Whipple's Castle (55 page)

He laughed, partly embarrassed, still pleased. At least she had startled him out of his sophistication for a moment.

“Maybe I could,” he said. There was some little-boy bragging in this; maybe that was what struck her as dangerous in him. He looked closely at the two girls, a speculative look. “But you know, I've got a girl, at Chicago. She's in North Dakota right now.” This made him thoughtful, even a little sad. He sailed the inner tube down across the dock into the water, and Horace lunged after it, followed by the two girls. “Maybe you shouldn't trust me,” he said. “I don't know. But Peggy? That would be almost like incest, wouldn't it? Peggy's a member of the family.”

“You are dangerous, Davy. I don't mean to flatter you, either,” she said. “Please don't get involved with Peggy. She's changing a lot right now, and I think she's still confused. We all mean too much to her still. It wouldn't be fair if you used that.”

He laughed again and patted her on the back. “You know, you're not so dumb,” he said. “For a mother, I mean! Sorry! But I promise. Besides, Peggy's been crazy about Wood since she was knee high to a mouse.”

“But not in that way.”

“Ah, but she wasn't this way then.” They watched Peggy climb out of the water and pull down her black suit. Her waist was narrow. She was shy of her hips, and reached for her towel with a turning, feminine bend of the knees. She looked at Wood; they both saw that.

After the hot dogs and potato salad they all sat around, Wood and Harvey drinking beer out of cans, Sally and Henrietta out of jelly glasses. David and Kate sat on the dock in the afternoon sun, dangling their feet in the water, and Horace lay stretched out on his stomach, peering down through the interstices of the boards at the perch that hung among the boulders. Every once in a while he would creep like a big reddish lizard to a better crack, his glasses almost touching the boards.

David lay back, his hands protecting his eyes from the sun, and Kate lifted his head to put a towel underneath it.

“There,” she said.

“You take good care of me, Sis,” he said. He liked that caring touch of her hands, and raised his fingers to look at her. Sunlight haloed her head, and a flash of sun blinded him.

“What's Chicago like, Davy?”

“It's crazy,” he said. “It's a nuthouse.”

“Don't you like it?”

“I don't know. Sometimes.”

“I mean, is it serious? Are you learning a lot?”

“I guess so.”

“Is it hard?”

“No.”

“Neither is U.N.H.,” she said. He heard the sadness in her voice, and risked a glance at her, but the sun blinded him again. In his shut eyes he saw the outline of her head and neck, graceful in light blue against black, flashing blue and green, yellow and black and blue in the middle of his head.

“You can't look at the sun,” she said.

“But I'm your brother,” he said, and she laughed and hit him on the shoulder. It hurt.

“Ow!” he said. “If I wasn't blind I'd tickle you to death.”

“Come on, Davy! I want to be serious!”

“All right.”

“Tell me about that place where you live.”

“Mrs. Salamonsky's Madhouse?”

“And you have a mistress.”

“That's a funny word. I never thought of it that way.” He liked the word in a way, and was then repelled by it.

“But you do,” Kate said. “You actually live with this girl. That's what you said. What I want to know is do you love her very much? Is it good?”

“It's good, I guess.” He was a little ashamed of his romantic sadness.

“But is she nice? What does she look like?”

“She's pretty. I think so, anyway. She's handsome—a little blonder than you, and maybe an inch shorter. Is that the kind of details you want?”

“Does she love you very much?”

“I…” He began to say that he thought so. Did she love him very much? Yes, she did. Yes. “I think…I'm afraid she really does.”

“You're afraid because you don't love her?”

“No, I think I do.”

“You can't even mention the word ‘love.' You can't even say it!”

“I love you, kiddo,” he said.

“Oh, shut up.” She was silent for a while. The water licked the bottoms of his feet, cool little kisses from the lake.

Finally Kate said, “Can't you be serious, Davy? I really need to find out some things. Honest, I'm not just prying, I mean it. About boys and girls. I don't mean birds and bees stuff, either. I know all that. But I'm having problems, Davy.”

