Whipple's Castle (50 page)

“We'll see, then,” Henrietta said, and Sally tapped her affectionately on the hip with one of her canes.

Peggy had been helping decorate the tree, but just before this conversation had begun, she'd gone to her room to get her presents for the Whipples out from under her bed. She'd just knelt by the floor register and reached for the tissue-wrapped boxes, and she heard every word as clearly as if she'd been standing beside them.

It was the goodwill, that wave of warmth come up with the kitchen smells and warm dry air from the range. First that about her mother—hard but true; they had a right to say what they'd said, and she shouldn't resent it. Then their concern for her, bringing tears. She put her face on the bed. How had the Whipples happened to be here, and Sally De Oestris? Why should they take her in? So many kids lived in shacks in the woods, and came to school hungry too, with that beat-up look about the eyes, and constant toothaches. She used to recognize them, and they her, and feel that none of them really belonged in school or would be there very long. Sixteen was when you quit school—it was a fact nobody thought much about.

She felt gawky and rawboned, and she knew her eyes were red. She'd grown taller, into an awkward bony thing. She'd begun to have arguments with people when she disagreed with them. She'd begun to have opinions, even to look things up in the encyclopedia, and to read the newspapers and magazines. She'd begun to feel that she wasn't really a nice person—as if this research were a form of cheating. She'd had an argument with Mr. Whipple about Roosevelt and Dewey and he'd got so mad he whacked his cane down across his table and roared at her how the President was a dictator worse than Hitler. That was because he'd got Donald Nelson and Harold Ickes mixed up, and she'd corrected him.

And now to hear Sally and Mrs. Whipple talk of her with no reference to this hardness that had come over her, this snottiness she couldn't seem to control sometimes. She had to
deserve
whatever concern anyone had for her. What other right could she possibly have for being here, for living in this house? She could not deserve their kindness, yet they gave it anyway. And even after her argument with Mr. Whipple—right afterwards, with the echoes still flying—he'd asked her in the nicest way to get him another cup of coffee, as though nothing had happened.

Then, beyond what warmth of gratitude she'd felt as she listened to their power and concern, she thought of the gift itself. She had never thought of going to college. People like her didn't go to college, period. It was odd if they finished high school. She
had
been planning to major in the secretarial course. But now the possibilities scarily opened out. Now she could be anything. She could be
anything.
She knew she would never get married, and now she could learn things beyond the mere information and mechanical skills of high school. In college you learned how to make a profession out of your knowledge. She could be a teacher, a scientist, she could take Latin two more years if she wanted, and it would help her, not just be something she liked. Her whole future now opened out in warm colors, something to anticipate with fear and joy.

Then shut, with a chill shiver. She had forgotten the war, forgotten that Wood was in constant danger. Her father too. Even David was now in the real Army, training down in the South. She could not look ahead at all, not beyond Wood's safe return. They were all trapped to right here and right now. Again her essential selfishness had appeared, a little cold selfish thing like a snake, that made her say
me, me,
that slithered its cold head in and out of her mind, not under her control.

 

That Christmas, after the presents were opened, they were all silent, all at once, thinking of Wood. So many men and boys were overseas, or gone from Leah. Bertram Mudd was somewhere in the Pacific, and so was Wood. David was in the Army in the South, and so was John Cotter. Keith Joubert was in Europe. Donald Ramsey was in the Marines. Michael Spinelli was in a submarine. Gordon Ward had been wounded again in Italy. Eddie Kusacs was dead, still sitting inside his Marine fighter plane, deep in the Pacific Ocean; he'd crashed trying to land on his carrier and slid off over the side, leaving his wings, so he sank like a stone. Sylvia Beaudette's husband, Phil, was dead, missing over Germany but seen to explode, his “Flying Fortress” blowing up like one bomb, and she'd gone home to Maine to live with her parents. Others were dead, or missing, or wounded so badly they couldn't come home. The war was being won, but what consolation was that when all the hostages, the boys who ought not to have to die, were off in deadly foreign places? It was the winter for death.

