A Garden Of Earthly Delights Part 29

He thought about getting a job, since his friends had "jobs." They worked part-time in a service station. By now, his father would have given him a job somewhere if he was ever going to; he had given Clark a job when Clark had been only sixteen. So that was out. He was not going to ask his father about it because it was evidently settled that he wanted no part of Jonathan. Or he might be waiting for Jonathan to straighten out. But it came to the same thing. So he thought vaguely about finding a job somewhere, but he had no skills, knew nothing, could hardly change a tire. He hated the smell of gas, so how could he work in a filling station?

He thought, the h.e.l.l with getting a job. He didn't want one anyway.

He had a year and a half of school yet to go but he did not go back in the fall. As far as he was concerned, he was finished with it forever. Since he was stupid, there was no point in bothering-he might as well be dead. "Did you ever wish you were dead?" he asked Clark. But Clark, running off to his girlfriend, had no time for him. "Did you ever wish you were dead?" he said to his uncle Judd, whom he resembled closely; but questions like this made Judd nervous. Since that time in the back meadow-the accident with Robert's shotgun-Judd had seemed more nervous. Or was Jonathan just imagining it? Sometimes he himself could hear that blast, then the screaming....

(He had jumped off his horse and run back, and at first he hadn't seen anything at all. Then he saw it. He saw what the shot had done to Robert and how what had been Robert was shattered forever. Just like that. It did not matter that he died later, because he was dead right then. You couldn't fix up anyone who looked like that.... A few feet away Swan had been standing.) "Did you ever wish you were dead?" he said to one of his father's men during harvest. The men all worked hard and were paid well, so they had to like Revere. They saw him rarely enough, so it was easy to like him. Jonathan supposed that they did not like him but he was so scrawny, so punky, that they couldn't be jealous, at least, because he was a Revere. The men thought he was crazy and all they asked him about was Clara-when he told them to shut up they lost interest.

The night he ran away and disappeared, he was out with a girl from a small farm some miles away. She was only fourteen but she looked older: she had a big, st.u.r.dy body and long bleached hair that fell past her shoulders. She wore pink lipstick and her fingernails were painted to match. They got beer from a roadhouse and drank it for a while on the back porch of that place until the manager said they'd better leave, some state troopers were probably going to drop in, so they drove around for a while in the dark drinking it while the girl complained about her mother, and finally they parked and finished what was left of it. In the backseat of the car Jonathan wrestled around with her and she teased him, giggling drunkenly, and when she finally gave in he felt that something dangerous was approaching him. He could feel it coming as if he were standing on a railroad track and it had begun to vibrate. For years he had fooled around with girls like this, it meant nothing to him, it was nothing more than going to the bathroom-almost the same thing-but now he felt icy with fear. He tried to make love to the girl but something was wrong. He went cold, dead. Then, when she tried to get up, he began hitting her. He screamed into her face.

"s.l.u.t! Filthy b.i.t.c.h!"

He bloodied her face and punched her in the stomach and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He wept with the ferocity of his hatred. Then he pushed her out of the car and left her, his tires kicking up pebbles and dust behind him as he pulled away-and that was that.

8.

Outside the high school building it was a cold, clear November day. Many boys had skipped school to go hunting; that was against the "law," but the princ.i.p.al was a cheerful manly man who would not expel anyone. So there was a strange sense of holiday or half-holiday in the air-the usual girls had come to school but only about half the boys had showed up. Swan liked the relative peace in the corridor around his locker. The girls chattered and giggled the way they always did, but it was not quite so high-pitched, so self-conscious. There were no boys nearby to hear them except Swan, who did not count.

He was only sixteen but a senior already, and he must have carried this fact around with him without knowing it like a stamp or tattoo on his forehead that identified him as a freak. In the locker room he could not approach any group of boys and join them, because he didn't know how, nor did he want to know how; out in the corridors or on the stairs or outside in the parking lot, he could not sidle up to any girl and tease her in that certain winning way, because he did not know how and he supposed he did not want to know. Revere had told him about girls and that he should be careful of any situations that might lead to temptation. "Temptation." It was a word out of the Bible and Swan bowed his head in admiration for its holy and ancient uselessness. These days, Revere spoke a little loudly but you had to pretend nothing was unusual. He was hard of hearing, Clara explained; that always happened to men. But she thought it better to let someone else tell Revere about it. So he instructed Swan in a loud, slightly embarra.s.sed voice that he should avoid temptation. He was not yet old enough to understand the complexities of his own body, and when he was old enough, Revere would explain it. For the time being, he should just avoid temptation.