“What kind?” he said quickly. A hard pang of concern, maybe even jealousy, startled and confused him. He rose up on his elbow and looked at her. He didn't even care if she saw his concern. Her valuable self, his Katie out among the predators. There were her delicate lashes, her grave, gray-blue eyes. None of the wolves and foxes was a millionth-part worthy of her. “What kind of problems?” he asked. She was very serious, and her eyes stared soberly into his.

“It's mostly about Wayne,” she said.

“What about him?”

“Well, I don't think I understand him. I mean what he wants from me. What he wants me
for.”

“What do you mean?” Through his mind passed that gangling, unmanly creature named Wayne Facieux, skunkheaded, supercilious and dangerous, probably queer, and a vision of Kate being used by Wayne and his flitty friends, if he had any, in strange, vile communal rites of sodomy and degradation. He grew cool with anger.

“No, David. Take it easy,” she said. “You don't have to get all upset! But you are, aren't you?”

“Yes, all right, I'm upset.”

“Well, you don't have to be. It's nothing like you think.”

“How do you know what I think?” He couldn't keep a self-belittling anger out of his voice.

“You know,” she said.

“No, I don't.”

“Yes you do. He's never…made love to me. That's a euphemism.”

“Is that what you want him to do?”

“No! That's what you
thought.
Now, come on! That's what's so confusing. Shouldn't I at least want him to want to?”

“Well, you startled me,” he said.

“Well, don't treat me like a child, Davy. I'm a big girl now.”

He wanted to ask her questions he wasn't sure he wanted the answers to. He said, finally, “I just don't want you to get in any trouble, Katie. I want you to be happy.”

“Thank you, Davy,” she said in a low voice. Her eyes grew dark and concerned; she touched him on the cheek. Her emotion seemed a flaw in her beauty, and he knew how much he loved her—how much he really did, far and beyond all the kidding around and the ego points, that game they used to play.

A breeze had come up again, and Kate's light brown hair blew in long strands across her nose. She pushed them away. From above came Sally's raucous, rumbling laughter.

“Anything you want to know,” he said.

“Okay. Well, tell me…” She blushed. “Tell me what you do when you make love to her. To Letty. I don't mean all the way to the final sexual part. I presume that's pretty mechanical once it gets down to that, although maybe I'm wrong. But how do you begin? What do you say? Like that. I mean, how does it start, from not feeling like making love to starting to?”

He thought. “It's a look,” he said. “It's a funny little look, sort of steady and serious. It lasts about a second.”

“You both have it?”

“Yes. It sort of says ‘I'm a man,' and hers says ‘I'm a woman.' I never thought about it before. But it can happen any time. Sometimes it happens when we just happen to pass each other going back and forth to classes, and then we know all day long that we'll make love that night.”

“Do you both always feel the same? At the same instant?”

“No, but it's always better when we do.”

“You mean you make love without that look?”

“One can more or less persuade the other to, anyway,” he said.

“But that's not so nice?”

“Not quite.”

“Then what do you do? After the look.”

“We touch each other.”

“Do you kiss?”

“Yes. Not always on the mouth, though. At least not at first.”

“Where?”

“On the neck, maybe. And other places. She has favorite places.”

“It sounds lovely, Davy.” Kate sighed. “I'm sure it's lovely for both of you.” She seemed thoughtful and rather unhappy. They sat up and kicked their feet in the water. Then she said, “Do you ever comb her hair?”

“No, I never have. She never asked me to.”

“Hmm,” Kate said. “Wayne likes to comb mine.”

“What is he, a hair stylist or something? It sounds awfully queer to me.”

“You mean strange?” she asked.

“No, queer.”

“You mean homosexual? I don't think so. I'm kind of vague on the subject. But Davy, Wayne's the only boy that ever treated me like a human being. I thought in college it would be different, but it isn't. He's the only one that talks to me—I mean straight to me, like what he wants to say he wants me to understand, because what he's saying is important for itself. The others all treat me like a
thing.
I mean it. I'm not being paranoid, either.”

