The Risk Pool

by Richard Russo

  I was Claude Jr.’s only friend, perhaps the only friend of the family. And never was the term friend more qualified. As I remember it, I can honestly say that back then there was never an ounce of honest affection between myself and any of the Claudes (their name was Schwartz, but I always thought of them as the Claudes after discovering that the mother’s name was, incredibly, Claudine). Mrs. Claude and Claude Sr. were clearly disappointed that I was the best their son could do. After all, I was two years younger than he, and undistinguished to boot, though I overheard Claude Sr. once remark that at least I wasn’t “typical Mohawk,” which I took to be a compliment. And while they treated me well enough—I was practically a fixture at their dinner table (they ate abundantly, wonderfully) that summer the pool went in, I cared for the Claudes no more than they cared for me. Claude Sr.’s sarcastic and condescending manner made me feel ridiculed, and his wife’s constant lament about Mohawk’s not being able to support a single top-notch hairdresser I took to be somehow my fault.

  My relationship with Claude Jr. was strangest of all, predicated entirely on competition, or, more precisely, the lack of it that I could provide. Claude insisted that everything we did be a contest. Swimming, throwing, running, eating—it did not matter. He loved to win at anything, and the two years he had on me pretty nearly always ensured success. I have since heard of psychological profiles done on children that illuminate, to some degree, Claude’s character. A child is given a beanbag and invited to toss it into a circle. From close up, the task is easy enough, but as the child, on succeeding tosses, is backed farther and farther from the circle he inevitably encounters more difficulty. From across the room, the circle is pretty tough to hit and the child’s chances of success are diminished. When the child has tossed the beanbag from each varying distance, he is told he can have one more toss from anywhere he likes. Relatively few will grasp that success from the nearest stripe is a rather qualified affair and these will go directly to the farthest. Others, caring only for the assurance of success, no matter how qualified, indeed never suspecting that success could be qualified, will stand at the lip of the circle, plink the bag down, and be enamored of themselves for so doing.

  Claude Jr. was just such a boy. His appetite for victory was insatiable. If he beat me ten times in a row swimming freestyle laps in the pool, he’d immediately lobby for an eleventh race under the pretext of giving me another chance. If I demurred, he would lecture me that I’d never get anywhere if I was just going to give up.

  One September day after lunch, he emerged from the house with three large bags of Oreos. He carefully arranged the cookies in three equal columns, one group before me, the other before himself. I was extraordinarily fond of Oreos, but the long phalanxes—eight cookies deep, three high—were discouraging to look at, as was Claude, whose greedy eyes had already begun to devour his. His thick stomach hung out over his bathing suit, and his chest looked vaguely feminine. It did not take a genius to figure out what he had in mind.

  We ate Oreos.

  I scarfed the first half dozen or so happily, the second six without serious misgivings, except when I contemplated how many remained. Before long, however, it became obvious I wasn’t going to win, though Claude was slowing down too. He kept a comfortable half-dozen lead at all times, and at the end of my second dozen I attempted to concede. I could tell he was gravely disappointed in me. “Come on,” he said. “You can do it.”

  When I refused, he ate one more and proclaimed that under no circumstances could he eat another Oreo. This was an opportunity to show what I was made of, he said. I was six (count ’em) cookies away from victory. He separated them from my phalanx and returned all but the remaining six to the package. Suddenly I felt like I was all throat, throbbing and full, but I was even more full of defeat than cookies, and awash in black, desperate determination. Incapable of swallowing normal mouthfuls, I nibbled, birdlike at the dry crust of the cookies. It took me half an hour to dispatch four more. Another would give me a tie, and I realized as I stared at it that a tie would have to do. I didn’t need to say I won, provided Claude couldn’t either.

  It is difficult to describe the quality of Claude’s excitement as I approached the final cookie. I was terribly ill and my head was pounding savagely from the chocolate. I don’t think I could have stood. But strangest of all, and I remember this quite vividly, was the feeling I had that Claude was feeling what I felt—that each new wave of nausea somehow registered in his being as well as my own. He was pulling for me. He wanted us to be equals. Perhaps that was what he had wanted all along, I thought. He was giving me a chance.

  I picked up the last Oreo.

  I don’t know how long it stayed in my cheeks before I swallowed, but when I did I kept my hand up to see what would happen. My stomach churned, but to my surprise did not immediately rise. I was afraid to breathe, except through my nose, and then not deeply.

  Claude was grinning at me. I did not notice at first that he was holding another cookie. He held the Oreo elevated with two hands, thumb and forefinger each, like a priest at high mass, but instead of offering it to me (I recall sliding away from him on the bench), he placed it on his own tongue, and I watched with horror as the cookie disappeared, whole, into his mouth. His heavy jaws worked methodically, and soon his Adam’s apple bobbed.

  As the winning Oreo descended into Claude, the losing one began to rise in me, along with all its brothers. They surged upward angrily, and the black, impotent self-contempt that accompanied them made a pretty awful mess of the Claudes’ redwood picnic table.

