Songs in Ordinary Time (7 page)

Marie Fermoyle’s jaw trembled, then set like a closing fist.

From next door Jessie Klubock’s voice pealed like a glass bell through the warm spring morning. “Louis! Louis! You forgot to kiss Mommy goodbye!”

C
oach Graber’s whistle blew. Practice was over, and Norm’s heart leaped.

It was official. Tomorrow he would catch in the biggest game of the year.

“Wait up!” Weeb called. He was picking up the bases. Usually Norm helped, but today he followed his teammates off the field. He was the only sophomore on varsity. Weeb had been cut the first day, but he kept on showing up at all the tryouts and then the practices, so Coach Graber let him run for water and shag balls, and then he made him assistant manager.

In Norm’s first game he had struck out with such force in his last swing that the bat had flown down the baseline as he spiraled into a foolish heap over the plate.

“Asshole,” someone had muttered, and the next thing Norm knew, Graber was peeling him off the moaning bloody-nosed catcher by the seat of his pants. Ever since, Graber had hated his guts. He told everyone Norm was SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 29

a hothead, a poor sport, a disgrace as a Catholic, and a lousy catcher. But that was all right, the rest of the guys liked him. And more important, they respected him. They never gave him the shit jobs like they did poor Weeb, he thought as he trailed the older players back to the locker room, his gait the same rolling heel-to-toe strut as theirs, his shirttail out, his cap low to his eyes and mean, his square younger face aglow in the lowering sun and the warmth of their camaraderie. And now as they trooped into the dark locker room he shivered with pleasure in the musky commingling of their hard-earned sweat and their rude talk as they lingered over the long, gouged benches.

Weeb rushed in and stacked the bases in the corner. Always out of breath and erratic with energy, he ran up to Norm and squealed, “Jesus Christ, Norm, you did every fucking thing fucking perfect.” He pummeled Norm’s arm with a flurry of harmless jabs.

“Hey Miller,” Billy Hendricks, the tall senior first baseman, came in and called out to Weeb. “Graber says you forgot the fucking first-aid kit.”

“Shit. Shit,” Weeb muttered as he ran off.

Norm looked around at his teammates’ grimy faces limned with sweat and their sun-reddened eyes, and a jolt went through him. Suddenly he understood why wars were fought and how it was with buddies willing to heave themselves onto bouncing hand grenades. In here it was Audie Murphy and John Wayne and Knute Rockne. In here was the most he’d ever seen of truth and goodness and fair play. In here boys were men and the Gipper was all there was of sorrow and courage and nobody gave a fuck if his father’d been drunk for the last two weeks and out of work for years. In here there was only unity and heroes, and the weak were never trampled, but goaded gently to strength.

Weeb ran back inside with the first-aid kit and the canvas bat bag, which he dumped under the stairs. Talking all the way, he followed Norm to the toilet stalls, entering the one beside him. “Great practice, Norm! You’re really firing the ball to second! You must’ve blocked five pitches in the dirt!

Jesus Christ, Norm, I never saw you do so good. I mean it!”

In the privacy of the stall, Norm shook his head and grinned at the machine-gun rattle of the sudden laughter from the shower room, laughter he had practiced so often that now it was his laugh, too.

Billy Hendricks’s voice rose over the laughter. “Hey Brady,” Hendricks hollered and then snapped his towel.

“Cut it out!” Brady yelped.

Norm smiled, knowing that Brady’s ass had just been stung by Billy’s wet towel. The towel snapped again.

“You fucker, Hendricks!” Bobby Busco bellowed.

In the next stall Weeb’s foot arched. Last week, when Hendricks snapped his towel at Weeb, he had burst into tears with the pain.

“Hey Busco,” Hendricks shouted. “Tell ’em about Fermoyle’s old man hitting his little brother.”

“Oh yah, I couldn’t believe it,” Busco yelled back. “The guy was so drunk.”

30 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

“Shut up!” Brady hollered. “Norm’s—”

“He’s gone,” Hendricks shouted. “And even if he wasn’t, he’s such an asshole. Tell ’em!”

“I never saw anybody so far gone,” Busco shouted for everyone to hear.

“The guy can barely stand up, and then Fermoyle’s kid brother comes along, and he’s smacking him and the kid’s crying, and then he takes off, so then we go over and we start shoving the asshole and saying, How come you did that….”

