This Boy's Life

by Wolff, Tobias

  “Yo, Chuckles.”

  “I love you, Wolfman! I fucking love you!”

  I said “Terrific,” but I was watching him.

  “Listen, Wolfman. Listen.” He leaned into my face. “There’s gonna be a wedding, Wolfman. The old wedding bells are gonna chime. What do you think of that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “What do I think? I think it’s fucking great, Wolfman, what do you fucking think I think?” He went into the closet and got his Canadian Club. “Let’s drink to the bride,” he said. He took a drink and handed me the bottle. “Now drink to the lucky groom,” he said. “Go on, drink up.” He grabbed the bottle back and said, “What are you gonna call Tina after the wedding, Wolfman?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “What are you gonna call her?”

  I told him I didn’t know.

  “How about Mrs. Huff?” he said. “How about Mrs. Gerald Lucius Huff?” When he saw how I looked at him, he held up his right hand and said, “Gospel, Wolfman. I shit you not.”

  . “Huff? Huff’s marrying Tina?”

  Chuck started to answer but suddenly bent over, coughing and snorting. Canadian Club ran out of his nose. I pounded him on the back. I heard myself cawing harshly. Something was breaking loose in me, some hysterical heartless tide of joy. I could hardly breathe. My face twitched. I was shaking with relief and joy and cruel pleasure, for the truth was I didn’t like Huff and felt no pity for Tina. To me she was just The Flood and now I saw Huff trapped in its grip, paddling feebly on its broad heaving surface, pummeled and smothered, going under and bobbing up again somewhere else with his hairy arms churning and his pompadour agleam.

  Pearl felt abandoned after my mother left, and I was sorry for her. I let her eat lunch with me sometimes. We had, after all, plenty to talk about. I patronized her shamelessly and she let me do it, listening without argument to my frank opinions on the measures she should take to make herself cuter and more popular. In fact she wasn’t so bad, especially since my mother had taken her to a doctor to have her bald spot fixed. She had a gaunt sinewy beauty, but I didn’t see it. I thought she was pathetic and so did she.

  On a warm Friday afternoon in May we carried our lunches to the bleachers overlooking the football field. Other kids were eating and smoking in bunches around us, staring out at the brilliant grass as if a game were in progress. We talked about one thing and another, and Pearl mentioned that Dwight was planning to drive down to Seattle that night, supposedly to spend the weekend with Norma but really to see my mother and try to talk her into getting back together. He was bringing Pearl along for extra ammunition.

  I didn’t like hearing this. Chuck would be driving me down to Seattle the next day so I could have lunch with Mr. Howard and get fitted for my clothes, and I had hoped to go see my mother on the way home. Now that there was a chance of running into Dwight I had to give the idea up.

  But later that day I saw exactly what to do. Chuck agreed to help, though with certain conditions. An hour or so past midnight we pushed his car out to the main road, then drove up the valley to Chinook. Chuck kept to the speed limit and did not drink.

  The camp was dark and silent. When we got close to the house, Chuck turned off the lights and cut the engine and coasted to a stop. Dwight’s Ford was nowhere in sight. I got out and looked around back, just to be sure. Chuck stayed in the car. We both believed that as long as he did not enter the house or touch anything he could not be held legally responsible if I got caught.

  The door was unlocked, as always. I put on the gloves I had brought along and let myself into the utility room. I knew I should tend to business and get out of there fast, but instead I wandered into the kitchen. The refrigerator was almost empty. I put together a peanut butter sandwich and poured myself a glass of milk and carried them in my gloved hands from one room to the next, flipping on light switches until the house was ablaze.

  Pearl’s room smelled of perfume. I sat at her desk and read her diary. She hadn’t written in it since the last time I looked. I got up and went down the hall to my old room. Both beds were bare. Skipper still had a few things around, old boots, fishing gear, a stack of car magazines, but my Scout uniform hanging in the closet was the only sign that I had ever lived there.

