The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

  “I’m not going to. I’m not going to do it, Daddy. Why do you always have to make things so much worse? Why do you have to always do it?”

  Mr. Newbury rose from his chair and put out his cigar in an ashtray. He walked around his desk past his son and stood facing me. I dropped my head and concentrated on watching the pattern in the rug.

  “Look up, Tom,” he said.

  I looked up and he slapped me once, hard, across the face.

  I began crying and I heard Todd crying, too. Then Mr. Newbury looked down and whispered to me, “Don’t ever tell anyone I did that, Tom. I did it for your own good. If you ever tell a soul, I’ll run your family clean out of this town. And please, son, don’t ever be stupid enough to pick on a Newbury again. Now, you two boys shake hands and become friends. I really want you to be friends. Stay up here until you calm down. Then wash your face, Tom, and come downstairs. I’ll be talking to your pretty mother.”

  Crying, Todd Newbury and I shook hands as his father left the room.

  I knew I had to go down and face my mother’s interrogation about the meeting. My humiliation was pure and complete, but I did not want her to share in it. In a primitive way, I thought I had discovered the secret of the way powerful men attain and uphold their status in the world. I walked to a bathroom off the study, dried my tears, and washed my face. I let the water run for a long time and carefully pissed all over the bathroom floor, thinking: Tom Wingo, unrepentantly low class to the bitter end. When I emerged, Todd was still weeping, his head thrown back against the leather chair, the tears streaming down his plump cheeks.

  “Please don’t tell anyone, Tom. I beg you, please don’t tell anyone at school. They all hate me enough as it is.”

  “If you didn’t act like a jerk, no one would’ hate you, Todd,” I said.

  “Yeah, they would. Because he’s my father. Everyone hates him. Don’t you see I couldn’t stop him from doing that?”

  “I know that. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “He does things like that all the time. It’s what I have to live with.”

  “Why did you tell him Luke helped me?”

  “Because I had to. He could understand me getting beat up by two guys. But he would have made me fight you at school again if he knew it was just you. He’s scary when he gets mad.”

  “So’s my father.”

  “But your father doesn’t hate you. My father’s hated me since the day I was born.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not handsome. Because I’m not strong. Because I’m nothing like him.”

  “I’d be glad I was nothing like him.”

  “He’s the most prominent man in South Carolina,” Todd said defensively.

  “So what? You yourself said no one likes him.”

  “He says you can control men if they fear you.”

  “Then he gets to sit all alone in this big house, slapping kids who tangle with his kid. I’m real happy you’re rich and powerful and come from an old family, Todd. But I wouldn’t want to be you for nothing.”

  “I shouldn’t have said that about your family, Tom.”

  “No,” I agreed, “you shouldn’t have.”

  “They’re not all that trashy. There are dozens of trashier families in Colleton. Hundreds even.”

  “Thanks tons, fat shit,” I said, angry again.

  “I didn’t mean it that way. It came out all wrong. I meant to say you can come over any time you want. I’ve got a stamp collection and a pool table. We could do things after school.”

  “I don’t want to come to this house ever again.”

  “I could show you where the poor Yankees scratched out their names.”

  “I don’t care if you could show me where General Sherman took a shit; I ain’t hanging around this house.”

  “Maybe I could come out to your place sometime.”

  “You don’t even know where I live.”

  “I do too. You live out on Melrose Island,” he said. He rose and went to a huge map of the county, a navigational chart that enumerated the depths of all the rivers and creeks with small numbers.

  I looked at the map and studied the outline of our island, an irregular diamond of green surrounded by a blue border of water.

  “Why is there a red pin on our island?” I asked. The whole map was studded with an irregular phalanx of these pins.

  “Oh, that. Dad places red pins on all the places he plans to buy. The green pins represent all the property he owns.”

  “He owns the whole damn county,” I said. “Why does he want our land?”

  “Land is his hobby. He says land is money.”

  “That’s one piece of land he’ll never own. I promise you that much.”

  “He’ll get it if he wants it bad enough,” Todd said simply. “He always does.”

  “Come out there if you want, Todd. I can’t stop you.”

  “You don’t really want me to, though, do you?”

  “No, not really. I need to go get my mother now.”

  “Do you know what I can’t figure out, Tom? I can’t figure out why the kids at school like you so much better than they like me.”

  “That’s an easy one, Todd. No secret to that. I’m a lot nicer guy than you are. I say hello to people without worrying about what their daddies do for a living. You’ve never been able to do that. You don’t say hello to anybody.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable saying hello to just anybody.”

  “That’s fine. But then don’t get upset when everyone thinks you’re an asshole.”

  “I’ll walk you downstairs.”

  My mother was sitting in the den, giggling at everything Mr. Newbury said. She was sitting with her legs crossed prettily, sipping a glass of wine. Mr. Newbury was convivial and charming as he punctuated his stories with solemn, precise gestures. While I waited for him to finish one of his stories, I took time to memorize his features. He belonged to the same blue-eyed stock of his wife, but his were flecked with green; they changed color or seemed to when they caught the sunlight pouring into the room from the back yard. His hands were small, pudgy, and uncalloused. All his movements were lethargic, as though he had a layer of silk insulating his central nervous system. His voice was deep and glutinous. Speaking, his words poured out of him in rotund, pontifical essays of self-praise. My mother, of course, was charmed down to her toes.

