Early Autumn s-7

by Robert B. Parker

  “Come on, kid,” I said. “You only got up to go. Let me show you how to punch.”

  Without looking up he took the gloves.

  CHAPTER 18

  We were digging the last hole for the foundation tubes. It was hot, the going was slow through rocks and the usual root web. I was working with a mattock and Paul had a shovel. We also had use for an ax, a crowbar, and a long-handled branch cutter, which we used on some of the roots.

  Paul was dressed like I was: jeans and work boots. Mine were bigger. The sweat shone on his thin body as he dug at the dirt I loosened.

  “What are these holes for again?” he said.

  “See the big round cardboard tubes over there? We put them in these holes and get them level and fill them with reinforced concrete. Then we put a sill on them and the cabin rests on them. It’s easier than digging a cellar hole, though a cellar’s better.”

  “Why?” He dug the shovel blade into the dirt and picked it up. He was holding the shovel too far up the handle and the dirt flipped as he pried it up and most of it fell back in the hole.

  “Cellar gives you place for a furnace, makes the floors warmer, gives you storage. This way the house sits above ground. Colder in the winter. But a lot less trouble.”

  Paul shifted his grip a little on the shovel and took another stab at the dirt. He got most of it this time. “Don’t they have machines to do this?”

  “Yes.” I swung the mattock again. It bit into the soil pleasingly. We were getting down a layer, where the roots and rocks weren’t a problem. “But there’s no satisfaction in it. Get a gasoline post-hole digger and rattle away at this like a guy making radiators. Gas fumes, noise. No sense that you’re doing it.”

  “I should think it would be easier.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. I swung the mattock again, the wide blade buried in the earth to the haft. I levered it forward and the earth spilled loose. Paul shoveled it out. He still held the shovel too high on the handle and he still moved too tentatively. But he cleared the hole.

  “We’ll use some power tools later on. Circular saws, that sort of stuff. But I wanted to start with our backs.”

  Paul looked at me as if I were strange and made a silent gesture with his mouth.

  “It’s not crazy,” I said. “We’re not doing this just to get it done.”

  He shrugged, leaning on the shovel.

  “We do it to get the pleasure of making something. Otherwise we could hire someone. That would be the easiest way of all.”

  “But this is cheaper,” Paul said.

  “Yeah, we save money. But that’s just a point that keeps it from being a hobby, like making ships in a bottle. Only when love and need are one, you know?”

  “What’s that mean?” he said.

  “It’s a poem, I’ll let you read it after supper.”

  We finished the last hole and set the last tube into it. We drove reinforcing rods into the ground in each tube and then backfilled the holes around the tubes. I went around with a mason’s level and got each tube upright and Paul then shoveled the earth in around it while I kept adjusting it to level. It took us the rest of the afternoon. When the last one was leveled and packed I said, “Okay, time to quit”

  It was still warm and the sun was still well up in the western sky when I get a beer from the refrigerator and a Coke for Paul.

  “Can I have a beer?” he said.

  “Sure.” I put the Coke back and got a beer.

  We sat in the camp chairs with the sweat drying on our backs in the warm breeze. When the sun went down it would get cold, but now it was still the yellow-green spring of the almost deserted forest, and no human sounds but the ones we made.

  “In the summer,” I said, “it’s much noisier. The other cabins open up and there’s always people sounds.”

  “You like it up here?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Not for long. I like cities. I like to look at people and buildings.”

  “Aren’t trees and stuff prettier?”

  “I don’t know. I like artifacts, things people make. I like architecture. When I go to Chicago I like to look at the buildings. It’s like a history of American architecture.”

  Paul shrugged.

  “You ever seen the Chrysler Building in New York?” I said. “Or the Woolworth Building downtown?”

  “I never been to New York.”

  “Well, we’ll go sometime,” I said.

  One squirrel chased another up one side of a tree and down the other and across a patch of open ground and up another tree.