“I know,” he said. “I guess I know how they feel.”

“Sometimes I get so blue, and even angry, Davy. I feel I ought to do something drastic, or even shameful. You know? It's being a
thing,
and I can't stand it! Sometimes I think I ought to paint my teeth black, or never wash my hair, but I'm scared to do that!”

“Katie.”

“Well,
damn
it all!”

“Hey, Kate,” he said. She was crying, actually crying, and he almost felt like crying too, just looking at her. This was impossible, especially here on the breezy lake, with the gabbing and laughter coming down from above. Horace had gone up there with the others.

Kate rubbed her eyes and gave him a quick, contrite look.

“Davy, I'm sorry! But I've been throwing college away. It's only as easy as you make it, and I've been partying and cramming instead of getting involved. It's all so silly. The whole thing. Sometimes I want to stand up and yell the worst thing I can think of. My
profs
can't even look me in the eye. I want to stand up in class sometime and yell
‘Fuck'
or something. There!”

A sailboat had been coming across the lake on a tack directly toward them. Now it came about with the white flash of sail and jib. David could barely make out that its sides were red, and he could just see a trace of white foam at its bow as it cut back on a better angle to the wind.

“I don't want to
smile
any more,” Kate said.

The sailboat went behind Pine Island, moving fast. It would come out the other side soon, then probably take the slower tack back toward them.

“I wish I could help you be happier, Katie,” he said.

“I don't even talk like this with Wayne,” she said bitterly. “He does all the talking, anyway. That's all he does is talk. Talk, talk, talk. He hardly ever listens.”

“That sounds like him, all right,” David said.

“Well, he's brilliant!”

“All right already!”

“He is, Davy. But dammit all.” She stared morosely toward Pine Island, waiting, as he was, for the sailboat to reappear.

He thought of going to see Wayne:
Suh, I have come in order
to determine the quality of yo' intentions, suh, in ree-gard to a
certain lady.
But was Wayne a faggot? He didn't resemble, in his small gestures, either of the two tame communists at Mrs. Salamonsky's, but homosexual communists were rare birds anyway. Wayne had sold him a pair of sneakers last week, and he seemed odd enough, but not in that way. He had wanted to know all about the University of Chicago, and did they have any poets besides J. V. Cunningham (which Wayne pronounced J. V. Cunningum).

But suppose he did go to see Wayne? The whole thing was ridiculous. He might tell Wayne to turn into a nice, square, honorable, straightforward type, undangerous and predictable, who would then drop his jaw and gaze upon Kate with that typical stunned awe that she despised. Or he could deal with this complex problem, using the methods of the Black Hand; how would Wayne look with his feet encased in a washtub of cement, his striped hair flowing, deep in the Cascom River? A strange weed down among the cans and bottles and the passing condoms. The idea seemed a little more feasible than it should have.

The sailboat came into sight, nearer now. It came about onto an approaching tack, its bow waves curling like a little white mustache. It was a pretty little boat, leaning jauntily as it splashed across the waves. Its helmsman leaned the other way.
Ensconced,
David thought. No, what was the word for that rakish, somewhat regal pose there in the stem? He envied that sailor.

Because it came straight toward them, the boat caught their attention; it seemed to have them in mind, the way anything that points, like an arrow or a gun, suggests a dreamlike intention to the eye. It came on until that vague idea of collision changed into the possible. It was like waking up, and there was the little sloop, red with a white deck forward, its stays and braces trim and neat. The sailor was Gordon Ward, Jr., all muscles and freckles and clashing red hair. The gusty wind had brought up whitecaps, and he worked his sheet constantly to keep on course. He came within ten yards of the dock and suddenly hove to, his sail fluttering. “Ahoy!” he called.

“Avast!” David called back.

“That's a honey of a boat!” Harvey called from above.

“You used to own it!” Gordon yelled.

“Son of a bitch! Goddam!” Harvey yelled. “I didn't recognize it! Used to be green and white. Well, it
is
a damn pretty boat!”