  The following weekend we had a heat wave, the intensity of which took everyone by surprise, coming as it did in the first week of October. On Friday when the temperature hit 90, the windows of the Nathan Littler Junior High were flung open, but even then a tiny rivulet of perspiration disappeared down the open neck of Miss Devlin, the new English teacher, whose breasts were the subject of considerable admiration among us seventh-grade boys. We envied the perspiration. At night, things cooled off, but Saturday morning dawned with a low, white-gray sky and the sun, a magnified white ball, burned through by nine and an hour later the tar on the streets was shimmering. The Russians were using Sputnik to screw around with the weather, people said. Russians weren’t too popular in Mohawk anyway, and we certainly didn’t appreciate their mucking up autumn.

  Around midmorning on Saturday the telephone rang and it was Claude. He wondered if I’d like to go to the beach. I had not seen the Claudes since messing up their redwood picnic table. I consulted my mother through her bedroom door—it would be hours before she emerged for the day—and she seemed relieved at the prospect of not being required to deal with me until dinner time. The Claudes picked me up in their brand-new Pontiac station wagon (according to Claude, they’d had a Jaguar sedan when they lived in Connecticut), the backseat of which I shared with young Claude and several bags of groceries. I must have gone very pale when I saw the big package of Oreos sticking out of one.

  Only the Claudes would have thought of the beach in October. After the Mohawk Fair, convention strictly forbade summer amusements until the following Memorial Day, at which time swimming would be permissible, though far too cold to be enjoyed. When we pulled into the state park, the large parking lot was virtually abandoned and the man in the guard shack who was supposed to be collecting the parking fee was sleeping far too blissfully to disturb, at least in the opinion of Claude Sr., who was in rare good spirits. During the summer he would not have dreamed of packing off to the beach, which would have been “littered with Mohawk County.” Even the tattooed men who pressed his concave plastic turtles would be there with their swarming families, perhaps at the very next picnic table, an egalitarian circumstance to be avoided. There would be no such problem today. The long, sloping beach stretched before us, white and empty, not one in fifty picnic tables occupied.

  I helped Mrs. Claude carry the bags of food, while Claudes Sr. and Jr. unloaded the trunkful of paraphernalia. Young Claude had a
set of large black fins, and a mask and snorkel I knew I wouldn’t get to try even when he was done with them. I wouldn’t ask to, of course. He’d volunteer the refusal, saying, “It’s expensive stuff,” an explanation apparently preferable to more generous alternatives like “The fins wouldn’t fit,” or “Dad would feel responsible if you got hurt.” Claude was such a shit.

  As soon as we were unloaded, Claude Sr. said that the last one in was a rotten egg and immediately bolted for the water, his flabby middle jiggling. It was the same strategy his son often used to ensure victory against me. Running was the only contest Claude Jr. feared, since his size and weight were no great advantage. He knew that unless he took me by surprise I would beat him. For this reason there was never any “ready-set-go” nonsense. Rather, he’d wait until I was carrying something or heading in the opposite direction. He also liked to determine the finish line, and having crossed its invisible barrier to his own satisfaction, he would stop, catch me as I flew by and after explaining “No, not that tree, this one,” he’d raise my hand in the air and proclaim, “The LOOZAH!” It’s difficult to say for certain whether there was any bottom to the abyss of my humility with regard to Claude.

  That day I was more than content to watch father and son as they hurtled down the beach toward the water, their pear shapes generating little speed but a terrible momentum. It looked for a second like Claude Jr. might win, but they were running close together, and when the boy came abreast of his father, the older man gave him a big hip that sent him sprawling into the moist sand at the water’s edge, plowing it with his chin, as Claude Sr. parted the water of the green lake, his arms upraised in victory.

  Other than just that single defeat, Claude Jr. had a winning day, though beating me at stone skipping, kickball, hamburger eating, and sudden foot races did not engender in him the usual satisfaction. His raw chin was bubbly, and he behaved a little as if he regretted inviting me. After lunch we tossed the football around listlessly in knee-deep brackish water. The only other people on the beach were a group of teens roughly Claude’s age. They were fifty yards or so down the beach, and he eyed them sadly, as if they were much further. I myself wouldn’t have minded strolling down the beach in that direction to have a look at the girls in their bikinis, but Claude said he wasn’t up for it.

  “Go on,” Claude Sr. said to his son. “Nedley’s got the right idea, and he possesses a mere fraction of your age and native intelligence.”

  Claude Sr. always called me Nedley. I never knew why. He also liked to make comparisons between his son and me. They were supposed to be jokes.

  “And quit feeling your chin,” he went on. “It’s just a little scrape.”

  I wouldn’t have characterized it as “just” a scrape. Claude had a lot of chin, and all of it was raw and oozing, like a burn.

  “Don’t be a baby always,” Claude Sr. concluded.

  After a while I became aware of somebody besides us and the teenagers. There was a solitary man at the crest of the hill where the trees had been cleared to form a path to another section of the campsite. The man just stood there, a silhouette, with the sun at his back, watching Claude and me toss the football.

  “I’m tired of this,” Claude Jr. said. “Besides, you stink.”

  Mrs. Claude was stretched out on the beach towel nearby, her nose, eyes, and forehead beneath a ribbed hand towel. “I don’t think that’s a very nice way to address your friend,” she said vaguely.

