What Is All This? (47 page)

“Listen, boys and girls,” he yelled at them. The reason I came down here—”

“Yeah, for what?” Ronnie said.

“Was I talking to you?—The reason I came down here,” he shouted over Ronnie's head, “was because—”

“Ah, you already said that, so stop it.”

He lunged forward, just to grab Ronnie's arm and maybe cover his mouth till he finished what he'd started to say, but Ronnie dodged out of his reach and Henry tripped and fell. Lying on the ground, he heard the slapping of the boys' sneakers against the asphalt as they ran to their friends. When he looked up, all of them were laughing and pointing at him. He thought he must really look a sight. What with his knees scraped and arms dirty and blood trickling out of his stinging right hand, which had broken his fall. Really looking like the prize patsy of all time. He wiped his hand with a handkerchief, dabbed the knee cuts and tied the red-blotted rag around one of them. He stood up, laughing along with the kids.

“I feel like a real kid again, with my knees scraped and all,” he said to Ronnie and Timmy, who had moved to within ten feet of him.

“Well, you don't look like one.”

“He looks like a donkey,” Timmy said, and repeated it to the others. One of them hee-hawed back.

“Hey,” Henry said. “When I was your age we also used to give the older guys the business. But when we went too far with it we also knew they had a perfect right to pin back our ears. So how about us calling a truce now and you kids running up to Columbia Road and having a soda each on me—okay?”

The two kids smiled, “Sure, mister, anything you say,” Ronnie said, and held out his hand.

Henry reached into his pants pocket for his money clip, and when he couldn't find it, searched through his other pockets for a spare dollar and change.

“So?” Ronnie said.

“I left my money and keys home. Usually, I never leave without them. Wait here and I'll throw a couple of bucks down from my window.”

“Quit stalling. What you're going to do is throw down burning hot water on us, you mean.” He waved over the others, and once together, they all laughed about something and ran to the other end of the yard.

He watched them awhile, thinking he'd give his eye teeth to know what they were saying about him. He looked at his slippers—another thing that must have seemed funny to them—tried to think of the least humiliating way of leaving the yard, and finally, with a helpless shrug of his shoulders, started for his building.

It was quiet when he got to the apartment. He cleaned his cuts, sat at his worktable and thought he'd once been very much like Ronnie and Timmy. You put up a valiant resistance—you're the leaders, so it was expected of you in front of your friends—but once the old grouch left, it wasn't fun to rib him anymore. So you walked away, even felt petered out by the excitement, and you forgot whatever you were arguing about with the guy.

When some kids in the yard—he didn't bother to look outside or try to place their voices—started up again a half hour later, he decided to call it a day. He changed into slacks, put in an attaché case a box of fig newtons, cold bottle of No-Cal root beer, two books and the first thirty pages of his manuscript, and left the apartment.

He spent the next few hours in Rock Creek Park and felt unusually good there. He couldn't quite explain why but it could have been the glowing sun, his dream-filled sleep on the cool grass, the pleasure in watching people—kids playing quietly, babies and their adoring mothers and elderly couples picnicking in the shade, and especially this beautiful girl in shorts teaching her Great Dane to hurdle benches. She was alone, lived on his street three blocks away, so if it wasn't for the possible misunderstanding of her giant dog, he might have approached her. Later, while walking back from downtown where he went to the National Gallery and took in another double feature and had dinner at Scoll's Southern-style cafeteria, his original intention just to delay his return home, he felt that today had been his best day so far in Washington. (Life in the nation's capital around early dusk has all the tranquil flavor and drowsy lush charm of the Old South. So prepare to rest your tired feet along the Potomac, weary wanderers, and some places dip your toes in it, or take a leisurely stroll along the old C&O Canal, hearty visitors, and enjoy the most soul-stirring balminess of any city in the U.S.) And in a way this was true. He'd never liked living alone, although he understood the present necessity of it to write his books, but if there was one American city where a single man could enjoy himself—free museums, plenty of safe clean parks, ratio of single women to men around five to one, price of alcoholic beverages much cheaper than in most cities because of no state taxes—it was Washington. So really nothing should bother him again when there was so much to see and work to get done—especially not the minor annoyances of those kids outside. In the morning he'd buy a huge fan at Goodwill, close the rest of the windows and write six hours every day no matter what, have the book finished in a month and rewritten and sent off to the publisher a few weeks after that, which should be just around the time his money was running out. Then when the book was at the printers—a New York editor of a fairly large house had expressed interest in it and in fact was the one to suggest the first-person approach—he'd be off celebrating somewhere, with not a care in the world except for the forthcoming reviews and the size of his royalties, which he had a strong feeling wouldn't be anything but very good.