When he'd been only twelve, Clara had told him all about it. He had gotten the idea from her that it was something he would be doing sooner or later, preferably sooner because then he could "grow up better," that it always made the girl happy, but only if she was the right kind of girl. Clara was emphatic about this. "Someone like your cousin Debbie-no. n.o.body around here. n.o.body on a big farm. But some of those people that live down by the river in those dumps-with all the junk around them-and any time you see a girl standing around a bunch of boys and they're all laughing together-probably she's all right. You understand?"

He respected Revere's standards but he supposed that his mother was right and Revere was wrong. So he stopped thinking about it. He had so much else to think about that he would have to put off anything like that for a while-when he got older, and when Revere had explained to him everything that he had to know, then he would have time for himself. He would then have the rest of his life for himself.

So he did his homework in free periods at school and at home he did additional work and read books that were related to his courses. He did not let these books interfere with his teachers' teaching, though. He could respect their kindly limitations. And he went with Revere on small errands, to Tintern and to other small towns and once all the way to Hamilton, sitting beside his father in his father's new big black car and inclining his head toward him, listening to what his father had to say about money, taxes, buildings, land, wheat, gypsum, and men that had to be hired for the lowest possible pay. He could feel his head filling up slowly. At times he woke to the fear that his head would burst, that facts and ideas were being squeezed into his brain too fast, before he was able to make room for them. But he kept on studying and working at school and at home, he kept on listening to Revere and to the men Revere talked with. His ears were like holes in his head that sucked in information and stored it away, useless as it might seem to be at the moment. Everything he heard was sucked in. He never forgot anything. Along with the important equations he memorized in physics and chemistry were jumbled conversations he had overheard between his mother and someone's new wife she was trying to befriend, or vicious oaths spat out on the cramped little gym floor when the boys were playing basketball, or the sweetly sickish popular songs the girls hummed to themselves out in the corridor. He never forgot anything.

That day he felt a sense of holiday too, but it made him apprehensive. He did not trust unusual feelings. In English cla.s.s, half the desks were vacant and it was easy to figure out that the toughest boys weren't present: just Swan and two or three boys who would never succeed at anything, especially not at being boys, and a dozen girls. Swan despised this English teacher because she was so like himself, so uncertain. She was a new teacher, just graduated from college the spring before, and he had to turn his pencil round and round in his fingers as she spoke, to find some outlet for his own nervousness. She looked around the room, fearful of seeing something out of place, and finally, ten minutes after each cla.s.s began, her gaze would come to rest timidly on Swan's face; she could sense that he was different, like herself, he was quiet and that maybe meant he was shy; at least he was intelligent and the rest of the students were stupid. Stupid. Of course they were all stupid, who would expect anything else? Swan did not dislike them for being stupid, he was grateful to them. Whoever was stupid was beneath worry or thought; you did not have to figure them out. This eliminated hundreds of people. In this life you had time only for a certain amount of thinking, and there was no need to waste any of it on people who were not threatening.

Swan sat in the outer row near the windows. A few feet away the window was open a crack, slanted downward, so that the fresh hard air eased onto the side of his face. With one part of his mind he listened to the teacher and with another part of his mind he thought about what he was going to do. Clara talked more and more about living permanently in Hamilton, and he would have to help her with that. It would take them a few years to convince Revere. His father spoke vaguely of how Swan and Clark were to take over everything of his someday, when he got "old and worn out," as he put it-with a special forlorn grin that meant he was joking, he'd never get old and worn out. Swan thought about that. Clark was twenty-four and that meant he was eight years older than Swan. He talked to Swan only the way you'd talk to a child. He would always talk to Swan that way, he would never be able to accept Swan as an equal....

"Steven?" the teacher was saying.

Swan answered the question. He felt the girls looking at him, then back up to the teacher to see if he was right. But of course he was right-they were tired of him. They sighed, they exchanged glances. Swan wanted to snarl across at them, "I didn't ask to be smart." But he sat still, turning his pencil round and round. It had got to be that whenever he was sitting or standing still he had to keep some part of him moving, usually his fingers. He didn't know why. Sometimes he jerked his toes around, hidden safe inside his shoes, so that no one could see; sometimes he tapped his fingernails lightly on the desk. But he could not sit perfectly still. He had the idea that his brain would burst if he did not direct energy away from it.

The bell rang and they filed out. Swan came to the front of his aisle in order to cross over to the door, lowering his gaze. He avoided his teacher's eyes. It was not that he was really shy, as they thought, but that he hadn't time to worry about his relations.h.i.+p with them. He hadn't time to a.s.sess and catalogue anyone else. So when he saw the English teacher hurriedly put some papers together, he supposed she wanted to talk with him-about college again-and he walked with shoulders hunched forward out into the corridor where he would be safe.

But he was just outside the door when he heard her say, "Steven?" So he had to wait. She caught up with him, a tall ungainly woman in thick-heeled shoes, with a voice always gentle when she wasn't teaching. "Have you talked to your parents any more about college? What did they say?"

