Sons (3 page)

“So do you.”

“That’s only because you’re holding me so tight.”

“Do you mind?”

“Well... no. But don’t get the wrong idea.”

“What’s the wrong idea?”

“You know,” she whispered.

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, you just figure it out.”

“I’ll try.”

“Yes, do try,” she said.

Walsh was still watching us. There was only one other couple in the room and they were standing near the record player. Walsh glanced at them as though seeking their sympathy, but they were chattering about the poster hanging over the phonograph, a huge cartoon showing Hitler saying, “It is goot to hear Americans are now pudding 10 % of der pay into Bunds!” and Goebbels whispering to a glum Goering, “Hermann,
you
tell him it iss BONDS — not BUNDS!” Neither of them even noticed Walsh’s imploring look, and he seemed to take their indifference as a personal affront.

“How old are
you?”
the girl asked me.

“I’ll be eighteen in June. I may join the Air Force,” I said. “I want to fly. I want to be a fighter pilot.”

“Seems like everybody interesting is either already drafted or about to be,” the girl said.

“Oh? You think I’m interesting?”

“You’re okay,” she said indifferently.

Walsh came up off the couch in that moment, apparently having made his big decision. He walked directly to where we were dancing, and politely tapped me on the shoulder. I looked at his hand, and I said, “Sorry, no cutting in.”

“Who says so?” Walsh asked.

“Me.”

“Look, Tyler...”

“Yes, Walsh?”

“What’s the idea?”

“What’s the
big
idea,” I said. “You’re supposed to say ‘What’s the
big
idea?”’

“All right, what’s the
big
idea?” Walsh said.

“The idea is no cutting in,” I said. “That’s also the
big
idea.”

“Look, Tyler...”

“Yes, Walsh?”

“You know, Tyler...”

“Yes, Walsh?”

Walsh stood looking into my face, pained. I figured he didn’t know whether to press the issue or to retreat gracefully. He knew I could take him, but he also knew there were several close friends of his at the party, and yet he further knew I could take
them,
too. Besides, he knew I’d had a few beers, and he knew I could be terribly dangerous when I was John Wayne, but at the same time he wanted this girl, probably because he’d had such a promising beginning with her, his hand only having been removed from the hem of her skirt some sixty-four times in the length of a half-hour. So he stood in the center of the room, not wanting to walk away from a light, and yet hoping he would not have to fight. Realizing all this, I refused to make things easier for him. Instead of dancing the girl away and allowing Walsh to save face, I kept circling in the same spot, waiting for him to make his move.

“Aw, go fuck yourself,” he finally said cleverly, and went out into the kitchen.

“Nice fellow,” I said, and smiled.

“Charming.”

“You still want to dance?”

“What else is there to do?”

“I thought we’d explore the house a little.”

“What’s there to explore?”

“Well, the thing about exploration is you never know what you’ll be exploring until you start.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea what we’ll be exploring,” the girl said. “Well, don’t be too sure.”

“Maybe we ought to keep dancing.”

“Sure, whatever you say.”

“Anyway, it seems as if too many people are
already
out exploring.”

“Oh, there’re always new worlds,” I said.

“What time is it?”

“Eleven-thirty.”

“At midnight, you know...”

“Sure, we’ll be back. What do you say?”

“Why not?”

I took her hand. I deliberately avoided going through the kitchen to the bedrooms at the back of the house, not wanting an encounter with Walsh, not now. Instead, I led her through the entryway and up a flight of steps to the second floor. A boy and a girl were necking in the hallway. They broke apart as we went by, and then began kissing again almost immediately. I had practically grown up with Michael Mallory, could in fact remember the time he had wet his pants in the first grade of the Norwood Park elementary school on West Pratt Avenue, and I knew of course that his bedroom was around the turn at the far end of the hall, out of sight, heh heh, unbeknownst except to people like myself who had been in and out of this house for the better part of ten years. I tiptoed down the hall and hoped that Michael himself wasn’t using the bedroom, because that would have been possibly the
most
depressing thing that could happen on this otherwise totally depressing night.