Norm bit the inside of his cheek until it bled and then he flushed the toilet and held the handle down so Weeb wouldn’t hear him gag. As the last of the water swirled down the slimy bowl, he opened the door and he heard Weeb call weakly, “Don’t, Norm…”

He wanted Busco, but all he could see through the steam was Billy Hendricks’s dripping-wet face and the meaty splat of his lips under his fist, but then Hendricks fell and for a minute he couldn’t find him in the sudden writhing steamy contortion of hairy legs and shriveled peckers, but now he had found him, was on him again, this time with both fists. He couldn’t breathe. Someone was choking him, pulling him by the throat over the slimy floor.

It was Graber, Coach Graber dragging him, then dumping him against the bench where Weeb stood now, whimpering as he dabbed at his face with a towel, then jumped back with a gasp when Graber returned screaming, screaming at Norm like a woman. He grabbed his shirt, yanked him to his feet, then shoved him through the door on his hands and knees out into the dust. Graber opened the door once more to let a stricken-faced Weeb out to his friend. The door opened again and he threw out Norm’s glove. As the door closed, Weeb hollered, “It wasn’t Norm’s fault.”

The door opened again and Graber’s mouth opened, but before he could say a word Norm had picked up his beloved glove and flung it square and hard in the coach’s ashen face. Graber picked up the glove and ran to the railing and whipped it at Norm’s feet. “You’re done! You’re dead! You hear me?” Graber’s voice trembled down.

Norm kicked aside the glove. “Fuck you, Graber,” he roared as Weeb grabbed the glove and tried to hustle him away.

H
e was in the backyard hanging the dripping wash on the sagging clothesline. His mother had called from work with a list of chores to do before she got home. This was his last task. Now as he stuck clothespins on the corners of the towel, he glanced toward the large wooden box where Louie and his dog crouched so Mrs. Klubock wouldn’t see them over here.

Louie was telling him about a second-grade girl who’d wet her pants in school today. This was a great fear of Louie’s. He was always talking about someone who’d wet their pants in front of everyone.

“Where’s that guy?” Louie asked. “The one yesterday.” He looked toward the garage.

“I don’t know,” Benjy said. “Took off, I guess.”

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 31

“My mother saw him go in your house. She said nobody goes in your house,” Louie said.

“Sure they do. Lots of people do.”

“I never do,” Louie said.

“You’re too young.” Benjy reached into the basket for Norm’s undershirt.

“How old do I have to be?” Louie asked.

“Ten.”

“I can go in when I’m ten?” Louie looked pleased.

“Yup,” Benjy said. He had run out of clothespins. He looked on the ground for some. Whatever fell in this yard stayed there. Next to the wooden box that the washing machine had come in three years ago was a bent aluminum lawn chair, its torn webbing shredded and embedded in the tall grass. A thin waxy slip of poison ivy was entwined around one of the legs.

Along the dark eastern side of the house, where once there had been a split-rail fence, now two bleached posts were all that stood. The rest, poles and rails, were rotting somewhere beneath the bramble of honeysuckle and wild juniper of the advancing woods from which had already crept, dark and unnoticed, a fibrous vine thick as a rope, up the rusted drainspout, then up along the roof, its hairy tentacles rooted in the curled brittle shingles that flashed the crooked chimney. Next to the chimney, dangling from Benjy’s bedroom window with the tenuity of a tree’s last leaf, was a black shutter, the only one left on the house, its last touch of ornament.

Benjy returned to the clothesline with three spongy, muddy clothespins.

With one he pinned five washcloths, and with another a bunch of cleaning rags, and with the third, he hung his mother’s two white blouses together by the collars. The clothesline creaked, then sagged closer to the ground.

He caught the pole just in time. He looked up to see Norm coming down the driveway. His eyes were red and puffy, and one side of his face was streaked with dirt.

“You little faggot!” Norm growled. “C’mere! You get in here!”

“Norm! I can’t! The—” Benjy was trying to explain as he braced up the clothesline, but Norm flung his glove at him and growled, “I want to talk to you! Now!” He stormed inside and slammed the door.

“He’s mad at you!” Louie whispered from the box. Just then the dog darted out and snagged Norm’s big webbed, deeply oiled glove, then rolled on its back, whipping the glove from side to side.

“Louie!” Benjy called. With both hands supporting the line there was nothing he could do. “Get the glove!”

But the dog was already on its feet and trotting toward the woods with Louie scrambling after him. At the edge of the yard Louie froze.

