“I’m Van Ecke. The arithmetic teacher.” The man shook hands with him; he had an inoffensive manner, an informality that was probably professional. Both he and the other man wore short-sleeved Aloha sports shirts and lightweight trousers; they, and the women, seemed relaxed and in an affable mood and they smiled at him. With them was a portable radio, tuned to popular music, and a pitcher and glasses on a tray. “Why don’t you join us?” Van Ecke said. “Is your wife with you? I met her yesterday when she came up with Gregg. In fact, we had lunch together.”
“Not just the two of them,” one of the women put in. Everyone laughed. “Mrs. Alt was along.”
Seeing no choice, Roger walked back with Van Ecke. The arithmetic teacher introduced him around.
“This is Mrs. McGivern, the science teacher. Miss Tie, our English and physical ed teacher. And this is Mr. and Mrs. Bonner. Parents. Like yourself. Their kids are out there with yours.”
Mrs. Bonner said, “One grade below. First teachers, then parents.”
“Then children,” her husband said.
“They’re at the bottom of the scale,” Van Ecke said.
“What about the possum?”
“He’s at the bottom. Correction.”
Van Ecke asked. “Is Mrs. Lindahl along?”
“No,” Roger said. He seated himself awkwardly. “Just Gregg and I.”
“How old is your little boy?” Mrs. Bonner asked.
“Seven and a half.” He added, “He’s undersize.”
“After he’s been up here awhile,” Mrs. McGivern said, “he’ll be six feet four.” Again they all laughed, all except Mr. Bonner, who eyed him intently. They seemed easy-going, except perhaps Bonner. But his sense of discomfort grew. He was going to have to tell them the situation, and it was going to make him look pretty lousy.
The teachers chatted away, keeping their eyes on the children. Mr. and Mrs. Bonner were about his age, older than the teachers who looked, to him, like college students. Certainly Van Ecke was in his twenties. Miss Tie had a colorless, bland face; he guessed that she had got her credentials right after the war. Of the teachers, Mrs. McGivern seemed the most able, the most mature. Bonner had plump, furry arms, a pink face, receding but curly hair; next to him his wife sat with her arms on her drawn-up knees, her chin forward, a spear of grass switching back and forth between her fingers. Unlike the women teachers, who had on jeans, she was dressed in a skirt and blouse. A ribbon in her hair made her look younger than her husband and the teachers, but when she glanced up he realized that she was in her thirties. She had a pretty, round face and nice eyes; he liked her eyes.
She said, “Are you the one I’m supposed to talk to about the ride?”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Mrs. Alt said something about my driving your little boy in with me on weekends.”
“No,” Roger said, “not that I know of.”
“Maybe it was somebody else,” Mrs. Bonner said, tossing the spear of grass up and catching it. “I thought it was you; I’ll ask her again.” To her husband she said, “Didn’t she say Lindahl? I’m sure she did.”
Van Ecke said, “As I recall, it was Mrs. Lindahl who was talking about the drive. We were having lunch. She said something about how much it bothered her.”
“Yes,” Mrs. McGivern said. “That was Mrs. Lindahl.”
They all waited expectantly. “I’m sorry,” Roger said. “She didn’t mention it to me.”
Bonner tilted his wrist; underneath, on the inside, he had a watch. The dark leather strap passed along the strands of fur. “Maybe you better go ask her, Liz. We’ve got to leave pretty soon.”
“She’s probably up in the office,” Mrs. McGivern said.
“I’ll go see who it was,” Liz Bonner said. “She said she wanted to get it settled today.” Taking her purse she slipped to her feet and started up the trail to the top of the rise. Half-way up she said over her shoulder, “I know it was somebody.” Then she was gone.
I had better get out of here, Roger thought. To those around him he said, “It was nice meeting you people. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.” He stood up. “Time to head back to L.A.”
“Are you leaving Gregg today?” Mr. Van Ecke asked.
“No,” he said. “No, later in the week.” He walked out onto the field, not looking back. “Gregg!” he called. “Time to start home.”
