“You’re dang right!” Pa said, pleased.
“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t, sometimes,” Charlotte said. Pa began to frown, thought for a second, and smiled.
“I reckon Dick was a little put out,” he said. They all looked at Dick, who nodded seriously.
“I could beat him at something else,” Dick said.
“What, for instance?” Bob said. “You just don’t think a town boy ought to beat a country boy like you. You figure he ought to know more big words but you just naturally got to have big muscles. Well, that ain’t always true.” Dick turned red and scowled at his brother. Bob said, “What you need, Dickie-boy, is learning the facts of life.”
Dick slammed his fork down. With a hard, lopsided expression on his face he glared at Bob.
“You want to ask me out to the woodshed?” Bob asked. “You want to git all lumpy again?”
Dick slid his chair back and jumped up. “God damn you!” he yelled, and headed for the door.
“Dick, you sit down!” Ma said. Pa sat back, grinning. “Pa! Tell them to stop it!”
“They ain’t old enough to settle it?” Pa asked.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Charlotte said to Bob.
“Me?” Bob said with exaggerated surprise. “Did I invite anybody out to the woodshed? Hell, no. I don’t have no blood on my conscience.”
“You coming, or are you yellow?” Dick said.
“Me, Dickie? Well, I got to tell you the horrible truth. I’m yellow! But seeing as it’s only you.” He got up from the table and followed Dick.
“I thought Dick was supposed to be fighting John,” Timmy said, pointing his fork first at Dick and then at John.
“Timmy, be quiet!” Charlotte said.
“After you, my dear Alphonse,” Bob said, holding the door for Dick, who marched on through. “Lumpy will return in a moment, with his ass in a sling,” Bob said, and followed after.
“It’s Bob’s fault. It’s his doing. I hope he loses,” Charlotte said.
“Dick’s got to learn to keep his temper,” Paul said. He had been on Bob’s side all the way. John could easily see how the family lined up this time. Paul was for Bob, Charlotte and Jean were for Dick, Pa was impartial but maybe favored Bob a little, Ma was against the fight and Timmy was for it.
“Can I go watch, Ma?” Timmy asked.
“Eat your supper!” Ma was rattled. John wondered if the years were beginning to tell on her—she stirred her food around nervously, her hands shook. He thought she was about to break into tears. Paul had been noticing this, and now got up and walked swiftly to the door. He was gone before anyone spoke.
Then all three came back; solemn, no marks of battle on them. They sat down and began to eat.
“We’re sorry, Ma,” Dick finally said.
“My fault,” Bob mumbled.
John expected Pa to disapprove of this truce, and was surprised when Pa looked back at him and winked.
“They’re real good boys, though, ain’t they, John?” Pa said. Identical slow, sheepish smiles appeared on Bob’s and Dick’s faces.
John could do nothing, although he knew that some signal from him was necessary. He even knew the mechanics of the needed remark and the attitude with which it should be given. It must be a little funny, and didn’t have to be very funny—nearly anything would do to destroy the fading tension. It would go, anyway, but it was for John Cotter to hasten it along. But he could do nothing. Somewhere else—far away from Leah—he would not have had to think about it. He wanted to say to them, “Look, I’m not what you see here. I can be funny as hell too, and friendly. I like people.”
But the noise reached its usual height quickly, and his chance was gone. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed—but he knew they had, and now they would not be sure how he’d taken Timmy’s remark. Because they wouldn’t know he was less a part of them. No matter how carefully he watched, however, he could find no indication of this in their actions.
As Charlotte helped clear away the dishes he turned to Jane and tried unsuccessfully to get her away from Timmy, who was explaining the difficulties of second grade. Timmy said it was unfair, because he had to get up a whole hour earlier than the town kids and then wait around for the school bus. It was like having to go to school for an extra hour every day and it wasn’t fair. He liked school, but he didn’t like the bus driver.
“I like my new teacher. Everybody likes her,” he said.
“That’s nice,” Jane said.
“She’s pretty, like you,” Timmy said, and put his head on her forearm and looked up at her, smiling as if he were doing something slightly wrong, but didn’t care.
