Under the Apple Tree

by Wakefield, Dan;

  “Sometimes the old wound acts up again.”

  “I thought it was healed, though. You said you were good as new.”

  Suddenly Roy tore off his belt and yanked down his pants and even his underpants and stood in the middle of the living room in broad daylight with all his sex hanging out and he gave an angry slap to the outlining of stitches on his thigh.

  “See it? There it is, buddy. It’s real.”

  “Hey, I know, I’m sorry,” Artie said.

  Roy stared at him almost like he hated him and then he pulled up his pants and buckled his belt back and picked up the cane and stalked off to the kitchen, pounding the cane on the floor as he went. Sometimes he used the cane and sometimes he didn’t, but Artie never mentioned it again one way or the other.

  Roy was really different from the time he’d come home before from the War. Instead of being quiet and staring a lot like he was thinking deep thoughts, he talked all the time and cackled his sharp, mocking laugh. Artie invited Vickman and some of his other new pals from the freshman team over to talk to the hero whose exploits they all had heard about, and Roy told them lots of War stories—this time the “War stories” were really about battles and enemy attacks and dodging bullets instead of stuff about making out with girls. The guys were really impressed at first, but then Roy started telling some of the stories over again and Vickman said he had to get to bed early because of being in training and the other guys agreed and said they had to go home. Roy asked if they’d like a shot of bourbon and they said they couldn’t because it was during the season.

  “Hell,” Roy said, “when I was a freshman we drank the varsity under the table.”

  The guys just shrugged and went home.

  Artie was kind of embarrassed for Roy, and then he felt guilty for feeling that way, so when Roy asked him to sit awhile out on the porch with him he did, even though he really wanted to get to bed early himself.

  “Hell,” Roy said as they sat out in the dark, “looks like your team’s a bunch of pantywaists.”

  “They’re okay,” Artie said.

  “Looks like I better come over to practice some day and show ’em a thing or two about the game of football.”

  “Sure,” Artie said, without much enthusiasm.

  Roy mainly slept late and hung around the house drinking bourbon. After supper, Artie would sit out on the porch with him before going to bed.

  Roy complained that most of his buddies were gone, and there wasn’t diddly-squat to do in this one-horse town. Bo Bannerman and some of the guys had already gone off to college on their G.I. Bills, or up to Chicago or Detroit to get jobs.

  “Don’t know what they’re in such a rush about,” Roy said. “The rat race starts soon enough.”

  “I guess,” Artie said.

  It made him feel down in the dumps that Roy thought grown-up life was a “rat race,” but that was the kind of crummy mood he was in since he came back home.

  “I wish to hell Wings Watson was here,” Roy said. “Now there’s a guy who’d have liked to live it up a while before he got stuck in the groove.”

  “It’s a shame about Wings all right,” Artie said.

  “All the guys are gone, one way or other.”

  Roy took another swallow from his bourbon bottle.

  “Hey, Roy,” Artie said, “You know who’s home?”

  “I give up.”

  “Shirley.”

  “Who?”

  “Shirley Colby.”

  Roy made his harsh little laugh, and spit through his teeth.

  “She’s going to college next semester,” Artie said. “To Urbana. She saved up a lot of money when she worked at the War Plant.”

  Artie had written to Roy about Shirley moving to Indianapolis to work in the airplane factory, but Roy had never mentioned it.

  “Speaking of hot stuff,” Roy said, “whatever became of Beverly Lattimore?”

  “She married some guy she met at the U.S.O. in Moline. A Seabee, I think. From Pittsburgh.”

  “Just my luck.”

  Roy took another belt of bourbon and then stood up.

  “Guess I’ll hit the sack,” he said.

  Artie went up to his own room and prayed to God that Roy would feel better.

  Dad asked Roy to give a talk to the Moose Lodge about fighting the Japs in the South Pacific, and Roy kind of perked up and put on his dress blue uniform with the red stripes down the pants.