“Where are we going?” the girl whispered.

“Exploring,” I whispered back.

I tried the doorknob, and gently eased the door open. Wherever Michael was, he was not in his own bedroom. I led the girl inside, and locked the door behind me. When I turned, she was walking toward the bed, and I watched the black dress tighten across her ass as she moved in the semi-darkness, something about her deliberate walk as suddenly provocative as the whisper of a streetwalker on West Madison. The outside porch light was on, and it threw enough illumination into the room so that I could make out a framed picture of Michael on the table near the bed. He was smiling, his cherubic face retouched free of acne, his curly hair sitting on his head like a pile of wood shavings. The girl sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. My heart was suddenly pounding. I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes to twelve. I didn’t want to forget to call my father. “Western Union calling,” I would say.

I thought at first that she, this Margaret, Marge, or Margie Penner, this cotton candy concoction with bright red hair, would allow me to do whatever I had wildly imagined in my midnight bed, holding myself stiff and throbbing while my sister Linda slept in the room next door, would give herself to me as freely as the old year was giving itself to the new. There was no reluctance in her bold unfolding, she allowed me to take her breast in my hand, the way Michael had taught me to do one rainy afternoon in the basement of this selfsame house when we were both twelve years old and discussing all the things we’d never done to girls, permitted me to explore and exploit, offering her pink-white softness like a sacrificial maiden helpless in the grip of a greedy priest, allowing me the secret electric touch of all her silken underthings, and then opening to receive my hand. I was astonished by my own success, I had never before, she was wet and warm and suddenly entreating beneath me, suddenly transformed into something to tell the truth a little frightening. “Oh Jesus,” she whispered, “put on a rubber,” and I said, “I haven’t got one,” and she said, “Oh Jesus,” again and the stench of fear rose from her as overpowering as that other dizzying musk. Her hand expertly found me and she urged me against her belly in quick sharp jerks, while I begged, “Let me fuck you, let me fuck you,” and she answered now the cool determined mistress, “No, you’ll get me pregnant,” and I pleaded, “I’ll pull out, I swear to God,” and she said as Michael smiled in black and white beside the bed, “No, you won’t, you won’t, you won’t, you won’t,” and I came against her leg, spurting dizzily onto her thigh and her garters and the ribbed tops of her stockings.

Downstairs, I could hear the others in the living room. Someone had turned off the Victrola and put on the radio. An announcer was broadcasting from The Loop, describing the crowds of people in the street. I took out my handkerchief. She was lying crosswise on the bed, one arm up and folded, the back of her hand against her closed eyes. Her legs were still spread. I handed her the handkerchief, and she murmured, “Thank you, Will.”

She sat up then and clasped her bra, though I couldn’t remember having unclasped it, and then she turned for me to zip up the back of the black dress, and said, “Will, I hope you don’t think...” and I immediately said, “Of course not.” Downstairs, the announcer was saying it was four minutes to midnight. Someone had given out noisemakers and the kids were already beginning to use them as the redhead and I came into the living room.

Just after midnight, I went into the kitchen and dialed my home number. My father answered on the first ring. I didn’t even pretend I was Western Union with a message for Mr. Bertram Tyler.

“Pop?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Happy New Year. And happy birthday.”

“Thank you,” my father said.

Mama always said, “Bertram, we’ve only got two seasons here in Wisconsin, winter and the Fourth of July,” but I never minded the cold, and I didn’t mind it now. I was working late and alone in the forest because I’d taken an hour off that morning to ride one of the wagons into Eau Fraiche. With two thousand men working in the bush during cutting season, seven supply wagons made the trip to town every Friday, coming back loaded with beans and butter and coffee and potatoes and molasses and eggs and beef. Flour was still a problem because there’d been an epidemic of black stem rust in 1916, followed by another poor wheat season last year, and what with trying to keep France and England supplied with grain, there was a severe shortage all over the country, not only in Eau Fraiche. The same applied to pork and sugar, which the Allies desperately needed. I couldn’t remember having had a strip of bacon since I began working at the camp, and last year we were actually pouring corn syrup into our coffee to sweeten it.

