The Naked and the Dead (50 page)

            Well, I'm a regular as an old shoe, Bill Hearn says. There ain't any pretense about me, and if I come off an old scratch farm, I ain't a bit ashamed of it. The way I see it a man needs a parlor or a living room, a coupla bedrooms, a kitchen, maybe a rumpus room downstairs, and y' got enough, agree with me, Mrs. Judd?

            (Mrs. Judd is plumper, softer, more vacant-looking.) I suppose so, Mr. Hearn. Mr. Judd and I are mighty pleased with our place in Alden Park Manor, an apartment's so easy to keep.

            Nice place, Germantown. We have to visit the Judds there, Ina.

            Any time, I'll show you the sights, Mr. Judd says. There is silence, and they eat self-conscious, muting the noise of their tableware. Lovely view out there, Mrs. Judd comments.

            It's the only place you can get away from the heat in Chicago, Ina says. We're so backward to New York, you think they would have had a roof garden on a hotel here before this. It's so hot for May. I can't wait until we get out to Charlevoix. Pronounced: Choliveoil.

            Michigan, that's a green state, Bill Hearn says. There is silence again, and Mrs. Judd turns to Robert Hearn and says, you're such a big boy for twelve, Bobby, I thought you were a little more.

            No, ma'am, only twelve. He ducks his head uncomfortably as the waiter places the roast duck before him.

            Don't mind Bobby, he's just kind of shy, Bill Hearn booms, he certainly ain't a chip off my old block. Pushing his scant black hair over the bald spot on his head, his little red nose a button in the round sweating jowls of his face.

            When we were out to Hollywood, Mrs. Hearn says, we got taken over the Paramount lot by some assistant director fellow, Jew, but he was sort of nice. He was telling us all about the stars.

            Is it true Mona Vaginus is a tramp? Mrs. Judd asks.

            (Looking at Bobby, and whispering.) Oh, an awful tramp, the things she's supposed to do. But she hasn't got much of a future anyway now that those talkie pictures are the only ones being made.

            This ain't the place to talk business, Mr. Judd of Budd (Hearn laughs), I guess you hear that all the time, Judd of Budd, but the truth is you're in business to do business, and a curiosity enough, I'm out for the same thing, so it's just a case of our compromising on the price, but there's one thing this Thompson machine is on the way out and if the reformers come in it's going to be a case of playing ball with 'em, or else havin' to put perfume in the factory toilet bowls and such stuff for all the Polack element that don't know a washcloth from their underwear, so I gotta be careful about my commitments. I been plannin' for a bust 'cause we got an overexpanded economy, an' your prices over at Budd ain't makin' it any easier for me.

            Mr. Judd and I are planning to go to Paris. The petits-fours and the melting ice are set before them.

            I'll tell ya, tomorrow do you want to ride in with me to see those auto races at Indianapolis? Bill Hearn asks.

            Poor Robert, he's falling asleep, Ina says, nudging him with her elbow.

            My it's hot, Mrs. Judd says.

            Ina reaches up and turns on the bed lamp. Bill, how could you have asked the Judds where Mount Holyoke was? If you don't know something don't ask so many questions about it.

            So what if their daughter does go there? I ain't afraid of the damn Judds, I want to tell you something, Ina, that society stuff don't impress me 'cause the truth of it is it's the money that counts, and we ain't got a daughter to worry about, and as far as Robert goes with all the books he reads he ain't gonna be much on the social end anyway, not so long as you're never around the goddam house, and he's got a nigger cook for a mother.

            Bill, I wish you wouldn't talk that way.

            Well, you can't change a sow's ear, Ina. I got my business and you got your social engagements, and each of us oughta be happy. Only it seems to me you could give a little time to Robert, that kid's a big kid, and he's healthy, only he's like a cold fish, and there's just no life in him.

            He's going to camp this summer, and we're starting him at Country Day in the fall.

            The truth is we shoulda had another kid, or a bunch of them.

            Let's not go into that, Bill. Ina is settling down under the covers.

            No, not from your end anyway, I swear, Ina.

            Bill!