Swan had talked to no one. He wasn't going, he couldn't leave home. He said, "They want me home for a year. My pa is sick."

"But-"

She had nothing to say. Swan waited politely for her to let him go.

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said finally. She sounded bewildered. Swan nodded, made a clicking sound with his teeth that indicated he knew nothing, he was confused, that was the way life was. Before turning to leave he let his gaze rise up to flick across hers, which was only polite. Then he was safe.

Study hall was his next period. It was held in the school's dingy little library, which was just another cla.s.sroom. The walls were lined with ragged old books and there were two long tables for students to sit at. It looked quite empty today. In this room the cheap fluorescent lights were always flickering; Swan saw with disgust that they hadn't been fixed yet, and they had been broken for a week. He sat by himself at the very end of one of the tables, with his back to the window. A few girls filed in and let their books fall at the other end of the table, sighing and whispering. They looked down at him with their bright, penciled little eyes, then looked away. One leaned across to whisper to another and her black hair fell across her face. Swan narrowed his eyes and watched her secretly. He was prodding the soft flesh about his thumbnail with the nail of his forefinger.

He thought of how nice it would be to be alone with that girl, to hold her in his arms. He thought about kissing her. But she sat back, flicking her hair back, and he saw she was chewing gum. Her name was Loretta Stanley and she lived in Tintern. As soon as she sat back, she looked vulgar and cheap; just to be with her and to touch her would be cheap. It was only the thought of her that fascinated him.... He opened his math book and looked at the problems. There were additional problems at the back of the book that he always worked out and might or might not hand in to his teacher. He began to work the first problem, leaning over his paper. The fluorescent lights flickered. A girl on the far side of the room giggled. The teacher in charge of study hall got to her feet; there was a sense of daring and danger. Swan kept on working. When he finished the problem he turned to look out the window, as if this were his reward. Fresh, clear air, not air sullied by the odor of gum and cheap cosmetics and hair spray ... But the sky beyond the gritty window had turned gray, the color of slate. In this land the sky changed rapidly and violently. If it was spring he would worry about a tornado, but it was only November, early winter, so they were safe. Because this room was on the second floor of the building, he could see nothing out the window except the sky and an ugly black smokestack that rose from the part of the school building that had only one floor. Out past this, miles away, the land rose to ridges and hills and then, at the horizon, dissolved upward into that higher ground that was called mountains. Somewhere between the mountains and this building lived the Reveres. He felt as if he were an alien in this room, waiting patiently for the time to come when he could return to his proper place. He had nothing to do with the smell of chalk dust and wet leather, the whisking sounds of girls hurrying by in the hall, the louder sounds of teachers' heavy heels on the old wood floor. His head ached and he pressed his hands against his eyes.

All I want, he thought, is to get things straight. Put things in order. Then, after that- He took his hands away and blinked dazedly. After that? He could envision no future beyond the long years that awaited him, of struggle with Clark and then with other Reveres, probably his uncles, and after that the many-faceted struggles Revere had always taken on with such energy in the past: with men like himself in other cities, with workingmen, with unions, with builders, carpenters, merchants, trucking concerns, trains, and on and on out to the furthermost limits of Revere's world, which stretched out endlessly and was a universe of its own. The only way out of it was the way Robert had gone, by accident, or Jonathan had taken on purpose. Swan understood that and perhaps that was why his head ached and he feared his brain might burst.

He put down his pencil and went to the front of the room. The teacher was an old, mannish woman with a sour mouth; she taught history. "May I go to the rest room?" he said. No one here said "may" but Swan said it anyhow, to show that he knew he was different, but what the h.e.l.l? Out in the corridor he walked with his head drooping. He could smell all the familiar odors of the school-his eye took in the streaks of pale light reflected off the dented lockers that stretched out before him. All this was old, familiar. He saw someone's lost mitten and that too was familiar. He had lived a hundred years here. He felt that his mind could take it all in-the teachers as well as the students, the seldom-used closets and corners no one else ever glanced at-but that his mind could do nothing with it. It remained ugly and inert and confident, a building that had been already overcrowded and outdated as soon as the last fixture was screwed into place. He could take in his cla.s.smates and the students in lower grades, those his own age, and he believed he could predict for them all unsurprising and unpromising lives, but he had no power over them to help or befriend them, to answer any questions they might have. They had no questions and they had no idea what questions they might have.