“Get him!” Benjy called, but Louie wasn’t allowed to leave the yard, so Benjy let go of the sopping-wet line, and before it had even hit the ground, he was running after the dog, calling to it, panting, begging it to stop, come back, drop the glove. “Please! Please! Please!” he cried as he ran. But the dog was gone. He had lost him.

32 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

T
he dog, ears perked back, head slung low, ran with a mighty speed, disappearing into the woods, galloping some distance until it came to the rich ooze of the lower banks of Moon Brook, foul with runoff from the pig farm and the dump. Suddenly the dog stopped. It sniffed the air, then turned and crept deep into a viny thicket. Here in the dark earthen coolness, it lay down panting, its drooling muzzle on the soft glove while it watched the man’s quiet quiet body.

B
enjy was confused. Norm acted as if the drunken scene outside school yesterday had been all Benjy’s fault. Norm said he should have gone the other way the minute he saw him. Benjy said that he had tried to. Then he shouldn’t have talked to the asshole. Benjy said that he hadn’t really.

“But you were there,” Norm exploded. “Don’t you see? Don’t you get it?”

He didn’t, and yet he did. Somehow he was culpable. Everyone was.

Everyone but his father, whose condition, whose very nature absolved him of responsibility.

They were eating dinner now and every time Norm looked at him, he felt sick inside. He’d really hate him when he found out about his glove, Benjy thought. Alice asked where the salesman had gone, but their mother interrupted to ask Norm about the street department job interview with Jarden Greene. Norm said he hadn’t made it to town hall today. She put down her fork and for a moment seemed to be smiling. Relieved, Benjy smiled too. “What, what do you mean, you didn’t make it? You didn’t feel like it? You didn’t have time?” She kept hitting the table. “Or maybe you’ve got something better, is that it?”

“I got held up,” Norm said. “But I’m going tomorrow, I promise.”

“Right after school!” she said, seeming disarmed by his earnest gaze.

“Right after school,” Norm said.

“You damn well better,” she warned.

“I said I would,” Norm said softly. He smiled. “And I will.”

“Make sure you do,” she said, her chin out.

Benjy was shocked. The big game was tomorrow, but he didn’t dare remind Norm for fear he’d ask about the glove.

“Where’s that Mr. Duvall?” Alice asked again, her cheeks red and irritated-looking. Her lips were chapped and her eyes were bright and her blouse was inside out.

“I have no idea,” their mother sighed, looking toward the back door.

“Probably got his car back and now he’s on his way.”

“Weird guy.” Alice sighed with a distant little smile as she pushed food around her plate. “A traveling salesman! Can you imagine!”

Marie looked quickly at Alice, her eyes narrowing. “Where’d you go after school?”

“Oh”—Alice shrugged—“around. You know…stopped in to see Mrs.

Stoner, and I was looking for a job, of course. Before I saw Mrs. Stoner….”

“Where’d you go? What places?” Marie interrupted.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 33

Benjy and Norm watched their mother lay the trap. They watched Alice stumble toward it.

“Some stores.”

“What stores?”

“The Taylor Shop and then Pilgrim’s.” She shrugged.

“With your blouse inside out?” Marie said, the words forced through lips of wire.

Alice’s hand flew across her chest. “Oh no!” she said, her face reddening as she looked up at them. “It must’ve been like this all day. Ever since this morning.”

Marie got up and picked up her plate. “No, it hasn’t,” she said, staring down at Alice. “When you left, it was on right.”

After dinner, Norm said he’d be in his room studying for the two finals he had tomorrow. And then he’d be going to bed. The radio played loudly in his room and Marie called up twice for him to turn it down.

Alice was taking a bath. The sweet steam of soap, shampoo, and talcum powder seeped under the bathroom door. Benjy didn’t know why wearing a shirt inside out was so bad, but Alice and his mother still weren’t speaking.

His mother had set up the ironing board in the kitchen doorway so she could see the television. Benjy watched from the couch. Milton Berle was under a sheet on an operating table. Every time the doctors and nurses touched him, he giggled. His mother laughed and Benjy smiled. Though he didn’t think Milton Berle was very funny, he loved watching this show with his mother because it made her so happy. She held up Norm’s ironed shirt and put it on a hanger. She paused now as Milton Berle ran around the operating room in his hospital johnny with the doctors and nurses chasing him. Suddenly Norm’s radio blared so loudly that they couldn’t hear the show. Marie sent Benjy upstairs to tell Norm to turn it down. When he opened the door the lights were on, and the bed was covered with textbooks and folders and papers, but Norm was gone. The window was open.