The Hotel New Hampshire Part 7

I remember watching the old school desks being removed from what was going to be the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re - hundreds of desks that had been screwed down to the floor. Hundreds of holes in the floor to fill, or else carpet the whole thing. That was 'one of the details Father had to deal with.

And the fourth-floor bathroom equipment was a surprise to him. My mother should have remembered: years before her time at the Thompson Female Seminary, the toilets and sinks for the top floor had been misordered. Instead of outfitting bathrooms for high school-sized students, the toilet and sink people delivered and installed miniatures miniatures - they were meant for a kindergarten in the north of the state. Since the mistake cost less than the original order, the Thompson Female Seminary had let it pa.s.s. And so generations of high school girls had stooped and cracked their knees while trying to pee and wash - the tiny child-sized toilets breaking the girls' backs if they sat down too fast, the little sinks. .h.i.tting them a knee level, the mirrors staring straight at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. - they were meant for a kindergarten in the north of the state. Since the mistake cost less than the original order, the Thompson Female Seminary had let it pa.s.s. And so generations of high school girls had stooped and cracked their knees while trying to pee and wash - the tiny child-sized toilets breaking the girls' backs if they sat down too fast, the little sinks. .h.i.tting them a knee level, the mirrors staring straight at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

'Jesus G.o.d,' Father said. 'It's an outhouse for elves.' He had hoped simply to disperse the old bathroom equipment throughout the hotel; he had enough sense to know that the guests wouldn't want to share communal bathrooms, but he thought he could save a lot of money by using the toilets and sinks that were already there. After all, there wasn't much equipment that a high school and a hotel had in common.

'We can use the mirrors, anyway,' Mother said. 'We'll just mount them higher on the walls.'

'And we can use the sinks and toilets, too,' Father insisted.

'Who can use them?' Mother asked. can use them?' Mother asked.

'Dwarfs?' said Coach Bob.

'Lilly and Egg, anyway,' Franny said. 'At least for a few more years.'

Then there were the screwed-down desk chairs that had matched the desks. Father wouldn't throw them out, either.

'They're perfectly good chairs,' Father said. 'They're very comfortable.'

'It's sort of quaint how they have names carved in them,' Frank said.

'Quaint, Frank?' Franny said.

'But they have to be screwed down to the floor,' Mother said. 'People won't be able to move them around.'

'Why should people have to move hotel furniture around?' Father asked. 'I mean, we set the rooms the way they should be, 'right? I don't want people moving the chairs, anyway,' he said. 'This way, they can't.'

'Even in the restaurant?' Mother asked.

'People like to shove back their chairs after a big meal,' said Iowa Bob.

'Well, they can't - that's all,' Father said. 'We'll let them push the tables away from them instead.'

'Why not screw down the tables, too?' Frank suggested.

'That's a quaint idea,' Franny said. She would say, later, that Frank's insecurity was so vast that he would have preferred all of life screwed down to the floor.

Of course, the part.i.tioning of rooms, with their own baths, took the longest. And the plumbing was as complex as a freight yard of tracks in a city railroad station; when someone flushed on the fourth floor, you could hear it coursing through the entire hotel - trying to find a way down. And some of the rooms still had blackboards.

'So long as they're clean,' Father said, 'what's the harm?'

'Sure,' said Iowa Bob. 'One guest can leave messages for the next guest.'

Things like 'Don't ever stay here!' Franny said.

'It will be all right,' Frank said. 'I just want my own room.'

'In a hotel, Frank,' Franny said, 'everybody gets a room.'

Even Coach Bob would get a room; after his retirement, the Dairy School wouldn't let him go on living in campus housing. Coach Bob was cautiously warming to the idea; he was ready to move in when we were ready. He was interested in the future of the playground equipment: the cracked-clay volleyball court, the field-hockey field, and the basketball backboards and hoops - the nets were long since rotted away.