He went across into the annex where the junior high rooms were. This period was study hall and there were no cla.s.ses. He went to Deborah's homeroom and looked in, making sure the teacher could not see him. Deborah was sitting up at the front, just as Swan always had, these strange and perhaps frightening children one never knew what to do with except to keep them in clear sight- protected from the healthy coa.r.s.eness of the other students. Deborah was writing in a notebook. The notebook was twisted at quite an angle; she had this queer stilted handwriting that slanted far to the left. Swan watched her and was happy that she was sitting so close to the door, that she hadn't seen him and knew nothing, did not suspect she was being watched. He would have liked her to sit straighter, not to let her shoulders hunch over the desk like that. Sit up, Deborah. Sit back. But of course that was the way Swan sat too-as if pressing against the desktop and the book that lay opened on it, trying to get closer, a little further ahead. She'd been sick with pleurisy last spring and had missed weeks of school; Swan had felt a rush of possession toward her, as if, kept home with her ugly mother and her weak father, she would be safe from all "temptations" and could truly belong to him. She had the look of a child who would never be quite well. Her skin was smooth and pale, but the paleness was underlaid with an olive hue. Her eyes were big but a little too big, too intense. Her small lips were pursed together with concentration; other mouths hung half-open, in the aftermath of slack grins. Swan fitted the edge of his thumbnail into the crack between two of his lower teeth and worried it up and down for a few seconds, watching her. She was his cousin and he thought he might love her. Of all the Reveres and the families married into them, she was the only one he liked-even though she did not return his friends.h.i.+p.

She wore a blue wool jumper with a gray kitten made of felt for a pocket. Swan thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.

When he returned to the study hall, however, he felt depressed. He came in and the air seemed to suck at him, eyes lifted to take him in with a mysterious female interest, a.s.sessing, pondering- the eyes of girls who bided their time in the public school until they were old enough to quit (at sixteen) or old enough to marry (often at an age younger than sixteen). As he pa.s.sed her, Loretta gazed at him and he returned her look with a heavy, contemptuous droop of his eyes. Then he was at his seat. Why here, what was he doing? At such times he believed himself an individual in a dream not his own like one of those hapless voyagers of Edgar Allan Poe who made no decisions, were paralyzed to act, as catastrophes erupted around them. The floorboards of this place were worn smooth from generations of footsteps and the cracks between them seemed to be widening every day. Ugly black cracks through which one might slip, fall, never be seen again.

Briefly, the sun appeared. Swan crumpled up a piece of paper and let it fall to the floor into the patch of sunlight.

Stop. You will have to.

It struck him then: he must stop reading, and he must stop thinking. He could lose himself in a female body: Deborah, or Loretta. Though better yet Loretta, who did not know him as a Revere. He was seized with panic as, lifting his eyes, he saw shelves of books he had not read and would never read; the infinity of books he'd seen in the library in Hamilton, in the reference room where he'd dreamed away an afternoon and in other rooms in that building only glimpsed, at a distance. A library is a mausoleum: books of the dead. And so many. And so many secrets lost to him forever. Hadn't time for it all and if he couldn't do it all then there was no point in doing any of it. For such an effort would be like drawing a single breath in the knowledge that you would not draw another. You were fated to suffocate, to die. You were fated to become extinct. His teachers spoke to him enthusiastically of college-"You will want to apply to the very best universities, Steven"-but he knew he could not, he would not. He was fearful of leaving Eden Valley and of leaving REVERE FARM. He was fearful of relinquis.h.i.+ng all that he'd won in Revere. And he was fearful he would forget the powerful, potent air of Revere's world, those hundreds of acres-no: there were thousands-that were identified as Revere land. Revere land. If he should relinquish this claim, if he should forget all he'd learned since Clara had brought him here, what then? If he kept reading his mind would burst but if he pushed his books aside, as Jonathan had done, if he rejected the works of the mind, he would never learn all that he needed to learn-for knowledge is power, and he needed power. He remembered Revere pointing out casually the frothy rippling rapids of the Eden River, as they'd crossed the bridge at Hamilton. If he should relinquish this claim, if he should forget all he'd learned since Clara had brought him here, what then? If he kept reading his mind would burst but if he pushed his books aside, as Jonathan had done, if he rejected the works of the mind, he would never learn all that he needed to learn-for knowledge is power, and he needed power. He remembered Revere pointing out casually the frothy rippling rapids of the Eden River, as they'd crossed the bridge at Hamilton. Power. Dammed-up, to supply power. Power. Dammed-up, to supply power. He smiled, he was not going to be frightened. Yet he felt, between the two impulses, his muscles tense as if preparing him for danger. Unconsciously he dug the tender flesh about his thumbnail until it bled. He smiled, he was not going to be frightened. Yet he felt, between the two impulses, his muscles tense as if preparing him for danger. Unconsciously he dug the tender flesh about his thumbnail until it bled.

At that moment Loretta turned, to smile at him. A flame pa.s.sing between them.

