Slap Your Sides (11 page)

S
ome afternoons I timed Mahatma's walks so my chances of seeing Daria were better. The Daniels went into their dining room every afternoon at five sharp, since Radio Dan had to be at WBEA at six thirty. Between four forty-five and five I would often be able to see Daria at the piano or the desk in the living room, waiting for her mother to put dinner on the table.

Tommy was wise to me and asked me if I didn't think I'd become pathetic. If I w
as
pathetic, and I probably was, he'd been obnoxious ever since New Year's Eve. He had finally hit 100 on his graph. It was the finishing touch to what Tommy viewed as “manhood.” He dressed almost always in a suit and tie, except when he was at the Harts' helping with the horses. Even there he sported a new pair of black jodhpurs and black riding boots. He cooked wearing a white apron and white chef 's hat, and he often served the kinds of desserts that came from the kitchen aflame. My father would simply sit there shaking his head, wincing. I could remember when Dad had liked a little drama, some fun. There was the day, when I was very young, that Bud and his buddies put a cow in the meetinghouse. As people arrived, it was standing there, regarding them. Dad had tried to stop laughing
long enough to bawl Bud out, once he discovered Bud was part of it.

Ever since Dad had come back from Virginia, he'd been crabby and suspicious. He even believed what the local police down there believed: that Bud was beaten up by the Indian…. They claimed Bud was this bleeding heart who'd misjudged the Indian's killer nature and taken him out of a locked ward to a movie in town! According to them, Bud was lucky the other customers hadn't been hurt.

Although Tommy's relationship with Rose was off and on (off nights she did not want the same thing he did), they were considered a couple in Sweet Creek. For the Valentine's ball held at Wride Them Cowboy she had been voted Queen of Hearts by the employees of Wride Foods, and Tommy had reigned beside her as the King.

That March a lot of the kids at SCFS were angry because 800 Flying Fortresses had dropped 2,000 tons of bombs on Berlin. Then we'd dropped 3,500 on Monte Casino. Somehow it was always worse when America was part of the mass destruction, never mind what was done to us or what the Russians did. How about when 100,000 Germans surrendered at Sevastopol, and were killed by our sweet allies? I'd done a paper about it, earning this comment from my teacher, Mrs. Kruppenberger: “Jubal, war is a lot like nose picking. Nobody does it in an acceptable way. It's better not to do it at all.”

 

March seemed more like April, warmer, and becoming green. I took Tyke up on the trails near Chester Park. I was beginning to think of him as my only buddy.

Mr. Hart had Quinn out. He was saying his good-bye to him, as all of us were, one way or the other. I'd groom him the next day. His owner was taking him home.

Tyke had grown fond of Quinn, just as I had grown fond of Tyke. I rode Tyke about forty minutes every day, and I told him everything on my mind. I remember that particular March day very well, because I was telling Tyke I wished I could see Daria. Then, in the unbelievable way things happen sometimes, she was right at the bottom of the hill.

I whispered, “Hey! Tyke! There she is!”

She had stopped on the path that wound down from the Ochevskys' and led to the bus stop. She was watching me ride toward her.

I'd never seen the coat before. It was a brown shade matching her hair. A bright-yellow scarf around her neck. Brown boots with fur tops. I took it all in, the way you try to hang on to your dream when you first wake up because it slips away so fast. But she stood there, and she began waving. There was a grin across her face when we got to her.

I swung down off Tyke.

We said these fast hello-how-are-yous, and she asked me almost immediately how Bud was doing. I told her he'd been transferred to Welfare Island, New York.
He was entering an experimental medical program there, sponsored by the CPS.

“Is he well enough after that Indian attacked him?” Daria asked.

“He's not in top shape, but neither are a lot of people when they have to go without food. It's an experiment that has to do with how long starving victims can go without eating.”

“Bud's very brave, isn't he…in his own way.”

I said, “He's very brave no matter how you look at it.”

“Okay,” she said softly.

I told her the Indian hadn't attacked Bud, but no one chose to believe that down there. Sky Hawk was charged with the beating despite Bud's sworn statements to the contrary. But I didn't tell her Hope's theory: that Bud had volunteered for a study of starvation because he felt guilty about Sky Hawk. I didn't tell her that the beating had cost Bud most of the hearing in one ear…. All that sort of thing seemed irrelevant since Dean had been killed.

“And I hear your mother's working in the store now,” said Daria.

“Not every day.” It had been Mom's idea that the female customers might not want males waiting on them when they purchased certain things. I think Mom also thought some of the old customers would come back because of her.

It was too soon to tell.

My father wished she would not be there
any
day.

He never came right out and said so. He never came right out and said anything anymore.

