Night My Friend (9 page)

I walked vaguely back in the direction of the cars, knowing, feeling that six pairs of eyes were boring holes in my back. “So long,” I called out, half turning toward them for a final wave. It hadn’t been much of a visit, not much of a one at all.

Fred Dutton ran after me and caught me at the top of the hill. “Sam, look, come over to the house some night, huh?”

“Sure, Fred.”

“Don’t be bitter.”

“I’m not. Guess I just thought everything would be the same, like the old days.”

Fred Dutton looked suddenly solemn. “There were eight of us in the old days, Sam. There aren’t any more. It can’t ever be the same, I guess. You gotta understand that.”

“Sure. I’ll call you, Fred.”

“Do that.”

I went on down the hill and opened my car door. I guess I would have gone on home after all if I hadn’t seen the kid again just then. Katie Thames, in her red shorts and striped shirt, wandering over the top of the hill. She must have been almost three. I could remember the night she was born, when things were so much better.

“Katie, Katie girl!” I called softly. “Come here, doll.”

She came, a bit uncertainly, but remembering me now from our meeting of only moments before. “Hello,” she said.

“Come on, Katie, let’s run down by the water and play. Let’s sneak down real quiet, so mommy and daddy don’t hear us.” Yes, before I left, before I went out of their lives for good, I’d give them something to remember me by—especially Charlie and Laura.

We made our way through the underbrush and came out suddenly near the point where Joe and I had been walking. I led her around to the other side of the pond, though, until I was sure we would be in view of the picnic people—in view but out of touch. Let them scream and carry on then, damn them. Let them tell me to leave their precious kids alone.

“Here, Katie. We’ll play a little game. Up here.” I motioned her up on a rock, and watched her running with all the vigor and anticipation of a two-year-old. The rock jutted out a bit over the still, mirrored surface of the pond, and I knew from the old days that the kids often used it as a sort of diving-board for illegal swimming.

Now, my breath coming faster, I waited until she was within reach of my hands. Then I grabbed her up, suddenly, before she could give more than a little grasp. I held her by her tiny ankles and dangled her from the rock, upside down over the stagnant waiting waters.

“Scream now!” I told her. “Scream your head off! I’m going to drop you.” And I lowered her a few inches toward the water.

She screamed, a high tiny sound that barely managed to drive the birds from the nearest trees. And I wondered if they would hear. I wondered if they would come running to rescue her. I wondered if I would really let her tiny body drop into the water, perhaps just too soon to be rescued. She was not like the other one, not at all like the other one. She was too helpless, even for the killing, too small for anything like picnics. She needed to grow up, just as cattle must be fattened for market, needed to live.

“Scream! Louder!”

“Sam! You crazy fool!

It was Joe Falconi in the lead, splashing across the very middle of the shallow pond. Joe Falconi, up to his chest in the dirty water. And Laura, screaming in terror. Charlie, running toward me as he shouted a string of curses. Fred and Dora and Jean. Beautiful Jean. All horrified. Six horrified humans. Let her fall. Let her fall now. Give them a scare.

But already Joe was beneath me, smashing the reflecting surface of the pool, holding out his arms to catch her. Already Charlie and Fred were grappling with me, pulling me back from the edge.

“Somebody call the police!”

“Hold him down! Hold him!”

“He’s cracked up—really crazy.”

And Laura, screaming. “God, he would have killed her! He wanted to kill her!”

I didn’t struggle. I looked up into the fearful eyes of Charlie Thames, sitting on my chest, holding me down. O.K., Charlie, but I gave you a scare, didn’t I? Didn’t I?

And above me the trees whispered in the wind, the clouds… what did the clouds do…?

I
SUPPOSE I REMEMBER
it better than the other, countless other, picnics of my childhood, and I suppose the reason for that is the murder. But perhaps this day in mid-July would have stood out in my mind without the violence of sudden death. Perhaps it would have stood out simply because it was the first time I’d ever been out alone without the everwatching eyes of my mother and father to protect me. True, my grandfather was watching over me that month while my parents vacationed in Europe, but he was more a friend than a parent—a great old man with white hair and tobacco-stained teeth who never ceased the relating of fascinating tales of his own youth out west. There were stories of Indians and warfare, tales of violence in the youthful days of our nation, and at that youthful age I was fully content in believing that my grandfather was easily old enough to have fought in all those wars as he so claimed.