There's nothing that looks more abandoned,' Bob said, 'than a basketball hoop without a net. I think that's so sad.'

And one day we watched the men with the pneumatic drills chipping THOMPSON FEMALE SEMINARY off the death-grey face of stone, sunk in the bricks, above the great front door. They stopped work for the day - I'm sure on purpose - leaving only the letters MALE SEMIN over the door. It was Friday, so the letters stayed that way over the weekend, to my mother's and father's irritation - and to Coach Bob's amus.e.m.e.nt.

'Why don't you call it the Hotel Male s.e.m.e.n s.e.m.e.n?' Iowa Bob asked my father. Then you'll only have to change one letter.' Bob was in a good mood, because his team was winning and he knew he was about to get out of the wretched Dairy School.

If my father was in a bad mood, he rarely let it show. (He was full of energy - 'Energy begets energy,' he would repeat and repeat to us, over our homework and at sports practices for the teams he coached.) He had not resigned from the Dairy School; he probably didn't dare, or Mother wouldn't let him. He was going ahead with the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re, but he was teaching three cla.s.ses of English and coaching track winter and spring, so he was going ahead at half-speed.

Frank seemed to disappear at the Dairy School; he was like one of the token cows. You didn't notice him after a while. He did his work - he seemed to find it hard - and he attended the required athletics, although he favoured no particular sport and wasn't good enough for (or didn't try to make) any of the teams. He was big and strong and as awkward as ever.

And (at sixteen) he grew a thin moustache on his upper lip, which made him look much older. There was something floppy and puppylike about him - a certain heavy cloddishness in his feet - that suggested he would one day be a very large and imposing dog; but Frank would wait forever for the poise that must attend imposing size in order for the animal to be imposing. He had no friends, but no one worried; Frank had never been much for having friends.

Franny, of course, had lots of boyfriends. Most of them were older than Franny, and one of them I liked: he was a tall, red-haired senior at the school - a strong, silent type who stroked the first boat of the varsity crew. His name was Struthers, he had grown up in Maine, and except for the blisters on his hands, which were painted a rust-brown with benzoin - to toughen them - and the fact that he smelled, at times, like wet socks, he was acceptable to everyone in our family. Even Frank. Sorrow growled at Struthers, but that was a smell thing: Struthers threatened Sorrow's dominance of our house. I didn't know if Struthers was Franny's favourite boyfriend, but he was very fond of her, and nice to the rest of us.

Some of the others - one of them was the leader of that pack of Boston ringers who'd been hired to play for Coach Bob - were not so nice. In fact, the quarterback of that imported backfield was a boy who made Ralph De Meo look like a saint. His name was Sterling Dove, although he was called Chip, or Chipper, and he was a cruel, angular boy from one of the posher Boston suburban schools.

'He's a natural leader, that Chip Dove,' Coach Bob said.

He's a natural commander of someone's secret police, I thought. Chipper Dove was blondly handsome, in a spotless, slightly pretty sort of way; we were a dark-haired family, except for Lilly, who was not so blond as she was washed-out - all over; even her hair was pale.

I would have enjoyed seeing Chip Dove play quarterback without without a good line to protect him - and when he had to throw a lot of pa.s.ses to catch up several touchdowns - but the admissions office had done a good job for Coach Bob; Dairy's football team never fell behind. When they got the ball, they kept it, and Dove rarely had to pa.s.s. Although it was the first winning season that any of us children could remember, it was dull - watching them grind down the field, eating up the clock and scoring from three or four yards out. They were not flashy, they were simply strong and precise and well coached; their defence was not so strong - the other teams scored back on them, but not too often: the other teams rarely got to have the ball. a good line to protect him - and when he had to throw a lot of pa.s.ses to catch up several touchdowns - but the admissions office had done a good job for Coach Bob; Dairy's football team never fell behind. When they got the ball, they kept it, and Dove rarely had to pa.s.s. Although it was the first winning season that any of us children could remember, it was dull - watching them grind down the field, eating up the clock and scoring from three or four yards out. They were not flashy, they were simply strong and precise and well coached; their defence was not so strong - the other teams scored back on them, but not too often: the other teams rarely got to have the ball.