“Not yet,” Gregg yelled. “Please, just a little longer; okay?” Turning his back he dived into the group of children and vanished from sight.
Filled with anger, Roger said, “You get right over here.” Following his son he seized him by the wrist and dragged him away from the other children. Gregg blinked in surprise and hurt, and then his face folded up in grief. Opening his mouth he began to wail. The other children became hushed; they all watched as Roger led his son from the field.
“Wait’ll I get you off somewhere,” Roger said. “You never had such a whipping; I’m not kidding you, I’m not kidding.” Gregg stumbled and half-fell; he lifted him back on his feet and went on up the trail. The ground slithered and crumbled under their feet; clods of dirt spilled in a torrent behind them, carrying weeds and small rocks to the bottom. The group of adults watched without comment.
Wailing and whimpering, Gregg managed to say, “Please don’t whip me.” He had only been whipped once in his life. “I’m sorry; I won’t do it again.” Probably he had only a vague idea of what he had done. “Please, Daddy.”
They passed the school buildings and reached the road that led back down to the town. “Okay,” Roger said. “I won’t whip you.” His temper and anxiety began to abate. “But next time I want you to mind me. You heard me, didn’t you?”
“Y-yes,” Gregg said.
“You knew I wanted you to come.”
Gregg said, “When are we coming back?”
“Oh Christ,” he said, filled with despair.
“Can we come back tomorrow?”
“It’s too far.”
“I want to go back,” Gregg said.
They plodded on down the road; Roger held onto his son’s arm. Both of them perspired, both of them became silent. What a foul-up, Roger thought. What a bass-ackward mess.
“Mommy said I could,” Gregg said, once.
“It’s too far.”
“No it isn’t.”
“It is,” he said. “And it costs too damn much. So stop talking about it.”
On and on they toiled, feeling worse, losing all sense of where they were and what they were doing. Neither of them saw anything; when the road turned they turned with it. when they reached level ground they stopped while Gregg tied his shoe.
“I’ll buy you a soda,” Roger said.
His son, sniffling regularly, did not bother to look in his direction. He straightened up and started on.
“Okay,” Roger said. “The hell with it.”
They entered the town, the blocks of houses and then the business section.
“Look at the park,” Roger said. “You want to go into the park?”
“No,” Gregg said.
At the garage Roger picked up the car, paid the bill for the lubrication, and then started to back out onto the street. Beside him his son squirmed on the seat.
“I have to go to the toilet,” Gregg said.
Pulling on the handbrake, Roger opened the car door and helped his son out and back into the garage. He left the car where it was and took Gregg into the bathroom. When they returned they found the car gone.
“Somebody stole the car,” Gregg said.
“No,” Roger said, searching around for one of the garage attendants. “Where’s my car?” he said. “I left it here with the motor running.”
“One of the men parked it across the street,” the garage attendant said. “It was blocking the entrance. See it over there?” He pointed, and they made out the car, parked by a mailbox across the street.
“Thanks,” Roger said. He and Gregg walked to the crosswalk and stood, as cars passed.
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br /> While they were crossing the street, a Ford station wagon halted beside them, and a voice, a woman’s voice, called, “Mr. Lindahl; wait a minute, will you?” The station wagon then picked up speed, turned right, and came swiftly to a stop at the curb. Roger could not figure out who the woman was; he could not see her, and he did not recognize the voice. The car was totally strange.
The car door opened and Liz Bonner slid out, locked the door, and approached him and Gregg.
“Listen,” she said breathlessly, “do you have to go back to L.A. right now? Can’t you stay here a few more minutes? Mrs. Alt told me you changed your mind; you’re not putting Gregg in the school. Why? What’s wrong? You were going to. Did somebody do something?” Coming up close beside him she gazed up earnestly at him. She smelled of sun and fabric and perspiration. “Is it because of the way my boys jumped on him when they were playing ball? Chic—my husband—says it’s because you saw us yelling at him and it made you sore. Is that it?”