After cla.s.s Loretta lingered by her desk until he came by. She lifted her sooty eyes to him and smiled again, insinuatingly. "You don't like to hunt, Steven, do you?" don't like to hunt, Steven, do you?"

"No."

"Not for animals anyway. Right?"

Her sly smile. Her tongue wetting her lips. Swan swallowed hard, understanding that this was the kind of girl Deborah could never be, and the kind of girl he required. That oval, hard, knowing prettiness that could be wiped off with a thumb, smeared. The pale freckled forearms exposed by pushed-up sleeves in a way that was both glamorous and prim. Swan saw his hand reach out and with a startling authority not his he saw his forefinger tap a mother-of-pearl cross the girl wore on a fake-gold chain around her neck.

"Right."

[image]

A few days later Swan crossed the street from the school and entered the diner to buy cigarettes. Did he dare to ask for Old Golds, or would the salesclerk laugh at him? He'd begun smoking to give his nervous hands something to do, but he never smoked at home. Clara would not have cared and Revere would probably not have noticed, but he wanted to keep it secret just the same. He thought that if he was growing up, changing, he would keep it to himself for as long as he could.

The kids who ate in the diner were of a different crowd from those who stayed safe in the close, milky-smelling cafeteria room at school; they were not necessarily older but they were louder, more sure of themselves. Swan liked the crowded smoky atmosphere into which he stepped bringing a flurry of snow in with him. The pneumatic device above the door hissed and the door closed very slowly, so that he had the impulse to pull it shut behind him. A group of high school students stood around the counter, making noise, and all the booths that ran along the front of the diner were filled. There was a floor-stomping, shrieking anonymity here that Swan never felt back in school, where everyone was still named as precisely as they were on the teachers' seating charts; here the country music from the jukebox filled in any gaps there might be in conversations or thought. Swan went to the counter and asked for a package of cigarettes, any brand. He was confused and lonely in this place and would not have been surprised if his cla.s.smates-these bra.s.sy adults who, in the world of the diner, clearly knew everything important about life-turned to stare contemptuously at him. No one looked.

When he turned, opening the cellophane wrapper, he let his gaze run along the row of booths. Those faces and even the backs of those heads were familiar to him, yet at the same time strange. Was it possible that Swan, who supposed he knew so much and had never had any choice about it, really knew very little? He had always been aware of his cla.s.smates but he had never thought seriously about them. Even back in the country school, the boys who tormented him had existed on the periphery of his real life, which was his life at home. He was on a kind of voyage with them but their destinations were far different; when the voyage ended he would get off to go his way and they would go theirs. He had not hated them because he had not thought that much about them. There had been the whole Revere family to keep in his mind: uncles, aunts, cousins, new babies, new wives, the legends of older men now senile or crippled or dead, his own father, his father's father, the table-thumping accounts of spectacular successes that were legal, but not so legal they had no sensational surprise to them. And all that land, so much land, tended and tortured into a garden so complex one might need a lifetime to comprehend it ... His cla.s.smates had seemed to Swan to whirl about in their own trivial little world that had to do with the friends.h.i.+ps and hatreds of one another; that was all. As soon as he had come into Tintern in eighth grade he had been aware of a central group in his cla.s.s-an amorphous but unmistakable unit of boys and girls who seemed omnipotent in their power. They had only the power to give or deny friends.h.i.+p, to include or exclude, and Swan had not cared about that. He had not cared. Though he had no interest in them he had been overhearing for years the tales of their weekend and after-school exploits, their parties and hayrides and wild night-riding out on the highway, and, as time went on, their romantic alliances and feuds that marked them as adult, mysterious. He thought their bright clothes and loud voices drab enough, trivial as the high school cla.s.ses they all disliked, but he could not help admiring something about them- their blindness, maybe? Their complacence?

He was crossing the street and heading back toward school when he heard someone behind him. "Steven?" she said. Loretta was hurrying toward him, her head ducked. She wore a bright blue kerchief to protect her hair from the snow. Swan saw how her hair bunched out and made the kerchief puffed and bouncy; a lot of work had gone into that hair. The windows of the diner behind her were steamy; above her head a big sign ran the length of the building, cracked and peeling. CROSSROADS LUNCHEONETTE-TRUCK STOP- DRINK COCA-COLA. Swan had never looked at that sign before.

"If you're going back I'll walk with you," she said.

They walked along. Swan lit his cigarette and then offered her one. He thought: If she takes it that will mean something. She took it and he lit a match for her, the two of them pausing in the snow. Flakes had dampened her hair on top, on her thick puffy bangs. She had a hard, smooth, carefully made-up face. She could have been any age until you saw her eyes; then you knew she was young.