  I went to Dwight’s room. Even though I knew he was gone I held my breath and turned the doorknob slowly, then threw the door open. The bed was unmade. The air smelled sour. I turned on the light and poked around. In one of the dresser drawers I found a carton of Camels from which I shook two packs. I also found a stack of official Scout forms, including those that Scoutmasters sent to headquarters to report their boys’ completion of the requirements for various ranks and badges. I took a few of these. If Dwight wouldn’t promote me to Eagle, I’d just have to promote myself.

  I went to the kitchen, rinsed out the glass, put it back in the cupboard. Then I turned off all the lights in the house and carried a couple of target rifles out to the car. Chuck came around to open the trunk and started hissing at me. What the fuck was I doing, where the fuck had I been? I could see he was beside himself, so I didn’t try to answer. I went back in the house and got the two shotguns. Then I got the Marlin and the Garand. On my last trip I rounded up the Zeiss binoculars and the Puma hunting knife and a tooled leather scabbard Dwight had bought for the Marlin. He’d planned to use it when he went elk hunting by horseback, something he had never gotten around to doing.

  Chuck arranged these things in the trunk and covered them with the sandbags he carried for traction when it snowed. Then we cleared out. Chuck was still browned off at me, but too rattled to say anything. He kept to the speed limit again and drove with histrionic correctness. Our big fear was getting stopped. The possibility made us edgy and silent. We smoked. We listened to the radio, the songs blaring and fading as mountain gave way to field and field to mountain. We looked out the window at the looming purple shapes of the mountains, at the river, at the deserted winding road. Whenever we met another car Chuck reflexively dimmed the lights and slowed down as if he’d been speeding. He drove so fussily that any competent patrolman would have pulled us over on the spot.

  But we were lucky. We made it home, pushed the car down the drive, went to bed and caught ourselves a few hours sleep before Mr. Bolger had one of the girls come down to fetch us for breakfast. Mr. Bolger was in good humor. He had reason to be. The morning was fresh, Chuck was still free and single, and in another couple of weeks I would be on my way to California. While we feasted on ham and grits and eggs, Mr. Bolger spread a map on the table and marked our route to Seattle. Without actually saying so, he gave us to understand that this trip was a new chance to prove ourselves. We were to drive directly to Seattle and directly home. No sidetrips. No hitchhikers. No drinking. Mr. Bolger tried to be stem as he gave us our marching orders, but it was clear that he enjoyed sending us off on what he considered to be a business of some pith and moment, which it was, if not exactly in the way he imagined.

  I met Mr. Howard at Ivar’s Acres of Clams down on the wharf. His wife was with him, a tall fine-boned woman with black hair just beginning to gray—a few strands that made the rest of her hair seem even blacker. She had deep-set, watchful dark eyes. Even when she smiled I felt her taking my measure, felt the force of her curiosity. It wasn’t an arrogant curiosity: she wanted to know who I was. To be looked at that way is unsettling when you feel in danger of being seen through and exposed. I kept my eyes on Mr. Howard, who, under the pretext of warning me about the pitfalls of life at Hill, was happily reminiscing about his own years there—the friends he’d had and the stunts they’d pulled, like flooding the dormitory floor with water, opening the windows so it would freeze, then playing hockey through the rooms. I could see that he considered some of his memories too hot to handle. He would smile at them, then shake his head and pass on to something else. His speech turned peppery. A silly grin stole over his face. He seemed to get younger and younger, as
if talking about being a boy had changed him into one.

  Mrs. Howard relaxed her scrutiny. When I got lost in the menu she helped me decide what to order. We talked about Julius Caesar, which I was reading in English, and she mentioned that she did fund-raising for the Seattle Repertory Theater.

  She was a damned fine actress in her own right, Mr. Howard said.

  She made a face.

  “Well, it’s true,” he said. I could see that he admired her and expected me to admire her too. There was an air of partnership about them that I felt warmed by.

  We were sitting in a comer table overlooking the water. Gulls strutted on the railing outside, shaking their feathers and turning their heads at us. The air was rich with the smell of chowder. Sunlight gleamed on the silver, lit up the ice cubes in our glasses, made the tablecloth bright as a snowfield. I was lazily content, like the Old Pioneer whose verses covered our placemats:No longer a slave of Ambition

  I laugh at the World and its shams,

  As I think of my happy condition

  Surrounded by acres of clams!

