The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro (21 page)

“The other one,” Walter said. He was licking fudgy flakes and frosting from his dirty knuckles. “Where you see cars sometimes.”

“Where we shot holes in that No Parking sign?” Chicky said. Then shouted, “You had to eat all the Devil Dogs yourself, you fucking Jew bastard.”

“Doleful Pond,” I said. My father sometimes took me fishing there with my brother Louie. We caught small slimy fish, pickerel, hornpout, and kibbies, and removing the hook we sometimes slashed our fingers on the sharp fins.

Doleful Pond was so far, we did not bother tracking or whispering, but started off again, walking together on the bridle path, our rifles slung by their straps on our shoulders.

Chicky said, “Walter's got a new girlfriend.”

“Quit it,” Walter said.

“Her name's Mary Palm.”

“At least I don't eat fur burgers like some people I know.”

“You gobble the hairy clam,” Chicky said. “Andy plays pocket pool.”

Chicky let the cigarette die. He lit it again and finished it, puffing it to a small butt, less than an inch, tweezing it between his fingertips. “Look,” he said, and pinched the ashy tip off and began tearing at the paper and loose tobacco. He peeled the paper and flaked the tobacco and scattered it.

“That's called fieldstripping. My cousin showed me how. He was in the navy in Japan. He brought back this wicked nice jacket with a dragon on the back. I'm going in the navy.”

“The navy gets the gravy, but the army gets the beans,” Walter said. “That's true, you know. The food in the navy is really good.”

“I bet you've never seen one, Andy.”

“One what?”

“Twot.”

It was true, but I shrugged in a worldly way, as though the question was irrelevant.

“I've seen billions of them,” Walter said. “My mother's always charging around the house bollocky.”

“That doesn't count,” Chicky said. “She's too old.”

“I saw my cousin's,” Walter said. Though he sounded as if he was breathless from the memory, it was really from climbing the path, beating the twiggy bushes aside, kicking the snow crusts with his wet shoes. “She was bollocky. She didn't even know I was looking at her.” He measured with his cold reddened hands. “It was yay big. It even had some hair on it.”

“Like you'd know what to do with it.”

“I didn't have any Trojans,” Walter said.

“As if they make them that small.”

“Anyway, I wouldn't bang my cousin without a rubber.”

“She must be a nympho.”

“She's a virgin.”

“So are you,” Chicky said.

A silence entrapped us with the truth: we were each of us virgins. We knew nothing except the wild talk.

“You Jew bastard, why did you eat all the Devil Dogs?”

“Hungry,” Walter said. “This kid I know at school says to me, A girl doesn't have to get pregnant. After she gets banged she can just piss it out—piss out all the sperm.'”

Another silence and the crunching of dead leaves as we walked, each of us considering this, trying to imagine the process.

“What a shit-for-brains,” Chicky said. “It's impossible.”

Though none of us knew why. In fact, it seemed logical.

“I would have known what to do with your cousin,” Chicky said.

“Sure. Every day and twice on Sunday.”

“Anyway, what's her name?”

“Cheryl.”

“Headlights?”

Walter nodded and said, “She even wears a boulder holder.”

Chicky said, “I'd say, ‘Hey, Cheryl,' and then do like the four Roman emperors. Seize 'er. Squeeze 'er. Pump 'er. Dump 'er.”

“Did you really see her knobs?” I asked, and thought what heaven it would be to behold such a miracle.

“Yeah,” Walter said. “We was sitting on the glider, on her piazza. I was going to feel her up.”

“I would have,” Chicky said, “'cause I'm in the Four-F Club. Find 'em, feel 'em, fuck 'em, and forget 'em.”

Now the woods ahead were indistinct, though there was still light in the sky. The great thing about being in the woods at this hour was that there was rarely anyone else around: the woods were ours, and we were free in them. We walked on, into the thickening shadows.

Walter said, “Look, a toad.”

The thing had been startled from the path and hopped next to a crumbling log. Chicky kicked it, saying, “Bastards give you warts.”