"I s'pose they're laughing at us back there," she said, alluding casually and with brittle humor to something Swan was expected to know about. "But I really have to get back early. I really do." They walked along self-consciously. Loretta wore drab little boots with gray fur on top that looked like cotton; it was thick and had separated into bunches. Her coat was plaid, blue and yellow. Cheap. Everything about her was cheap. Swan felt sorry for her but at the same time knew that in the high school world he had to enter every day she was superior to him-not only a year older, but superior because she "knew" things he didn't; she ran around with the right people while Swan, Steven Revere from up the valley, ran around with no one. He s.h.i.+vered, thinking of her as she had been that day in the library, her dark glossy hair falling over her shoulder and swinging free.... He had always been aware of Loretta but had not bothered to truly look at her, just as he had been aware of all his cla.s.smates. Somewhere inside his brain, stored away with other useless, foolish knowledge, were faithful records of all their alliances and loves, going back to the eighth grade pa.s.sions that were expressed by scribbled notes and inked initials on the backs of hands.

"I didn't see you in there when I went in," Swan said, as if he had been looking for her.

"Well, I saw you come in. I didn't know you smoked."

He had no answer to that. They were walking up the driveway to the school-cracked pavement with crumpled-up papers and junk in its gutters. The air was very wet and not cold. Neither Swan nor Loretta dared to look at each other, but were fascinated by everything around them. Swan said, pointing to one of the orange-yellow buses parked forlornly out in the lot, "That's the bus I take." Loretta nodded with interest. He was aware of her beside him, the silhouette of her head. She was several inches shorter than he. The girls who were loudest, most confident, who had bright red lips that might say any word and show no shame, always turned out to be short and modestly proportioned. Swan s.h.i.+vered again and was so nervous he had to keep wiping snowflakes out of his eyes just for something to do. They were so vivid and real, he and this girl. It was not a bright day, but the sullen air glared about them, setting them apart and dissolving everything else back from them-the school building with its gray concrete blocks, the withered evergreens at the corners of the school. Even their voices sounded harsh and loud. A whisper would have carried everywhere, to every corner of the school, Swan thought. He had no idea what to do with this girl, who seemed to be pus.h.i.+ng against him-even when she was several discreet feet away-and offering her face up to him, her big penciled eyes and face caked with pink-toned makeup. He did not know the style of language and behavior the other boys knew instinctively. He did not know what to say or do and the knowledge of his stupidity depressed him.

[image]

After they had been having lunch together in the diner for a few weeks, they idled by her locker one day-the old locker tumbling and crowded with books, papers, old scarves, tissues, a mirror with a yellow plastic frame, and her sweater and coat-he tried to talk with her as he would have talked with Deborah. He told her of his nervousness, his need to smoke. As he talked with her, leaning in with one arm up over her head in the cla.s.sic pose all his cla.s.smates used and which he was consciously imitating, he tapped lightly on the thin metal of the locker with his fingertips. Loretta smiled as if he had begun to tell a joke or a complicated story. He went on, uncertainly, to say that he did not think his father would like her because he didn't like Clark's girl Rosemary, and she was something like Rosemary; and at last she began to listen, her eyes getting keen and sharp. He thought the irises were like tiny pebbles, like pellets. "So what are you saying?" she said, standing back flat on her heels. The sockets of her eyes were fiercely shadowed by the dimness of the hall. Swan understood then that he could not talk to her and if he tried he would only disturb her. He could not talk to his mother either, and of course not to his father, and never to Clark and never to his teachers, and it made sense that he could not now talk to Loretta, who walked so close to him and smiled dazzlingly up into his face as if these gestures of intimacy had nothing at all to do with Swan himself and his problems, but were just conventional gestures everyone used. As soon as he understood this he was all right. He was even relieved. When he encountered Deborah he could say things to her, certain things, and she understood, even if she offered him no friendliness and certainly no intimacy. But Loretta was another person.

"Nothing, I'm sorry," he said.

"I know your father's a big deal, so what? You trying to tell me something?"

"I said it was nothing. Forget it."

He had caught on to something arch but at the same time pliant in her-her edginess could always be caressed into softness if the caress had a harsh enough sound to it.

Loretta lived half a mile away and he could never walk her home because he had to catch the school bus. He felt juvenile and degraded by this fact, but Loretta did not seem to mind. She stood out back with him in the crowd of kids from the "country"-which could mean anything from the scrubby lower section where families lived fifteen to a shanty, to the vast rich farms of the Reveres off to the north of Tintern-and she cradled her books against her chest, standing with her back straight and her shoulders ready to shrug up in a coquettish gesture, while Swan smiled down into her pretty, ordinary little face and felt somehow illuminated by her presence, made special, important. He could not understand why she liked him. He could not understand why she had singled him out, abandoning some other boy or boys in favor of him, and he had abdicated to her the complete privilege of choice-it would never have occurred to him to turn to another, more intelligent girl. He would never be able to approach his cousin Deborah with the casualness he approached this Loretta, whom he scarcely knew even after weeks of lunches and huddled talks, though he felt that he knew Deborah thoroughly and that knowing her was like coming across a splinter of himself. But he could touch Loretta and slide his arm around her; in the precarious safety of an emptied stairway he could kiss her; he could b.u.mp his nervous forehead against hers secure with the knowledge that she knew how to do this: she was smiling and conspiratorial, she was never embarra.s.sed.

