Ice-Cream Headache (27 page)

“Johnnn-y-y-y!” his mother’s voice came.

“I
am
!” he cried immediately.

“But what are you doing! Rolling around like that!”

“Working!” he cried with wild outrage, but frightened now, and guilty. “Pullin’ weeds! I got to get hold of them, don’t I?” Cautiously and slyly he raised himself partially onto his hands and knees and went back to pulling, pretending he had not stopped. After a moment she went back in. God, would she never leave him alone? Ever? Would he never be free of that shrill, insistent, constantly checking voice? Would it follow him around the world forever?

Right in front of him, but a couple of steps off to the left beyond the radish rows, and growing in and around and over the back-yard fence, was the big snowball bush his grandfather had planted long ago before he himself was even born, when grandfather lived in the house his uncle lived in now, the big house. The bush had grown until its branches had fallen back over and made a hidden cave inside it. He often hid in there when nobody knew it, or when he was playing Tarzan or just plain jungle explorers. It was even more secret and he liked it even better than his tree house he had built in the old hollow tree out behind the garage. He had sneaked out his father’s pliers and cut away a large section of the wire fence beneath the bush so that he had a secret tunnel between his yard and his uncle’s yard that nobody else knew about and could go from one yard to the other without being seen. And now for a moment, crouched on his hands and knees between the radishes, his heart still beating in his ears from her almost catching him, he debated making a run for there when she wasn’t looking. The tickle of secrecy was still with him but now it was an angry tickle. He could sit in there where he could see out but nobody could see in and take down his pants and rub handfuls of the fresh dirt all over his peepee with his grubby hands. The thought of doing that excited him because he would be getting even with her. And she would never catch him provided he could get to the house and in the bathroom and wash himself first. And he thought he could. Because she’d never think to make him take his pants down. But he wisely decided against trying to make the run for it. She would surely be looking out again in a minute and see him gone, and anyway if he didn’t get the weeding done he would be out here all day and not get to play at all. She would see to that. And after this, there was still the front half of the yard to mow. And of course he would have to go to the store for her too, for something she’d forgotten.

Furiously, in a violent if momentary burst of vigorous energy, he attacked the weeds because it was the only way out of this that he could find. And he had been wanting to play his tennis game today, ever since early morning.

Johnny Slade wasn’t any damned fool. And he knew enough to know that he didn’t
have
to weed the garden, or mow the yard. They didn’t even have to
have
a damned old vegetable garden. His mother said it was to save money, and then would put a sad look on her face, but he knew better. He had watched his father shopping at the A&P store, and he knew the money they saved by putting out a garden was not enough even to count. He knew there was a Depression on, and had been for five years ever since the President had closed the banks when he was little; but he also knew the money his father made in his dentist’s office downtown was enough that they could afford to hire a man to mow the yard, and weed the damned garden if they had to have one, just like his uncle who was a lawyer had hired the colored man George in Florida. But they were just too cheap to do it. That was the truth. That, and because his mother wanted something to hold over his father when he got drunk. And because, as she said when she got mad, her son was going to learn to work because it built character and was good for his soul—and he was going to learn it if it killed the both of them. But the real truth was she couldn’t stand to see him outdoors playing and having fun while she herself had to clean house and cook. She just couldn’t stand it, he could tell by the look on her face, and so the whole thing was no more than one damned big lie. One of those grownup lies, that grownups told each other and pretended to believe, and that children because they were little had to accept and pretend to believe too, because they could not argue back.