  “Red squirrel,” I said. “Usually you see gray ones.”

  “What’s the difference?” Paul said.

  “Aside from color, gray ones are bigger,” I said.

  Paul was silent. Somewhere on the lake a fish broke. A monarch butterfly bobbed toward us and settled on the barrel of the shotgun that leaned against the steps to the cabin.

  Paul said, “I been thinking of that stuff you said that time, about being, ah, you know, about not depending on other people.”

  “Autonomous,” I said.

  “Well, what’s that got to do with building houses and lifting weights? I mean, I know what you said, but…” He shrugged.

  “Well, in part,” I said, “it’s what I can teach you. I can’t teach you to write poetry or play the piano or paint or do differential equations.”

  I finished the beer and opened another one. Paul still sipped his. We were drinking Heinekens in dark green cans. I couldn’t get Amstel, and Beck’s was only available in bottles. For a cabin in the woods, cans seemed more appropriate. Paul finished his beer and went and got another one. He looked at me out of the corner of one eye while he opened the new can.

  “What are we going to do tomorrow?” he said.

  “Anything you’d like to do?” I said. “It’s Saturday.”

  He shrugged. If he did enough weight lifting maybe I could get him too muscle-bound to do that. “Like what?” he said.

  “If you could do whatever you wanted to do, what would it be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When you are twenty-five, what do you imagine yourself doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is there anyplace you’ve always wanted to go? That no one would take you, or you were afraid to ask?”

  He sipped at the beer. “I liked the movie The Red Shoes” he said.

  “Want to go to the ballet?” I said.

  He sipped at the beer again. “Okay,” he said.

  CHAPTER 19

  It was Saturday morning.

  I put on a blue suit and a white shirt from Brooks Brothers, all cotton, with a button-down collar. I had a blue tie with red stripes on it, and I looked very stylish with my black shoes and my handsome Smith & Wesson in my right hip pocket. The blue steel of the barrel was nicely coordinated with my understated socks.

  Paul broke out a tan corduroy jacket and brown pants and a powder blue polyester shirt with dark blue pocket flaps. He wore his decrepit Top-Siders and no tie. His socks were black.

  “That is about the ugliest goddamned getup I’ve seen since I came home from Korea,” I said.

  “I don’t look okay?”

  “You look like the runner-up in a Mortimer Snerd look-alike contest”

  “I don’t have any other stuff.”

  “Okay, that’s what well do this afternoon,” I said. “We’ll get you some clothes.”

  “What will I do with these?”

  “Wear them,” I said. “When we get new ones you can throw those away.”

  “Who’s Mortimer Snerd?”

  “A famous ventriloquist’s dummy from my youth,” I said. “Edgar Bergen. He died.”

  “I saw him in an old movie on TV.”

  The ride to Boston took three and a half hours. Most of the way down Paul fiddled with the radio, switching from one contemporary music station to another as we went in and out of range of their signal. I let him. I figured I owe
d him for the near daily baseball games he’d listened to while we worked. We got to Boston around a quarter to twelve.

  I parked Susan’s Bronco on Boylston Street in front of Louis‘.

  “We’ll go here,” I said.

  “Do you buy your clothes here?” he said.

  “No. I don’t have the build for it,” I said. “They tend to the leaner pinched-waist types.”

  “You’re not fat.”

  “No, but I’m sort of misshapen. My upper body is too big. I’m like a knockwurst on a canape tray in there. The lapels don’t fall right. The sleeves are too tight. Guy that’s lean like you, they’ll look terrific”

  “You mean skinny.”

  “No. You were skinny. You’re beginning to tend toward lean. Come on.”

  We went into Louis’. A slim, elegant salesman picked us up at the door.

  “Yes, sir?”

  He was wearing a pale gray-beige double-breasted suit with the jacket unbuttoned and the collar up, a round-collared shirt open at the neck with the blue paisley tie carefully loosened, Gucci loafers, and a lot of blue silk handkerchief showing at the breast pocket. He had a neat goatee. I decided not to kiss him.