They met out in the corridor during cla.s.ses, each asking to be excused at the same time and exhilarated with the idea of such fraud, such daring-seeing her come shyly out of a cla.s.sroom down the hall made Swan wonder dizzily who he was to have such power. He led her down the back stairway past the double doors to the cafeteria and past the first floor (there were no cla.s.srooms at the rear of the first floor) and down the bas.e.m.e.nt, the last flight of stairs absolutely forbidden to all students and generally of no interest to them-where, in a dim alcove under the stairs, surrounded by the mysterious comforting hum of machinery and the permanent odor of food from the cafeteria, they could stand pressing against each other, kissing, and Swan felt so strongly how nice she was-he could think of no other word-that he had to keep telling her, telling her. He felt that they drifted out from themselves, from Swan and Loretta, into a sweet mild anonymous world where there was only the gentleness and kindliness of affection, simple affection. He felt how easy it was to be good and how intoxicating this girl's warmth, which was never a threat to him, asked nothing of him but only wanted to give; he wondered if the men who had come to Clara's arms had discovered this sweet entrancing silence and if all men discovered it sooner or later.

Some months later, when Clara tried to talk to Swan about her, he was uneasy and avoided her eyes.

"But why, what's wrong?" she said. He thought her too eager, too simple. What business was it of hers that he had a girlfriend? That he had turned out to be less freakish than everyone suspected should not have surprised her. "Why don't you want to talk about her? Clark says she's cute, he knows both of her brothers-"

"I'm not interested in Clark's opinion of her," Swan said.

"But Clark says she's nice. Why don't you look at me? There's nothing to be ashamed about."

He flinched as if she had struck him.

"A boy your age should have a girlfriend, there's nothing wrong with it. Why don't you want me to tell your father? Clark always went out with lots of girls, even Jonathan did-I guess-and it didn't mean they were going to marry them. All your father is afraid of is you or Clark marrying someone below you, that's all, but he knows how it-"

"He doesn't know anything about it," Swan said.

"There's nothing wrong with her-is there?" Clara said.

Swan tapped his fingers impatiently on his desk. Since his mother had come in his room he couldn't leave; that would be a mistake, it would be admitting defeat. She sat on the edge of his bed, her legs crossed at the ankles, as if she owned everything in here, including him. After a moment Swan said, beginning quietly, "You think it's all so simple. You think it's just two animals together and that's that-no, don't interrupt me. I know what you think. But it isn't like that. I don't act with Loretta the way you think and there's nothing wrong with her. I don't do what you think."

Clara stared at him. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"When I was thirteen you told me about girls ... and how it would be all right if I, if I ..."

"I did?" Clara laughed. "Why did I do that?"

He saw that she did not remember. How had he been able to remember every word and gesture of that conversation while she had forgotten?

"Tell me what I said. I must have made you mad, right?"

"No, you didn't make me mad."

"But you're mad now? Because you have a girlfriend you have to turn against your mother?"

"I haven't turned against you," Swan said.

"Look around at me, then. Why do you look so sad? What's wrong?"

"I don't know what's wrong," Swan said helplessly.

She brushed his hair back from his forehead as if she wanted to see him more clearly. Her fingers were cool and deft. He thought that if she stayed by him, this close, or if Loretta pushed up so perfumy-close against him, he could escape the sense of alarm and depression that was like a puddle of dark water moving steadily toward his feet.

9.

But Clark ended up marrying his Rosemary, that birdlike, short little girl with plucked eyebrows and hair dyed black to set off her white, white face, white as flour and just as softly smooth to the touch. To escape Revere's anger he moved out the day he announced his plans, and he and the girl were married a week later. The Revere women and women in Tintern generally began counting months and weeks, staring at Rosemary's trim little stomach whenever they saw her, but nothing happened. Their first baby wasn't born until a year later and by then it was all forgotten and Clark's place with his father was settled: Revere was speaking to him again and he was given a good job, in a few years he might be managing the lumberyard if he did well, but he had been lost forever to the vastness of Revere's schemes and fortunes. He and Rosemary lived in town upstairs in a two-story white frame house, on one of Tintern's better streets.

