Sons (25 page)

There were several
other
annoying things about him.

I discovered, for example, that he had a remarkable sense of humor and a truly enormous stockpile of jokes for every occasion. (That wasn’t the annoying thing.) The annoying thing was that whenever he saw or heard something that nudged his joke file, he would automatically recall the punch line out loud, “Yeah, but
lost
time we were taking movies,” and then would say, “Do you know that joke, Will?” and whether you knew it or not, “Yes, I know it, Ace,” he would go right on to tell the entire joke, anyway. So if you’d heard it, you would have to sit through it again in Technicolor with Ace relishing each hilarious syllable. And if you
hadn’t
heard it, you had in
effect
heard it because he’d already given the punch line before telling the joke. The result was mind-numbing. Then, in a luncheonette later that night, after we’d taken a jitney into Columbus, and after Ace had told seven jokes, three of which I’d already heard, the punch lines to the other four already delivered, I discovered another of his little faults, and this one
really
bothered me.

When the waiter, a tired old man dragging ass after probably twelve hours of labor, shuffled over to the booth and gave us our menus, Ace said, “Bacon and eggs, please,” and then politely inquired, “Is the bacon nice and soft?”

The waiter said, “Oh yes, sir, the bacon is nice and soft, very tender bacon, sir.”

Ace instantly said, “Then I don’t want it. I like my bacon crisp.”

The waiter looked puzzled for an instant, and then said, “Well, we can make it crisp for you, sir, if that’s the way you like it.”

Ace considered this, and then asked, “You won’t burn it, will you?”

“Oh
no,
sir, of
course
we won’t burn it.”

“I like it burnt,” Ace said.

“Well, if you like it burnt...”

“Never mind, I’ll have ham instead.”

“Ham and eggs, yes, sir.”

“No, ham on rye with a slice of pickle. Are the pickles very sour?”

The waiter, wary now, asked, “How do you
like
your pickles, sir?”

“How have you got them?”

“However you like them.”

“I don’t like them.”

I should not have been surprised by his waiter-baiting. Ace had removed the wire grommet from his hat the moment we left the field, giving it a raunchy fifty-mission crush, and on the darkened streets of the town he’d been thrown at least six highballs from soldiers mistaking him for brass. He had returned each salute unblinkingly, as if they were only properly his due; there had been no mistaking his cruel enjoyment of the ruse. But I guess I was dazzled by his flow of confidences that night, and overwhelmed by his enormous ego, even though I was not completely taken in by his fancy patter and sleight-of-hand. I knew, for instance, that whereas he claimed to hate the name “Ace,” he nonetheless enjoyed his reputation as a hot pilot and felt the name, however acquired, was entirely appropriate. I suspected, too, that his boasting desire to get overseas and “shoot down a thousand Germans” may have been masking a fear of actual combat with real enemy airplanes. And yet, I felt pleased and flattered to be in his presence.

A friendship was beginning that night in Mississippi, and I think we both recognized how slowly and carefully it needed to be explored, both respected how easily it could have been destroyed before it even truly started. I was willing at once to forget whichever of his small inadequacies rankled, and ready to trust that he would forgive my own annoying defects in return.

It was a good beginning.

We had come from the vestry into the chancel, where we stood now and waited for the wedding to begin, though I suppose it had properly begun the moment I made my entrance with the minister and my best man. It had been raining all day Saturday, and the ground outside West Presbyterian was soggy and riven, mud running off the sloping lawn down to Indian Street. I stood before the red-carpeted steps to the left of Danny Talbot, who was my best man, and watched the slow Sunday drizzle that pressed the high arched windows of the church. I did not want to look at the open wooden doors through which Nancy Ellen Clark would come on her father’s arm within the next few moments. I did not want to get married. Rosalie Hollis in the organ loft was playing “Claire de Lune,” and I could see from the tail end of my eye, as I steadfastly watched the oppressive drizzle, my family sitting in the first three pews on the right side of the church, Nancy’s family on the left, all of them there to witness a wedding that should not be taking place, I did not love her.

Yes, I loved her.

