eddie said sadly, with little defiance. “What do yuh wanna say?”

  “See that house over there?” the farmer asked, pointing.

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “What about it?”

  “That’s my house,” the farmer said. “You stay away from it. See?”

  “O.K. O.K.,” Eddie said wearily, all pride gone.

  “See that boat there?” the farmer asked, pointing at the source of all the trouble.

  “I see it,” Eddie said.

  “That’s my boat. Stay away from it or I’ll beat hell outa ye. See?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I see,” Eddie said. “I won’t touch yer lousy boat.” And once more, to Lawrence, “Come on, you.…”

  “Yella! Yella! Yella!” Nathan kept roaring, jumping up and down, until they passed out of earshot, across the pleasant fields, ripe with the soft sweet smell of clover in the late summer afternoon. Eddie walked before Lawrence, his face grimly contracted, his mouth curled in shame and bitterness. He stepped on the clover blossoms fiercely, as though he hated them, wanted to destroy them, the roots under them, the very ground they grew in.

  Holding his shoes in his hands, his head bent on his chest, his hair still mahogany smooth and mahogany dark, Lawrence followed ten feet back in the footsteps, plainly marked in the clover, of his brother.

  “Yella,” Eddie was muttering, loud enough for the villain behind him to hear clearly. “Yella! Yella as a flower. My own brother,” he marveled. “If it was me I’d’a been glad to get killed before I let anybody call me that. I would let ’em cut my heart out first. My own brother. Yella as a flower. Just one in the eye! Just one! Just to show ’im … But he stands there, takin’ guff from a kid with holes in his pants. A pianist. Lawrrrrence! They knew what they were doin’ when they called yuh Lawrrrrence! Don’t talk to me! I don’t want yuh ever to talk to me again as long as yuh live! Lawrrrrence!”

  In sorrow too deep for tears, the two brothers reached home, ten feet, ten million miles apart.

  Without looking around, Eddie went to the grape arbor, stretched out on the bench. Lawrence looked after him, his face pale and still, then went into the house.

  Face downward on the bench, close to the rich black earth of the arbor, Eddie bit his fingers to keep the tears back. But he could not bite hard enough, and the tears came, a bitter tide, running down his face, dropping on the black soft earth in which the grapes were rooted.

  “Eddie!”

  Eddie scrambled around, pushing the tears away with iron hands. Lawrence was standing there, carefully pulling on doeskin gloves over his small hands. “Eddie,” Lawrence was saying, stonily disregarding the tears. “I want you to come with me.”

  Silently, but with singing in his heart so deep it called new tears to his wet eyes, Eddie got up, blew his nose, and followed after his brother, caught up with him, walked side by side with him across the field of clover, so lightly that the red and purple blossoms barely bent in their path.

  Eddie knocked sternly at the door of the farmhouse, three knocks, solid, vigorous, the song of trumpets caught in them.

  Nathan opened the door. “What do ye want?” he asked suspiciously.

  “A little while ago,” Eddie said formally, “yuh offered to fight my brother. He’s ready now.”

  Nathan looked at Lawrence, standing there, straight, his head up, his baby lips compressed into a thin tight line, his gloved hands creased in solid fists. He started to close the door. “He had his chance,” Nathan said.

  Eddie kept the door open firmly. “Yuh offered, remember that,” he reminded Nathan politely.

  “He shoulda fought then,” Nathan said stubbornly. “He had his chance.”

  “Come on,” Eddie almost begged. “Yuh wanted to fight before.”

  “That was before. Lemme close the door.”

  “Yuh can’t do this!” Eddie was shouting desperately. “Yuh offered!”

  Nathan’s father, the farmer, appeared in the doorway. He looked bleakly out. “What’s goin’ on here?” he asked.

  “A little while ago,” Eddie spoke very fast, “this man here offered to fight this man here.” His eloquent hand indicated first Nathan, then Lawrence. “Now we’ve come to take the offer.”

  The farmer looked at his son. “Well?”