            Now, fellows, the counselor says, if you're a good fellow you co-operate and if you're square and honest you do your part of your duties. Who was it that left his bed undone this morning?

            No answer. It was you, Hearn, wasn't it?

            Yes.

            The counselor sighs. Fellows, I'm going to give this tent a demerit because of Robert.

            Well, I don't see why you have to make a bed when you just got to take it apart at night. The kids snicker.

            What's the matter, Hearn, are you filthy, how were you brought up if you don't make a bed? And why didn't you come out like a man and say you were guilty?

            Aw, leave me alone.

            Another demerit, the counselor says. Fellows, it's up to you to make Robert behave.

            Only he wins back the demerits at the team boxing matches that afternoon. He shuffles in clumsily against the other kid, his arms tired from the heavy gloves, and swings his fists desperately.

            His father has come up to see him for the day. Sock it to him, give it to him, Robert, in the head, in the stomach, give it to him.

            The other kid jolts him in the face, and he pauses for a moment, drops his gloves, and dabs at his outraged nose. Another punch makes his ear ring.
Don't let up, Bobby,
his father shouts. A missed punch travels around his head, the forearm scraping the skin on his face. He is ready to cry.

            In the belly, Robert.

            He swings out feverishly, flailing his arms. The other kid walks into a punch, sits down surprised, and then gets up slowly. Robert keeps swinging at him, hitting him, and the kid goes down again, and the referee stops the fight. Bobby Hearn on a TKO, he shouts, gives four points to the Blues. The kids yell, and Bill Hearn is putting a bear hug around him as he climbs out of the ropes set up on the grass. Oh, you gave it to him, Bobby, I told you to give it to him in the belly, that was the way to fight, kid, goddam, I got to hand it to you, you're not afraid to step in and mix it.

            He wiggles out of the hug. Leave me alone, Pop, let me go, and he runs away over the grass to his tent, trying not to cry.

            There are the summers in Charlevoix, the expanding house in the Chicago suburb, the world of long green lawns, and quiet beaches, and croquet courses and tennis courts; there are all the intimate and extensive details of wealth, the things he takes for granted, and understands, separates only later. There is also six years at Fieldmont Country Day, more of the fellows and demerits, the occasional sermon, the individual regular-fellow ethic borrowed from more exclusive eastern prep schools.

You do not lie             You do not cheat

You do not swear       You do not screw

And you go to church.

            Always of course with the booming voice, the meaty palm of Bill Hearn in the background, combined somehow -- never believably -- with dancing lessons on Saturday mornings, and the persistent avid aspirations of Ina Hearn. Bobby, why don't you take Elizabeth Perkins to your Junior Dance?

            Deep in the womb which covers me,

            Green as grass from house to house. . .

            Only that idea comes later.

            The week after he graduates from Fieldmont Country Day, he goes on a drinking bout with a few contemporaries, fellow graduates, to a shack out in the woods, owned by one of their fathers. A two-story shack with a built-in bar.

            At night they sit around in one of the upstairs bedrooms, passing the bottle after swigging at it gingerly.

            If my old man knew.

            To hell with your old man. They are all shocked, but it was Carsons who spoke, and his father committed suicide in 1930. Carsons can be forgiven.

            Here's good-bye to Fieldmont, good old FCD, we had a lot of time there.

            That's no lie.

            The Dean wasn't bad but I never could figure him out, and you remember what a good-looking wife he had.

            Here's to the wife, I heard she left him last year for a month.

            Oh, no. The bottle goes on its second and third circuit.

            All in all we had a good time there, only I'm glad to be out, I sure wish I was going with you fellows to Yale.

            In a corner the football captain of the previous season is bending Hearn's ear. I wish I could be back for this next fall, what a team we're going to have with those juniors, you mark my words, Haskell is going to be All-American in four years, and while we're on the subject, Bob, I would like to give you just a little word of advice 'cause I've kept my eye on you for a long time now, and you don't try hard enough, you don't pull, you could've made the team 'cause you're big and you got natural ability but you didn't want to, and it's a shame because you ought to pull harder.

            Stick your head in a bucket of ice.

            Hearn's drunk, the captain yells.

            Look at old Hearn off in the corner again. I bet he busted up with Adelaide.