  Mr. Howard was quiet during lunch. He ate half his food in silence, then pushed the rest around his plate. He asked me a couple of polite questions and paid no attention to the answers. Then, with an affectation of nonchalance that put me on guard, he said there was something we needed to talk about. Something serious.

  I felt myself die a little.

  He hemmed and hawed awhile, then he asked if by any chance I’d had second thoughts about going off to Hill. It wasn’t too late to change my mind, he said. The big thing was, I shouldn’t be afraid of disappointing him or letting him down in any way. He was worried that he might have been too much of a booster, might have pushed me toward a decision I really ought to come to on my own. After all, this would be one heck of a big move, and if I didn’t want to make it then I shouldn’t. I was doing a terrific job up there in Concrete, a bang-up job. Going to Hill was a bit of a gamble. I might not like it. I might even do badly there, which would leave me worse off than I was now. This was a possibility that had to be taken into account.

  He sat back. Well, what did I think?

  I looked at him. He actually wanted an answer. I told him I’d given the question serious thought and decided to go.

  “What about your mother?” Mrs. Howard said. “I imagine this is going to be hard on her, the two of you being separated after all these years.”

  I allowed that it would be hard on her—very hard. But we’d talked about it quite a lot, I said, and my mother was resigned to my going. In fact she was in favor of it. You could even say she was dead set on it.

  “That’s generous of her,” Mrs. Howard said. “I hope I’ll be as generous when the time comes.”

  She and Mr. Howard looked at each other.

  After a moment he said, “So. Your mind’s made up?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He said “Great!” and smacked his hands together, and I could see that any other answer would have broken his heart.

  THERE WERE THREE men folding clothes in the back of the tailor shop when we came in. One of them walked over to us, a gray-skinned man with an Adam’s apple as big as a goiter. I had to force myself not to stare at it. Mr. Howard introduced him to me as Franz and me to him, without evident irony, as Mister Wolff. Franz inclined his head but did not offer to shake hands with me, nor did he speak. His eyes were milky. While Mr. Howard told Franz what we needed, Mrs. Howard sat down in one of a group of red leather chairs arranged around a frayed Oriental rug. Two white-haired men in dark suits were already seated there, both of them smoking cigars and dropping the ashes into columnar brass ashtrays filled with sand. The shop was panelled in dark wood. Fox-hunting prints hung between the tall mirrors. The plank floor was lustrous and covered with scraps of material and thread.

  One of the men said something to Mrs. Howard and she said something back. Then he looked at me. His nose was purple and bulbous. “Off to Hill, are you?” he said.

  “Yes sir.”

  “I used to wrestle against you fellows. Powerful team, Hill. A veritable juggernaut.” That was all he said. A few moments later he and the other man doused their cigars and left the shop.

  Mr. Howard led me to a mirror and Franz followed with an armful of jackets. Mr. Howard flipped through them until he found one that interested him. He had me put it on, then stood behind me and squinted at my reflection.

  “Do you have this in a darker tweed?”

  “Yesss,” Franz said heavily.

  “Let’s see it.”

  Franz brought another jacket. Mr. Howard made me turn this way and that, button the jacket, unbutton it. “The sleeves are long,” he said.

  Franz measured the sleeves and made a notation in the ledger he carried.

  Mr. Howard sent me to the changing room to try on a suit, then again to try on another one. Franz took the measurements and pinned the cuffs but he registered no opinions, not even with the subtlest change of expression. He stood quietly by as Mr. Howard rummaged through the heaps of clothes he brought, tossing ten things aside for every one he so much as paused to look at again or run between his fingers. Mr. Howard flung the rejects away with a peremptory gesture. His eyes were narrowed, his cheeks flushed. Mrs. Howard watched him with a look of amusement and pride.