He saw himself as the greatest rat that ever walked the earth. “No,” he said, “I was already fixed up. Nothing to do with you.”
“Oh,” she said, unconvinced. “Really? But you brought him up here; you drove all the way up from L.A. And your wife arranged for me to pick him up on weekends. And she and Edna made out the lists of what he’s supposed to bring; didn’t your wife even pay her for the first month? I don’t understand it; Edna seems upset about it and I can’t get a clear story from her.” The tumble of words ceased, at that point. Mrs. Bonner plucked at her shoulder strap and then seemed to become aware of her peculiar position. “How ridiculous can you get?” she murmured. “I guess I went off the deep end. Well, anyhow—we had good intentions.”
Neither of them knew what to do next.
“Hi,” Liz Bonner said to Gregg; she smoothed his hair back from his forehead.
“Hello,” Gregg said.
“How are you going back to L.A.?” Liz Bonner asked. “Oh, you have your car. You don’t want a ride.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“Well, it’s too bad. It’s a nice school. Maybe some other time.” She smiled hesitantly. “I’m glad to have met you.” She remained for a moment and then she said, “What we thought was—we thought you were a new parent, and you had this idealistic notion about the school, and you had just brought your boy up, and then you ran into us. And we fouled it up somehow.” She shrugged. “Some way or other. And we thought Edna was sore because of that. Our doing that. I’ll see you, then, maybe. Some time.”
She dashed back to her car, unlocked the door, got inside, and, scrutinizing the traffic, drove off in the direction of the school. The station wagon needed a bath; dust and road grime covered it. He saw it again as it reached the first grade at the edge of town; he and Gregg watched the dull shape shoot up the hill down which the two of them had trudged.
“We could have come down with her,” Gregg said.
They got into their own car, their Oldsmobile. The motor was running; the attendant hadn’t shut it off.
“Back to L.A.,” Roger said. Pulling away from the curb he headed in the opposite direction from the red Ford station wagon. “What a mess,” he said to Gregg. “Did you ever see a mess like that?” He drove slowly, with both hands on the wheel. How did I get into it? he said to himself. How does anybody get into a situation like that?
The glare dazzled him. Straight into the sun, the whole trip back. God, he thought. Things were bad enough at home. Not more, he thought; please not more.
4
Saturday afternoon, as Virginia walked home from the bus stop to her apartment in the North East part of Washington, a dingy old car pulled up by the curb; the window rolled down and a voice hailed her.
At first she thought it was Irv Rattenfanger; it was his ’34 Buick, but loaded with boxes and crates. A rack had been welded to the top and it was full, too. She halted, catching her breath, and then she recognized Roger Lindahl, the man who had drunk up her bottle of wine at the Rattenfangers’ party. He was crammed into the front seat with the boxes. Waving merrily, he parked the car and got out to run around and leap up on the curb. Today his mood was buoyant, but she shrank away. One of those sub-rational forebodings, bound up in childhood experience and bad luck, began to plague her as soon as she recognized him.
“Hello,” she said. “You seem happy today.”
“I just got my Government check,” he said. “I’ve been driving around; your roommate said you ought to be home any time. You just getting off work?” He was drawing her toward the parked car. “Hop in and I’ll ride you home.”
“There’s no room in there,” she said, with wariness.
“Sure there is.” Opening the door he showed her the space he had made beside the driver’s seat. “Look,” he said, “I’m leaving for California!”
She could not help feeling excitement at the idea. “In that?”
“I’m leaving late tonight; I’m all loaded and I have my C sticker. Hey—” He paused, and a seriousness set in. “Look, I can’t leave until after the traffic. How about going out with me?”
For just a second she thought he meant literally driving a distance with him in his loaded-down car, a sort of trial run to see if all the gears and engine worked.
“I mean, let’s drive down into Rock Creek Park or something. For a couple of hours.” His hand shot up and he examined his wrist-watch. “It’s only three o’clock.”
She said, “Are you really just about to leave?”
