Town Burning (15 page)

Later he raised himself up on his arms and looked at the sweating body beneath him. Hadn’t he seen that black triangle before, and caused the same, always the same, urgent moans? But she hooked him down with her legs and the moaning began again.

They dressed. He found his beer where he had set it on a level place, and they walked, not touching each other, back to the car. She opened the door and got in.

“Hadn’t you better…” he asked.

“Get in and don’t worry about it,” she said. He went around and got in behind the wheel. She leaned back against the door and looked at him, her long hair shadowy over her shoulders.

“I’m by nature cautious and sober,” he said.

“Sure you are. You stink of it. You’re pretty good, aren’t you? Better than your brother.”

“Bruce?” he said, startled.

“Oh, you’re an expert, you are. What do you think about? Do you do addition in your head? Subtraction?” She spoke coldly, reached over and put her hand in his pants, then took her hand away. “Have you ever
loved
a girl? Would you be such an artist?” Her anger built up until her voice was choked—raging: “You’re not a man! You’re a lousy self-conscious gigolo! Bruce is a
man!
He does what he needs to do, what he
feels!
I need a man who needs and jabs and
does,
none of you fancy experts!”

He began to chuckle involuntarily, half horrified, half amused by her outburst. “Ram, bam, thank you, ma’am,” he said.

“You goddam professional! Run off home and gloat how good you are and how you made me purr! How many times?” She got out of the car and shut the door, then put her head in the window. “You and all the lousy honyaks in Leah. You think you’re all so damn’ good, but none of you is half the man he is. Murder him, hate him, live on his money!” She ran up to the house.

Bruce! He watched Minetta’s shadow pass the windows. He was too vulnerable; all the starch was out of him—his laughter was cut short by a chilly wave of fear as the warm lamplight in the windows faded and snuffed out. He found himself desperately searching for the switch. A warm breath of wind came over the back of his neck and head like a hand, and he shivered. Did the hawk watch him? He feared that if he turned on the headlights Bruce himself might be standing immediately in front of the car, hawks’ eyes in his head, waiting….

Junior rarely came to the farm. Jane had never seen his room in Leah above Futzie’s Tavern. Now he came in his old Chevrolet and parked it at the far end of the driveway instead of the usual place in front of the kitchen. She watched him from the window as he walked toward the door. Though it was Saturday afternoon, he wore a suit and tie—his dark blue pin-stripe suit he had bought for his mother’s funeral. The pants had always been too short, and his white socks flashed above his black Navy dress shoes. Mike had known how to dress—not like the other people, the Maple Street people like John Cotter and his brother in their sport jackets and argyle socks—not that way, but at least Mike had a certain style in a suit with too wide shoulders and pegged pants, and a yellow tie. Junior was too big and gawky; he was from the farm, and looked it.

“Hi, Janie,” he said, his face composed, formal. “We’re going to come and see you. We decided that we should come and see you, on account of Mike. Not just on account of Mike, Janie. The Club thought that was the thing we better do.” He stood by the door with his hands clasped behind him. He was terribly worried. She had never seen him so worried, but she couldn’t ask him to sit down in his own grandfather’s house. He stood as if he were a stranger, frowned at her, and then turned to frown at Mrs. Pettibone, who just then came into the kitchen.

“Junior Stevens!” Mrs. Pettibone said. Keeping her eyes on him, she put a bowl of potatoes down on the table and went toward him quickly. She stopped suddenly and turned to Jane.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, and then to Junior: “What are you all slicked up for, Junior? What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Junior said. He motioned with his head toward Jane.

“The Riders are coming to offer their respects to the widow,” Jane said.

“Oh, isn’t that nice—” Mrs. Pettibone began.

Junior cut her off. “You don’t make it any easier!” he yelled.

“Me?” Mrs. Pettibone asked in a quavering voice.

“No! Not you! Her!” His hands came from behind him for the first time and he pointed a big finger at Jane. The callused brown finger looked like a club.

“And you came first, so you could find out how I’d be,” Jane said, “ ‘cause you were scared I might not act right.”

“We’re just trying to be nice to you!” Junior shouted.

Mrs. Pettibone had backed slowly and carefully out of the kitchen, shaking her head and looking sad. Now from the sitting room she called back with as much force as she could, “Junior! Is that nice?”