“I miss riding Quinn,” Daria said. She smelled like summer flowers, and I wondered if she was wearing the Evening in Paris I'd given her.

“Quinn's owner is taking him back tomorrow.” I said.

“He
can't!
”

“Quinn is his. The Army's discharged him and he's back on his farm, in bad shape. He can't wait to see Quinn.”

“I wish I could have one more ride. I wish
we
could go out together.”

“Tomorrow's Saturday. I won't trailer him until around three.”

“You don't know how badly I want to do it, Jubal.”

“Then do it.”

“And break a promise to my dad?”

“I'm not going to get into that. You have to make up your own mind.”

“I'm afraid of Luke. He's gotten friendly with Dad. He drops off hamburgers, doughnuts, at the station, looking for me, I think. Someone at WBEA had to tell him my songs were recorded.”

“That creep!”

“I'm afraid he'd tell Dad I was with you, just to get in good with him.”

“You could see Quinn
now
. I don't think he's on much of a ride. Mr. Hart only takes him for about twenty minutes.”

“I better not. Daddy gets upset when I don't come right home.”

Tyke was nudging my neck.

“Look how he loves you, Jubal.”

“I know.”

“I almost love you myself sometimes,” she teased. “Did you know that?”

“‘All or nothing at all.'” I sang the opening of Sinatra's big hit.

She joined in: “‘Half a love nev-ver appealed to me.'”

She smiled. “Say good-bye to Quinn for me, Jubal. I can't make it. I'm sorry.”

“So am I. For you.”

“I didn't mean I just wanted to ride Quinn a last time.”

“That's how it sounded.”

“But that isn't what I meant…. I miss you an awful lot, Jubal.”

I had to look away and get control. Just her saying that made me want to bawl, made me want to cry out,
Me, too!
and grab her. But there we stood with the huge sentinel crows cawing above us on the gnarled limbs of the buttonwoods. There we stood.

“Yeah, I miss you, too,” I finally managed.

“Sometimes I think it wasn't right for me to scold you about Bud. Or about your own feelings. You have a right to your opinions.”

“That isn't the way I remember you, anyway.”

“In his letters Daniel sometimes sounds more like you than you do.”

We stood there a silent moment before she asked, “How
do
you remember me?”

“I remember how you used to suddenly sing something from a song…or an opera. The way we just sang out a second ago.”

“I can't do it on command,” she said.

“I'm not commanding you.”

“I know that…. Do you listen to Daddy?”

“Sometimes.” I don't know why I didn't just say Almost every night.

“He's got this new theme song. He's using the old one too, but I recorded a new one for him to play. And guess what—I wrote it.”

“So now you're a writer, too.”

“No, I did it for the girls at Wride's. It just came to me.”

“Uh-huh. Good.”

“So you can hear
that
if you ever catch the program.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, Jubal.”

“What?”

“Just get back up on Tyke, hmmm? Just ride away.”

“If that's what you want.”

She didn't say it was or it wasn't. She turned in the other direction and walked away.

“I love her,” I told Tyke on the way back to the stables.

His ears were pricked forward. He'd been acting strange lately, bolting his feed, pacing in his stall. I thought he sensed Quinn was leaving. Luke said that was what it
was. Luke said horses felt plenty that we didn't know about.

“They're not that different from us,” he said. “They intuit things.”

B
oth Tommy and I took the day off to drive Quinn up past Lancaster. Mom would be at the store helping Dad.

As capable a man as Luke was with horses when he was sober, he wasn't ever the right one to trailer them. He didn't have the patience to load them. They sensed he didn't, and horses never help you when they find you out. Luke also drove too fast, always. A horse would be back there in the trailer trying to keep its balance.

I'd bathed and groomed Quinn on the day we were taking him. Across the stable Tyke had begun the pacing again, plus giving an occasional snort and neigh.

I was glad to get on the road earlier than we'd planned.

“I think Tyke knew Quinn was leaving. He's been so nervous.”

“Maybe Tyke doesn't like being alone with Luke,” said Tommy. “Would you? He stinks from booze, and it's only eleven thirty.”

“Tyke's almost the way he used to be when he first came to us. Back when he was Ike.”

“Mr. Hart's not too happy about the horse business,” Tommy said. He'd had coffee with him while I was getting Quinn ready.

“Mr. Hart's not too happy period,” I said.

“What's he got to be happy about? You've
never
been sympathetic toward Abel, have you?”

“I can't call myself a fan of his, no. But I wasn't even thinking about Abel. I just hope Mr. Hart doesn't give up the horses.”

“Not you, too,” Tommy said. “First we had Bud mad about Quinn. Now we've got you crazy about Tyke.”