He began putting on weight along with his wife when she was pregnant, a plump, serious worried young husband. In a year or two he would be able to bring her out to the house, maybe, but in the meantime her family took them in and crowded about them and loved them dearly, as proud of their son-in-law as if he had come down from the mountains to wed Rosemary and had been able to take her back up again.

A week and a day before that wedding, Clark had driven to the railroad depot to pick up a package for Clara. It was a long, heavy thing-another rug from an Eastern import store. He had taken off from work at the lumberyard to get the rug before the depot closed, and he had just enough time to drive by the drugstore to say h.e.l.lo to Rosemary; then he was off on the drive home. It was early April now. He felt a sense of elation that had nothing to do with spring or with Rosemary, whom he loved sweetly and simply and whose pet.i.te body seemed to him vastly exciting, but with this package he was bringing home. It was a present, a gift. He was proud of bringing it to Clara, who showed such grat.i.tude and such surprise over everything, though her attention did not last long.

When he got home the old dining room rug had been dragged out. Clara wore jeans and an old s.h.i.+rt; she was barefoot. "G.o.d, it looks big," she said. "You think it's the wrong size?" The dining room furniture had been pushed out into the other room and Clark was a little surprised that Clara had done it all herself. "I want to get it all fixed up for your father. I want to surprise him," she said.

They struggled with the wrapping around the rug, grunting and sweating. "If Swan was home he could help," Clara said. But Swan had his own car now and took his time about coming home; and anyway Clark was glad he wasn't around. He felt a sense of possession toward this rock-heavy rug in its awkward packaging, as if it were something he had picked out for Clara himself.

When it was unrolled finally, the rug astonished them with its colors. They felt a little shy before it. "My hands are dirty, I shouldn't touch it," Clark said. Clara was bent over the rug, staring at it. She bit her lower lip thoughtfully. But Clark, who was embarra.s.sed by beautiful things as if they were an affront to his manhood, broke the silence by saying: "Guess I'll drag all this junk back in." The "junk" was the old, good furniture that had belonged to Revere's first wife, reclaimed from the attic by Clara. She had discovered that its graceful lines and mellow wood were exactly the kind of thing she had been seeing in her magazines.

Afterward they sat at the dining room table but with their chairs turned around, so that they could look at the rug. They drank beer and talked quietly, aimlessly. Clara sat with her knees hunched up and her bare heels just on the edge of the chair; she kept staring at her new rug and as she did, her lips would turn up slowly into a smile. Clark was oddly pleased. "When you get married I'll help you with your house," Clara said. "I can tell if things are quality or not."

"Who says I'm getting married?" Clark said.

"Oh, you. You're a nuisance," Clara said, waving at him.

After supper Clark drove down the road to a tavern just for fun. Usually he did not go out alone but tonight he felt like doing something different; he was restless. In the tavern he stood at the bar and talked loudly and seriously about politics with the farmers who came in. He could tell that they liked him. He warmed at once to anyone who liked him and his magnanimity sometimes puzzled them; they were not accustomed to such friendliness from a Revere. But they did like him. At about eleven, one of his friends came in, a young man who had been married for maybe five years now, who wasn't doing well and had been avoiding Clark. But in ten minutes they had made everything up, Clark had won the man's friends.h.i.+p again, it was all right. They were both the same age, twenty-five. Tears came into Clark's eyes at the thought of them knowing each other so long. The young man said he had to call his wife to say why he was staying out so late, and Clark went over to the telephone with him. They were both quite drunk. After the man hung up Clark called Rosemary's house. Her mother answered and said she was in bed, was it important? Clark said yes, it was important. When Rosemary came to the phone he told her that he loved her, how was she? Tears had come into his eyes again. When the roadhouse closed he had to drive his friend all the way home because the man had pa.s.sed out, then he had to drive home by himself, taking the turns as precisely as possible. Sometimes he drove fast, sometimes slow. He did not seem to know what he was doing except when he tried to make a turn then he could tell by a weak queasy sensation in his stomach if he was going too fast. When he got home it was quite late and the house was dark except for the back porch light. He turned off the ignition and sat smiling toward the house. He was too lazy and content to move.

He must have fallen asleep, because he woke up to Clara shaking his head. She had hold of his hair. "Wake up, come on," she said. She was whispering. "You want your father to know how drunk you are? Drunk like a pig?"

He felt a surge of nausea, then forgot it. He was very sleepy and peaceful. A long gap of time seemed to pa.s.s and then Clara jerked him awake again, bent low to hiss something into his face. "I'm O.K.," Clark muttered. "I can sleep here...."

"Come on, please. Wake up. You don't want trouble."

Her hair was loose. She shook him again and strands of her hair flew into his face, stinging and tickling him. Clark did not remember her opening the car door, but it was open. He tried to step out but it was like stepping out over a chasm; everything was dark and strange.

"Clark, please-come on," Clara said.