  I was worried that he wouldn’t find anything he liked, but kept my mouth shut. I understood that I was being outfitted not for pleasure but for survival, that these clothes were a finely nuanced language that the boys in my new world would read at a glance and judge me by, even as I had judged other boys by the uniforms they wore.

  I kept quiet and did as I was told. Mr. Howard sent me back and forth between the changing room and the mirror. While Franz stood waiting with his pins and tape measure Mr. Howard adjusted the length of a pant leg, raising and lowering it until it fell just so on the shoe. He tugged at my sleeves and turned me around and squared my shoulders as if he were sculpting me. If he was satisfied with something he nodded at Franz, and Franz put it aside. A pile grew. Two jackets, one of Donegal, the other of Harris tweed. A blazer. A suit. Several pairs of pants in gabardine and twill. A dozen Oxford shirts. Ties. A raincoat. Corduroy pants and flannel shirts for “hacking around,” as Mr. Howard put it. A pair of Weejuns, a pair of dress shoes, and a pair of brogans—also for hacking around. Three sweaters. Then another pile of clothes for warm weather, and another for sports. It was decided that I should return to the shop in two weeks for a final fitting. Mr. Howard would collect the clothes when they were done and ship them to Hill in August so they’d be waiting for me when I got there.

  I still needed a dark suit for Sundays. Mr. Howard had me try on four or five, barely distinguishable to me, before he found one worth considering. He knelt beside me and set the length of the pant legs. Then he straightened up and inspected my reflection, prodding me and turning me around as he did so. By now I was limp as dough. Mr. Howard moved behind me. He knotted a tie around my neck and stood there, hands on my shoulders, looking pensively at the mirror.

  “He’s going to need an overcoat,” Mrs. Howard said.

  “Right!” Mr. Howard said. “An overcoat. I knew there was something else.”

  Franz walked over to a rack and took down some overcoats for Mr. Howard to look at. He went straight to a black one with a fine herringbone weave. “Try this,” he told me. I took it. It was silky to the touch, like cat’s fur. “Wait,” Mrs. Howard said when I began to put it on. She came over and held out her hands for the coat. With a feeling of bitterness I surrendered it. “Mmm,” she said. “Cashmere.” She turned me toward the mirror and settled the coat on my shoulders like a cape. She looked me up and down. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, “A scarf.”

  “Something in navy,” Mr. Howard said.

  She shook her head. “He’d look like an undertaker. Claret.”

  Franz gave her a choice of three scarves. She moved her hand over them, wiggling her fingers like s
omeone deciding on a chocolate, then picked one up and draped it around my neck. It had the same silky texture as the overcoat. Mrs. Howard arranged the scarf so it hung casually between the lapels of the overcoat. She glanced at me again and then stepped back so that I was alone before the mirror. The elegant stranger in the glass regarded me with a doubtful, almost haunted expression. Now that he had been called into existence, he seemed to be looking for some sign of what lay in store for him.

  He studied me as if I held the answer.

  Luckily for him, he was no judge of men. If he had seen the fissures in my character he might have known what he was in for. He might have known that he was headed for all kinds of trouble, and, knowing this, he might have lost heart before the game even got started.

  But he saw nothing to alarm him. He took a step forward, stuck his hands in his pockets, threw back his shoulders and cocked his head. There was a dash of swagger in his pose, something of the stage cavalier, but his smile was friendly and hopeful.

  Chuck had spent the afternoon at a double feature. I met him outside the theater and we drove over to Pioneer Square. I had kept him waiting for more than an an hour, and he was worried about the business still ahead of us, so he didn’t say much. I could tell he was at the end of his rope where I was concerned. His mouth was set in a line. He lit one cigarette off another. He drove with dowdy rectitude, now and then sighing heavily.

  I went into three pawnshops before I found anyone who would give me the time of day. The third shop was run by a woman. She was as tall as I was, and had the stiff blond hair, spiky eyelashes and smooth, waxy face of a doll. When I said I had some things to sell she busied herself with the merchandise on the back shelf. Her hands were red and big and covered with turquoise jewelry. She didn’t look at me, not then or at any other time while I was in her shop.