By then we were out by the cycle rack. Deke said “You forecasting harm if I don’t?”
“No sir, I just—” It shocked me to see a grown man take any words of mine that earnestly; no other man had and few have since.
Deke said “Goddammit, son, don’t call me sir. You’re older than me.”
That was crazy but it hit even harder; I stopped to look him square in the face. At one and the same time, everything on him looked young and easy to hurt as a child set down by his mother in an open field but also older than my grandfather who’d died last year, half-starved with pain. I said “Get on your bicycle please. We’ll take the shortcut.”
The shortcut ran through a railroad yard, and the ground was paved with broken glass from drunks’ wine bottles. I rode on slowly to watch my path; but Deke overtook me, rearing up and lifting his front tire off the ground—that eager for something I couldn’t see. Or so I figured; I also figured it had to be something involving a person older than me. Maybe a secret message had passed to the girl at the pool and she was waiting. Anyhow he never swerved or slowed till he was back in the shed at home.
I parked behind him and offered my hand to say goodbye.
Deke looked it over, then solemnly shook it. “You won’t even spare me a cool drink of water?”
I halfway knew he meant me to laugh, but the other half (the look in his eyes) reminded me of numerous dreams where I had seen my hungry father locked outdoors in pouring night behind a window that I couldn’t raise or even break. I said “Come on” and tried to hide what a nameless struggle—brand new to me and bigger than any I’d known till now—was waging itself inside my head each step of the way to the kitchen door.
Those were times when nobody thought to lock a house, when your neighbors helped themselves to sugar and left the shelves as neat as if they’d never walked in. So Deke and I had drunk two glasses of warm tap water before he spied a note on the counter and passed it to me. It was from Lennie Crumpler, the lady next door.
Marc, your mother just now phoned me and wants you to call her up in Watson soon as you can. She sounded worried so call her, hear? Then come tell me if she’s all right.
Deke held out his hand and asked to read it.
Meanwhile I was breaking out ice for more water.
But Deke said “Haul yourself to the phone. Ma needs you bad.”
I told him my mother could handle herself in a rattlers’ den.
He shook his head. “Don’t leave her hanging at the end of your rope.”
I’d never seen it that way before, so I went to the phone and placed the first long-distance call of my career (back then children didn’t just phone Europe to see how their best friends felt that day).
Mother answered, first ring. “Oh Marcus, thank God.”
This saying Oh Marcus was catching on; and it lifted my spirit to hear her thanks—she was such a self-sufficient woman, kind but able and hard to serve. I said “Are you O.K. or what?”
She said she was all right but that her mother was having a spell. “You know the flashes she gets in her head?—an hour ago she and I were wandering out in the garden; and she flopped down between the tomatoes. Just buckled gently in the sandy dirt and waited there. I was deep in the corn and didn’t see her; but when I got back, she was still on the ground.”
I said “It’s too hot. You ought not to—”
“Marc, I well know Mother’s limits. She’s better now but her left hand is cold and that whole arm, almost to her elbow.”
Grandmother’s skin was always cold, but I didn’t say it. I said “You sure this isn’t a stroke?”
There was such a long pause, I thought I’d lost her. Then she whispered “She’s calling me Sybil”—that was Grandmother’s sister who died far back. “I’m worried, Marc.”
“You called the doctor?”
“You think I should?—it’ll scare her badly.”
“It’ll scare her worse to die,” I said. I don’t know where such words came from, but they chilled my teeth, and I waited for Mother to shame me. She didn’t but paused. And I understood that was why she’d called, hoping I’d tilt her up or down. She’d once been timid but since the evening my father died while dozing in his chair, Mother feared nothing but threats to me and her own mother’s death. So I chose a kinder voice and said “I’ll hang up now, you call Dr. Fritz, then call me back if you need me.”
