Nine Stories (22 page)

Teddy
glanced briefly, objectively, at Myron. "Listen," he said
to Booper. "Where's the camera? Daddy wants it right away."

"He
doesn't even live in New York," Booper informed Teddy. "And
his father's dead. He was killed in Korea." She turned to Myron.
"Wasn't he?" she demanded, but without waiting for a
response. "Now if his mother dies, he'll be an orphan. He didn't
even know that." She looked at Myron. "Did you?"

Myron,
non-committal, folded his arms.

"You're
the stupidest person I ever met," Booper said to him. "You're
the stupidest person in this ocean. Did you know that?"

"He
is not," Teddy said. "You are not, Myron." He
addressed his sister: "Give me your attention a second. Where's
the camera? I have to have it immediately. Where is it?"

"Over
there," Booper said, indicating no direction at all. She drew
her two stacks of shuffleboard discs in closer to her. "All I
need now is two giants," she said. "They could play
backgammon till they got all tired and then they could climb up on
that smokestack and throw these at everybody and kill them." She
looked at Myron. "They could kill your parents," she said
to him knowledgeably. "And if that didn't kill them, you know
what you could do? You could put some poison on some marshmellows and
make them eat it."

The
Leica was about ten feet away, next to the white railing that
surrounded the Sports Deck. It lay in the drain gully, on its side.
Teddy went over and picked it up by its strap and hung it around his
neck. Then, immediately, he took it off. He took it over to Booper.
"Booper, do me a favor. You take it down, please," he said.
"It's ten o'clock. I have to write in my diary."

"I'm
busy."

"Mother
wants to see you right away, anyway," Teddy said.

"You're
a liar."

"I'm
not a liar. She does," Teddy said. "So please take this
down with you when you go . . . C'mon, Booper."

"What's
she want to see me for?" Booper demanded. "I don't want to
see her." She suddenly struck Myron's hand, which was in the act
of picking off the top shuffleboard disc from the red stack. "Hands
off," she said.

Teddy
hung the strap attached to the Leica around her neck. "I'm
serious, now. Take this down to Daddy right away, and then I'll see
you at the pool later on," he said. "I'll meet you right at
the pool at ten-thirty. Or right outside that place where you change
your clothes. Be on time, now. It's way down on E Deck, don't forget,
so leave yourself plenty of time." He turned, and left.

"I
hate you! I hate everybody in this ocean!" Booper called after
him.

Below
the Sports Deck, on the broad, after end of the Sun Deck,
uncompromisingly alfresco, were some seventy-five or more deck
chairs, set up and aligned seven or eight rows deep, with aisles just
wide enough for the deck steward to use without unavoidably tripping
over the sunning passengers' paraphernalia knitting bags,
dust-jacketed novels, bottles of sun-tan lotion, cameras. The area
was crowded when Teddy arrived. He started at the rearmost row and
moved methodically, from row to row, stopping at each chair, whether
or not it was occupied, to read the name placard on its arm. Only one
or two of the reclining passengers spoke to him--that is, made any of
the commonplace pleasantries adults are sometimes prone to make to a
ten-year-old boy who is single-mindedly looking for the chair that
belongs to him. His youngness and single-mindedness were obvious
enough, but perhaps his general demeanor altogether lacked, or had
too little of, that sort of cute solemnity that many adults readily
speak up, or down, to. His clothes may have had something to do with
it, too. The hole in the shoulder of his T shirt was not a cute hole.
The excess material in the seat of his seersucker shorts, the excess
length of the shorts themselves, were not cute excesses.

The
McArdles' four deck chairs, cushioned and ready for occupancy, were
situated in the middle of the second row from the front. Teddy sat
down in one of them so that--whether or not it was his intention--no
one was sitting directly on either side of him. He stretched out his
bare, unsuntanned legs, feet together, on the leg rest, and, almost
simultaneously, took a small, ten-cent notebook out of his right hip
pocket. Then, with instantly one-pointed concentration, as if only he
and the notebook existed--no sunshine, no fellow passengers, no
ship--,he began to turn the pages.

With
the exception of a very few pencil notations, the entries in the
notebook had apparently all been made with a ball-point pen. The
handwriting itself was manuscript style, such as is currently being
taught in American schools, instead of the old, Palmer method. It was
legible without being pretty-pretty. The flow was what was remarkable
about the handwriting. In no sense--no mechanical sense, at any
rate--did the words and sentences look as though they had been
written by a child.

Teddy
gave considerable reading time to what looked like his most recent
entry. It covered a little more than three pages:

Diary
for October 27, 1952

Property
of Theodore McArdle

412
A Deck

Appropriate
and pleasant reward if finder promptly returns to Theodore McArdle.

See
if you can find daddy's army dog tags and wear them whenever
possible. It won't kill you and he will like it.

Answer
Professor Mandell's letter when you get a chance and the patience.
Ask him not to send me any more poetry books. I already have enough
for 1 year anyway. I am quite sick of it anyway. A man walks along
the beach and unfortunately gets hit in the head by a cocoanut. His
head unfortunately cracks open in two halves. Then his wife comes
along the beach singing a song and sees the 2 halves and recognizes
them and picks them up. She gets very sad of course and cries heart
breakingly. That is exactly where I am tired of poetry. Supposing the
lady just picks up the 2 halves and shouts into them very angrily
"Stop that!" Do not mention this when you answer his
letter, however. It is quite controversial and Mrs. Mandell is a poet
besides.

Get
Sven's address in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It would be interesting to
meet his wife, also his dog Lindy. However, I would not like to own a
dog myself.

Write
condolence letter to Dr. Wokawara about his nephritis. Get his new
address from mother.