Bob looked up from the Montgomery-Ward catalogue. “My! Ain’t he a little wolf, though!”
Timmy seemed a little embarrassed, but determinedly held Jane around the waist with both arms.
Paul came back from the shed and saw it. “Ain’t he a little devil? It seems to me, Timmy, you’re a little old to be sitting in laps.”
“Little too young for anything else,” Bob said.
Timmy smiled harder and blushed, but he didn’t let go. It was worth it. Until the doorbell rang, at least. Then he jumped down impatiently and went under the table to wait and see who it was. Pa, Jean and Dick had gone out to the barn, so Ma answered it. The door opened to the jangled sound of Canadian French spoken simultaneously by three people—Uncle Albert, Aunt May and Ma, who was suddenly bright and active, leading them in, twirling chairs around, sweeping the last crumbs from the table, talking all the time in a language John could barely follow. It reminded him of his first days in Paris when the sense of any conversation was just out of reach.
Uncle Albert was a small, neat man who ran a little grocery store in Leah, and Aunt May was a smaller, neater woman who ran Uncle Albert. Their children had grown up and gone away, and now they lived in a small apartment over their store.
When Timmy saw that it was only Uncle Albert and Aunt May he headed back for Jane, but he never made it. Charlotte caught him from behind and picked him up.
“Hey!” he said.
“Hey yourself,” Charlotte said firmly, “you’re going to bed.”
“Oh, Jesus!” he said, half resigned to it. Aunt May looked up, shook her head, and frowned. She was very religious, and when the organization of the store and Uncle Albert proved too unrewarding she organized Father Desmond and the church.
“Timmy, you got to stop that!” Charlotte said.
“He took the Lord’s name in vain,” Aunt May said in English.
“He knows that,” Bob said. “He gits it from them goddam brothers of his.”
“Bob!” Charlotte said. Aunt May had gone back into French, for protection, and spoke with quite a bit of heat to Ma, who shook her head hopelessly.
“Jesus,” Timmy said experimentally. Charlotte whacked his bottom. “Jesus!” he said, getting mad. Charlotte carried him out of the room and started up the stairs.
“Jesus!” he yelled, and they heard another whack. “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” followed by three harder whacks. Aunt May was scandalized.
“He ain’t cussin’, he’s prayiri,” Bob said. But the whacks, the loss of dignity and the unfairness began to tell. Upstairs in the big house the next sounds were screams and hiccuping cries and bawling. A door shut off the noise. Aunt May and Ma went on talking French; Uncle Albert sat solidly and neatly, listening and nodding. Paul had gone out. Bob studied the catalogue and carefully filled out a mail-order form.
“I guess you made a conquest,” John said to Jane.
“A what? Oh, Timmy,” Jane said. She offered him a cigarette at the same time he offered her one, and then, confused, he lit his and forgot hers. He struck another match and held it out to her.
“I’m going to come up and see you,” he said.
“Why don’t you?”
“I’ve got to go to work tomorrow. I promised my father. Maybe I’ll come up tomorrow after supper. Is that O.K.?”
“Sure, Johnny,” she said, “come up anytime. I don’t seem to do anything but sit around nowadays. I guess I’ll get a job pretty soon, too. I can’t stand it much longer just sitting around—that’s why it feels so good to be with the Paquettes again.”
“They do seem to keep ramming around every minute. Hey, Jane?”
She looked surprised. “Hey, what?”
“How about going to a movie tomorrow night? I don’t know what it is. Maybe the drive-in.”
“Sure, I’ll go with you, Johnny.”
“I’ll pick you up around six-thirty, O.K.? I guess they start as soon as it gets dark.”
Good. That had been handled all right. Now everything was settled, and he felt that he had done the right thing, for once. Charlotte came back and sat down, saying that Timmy must have been pretty tired. Bob asked where were the stamps, then where was an envelope, then where in hell was some ink? Ma found them, still talking French to Uncle Albert and Aunt May, and then Bob motioned to John to come outside.