“You can’t get here—”
I said “I can thumb a ride and be there quick.” Then I knew I’d raised a worse chance for her than a stroke in the family—me killed by a drunk or kidnaped six states off by dawn and strangled in some mangy garage (however safe America was, the tragic fate of the Lindbergh baby a decade past was still a nightmare for thoughtful parents).
Mother said “You stay by the phone till I know more.” Then she thought to ask when Deke had left.
I said “Maybe fifteen minutes after you.” It gave me a pleasure I knew was wrong. And when Mother hung up, I looked toward the kitchen.
Deke was propped in the door, shaking his head at what he already knew was a lie.
I didn’t beg pardon though and didn’t wait by the phone one minute. Just in the time I talked to Mother, the sun had slipped down farther toward dusk; and whatever light was left in the house was almost gold. For the first time ever, some new thing in me lunged for what I knew I needed. I walked on straight to the hall closet, found the Kodak and faced Deke again. “Let’s take a picture before it’s too late.”
He was still in the kitchen door, still somber. But when he finally spoke, he smiled. “You said it wouldn’t get too late—for me anyhow.”
I stepped closer to him and beckoned hard. He seemed to nod and I led us out in the last of the heat, which is why I have two pictures now and these old memories, fresh and true. In the picture I’ve thought about most through the years, Deke stands on the edge of our Victory garden with staked tomatoes tall behind him. He’s cupping a great ripe globe in his hand, but I always think he’s facing me. And even now— with hardly a clue to his fine eyes—I can stare on at him and know again what a draw he was in that green place, that day of my life and on through the night. I know, for instance, how he held the bright tomato toward me; and as I clicked he plainly said “Son, never say I never gave you nothing.” To this day anyhow I’ve never said it.
By the time we were back indoors, I saw it was nearly six-thirty; and I guessed Deke would leave in a minute. But before I could put the Kodak away, the telephone rang. Deke was near it, took up the receiver; and for a long moment, I thought he’d answer and then take over the rest of my life. On the spot there, it was not a bad thought.
But he held the phone toward me.
I could hear Mother’s voice as it passed from Deke’s long hand to mine—“Marcus? Where are you?”
I begged her pardon. “I dropped the phone.”
“Marc, Dr. Fritz says you were right. She may have had a very slight stroke. No reason to go to the clinic yet and scare her to death. But he wants me to sleep down here tonight.”
I understood, for the first time, that my last grandparent was leaving; and even if I didn’t like her that much, for a while I felt as tall and unsurrounded as the last whole tree on a burned-out hill. I must not have spoken.
So Mother said “You’re not mad, are you—me staying here? Just take your pajamas and your toothbrush to Lettie’s and sleep in her new attic. I’ll see you well before supper tomorrow.”
I said I would and sent my love to her and her mother, though what I knew—all over my body—was I’ll stay here tonight, come what may. And when I’d hung up and looked toward Deke, I knew I’d lie to him as well. I said “Things are fine. She’ll eat supper there and head on back.” From here I can guess that, being a child, I was trying to make the bitter axe fall, not hang on above me. The day had been sweet, though my wild hopes had slid away in the trough of Deke’s silence and inwardness. He had to leave here well before night; so sure, Force him out, h
ave the house to yourself.
He rolled my false news over in his mind, then said “Don’t lie to me. I know you.” His eyes and jaw were fixed and blank as any threshing machine in grain.
I nodded, clutched my chest as if he’d shot me, moaned in pain and dropped to one knee.
Deke said “I’m a guard. I’ve been on guard. I’ll see you through.”
Fear and happiness both rushed on me. Was this man addled or a crook on the run? Or say he was just an average soldier, wouldn’t he land himself in the stockade if he missed rollcall tomorrow dawn? In a few more seconds, the fear passed; only the stinging hope stayed in me. Somehow tonight I’d learn the big news I’d been starved of. I said “Please. And thank you, sir.”
Deke said “I’m a private. Drop the sir.”