Thinking about it, and the whole entire huge conspiracy of it all, in which a kid as long as he was little had no chance at all, depressed him so his violent burst of energy dwindled away inside of him leaving him feeling only weary, and defeated, completely beaten, and lethargic. He had, in his burst of activity, cleared two feet of ground. There was at least twenty more to go. How would he ever get it done in time to play the tennis game? Or anything at all, for that matter.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to finish it, although it was after lunch before he was finally allowed to quit. His mother called him in and made him wash for lunch (exclaiming over how dirty he always managed to get, to which he of course said nothing) and fed him and then sent him back out to work on it another hour. But then she let him quit and made him take a bath because this afternoon she was having her Wisdom Club bridge ladies that she had to entertain once every two months, and she didn’t want him coming in the house all messy and dirty while they were there. So he was free to play, reprieved, and the rest of the garden as well as the yard to mow was put back until tomorrow. Happy just simply to be free, and willing to let tomorrow take care of itself and not even think about it, he ran outside through the kitchen and the back door after he had dressed and across the driveway to the playhouse his father had bought for him and his baby sister a year ago, wanting only to get away and out of sight before she changed her mind maybe, as she often did.

Listening to the Wisdom Club bridge ladies as they began to arrive, and feeling like a rich man, he sat in the little chair on the porch of the playhouse and went over in his mind the various games he could play. The tickle of secretive pleasure had come back into his stomach again. He knew of course what he was going to play. The tennis game. But he enjoyed going over his possibilities and pretending he was making his choice. For instance, there was the tree house and Tarzan, for which he would have to take off his shirt and put on his hunting knife, and he could carry her there, Jane, and make her play with his peepee. Or he could get out his sun helmet and play jungle explorers and how they found the lost tribe of naked white women Amazons who captured them and tortured them. He could, if he wanted to, go on with the lead-soldier battle he had in progress in the playhouse. He sat on the porch of the playhouse luxuriously, and thoughtfully studied all of these.

The playhouse where he sat was a regular little house with a regular roof that sloped two ways like a real house and a front door and back door and windows that opened; it was very realistic, and the floor of the single room interior was the scene of the lead-soldier battle. It had been going on almost three weeks now. First he had fixed up the floor with pillows for mountains and piles of Big Little Books for hills and long strips of blue paper for the river, and then later two lines of Big Little Books for the trenches in front of the big plaster fort. From one end of the room the bad side was advancing upon and trying to capture the good side who were gradually being forced back to take refuge in their fort. At present, the good side had had to abandon two whole lines of trenches. Trenches which the bad side, naturally, had taken over to use against them. With it arranged this way, and the attack moving from one end of the room toward the other, he could shoot for both sides through the open windows at either end of the playhouse. Only just yesterday he had killed a colonel of the good side who was leading a counterattack against the steadily encroaching trenches in an attempt to break through and split the line. The BB had struck the colonel’s horse, breaking off both of its front legs, and that particular soldier was ruined forever, which made John feel curiously and pleasantly sad, and the colonel’s force had been driven back in confusion, losing two more killed before they could get back to their own lines. The counterattack had failed. It was a bad blow for the good side. The colonel had been one of their best field commanders and they had counted a great deal on that attack and now things didn’t look good for them at all. Steadily they were being forced further and further back, ringed in into a smaller and smaller maneuvering space. It gave John a strange delicious feeling of tragic fatalisticness, to see them fighting so hard and bravely and being gradually beaten back. On the other hand, as the bad side steadily advanced into the good side’s territory, they came more and more into dead range of the BB gun in the window, and consequently were now losing a great many more men than they had before. It even appeared at times that they might not have sufficient forces to capture the fort once they got there. Also, John had contemplated putting a relieving force of reinforcements in the field behind the bad side to aid the beleaguered garrison. He had the men. And if he did that, it would turn into a real blood bath, a regular rout, for the bad side. And in fact John was not sure yet just which side was going to win. Sometimes he could hardly wait to find out.

The deciding factor of course was himself, and he knew this, and understood it fully and completely in all its implications, and accepted the responsibility. Just as he accepted the responsibility of destroying his own soldiers, which he loved and valued, every time he levered his BB gun against his leg and shot a big ugly hole in one, or knocked off its head, or broke it off from its stand. He understood this too and it made him sad when he had to do it. But there wasn’t any choice. It was necessary in the cause of reality. Otherwise the battle wouldn’t be real or realistic at all. And every time he got one of his better soldiers he particularly loved in his sights, the old sad fatalistic secret tickle of almost hurtful pleasure would arise in his stomach. Of course, he didn’t shoot these better ones very often, like the colonel, and saved them back for special occasions.