  “And so I told the governor, Lila, I said, ‘Fritz, you know there’s no use talking about this over drinks. Come down to Colleton next week and we’ll meet in my office and get this straightened out.’ He was here on Monday morning with his hat in his hand. Now I have all the respect in the world for our governor—in fact, I was on his campaign committee—but my philosophy is that business is business.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more, Reese,” my mother said enthusiastically. “I never thought that friendship should interfere with a business matter.”

  Mr. Newbury looked up and saw Todd and me standing in the doorway. He waved us into the room. Before he could speak, I heard my mother gasp when she saw Todd’s face for the first time.

  “Oh, Todd. Your face, darling,” she said, coming out of her chair and touching his face solicitously. “Oh, I’m so sorry about all this. I hope Tom told you that I whipped him good last night. Oh, Todd, you poor darling.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Wingo. I deserved it,” Todd said, to my infinite relief.

  “Did you boys have a good talk?” Mr. Newbury asked sternly.

  “Yes, sir,” I answered.

  “If you ever have any problems, Lila,” Mr. Newbury said, rising out of his chair and escorting us to the front door, “please don’t hesitate to call on me. After all, that’s what neighbors are for.”

  At the front door, Mr. Newbury put his arm around my shoulder and walked me down the steps. He squeezed my left shoulder very hard, a warning.

  “It takes a real man to say he’s sorry, Tom. I appreciate your coming over to clear the air. I won�
�t say a word about it to anyone. And I know you won’t, either. It was worth the whole day just to get to know you a little better. I’ve always taken an interest in the young folks. They’re the future. Yep, the future of this whole town.”

  “Goodbye, Tom. I enjoyed the talk,” Todd said, standing behind his father.

  “Goodbye, Todd.”

  “Toodly-doo, Reese. Bye, Todd, honey,” my mother said.

  When we walked half a block down the street, my mother, tipsy from both the wine and her half-hour of being entertained in the Newbury house, said, “I’ve always said to everyone who’d listen, the most successful men are always the nicest men.”

  “Tom, why did you tell me that story?” Dr. Lowenstein asked. I had been talking for almost an hour in her office. “It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Savannah. It sheds a lot of light on why you became the man you did, but how does it fit in with her story? She wasn’t even present when Mr. Newbury struck you.”

  “Savannah was the only one I told that story to. I didn’t tell Dad or Luke because I thought they might have caught Newbury out on the street and broken his legs. So I told her that night and we sat up late trying to figure out what it all meant.”

  “But it did not affect her directly. I mean, she empathized with you, I’m sure. She felt the same hurt and humiliation, but it doesn’t seem to have had any direct impact on her life.”

  “In a way that story is essential to her history, Doctor. You can’t see it now, but I’m getting to it. I’m talking as fast as I can. I’m trying to eliminate the parts that only affect me, but all of it seems related now. Pieces are starting to fit together in my mind like they never did before.”

  “But you’re not making it clear to me. You’ve got to tell me what the connections are as soon as you see them. I understand that your mother’s paranoia about her social standing had a profound effect on Savannah. You’ve made that abundantly clear. But was Savannah ever connected to the Newburys in any way?”

  “Did my mother ever write to you?”

  “Yes, right after we first spoke on the phone.”

  “Do you have that letter?”

  She went to a file cabinet by the desk and came back with a letter. I recognized my mother’s handwriting on the envelope.

  “Here it is. It was a very nice supportive letter.”

  “My mother writes wonderful letters. She’s a good writer. Savannah’s gift did not come out of a vacuum. Did you notice the return address?”

  “It’s from Charleston,” she said, picking up the envelope.

  “What else do you notice?”

  “No!” she said, stunned.

  “Yes,” I said.

  10

  In Central Park, I watched a polar bear suffering in mute dignity on a sweltering day in late June. Behind me, the immense gathering of buildings along Central Park South cast mile-long shadows that eclipsed most sunlight from the zoo but did little to ease the bear’s discomfort. A pigeon floating in the air currents between the Sherry-Netherland hotel and the zoo did not see the hawk flare its wings and plummet two hundred feet with its talons extended. The hawk broke the pigeon’s back and small feathers fell on top of the baboon’s cage. The pigeon, like me, probably thought that citizenship in New York City at least made you safe from hawks, but New York never forfeited its rights of surprise. When I walked through the zoo, I always expected to see extraordinary animals staring at me from the grim interiors of their cells—animals worthy of the city, unicorns sharpening their spiraled horns against weathered bars or dragons setting fire to pages from the Daily News as the sheets blew along the walkway. Instead, fallow deer shyly pawed the baked ground and ocelots scratched Manhattan fleas from their shining coats.

  From the zoo, I walked straight across the park for my rendezvous with Susan Lowenstein’s son. I kept looking up for another hawk, but only saw those ranks of great buildings huddled along the edges of the park all around me.

