A Summer Place

by Sloan Wilson

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “They have a few which cover room and board. I’ll see what I can do for you,” Mr. Caulfield concluded.

  The school band, a nine-piece affair, practiced in the gymnasium every Friday night. Ted Farlough was good on the trumpet, and Fred Cohn was terrific on the drums, and the others struggled along as best they could. John walked to the gymnasium now to practice with them. Ted and the others were already warming up. “Come on, Johnny,” they said. “Get on the mike.”

  The band swung into an old one, “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” John let them run through it once before he began. “East of the sun,” he sang, “and west of the moon, we’ll build a dream house for two, dear, east of the sun in the day and west of the moon at night…”

  “Man, that’s wonderful!” Art Bradshaw said. “You’re wasting your time with Latin, boy.”

  “Thanks,” John said, embarrassed. “To tell you the truth, I never liked that song. What else have we got?”

  It was that evening that Mr. Nealy, newly returned to the school after a long absence, knocked on the door of John’s room. “Telephone call for you,” he said. “Long distance.”

  John hurried to the booth on the bottom floor of his dormitory. “Johnny?” Molly said, her voice taut.

  “Yes! Are you all right?”

  “Oh, Johnny!” The words were followed by an agonized silence.

  “Molly, what is it?”

  At the other end of the line there was a deep intake of breath. “It’s happened,” she said finally.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Almost.”

  “Where are you? Where are you now?”

  “Drugstore,” she said. “Near school. Had to tell you.”

  “Have you told anyone else?”

  “The doctor!” The words were a gasp of agony. “I went out of town to see one!”

  “Don’t cry!” he said. “Please don’t! We’ll figure this out.”

  “How? Can you come here? I need you so much, Johnny!”

  “Of course I’ll come.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. I’ll start tonight.”

  “Oh, thank you, Johnny! I had imagined awful things.” Immeasurable relief was in her voice. “I was afraid you’d say it was no business of yours,” she said.

  “Molly! We’re man and wife.”

  “Yes!”

  “I suppose this is terrible to say, but I’m glad.”

  “Oh, Johnny!”

  “Except for hurting you.”

  “What will we do?”

  “Get married!”

  “How?”

  “We’ll figure a way.”

  “I feel so ashamed!” Agony again.

  “Nuts!” he said, the word coming out like the crack of a whip. “Don’t talk like that, Molly! Cut that stuff out! We’re going to handle this together, and everything will be all right, but you’ve got to quit being ashamed.”

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  “If anybody should be ashamed, I should. Let me be ashamed for both of us. It’s easier on me.”

  “All right.” Her voice was meek.

  “Now listen. Dry your eyes and go back to school and wait for me. We ought to keep this secret till we figure out what we want to do. I don’t know how long it will take me to get there, but I’ll make it as soon as I possibly can. We need a chance to talk and figure things out. When I come, pretend I’m your brother or something.”

  “They know I don’t have a brother.”

  “O.K. So I’m asking you out on a date. Does that school let you have dates?”

  “Just on weekends. On weekdays you can call on us in the common room.”

  “Tomorrow’s Thursday,” he said. “I’ll be in the common room as soon as I can.”

  “But what are we going to do?” she asked.

  “Give me a chance to think, but I know we can figure it out. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” she said.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can. Goodbye, darling.”

  “Goodbye,” she said, and before the click of her hanging up, she added, “Thank God, Johnny.”

  He had been calm up till then, but upon leaving the telephone booth he felt suddenly confused. He had to get permission to leave the school—if he just ran away, they would look for him, and that would add another complication. He needed money immediately. How much did a train ticket cost to Virginia? He had no idea. Could he get a plane? Again no idea. Money—that was the first thing. He ought to get a hundred dollars, and he wished he hadn’t torn up the checks Sylvia had sent him. In his school bank account, he had only seven dollars left from his Easter vacation.

  No money.

  Nobody to borrow a hundred dollars from at Colchester Academy. The masters would ask questions, and the boys wouldn’t have it to give.

  No money. Panic took him. Maybe it would be simply impossible for him to go immediately.

  Of course not. He could hitchhike if necessary. Make it almost as fast, with luck.

  Or borrow money from the headmaster. Say there was a family emergency. Father sick. Have to make some excuse like that anyway to get permission to go. No point in having Caulfield set the cops searching for him.

  But if there were a real emergency like that, wouldn’t the family wire money? Old Caulfield would get suspicious if John not only wanted to leave without official word from the family, but also asked to borrow money. And if he got suspicious, he might prevent John even from hitchhiking—he might keep an eye on him or something, and even lock him in his room if he were caught slipping out with a suitcase. And then he wouldn’t be able to go at all.

  No. This has to be done right, John at the age of eighteen thought. No mistakes. And immediately a plan formed itself, a lie based on the truth.

  “Mr. Caulfield,” John said to the headmaster fifteen minutes later. “I’ve just received some pretty bad news. Family emergency.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mr. Caulfield replied, his voice full of concern. “What is it?”

  “It’s kind of embarrassing, sir.”