By eleven o’clock we’d made and eaten waffles with syrup. We’d done my English and history homework, listened to the radio, checked the stars in the deep backyard (they seemed to multiply as we watched; and Deke knew more of their names than me, though now I suspect he made them up). We mixed lemonade and drank the whole pitcher, then finally climbed upstairs bone-tired—Deke laughing that we might both wet the bed with that much sour juice in our veins. At the top of the stairs was the guestroom door. Mother kept the bed in there made up, and I switched on the light to give Deke his chance at a private room.
He considered the offer, standing on the rug and turning round the whole white space till at last his eyes got back to me. “One ruffle too many. Where do you sleep?”
I pointed two doors down the hall. “Bunk beds in my room.”
“Who you expecting?”
I told him the truth. When Mother was pregnant with me far back, my father had been so sure I was male—and so convinced they’d have a second male in short order—that he went out and bought bunk beds at a bankrupt furniture store for eight dollars. I slept in a baby bed of course for the first two years and no brother came. Then two more years and, with Father dead, I took the lower bunk and slept there ever since, except for ten idiotic nights at Boy Scout camp on the Cape Fear River. The top bunk was covered with a Pendleton blanket that had been my father’s, a Navaho pattern; and even at fourteen I spent a fair number of afternoon hours lying up there, trawling space and the deeps of my mind in hopes of knowing whether I could make it on through life and be a sturdy reliable man, maybe even the father to my own child—boy or girl, whatever they sent me.
By the time I more or less told Deke that, he’d slid past me and entered my room. It burned me a little, his forging ahead with no permission, and I hung back.
But then he said one word, “Outstanding.”
That drew me on. When I walked in, he was on the top bunk—legs under him, Indian-style. He was holding my submarine model.
It was far from finished. I’d already botched the tricky sanding along the hull that meant to be sleek, and now I despaired of coming near the snaky lines of the handsome picture on the box. The longer I watched Deke hold and stroke it, the worse it looked—one more thing I’d helplessly ruined. I said “I’m planning to burn it up.”
Deke held it out with both hands before him. “I got another plan— you give it to me.” He sounded earnest.
“Help yourself,” I said. “Just don’t tell anybody who ruined it.”
He shut his eyes and rubbed the hull down the edge of his jaw, then held it toward me. “Finish it please by next weekend.”
“What happens then?”
“My last furlough; they’re moving us on. I’ll take it next Sunday.” He held the boat out further toward me; he meant what he said.
I took it and, Lord, it looked even worse. That far back I was one mad perfectionist—any flaw and a whole thing was lost. But here for the first time, somebody said he wanted something I’d halfway made. So finally I said “Help me then.” Before the words could cross the narrow space between us, I knew I’d never asked a man for help till now—not a grown man who could crush my skull like a walnut shell and walk on free. A chill crept through me as Deke cleared his throat and moved to speak.
By midnight though—spelling each other with the finest sandpaper—we’d nearly repaired my blunders down one side of the hull. In all that time we talked very little, and nothing Deke said came near to sounding like a sermon or blame. I mean him no insult—in fact I mean it as genuine praise—to say that sitting at work with Deke was like the granting of one more postponed boyhood dream: living beside a majestic dog that understood my every need and could now and then speak a few clear words of patient advice.
And if I learned a useful thing in that late hour, it’s bound up deep in the memory I have before me still—the lasting sight of a man’s strong hand, polishing slowly with a touch so light it couldn’t have marred a baby’s skin but gradually mended most of my flaws. From here I know, Deke worked no magic. He was likely a sensible family boy who’d learned the right relation to time for any hand with a hard job to do—building a model or a ten-room house or carving a stately face in granite: Assume you’ve got forever to finish, but start today and dont look up till it’s truly done.
At last Deke set the submarine at the back of my table and said “You knew how all along; you just got rushed. Take a whole slow week and finish by Sunday. Then I’ll give you the seal of approval.” He knocked the top of my head with a fist. “Old Marc, next thing—you need to sleep.”
