The eyes stared.
Sid made a smile. “All right, all the water is over the dam. We’re just like we used to be. Can I get you something, Rudy? Anything. You just name it.” Sid glanced around the room. “I’ll write it down. That way we can talk. I could shout but they don’t like that in hospitals. I’ll write it down. Can I do something for you? Here.” And he grabbed a crumpled piece of paper from Esther’s purse. He rummaged through some more until he found a pencil. “See, Rudy?” and he waved the pencil. “Now we can talk. Here. Can I do something for you? I’m writing it down.” Slowly, Sid printed the words then gave the paper to the boy. As the boy read the words, Sid said them again. “Can I do something for you?”
“Die.”
X
SLEEPING WITH SHELLY BINGHAM was, for Aaron, a watershed event, since it forced him at last to face without flinching the one unendurable question: was there “something the matter with him”? That possibility had existed for quite some time, first, primarily in his subconscious, a weightless fear lying suspended inside him, a tiny spider floating darkly across his mind. Occasionally it would catch the light, but not often, and when it did he would quickly brush it back into the shadows again, praying for the darkness to kill it, kill it, make it die. It festered.
One spring night when Aaron was sixteen the fear had exploded, shredding his subconscious. He had left the movies early that spring night, by the side entrance, and he hurried to his home via back streets, moving through tree shadows, avoiding light. Arriving at his house, he crept in through the rear door, turning the knob noiselessly, stepping inside, shutting the door without a sound. Aaron paused. From the living room he could hear talking, and he took advantage of that sound, moving a step at a time toward it. When he had moved as close as he dared he stopped, waiting, waiting.
The lights in the living room went off. Then Aaron heard his sister’s voice. Deborah was saying, “Jamie Wakefield, you win the blue ribbon for stupidity. The world’s championship.”
“What did I do?” Jamie Wakefield said.
Aaron crept forward again, closer. Now he could see them, framed in moonlight, sitting on the couch. Aaron waited. Suddenly he saw them kiss.
“Jamie. Jamie.”
Aaron held his breath. Jamie was touching Deborah’s body now. They began to disrobe. Aaron moved closer, standing framed in the doorway. Their eyes were closed as they pawed at each other, breathing louder. Soon they were naked save for Deborah’s pearls, Jamie’s socks. Panting, they clawed each other, fingers digging into flesh. Aaron took another step forward. He was inside the room now, and had he wanted to he could have almost reached out and touched them. Jamie straddled Deborah. Deborah groaned. Aaron stared. Their bodies glistened in the moonlight. Grappling, they rolled together on the couch. Deborah’s fingers tore at Jamie’s back. Jamie bit her neck and then he yelled and Deborah moaned his name, Jamie, Jamie. Aaron closed his eyes. It was over, all over, and he felt ... he felt ...
Nothing. It had been like watching a wall.
Aaron backed out of the room, slipped through the house, mindless of noise. He opened the rear door and stepped into the spring night. He felt sick and dizzy and he staggered along the sidewalk, howling like a cretin in pain. Shades lifted as he staggered on, moving in and out of shadow, turning corners, traveling lanes. His legs ached terribly but he forced them on, glorying in the pain that gave him something else to concentrate on, something other than the one unendurable question. Eventually he lost track of time. His howling weakened. Finally he pitched forward.
Aaron on the grass.
Racked.
The night with Shelly Bingham racked him again. Try as he would to forget it, he could not. And so, three days later, desperate and weak and pale, Aaron forced himself once and for all to face the one, the only unendurable.
Was he homosexual?
Praying, Aaron walked into the university library and was about to ask the librarian for some books on the subject, except when she asked, “Yes?” he found himself too frightened to speak. He tried for a smile, finally settled for a feeble shrug and fled her sight. Later, hating himself, Aaron for the first time in his life stole the books on homosexuality from the library and crept away from the building, convinced of his perversion.
When he got the books safely inside his house he locked his bedroom door and began to read. He read the books several times through, always with the door locked, and when he had to leave his room for trips to the kitchen or into town for cigarettes he carefully hid the books in the farthest corner of the topmost shelf in his clothes closet.
After he had committed the material almost to memory, Aaron took to journeying into Manhattan, standing in the cold on 42nd Street, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his taut mouth as he watched the homosexuals prance by. Night after night he stood there, watching as they swaggered and swished, some wearing lipstick, some mascara; limp wrists and muscle men, brunettes and peroxide blondes, Aaron eyed them all.