He opened the door to his apartment and heard the screams of children, but thought Hell, it's getting late, so it won't last too long. In the bedroom where the screaming seemed even louder, he calmly took off his shoes and socks and stepped into his zoris. When he was in the kitchen getting a beer, he only found it amusing when a girl yelled hoarsely to her mother that she didn't want to go home.

“Crybaby Sylvia's a nincompoop,” a boy shouted. She yelled back “You stupid garbage bag” and other things before she was dragged off screaming by her mother.

Poor Sylvia, Henry thought, laughing out loud. Poor, poor Sylvia, He drank down the beer and a shot of bourbon, berating himself for not taking this super-cool attitude to their disturbances from the start. He got up for another drink.

He was sitting in the easy chair by the window, drinking his fifth beer and bourbon and staring at the gray silhouette of the school against the starlit sky, when he heard two of the remaining children telling Mary she was it.

“No I'm not,” she said. “It's dark and I have to get home.”

“Come on,” a boy said—which one, he once knew, but now couldn't tell. “You can stay a little longer.”

“Can't,” and she was gone.

Henry swung at a pesky fly, felt relaxingly high from all the alcohol. He heard a bell chime somewhere the quarter hour of eight or nine, then Timmy saying “See ya tomorrow,” and the rattling of a stick against the steel wire fence as he left the yard. Now it's quiet, Henry thought. At last—the sole advantage of living in the rear of a building and not facing the street. He slumped back, his shirt soaked through from the drinks and heat, and was dozing off when he heard a loud thumping in the schoolyard followed by a much softer slap. The thumping sounded like something being slammed against something else—a fist against one of those big bags boxers practice on, even, but couldn't be that—but the slapping sound?, when the noise stopped.

About ten minutes later, while he was trying to balance the empty beer cans on his chest like a pyramid—three, two and now the sixth on top—the same noises started up again. He put his nose against the window screen, couldn't see anything, and yelled “Hey, what the hell's going on down there?”

The sounds continued, thump-slap, thump-slap, while he tried to figure out what they could be. Ball against a wall, of course. Has to be.

“Hey, is someone throwing a Spaldeen against a wall or something?” The thumping continued. “For crying out loud, don't you kids ever stop playing? Enough, already. Beat it! Take off! Let some people around here get some peace and quiet for a change,” hoping a neighbor or two would join him in scolding the kid. He decided nothing would stop the racket short of a trip downstairs himself. He yelled through the window “I'm coming down,” grabbed his keys and money clip off the dresser, hurried through the building and into the backyard, stumbling over a bush in the dark. He got up—same goddamn hand from before, he thought—and walked through the school gate and saw Ronnie Peterson, only dimly visibly from the moon and the lights in the apartment buildings, casually tossing a basketball against a handball wall.

“What're you doing with that freaking basketball?” he said, rubbing his bad hand against his pants and going over to him.

Throwing it.” He didn't move a step.

“But why the hell now—when it's so dark?”

“You don't have to curse, you know.”

“Okay, then just why now?”

“Because my punchball I couldn't see.”

“But do you have to play in the same spot all day?”

“I didn't. We all went home for lunch and came back only after dinner.”

“Look, I don't mean to seem unreasonable, kid, but isn't it a trifle late for you and your ball to be out?”

“I got permission. Tomorrow's no school. And listen, mister, you're as drunk as can be. I can even smell it from here, so why should I listen to you?”

“Don't get fresh with me, Ronnie. Take some advice and don't act so tough when your friends aren't around to back you up.”

“I don't need them. You don't scare me. And don't be coming nearer or I'll get my dad to break your nose in.”