            She's a keen girl, but she necks around an awful lot, I bet Lantry used to worry about it before he went off to Princeton.

            Aw, brothers don't care, that's my theory. I've got a sister, and she doesn't fool around, but I wouldn't care if she did.

            You're only saying that 'cause she doesn't, I mean if she did, oh, that liquor is going around in my head. Who's drunk?

           
Yippeeee!
It is Hearn standing in the middle of the floor with his head tilted back, gasping at the spout of the bottle. I'm a sonofabitch, what I say is all you men put your cards on the table.

            Man, is he potted.

            Go ahead, dare me to jump out the window, watch me pull my oar. Sweating, his face red with sudden anger, he pushes one of them away, opens the window and teeters on the sill. I'm gonna jump.

            Stop him.

            Yippeeeeeee! And he is gone, leapt out into the night. There's a thud, a crash of some bushes, and they rush horrified to the window. How are you, Hearn, are you all right, where are you, Hearn?

            Fieldmont, Fieldmont über alles, Hearn roars back at them, lying on the ground in darkness, laughing, too drunk to have hurt himself.

            What an odd egg Hearn is, they say. Remember last year when he got potted?

            The last summer before college is a succession of golden days, and shining beaches, the magic of electric lights on summer evenings, and the dance band at the summer bathing club, AN AIRLINE TICKET TO ROMANTIC PLACES, and the touch and smell of young girls, lipstick odor, powder odor, and the svelte lean scent of leather on the seats of convertibles. The sky always has stars, always has moonlight gilding the black trees. On the highways the headlights lance a silver tunnel through the foliage overhead.

            And he has a girl friend, a great catch, the young beauty at this summer colony. Miss Sally Tendecker of Lake Shore Drive, and the inescapable connotations to come of Christmas holidays, and fur coats, perfume, and college dances in the hue-titled rooms of the big hotels.

            Bob, you drive faster than anybody I know, you're going to kill yourself one of these days.

            Uh-huh. He's slow at speech with women yet, absorbed for the instant in negotiating the turn. His Buick swings out wide to the left, resists, struggles against going to the right, and then straightens from the turn. There had been panic for a second, and then relief, exultation as he goes streaming down the straightaway.

            I declare you're a wild man, Bob Hearn.

            I don't know.

            What goes on in your head, Bob?

            He parks the car off the highway, turns to her with a sudden abrupt outpouring of speech. I don't know, Sally, sometimes I think. . . but that isn't true, I just get all worked up, and I stew around, and I don't want to do anything, I'm going to Harvard just 'cause my father said something about Yale, and I don't know, there's things, there's something else, I can't put my finger on it, I don't want to be pushed, I don't know.

            She laughs. Oh, you're a crazy boy, Bob, I guess that's why all we girls love you.

            You love me?

            Just listen to him talk. Why, of course I do, Bobby. Across from him on the leather seat cushions, her perfume is a little too strong, a little too mature for a girl of seventeen. And he senses the truth beneath her banter, moves over to kiss her with his heart beating. Only back of it is the forecast of dates at all the holidays, of college weekends, and the identification with this summer resort, and the green lawns in the suburbs, and the conversations with his father's friends, the big wedding.

            You know I can't plan on anything if I'm going to be a doctor, because you know eight years, ten years, it's a long time.

            Bob Hearn, you're conceited. What do you think I care? You're too conceited, that's all.

            Now, son, now that you're going away to college, there's some things I want to be talking to you about, we don't get much of a chance to say much to each other but, what the hell, we're pretty good buddies I always like to think, and now that you're going to college, just remember that you can always depend on me. There's gonna be some women, what the hell, you wouldn't be my son if there weren't, not since I been married of course -- a patent lie which both of them ignore -- but if you get in any trouble you can always depend on me, what the hell, my old man used to tell me you get in any trouble with any of the mill girls, you just let me know -- the embarrassing ambiguity of the grandfather who has been sometimes a farmer, sometimes a factory owner -- so that goes for you too, Bob, and remember it's always easier, always more natural to buy a woman off than to get in any alliances with her, so you just let me know, letter marked personal is okay.