Short Stories: Five Decades (9 page)

Eddie looked through the window a moment more, watching his brother, sighed and walked around to the side of the house, where a crow was sleepily eating the radish seeds that Eddie had planted three days ago in a fit of boredom. Eddie threw a stone at the crow and the crow silently flew up to the branch of an oak and waited for Eddie to go away. Eddie threw another stone at the crow. The crow moved to another branch. Eddie wound up and threw a curve, but the crow disdained it. Eddie picked his foot up the way he’d seen Carl Hubbell do and sizzled one across not more than three feet from the crow. Without nervousness the crow walked six inches up the branch. In the style now of Dizzy Dean, with terrifying speed, Eddie delivered his fast one. It was wild and the crow didn’t even cock his head. You had to expect to be a little wild with such speed. Eddie found a good round stone and rubbed it professionally on his back pocket. He looked over his shoulder to hold the runner close to the bag, watched for the signal. Eddie Hubbell Dean Mungo Feller Ferrell Warnecke Gomez Barnes picked up his foot and let go his high hard one. The crow slowly got off his branch and regretfully sailed away.

Eddie went over, kicked away the loose dirt, and looked at his radish seeds. Nothing was happening to them. They just lay there, baked and inactive, just as he had placed them. No green, no roots, no radishes, no anything. He was sorry he’d ever gone in for farming. The package of seeds had cost him a dime, and the only thing that happened to them was that they were eaten by crows. And now he could use that dime. Tonight he had a date.

“I got a date,” he said aloud, savoring the words. He went to the shade of the grape arbor to think about it. He sat down on the bench under the cool flat leaves, and thought about it. He’d never had a date before in his life. He had thirty-five cents. Thirty-five cents ought to be enough for any girl, but if he hadn’t bought the radish seeds, he’d have had forty-five cents, really prepared for any eventuality. “Damn crow,” he said, thinking of the evil black head feeding on his dime.

Many times he’d wondered how you managed to get a date. Now he knew. It happened all of a sudden. You went up to a girl where she was lying on the raft in a lake and you looked at her, chubby in a blue bathing suit, and she looked seriously at you out of serious blue eyes where you stood dripping with lake water, with no hair on your chest, and suddenly you said, “I don’t s’pose yuh’re not doing anything t’morra night, are yuh?” You didn’t know quite what you meant, but she did, and she said, “Why, no, Eddie. Say about eight o’clock?” And you nodded and dived back into the lake and there you were.

Still, those radish seeds, that crow-food, that extra dime.…

Lawrence came out, flexing his fingers, very neat in clean khaki shorts and a white blouse. He sat down next to Eddie in the grape arbor.

“I would like a strawberry ice cream soda,” he said.

“Got any money?” Eddie asked, hopefully.

Lawrence shook his head.

“No strawberry ice cream soda,” Eddie said.

Lawrence nodded seriously. “You got any money?” he asked.

“Some,” Eddie said carefully. He pulled down a grape leaf and cracked it between his hands, held up the two parts and looked at them critically.

Lawrence didn’t say anything, but Eddie sensed a feeling developing in the grape arbor, like a growth. “I gotta save my money,” Eddie said harshly. “I got a date. I got thirty-five cents. How do I know she won’t want a banana-split tonight?”

Lawrence nodded again, indicating that he understood, but sorrow washed up in his face like a high tide.

They sat in silence, uncomfortably, listening to the rustle of the grape leaves.

“All the time I was practicing,” Lawrence said, finally, “I kept thinking, ‘I would like a strawberry ice cream soda, I would like a strawberry ice cream soda …’”

Eddie stood up abruptly. “Aaah, let’s get outa here. Let’s go down to the lake. Maybe something’s doing down the lake.”

They walked together through the fields to the lake, not saying anything, Lawrence flexing his fingers mechanically.

“Why don’t yuh stop that fer once?” Eddie asked, with distaste. “Just fer once?”

“This is good for my fingers. It keeps them loose.”

“Yuh give me a pain.”

“All right,” Lawrence said, “I won’t do it now.”

They walked on again, Lawrence barely up to Eddie’s chin, frailer, cleaner, his hair mahogany dark and smooth on his high, pink, baby brow. Lawrence whistled. Eddie listened with disguised respect.

“That’s not so bad,” Eddie said. “You don’t whistle half bad.”

“That’s from the Brahms second piano concerto.” Lawrence stopped whistling for a moment. “It’s easy to whistle.”

“Yuh give me a pain,” Eddie said, mechanically, “a real pain.”

When they got to the lake, there was nobody there. Flat and unruffled it stretched across, like a filled blue cup, to the woods on the other side.

