Town Burning (17 page)

“You have a way of turning into a statue or something,” Charlotte said to him. “Now, what could you have been thinking about?”

“Hey, John!” Bob called from the sink. He spread Boraxo up and down his greasy arms and grinned. “Ain’t you going to wash, John? We generally wash out here in the country.” Pa smiled and Ma, passing, hit Bob on the back of the neck. He ducked and then said seriously, “Dirt ain’t healthy. I been trying to make that clear to John, that’s all.”

John started under the table again. Jean, who was twelve, still blocked one side of the kitchen. He had his bicycle upside down on unsteady handlebars and seat. He had started to tighten spokes, but now turned the pedals by hand, as fast as he could.

“Look!” he yelled, “That’s a gyroscope! Look at it? Look at it?” Ma looked and ordered him out to get some wood. Dick and Paul, twenty-six and twenty-four, were Indian wrestling.

“John don’t seem to learn,” Bob said. “Come here and clean your dirty self!”

Jean came back and dumped the wood into the woodbox. Ma told him to remove his bicycle. He turned it over, trying to hit somebody, missing Paul, and wheeled it into the living room.

“Jean!” Pa said. Jean and the bicycle came back into the kitchen. “Put that bike outside. It ain’t new! You act like you want to eat with it!”

“Yeah, Pa,” Jean said hopefully.

“You take it out.”

“It’s because of Bob’s new motorcycle,” Ma said, and then looked guiltily at Jane and away again. “Take it out, now!”

“Aw, hell I” Jean said, and banged the bike on the door.

Charlotte set the table while Timmy entertained Jane. He tried to ignore his mother, who wanted him to put away his highway system. John wanted to get back to Jane, but Dick challenged him to Indian wrestle. They put their right feet together and clasped right hands. The object was to force the other to move his front foot. To Dick’s shame, John won easily. Then he won from Paul. It quickly became an affair of family honor. He beat Bob, and supper was forgotten for a time. They made Pa get up and try. Pa gripped John’s hand with his great splayed fingers and set himself. They pushed and jerked sideways, trying to get each other off balance. John felt that he could tip Pa over anytime. It didn’t seem to be a matter of pure strength, but of a certain rigidity in the upper arm and shoulder, and to John’s surprise his shoulder was immovable, rigid—he felt himself to be all of a piece, as if he were a statue. At the end he had Pa bent over and had his own wrist against Pa’s foot. One sideways and upward jerk and he could have won. But he didn’t make the move. After much grunting they called it a draw.

“You’re strong, John,” Pa said. The others nodded. Coming from Pa, it was a real compliment.

A little subdued, they sat themselves around the table. John sat on one side of Jane and Timmy on the other. Timmy probed the mustard pickles for pimento. Charlotte forcibly removed the mustard pickles, while he screamed, and put beet greens on his plate.

Pa was staring at John, frowning. Everybody noticed it, and even Timmy shut up.

“I got a feeling you held off, John,” Pa said. “You could of beat me.”

“No, Pa!” Dick said, horrified. Paul, Bob, Jean and even Timmy looked the same, their round Paquette faces, blue eyes and black hair, all seemed to flash and bristle with disbelief.

“Bob could beat me,” Pa said.

“No, I couldn’t!” Bob said, “I couldn’t come nowhere near it, Pa!”

“And you beat Bob,” Pa said to John. “You boys be quiet. What I want to know is why John held off.”

They all turned silently toward John. He couldn’t deny it—that would be calling Pa a liar. Silence. He heard for the first time that day sounds he hadn’t been able to hear before—the old pendulum clock ticking, a drip of water at the sink, green wood hissing in the stove, and between gusts of the incessant wind the drone of the water pump out in the milkhouse.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You must know something about it,” Pa said, “ ‘cause right plumb in the middle of it you had a change of mind.”

No one ate. They all looked at John until Jane said, “He didn’t think it would be right to beat you, Pa.”

“Hah!” Pa said, and then grinned, looking all around the table. “That’s what I figured. Now, John, I don’t mean to give you no third degree, nor nothing like it. But you been coming out here ever since you was kindygarden age and we always considered you as near a member of this family as a body could stand. You always called me Pa and Ma Ma, same as Janie, and you’re both welcome. But it don’t strike me right you dasn’t beat me if you could. I never wrestled with Bob, but if we did he wouldn’t think nothing of beating me if he could.”