  “He had his chance,” Nathan grumbled sullenly.

  “Nathan don’t want t’ fight,” the farmer said to Eddie. “Get outa here.”

  Lawrence stepped up, over to Nathan. He looked Nathan squarely in the eye. “Yella,” he said to Nathan.

  The farmer pushed his son outside the door. “Go fight him,” he ordered.

  “We can settle it in the woods,” Lawrence said.

  “Wipe him up, Larry!” Eddie called as Lawrence and Nathan set out for the woods, abreast, but a polite five yards apart. Eddie watched them disappear behind trees, in silence.

  The farmer sat down heavily on the porch, took out a package of cigarettes, offered them to Eddie. “Want one?”

  Eddie looked at the cigarettes, suddenly took one. “Thanks,” he said.

  The farmer struck a match for the cigarettes, leaned back against a pillar, stretched comfortably, in silence. Eddie licked the tobacco of his first cigarette nervously off his lips.

  “Sit down,” the farmer said, “ye kin never tell how long kids’ll fight.”

  “Thanks,” Eddie said, sitting, pulling daringly at the cigarette, exhaling slowly, with natural talent.

  In silence they both looked across the field to the woods that shielded the battlefield. The tops of the trees waved a little in the wind and the afternoon was collecting in deep blue shadows among the thick brown tree-trunks where they gripped the ground. A chicken hawk floated lazily over the field, banking and slipping with the wind. The farmer regarded the chicken hawk without malice.

  “Some day,” the farmer said, “I’m going to get that son of a gun.”

  “What is it?” Eddie asked, carefully holding the cigarette out so he could talk.

  “Chicken hawk. You’re from the city, ain’t ye?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like it in the city?”

  “Nothing like it.”

  The farmer puffed reflectively. “Some day I’m goin’ to live in the city. No sense in livin’ in the country these day
s.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Eddie said. “The country’s very nice. There’s a lot to be said for the country.”

  The farmer nodded, weighing the matter in his own mind. He put out his cigarette. “Another cigarette?” he asked Eddie.

  “No, thanks,” Eddie said, “I’m still working on this.”

  “Say,” said the farmer, “do you think your brother’ll damage my kid?”

  “It’s possible,” Eddie said. “He’s very tough, my brother. He has dozens a’ fights, every month. Every kid back home’s scared stiff a’ him. Why,” said Eddie, sailing full into fancy, “I remember one day, Larry fought three kids all in a row. In a half a hour. He busted all their noses. In a half-hour! He’s got a terrific left jab—one, two, bang! like this—and it gets ’em in the nose.”

  “Well, he can’t do Nathan’s nose any harm.” The farmer laughed. “No matter what you did to a nose like that it’d be a improvement.”

  “He’s got a lot of talent, my brother,” Eddie said, proud of the warrior in the woods. “He plays the piano. He’s a very good pianoplayer. You ought to hear him.”

  “A little kid like that,” the farmer marveled. “Nathan can’t do nothing.”

  Off in the distance, in the gloom under the trees, two figures appeared, close together, walked slowly out into the sunlight of the field. Eddie and the farmer stood up. Wearily the two fighters approached, together, their arms dangling at their sides.

  Eddie looked first at Nathan. Nathan’s mouth had been bleeding and there was a lump on his forehead and his ear was red. Eddie smiled with satisfaction. Nathan had been in a fight. Eddie walked slowly toward Lawrence. Lawrence approached with head high. But it was a sadly battered head. The hair was tangled, an eye was closed, the nose was bruised and still bled. Lawrence sucked in the blood from his nose from time to time with his tongue. His collar was torn, his pants covered with forest loam, with his bare knees skinned and raw. But in the one eye that still could be seen shone a clear light, honorable, indomitable.

  “Ready to go home now, Eddie?” Lawrence asked.

  “Sure.” Eddie started to pat Lawrence on the back, pulled his hand back. He turned and waved at the farmer. “So long.”

  “So long,” the farmer called. “Any time you want to use the boat, just step into it.”