“Nobody here,” Eddie said, staring at the raft, unmoving and dry in the still water. “That’s good. Too many people here all the time.” His eyes roamed the lake, to the farthest corner, to the deepest cove.

“How would yuh like to go rowing in a boat out in that old lake?” Eddie asked.

“We haven’t got a boat,” Lawrence answered reasonably.

“I didn’t ask yuh that. I asked, ‘How’d yuh like to go rowing?’”

“I’d like to go rowing if we had a …”

“Shut up!” Eddie took Lawrence’s arm, led him through tall grass to the water’s edge, where a flat-bottomed old boat was drawn up, the water just lapping at the stern, high, an old red color, faded by sun and storm. A pair of heavy oars lay along the bottom of the boat.

“Jump in,” Eddie said, “when I tell yuh to.”

“But it doesn’t belong to us.”

“Yuh want to go rowing, don’t yuh?”

“Yes, but …”

“Then jump in when I give yuh the word.”

Lawrence neatly took off his shoes and socks while Eddie hauled the boat into the water.

“Jump in!” Eddie called.

Lawrence jumped. The boat glided out across the still lake. Eddie rowed industriously once they got out of the marsh grass.

“This isn’t half bad, is it?” He leaned back on his oars for a moment.

“It’s nice,” Lawrence said. “It’s very peaceful.”

“Aaah,” said Eddie, “yuh even talk like a pianist.” And he rowed. After a while he got tired and let the boat go with the wind. He lay back and thought of the night to come, dabbling his fingers in the water, happy. “They oughta see me now, back on a Hunnerd and Seventy-third Street,” he said. “They oughta see me handle this old boat.”

“Everything would be perfect,” Lawrence agreed, picking his feet up out of the puddle that was collecting on the bottom of the boat, “if we only knew that when we got out of this boat, we were going to get a strawberry ice cream soda.”

“Why don’t yuh think of somethin’ else? Always thinkin’ of one thing! Don’t yuh get tired?”

“No,” Lawrence said, after thinking it over.

“Here!” Eddie pushed the oars toward his brother. “Row! That’ll give yuh somethin’ else t’ think about.”

Lawrence took the oars gingerly. “This is bad for my hands,” he explained as he pulled dutifully on the oars. “It stiffens the fingers.”

“Look where yuh’re goin’!” Eddie cried impatiently. “In circles! What the hell’s the sense in goin’ in circles?”

“That’s the way the boat goes,” Lawrence said, pulling hard. “I can’t help it if that’s the way the boat goes.”

“A pianist. A regular pianist. That’s all yuh are. Gimme those oars.”

Gratefully Lawrence yielded the oars up.

“It’s not my fault if the boat goes in circles. That’s the way it’s made,” he persisted quietly.

“Aaah, shut up!” Eddie pulled savagely on the oars. The boat surged forward, foam at the prow.

“Hey, out there in the boat! Hey!” A man’s voice called over the water.

“Eddie,” Lawrence said, “there’s a man yelling at us.”

“Come on in here, before I beat your pants off!” the man called. “Get out of my boat!”

“He wants us to get out of his boat,” Lawrence interpreted. “This must be his boat.”

“You don’t mean it,” Eddie snorted with deep sarcasm. He turned around to shout at the man on the shore, who was waving his arms now. “All right,” Eddie called. “All right. We’ll give yuh yer old boat. Keep your shirt on.”

The man jumped up and down. “I’ll beat yer heads off,” he shouted.

Lawrence wiped his nose nervously. “Eddie,” he said, “why don’t we row over to the other side and walk home from there?”

Eddie looked at his brother contemptuously. “What’re yuh—afraid?”

“No,” Lawrence said, after a pause. “But why should we get into an argument?”

For answer Eddie pulled all the harder on the oars. The boat flew through the water. Lawrence squinted to look at the rapidly nearing figure of the man on the bank.

“He’s a great big man, Eddie,” Lawrence reported. “You never saw such a big man. And he looks awfully sore. Maybe we shouldn’t’ve gone out in this boat. Maybe he doesn’t like people to go out in his boat. Eddie, are you listening to me?”

With a final heroic pull, Eddie drove the boat into the shore. It grated with a horrible noise on the pebbles of the lake bottom.

“Oh, my God,” the man said, “that’s the end of that boat.”

“That doesn’t really hurt it, mister,” Lawrence said. “It makes a lot of noise, but it doesn’t do any damage.”