Henrietta sat by the fire, seeing empty places in the room. It was the winter for death. Let them crow of the victories happening or to come. Victories over what, over whom? Some kind of monster out of space, was it? Was it a victory over fascism, now, fought by boys and men who didn't know fascism from German measles?

In the smiles of victory she saw the same vicious triumph she'd seen on Hitler's face at the fall of France. She saw the same primitive joy in giving death. Patton, for instance, wearing his six-shooters. She saw it in Harvey. She saw it all over town. She read it in the papers and heard it on the radio. They were fighting the war for a new car and a new refrigerator, according to the ads, and that was a good way to put it, because they didn't give a hoot in hell for anybody else; they killed vermin, everybody was killing vermin, to get them out of the way so they could get theirs, the things they wanted, and it was a nice nasty way to put it, to hide it, that they fought for a new car and a new refrigerator.

But then she thought of Wood, and her bitterness melted. He looked like them all, so broad and manly and upright, but she could not see death in his squarish, unhumorous face. She never had. But then he'd rarely let his face be read, even as a child. She tried to pray for him, but even as she considered it she saw how silly and stupid it would be, because she'd never prayed out of real belief in her life. There'd have to be too many its, ands and buts in any prayer she'd make.

But she loved and honored her son. What else could she do for him?

Nothing.

Suddenly a big hand was on her shoulder. It was Horace, who stood leaning massively over her, his coarse face staring fiercely, meaning to comfort her.

That winter and spring Horace continued to do errands for his father concerning the tenements. He had changed a great deal, and everybody noticed it. When he moved his body now, it was with purpose, almost aggressive purpose, and this new tension in his muscles caused him to have control he'd never had before. When he reached for his glass at the table, he believed, now, that the glass would stay there until his hand got ready to grasp it. Inanimate things were no longer quite as aggressive toward him. In a dream he had even killed a Herpes with his hands. The others got away. He knew they were only in his mind, but somehow this thought was frightening, so he tried not to know, knowing all the time that Zoster and the Herpes were in his mind.

Zoster skulked in the cellar, and when Horace went to the cellar he thought of Susie's warmth and frailty. He carried David's loaded revolver in his back pocket under his handkerchief, but he would not shoot Zoster, he would kill him with his bare hands if he appeared in conjunction with Susie's goodness. Then why the gun? he sometimes asked himself. If he actually shot it in the house someone would hear it and all hell would break loose. But in spite of these disturbing questions, his power grew. No longer did he have to make a pact with his own death each time he descended into the cellar's stench of earth, potatoes, vegetable rot and the wisps from the coal fire. His shoulders squared; hard as iron, he challenged Zoster. If he turned, he turned slowly in his strength, his rage contained, his fear contained, deliberately wanting to look upon the scaled head that had never yet dared to face him. He held out an arm, an offering to that mouth, but kept the other ready. He had never seen Zoster but he knew what he looked like, how the scales overlapped, the long teeth clashed, the eyes shone with triumphant, smutty mirth. He knew where the joint was in that neck, the main joint where reptilian horn glided in cold oil to protect the black nerves and blood.

But then, the fire shaken down—not too far, as David had shown him, the drafts right, the cleanout door shut—he left the furnace creaking contentedly like a huge, fairly friendly domesticated animal in its stall and climbed the stairs into the real world again. Sweat always beaded his spine at his escape from the confrontation with Zoster, and it turned cool as he shut the door and strode, not too fast, through the shelf pantry into the kitchen.

“You're not afraid of the cellar any more?” his mother asked.

“Not exactly,” he said. “I mean, I can go down there now.”

But he was not sure that he could go down there, just himself, just Horace Whipple. He became something else, a sort of warrior, not that little boy who cringed in terror under his damp bedclothes. It was like dying and being born again into that stern duty. It took a great carefulness of thought, and thought was a dangerous thing to weave into spells, because it might trick you.