 

Quinn returned to a thirty-acre farm with an immaculate stable and large pastures, trails, and paddocks. His owner was on crutches, in mufti except for an Army cap, a big smile on his face. He was waiting for us in the driveway. After we backed Quinn out, and Quinn saw where he was and who was there to greet him, Quinn showed off. We'd never seen him prance around the way he did, high-stepping and nickering.

On the way back Tommy said, “Bud will be relieved when we tell him about taking Quinn home.”

“I don't know. Do we want Bud to know Quinn's
that
happy without him?”

We had the radio playing loud, the way we both liked it. We listened to Sinatra and Harry James and Dinah Shore.

“Do you think Mom and Dad are ever going to be the way they used to be?” I asked Tommy.

“I have no idea. Neither one will talk about it.”

Tommy had this new celluloid black eyeshade he liked to wear. He was wearing the black jodhpurs and
one of the white shirts Mom ironed for him every day. The black boots. He looked like a combination card shark and plantation owner.

“We're not a family that talks much about things,” I said.

“
We
talk about things,” he said. “Don't we?”

“Sometimes…but I had to sneak a look at Bud's letter to get you to talk about that. Remember?”

“I remember. And you sneak peeks at my graphs.”

“Because you don't talk about it.”

“What if I did?” Tommy said.

“Okey-dokey, go right ahead,” I said.

“Things aren't so okey-dokey, Jubal.”

“You mean with Rose?”

“That's what I mean. Oh, gawd!” he groaned.

“What's the matter?”

“She's got herself in trouble,” he said.

“How?”

“She's got herself pregnant,” he said.

“You mean
you
did. What are you going to do?”

“I wish she could get rid of it.”

“She can't get rid of it, Tommy!”

“I'm not saying she can. I'm saying I wish she could.”

“Even if there was someplace to take her, and even if there was some way to afford it, she's Catholic.”

“Don't
you
remind me. She reminds me enough.”

“You're going to have to marry her,” I said.

“I don't love her,” Tommy said. That was our only subject on the way back to Doylestown.

“If I marry Rose, it will ruin my life,” Tommy said.

“What about hers?”

“I know. It would ruin hers also, but she'd have the baby, anyway.”

“You'd have the baby too!”

“I don't
want
the baby! What do you think I'm talking about?”

“I feel sorry for her, Tommy. She's crazy about you.”

“Girls love being mothers. She'd have the baby. I'd have the bills. I'd have her old man showing me his bowling trophies…. I'd never go on a date again. That part of my life would be over—pffft!”

“Did you
ever
love her?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you
say
you loved her?”

“You
say
it. You
always
say it. If you don't say it, they won't do it.”

“You never should have said it.”

“I never should have done it!”

 

Tommy didn't want to take the time to stop for lunch at a road stand. He wanted to go home and meet with the coach at Sweet Creek High School. He said that besides Bud, the coach was the only adult he trusted. He didn't want to lay it on Bud. Bud had his own problems.

 

Back at the Harts', Tommy slammed the car door and said, “Don't tell anyone what I just told you!”

“Don't worry.”

“Are you going to help me clean the trailer?”

“Let Luke do it. Let him do something for a change.”

“He's probably too loaded by now.”

“I want to ride Tyke.”

“Go on then, but remember what I said. Don't tell anyone!”

“Who would I tell?”

“Just zip the lip, Jubal!”

I was walking up toward the stables, feeling sorry for myself. I was hungry, too, and angry. There was no way Tommy could get out of marrying Rose. Even forgetting the fact that her father was a carbon copy of Attila the Hun, any boy in Sweet Creek who got a girl in trouble had to have the proverbial shotgun wedding…. I was cussing to myself. It suddenly dawned on me that I would be the only child living at home. I would be the only person my mother would be able to talk to and the only person my father would be able to talk to. But I wouldn't know how to really talk with either one of them. I'd always had Bud or Tommy.

 

At first I thought the cry I heard was one of the stable cats in heat. Then I realized it was a girl crying. She was crying, “Help!”

It was someone in trouble.

I began to run. I thought of Luke, thought of him drunk, and then when the voice called, “Help me!” I knew the voice.

“Daria! I'm coming!”

Scare him off, I thought. “
We're
coming!” I shouted, even though I'd looked behind me and didn't see Tommy anywhere.

I had never run so fast. I had never known I
could
run so fast. A powerful rush of rage and adrenaline drove me.

Again she cried out, “Please, some—” and the rest of what she'd said was muffled by what? Luke's hand across her mouth?

I headed straight for the stable door.

Just outside it I saw the pitchfork stuck in the block of hay.