It was not the custom in the Thirties, as it is today, for parents to take their children along when making their first tour of Europe, and so as I’ve said I was left behind in grandfather’s care. It was really a month of fun for me, because the life of the rural New York town is far different from the bustle of the city, even for a boy of nine or ten, and I was to spend endless days running barefoot along dusty roads in the company of boys who never—hardly ever—viewed me strangely because of my city background. The days were sunny with warmth, because it had been a warm summer even here on the shores of a cooling lake. Almost from the beginning of the month my grandfather had spoken with obvious relish of the approach of the annual picnic, and by mid-month I was looking forward to it also, thinking that here would be a new opportunity of exploring the byways of the town and meeting other boys as wild and free as I myself felt. Then too, I never seemed to mind at that time the company of adults. They were good people for the most part, and I viewed them with a proper amount of childish wonder.

There were no sidewalks in the town then, and nothing that you’d really call a street. The big touring cars and occasional late model roadsters raised endless clouds of dust as they roared (seemingly to a boy of ten) through the town at fantastic speeds unheard of in the city. This day especially, I remember the cars churning up the dust. I remember grandfather getting ready for the picnic, preparing himself with great care because this was to be a political picnic and grandfather was a very important political figure in the little town.

I remember standing in the doorway of his bedroom (leaning, really, because boys often never stood when they could lean), watching him knot the black string tie that made him look so much like that man in the funny movies. For a long time I watched in silence, seeing him scoop up coins for his pockets and the solid gold watch I never tired of seeing, and the little bottle he said was cough medicine even in the summer, and of course his important speech.

“You’re goin’ to speak, Gramps?”

“Sure am, boy. Every year I speak. Give the town’s humanitarian award. It’s voted on by secret ballot of all the townspeople.”

“Who won it?”

“That’s something no one knows but me, boy. And I don’t tell till this afternoon.”

“Are you like the mayor here, Gramps?”

“Sort of, boy,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m what you call a selectman, and since I’m the oldest of them here I guess I have quite a lot to say about the town.”

“Are you in charge of the picnic?”

“I’m in charge of the awards.”

“Can we get free Coke and hot dogs?”

He chuckled at that. “We’ll see, boy. We’ll see.”

Grandfather didn’t drive, and as a result we were picked up for the picnic by Miss Pinkney and Miss Hazel, two old schoolteachers who drove a white Cord with a certain misplaced pride. Since they were already in front, the two of us piled in back, a bit crowded but happy. On the way to the picnic grounds we passed others going on foot, and grandfather waved like a prince might wave.

“What a day for a picnic!” Miss Hazel exclaimed. “Remember how it rained last year?”

The sun was indeed bright and the weather warm, but with the contrariness of the very young I remember wishing that I’d been at the rainy picnic instead. I’d never been at a rainy picnic for the very simple reason that my parents always called them off if it rained.

“It’s a good day,” my grandfather said. “It’ll bring out the voters. They should hold elections in the summer time, and we’d win by a landslide every time.”

The Fourth of July was not yet two weeks past, and as we neared the old picnic grounds we could hear the belated occasional crackling of left-over fireworks being set off by the other kids. I was more than ever anxious to join them, though I did wonder vaguely what kind of kids would ever have firecrackers unexploded and left over after the big day.

We travelled down a long and dusty road to the picnic property, running winding down a hillside to a sort of cove by the water where brown sandy bluffs rose on three sides. There was room here for some five hundred people, which is the number that might be attracted by the perfect weather, and already a few cars were parked in the makeshift parking area, disgorging there the loads of children and adults. Miss Pinkney and Miss Hazel parked next to the big touring car that belonged to Doctor Stout, and my grandfather immediately cornered the doctor on some political subject. They stood talking for some minutes about—as I remember—the forthcoming primary election, and all the while I shifted from one foot to the other watching the other kids at play down by the water, watching the waves of the lake whitened by a brisk warming breeze that fanned through the trees and tall uncut grass of the bluffs.