Nevertheless, though he knew what the deciding factor would be, in other words himself, and it was a great responsibility, he still didn’t know which side would win. Naturally, he wanted the good side to win, because they were the good guys. But in some ways he wanted the bad side to win too, and tear the good side all to shreds and kill them to the last man like the Arabs did at the fort in
Beau Geste
when he read it, or like at the Alamo. So he could not be sure which side would win because he wasn’t sure which side he
wanted
to win. His opinions changed with his moods. He was not above cheating a little, either, and making a greater percentage of his shots miss one side or the other depending upon what mood he was in and who he was for at the moment, but he didn’t really feel that that was really cheating. One day, in a fit of mood, he had organized an all-out attack by the good side which in an hour had the bad side in full retreat and which before it was done had swept away and destroyed almost all the gains the bad side had so laboriously built up since the battle started, and in fact the only thing that saved them from complete defeat was a last ditch stand by a small group of French Foreign Legionnaires, tough fighters all, who were fighting with the bad side this battle. That time almost all the shots the bad side made either missed or went astray, and when it was all over and he looked around at the carnage and havoc and the ruptured plans he felt half sick and strangely astonished, although he had known all along what he was doing and was going to do. Why had he done it? Now they would have to start all over.

Sitting on the little porch and hearing the high-pitched cackling chatter of the Wisdom Club bridge ladies in the house, John looked in through the window at the battlefield of the floor. The bad side had by now of course regained all of the lost ground that the good side’s attack had wrested from them and were once again encroaching upon the fort. Maybe tomorrow he would start a feeling attack by the bad side with the objective maybe of driving a salient into the good side’s line and breaking it. If it did, if it succeeded, did break the line, it would be nearly the end. The good side would have to retire into their fort, the fort would be invested, and from then on it would only be a matter of time. There wasn’t anywhere behind them to fall back to; the fort was right back against the end wall of the playhouse. It gave John a strange excited sad feeling. And now would be a good time to start off such a feeling attack, while the good side was still shaken up and in distress over the failure of their counterattack, and the loss of their fine colonel. Yes, that was what he would do. But not today. Today he was going to play the tennis game.

Getting up from the little porch, excited, and tingly all over at the prospect, and with the high-pitched cackle of the Wisdom Club bridge ladies still irritably in his ears (the boobs), he went to the garage to get the racket and balls. The playhouse which served as battlefield for the lead-soldiers also doubled as grandstand for the tennis game, and he brought the equipment back to where the umpires waited, to be introduced to his opponent. Although, of course, they knew each other, and had in fact played against each other many times at Wimbledon and Forest Hills and in many other tournaments. The introduction was only a formality.

But first, before beginning to play, he laid the equipment on the little porch and went around to the side of the garage to pee, and suddenly for no reason, but with his heartbeat rising in his ears frightenedly and causing his excitement over the game to dissipate and leave him feeling hollow and empty, found himself thinking of that day a month or so ago when Alice Pringle from the other side of town had been here to play.

He knew, of course, why he suddenly thought of Alice, whom he hardly knew; it was because of what had happened right here around the side of the garage, right where he was standing now, when Alice had been here. It was a secluded spot here, out of sight of his house, and the spot where all the guys came to pee when they played here or in the vacant lot behind the playhouse. A neighbor’s garage which faced the other way from his own toward the other street was built right alongside John’s garage, so close their eaves were only a few feet apart and you could jump from one garage roof to the other and there was almost like a tunnel between them, a sort of passageway between the yards, from one side of the block to the other, and right at the back end of it a big young locust tree that partly shaded the playhouse. This was where he brought Alice to pee too, when she had asked him to take her some place. He had offered to take her in the house, first, but looking at him with a funny strange grin that made her eyes seem to get littler, the same kind of grin he could feel beginning to come over his own face, she had said no she would rather go somewhere close outside instead of in the house.