I’d asked Hal, the head-chopper, if I could take a few hours off that morning because I had something to do in town. I didn’t tell him what it was I had to do, but I think he knew what I was up to because he just grinned and clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Sure, Bert, you just take all the time you need.” As it turned out, I hadn’t needed much time at all. In fact, I was able to catch the first loaded wagon back to camp. Still, I’d lost an hour’s work, and when you were cutting pulpwood, you got paid by how many cords of wood you cut, and not by how much time you spent in town. The standard cord was eight feet long, four feet high, and four feet wide. A scaler measured each pile of logs at the end of the day, figured out how many cords they added up to, and that way was able to tell how much pay you had coming. Anyway, I thought I might still be able to hit my quota if I could bring down the tree I’d been working on.

The tree was a huge spruce, probably there since the days of old Frenchy La Pierre, towering up against a sky brittle with dusk. I’d cleared a working space around the tree, clipping off the brush and saplings, holding the ax in one hand near the point of balance and cutting very close to the ground. I’d hung the ax myself because I never did trust factory-hung axes, and I’d also tapered the blade — a single-bit Michigan — on a wet grindstone, and then honed it razor-sharp, taking off the wire edges; a dull ax is much more dangerous than a sharp one, that was something you learned very quickly in the woods. I’d also cut off all the low-hanging branches to give me plenty of swinging room, and I’d checked the direction of fall, to make sure there weren’t any widow-makers on any of the surrounding trees. I was ready to start my undercut now, and as I moved around to the side toward which the tree would fall, I looked up at the sky and saw a pair of geese silhouetted against the deepening red, and saw my own breath blowing white out of my mouth, and I grinned and picked up the saw and began making the horizontal cut, and thought again of what I’d done that morning.

Nancy wasn’t going to like it, that was for sure. I couldn’t wait to tell her about it, and yet I was really sort of seared to tell her. She was five feet four inches tall, thinner than a rake handle, but when she got mad, thunder could boom out of those green eyes of hers. I knew all the arguments she’d give me (even though it was too late now) because I’d given myself the very same arguments all this past week before finally deciding this morning to go over to Eau Fraiche and get the thing done. There were some things a man
had
to do, that was all, but I guessed Nancy wasn’t going to understand that too well. All I knew was I was eighteen years old, and I was strong and healthy, and I wanted to do my part. It was as simple as that.

(When did you all of a sudden get so thick with Mr. Wilson? Nancy would ask. It was you who said Wisconsin should go all-out for Hughes, which we most surely did, and now you’re thick as the devil and the old green snake, how do you explain that, Bert?)

Well, there
was
no explaining it, I guessed. It was just something you had to do, that was all.

I freed the saw and picked up my ax. There was perhaps half an hour of light left, oh, maybe just a bit longer, and with luck I could have my notch cut in half an hour, and then I could start on my backcut. I was beginning to doubt I would get any bucking done before dark, but if I could at least get her felled and limbed, why then I could get to work with the bow saw in the morning, and cut her into log lengths then. I began to chop. She was a big tree, so I decided to make two smaller notches, working them eventually into a single large one. I worked with an easy steady swing, my legs widespread, my right hand just above the bulge at the end of the ax handle, sliding my left hand up close to the head on the upstroke, and then toward my right hand again on the downstroke. I kept one corner of the blade always free of the wood, giving it a slight twist each time to free the chip and release the bit. I put each stroke exactly where I wanted it, the chips falling away yellow-white and thick into the snow. I took off my jacket after twenty minutes of hard chopping, working in my sweater now, swinging the ax in long steady arcs, joining the two notches and making a big notch that slanted down at a forty-five-degree angle toward the saw cut.

The sky was streaked with purple, the trees looming high against it, the snow tinted a fainter lavender. From far away in one of the bunkhouses, I heard a lumberjack’s laughter cracking across the snowbound silence. A dog began barking and then was still.