Three Stories (2 page)

“Are you nuts about Holden too?”

“Sure. Nice fella.”

“Don’t be so reticent,” Kenneth said.

“All right.”

“Tell everybody when you love somebody, and how much,” Kenneth said.

“All right.”

“Drive faster, Vincent,” he said. “Really step on that thing.”

“I gave the car all it could take, getting it up to about seventy-five.

“Attaboy!” Kenneth said.

***

In just a couple of minutes we were at Lassiter’s joint. It was an off hour and there was only one car, a De Soto sedan, in the parking space; it looked locked and hot, but not oppressive because we were feeling pretty slick. We sat down at a table outside on the screened porch. At the other end of the porch a fat, baldheaded man in a yellow polo shirt sat eating blue points. He had a newspaper propped up against a salt shaker. He looked very lonesome and very much the owner of the hot, empty big sedan baking outside in the parking space.

While I tipped my chair back, trying to catch sight of Lassiter through the fly-buzzy hallway to the bar, the fat man spoke up.

“Hey Red, where’dja get that red hair?”

Kenneth turned around to look at the man, and said:

“A guy gave it to me on the road.”

That nearly killed the guy. He was bald as a pear. “A guy gave it to you on the road, eh?” he said. “Think he could fix me up?”

“Sure,” Kenneth said. “You gotta give him a blue card, though. Last year’s. He won’t take this year’s.”

That really killed the guy. “Gotta give him a blue card, eh?” he asked, shaking.

“Yeah. Last year’s.” Kenneth told him.

The fat man shook on as he turned back to his newspaper; and after that he looked over at our table frequently, as though he had pulled up a chair.

Just as I started to get up, Lassiter rounded the corner of his bar and saw me sitting there. He raised thick eyebrows in greeting, and started to come forward. He was a dangerous number. I had seen him, late at night, break an empty quart beer bottle against his bar, and holding on to what was left of the neck of it, go out into the dark, salty air looking for a man whom he merely suspected of stealing fancy radiator caps from cars in his parking space. Now, coming down the hallway, he couldn’t wait to ask me: “You got that smart redheaded brother a yours with you?” He couldn’t see where Kenneth was until he was out on the porch. I nodded to him.

“Well!” he said to Kenneth, “How you doin kid? I ain’t seen you around much this summer.”

“I was here last week. How you doin Mr. Lassiter? You beat anybody up lately?”

Lassiter chuckled with his mouth open. “What’ll it be, kid? Steamers? Lotta butter sauce?” Getting the big nod, he started to go out to the kitchen, but stopped to ask:

“Where’s your brother? The little crazy one?”

“Holden,” I identified. “He’s away at summer camp. He’s learning to shift for himself.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Lassiter, interested.

“He isn’t crazy,” Kenneth told Lassiter.

“Ain’t crazy?” Lassiter said. “If he ain’t crazy, what is he?”

Kenneth stood up. His face was almost the color of his hair. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Kenneth said to me. “C’mon.”

“Aw, wait a minute, kid,” Lassiter said quickly. “Listen, I’m only kidding. He ain’t crazy. I didn’t mean
that
. He’s just mischeevious like. Be a good kid. I didn’t say he was
crazy
. Be a good kid. Lemme bring ya some nice steamers.”

With his fists clenched, Kenneth looked at me, but I gave him no sign, leaving it up to him. He sat down. “Be your age,” he told Lassiter. “Gee! Don’t go calling names.”

“Don’t get tough with Red, Lassiter!” the fat man called from the table. Lassiter didn’t pay any attention to him—he was that tough.

“I got some beauty steamers, kid,” he told Kenneth.

“Sure Mr. Lassiter.”

Lassiter actually stumbled his way up the single step leading to the hallway.

***

When we left I told Lassiter the steamers had been swell, but he looked doubtful until Kenneth slapped him on the back.

We got back in the car, and Kenneth dropped down the door of the side compartment and comfortably propped one foot into the cavity. I drove the five miles up to Reechman Point because I felt we both wanted to go there.

At the point I pulled the car up at the old spot, and we got out and started to stride from stone to stone down to what Holden used to call, for some reason of his own, the Wise Guy Rock. It was a big, flat job about a run and a jump from the ocean. Kenneth led the way … balancing himself by holding out his arms like a tight-rope walker. My legs were longer and I could go from rock to rock with one hand in my pants pocket. Also, I had several years’ head start on him.