'Ball control,' crowed Iowa Bob. 'First time I've had a ball-control team since the war.'

My only comfort in Franny's relations.h.i.+p with Chipper Dove was that Dove was such a team boy he was rarely in Franny's company without the rest of the Dairy backfield - and often a lineman or two. They menaced the campus that year like a horde, and Franny sometimes was seen in their camp; Dove was attracted to her - every boy, except Frank, seemed attracted to Franny. Girls were cautious in her company; she simply outshone them, and perhaps she was not a very good friend to them. Franny was always meeting more and newer people; she was probably too curious about strangers to be loyal in the way girls want their girl friends to be loyal.

I don't know; I was kept in the dark about that. At times Franny would fix me up with a date, but the girls were usually older and it didn't work out. 'Everyone thinks you're cute,' Franny said, 'but you have to talk talk to people a little bit, you know - you can't just to people a little bit, you know - you can't just start out start out necking.' necking.'

'I don't start out necking,' I'd tell her. 'I never get get to the necking.' to the necking.'

'Well,' she said, 'that's because you just sit there waiting for something to happen. Everyone knows what you're thinking.'

'You don't,' I said. 'Not always always.'

'About me, you mean?' she asked, but I didn't say anything. 'Listen, kid,' Franny said. 'I know you think about me too much - if that's what you mean.'

It was at Dairy that she started calling me 'kid,' although there was just a year's difference between us. To my shame, the name stuck.

'Hey, kid,' Chip Dove said to me in the showers at the gym. 'Your sister's got the nicest a.s.s at this school. Is she banging anybody?'

'Struthers,' I said, although I hoped it wasn't true. Struthers was at least better than Dove.

'Struthers!' Dove said. 'The f.u.c.king oarsman oarsman? The clod who rows rows?'

'He's very strong,' I said; that much was true - oarsmen are strong, and Struthers was the strongest of them.

'Yeah, but he's a clod,' Dove said.

'Just pulls his oar all day!' said Lenny Metz, a running back who was always - even in the showers - just to the right of Chip Dove's hip, as if he expected, even there, to be handed the ball. He was as dumb as cement, and as hard.

'Well, kid,' said Chipper Dove. 'You tell Franny I think she's got the nicest a.s.s at this school.'

'And t.i.ts!' cried Lenny Metz.

'Well, they're okay,' Dove said. 'But it's the a.s.s that's really special.'

'She has a nice smile, too,' Metz said.

Chip Dove rolled his eyes at me, conspiratorially - as if to show me he knew how dumb Metz was, and he was much, much smarter. 'Don't forget to use a little soap, huh, Lenny?' Dove said, and pa.s.sed him the slippery bar, which Metz, instinctively - a non-fumbler - slapped against his belly in his bearish grip.

I turned off my shower because some bigger person had moved under the stream of water with me. He shoved me out of his way altogether and turned the water back on.

'Move on, man,' he said, softly. It was one of the linemen who kept other football players from hurting Chipper Dove. His name was Samuel Jones, Jr., and he was called Junior Jones. Junior Jones was as black as any night in which my father's imagination was inspired; he would go on to play college football at Penn State, and pro ball in Cleveland, until someone messed up his knee.

I was fourteen, in 1956, and Junior Jones was the largest organization of human flesh I had ever seen. I moved out of his way, but Chipper Dove said, 'Hey, Junior, don't you know this kid?'

'No, I haven't met him,' said Junior Jones.

'Well, this is Franny Berry's brother,' Chip Dove said.

'How do you do?' said Junior Jones.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said.

'Old Coach Bob is this kid's grandfather, Junior,' Dove said.