No, I did not love her. I was nineteen years old, there was too much yet to do, too much yet to see, to experience, to feel. I did not want to marry Nancy Ellen Clark and take her to the apartment we had rented in Eau Fraiche on Mechanic Street, the apartment I had painted last week in colors Nancy chose from Mr. Eckert’s sample book, our furniture arriving on Wednesday from Talbot’s, an unreal shelter that apartment, unlived in, unused, waiting empty for the bride and groom to return from their two-week honeymoon in Chicago, where we would be staying at the Blackstone Hotel, I did not want to go.

I wanted to go. I wanted to make love to her, I wanted to take off her dress and her petticoat, hold her naked in my arms, tell her secrets about myself, whisper them in her good ear, hold her close and confide everything because I loved her so much I could die.

They sat in anticipation, the wedding march was beginning, my mother and father in resplendent Sunday-wedding best, and beside them my sister Kate with her half-breed stud, no feathered headdress on his proud Apache skull, but wearing instead a white man’s dark suit probably bought second-hand in an Arizona beer hall, arms folded across his massive chest. And on his right, my sisters Harriet and Fanny in georgette chiffon, and my brother John, all of eight now, probably longing to pick his nose, but worrying the flap of it instead with his forefinger as Rosalie Hollis pounded the keys and Lohengrin reverberated in the wooden church and the gloomy drizzle pressed against the windows.

Too much to see and do, I wanted to devour worlds, every universe there was, the ushers starting down the aisle, two by two in black, why did men dress alike for weddings and for funerals? the ground upon which Timothy Bear had lain exposed in death, his mouth open, his eyes open, his skull open to the shell fragment that had drained his maleness and left him there for friend and enemy alike to sec, a limp geometric tangle of lifeless limbs, my best man dead while flashy Danny Talbot stood next to me by default and the four ushers joined us, sealing off escape, I could not run, I wanted to bolt.

And in Paris, what would I do? In Paris, I would learn to say
"Je vous en prie,”
and I would roam Montmartre in search of fancy ladies, gartered and laced, perfumed and rouged, who would lift their skirts and French me, would Nancy Ellen Clark do that, would I dare to ask her in the secret dark of our bedroom on Mechanic Street to do things she had never once conjured in her wildest fantasies? I would become the Paris correspondent for the New York
Tribune,
I would send daily dispatches on the progress of Mr. Wilson’s efforts to quell the land-hungry appetites of the British, the French, and the Italians, my byline would read Bertram A. Tyler, the A for Alfred, though Nancy perhaps herself did not know this, another secret to tell in our midnight cloister, my middle name is Alfred, is that not amusing,
mon gamin,
let me take off your garter and press it to my lips. Or I would become a translator once I became fluent in the language, I had learned to say
Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir, mademoiselle
with considerable ease in far too many French towns, what a laugh when Timothy Bear tried to cope with the language, what a laugh that boy was. And once fluent with the tongue (I beg you,
mademoiselle,
be more careful with your tongue, eh?) once fluent with the language, I would translate novels, perhaps pornography, I would walk along the Champs Êlysées wearing a black derby and a long black coat with a black velvet collar, carrying a walking slick, and they would whisper about me in every sidewalk café, not knowing who I was, but surmising I was terribly important, fluent as I was in four languages, and able to translate Marcel Proust’s most complicated writings, I, Bertram A. Tyler, the amazing nineteen-year-old American who had set the continent abuzz, tall and handsome and oo-Ia-la
quel homme!