  “You can tell me, son!” Mr. Caulfield always thought himself a very understanding person. The boys could bring him all their problems, he said.

  “Well, it’s my father, sir. He, well, sometimes he drinks too much.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mr. Caulfield said, although he had heard it before from other sources. He always kept a thorough record on “the home situation.”

  “I guess he’s been drinking too much lately, especially too much, I mean, and he’s sick. The woman who worked for him quit two days ago, he was so hard to get along with. This woman, old Martha Hulbert, started driving to Florida to look for work, but in Virginia she got worried about Dad. Said her conscience bothered her about leaving him alone. So she stopped to call me up. Said she thought I should take a visit home, maybe put Dad in the hospital. I just got this long distance call from Virginia.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mr. Caulfield said. “Don’t you have any relatives you can call on?”

  “Well, you know Dad and Mother are divorced.”

  “It’s a hard job for a young boy,” Mr. Caulfield said. “Putting his father in the hospital. Especially in this sort of situation. Isn’t there someone who could help?”

  “Yes, sir,” John said. “All kinds of friends are on the mainland. If Dad actually has to go to the hospital, I’ll get them. But first I’d like to see.”

  “Couldn’t one of his friends go?”

  “No, sir. There’s no phone on the island, and the way it is, I’d feel pretty bad asking a friend to go out, especially if Dad turned out to be O.K. I mean, Dad wouldn’t like it if I asked someone to come out and see if he were sick. Kind of insulting to him. That Martha Hulbert, well, she’s a queer one. She might have been exaggerating.”

  “I see,” Mr. Caulfield said. “You’re
an unusually responsible boy, John. Old for your age.”

  “Thank you, sir. I guess we all have problems, sooner or later, I mean. There’s just one thing. Of course, I can’t very well get written permission from my father, and I don’t have any money. Could I borrow a hundred dollars from the loan fund?”

  Mr. Caulfield folded his hands in front of him. “John,” he said, “I want you to know that Colchester Academy will do everything it can to help you meet your family responsibilities, but this isn’t right. I can’t let an eighteen-year-old boy go off alone on an errand like that.”

  “Why not, sir?”

  “These cases can be pretty tough—nothing for a youngster to handle. We’ll call the police and get them to check on your father.”

  “There are no police on the island. And no telephone.”

  “Then we’ll call the Coast Guard.”

  “Oh. No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “My father would be very angry.”

  “He won’t know. The Coast Guard will make some excuse for dropping in.”

  “I think I ought to go myself,” John said.

  “Absolutely not,” Mr. Caulfield replied. “I respect your desire, but I must forbid it.”

  “Oh,” John said.

  “John, are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try not to worry about this too much. I’ll let you know what the Coast Guard reports.”

  “All right,” John said. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”

  He went back to his room, took his suitcase and his seven dollars, and left the school immediately, walking fast through the woods. It already was dark, a cool May evening. The leaves were wet. When he reached the state highway, he stood beside his suitcase gesticulating at passing automobiles, a tall boy waving his thumb wildly in the glare of headlights at the side of the road.

  Chapter Thirty

  AN INSURANCE SALESMAN who said he had been driving thirty-six hours without stopping picked him up first. When John offered to drive for him, he refused, and sat stolidly staring ahead through red-rimmed eyes, slapping his own face to stay awake.

  “Talk to me, kid,” he said. “Talk to me so I won’t go to sleep.”

  “I don’t know what to talk about.”

  “Tell me anything. Tell me the story of your life.”

  “Nothing to that.”

  “You’ve got to talk,” the salesman said. “What books do you read in school?”

  For two hours, while the salesman continually slapped his own face and shook his head, John told him about The Return of the Native, The Turn of the Screw and Brave New World.

  At a filling station John picked up a road map, and when the salesman turned off his route, he thanked him and got out. It was almost midnight, and few cars were passing, but finally a huge truck rumbled to a stop, and a fat burly man in a dirty blue shirt opened the door of the cab, and in a deep friendly voice said, “Get in, my boy. You look to me as though you need help.”

  John rode for a hundred miles, when the truck turned off his route. After he had waited in a cold drizzle at the side of the road for an hour, starting at three in the morning, an old Chevrolet slowed down and backed to him. A flashlight shone in his face. “You look like a nice young man,” a woman’s voice said in a slight Southern accent. “Get in.”

  “Thank you,” John said, and sat on the ragged upholstery of the front seat. The driver seemed to be quite a stout woman, but the light from the dashboard was too dim to see her clearly.

  “Guess you wonder why I pick up hitchhikers,” the woman said, grinding the gears as she started.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Got bad tires,” the woman said. “One liable to go any minute. Might need help.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” John said.

  “Guess you wonder why I’m driving alone this time of night. A respectable lady like me.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Mother’s dying,” the woman said. “Poor old lady, haven’t seen her in three years. Hope I get there in time.”

  “Hope so,” John said.