That's nice,' said Junior Jones. He filled his mouth with a froth of lather from the tiny bar of soap in his hand, then tipped his head back and rinsed his mouth out in the downstream of the shower. Perhaps, I thought, this was what he did instead of brus.h.i.+ng his teeth.

'We were talking,' Dove said, 'about what it was we liked liked about Franny.' about Franny.'

'Her smile,' Metz said.

'You said her t.i.ts, too,' Chipper Dove said. 'And I I said she had the nicest a.s.s at this school. We didn't get to ask the kid, here, what said she had the nicest a.s.s at this school. We didn't get to ask the kid, here, what he he likes about his sister, but I thought we'd ask you first, Junior.' likes about his sister, but I thought we'd ask you first, Junior.'

Junior Jones had lathered his bar of soap away to nothing; his huge head was awash with white froth; when he rinsed himself under the shower, the suds lapped around his ankles. I looked down at my feet and felt the close presence of the remaining twosome from Iowa Bob's backfield. A burnt-face boy named Chester Pulaski, who spent too much time under the sun lamp - even so, his neck blazed with boils; his forehead was studded with them. He was primarily a blocking back - not by choice; he simply didn't run quite as well as Lenny Metz. Chester Pulaski was a natural blocking back because he tended to run at his opponents more than he tended away from them. With him, and flitting near to me, like a horsefly that won't leave you alone, was a boy as black as Junior Jones; any comparison, however, was over with their colour. He sometimes lined up as a wide receiver, and when he ran out of the backfield it was only to catch Chipper Dove's short and safe little pa.s.ses. His name was Harold Swallow, and he was no bigger than I was, but Harold Swallow could fly. He had moves like the bird he was named for; if anyone ever tackled him, he might have broken in half, but when he wasn't catching pa.s.ses and flying out of bounds, he was just hiding in the backfield, usually behind Chester Pulaski or Junior Jones.

They were all there, standing around me, and I thought that if a bomb were to be dropped on one spot in the shower room, Coach Bob's winning season would be over. Athletically, at least, I was the only one who wouldn't have been missed. I was simply not in the same category with Iowa Bob's imported backfield, or with the giant lineman Junior Jones; there were other linemen, of course, but Junior Jones was the main reason Chipper Dove never even fell down. He was the main reason there was always a hole for Chester Pulaski to lead Lenny Metz through; Jones made a hole big enough for them to run through side by side.

'Come on, Junior, think think,' Chip Dove said, dangerously - because the tone of mockery in his voice implied his doubt that Junior Jones could could think. 'What is it think. 'What is it you you like about Franny Berry?' Dove asked. like about Franny Berry?' Dove asked.

'She's got nice little feet feet,' said Harold Swallow. Everyone stared at him, but he just pranced around under the falling water, not looking at anybody.

'She's got beautiful skin,' said Chester Pulaski, helplessly drawing even more attention to his boils.

'Junior!' Chip Dove said, and Junior Jones shut off his shower. He stood and dripped for a while. He made me feel as if I were Egg, years ago, still learning to walk.

'She's just another white girl, to me,' Junior Jones said, and his look paused a second on each of us before moving on. 'But she seems like a good girl,' he added, to me. Then he turned my shower back on and shoved me under it - it was too cold - and he walked out of the shower room, leaving a draught.

I was impressed that even Chipper Dove would go only so far with him, but I was more impressed that Franny was in trouble - and still more impressed that I was helpless to do anything about it.

'That sc.u.m Chipper Dove talks about your a.s.s, your t.i.ts, even your feet feet' I told her. 'You watch out for him.'

'My feet feet?' Franny said. 'What's he say about my feet?'

'All right,' I said. That was Harold Swallow.' Everyone knew Harold Swallow was crazy; in those days, when someone was as crazy as Harold Swallow, we said he was as crazy as a waltzing mouse.

'What did Chip Dove say about me?' Franny asked. 'I just care about him.'