Finally, with a nod of permission from my grandfather, I took off on the run, searching out a few of the boys I’d come to know best in these weeks of my visit. I found them finally, playing in a sort of cave on the hillside. Looking back now I realize it was probably no more than a lovers’ trysting place but at the time it held for us all the excitement and mystery of a smuggler’s den. I played there with the others for nearly an hour, until I heard my grandfather calling me from down near the speakers’ platform.

Already as I ran back down the hill I saw that the campaign posters and patriotic bunting were in place. The picnic crowd was gradually drifting down to the platform, clutching hot dogs and bottles of soda pop and foaming mugs of beer. Over near the cars I could see the men tapping another keg of beer, and I watched as a sudden miscalculation on the part of the men sent the liquid shooting up into a fizzing fountain. “It’s raining beer,” shouted one of the men, standing beneath the descending stream with his mouth open. “This must be heaven!”

Frank Coons, the town’s handyman and occasional black sheep, had cornered my grandfather and was asking him something. “Come on, how about some of your gin cough medicine? I been waitin’ all afternoon for it!”

But my grandfather was having none of it. “None today, Frank.”

“Why not? Just a drop.”

“Have some beer instead. It’s just as good.” He moved off, away from Frank, and I followed him. There were hands to be shaken, words to be spoken, and in all of it grandfather was a past master.

“When’s your speech, Gramps?” I asked him.

“Soon now, boy. Want a soda pop?”

“Sure!”

He picked a bottle of cherry-colored liquid from the red and white cooler and opened it for me. It tasted good after my running and playing in the hot dirt of the hillside. Now grandfather saw someone else he knew, a tall handsome man named Jim Tweller, whom I’d seen at the house on occasion. He had business dealings with my grandfather, and I understood that he owned much of the property in the town.

“Stay close to the platform, Jim,” grandfather was saying.

“Don’t tell me I won that foolish award!”

“Can’t say yet, Jim. Just stay close.”

I saw Miss Pinkney and Miss Hazel pass by, casting admiring glances at Jim Tweller. “Doesn’t he have such a
mannish
smell about him!” Miss Pinkney whispered loudly. Tweller, I gathered even at that tender age, was much admired by the women of the town.

“Come, boy,” grandfather was saying. “Bring your soda and I’ll find you a seat right up in front. You can listen to my speech.”

I saw that the mayor, a Mister Myerton, was already on the platform, flanked by two men and a woman I didn’t know. In the very center was a big microphone hooked up to an overhead loudspeaker system borrowed from the sole local radio station. Empty beer mugs stood in front of each place. My grandfather’s chair was over on the end, but right now he strode to the speaker’s position, between Mayor Myerton and the woman.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, speaking in his best political voice. “And children, too, of course. I see a lot of you little ones here today, and that always makes me happy. It makes me aware of the fact that another generation is on the rise, a generation that will carry on the fine principles of our party in the decades to come. As many of you know, I have devoted the years since the death of my wife almost exclusively to party activities. The party has been my life-blood, as I hope it will be the life-blood of other, future generations. But enough of that for the moment. Mayor Myerton and Mrs. Finch of the school board will speak to you in due time about the battle that lies ahead of us this November. Right now, it’s my always pleasant duty to announce the annual winner of the party’s great humanitarian award, given to the man who has done the most for this community and its people. I should say the man or woman, because we’ve had a number of charming lady winners in past years. But this year it’s a man, a man who has perhaps done more than any other to develop the real estate of our town to its full potential, a man who during this past year donated—yes, I said donated—the land for our new hospital building. You all know who I mean, the winner by popular vote of this year’s humanitarian award—Mister Jim Tweller!”

Tweller had stayed near the speakers’ stand and now he hopped up, waving to a crowd that was cheering him with some visible restraint. Young as I was, I wondered about this, wondered even as I watched grandfather yield the honored speaker’s position to Tweller and take his chair at the end of the platform. Tweller waited until the scattered cheers had played themselves out in the afternoon breeze and then cheerfully cleared his throat. I noticed Frank Coons standing near the platform and saw grandfather call him over. “Get a pitcher of beer for us, Frank,” he asked. “Speeches make us thirsty.”