We both sat down on the Wise Guy Rock. The ocean was calm and it had a good color, but there was something I didn’t like about it. Almost the instant I noticed there was something I didn’t like about it, the sun went under a cloud. Kenneth said something to me.

“What?” I asked him.

“I forgot to tell ya. I got a letter from Holden today. I’ll read it to you.” He took an envelope out of the hip pocket of his shorts. I watched the ocean and listened. “Listen to the thing at the top. The heading,” Kenneth said, and started to read the letter which came in this form.

Camp Goodrest for slobs

Friday

Dear Kenneth,

This place stinks. I never saw so many rats. You have to make stuff out of lether and go for hikes. They got a contest between the reds and the whites. I am supposed to be a white. I am no lousy white. I am coming home soon and will have some fun with you and Vincent and eat some clams with you. They eat eggs that are runny here all the time and they don’t even put the milk in the icebox when you drink it.

Everybody has got to sing a song in the dining room. This Mr. Grover thinks he is a hot singer and tried to get me to sing with him last night. I would of, only I don’t like him. He smiles at you but is all the time very mean when he gets the chance. I got the 18$ mother gave me and will probly be home soon maybe saturday or sunday if that man goes in to town like he said so I can get a train. They got me austersized now for not singing in the dining room with Mr. Grover. None of these rats can talk to me. One is a very nice boy from Tenesee and is near as old as Vincent. How is Vincent. Tell him I miss him. Ask him if he ever read corinthans. Corinthans is in the bible and is very good and pretty and Web tailer read me some of it. The swimming stinks here because there are no waves even little waves. What good is it without any waves and you never get scared or turned all over. You just swim out to this raft they got with a buddy. My buddy is Charles Masters. He is a rat and sings in the dining room all the time.

He is on the white team and is the captain of it. He and Mr. Grover are 2 of the biggest rats I ever met yet, also Mrs. Grover. She tries to be like your mother and smiles all the time but she is mean like Mr. Grover too. They lock the bread box at night so nobody can make sanwiches and they fired Jim and everything you get here you have to give 5¢ or 10¢ for and Robby wilcoks parents did not give him any money. I will be home soon probly sunday. I sure miss you Kenneth also Vincent also Phoebe. What color hair has Phoebe got. It is probly red I bet.

Your brother Holden Caulfield

Kenneth put the letter and envelope back into his hip pocket. He picked up a smooth reddish pebble and looked at it, turning it over, as though he were hoping there were no flaws in its symmetry; then he said more to the pebble than to me: “He can’t make any compromises.” He looked at me bitterly. “He’s just a little old kid and he can’t make any compromises. If he doesn’t like Mr. Grover he can’t sing in the dining room even when he knows if he sings that everybody’ll leave him alone. What’s gonna happen to him, Vincent?”

“I guess he’ll have to learn to make compromises,” I said, but I didn’t believe it and Kenneth knew it.

Kenneth stuck the smooth pebble into his watch pocket of his shorts and looked out at the ocean with his mouth open.

“You know what?” he said. “If I were to die or something, you know what I would do?”

He didn’t wait for me to say anything.

“I’d stick around,” he said. “I’d stick around a while.”

His face got triumphant—the way Kenneth’s face got triumphant; without implications of his having defeated or outdrawn anybody. The ocean was terrible now. It was full of bowling balls. Kenneth stood up from the Wise Guy Rock, looking very happy about something. From the way he stood up I could tell he was in a mood for a swim. I didn’t want him to go swimming around in all those bowling balls.

He yanked off his shoes and socks. “C’mon, lets go in,” he said.

“You gonna wear those shorts?” I asked him. “You’ll be cold on the way back. The sun’s gone down.”

“I have another pair under the seat of the car. C’mon. Let’s go.”

“You’ll get cramps, from the clams.”

“I only ate three.”

“No, don’t—” I started to stop him. He was pulling off his shirt and didn’t hear me.

“What?” he said when his face was in the clear.

“Nothing. Don’t stay in long.”

“Aren’t you gonna come in?”

“No. I haven’t a cap.” He thought that was pretty funny, and slammed me back.

“Aw, c’mon in, Vincent.”

“You go ahead. I can’t stand that ocean today. It’s full of bowling balls.”