'Your a.s.s a.s.s is all he cares about,' I told her. 'And he talks about it to everyone.' is all he cares about,' I told her. 'And he talks about it to everyone.'

'I don't care,' she said. 'I'm not that interested.'

'Well, he's he's interested,' I said. 'Just stick with Struthers.' interested,' I said. 'Just stick with Struthers.'

'Oh, kid, let me tell you,' she sighed. 'Struthers is is sweet, but he is boring, boring, sweet, but he is boring, boring, boring boring.'

I hung my head. We were in the upstairs hall of what was now only a rented house, although it still felt like the Bates family house to us. Franny rarely came into my room anymore. We did our homework in our own rooms and met outside the bathroom to talk. Frank didn't even seem to use the bathroom. Every day, now, in the hall outside our rooms, Mother would stack up more cartons and trunks; we were getting ready to move to the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re.

'And I don't see why you have to be a cheerleader, Franny,' I said. 'I mean, you, of all people - a cheerleader cheerleader.'

'Because I like it,' she said.

In fact, it was after a cheerleading practice that I met Franny, not far from our place in the ferns we didn't see so much of - now that we were students at the school -when we encountered Iowa Bob's backfield. They had accosted someone on the path through the woods that was the shortcut back to the gym; they were working someone over in the large mud puddle that was drilled with football cleats - holes like machine-gun fire in the mud. When Franny and I saw who they were - the boys in the backfield - and that they were beating up on someone, we started to run the other way. That backfield was always beating up on someone. But we hadn't run more than twenty-five yards before Franny caught my arm and stopped me. 'I think it was Frank,' she said. 'They've got Frank.'

So of course we had to go back. For just a second, before we could actually see what was going on, I felt very brave; I felt Franny take my hand and I gave her a strong squeeze. Her cheerleading skirt was so short that the back of my hand brushed her thigh. Then she pulled her hand out of mine and screamed. I was in my track shorts and I felt my legs turn cold.

Frank was wearing his band uniform. They had stripped the s.h.i.+t-brown pants (with the death-grey stripe down the leg) clean off him. Frank's underwear was yanked down to his ankles. The jacket of his band uniform had been tugged up to the middle of his chest; one silver epaulette floated free in the mud puddle, alongside Frank's face, and his silver cap with the brown braid - almost indistinguishable from the mud itself - was squashed under Harold Swallow's knee. Harold held on to one of Frank's arms, fully extended; Lenny Metz stretched Frank's other arm. Frank lay belly down with his b.a.l.l.s in the heart of the mud puddle, his astonis.h.i.+ng bare a.s.s rising up out of the water and submerging again, as Chipper Dove pushed it down with his foot, then let it up, then pushed it down. Chester Pulaski, the blocking back, sat on the backs of Frank's knees with Frank's ankles locked under this arms.

'Come on, hump it!' said Chipper Dove to Frank. He pushed down on Frank's a.s.s and drove him deep into the mud puddle again. The football cleats left little white indentations on Frank's a.s.s.

'Come on, you mud-f.u.c.ker,' said Lenny Metz. 'You heard the man - hump it!'

'Stop it!' Franny screamed at them. 'What are you doing?'

Frank seemed the most alarmed to see her, although even Chipper Dove couldn't conceal his surprise.

'Well, look who's here,' Dove said, but I could tell he was thinking about what to say next.

'We're just giving him what he likes,' Lenny Metz told Franny and me. 'Frank likes to screw mud puddles, don't you, Frank?'

'Let him go,' Franny said.

'We're not hurting him,' Chester Pulaski said; he was forever embarra.s.sed about his complexion and he chose to look at me, not at Franny; he probably couldn't stand to see Franny's fine skin.

'Your brother likes boys boys,' Chipper Dover told us. 'Don't you, Frank?' he asked.

'So what?' said Frank. He was angry, not whipped; he'd probably stuck his fingers in their eyes - he'd probably hurt one or two of them, here or there. Frank always put up a fight.