  “I’ve got six kids,” the woman continued. “My husband is staying home taking care of them to let me off. Not much on looks or money, my husband, but he’s a good guy. That’s worth a lot.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I was married young,” the woman went on as the old Chevrolet rattled along the highway. “Might have done better if I’d waited. I was a looker when I was young. You wouldn’t believe it to see me now, would you?”

  “It’s easy to believe, ma’am.”

  “Old Tom—that’s my husband—he was the one with the girls! Just a little feller too, but oh boy, as they used to say.”

  “I see.”

  “Those things mattered then. I was a great girl for a barnyard fiddle. Brought up in Georgia—they had great fiddlers down there. And my Tom, he could dance with the best of them. Just a little feller, too.”

  “I guess size isn’t very important,” John said.

  “You said it, boy! You understand! It ain’t. And neither is money—not in the long run. That sounds like a lot of malarky, doesn’t it? Especially to a young feller like you. I know what’s important at your age—the fast girl and the fast buck. Did I nail it that time, boy? Did I nail it?” She gave a high cackle.

  “You nailed it,” John said.

  “You understand. Well, let me tell you a story—from my life, boy, the real goods, not the malarky you read in books. My old lady—the one who’s dying right now, may be dead, for all I know—she married well, at least for Georgia in those years. My old man had a big outfit, over a thousand acres, with no bank paper on it. But he is a mean bastard, a real mean bastard, and my mother hasn’t had a happy day since.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You damn well should be. That old lady’s been married almost sixty years, and that’s a lot of misery, boy—sixty years can be a long miserable time. My father, he’s still kicking, still fighting with her. She’s had cancer in the gut, or some damn thing, for a year now, and the last time she wrote me, she said she was down to ninety pounds, her a woman that used to be able to pick me up, even when I was grown. And that old man, my sister told me, he comes into her room and fights with her yet. Sits right by her bed, with her in pain, and tells her she was never no good to him, and he’ll say that until she’s dead.”

  This left John speechless.

  “You hear me, boy?” the woman said.

  “I hear you. I’m kind of tired. I haven’t had any sleep for a long while.”

  “Put your head down, boy, and shut your eyes. Don’t let my talking bother you. I just talk to keep myself awake, because I like to figure things out. A time of death—it makes you think, boy, you know that? Makes you think what’s important. Say, where do you want to get out? I’ll wake you up.”

  “I’m going to Briarwood,” John said drowsily. “In Virginia.”

  “Going right through there. I’ll wake you up. Don’t let my talking bother you, but don’t expect me to stop. You know what’s important, boy, when you get right down to it?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “The small things—take care of them and the big ones will take care of themselves. Take my husband, he knows I want to go see my old lady before she dies. He don’t begrudge me the gas money, though he ain’t having it easy now. He stays home from his job to look after the kids. When he gets mad he cusses me like any man will. When he wants me in bed he wants me, and he won’t take no, even now. But there’s never a mean word to him, really, never a plan to hurt. This morning when I started, he gave me a road map he had all marked out with the route for me to take. It’s the small things which are important, the stuff that holds us up.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” John said, and went to sleep.

  What seemed only a short time afterward, she awoke him by poking him hard with her fist. “Get up, bo
y!” she said. “This is your stop. Briarwood!”

  He opened his eyes in confusion. The sun was shining brightly, and outside the window of the car was an unfamiliar street. For a moment he didn’t know where he was, or why. “Briarwood?” he asked.

  “Yes. You live here, boy?”

  “No,” he said. “Just visiting. Thanks for the ride very much.”

  Carrying his suitcase, he walked bewilderedly across the street, causing a milk truck to honk wildly at him as it veered by.

  The first problem was where to leave his suitcase. In a Greyhound Bus terminal he found a locker. “Can you tell me where the Briarwood school is?” he asked a thin man behind the ticket counter.

  “Public or the other?”

  “The other.”

  “Straight down Main Street, just outside of town.”

  John started to walk. The spring air was warm in Virginia, and he carried his coat on his arm. The town of Briarwood was unusually quiet, and there was little traffic on the streets. Passing a bank, John glanced at a clock on a post outside and saw that it was not yet nine, much too early to call at a girls’ school. He went back to the bus terminal, and feeling suddenly weak, discovered that he was hungry. At the lunch counter he ate two soggy doughnuts and drank a glass of milk, spending fifteen cents. The hamburgers smelled good, but he didn’t order one, because he didn’t know how long his seven dollars would have to last.

  Maybe I could reach her now by telephone, he thought; she ought to know I’m here. Going to a booth, he found a tattered telephone book, and looked up the school number.

  “Briarwood Manor,” a crisp feminine voice answered.

  “Could I speak to Miss Molly Carter, please?”

  “Miss Carter will be in chapel now. All the girls are in chapel. Who is this, please?”

  “A friend of the family,” John said, keeping his voice carefully casual. “My father and I just happened to be driving through town on our way south, and I promised Miss Carter I’d call. I know it’s awfully early, but she knew we were planning to pass by, and she wanted us to pick up some clothes or something from her to deliver to her mother. Both our families have winter places down in Palm River.”