The man reached over and grabbed Lawrence by the back of his neck with one hand and placed him on solid ground. He was a very big man, with tough bristles that grew all over his double chin and farmer’s muscles in his arms that were quivering with passion now under a mat of hair. There was a boy of about thirteen with him, obviously, from his look, his son, and the son was angry, too.

“Hit ’im, Pop,” the son kept calling. “Wallop ’im!”

The man shook Lawrence again and again. He was almost too overcome with anger to speak. “No damage, eh? Only noise, eh!” he shouted into Lawrence’s paling face. “I’ll show you damage. I’ll show you noise.”

Eddie spoke up. Eddie was out of the boat now, an oar gripped in his hand, ready for the worst. “That’s not fair,” he said. “Look how much bigger yuh are than him. Why’n’t yuh pick on somebody yuh size?”

The farmer’s boy jumped up and down in passion, exactly as his father had done. “I’ll fight him, Pop. I’ll fight ’im! I’m his size! Come on, kid, put yer hands up!”

The farmer looked at his son, looked at Lawrence. Slowly he released Lawrence. “O.K.,” he said. “Show him, Nathan.”

Nathan pushed Lawrence. “Come into the woods, kid,” he said belligerently. “We kin settle it there.”

“One in the eye,” Eddie whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “Give ’im one in the eye, Larry!”

But Lawrence stood with eyes lowered, regarding his hands.

“Well?” the farmer asked.

Lawrence still looked at his hands, opening and closing them slowly.

“He don’t wanna fight,” Nathan taunted Eddie. “He just wants t’ row in our boat, he don’t wanna fight.”

“He wants to fight, all right,” Eddie said staunchly, and under his breath, “Come on, Larry, in the kisser, a fast one in the puss …”

But Larry stood still, calmly, seeming to be thinking of Brahms and Beethoven, of distant concert halls.

“He’s yella, that’s what’s the matter with him!” Nathan roared. “He’s a coward, all city kids’re cowards!”

“He’s no coward,” Eddie insisted, knowing in his deepest heart that his brother was a coward. With his knees he nudged Lawrence. “Bring up yuh left! Please, Larry, bring up yuh left!”

Deaf to all pleas, Lawrence kept his hands at his sides.

“Yella! Yella! Yella!” Nathan screamed loudly.

“Well,” the farmer wanted to know, “is he goin’ to fight or not?”

“Larry!” Fifteen years of desperation was in Eddie’s voice, but it made no mark on Lawrence. Eddie turned slowly toward home. “He’s not goin’ to fight,” he said flatly. And then, as one throws a bone to a neighbor’s noisy dog, “Come on, you …”

Slowly Lawrence bent over, picked up his shoes and socks, took a step after his brother.

“Wait a minute, you!” the farmer called. He went after Eddie, turned him around. “I want to talk to ye.”

“Yeah?” Eddie said sadly, with little defiance. “What do yuh wanna say?”

“See that house over there?” the farmer asked, pointing.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “What about it?”

“That’s my house,” the farmer said. “You stay away from it. See?”

“O.K. O.K.,” Eddie said wearily, all pride gone.

“See that boat there?” the farmer asked, pointing at the source of all the trouble.

“I see it,” Eddie said.

“That’s my boat. Stay away from it or I’ll beat hell outa ye. See?”

“Yeah, yeah, I see,” Eddie said. “I won’t touch yer lousy boat.” And once more, to Lawrence, “Come on,
you.…
”

“Yella! Yella! Yella!” Nathan kept roaring, jumping up and down, until they passed out of earshot, across the pleasant fields, ripe with the soft sweet smell of clover in the late summer afternoon. Eddie walked before Lawrence, his face grimly contracted, his mouth curled in shame and bitterness. He stepped on the clover blossoms fiercely, as though he hated them, wanted to destroy them, the roots under them, the very ground they grew in.

Holding his shoes in his hands, his head bent on his chest, his hair still mahogany smooth and mahogany dark, Lawrence followed ten feet back in the footsteps, plainly marked in the clover, of his brother.

“Yella,” Eddie was muttering, loud enough for the villain behind him to hear clearly. “Yella! Yella as a flower. My own brother,” he marveled. “If it was me I’d’a been glad to get killed before I let anybody call me that. I would let ’em cut my heart out first. My own brother. Yella as a flower. Just one in the eye! Just
one!
Just to show ’im … But he stands there, takin’ guff from a kid with holes in his pants. A pianist. Lawrrrrence! They knew what they were doin’ when they called yuh Lawrrrrence! Don’t talk to me! I don’t want yuh ever to talk to me again as long as yuh live! Lawrrrrence!”

In sorrow too deep for tears, the two brothers reached home, ten feet, ten million miles apart.