  Evidently Roy’s talk to the Moose was a big hit, and it seemed to give him a real shot in the arm. He started getting up early and going to help out Dad at the filling station, and Sunday he put on his dress blues again and went to church with the rest of the family. Monday he dropped by freshman football practice and gave the backfield guys some tips on passing.

  “Thanks a lot for coming to practice,” Artie said when he walked home with Roy.

  “Hell, I got a real kick out of it.”

  “That was great, what you showed us. I bet you’d be a great coach, you know?”

  “Ah, I was just horsing around,” Roy said, but Artie could tell he was proud. Maybe that’s what he would do in life, be a great football coach, the greatest since Knute Rockne. It made Artie feel good, thinking it might happen.

  The whole family was in a great mood for their first big outdoor barbecue. Dad had decided to splurge and buy one of the new barbecue grills like people all over America were getting so they could enjoy the new life of Post-War leisure and home entertainment. It was pretty darn chilly, but the whole point of having a barbecue grill was so you could sit outside and eat in the fresh air, so everyone put on jackets and went to the backyard while Dad put the steaks on. They didn’t have a backyard picnic table yet like the kind people had in the magazine ads, but Mom spread a blanket on the ground and they sat around like it was a picnic, eating steak and corn on the cob and potato salad and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon out of the can, except for Artie who just had a Coke because he was still in training.

  “Well, this sure is ‘The Life of Riley,’” Dad said.

  “That’s for me,” Roy said. “‘The Life of Riley.’”

  That was the name of a new radio show with William Bendix, and everyone talked about “leading ‘The Life of Riley,’” which meant enjoying yourself and having all the good stuff to do it with.

  “You fellas can be ‘Riley,’” Mom said, “and I’ll be ‘Queen for a Day.’”

  That was another popular new program, where regular housewives from all over America could compete to be “Queen for a Day” and win all kinds of terrific prizes, like a thousand dollars in cash, fur coats, jewelry, and free trips to nightclubs.

  “The sky’s the limit these days,” Dad said. “They used to tell us ‘Prosperity is just around the corner,’ but I never thought I’d live to see it. Now it’s here.”

  “Thanks to Roy and all the boys who won the War,” Mom said.

  “You better believe it,” Dad said.

  He raised his can of beer toward Roy, like a toast, and Artie did the same with his Coke bottle.

  “Ah, hell,” Roy said, being modest.

  “I just want to see you get your piece of this Post-War world,” Dad said. “You deserve it.”

  Roy slugged back a big gulp of his beer.

  “A guy just has to pick his spot,” he said. “I’m in no rush.”

  “No need to be,” Dad said. “Plenty of new opportunities out there that won’t go away. Things we never dreamed of.”

  “Shoot, yes,” Artie said. “I read in Life they already got radio shows you can see, in New York, and pretty soon they’ll have these little picture tubes in everyone’s living room, like little movie screens.”

  “I don’t know if I’d want to see Stella Dallas,” Mom said. “I already have her pictured in my own mind.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said: “I’m not running out to buy any picture tube. We just bought us the barbecue grill.”

  “Not only that,” Artie said, “Life says there�
�s going to be ‘machines that think like men.’”

  Roy made a harsh little laugh.

  “Where does that leave the men?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said. “Any machine, it’ll take a man to run it.”

  “That’ll take ‘Whiz Kids,’” Roy said. “Math brains.”

  “You have the brains, Roy,” Mom said. “You just have to use them.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Roy asked.

  “That we have all the confidence in you,” Dad said quickly.

  Roy finished off his beer and squeezed up the can with his hand.

  “Well, like I said, I’m not rushing into anything.”

  “Nobody wants you to,” Dad said.

  “If you ask me, you’d make a great football coach,” said Artie.

  “I was just horsing around,” Roy said.

  “Yeah, but I mean, if you wanted to—”

  “If I wanted to, they’d tell me to go get a rinky-dink college degree in Phys. Ed.”