The stunned toad looked bug-eyed and feeble as it made a low heavy hop.

“Stand back,” Chicky said. He worked the pump on his Winchester and shot it, the first rifle shot of the day, a startling sound, so loud it was unfamiliar, echoing as though there was a wall at the far end of the woods. “Shoot him between the eyes.”

Walter and I started firing, Walter with his single-shot Remington, me with my Mossberg, tearing its body open, its belly ripping like the thin rubber on a small squeeze toy. As it flopped forward, Walter shot its blunt head, and burst it, then Chicky booted the ragged corpse into the leaves.

“Beaver Patrol to the rescue,” Chicky said in a singsong voice, making a monkey face.

Farther on, Walter said, “Cheezit.”

Two riders on horses trotted down the bridle path toward us as we scampered behind some rocks and flattened ourselves on the ground. They were women, in round riding caps and tweed jackets and tight pants and black boots. Unseen by the mounted women, we watched them go by, moving off in the last light of day.

“Think they heard the guns?” I said. We were nagged by the fear of our guns being taken away.

No one replied. Walter said, “They must be rich.”

We watched them rocking and swaying back and forth in their saddles, chucking their boot heels against the horses' bellies.

“Women get horny riding horses,” Chicky said.

“That's bull.”

“They get hot,” Chicky said. “Them two broads are so freakin' horny.”

We were still lying on the ground, watching the long swaying tails, the twitching flesh of the horses' high hindquarters, the women's packed buttocks and wide-apart legs.

“I've got a bonah,” Walter said.

The women rode off, unaware that three armed boys lay hidden, watching them from the margin of the bridle path, excited by the snorting horses, the stamping of hooves in the cinders.

“Tell us the story again,” I said.

Walter clawed his damp spiky hair and sighed, having to repeat himself. He said in a mumbling way, “I'm walking along the path near where we found the ripped-up magazines that day.”

“Doleful Pond,” I said.

“Yeah,” Walter said. “Where you see cars sometimes and you wonder how did they get there?”

“They're watching the submarine races,” Chicky said. He began to snap a narrow comb through his greasy hair.

But I was thinking about the magazines, how they had been torn to pieces, but even so, they were easy to put together. Each fragment was a part of a naked woman, and some pieces were so big there was a whole naked woman, the white of a smooth body so clear, almost luminous, or pale as sausage casing, breasts like balloons. They had seemed like witches to me, powerful and pretty, smiling sinners, representing all that was forbidden.

As Walter talked I saw everything in black and white, because the past was always black and white, as the television was in black and white; because of right and wrong, no in-between. Also black and white because of the weather, for in early spring the green was blackish, the trees were dark, the stones and big boulders were white, the ground bare except for the patches of snow that lay like torn scraps and muddied sheets, black and white rags all over the woods.

“I'm walking past this blue Studebaker and I didn't know this old guy was in it until he says, 'Hey, kid,' and reaches out the window. I looks over—he's smiling with these yellow teeth, and as I walks away I hear the door open.”

“Why didn't you take off?”

Walter could run faster than either Chicky or me, but he was slower-witted, so he did not always know when to run.

“I almost shit a brick because he scared me. I didn't know what to do. I just kept walking, to show I didn't really care.”

I knew the pond and the road there, so I could easily see Walter marching stiffly away from the blue Studebaker, his little head, his skinny neck, his spiky uncombed hair, his baggy pants and scuffed shoes; trying so hard not to look scared, he moved like a puppet.

“I thought he was supposed to have a bonah,” Chicky said.

“That was later,” Walter said.

“When he chased you?” I asked.

“No. I looks back and he's in the car, so I kept going. I knew he wouldn't drive on the path. There's a sign, the one we blasted with our guns. There's a gate. He couldn't get through.”

“Which path?”

“To the Sheepfold, like I said. I was going up there to build a fire and get warm.”

“What about your gun?”

“I didn't bring it.”

“You said you did.”

“No sah.”

“Yes sah.”

“My sister hid it, to be a pain.”

Chicky said, “You said you aimed your gun at him and he freaked.”