The job had waked us both up awhile; but now he was right. I also knew there were miles of questions I meant to ask. For instance, we hadn’t even started on the mysteries of my new body, this astounding equipment that grew by the day and ached to drive me in opposite outlandish ways, all of them leading far from this house and the peaceful life I’d spent till now. But as I stood there watching my rescued submarine, I asked the only question that came. “Why in the world are you here?”
Again he didn’t laugh and he finally said “I already told you— normal guard duty.”
I nodded. “But this town’s safe as a tub. I could sleep on the center line of the road and not get scratched.”
Deke shook his head. “Not so. I know. Go brush your teeth.”
I wanted to ask for more details—what danger, from whom?—but like a child in the midst of a party, I suddenly felt my strength run out. I might as easily have dropped in place and slept on the rug, but I took my pajamas to the bathroom and undressed there. When I got back Deke had switched on the desk lamp and was lost in reading The Boy’s King Arthur, a book that had been my favorite for years. Any hour but then, I could have sat on the edge of my bunk and recited him entire pages of the story—finding the Grail in a blaze of light, shown only to men who were pure in heart.
That way I might have bolstered his courage, more anyhow than I’d yet managed with my dumb promise of a healthy return. He seemed so lost in reading though that all I could do was to tell him the upper bunk was clean. He hardly nodded so I said “Good night.” I don’t believe he even replied. In the final instant I silently said a one-line prayer—Don’t let either one of us hurt the other. Before I could think how strange that was—how could I hurt Deke?—sleep drowned me out.
My whole life I’m a marathon dreamer, and a good many dreams stay in my mind when I wake up. I can replay dozens of detailed stories that have come to me at crucial times from the age of four or five till today. But hard as I’ve tried to think what story I told my sleeping self that night, I come up blank. What I’m sure of is what I saw with clear eyes when I woke up near three o’clock, though it feels to this day more like a dream than provable fact.
Understand this first—the lady who owned the house before us had put up mirrors everywhere. No room escaped; she was that concerned to meet the world with all curls screwed. And her daughter hauled most of them off when the lady died, but one was bolted to the outer face of my closet door, and with our permission she left it there directly opposite where my eyes would open each day. In early years it meant little to me. Every week or so I might try out a promising fr
own or grimace— wiggling my ears or raising my eyebrows curious ways in hopes of winning affectionate laughter from my classmates.
But lately with my fascinating body in progress, around and beneath me, I’d taken to that tall scabby glass as if it amounted to my first love, a living creature lonely as me. I’d started pressing my lips to the surface two years back; and months before I met Deke Patrick, if I got home in the afternoon and Mother was out, I might well wind up stripped before it, longing to press my warm self through that cold glass and meet the needy body beyond me—the body I half-believed was me, though I knew it was just a common deed committed by light.
So what I saw, as I woke up on the night in question, was a young man standing beyond my bunk, completely naked and serious-eyed. You’ll have guessed that first I thought My father is here. For years I’d silently begged to see him, a long clear glimpse if nothing else; and everybody said that, sooner or later, prayers got answered Yes or No. Dazed as I was, it took me maybe ten seconds to see that—if this was the answer—then I couldn’t say if the answer was Yes. What I faced was not exactly my own father but more like a changed Deke Patrick in the mirror, more of Deke than I’d bargained on.
Was Deke in some mysterious way a younger model of the man who’d helped to make my life and whom I needed more than ever, with time pell-melling down the road and dragging me breathless? Whatever else I might see later, the live Deke’s back was turned toward me and was nearer yet. He was thoroughly still, both hands at his sides; and his eyes never blinked but watched the reflected man in the mirror.
For a long time then, I didn’t wonder what this could mean to the man or what it meant to do to me and maybe the world. If it wasn’t someway my lost father, it was anyhow a soul that banked on me to sleep in reach of whatever this new presence was. And like the average curious child, I rushed to study the news before me—the first bare grown man in this house in the ten years since my father died, standing frankly in my room, as still as a hunting heron or leopard.
Collected Stories of Reynolds Price Page 24