“Sure.” His face lit up; the frowns and wrinkles eased away.
“You didn’t come back last night,” she said. “To the party.”
“I came back later,” he said vaguely. “It was after you went home.” His feet shuffled. “How about it? There’s a bunch of animals or something down there, in buildings. I drove through there once.” He did not bring up the subject of the wine, which he had sworn to replace. For some reason she knew that he never would.
“Okay,” she said. The Park was not far from her apartment and she loved to roam around in it, especially near the river. Since it was so familiar she was less apprehensive. And anyhow, he was a friend of the Rattenfangers. He even had their old harmless car.
With the two of them in the car the doors would barely shut. She had to hold a cardboard box of clothes on her lap. At first his driving unnerved her; at the lights he shot forward and at corners he turned without slowing. But he was skillful.
“What check?” she asked, unable to think of anything else to say.
“Compensation,” he said. “From Uncle Sam.”
“Oh,” she said, thinking of her own job at the Washington military hospitals. “Were you in the Service?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “I was wounded in the Philippines.” He glanced at her and said, “We fought it out with the Japs—I was taken off with a bunch of guerillas by means of a submarine.”
“Where were you hurt?”
“My leg,” he said. “A Jap machine gunner shot away most of the bone. But I got him. With a Filipino throwing knife.” Again he glanced at her and she realized that he was making it up.
“That’s a lie,” she said.
“No,” he said, “its true. I have a silver plate there.”
“Show it to me.”
“It’s inside.” His voice sank. “It’s all healed over.”
She said, “I work with wounded servicemen; you couldn’t walk as well as you do.”
Protest started from him. And then it disappeared. A brief, sly elfish manner took its place and in spite of herself she was charmed. But he did not admit it was a lie; for a time he continued to nod his head.
“I have to stop at a gas station,” he said, as the car entered a business district. Without any further word he swung the car from the street and up by the pumps of a Texaco station. Then he backed it to the grease rack and shut the motor off. But he did not get out; sitting there, he launched into a long story, without explanation, a rapid and nervous account:
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“We had this milkman and we used to put a note out on the porch, you know, stuck on the door with a thumbtack, telling him not to leave any milk that day. One day I looked out the window and I saw he didn’t come up on the porch; when he saw the note pinned up he just gunned his motor and drove off, to save time. So I got to writing different things; I wrote things like, Leave four gallons of cream and six pounds of butter and six pints of milk. I put notes like that up, and he just glanced out the window of his truck and gunned off. Then one day there was a new driver and he came up on the porch and read the note, and he left all that stuff. Twenty dollars worth of butter and cream and milk. Even a quart of orange juice.” Roger became silent then.
“When was that?” she said. “When you were a child?”
“Yes,” he said, but again she sensed the evasion. And even in her childhood—and she was younger—the milk trucks had been horse-drawn. She remembered the clop-clop of the hoofs at dawn, while everyone was still in bed. But, she thought, perhaps it was in another city.
She said, “Didn’t Dora tell me you’re married?”
“Hell no,” he said, horrified.
The station attendant in his brown uniform, wiping his hands on a rag, walked over, “What can I do for you?”
“What’s the chances of maybe my using your hydraulic jack for a couple of seconds?” Roger said.
“Why?”
“Because my bumper jack won’t lift this load I got in here and on top.” A servile, wheedling quality entered his voice which she had never heard in anyone before. “Come on,” Roger said, “be a good guy.”
Shrugging, the attendant walked away. At once Roger jumped from the car and hurried to the hydraulic jack, which he had already located. Soon he was back, dragging it behind him.
“I want to get the spare on the rear left,” he explained to Virginia. “It’ll only take a couple of seconds; okay?” The jack disappeared under the car. At that she opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement.
Down on his hands and knees he was guiding the jack beneath the rear axle. And she had the strange conviction that, silly as it might seem, he was doing all this deliberately, because of her, not because he really wanted to change the tire. In some oblique manner he wanted to convey something to her.
Puttering About in a Small Land Page 5