“Look,” he said. He had the catalogue with him, and he pointed to the picture of a set of saddlebags; black leather studded with reflectors, chrome stars and studs of various shapes and sizes. “What do you think of that?”
“They’ll see you coming,” John said.
“What? Why, goddam, John, they’ll see me and hear me! But what do you think of ’em? Tell me, now!”
“I’m no arbiter of taste in saddlebags,” John said.
“No whichiter? Don’t kid me, Jerome!” He grinned and slapped John on the back, half pushing him through one shed, into the place they had cleared for the motorcycle.
“Look at her, boy!” He walked around the motorcycle, feeling it with one hand. “Let’s take her out for a spin. I’ll give you a ride.”
“I don’t know…” John began.
“Aw, come on.” Bob wheeled the machine outside, turned on the switch and kicked down the starter. There was a metallic, chain-rattling, gear-teething sound and a mild pop from the motor. Then he turned the spark handle a little and kicked down the starter again. This time there was a terrible roar and the machine shook and tried to edge forward, then the noise turned into a vibrant, mounting hum of explosions. John thought it would blow up, until Bob straddled it and idled the engine down. “Get on!” he yelled, patting the back of the saddle. “Git on, boy!” He switched on the lights, and across the front yard in the dusk withered grass, two tires set with dirt and flower stalks, a broken toy truck of Timmy’s, and then a huddled group of white mailboxes out at the road’s edge stood out sharply. “Git on!” Bob yelled, turning around impatiently.
John swung his leg over the wide saddle and set his feet carefully behind Bob’s on the narrow, hinged runningboards. Bob moved his wrist quickly on the rubber handlebar-accelerator and the motor roared higher; then he pushed in the clutch. John felt as if somebody had hold of him from behind. Gravel spurted out behind the rear wheel, the seat shifted to one side and pulled out from under him, leaving him stumbling dazedly on the driveway as Bob and the machine swerved on around the curve to the road. Bob continued on around and came up to him again—high laughter over the engine sound.
“You got to hold on, John! Now git on and stay on!”
“Well, take it easy!” John yelled back. This time he set himself firmly and took a firm grip on Bob’s belt in back. “If I go, you go,” he said, and the clutch went in, the wheel spun and they taxied around to the asphalt road, going through the gears quickly as the machine went faster, faster, and then was a projectile flying straight down the narrow road, the headlight bouncing and the motor screaming. In spite of the rushing air he smelled hot oil. The motor warmed his knees while cold air hit him in the face and at the same time climbed up his shirt in back and made him shake wildly from fear and cold. The road bent, snapped around and tilted as they passed a car. He looked over Bob’s shoulder and made out the speedometer through his wind-watering eyes. The needle jiggled around sixty.
“Hey!” he yelled in Bob’s ear, “slow down a little!” Bob looked around at him like an owl, his eyes staring and remote, his face fiercely set. He nodded slowly and just as slowly turned again to face the road and the bits of hurtling trees in the bright tunnel of his headlight’s beam.
John recognized nothing along the road. He had no idea where they were or where they were going until a white sign flashed by: LEAH. Then in quick succession a golden Rotary gear, a Lions emblem, and mailboxes shot by. They hit a bump in the road and for one dreadful moment he flew along an inch above the seat, his feet lost the runningboards, his head began to pound. But soon the fear became strangely constant and bearable, and he didn’t realize just how scared he had been until Bob idled down to go through the main part of town. He had never been so glad to see Leah. They stopped on the square by the Strand to be examined distantly by the young boys who were waiting for the first show to start and by the old men who would watch the people go by until the show started and then go home.
“How’d you like it?” Bob said, still stiff as he turned, with an inner excitement that amounted to intoxication visible in his eyes.
Now that it was over, the fright had gone, except for the hopeless realization that they had to go back to the farm the same way. He was left weak and cold—shivering—and found that he had sweat not only under his arms but all the way up his back to his collar. He got off the motorcycle and stood weakly on the sidewalk. He wanted to sit down. Bob looked at him expectantly.
“What do you want to do on that damn’ machine, commit suicide?” he said.
“By God!” Bob said, zooming the motor for emphasis, “By God!”