He didn’t hear me. He ran down the flat of the beach. I wanted to grab him and haul him back and drive off fast.

When he was finished kidding around in the water he came out by himself, without my being able to tell anything. He stepped out of and past the wet-ankle, sloshy part of the water; he even rushed and passed the dry, faint-footprint part of the flat without my being able to tell anything except that his head was down. Then, as he barely reached the soft of the beach, the ocean threw its last bowling ball at him. I yelled his name at the top of my voice, and ran crazily to the spot. Without even looking at him I picked him up; carrying him, I ran jerkylegged to the car. I put him in the seat and drove the first mile or so with the brakes on; then I gave it everything I had.

***

I saw Holden sitting on the porch before he saw me or anything. He had a suitcase next to the chair, and he was picking his nose until he saw. When he saw, he screamed Kenneth’s name.

“Tell Mary to call the doctor,” I said, out of breath. “The number’s on the thing by the phone. In red pencil.”

Holden screamed Kenneth’s name again. He pushed out his crummy-looking hand and pushed, nearly struck, some sand off Kenneth’s nose.

“Quickly, Holden, damn it!” I said, carrying Kenneth past him. I felt Holden rush through the house to the kitchen after Mary.

A few minutes later, even before the doctor arrived, my mother and father drove into the driveway. Gweer, who was playing the juvenile lead in the show, was with them. I signaled to mother from the window in Kenneth’s room, and she ran like a girl into the house. I spoke to her for a minute in the room; then I went downstairs, passing my father on the stairs.

Later, when the doctor and my mother and father were all upstairs in Kenneth’s room, Holden and I waited around on the porch. Gweer, the juvenile, hung around too for some reason. At last he said to me quietly, “I guess I’ll be going.”

“All right,” I said vaguely. I didn’t want any actors around.

“If there’s anything—”

“Go home, willya fella?” Holden said.

Gweer smiled at him sadly, and started to leave. He didn’t seem to like his exit. He was also curious after his little chat with Mary, the maid. “What is it—his heart? He’s only a kid, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Go home. Willya?”

Later on I felt like laughing. I told Holden the ocean was full of bowling balls, and the little dope nodded and said, “Yeah, Vincent,” as though he knew what I was talking about.

He died at ten after eight that night.

Maybe setting all this down will get him out of here. He’s been in Italy with Holden, and he’s been in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and part of Germany with me. I can’t stand it. He shouldn’t be sticking around these days.

Miss Collins was coming out of his room, having little trouble closing the double doors behind her despite the tray of used luncheon dishes she carried. It seemed to the approaching Ethel that Miss Collins was always coming out of his room.

“How is he today?” Ethel hospital-whispered.

“Oh Mrs. Nicolson!” Miss Collins greeted loudly, as though saluting a relative thought dead twenty years. “Oh, he’s much better.” He was always much better. Miss Collins with a veiny, capable hand raised the cover from the largest plate. “Just had his lunch, ate his chop, the potato, but wouldn’t touch the carrots.” He was always not touching something.

“Can I go in for a minute?” Ethel asked. “I mean he isn’t asleep?”

“Sleep?” said Miss Collins, “That man?”

Ethel tiptoed into the room. The head of Ray’s bed was cranked up to prop him into a sitting position. Ray sat. His light brown hair was neatly combed, as though by a mother, and the lapels of his polka-dot robe were drawn close to his almost beardless throat.

He looked at Ethel, the dull expression on his face unaltered. It appeared as though it were his business to be sitting there just so.

“Ethel’s here. Hello, sweetie.” This, while shutting the inner double door. “My sitting-up sweetie.” She went over to him, bent, and kissed him wetly with an MM
mm
square on the mouth, a gesture for the like of which Mr. Pierce, at the shop, would have given her an apartment in the 50s. “Happy birthday, darling. Happy, happy, happy, happy birthday.”

“Thanks. Hey. You’re leaning on my stomach.”

She sat down in the straight chair to the right of his bed and took his hand in hers.

“My birthday boy.”

“Uh.”

“Why didn’t you eat your carrots? Will you kindly tell me?”

“Somebody chewed them before they got to me.”

Ethel giggled, which she did very well.

“Miss Collins maybe. She looks like she goes around eating people’s carrots. Twenty-two-year-old birthday boy’s carrots.”