  “I’d like a suit for the kid,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Come with me.” If Louis’ were a New York restaurant, it would be the Tavern-on-the-Green. If it were a municipality, it would be Beverly Hills. Lots of brass and oak and indirect lighting and stylish display, and thick carpet. As we got into the elevator I said softly to Paul, “I always have the impulse to whiz in the corner when I come in here. But I never do.”

  Paul looked startled.

  “I got too much class,” I said.

  We bought Paul a charcoal three-piece suit of European cut, black loafers with tassels, nearly as nice as mine, two white shirts, a red-and-gray striped tie, a gray-and-red-silk pocket handkerchief, two pairs of gray over-the-calf socks, and a black leather belt. We also bought some light gray slacks and a blue blazer with brass buttons, a blue tie with white polka dots, and a blue-and-gray-silk pocket handkerchief. Under pressure they agreed to get the pants shortened for the evening. The jackets fit him decently off the rack. I offered the elegant salesman a check for seven hundred fifty dollars. He shook his head and took me to the front desk. A far less elegant young woman handled the money. The salesmen were too dignified.

  “We’ll have those trousers ready at five o’clock, sir.”

  I said thank you, and the salesman left me the clerical ministrations of the young woman.

  “I’ll need two pieces of identification,” she said. She was chewing gum. Juicy Fruit, from the scent. I gave her my driver’s license and my gumshoe permit. She read the gumshoe permit twice. We got out of the store at three ten.

  “Ever been to the Museum of Fine Arts?” I said.

  “No.”

  “We’ll take a look,” I said.

  At the museum I offended a group being taken through by a guide. I was telling Paul something about a painting of the Hudson River School when one of the ladies in the group told us to shush.

  “You’re disturbing us,” she said.

  “Actually you’re disturbing me,” I said. “But I’m too well-bred to complain.”

  The guide looked uncomfortable. I said to Paul, “It’s like a Cooper novel. The wilderness is lovely and clean. It’s romantic, you know?”

  The whole party glared at me in concert. Paul whispered, “I never read any novels by that guy.”

  “You will,” I said. “And when you do, you’ll think of some of these paintings.”

  He looked at the painting again.

  “Come on,” I said. “I can’t hear myself think in here.”

  At five o’clock we picked up Paul’s clothes at Louis‘. The elegant salesman glided by as we did so and nodded at us democratically. We drove over to my apartment so he could change.

  “Change in my bedroom,” I said. “And when you get through, bring that crap out here.”

  “My old clothes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which outfit should I wear?”

  “Your choice.”

  “I don’t know what goes with what.”

  “The hell you don’t,” I said. “We picked it all out at Louis’.”

  “But I forgot”

  “Get in there and get dressed,” I said. “This is a decision you can make. I won’t do it for you.”

  He went in and took twenty minutes to change. When he came out he was wearing the gray suit and a white shirt He carried the red-and-gray tie. “I can’t tie it,” he said.

  “Turn around,” I said. “I have to do it backwards on you.”

  We stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom and I tied his tie.

  “All right,” I said when I ran the tie up and helped him button the collar. “You are looking good. Maybe a haircut, but for the ballet it’s probably the right length.”

  He looked at himself in the mirror. His face was sun- and windburned, and looked even more colorful against the white shirt.

  “Come on,” I said. “We gotta meet Susan at Casa Romero at six.”

  “She’s coming?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why does she have to come?”

  “Because I love her and I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks.”

  He nodded.

  Susan was standing on the corner of Gloucester and Newbury when we walked up. She had on a pale gray skirt and a blue blazer with brass buttons and a white oxford shirt open at the throat and black boots with very high heels. I saw her before she saw me. Her hair looked glossy in the afternoon sun. She was wearing huge sunglasses. I stopped and looked at her. She was looking for us up Newbury and we were on Gloucester.