They made him sick.
Thank God, Aaron thought, standing in the cold, and when a few approached him he sent them sharply on their way with withering scorn. For the first time since Shelly, Aaron felt alive.
I’m all right, he realized. I’m fine.
Then what had happened in his mind that night?
Aaron read his books again, and the more he read them the clearer it all came. Hugh had come after him, pursuing him down to the Food Shoppe. Hugh had pestered him after classes. Hugh incessantly talked of women and his need of them and his infinite conquests, obviously, Aaron realized now, protesting too much. Hugh’s insistence on the double date, on sharing an evening of sex, that was another sign. And Hugh was always touching him, punching him or throwing an arm in a seemingly casual way around Aaron’s shoulder—desperate, Aaron realized now, for contact.
He’s after me, Aaron realized. And considering what had happened in his mind that night, Hugh was coming perilously close to succeeding. At last, Aaron saw it whole: he had gotten involved with (to give Hugh the benefit of any doubt) at best a latent homosexual. And who could tell how long Hugh’s latency would hold? Isn’t that just the way, Aaron thought: the one time you get a friend in this world he turns out to be a dirty, no-good, scheming, son-of-a-bitching fag?
Returning the books to the library, Aaron cut himself off from the world.
Until his graduation, he simply went to classes, came straight home. He quit his job. He did only what schoolwork was necessary. He lay on his bed and he stared at the walls and he thought. For the books he had stolen had told him that there was a little bit of the homosexual in every man. Through weakness, Aaron had allowed his little bit to come close to conquering. I must take stock of myself honestly, Aaron decided. No more weakness. I must set my house in perfect order.
So he cut himself off from the world. For the next months he saw, as far as was possible, no one. He was terribly lonely, of course.
But he had been there before.
Two weeks after his graduation from Princeton, Aaron received a notice of induction into the Army. The notice irked him. In the first place he was going to be 4F because of his legs, so the whole thing was a waste of time. And, most important, it would deprive him of a full day’s writing. He had started a book of short stories the day after his graduation, and the way he was going there was no reason not to have it all done by early fall. Except the crucial thing was not to break the rhythm, and this absurd call to country forced him for a day to do just that, so he did not feel, as he reread the notice and crumpled it up, the least patriotic.
He was in a foul humor the morning of departure. Charlotte cooked him breakfast and, in spite of his protests, insisted on packing an overnight bag while he stood stiffly in the kitchen, sipping coffee and practicing limping. He had been working on a particular walk ever since the notice came, and by now he had it down to perfection. A vague pained expression on his face, a decided stiffness in his body, Aaron stalked around the kitchen. It was impo
rtant, he thought, to appear to be hiding the limp. He was no malingerer; the limp was real. So he drank more coffee and practiced his limp until Charlotte returned with his bag. Aaron took it and walked halfway out the door when she called his name.
“Aaron.”
“What?” Aaron said. She wore a flowered summer robe and her long hair, totally white now, hung straight down her back. She looked at him, saying nothing, and he was about to say “What?” again when he noticed her tiny hands; they were in constant flight, from her cheek to her hair to her heart. “Oh,” Aaron said then as he realized she wanted to be kissed goodbye, so he bent abruptly and touched his lips to her forehead.
Charlotte nodded. “Do you want anything special for supper? A celebration meal?” She clapped her hands. “A 4F fiesta we could call it.”
Aaron grunted.
“Don’t be nasty to them, Aaron. Please. Remember your manners and don’t get them mad at you and—”
Aaron waved and closed the door, starting on his not so merry way. By the time he reached the induction center, an old gray building, ponderous, covered with heavy soot, he was perspiring and angrier than ever at the Army for wasting his very good time. Limping down a linoleum corridor, Aaron sat uncomfortably in a stiff-backed wooden chair, waiting impatiently along with more than a hundred other potential soldiers.
They were so young, so panicked, that it was difficult for him to keep from laughing. Gawky bodies, acne-ridden faces, dead eyes. Aaron tried not to listen to the bursts of nervous laughter which exploded intermittently, making the ensuing silences especially welcome. Finally a buzzer sounded and a corporal with a clipboard began calling off names at the front of the large room.
“Abbott, Henry C.”