The bridesmaids were coming down the aisle singly now, somewhat drizzle-dampened in peach-colored gowns, each carrying small bouquets of tea roses and baby’s breath, Nancy’s younger sister Meg first, a silly bewildered grin on her face, followed by Adelaide Moore, who had been voted Dairy Queen of the state three years back, before we’d entered the war, but who still hadn’t caught herself a husband. Behind her, in the identical peach gown was Brigitte Rabillon, who was keeping steady company with Danny Talbot, it was said they would be married in June as soon as he became executive sales manager of his father’s furniture company. He had already asked me if I would do him the extreme honor of being his best man, but by June I would be in the Loire Valley, one of France’s most discriminating wine tasters, but he is an
American,
they would say! Ah
oui, monsieur,
but he knows wine like no other man on earth, it is said he can tell a good vineyard from the road as he approaches in his automobile, ah
oui, monsieur,
he drives one of those Stutz Bearcats, he is
trés formidable, vraiment.
Then came Felice Clark (no relation to my intended bride), who, it was rumored, had had numerous exciting things done to her dawn-peninsula during our great American adventure, while all the town bloods were away in Europe, the party having been thrown by several forty-year-old members of the Republican Club, who decided in private smoke-filled conclave that this might be a good time to explore the virtues of some of the younger ladies around, they being deprived of company of their own age and all, hence the sad story of Felice Clark, who had lost it repeatedly down-peninsula one starless night last October on the back seat of a flivver, and who now marched down the aisle looking hardly sullied or blemished, had Nancy ever done anything with anybody anywhere anytime? Suppose, no, the thought was unthinkable, not here with Reverend Boland at my side, but suppose, ah
suppose,
well, are we any of us perfect? but suppose in that Chicago hotel room tonight (will we be there tonight, did I check the train schedule?) suppose there is no blood? the blood on the straw pallet under the thirteen-year-old girl in that French farmhouse and the blood of her mother on the floor of the second bedroom and the blood of the horse in the courtyard outside, the flies eating blood, suppose there is no blood from my Nancy, will it matter? I do not love her, how can it matter?

Clara, Nancy’s older sister and her maid-of-honor, came through the doors radiantly happy in a pale blue gown, yellow roses crushed in a bouquet against her bosom, dear Clara who had written to me of her sister’s illness during those dread weeks so many centuries ago, I must have loved Nancy very much then, I cried for days when I thought I might lose her.

Oh Jesus God, I love her now, too, with all my being! I love her desperately, I would kill any man who touched her, who even dreamt of touching her. I pledge to you, Nancy, my life, my troth, my undying devotion, I love you, Nancy, I will never stop loving you!

Or perhaps an automobile agency on the Avenue Neuilly, strictly American cars, bring the old Ford over there, put the nation on wheels. Ah,
oui, madame,
you may well ask who that strikingly

handsome American is! He is Bertram A. Tyler, he is the man who brought the Ford automobile to France, ah,
oui,
and put the nation on wheels. (Has someone
already
brought the Ford automobile over there and put the nation on wheels?) I’ll drive him out of business, I’ll fluently make speeches in the Bois de Bologne, I will stand on the equivalent of a French soapbox, make speeches the way the Bolsheviks are doing here in America, only I will extol the merits of buying a Ford automobile from the Bertram A. Tyler Agency on the Avenue Neuilly, where the owner himself, the proprietor, the boss,
mesdames et messieurs,
speaks fluent French, why even colloquial French, and where you will get the squarest little deal on the continent, bar none, buy your car from
me,
my friends, make me rich, I want to be a rich American bum, I want to gamble the night away at Monte Carlo, and dance the waltz in the grand ballroom of the Alhambra in Cimiez, and take my yacht to Cannes, I want to be Bertram A. Tyler, the notorious American bachelor tycoon,
bachelor,
do you hear? I don’t
want
to get married, not today, not any day, not ever, ever,
ever!

She came through the doors on her father’s arm.

My heart stopped.

Her hand rested ever so delicately on the sleeve of his black coat, her eyes behind the veil were downcast as though she were carefully watching the toes of her white slippers, the white lace gown seeming to float of its own slow volition down the church aisle, suspended around her tiny figure as she came closer to me and the organ notes floated from the loft in fat and mellow accompaniment, my Nancy’s triumphal music. She was beside me now, standing on my left, the minister before us, her father having stepped back and away, symbolically mine already though her father had not yet given her in marriage, not really mine as yet because the words had not been spoken. “Dearly beloved,” Reverend Boland said, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God,” perhaps not even mine
after
the words were spoken, perhaps not to be mine for a long long time to come, “to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate.” We were both so very young, I felt our exposed youth glaringly out of place in this old people’s church, they who knew so very much, but who watched this ancient ritual in silence now, saying nothing, eyes wet, watching, “not to be entered into unadvisedly, but reverently, discreetly, and in the fear of God. Into this holy estate these two persons come now to be joined,” Nancy’s eyes still downcast behind the veil, I wanted to see her eyes, I wanted to read what was in her eyes, did she want this marriage any more than I did?