“Knife. I had my hunting knife, so that I could make wood shavings to start the fire. I had it in my belt, in the sheath. I pulled it out as I was walking up the path, in case he chased me.”

“You said ‘gun' before. Didn't he, Andy?”

“I don't remember,” I said. Truly, I didn't. All I could recall was the blue car, the old man, his black golf cap, Walter being pestered.

“You told the story different before,” Chicky said. “You said you saw him in the woods.”

“You didn't let me get to that part,” Walter said in a wronged, pleading voice, his eyes glistening so much I felt sorry for him. More softly he said, “So I'm at the Sheepfold. There's nobody around. I whittle a stick and get some shavings. I try to start a fire, and I'm kneeling down and blowing on the sparks and I hear something.”

“What?”

“How do I know? Twigs. But I look around and the old guy is standing right behind me. He followed me somehow. He's saying, ‘Hey, kid.' His fly is open. That's when he had the bonah.”

“What did it look like?” Chicky said.

“He tries to grab me,” Walter said, hurrying his story. “I screams at him but there's no one around, right? So then I starts running.”

“What about all your stuff, and the fire?”

“I just left it.”

“Anyway, you escaped,” I said.

Walter didn't say no. He frowned again and clawed his spiky hair. He said, “Then, when I was out to the road and thought it was all over, this blue Studebaker conies screeching up beside me, and it's the guy again, and he's after me.”

When he said that, I got a chill. I could imagine it clearly, for sometimes in my worst dreams people kept showing up, I never knew how, to scare me or accuse me.

“Everywhere I go I sees the stupid guy.”

Chicky said, “He's definitely a homo.”

Walter was silent, paler than when he had started the story, biting his lips.

“But you told it different the first time,” Chicky said.

“You think I'm bullshitting?”

“Sounds like bird turd to me,” Chicky said.

“You believe me, Andy,” Walter said in a beseeching voice.

“Sure.” But he had told the story differently the first time. He had a gun. He had turned and threatened the man, who had fallen back and returned to his car. He had not said anything about the Sheepfold and the fire. Seeing the man again on the road, the car stopping—that was new. He was chased more the second time; he was more scared. The whole story sounded worse, which was why Chicky didn't believe him.

“Wait till you see his car,” Walter said. “Then you'll believe me.”

“Anyway, what did he want?” Chicky asked.

“He was a homo. You know what those guys want.”

But we had absolutely no idea, except that it was wicked and dangerous and we were unwilling. In my imagination, such a man would hold me captive in his car, all the windows rolled up, trapping me and threatening me. What he did was not anything I thought of as sex. These men were friendly at first, so that they could grab me and tie me up. In my imagining, I was gagged and blindfolded. Then he would take some of my clothes off, and something happened, something that hurt. In the end, when I was naked, he would kill me, probably stab me.

“I don't get it,” Chicky said. He was still impatient and overstimulated, flecks of spit in the corners of his mouth, blinking hard, his yellowish Italian face looking damp with confusion. “He was bigger than you, right? So why didn't he just grab you?”

“He did grab me,” Walter said. “I was fighting with him.”

“You didn't say that before.”

“You didn't give me enough time.”

Walter was looking breathless and wretched, yanking his hair.

“Did he touch you?” I asked.

“I didn't want him to,” Walter said, protesting.

“Where did he touch you?”

“I told you, the Sheepfold.”

That was new. I had not seen Walter struggling at the Sheepfold, only fleeing. Now I put him back at the Sheepfold, on the ground, the man grabbing at him.

“I mean, did he touch your nuts?”

Walter said, “I was pushing him as hard as I could,” and as he spoke he was fighting tears.

“I thought you ran away.”

“I did run away. After.”

“What else did he do?”

“I don't know. He was feeling my pants. He was really strong and he had this mustache and was chewing something like a cough drop. He even tried to kiss me. He was snatching my hands.”

“Was he saying anything?”

“Yeah. ‘Don't be afraid, don't be afraid.'”

“I would have shit a brick.”