There was silence.
“Abbott, Henry C.” More emphatic this time.
A high voice said “What?”
“What the hell do you think? Are you here, Abbott? If you are, say so.”
“Here, sir.”
“All right; down the corridor, first door to your left. Think you can handle those instructions, Abbott?”
Oh, you smug bastard corporal, Aaron thought.
“Adams, William F.”
“Here, sir.”
“Adderly, Morris I.”
“Here, sir.”
Aaron waited.
“Fazio, Eugene D.”
“Here, sir.”
“Firestone, Aaron.”
Aaron paused a moment before standing. Then, deliberately, formally, he answered, “In attendance.” There was a burst of laughter, and Aaron was conscious of dead eyes watching him. When the laughter died, he added, with infinite disdain, “Sir.”
The corporal looked at him. “You’ll love it in the Army, Firestone.”
“Dubious” Aaron answered. “Highly.” Another burst of laughter; Then Aaron nodded courteously to the corporal, picked up his overnight bag and disappeared down the corridor.
The examination was a farce. They were allowed forty minutes to complete the written test, a moronic group of multiple-choice questions. Aaron finished them in five, the first one done. He glanced around at the others; they sat, hunched over, perspiring. Illiterates, Aaron thought as he handed in his answer sheet. Limping noticeably, he left the room, heading for the physical exam. It proved to be even more ludicrous. A series of aging doctors, obviously no longer able to sustain themselves in private practice, prodded and poked him. They checked his eyes and his ears and his teeth. Aaron endured them. Finally a doctor noticed his limp. Aaron explained. The doctor touched his hips, muttered to himself, then asked Aaron to walk. Aaron walked. The doctor shook his head, then called in another doctor. The other doctor asked Aaron to walk. Aaron walked, limping magnificently. The doctors conferred, both of them muttering, shaking their heads in unison. Aaron stood very straight and tried to look patriotic. In a few minutes it was all over.
They took him.
“They took me, Mother. They took me.” He sat sweating in a telephone booth, trying to keep his voice under control.
“What’s that, Aaron?”
“Oh, the stupid bastards, the stupid idiotic bastards.” His hands were shaking but he managed to light a cigarette. Inhaling deeply, he scowled at his hands, commanding them to be still.
“Didn’t they see you walk?”
“They saw. They saw. Stop!”
“Stop what, Aaron?”
“I was talking to my hands, Mother.”
“Are you all right, Aaron?”
“I am angry, Mother.”
There was silence on the wire.
“When I get settled I’ll want you to send me my writing.” Then another silence. He sensed her tears, said, “Don’t. Goodbye.” Hung up. One. Two. Three.
The train ride proved dreary. For two nights and a day they traveled south, then west, then south again. The weather grew progressively hotter, but the cars were so uncomfortable to begin with that the increase in temperature didn’t really matter. There was a sudden vicious thunderstorm the second afternoon, but other than that the sun remained steady. Aaron sat alone in the rear seat of his car. Originally a fat, swarthy boy shared the seat with him, but Aaron’s legs were too long for both of them to be comfortable, so midway through the first night, grumbling, the other boy left.
Aaron’s companions bored him. He quickly had them all pegged. Across the aisle sat a short, ugly Irish boy who boasted continually of his sexual prowess. “I had her pantin’ like a bitch in heat, see, an’ she’s beggin’ me for more. ‘Go-wann, Danny,’ she’s sayin’ ‘Yer killin’ me, Danny, but go-wann.’ ” In front of him sat four curly-haired Jews, gamblers, devourers of salami. “Willya deal the cards, Herman, for crissakes.” “Shaddup, Byron, cantcha see I’m eatin’?” “Well, I don’t give a crap if yer eatin’ or not, deal the goddam cards.” And in front of them, two laughing Negroes who hummed and snapped their fingers and said “Man ... man” over and over. And three sullen Puerto Ricans reading “Batman” and a quiet blond letter writer—“Dear Sis. Well, I am on the train and so far so good ...”
You are clichés, Aaron thought. Every bloodless one of you.
Dear Aunt Lou ...
Hey, man (finger snap). Hey, man ...
Ohhhhhhhhh, Danny, Jee-zusssss ...
Yer a fink, Byron, you know that ...
Herman, yer droolin’ on the cards ...
Man, hey, man ...
Dear Cousin Stanley ...