“Say, I'd like that. Go on, call him—well, go ahead,” not sure if he was up to facing the boy's old man if he did take his bluff. “Because I'd really like to speak to Mr. Peterson about his dear considerate son.”

“Maybe later. Stick around. He'll be here soon to get me.” He poised the ball over his head, threw it against the wall, and retrieved it effortlessly when it bounced back to his chest.

“Now didn't I ask you nicely just before? I mean, don't you think you're just banging the ball out of spite.”

“Shove off, mister,” a slight quiver in his voice.

“Well, what, then? I mean, what do you want from me—my blood?”

“
Meada du sombrero
, mister—you know what that means in Spanish?” Henry shook his head, and Ronnie said “‘Go shit in your hat.'”

He swirled around and threw the basketball against the wall, didn't see Henry's fist coming down on his face. The blow caught him square in the cheek and sent him sprawling. The ball rebounded past them, banged against the fence with a ping and rolled jerkily a few more feet before stopping. Henry charged over to him, and was pulling at Ronnie's shirt and hair when a woman screamed behind him. He jumped up, looked around as if others were watching him, looked at Ronnie, whose eyes were closed and he wasn't moving, and ran to his building.

Someone pounded on his door half an hour later. “Mr. Sampson? It's the police. I want you to open the door.”

“Be there in a jiffy.” He was sitting in the easy chair, downing his last beer. The pounding became more insistent. Henry yelled out “I have to put on some clothes before opening up, you know.”

“Just open it now.”

He unlocked the door. Two policemen were in the hallway, and behind them two men in baseball uniforms held up a woman by her underarms. She was sobbing and sweating and saying in a Southern drawl That's him, that's him. That's the filthy crazy bastard I saw nearly kill my boy.” The ballplayers just stared at their spikes, as if they'd been tapped at random by the cops to hold this woman and didn't want to get any more involved than that.

Henry was so sickened by her wet pulpy face that he had to turn away. He also didn't like her pointing at him as if he were a common ignorant dipso like herself who'd just committed an unprovoked brutal act. Because there were things to explain. Plenty of things—all proving how justified his attack on her son had been and why it could be labeled a clear case of self-defense.

She pulled away from the men and tried to punch Henry. A policeman grabbed her wrists and tried calming her down. He said “Yes, ma'am…All right, ma'am…Now everything's going to work out just dandy, ma'am, so you take it easy, you hear?” The other policeman took down Henry's name and address and began asking a lot of questions Henry found to be embarrassing. Yes, he was not a permanent resident. No, he could not say he had any present visible means of support other than for a little savings. Yes, it's possible he struck the face of a boy known as Ronald Gregory Peterson. Yes, he had a pretty good idea why he did it. No, he'd never been in trouble in Washington before. Yes, he might have had some difficulties with law enforcement agents in other cities.

And then other questions, some even more disturbing, Henry feeling too dizzy and confused to answer them and really only thinking of a paragraph he wrote last week for the Tips the Natives Know section about the ruthless almost Gestapo-like tactics of a lot of the police here and which he'd have to revise. Because he had to maintain more than a semblance of truth and fairness in his books if they were to be worthy of publication and sell. And these two here—the first policemen he'd spoken to in this city—showed courtesy and considerable understanding and tact, far unlike that fat slobbering Texas cop who arrested him on a street a year ago, when all Henry had wanted from several prostitutes and strippers were statistics and humorous anecdotes for the Strictly Male section of his uncompleted Houston-Galveston book. (Tourists concerned with the current widely discussed issue of law and order in our nation's major cities will be pleased to learn that the DC police—and this opinion is not only mine but that of many very discerning and influential Capitol Hill friends—is probably the most honest, intelligent and well-mannered municipal protective force in America. Besides being unusually effective in keeping the city's crime rate down beyond a reasonable low, considering the poverty that exists in some outlying areas here, the police are also helpful and friendly to residents and tourists alike in dealing with matters of a noncriminal nature. In a way, they remind me of those handsome white-uniformed Carabinieri in Naples and Rome. For whenever I approached one for street directions or really any topical or historical information, he would first salute me, smile, even bow a little, and then very graciously and patiently offer his help.)