On Friday afternoons he trembled as he tapped on Susie's door. She always smiled and kissed him on the forehead, sometimes putting her arms around him for a second. But sometimes she seemed tired, and he grew worried. Sometimes she would seem listless and distracted, though always friendly. But then he'd come the next Friday and she'd greet him all lively and full of excitement again, and they'd sit at the table and talk. Her eyes were dark blue, blue as plums, and her wide cheeks bowed when she smiled, she smiled so wide. He liked it best when she wore no lipstick, because without the lipstick's hard red proclamation to be seen, her face was softer, and she seemed more intimate with him.

What he didn't like at all was to find Mrs. Palmer sitting at Susie's table, sometimes with a bottle of beer. Susie called her “Candy,” and they made references to things Horace wasn't sure about. Candy was Beady Palmer's wife, and she had four little kids to take care of—three of them the children of her first husband. She lived in the apartment across the hall, in the only three-bedroom apartment in the building, and she left the doors open so she could hear if the little kids started screaming. She was four or five years older than Beady, with that smooth hard look about her, her blond hair too much fussed with, that Horace understood was supposed to be attractive to men. When he'd first seen her there he stood silent and embarrassed, he was so surprised. A slithery green dressing gown fell loosely from her shoulders, and underneath were only pink bands and smooth, cuplike structures of pink silk. As Susie introduced him to her she drew the green material across her breasts and over her thighs.

“Jesus,” she said. “You said he was a kid. He's as big as a man!”

Susie laughed and put her arm around him. “He's my Horace,” she said gaily.

Candy winked and mashed a pink cigarette butt into the ashtray. “Well, I say he's as big as a man,” she said. The way she said it Horace wasn't sure she meant just his size. There had to be some other meaning, the way she said it, as though at least one of the words she'd used didn't mean what it usually meant.

Susie would start using this strange language too, only not so much. It seemed she used it only to be polite to Candy, although she laughed when Horace couldn't laugh, and then she seemed to have gone away from him.

Once when Candy was there Beady Palmer came home from work.

“Hey, Candy!” he began shouting in the other apartment. Candy yelled, “In here, lover boy!” Then in a lower voice she said, “If he can find his way.” She and Susie laughed.

Beady came in, moving his dented cheeks from side to side so his eyes could see everything. “Well,” he said, recognizing Horace, “our illustrious landlord's son and heir!” He saw the beer on the table. “Hey, Suze, let me trade you a hot one for a cold one,” he said. They all laughed, and Beady went to his apartment and brought back a quart bottle of Beverwyck Ale, which he put in Susie's refrigerator. Susie poured him a glass from another quart that was evidently colder. But why the laughter?

“I don't want you to do no trading unless I'm present and accounted for,” Candy said. They laughed.

“How about a beer for the kid?” Candy said. Horace said no, thank you, and they laughed. Susie patted his hand and smiled at him.

But what caused the greatest laughter of all was later, when Beady put his hand on Candy's leg and said, “Hey, kid, I'm tired. Let's go to bed.”

After the laughter Beady said, “No kidding, we got to eat and git ready if we're going out on the town.”

“Some town,” Candy said. “You mean the hog wrastle.”

“‘Blue Moooon, da da di yadda di da,'” Beady sang.

When they got up to go, Candy thanked Susie, who was going to leave the doors open so she could keep an ear out for the kids. “Rain or shine, we'll be back at twelve, Suze, and thanks a million, huh?”

“You're a sweetheart, Suze,” Beady said. “I wish I could thank you in a more personal way.” They all laughed, and Candy punched him on the arm.

When they were gone, Susie looked a little sad, and Horace asked her what was the matter.

“Oh, it's just life, I guess,” she said, sighing. “A girl gets lonely, Horace. You know what I mean?”

“I'll keep you company,” he said.

“You're a darling,” she said, squeezing his arm. But she still looked so sad he moved his chair over next to hers and put his arm around her. For a minute she put her head on his chest. His heart beat in his throat. He smelled her rich brown hair, oily and soapy. Her body was warm and soft, all encircled by his strong arm. His hand, wide and living on her side, felt her breathe.

Finally, in a businesslike way, she straightened up and shook her head, then with an affectionate pat on his ribs she got up and began to clear the table.