“By God is right,” John said, and walked around in a little circle, trying to shake some life back into himself. “Let’s go down to Futzie’s and get a beer or something. I lost my marbles riding that thing.”
“Aw, you liked it,” Bob said.
“Like hell I did!” He got back on the seat. “Now take it easy,” he said. “I can’t stand it. I mean it.”
“You ain’t got over the first thrill yet,” Bob said. They went fairly slow and parked on the sidewalk in front of Futzie’s Tavern on River Street. Bob leaned the motorcycle against a pole so he could keep an eye on it from inside.
River Street, one block of shabby frame buildings, staggered sootily to the railroad spur and a dead end at Cotter & Son’s. Futzie’s and the Army-Navy store were the only live businesses on the street—the rest of the buildings leaned sadly and emptily into each other, old clapboard fronts without decoration or pretension. Most of them had been residences, and Futzie’s building was one of these, odd because of the large window in an aluminum frame next to the wooden Georgian door. A cool blue sign in the window said, Petrosky’s Tavern, and below the sign several deer rifles and shotguns hung on a wire rack. Futzie traded guns and would accept nothing else as security against a loan or a drink.
John pulled the doorknob, and the weathered door came open. The front window was Futzie’s only modern improvement. The floor was covered with odd ripped sections of linoleum, worn and faded in places, and in other places, where furniture had covered it in its previous home, bright and colorful. The ceiling was stamped metal in old-fashioned scroll-and-flower designs made hazy by many layers of cream paint. Two light bulbs hung down on long cords, shaded only by dust and grease, and along both sides of the room low brown benches and booths dissolved into a musty twilight. At the bar five silent old men held on to their glasses and stared without expression at television. Futzie leaned against the bar, his shrunken old monkey-face sharp and mean-looking. He never smiled and he never gave a free beer to anybody. When he saw Bob and John he reached for the tap and brought them two beers, standing silently until they put their money on the table. Then he took two dimes and went back behind the bar.
They sat at a booth, Bob facing toward the street so that he could watch his motorcycle. Across from him, John had to watch television. A fuzzy girl with a sharp, domineering voice kept ope
ning and closing the door of a refrigerator, sliding the trays, opening the freezer door, smirking vaguely as if she were looking through a cloud and all the time saying, “See how handy! See how beautiful and economical…decor…modern, wonderful!” and the dark old men, completely absorbed, sipped their beer and watched.
John drank his beer quickly and put two fingers in the air. Futzie must have had an eye in his ear, he thought, because even though he had been half turned away he turned to the taps again and drew more beer.
“Slow down, John,” Bob said.
“That’s what I asked you to do on the way here.”
The door at the right of the bar opened—the one that led to the rooms upstairs. Junior Stevens came into the room and slammed the door behind him. He was halfway to the street when he saw them and stopped in front of the booth.
“How do you like the bike?” he asked Bob.
“Fine,” Bob said, and then looked from Junior to John and back. Junior hadn’t recognized John. Now they looked at each other coolly and nodded.
“Sit down,” Bob said. “You got time for a beer?”
“Why surely!” Junior said, too loudly, and John remembered
with a twinge of childhood that sudden change in Junior from curt silence to loud affability. It generally meant that he was about to hit somebody, or goose somebody, or trip somebody up. Now he watched Junior closely. He finished his beer and signaled to Futzie for three more.
John got up and put some money in the juke box, then sat back to listen, his eyes closed and a cigarette in his mouth.
“Well, hello, Mrs. Jones!” Junior said. John opened his eyes and saw Billy Muldrow, tall and wide shouldered in his dirty overalls, standing diffidently by the booth.
“Hello, Junior,” Billy said coldly, and looked at John. “Hi, John!”
“Hi, Billy. Have a beer,” John said. But Billy looked guiltily toward Futzie, whose cold eye seemed to chill him.
“I can’t drink, John,” Billy said.
“They got him shut off,” Junior said to Bob. He wouldn’t talk directly to John, not really having recognized him. Billy looked hurt. A chastened giant, he frowned and looked sideways at Junior.
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