  “You have the G.I. Bill,” Dad said.

  “But I don’t have my high school diploma, so go ahead and say ‘I told you so’ and get it over with!”

  Dad shook his head.

  “I wasn’t going to say that at all.”

  “You’d only have to finish up your last semester,” Mom said.

  “If you think I’m going back and sit in a class with a bunch of kids, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “I bet you could make it up at a college,” Mom said. “There’s probably a lot of G.I.’s doing that.”

  “You could probably do it right at Urbana,” Artie said.

  Roy took his beer can and heaved it as hard as he could in the neighbors’ yard.

  “Will everyone get off my back?” he said.

  “Roy, you know you’re welcome to come in with me at the station,” Dad said, “if that’s what you want.”

  Roy jumped up, his fists clenched and his face flushed red.

  “It’s not what I goddamn want. I don’t want a goddamn thing. I want to be left the hell alone!”

  He turned and ran in the house.

  “Dear Lord,” Mom said.

  Dad put his hand on her arm.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll find himself.”

  Artie didn’t say anything, but he understood something.

  Roy was afraid.

  He was scared to death of what in the world he was going to do with his own life.

  Artie got up and started collecting the paper plates and steak bones.

  That was the end of the family’s first outdoor barbecue.

  Roy came home drunk that night. He had got in a fight at the Purple Pony. His right eye was swollen, and his shirt was ripped. Artie helped Mom and Dad put him to bed, and afterward he sat in the kitchen with them.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Mom said.

  Dad sighed and shook his head.

  “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”

  “We can’t just sit back and watch him go to pieces,” Mom said.

  “No,” Artie said. “We can’t.”

  Mom and Dad stared at him, but he didn’t say anything else. He just gave them each a hug and went up to bed.

  He knew it was up to him.

  And Shirley Colby.

  “You’re the only one can help him,” Artie told Shirley over Cokes at Damon’s Drugs.

  “He doesn’t even want to see me.”

  “He’s scared is why.”

  “I saw him one day on Main Street, on the other side of the street. I waved, and he turned away.”

  “Do you still love him? I mean, are you still in love with him?”

  Shirley took the straw from her Coke and twisted the ends together in a little bow.

  “I always will be,” she said.

  “He will with you, too. No matter what he says.”

  “In my heart, I believe it. But I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “You got to be alone with him some way.”

  “Well, I can’t go tie him to a tree.”

  Artie put his Coke glass down and leaned across the table.

  “That’s it!”

  “Artie. Be serious.”

  “I don’t mean the part about tying him up, I mean trees. The woods. The old place, where you went to be alone.”

  “If only—”

  “I’ll get him there.”

  Artie stood up, and Shirley went around the table and hugged him, right in the middle of Damon’s Drugs.

  4

  On Saturday morning Artie took a cold bottle of milk up to Roy and woke him from his latest hangover.

  “What the hell?” Roy said, blinking.

  Artie handed him the bottle of milk.

  Roy started gulping it down and then stopped to take a breath and looked suspiciously at Artie.

  “Who are you supposed to be? Florence Nightingale?”

  “I got to talk to you.”

  “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “Not here. Not in the house.”

  “Uh-oh. Girl problems, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Roy finished off the milk, and flopped back on his pillow.

  “Well, if you give me a chance to shower, we can take a little hike around the block.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Ohhhhhh. You ‘got it bad and that ain’t good,’ huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I guess we can take a spin out in the country, if the old man’ll let me touch the car again.”

  “No. I mean, I’d just like to walk out to Skinner Creek, to the rock. You know? Where we used to go and talk.”

  “That was the good old days, kid.”

  “Well, it’s still there. The rock.”

  “Hell, it’s November.”

  “The sun’s out, though, and it’s way above freezing. Anyway, I’ll build a fire.”

  Roy sat up on his elbows, squinting.