Danny, yer drivin’ me cray-zeeeeeeee ...
You do not exist, Aaron thought. Not in my world. If you breathe, then I give you permission to breathe the same air. But that is all.
They reached Camp Rand the morning of the third day. Getting off the train, they marched to a line of open trucks and began climbing on. Climbing was difficult for Aaron and he felt a sharp pain as he made his first attempt at boarding. Failing, he tried again, but it hurt, and he had no success until someone started helping him, half lifting him onto the truck. Aaron turned. It was the blond boy who wrote letters. It would be you, Aaron thought; of course, it would have to be you. Should he say “thank you”? he wondered. There was always the chance that the boy might take it as a prologue to conversation. Aaron solved the problem by saying “Thanks” sharply, turning away at the same time, moving to a corner of the truck and standing rigidly, staring out.
When he first caught sight of Camp Rand, Aaron had to laugh. It too was a cliché—hot, flat, endless, just like in the movies. Not much grass,’ not many trees, a plenitude of dust. The trucks ground down to a lower gear, slowing, turning into the post proper. A company of basic trainees in full field uniform, complete with rifles and heavy packs, marched along a parallel road. Aaron watched them, listening as they chanted, “Lef, ri, lef, ri, ho-lef, ri, lef.”
Aaron panicked.
His legs would never hold! Never. They would fail him and he would fall to earth open, exposed to laughter. Aaron rubbed his hips. They still hurt from trying to jump onto the truck. Never hold. Nev
er. Oh, you goddam stupid doctors. You silly-assed sinecures, doing this to me. Putting me here. “Lef, ri, lef, ri, ho-lef, ri, lef.” I can’t do it. I’ll never be able to. Suddenly he wanted to cry. He had not cried since ... since ...
My name is Aaron Fire and I do not cry.
I endure.
The men were all delivered to the Transient Company, a squat series of dull rectangular buildings set directly across the road from the Post Stockade. Usually recruits stayed one night in the Transient Company before being shipped out to one of the other companies on post for basic training. Several times a day whistles would blow and the men would race out to the street, standing in formation, waiting for their names to be called. Then they would be marched away. Aaron stayed a week. Most of that time he spent pulling details. Twice he had KP and the strain on his legs was great. He would lie awake at night, rubbing them, pounding them with the sides of his hands, trying desperately to alleviate the pain. At first he was delighted that his name was not called and he began thinking that perhaps the Army had made a mistake, forgotten him. But as the days wore on, the delight soured. He was always being selected for some duty or other—his height betrayed him. “You, Shorty, go grab a mop.” “All right, Shorty, two steps forward.” He did what he was told, silently, speaking to no one. But he longed for training to begin. Anything was better than waiting; something was better than nothing.
Then, the eighth day, his name was called. Hurrying to his barracks, he grabbed his green duffel bag and dragged it back out into the company street. Several other boys were waiting. Then a bus appeared. All the other recruits had marched off, but Aaron’s group silently boarded a bus. Slowly, the bus began to move. Aaron lit a cigarette. Where in hell were they going? Inserting the cigarette at the left corner of his mouth, he waited. The bus drove for fifteen minutes. Then it stopped. The recruits got out. Aaron looked around. He was standing in the street of what appeared to be the most remote company on post. There were several barracks buildings, a classroom and an orderly room. Set into the dirt by the orderly room door was a freshly painted wooden sign that read “X Company.” Across from the buildings was an enormous, dusty field. Behind the buildings was another field, equally large, equally dusty. They were isolated from the rest of Camp Rand. The firing from the rifle ranges sounded louder here than at the Transient Company. It was all very strange. Aaron turned around and around, perspiring, on the dusty road. Then the bus driver asked would they please follow him, so they did, trailing along to the supply room, where they were given sheets and blankets. The bus driver requested they go into the nearest barracks, select a bed, make it and wait for further instructions. As Aaron entered the barracks he saw another busload of recruits pull into the company street. He waited for the better part of an hour and then the bus driver reappeared, asking quietly if they would please go to the classroom now. Aaron entered the classroom and sat in the rear corner. Gradually, other recruits straggled in, looking around, unsure, uncertain. In fifteen minutes there were seventy-five men in the room, smoking, talking nervously among themselves. Suddenly the talking stopped.
Boys and Girls Together: A Novel Page 34