“Nice? You old bitch, you’re always on her side!”

“You’ve got no call to say that,” Jane said.

“I’m sorry!” he screamed at the top of his voice. Mrs. Pettibone hurried up the front stairs, sobbing.

Jane watched her brother and saw his neck swell and turn red.

“Oh, all right, Junior. I’ll be nice during your ceremony. I’ll be very nice.”

“We’re just trying to be nice to you! I don’t see why you always have to be such a wisenheimer! You think you’re the goddam Queen of Sheba, and what’re the rest of us, goddam pigs or something?”

“Don’t yell. I told you I’d be nice. When are they coming?”

“They ought to be here anytime now. Just coming to be nice to you.”

“Before they come I think you ought to go up and apologize to Mrs. Pettibone. She’s always been good to you and you know she’s not what you called her at all. You’ve made her cry—” She began to lose control of her voice, and it rose a little higher than she wanted it to. “You called her a bitch. I don’t care how upset you were. A
bitch!
She used to wash your diapers for you, and you’re just as much of a baby now! You’re a baby and a bully! Did you see how glad she was to see you? And when do you ever even come out here and see her? When you have to, that’s when. She loves you and you come in here and call her a bitch! You want to ask me again if I think you’re a pig?”

When he pouted he could have been the little boy she remembered in grade school. His lower lip pushed out, he frowned, he wiggled his shoulders; but the lower lip was coarse and cracked and the shoulders were thick under the suit coat. He went to the stove and looked at its bare surface.

“You going to make some coffee?” he asked.

“Mrs. Pettibone would love to make coffee for all of you, and you know it. She’d be hurt even more if you didn’t ask her.”

“All
right!”
He walked swiftly to the stairs and shouted up, “I’m sorry!” No answer. “I’m
sorry,
Mrs. Pettibone!”

“You’d better go up,” Jane said.

He whispered at her, “You shut up and let me alone!” A car came into the dooryard, and when Junior heard it he shook his head, panicky. “It’s always like this!” he said, and went upstairs.

Fortunately, the first one to come in was Bob Paquette. Mrs. Pettibone served coffee and cupcakes, but still hadn’t fully recovered from being called a bad name. Bob was the only one to smile during the ceremonial hour, and the only one to say more than one or two words.

The Riders came in their old cars with the dirt caked up under the fenders and the metal salt-rotted through along the bottoms of the doors. They wore suit coats that crippled their arms and exposed long wrists, and they held coffee cups in awkward fingers, always by the dinky little handles. They wore ties on shirts that hadn’t been used to wearing ties and their collar points were held down by heavy hardware clipped and skewered into the cloth. Their hands collided often with the hard knots of their neckties. The wives and girl friends of the Riders came too, and sat closer to Jane than the men, although they had just as little to say. Junior pretended that he was busy helping Mrs. Pettibone serve coffee and cupcakes. They were all as frightened and nervous as they had been the night at the hospital, and this time their machines didn’t wait outside. Stifled in the strait-jackets of unfamiliar clothing, they were all present; Junior and Bob the oldest, the youngest nineteen-year-old Slugger Pinckney; blond crew cut, rosy baby cheeks and strangely old, lined folds under his eyes. His girl friend came, too, and she was his age—Wilma Berry—hard-faced, thin yet big breasted with narrow hips. She wore loafers and bobby socks, the high-school uniform. They all smoked constantly and tried not to rattle ash trays or cups. They were all so much alike—none were fat, or even plump—the women as well as the men. All had a scrubbed sheen to their skin and an insensitive, positive gleam in their eyes, even though they were embarrassed and ill at ease. And all were handsome. In each face Jane saw some of the traditional examples of good looks: good chins, wide jaws, thin lips—they were all put together right, and beneath the cheap clothes their bodies were spare and strong. Jane had never noticed before—perhaps thinking of them in a group only in their uniforms—how much alike they were. Gussie Contois she had known in high school, and Diane Rousseau, and Billy Frisch. They had all been silent people, never entering into school affairs, never raising their hands in class, never getting good marks—most of them had never finished high school. Bob Paquette was different, though; he was always open and friendly. But Junior, like them in some ways, had a certain mean streak she knew none of the others had. Mike had been a different kind of Rider, too, reckless without the silent control of these hard people, reckless as a child. He was a little like Junior, but with more courage and flair.