  “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,” he said.

  “It’s really important.”

  “Okay, okay! Put on some coffee, anyway. Then we’ll go freeze our tails.”

  Artie grabbed the empty milk bottle and hustled downstairs.

  They were almost to the rock but not in sight of it yet when Artie stopped.

  “Hey, Roy, you go on,” he said. “I gotta see a man about a horse. Be there in a shake.”

  “You hurry up and start that fire, Mr. Boy Scout.”

  “Sure! Be right there!”

  Roy walked on and Artie unzipped his fly and faced toward a tree. He even tried to pee, to make his lie more realistic, but he couldn’t. He just stood there, holding himself.

  He didn’t hear any noise from Roy walking, and wondered if he was waiting to hear the sound of peeing, maybe suspecting something was up. Artie squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated everything on trying to make the water come, but nothing happened. He even made the sound of “pssssss” to himself like he used to do when he was a kid to get himself going, but that didn’t work either. Finally he put it back in his pants and zipped up his fly, figuring Roy had either got to the rock by now or was waiting on the trail to catch Artie in his lie, but either way it was too late now to pretend anymore. Whatever was going to happen would happen.

  Artie would have given a cool million to go and sneak a look at what was happening, but he’d given Shirley his sacred word of honor, not as a Boy Scout but as a man, that he wouldn’t spy on them. He realized anyway that spying was kid stuff, something that belonged to his childhood. Next April he’d be fifteen, and that fall he’d be a Sophomore and a varsity man. He was not a little kid anymore, and he didn’t do kid stuff. He had done his part of the job, which was getting Roy to the rock, and now his only duty was to get the hell out of there. Still, he just stood where he was. Then he bowed his head and prayed.

  “Dear God, make it all right with Shirley and Roy, and give me the willpower to go home now.�
�

  He took a deep breath and started walking out of the woods when he heard the sound and stopped.

  It was Roy, laughing.

  It was scary.

  The laugh was the harsh, croaked, bitter kind that Artie was used to hearing from Roy all the time since he came home from War, but this time it was worse, like it came from way down inside him and was being yanked out like a part of his guts. It was almost crazy, and Artie wondered if maybe Roy really had cracked, and might do something terrible.

  To Shirley.

  “Forgive me, God,” Artie whispered.

  Then he turned and got down on all fours and started crawling toward the high rise of ground that gave a view of the rock. The smell of dead leaves, like an odor of fear, filled his head. When he got to the rise he stopped without crawling up to look. At least he wouldn’t break that part of his pledge. He would only listen.

  The horrible, wrenching laugh came again, and then Roy was shouting.

  “I surrender! You win! The dumb vet fell for the trick! Oh, brother—if the old platoon could see me now! Ambushed by a kid and a broad!”

  “Will you listen to me, please?” Shirley said real calmly.

  “You got a speech? Go ahead—deliver! ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen—lend me your beers.’”

  Then the awful laugh again.

  Finally it stopped, and turned to racked coughing, and then there was quiet.

  “I don’t have any speech,” Shirley said quietly. “I really just have one thing to say. I hope you can hear me.”

  “I may be dumb, but I’m not deaf.”

  A wind came up, stirring dead leaves. Then the woods were silent.

  “I love you, Roy Garber.”

  “Love!” Roy bellowed. “Oh, good, just great! I am melting, look, I am melting into a little pool of butter, just like Little Black Sambo, that’s all I’ll be, a little pool of butter on the ground.”

  “You’re afraid,” she said. “You’re a coward.”

  “Now, you listen to me, little lady. I may be a lot of things, I may be no-good and worthless and a goddamn drunk, but I did not get the Purple Heart and a game leg by being a coward.”

  “I know you’re not afraid of dying,” she said.

  “So what am I afraid of? You?”

  “Yes, I hurt you.”

  “I managed to survive, thank you, ma’am.”

  “So did I.”