  Paul said, “What are we stopping for?”

  “I like to look at her.” I said. “I like to see her sometimes as if we were strangers and watch her before she sees me.”

  “Why?”

  “My ancestors are Irish,” I said.

  Paul shook his head. I whistled through my teeth at Susan. “Hey, cutie,” I yelled. “Looking for a good time?”

  She turned toward us. “I prefer sailors,” she said.

  As we walked down the little alley to the entrance I gave Susan a quick pat on the backside. She smiled, but rather briefly.

  It was early. There was plenty of room in the restaurant. I held Susan’s chair and she sat down opposite Paul and me. The room was attractive and Aztecky with a lot of tile and, as far as I could see, absolutely no Mexicans.

  We ate beans and rice and chicken mole and cabrito and flour tortillas. Paul ate a surprising amount, although he was careful to poke at each item with his fork tines first, as if to see that it was dead, and he sampled very tiny bits to make sure it wasn’t poisonous. Susan had a margarita and I had several Carta Blanca beers. There wasn’t much conversation. Paul ate staring into his plate. Susan responded to me mostly in short answers and while there was no anger in her voice I sensed no pleasure either.

  “Suze,” I said over coffee, “since I’m spending the rest of the evening at ballet I was hoping this would be the high point.”

  “Did you really,” she said. “Am I to gather you’re disappointed?”

  Paul was eating pineapple ice cream for dessert. He stared down into it as he ate. I looked at him then at Susan.

  “Well, you seemed a little quiet.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think I will pursue this, if at all, another time,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said.

  “Would you care to join us at ballet?” I said.

  “I think I will not,” she said. “I don’t really enjoy ballet”

  The waiter presented the check. I paid it

  “May we drop you somewhere?” I said.

  “No, thank you. My car is just down Newbury Street”

  I looked at my watch, “Well, we’ve got a curtain to make. Nice to have seen you.”

  Susan nodded and sipp
ed her coffee. I got up and Paul got up and we left.

  CHAPTER 20

  I had never been to a ballet before, and while I was interested in the remarkable things the dancers could do with their bodies, I wasn’t looking forward to the next time. Paul obviously was. He sat motionless and intent beside me throughout the program.

  Driving back to Maine I said to him, “Ever been to a ballet before?”

  “No. My dad said it was for girls.”

  “He’s half right again,” I said. “Just like the cooking.”

  Paul was quiet.

  “Would you like to do ballet?”

  “You mean be a dancer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’d never let me. They think it’s… they wouldn’t let me.”

  “Yeah, but if they would, would you want to?”

  “Take lessons and stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded. Very slightly. In the dark car, trying to keep an eye on the road, I barely caught the nod. It was the first unequivocal commitment I’d seen him make, and however slight the nod, it was a nod. It wasn’t a shrug.

  We were quiet He hadn’t turned the radio on when he got in the car, as he almost always did. So I didn’t either. Past the Portsmouth Circle, on the Spaulding Turnpike, an hour north of Boston, he said without looking at me, “Lots of men dance ballet.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “My father says they’re fags.”

  “What’s your mother say?”

  “She says that too.”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know about their sex life. What I can say is, they are very fine athletes. I don’t know enough about dance to go much further than that, but people who do know seem to feel that they are also often gifted artists. That ain’t a bad combination, fine athlete; gifted artist. It puts them two up on most people and one up on practically everybody except Bernie Casey.”

  “Who’s Bernie Casey?”

  “Used to be a wide receiver with the Rams. Now he’s a painter and an actor.”

  There were a few streetlights and not many towns now. The Bronco moved through the night’s tunnel as if it were alone.

  “Why do they say that?” Paul said.

  “Say what?”

  “That dancing’s for girls. That guys that do it are fags. They say that about everything. Cooking, books, everything, movies. Why do they say that?”