She had gone once with Mike and the Riders, but at the time she hadn’t given up her own version of Mike’s character. She could not enter into the group or find in the machines the Riders’ bright excitement. She had always been an alien among them, and she was now.

When the hour was up they left, as silent and blank-faced as they had come. Bob Paquette stayed, and she knew he wanted to ask about the motorcycle in the shed. He almost asked, and she wondered how long he would have to wait before he thought it was time to talk money about it. He left in the last of the drab old cars.

She helped Mrs. Pettibone clear up the coffee cups. It had been difficult for the Riders, but they had done their duty.

It was after closing time, and the secretary had gone. His father sat as he had when John first came back into Leah, smoke from his cigarette getting into his eyes, yet content to shake his head back and forth rather than move the ash tray. His long, ex-athlete’s body bent over Bruce’s desk, space cleared for his elbows in the piles of grimy circulars. When he saw John he smiled hesitantly, reached for his cigarette, and then saw that it was too short to bother with. It smoldered away among the butts and ashes.

“You wanted to see me?” John asked.

“Sit down, Johnny.” He still smiled, but his eyes were worried, darting. “Johnny, I haven’t asked you at all—in any way, you know, about coming down here and helping me. But since Bruce’s operation things have been in a hell of a mess. You know how Bruce was! He had to run everything, take care of everything by himself or he wouldn’t do it at all. You know how Bruce was.”

“Sure, I know,” John said. This is my father, he thought, who is afraid of me.

“So in the last few years—well, even during the war, too…for quite a long time! I mean Bruce sort of took over, and now Bruce is in the hospital I have to kind of learn everything over again, catch up on all the deals Bruce…you know he wouldn’t tell anybody anything either.” William Cotter reached in his pocket for a cigarette, then seemed to forget about it. He looked for a long time out the small window into the yard, the silly smile still half there on his face.

John remembered Bruce’s saying once, right out loud at the dinner table, “God damn it, he’s got to take some responsibility too. I can’t do it
all!”
And “he” sat right across the table, looking big and strong but being weak and silent. That was during the war when John was home on furlough, and secure in his uniform he jumped up and pulled Bruce out of his chair. “He’s your own father!” John screamed into Bruce’s surprised face, and Bruce, for once not meeting him with a greater, louder rage, smirked and said, “You can’t blame me for that,” while William Cotter sat staring at his plate.

“You know how difficult Bruce was sometimes,” his father now said to him. “He was a good boy underneath, but he had to run everything his own way.”

John watched his father, knowing that by keeping silent he was hurting him, and not wanting to.

“I never saw what was underneath,” he said. Then his father turned away from the window, hunched up his shoulders and held his face rigid, as if he were going to make a supreme effort.

“I don’t blame Bruce for me. I mean you and I…well, I don’t know about you, Johnny. You went to the war and did things—traveled, learned foreign languages. You’ve done a lot for your age, really. But me? What have I done but drift along and let Bruce take over? But I mean you and I are alike in lots of ways. I couldn’t help liking you more than Bruce. I tried, but Bruce wouldn’t let me, you know? He wouldn’t let you
relax,
even for a minute. It was like an examination all the time. God knows when he was a little boy I never made him do that!
Why?
What made him do it to me all the time?” His hand had been tapping the desk, and now it moved up and down too fast, as if a nerve were doing it, out of control. “There was no
reason
for him to be like that! I’ve thought it over. I’ll tell you, I’ve thought it over many, many times. You know what they say now, that it’s really the parents’ fault how the children are brought up. No, I mean when sometimes the child doesn’t act right, like he should, it’s because of something happened to him way back when he was a little boy, because they didn’t love him or something.” He looked straight at John. “Now you know that’s a lot of crap, because if there ever were any people loved and wanted you boys it was your mother and me. Especially your mother. I know she’s got her faults and all that, but you know damn’ well, and I know and I’m not so dumb, that she always had more love to give you—both of you—than you ever wanted to take. Why that was—I mean your not taking it when it was freely given,
right out,
no strings attached—I don’t know and I’ll never know.”