  Bernard Woodruff stood waiting for me beneath a young oak tree near his parents’ apartment on Central Park West. As I approached him I noticed that he had inherited his mother’s vivid, pretty face except for a statelier, more prominent nose. He was taller than I had expected and his hands were long and graceful. In repose his fingers almost reached his knees. He had a magnificent crown of black hair that framed his thin face in a curled, abundant wreath. But his demeanor worried me immediately. His face was a cove of stifled insolence. I saw that flare of adolescent underlip, the insubordinate bravado and vulnerable sneer that young boys in their powerlessness sometimes assume will mask their own fear of exposure. Bernard faced me as a tough guy, Manhattan boy weathered in the war zones, street kid. Before we spoke, this old coach, veteran of a generation of boys, saw the nocturnal light moving beyond the horizons of his dark eyes and heard the distant thunder of his small but consequential war with the world.

  “Hi, Bernard,” I shouted to warn him of my approach. “I’m Tom Wingo.”

  He did not say a word but lifted his gaze and studied me with bored, suspicious eyes.

  “Yeah, I thought it was you,” he said when I neared him.

  “How are you doing?” I said, extending my hand.

  “I’m okay,” he answered, staring out beyond the traffic. He ignored my hand.

  “Looks like a nice day to toss a football around, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  “It’s okay,” he said in a hostile voice that told me Bernard was not going to make this initial encounter an easy one.

  “Been waiting long here?”

  “Long enough,” he said to the traffic more than to me.

  “I got lost,” I admitted. “I always get lost in Central Park. It’s always bigger than I remember it.”

  “No one asked you to come here,” he said, glancing at me briefly.

  “Wrong, tiger,” I said, lowering my voice and tiring of his slouching insolence. “Your mother did.”

  “She’s always making me do things I don’t want to do.”

  “That right?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “That’s right.”

  “You don’t want me to coach you.”

  “Hey, you get the picture fast, don’t you?” Bernard said. “Besides, I got a coach at school already.”

  “You play in any games last year?” I asked, and I could tell he heard the doubt in my voice.

  “I was only a freshman.”

  “You play in any games last year?” I repeated the question.

  “No. Where do you coach, anyway?”

  “In South Carolina.”

  “Hey.” He laughed. “Real big time.”

  “No, not big time, Bernard,” I said, my voice nearly freezing in my throat. “But let me assure you of one thing. I’ve coached teams who could take any Phillips Exeter team in history and drive them into the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “How do you know?” he asked contemptuously.

  “Because I don’t coach little rich kids who get sent to boarding school because their parents can’t stand to have them around the house.”

  “So what?” he said.

  I could tell I had touched a sensitive area in his life. But I had no intention of letting up on Bernard. “And none of my kids play the violin, Bernard. They eat kids who play the violin.”

  “Yeah,” he answered, “and I bet none of them are forced to play the violin, either.”

  “And I’m not going to force you to learn some football from me. I don’t like wasting my time with snotty-nosed, wise-assed kids. I coach kids who like the game. I don’t coach kids whose mothers make them.”

  “My mother didn’t even know I played football last year.”

  “You didn’t play football last year, Bernard,” I said, amazed by the boy’s refusal to make eye contact. “You already told me you didn’t get into any of the games.”

  “You don’t understand!” he whined. “I was behind the other guys. I’d never gone to a school that had a football team before.”

>   “What position do you play?” I asked.

  “Quarterback.”

  “I played quarterback,” I answered.

  “So what?” he said, his sneer disfiguring the entire right side of his face. “I came here to tell you I don’t need you.”

  I lateralled him the football and he handled the ball nicely. I ran out ten yards and then said to him, “Throw me a pass.” He threw a wobbling though accurate pass. He had a nice arc on the ball, a soft touch. I took the ball, and without saying a word, I turned and began walking out of Central Park. I knew his eyes were on me.

  “Hey, where are you going?” he asked.

  “Home,” I said without looking back. I heard him jogging up behind me.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not worth a shit, kid,” I said meanly. “Go practice your violin and make your parents happy. Also, I can’t stand your attitude. And if I can’t stand it, how are you ever going to lead a team? How are you ever going to transform your whiny, self-pitying ass into a quarterback?”

  “Look,” he said, “that was the first pass I’ve thrown in six months.”

  My present mood did not include charity or forgiveness and I answered, “It looked like the first pass you ever threw in your life.”

  “Throw it back and I’ll try it again,” he said, and his voice changed for the first time and I stopped and faced him.

  “First we talk.”

  “What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

  “Your mouth, for one thing.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Shut it, kid,” I said coldly. “Now, Bernard. I don’t care if you like me or not, my friend. And I’m not sure whether I’m going to coach you or not. But when I talk to you I want you to look me straight in the eyes. That’s it. It won’t hurt a thing. The next time I put out my hand to shake and you pretend you don’t see it, I’m going to break every bone in your hand. Then when you talk to me I want you to speak to me with respect and kindness. Now . . . I want you to tell me why you’re pissed off at the world. I won’t tell your mother a word of what you say. I promise you that. But you’re a nasty son of a bitch and I’d like to help you figure out why.”