“That’s right,” Bob said.

“If we try it again I’ll do my best to beat you,” John said.

“No, we ain’t going to try it again,” Pa said, and turned to the potatoes, obviously through talking.

Timmy had been listening carefully, and now his high voice cut across the clashing of forks on plates. “Did John do something wrong, Pa?”

“Eat your greens,” Ma said.

His head bent over his plate, Timmy turned to John and whispered loudly, “What did you do, John?”

John was about to answer “I don’t know” again, but caught himself in time.

“Timmy! You hush!” Ma said.

“He beat Paul and Dick and Bob and he could have beat Pa,” Timmy said. Then a crafty look came over his face and he whispered again, holding a large forkful of beet greens in front of his face, like a screen, “Maybe he peed his pants.”

“Timmy! You want to go to bed without your supper?” Ma said.

Bob choked and sprayed coffee over the table. Dick had to get up and wipe his face with the dishcloth, while Paul laughed and wiped the tears out of his eyes. Timmy sat pleased and smug—a comedian who didn’t quite know whether to laugh or keep a straight face. Even Pa smiled.

“Did you, John?” Timmy asked.

“Now that’s enough of that,” Bob said, chuckling and sighing, “Don’t milk it dry, Timmy. You got your point acrost.”

John smiled, feeling absolutely helpless and stupid. He tried to keep his smile on, to keep it real, but was saved by the business of mashing potatoes.
Clink, clink, clink,
the forks went, in a surprisingly complicated and interesting rhythm. All faces, he gratefully saw, were turned toward plates; serious, concentrated upon the mashing. Pa held the gravy boat in one hand while he got his potatoes just right, then poured. After the mashing and pouring was finished, the less serious business of eating began. After the first helping Pa decided to speak.

“You was afraid I’d git mad,” he said.

“Git mad!” Bob said wonderingly.

“Maybe that’s right,” John said. “I was wrong there. I never saw you get mad at anything like that, Pa.”

“You’re dang right!” Pa said, pleased.

“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t, sometimes,” Charlotte said. Pa began to frown, thought for a second, and smiled.

“I reckon Dick was a little put out,” he said. They all looked at Dick, who nodded seriously.

“I could beat him at something else,” Dick said.

“What, for instance?” Bob said. “You just don’t think a town boy ought to beat a country boy like you. You figure he ought to know more big words but you just naturally
got
to have big muscles. Well, that ain’t always true.” Dick turned red and scowled at his brother. Bob said, “What you need, Dickie-boy, is learning the facts of life.”

Dick slammed his fork down. With a hard, lopsided expression on his face he glared at Bob.

“You want to ask me out to the woodshed?” Bob asked. “You want to git all lumpy again?”

Dick slid his chair back and jumped up. “God damn you!” he yelled, and headed for the door.

“Dick, you sit down!” Ma said. Pa sat back, grinning. “Pa! Tell them to stop it!”

“They ain’t old enough to settle it?” Pa asked.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Charlotte said to Bob.

“Me?” Bob said with exaggerated surprise. “Did I invite anybody out to the woodshed? Hell, no. I don’t have no blood on my conscience.”

“You coming, or are you yellow?” Dick said.

“Me, Dickie? Well, I got to tell you the horrible truth. I’m yellow! But seeing as it’s only you.” He got up from the table and followed Dick.

“I thought Dick was supposed to be fighting
John,”
Timmy said, pointing his fork first at Dick and then at John.

“Timmy, be quiet!” Charlotte said.

“After you, my dear Alphonse,” Bob said, holding the door for Dick, who marched on through. “Lumpy will return in a moment, with his ass in a sling,” Bob said, and followed after.

“It’s Bob’s fault. It’s his doing. I hope he loses,” Charlotte said.

“Dick’s got to learn to keep his temper,” Paul said. He had been on Bob’s side all the way. John could easily see how the family lined up this time. Paul was for Bob, Charlotte and Jean were for Dick, Pa was impartial but maybe favored Bob a little, Ma was against the fight and Timmy was for it.

“Can I go watch, Ma?” Timmy asked.

“Eat your supper!” Ma was rattled. John wondered if the years were beginning to tell on her—she stirred her food around nervously, her hands shook. He thought she was about to break into tears. Paul had been noticing this, and now got up and walked swiftly to the door. He was gone before anyone spoke.