Try
the sports deck for meditation tomorrow morning before breakfast but
do not lose consciousness. Also do not lose consciousness in the
dining room if that waiter drops that big spoon again. Daddy was
quite furious.

Words
and expressions to look up in library tomorrow when you return the
books--

Nephritis

myriad

gift
horse

cunning

triumvirate

Be
nicer to librarian. Discuss some general things with him when he gets
kittenish.

Teddy
abruptly took out a small, bullet-shaped, ballpoint pen from the side
pocket of his shorts, uncapped it, and began to write. He used his
right thigh as a desk, instead of the chair arm.

Diary
for October 28, 1952

Same
address and reward as written on Octobe 26 and 27, 1952.

I
wrote letters to the following persons after meditation this morning.

Dr.
Wokawara

Professor
Mandell

Professor
Peet

Burgess
Hake, Jr.

Roberta
Hake

Sanford
Hake

Grandma
Hake

Mr.
Graham

Professor
Walton

I
could have asked mother where daddy's dog tags are but she would
probably say I don't have to wear them. I know he has them with him
because I saw him pack them.

Life
is a gift horse in my opinion.

I
think it is very tasteless of Professor Walton to criticize my
parents. He wants people to be a certain way.

It
will either happen today or February 14, 1955 when I am sixteen. It
is ridiculous to mention even.

After
making this last entry, Teddy continued to keep his attention on the
page and his ball-point pen poised, as though there were more to
come.

He
apparently was unaware that he had a lone interested observer. About
fifteen feet forwardship from the first row of deck chairs, and
eighteen or twenty rather sun-blinding feet overhead, a young man was
steadily watching him from the Sports Deck railing. This had been
going on for some ten minutes. It was evident that the young man was
now reaching some sort of decision, for he abruptly took his foot
down from the railing. He stood for a moment, still looking in
Teddy's direction, then walked away, out of sight. Not a minute
later, though, he turned up, obtrusively vertical, among the
deck-chair ranks. He was about thirty, or younger. He directly
started to make his way down-aisle toward Teddy's chair, casting
distracting little shadows over the pages of people's novels and
stepping rather uninhibitedly (considering that his was the only
standing, moving figure in sight) over knitting bags and other
personal effects.

Teddy
seemed oblivious of the fact that someone was standing at the foot of
his chair--or, for that matter, casting a shadow over his notebook. A
few people in the row or two behind him, however, were more
distractible. They looked up at the young man as, perhaps, only
people in deck chairs can look up at someone. The young man had a
kind of poise about him, though, that looked as though it might hold
up indefinitely, with the very small proviso that he keep at least
one hand in one pocket. "Hello, there!" he said to Teddy.

Teddy
looked up. "Hello," he said. He partly closed his notebook,
partly let it close by itself.

"Mind
if I sit down a minute?" the young man asked, with what seemed
to be unlimited cordiality. "This anybody's chair?"

"Well,
these four chairs belong to my family," Teddy said. "But my
parents aren't up yet."

"Not
up? On a day like this," the young man said. He had already
lowered himself into the chair at Teddy's right. The chairs were
placed so close together that the arms touched. "That's
sacrilege," he said. "Absolute sacrilege." He
stretched out his legs, which were unusually heavy at the thighs,
almost like human bodies in themselves. He was dressed, for the most
part, in Eastern seaboard regimentals: a turf haircut on top,
run-down brogues on the bottom, with a somewhat mixed uniform in
between--buff-colored woolen socks, charcoal-gray trousers, a
button-down-collar shirt, no necktie, and a herringbone jacket that
looked as though it had been properly aged in some of the more
popular postgraduate seminars at Yale, or Harvard, or Princeton. "Oh,
God, what a divine day," he said appreciatively, squinting up at
the sun. "I'm an absolute pawn when it comes to the weather."
He crossed his heavy legs, at the ankles. "As a matter of fact,
I've been known to take a perfectly normal rainy day as a personal
insult. So this is absolute manna to me." Though his speaking
voice was, in the usual connotation, well bred, it carried
considerably more than adequately, as though he had some sort of
understanding with himself that anything he had to say would sound
pretty much all right--intelligent, literate, even amusing or
stimulating--either from Teddy's vantage point or from that of the
people in the row behind, if they were listening. He looked obliquely
down at Teddy, and smiled. "How are you and the weather?"
he asked. His smile was not unpersonable, but it was social, or
conversational, and related back, however indirectly, to his own ego.
"The weather ever bother you out of all sensible proportion?"
he asked, smiling.

"I
don't take it too personal, if that's what you mean," Teddy
said.

The
young man laughed, letting his head go back. "Wonderful,"
he said. "My name, incidentally, is Bob Nicholson. I don't know
if we quite got around to that in the gym. I know your name, of
course."

Teddy
shifted his weight over to one hip and stashed his notebook in the
side pocket of his shorts.

"I
was watching you write--from way up there," Nicholson said,
narratively, pointing. "Good Lord. You were working away like a
little Trojan."

Teddy
looked at him. "I was writing something in my notebook."

Nicholson
nodded, smiling. "How was Europe?" he asked
conversationally. "Did you enjoy it?"

"Yes,
very much, thank you."

"Where
all did you go?"

Teddy
suddenly reached forward and scratched the calf of his leg. "Well,
it would take me too much time to name all the places, because we
took our car and drove fairly great distances." He sat back. "My
mother and I were mostly in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Oxford, England,
though. I think I told you in the gym I had to be interviewed at both
those places. Mostly the University of Edinburgh."

"No,
I don't believe you did," Nicholson said. "I was wondering
if you'd done anything like that. How'd it go? They grill you?"

"I
beg your pardon?" Teddy said.