  “I don’t mind,” I said. If you objected to being told that you stank, Claude wasn’t the person to chum around with. Besides, I wasn’t paying any attention.

  “Who the hell’s that?” Claude said, following my line of vision and apparently a little unnerved by the man’s just standing there.

  “My father,” I said, though I don’t remember being certain. With the sun at his back it was impossible to tell.

  “Sure,” Claude Jr. said sarcastically.

  I happened at that moment to be holding the football, so I gave it a good heave straight out into the lake.

  “Now you can go get it,” Claude said.

  But I was already headed up the beach in the opposite direction.

  “Hey!” Claude said, looking alternately at me and the bobbing football, which had caught the current and was floating down the beach in the direction of the teenagers. “Hey, goddamn it!”

  “I don’t think that’s such a very nice way to talk,” I heard Mrs. Claude say.

  “Hello, Bud,” my father said when I’d made the long trek up the beach. “Who’s your fat friend?”

  I told him Claude Schwartz. We stood there looking down the sloping beach at the Claudes and the tiny bobbing football, now a good hundred yards out in the current and still on the move. Big Claude and Little Claude were staring at us openly, while Mrs. Claude peeked from beneath her towel.

  “How’d you get hooked up with them?”

  That was what he wanted to know after all that time—how I had managed to get hooked up with the Claudes. I shrugged.

  “You’re still talkative, I see.”

  He was right. I wasn’t much of a conversationalist, especially around him. For a while there I’d gotten to like talking, but only around certain people, like Father Michaels. Since he’d gone, I had pretty much given it up again. Part of the problem, with my father anyway, was that the things he said didn’t exactly lend themselves to response.

  “Well?” he said.

  A case in point.

  “I missed you,” I said. It sort of came out of left field, not at all naturally, but it was the only thing I could think of.

  Apparently it was all right with him, because he said, “I missed you, too.” That settled, we just stood there for a while until the Claudes’ football bobbed out of sight around the point.

  When I went back down to gather my stuff, Mrs. Claude wanted to know if it really was my father, and I said it was. “You’re sure?” she said, obviously a little apprehensive about letting me go off with him. Why didn’t he come down and introduce himself, or at least let somebody get a look at him? After all, the Claudes were in all probability legally responsible for my safe return to Mohawk. The poor woman looked like she would have liked to consult her husband on these matters, but the other two Claudes had rounded the point in pursuit of the football.

  I pulled on my shirt and scuffed into my tennis shoes. “Sorry about the ball,” I said. “It’s just that Claude can be a real turd.”

  I half expected her to be angry with me for saying that, but she just looked sad, as if I’d voiced a sentiment she herself had been trying to find the right words to express. “I hope you’ll keep being his friend,” she said when I started back up the beach to where my father waited.

  I turned and gave her a smile, surprised to discover that just then I liked her. “Sure,” I said. Why not.

  9

  We headed up the dirt road toward the guard shack at the entrance to the park. There were just a few cars parked in the shade along the way and none of them looked like the sort that would belong to my father. I did not mind walking, or even not knowing where we were headed. He seemed content too, not all that interested in catching up on things. I was grateful for that. I don’t know how I would have summarized such a long time. He did want to know if my mother was all right, and when I said I guessed so he didn’t press me.

  At the entrance to the park, the attendant was still asleep inside the shack, his chair tilted up against the inner wall, his legs alone protruding out the front door. Spying them, my father put a hand on my shoulder and motioned for me to be quiet. There was a tiny open window on the side wall of the shack and my father peeked in before unfastening the screen door from its outside hook. The door moaned on its hinges a little, but the sleeper did not stir.

  When the screen hit the side of the shack like a pistol shot, the feet resting on the legs of the tilting chair went straight up in the air. Things were still crashing inside the shack when my father disappeared around ba
ck. A taut face appeared for just an instant in the tiny window and looked directly at me. Then its owner came out, rubbing the back of his head. He looked pretty mad.

  Having circled around the other side, my father came at him from behind. The man must have seen where I was looking, but too late, and he found himself in a double nelson, his arms extended outward and dangling, like a big awkward bird. When he struggled, my father put a knee on his spine and lifted him off the ground. The man gurgled, but could not speak.

  My father rotated him so that the man’s right hip was toward me. “Take his gun and shoot him,” my father said.

  “It’s not l-l-loaded,” the man squeaked.

  “Well, that’s good,” said my father, releasing his victim. “I’d hate to think anybody’d give live ammunition to a blockhead like you.”

  “God d-d-damn you, Sammy,” the man said. “You’re gonna go too f-f-fucking far some day.” He shook my father’s hand reluctantly.

  “I wish you’d watch your l-l-language around my son,” my father said.

  “Screw you,” the man said, fingering the back of his head. “Is it bleeding?”

  My father examined the man’s head. “Not bad,” he said.

  “I oughta let you have one,” the man said. It didn’t sound like much of a threat.

  “Nah,” my father said. “I’m just trying to keep you sharp, Tree. What if there was a real evildoer around here?”