Then all three came back; solemn, no marks of battle on them. They sat down and began to eat.

“We’re sorry, Ma,” Dick finally said.

“My fault,” Bob mumbled.

John expected Pa to disapprove of this truce, and was surprised when Pa looked back at him and winked.

“They’re real good boys, though, ain’t they, John?” Pa said. Identical slow, sheepish smiles appeared on Bob’s and Dick’s faces.

John could do nothing, although he knew that some signal from him was necessary. He even knew the mechanics of the needed remark and the attitude with which it should be given. It must be a little funny, and didn’t have to be very funny—nearly anything would do to destroy the fading tension. It would go, anyway, but it was for John Cotter to hasten it along. But he could do nothing. Somewhere else—far away from Leah—he would not have had to think about it. He wanted to say to them, “Look, I’m not what you see here. I can be funny as hell too, and friendly. I like people.”

But the noise reached its usual height quickly, and his chance was gone. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed—but he knew they had, and now they would not be sure how he’d taken Timmy’s remark. Because they wouldn’t know he was less a part of them. No matter how carefully he watched, however, he could find no indication of this in their actions.

As Charlotte helped clear away the dishes he turned to Jane and tried unsuccessfully to get her away from Timmy, who was explaining the difficulties of second grade. Timmy said it was unfair, because he had to get up a whole hour earlier than the town kids and then wait around for the school bus. It was like having to go to school for an extra hour every day and it wasn’t fair. He liked school, but he didn’t like the bus driver.

“I like my new teacher. Everybody likes her,” he said.

“That’s nice,” Jane said.

“She’s pretty, like you,” Timmy said, and put his head on her forearm and looked up at her, smiling as if he were doing something slightly wrong, but didn’t care.

Bob looked up from the Montgomery-Ward catalogue. “My! Ain’t he a little wolf, though!”

Timmy seemed a little embarrassed, but determinedly held Jane around the waist with both arms.

Paul came back from the shed and saw it. “Ain’t he a little devil? It seems to me, Timmy, you’re a little old to be sitting in laps.”

“Little too young for anything else,” Bob said.

Timmy smiled harder and blushed, but he didn’t let go. It was worth it. Until the doorbell rang, at least. Then he jumped down impatiently and went under the table to wait and see who it was. Pa, Jean and Dick had gone out to the barn, so Ma answered it. The door opened to the jangled sound of Canadian French spoken simultaneously by three people—Uncle Albert, Aunt May and Ma, who was suddenly bright and active, leading them in, twirling chairs around, sweeping the last crumbs from the table, talking all the time in a language John could barely follow. It reminded him of his first days in Paris when the sense of any conversation was just out of reach.

Uncle Albert was a small, neat man who ran a little grocery store in Leah, and Aunt May was a smaller, neater woman who ran Uncle Albert. Their children had grown up and gone away, and now they lived in a small apartment over their store.

When Timmy saw that it was only Uncle Albert and Aunt May he headed back for Jane, but he never made it. Charlotte caught him from behind and picked him up.

“Hey!” he said.

“Hey yourself,” Charlotte said firmly, “you’re going to bed.”

“Oh, Jesus!” he said, half resigned to it. Aunt May looked up, shook her head, and frowned. She was very religious, and when the organization of the store and Uncle Albert proved too unrewarding she organized Father Desmond and the church.

“Timmy, you got to stop that!” Charlotte said.

“He took the Lord’s name in vain,” Aunt May said in English.

“He knows that,” Bob said. “He gits it from them goddam brothers of his.”

“Bob!” Charlotte said. Aunt May had gone back into French, for protection, and spoke with quite a bit of heat to Ma, who shook her head hopelessly.

“Jesus,” Timmy said experimentally. Charlotte whacked his bottom. “Jesus!” he said, getting mad. Charlotte carried him out of the room and started up the stairs.

“
Jesus!”
he yelled, and they heard another whack.
“Jesus! Jesus!
Jesus!”
followed by three harder whacks. Aunt May was scandalized.

“He ain’t cussin’, he’s
prayiri,”
Bob said. But the whacks, the loss of dignity and the unfairness began to tell. Upstairs in the big house the next sounds were screams and hiccuping cries and bawling. A door shut off the noise. Aunt May and Ma went on talking French; Uncle Albert sat solidly and neatly, listening and nodding. Paul had gone out. Bob studied the catalogue and carefully filled out a mail-order form.