Whipple's Castle

by Thomas Williams

“It’s not something I want to do,” Wood said. “I have to do it. Everybody has to do it.”

  “We can’t lose the war,” David said.

  “I suppose you’ll be wanting to go, next,” Harvey said, looking straight at David. David shrugged proudly.

  “You would,” Harvey said. “I can see that.”

  They sat around the big table for a while after they were through eating. No one knew exactly what to say, but no one got up. It would be like leaving Wood to the war, now that he had to go. It was like a farewell party, or ceremony. Their regard of Wood chilled Horace, and went to prove that soon Wood would not be there.

  Kate brought more coffee to her father and mother and Wood, and sat down again herself. She said to Wood in a low voice, “We’ll miss you, Wood. We really will.”

  “Why shouldn’t you?” Henrietta said.

  “I didn’t say we wouldn’t!” Kate said, nearly crying.

  “All right. All right,” Henrietta said, patting Kate’s shoulder.

  Harvey suddenly rolled his chair back from the table, his white balloon face quivering from the effort. He snorted, swung his chair around and wheeled himself out into the living room. No one followed.

  “David,” Wood said. “You’re going to have to take over the furnace altogether.”

  David groaned. “Until next fall, anyway,” he said, and they all looked at Horace.

  No, Horace thought. Impossible. Didn’t they realize that he could hardly sleep? His head began to move from side to side. No, he was saying to them. Couldn’t they see that he could not go alone into the cellar? He was afraid in the cellar even with Wood next to him. Even Wood couldn’t surround him and protect him down there; one side was always exposed.

  “We won’t talk about that now,” Henrietta said firmly.

  Peggy, who hadn’t said a word, although Horace had seen her not look at Wood when she wanted to, got up with Kate to take out the dishes.

  Horace went into the living room and sat looking at Life for a long time, but just at one or two pages about the scientific explanation of radar, which could look through clouds and darkness. He was afraid to turn the pages indiscriminately and come upon the war and all the dead men. He was merely staring when Peggy came back. Her hand was soaked and spongy from dishwater, and when it touched his he looked up into her dark, skinny little face.

  “Horace? If I’m still here I’ll take care of the furnace,” she said. She knelt down on one knee beside his chair.

  He stared at her face. Her eyes were nearly black, they were such a dark brown—almost olive too. The lines of iris radiated out like the deep lines in agate. Her skin darkened where it folded around her eyelids, and each lash was a curved prong.

  “I’m twice as big as you!” he said, and ducked slightly when his father stirred and for a moment looked around.

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  “You don’t have to do it,” he said.

  “I didn’t say I had to.”

  “Maybe I’ll get so I can do it,” he said, not believing this at all.

  “Don’t worry about it, though. All right?” Her little bony shoulders rose and then sank as she got up. The bones showed though the old red dress of Kate’s that was still too big for Peggy, because her shoulders didn’t come out wide enough to blend into the shoulder padding. The color of the dress was too bright for her, and unless he looked closely and deliberately at her face itself—at its little parts that made up its expressions—all he saw was a dim presence behind the flash of red. But then he would look, and it was Peggy looking back at him.

  His mother came in and asked him if he’d done his homework, but of course he had, in study hall. It kept him out of trouble in school to do his homework with complete concentration. Sometimes they forgot him, and didn’t shoot him with rubber bands, or say anything about him. He couldn’t hear them sometimes, and they forgot him.

  Peggy had gone, and so had Wood and David and Kate, to the rooms that were theirs, where they wanted sometimes to be alone. He sat with his mother and father while they both read and the fire died down. He should have been in his room too, but it wasn’t his room. Last night he had been badly scared. He hadn’t slept well at all, and this night would probably be the same.

  At ten o’clock he had to go to his room. Each step up the wide staircase was away from safety until he was halfway, and then it was toward safety again as he came near Wood’s door—but that was a false safety now, like a warm, safe station a train had to pass, the warm lights receding in the night, because Wood had gone to bed. No light touched the carpet fuzz beneath Wood’s door, so he had to proceed toward the black door of his room. He had left a light on, to make it a little easier, but he still had to open the door upon what might be inside. At the door he grunted and stumbled purposely, coughed and brushed the door with his elbow and sleeve to give them warning, to plead with them by this warning not to show themselves.

  The next evening Lois Potter called Wood on the telephone and told him she’d heard. He could tell by the breath in her voice that she was very nervous. After all, he should have been the one to have told her. He could almost feel her breath moving against his ear, as though her mouth were right there.

  “I knew you’d have to go,” she said. “I knew there wasn’t anything wrong with you, Wood.”

  “I guess not,” he said, and then added, with some feeling of duty, “What are you doing? Anything?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “I’ll pick you up and we’ll have a Coke,” he said.

  It was a cold, damp March night, the kind that felt colder than the coldest night in February. He shivered as he left the house and turned down High Street; his body felt tender and shockable. Even when he’d walked all the way to her house he was still a little chilly and sweaty. She was ready, and after he’d said hello to her father and mother, who didn’t quite know whether to congratulate him or to commiserate with him, he and Lois went downstreet toward Trask’s Pharmacy. She took his hand in her mittened one.

  “When do you have to go? My spies didn’t tell me that.”

  “In about two weeks.”

  “Oh!” She stopped suddenly and looked up at him. The knit tassel on her hat bounced, and her eyes glittered out of their shadows. “Two weeks! I thought they gave you thirty days, or something like that!”

  “Well, I don’t have many affairs to settle,” he said.

  “Affairs to settle,” she said. “Are we an affair?”

  “Not precisely,” he said, and smiled down at her. She wouldn’t turn to walk again, so he took her shoulders and turned her around toward the square. As they began to walk she took his arm in both her hands and pulled it against her.

  “I know you don’t like this—to walk this way,” she said, “but I don’t care any more. I’ve got to feel you.” They walked along, somewhat awkwardly, and she said in a low voice, as if to herself, “We could be. We could be an affair.” He was meant to hear it, however.

  The first show hadn’t let out yet, and no one was in Trask’s except a couple of older people waiting at the prescription counter. Prudence got them their Cokes and sat down across from them.

  “He’s going in two weeks,” Lois said.

  “Oh!” Prudence said, her face turning sad. She was a very smart, handsome girl with straight lines and definite curves to all her features, and her sad expression seemed almost statue like and sorrowful.

  “Have you heard from John?” Lois asked.

  “We had a letter last week, but he never says much. We’re not even sure where he is. He says he’s fine, but mother’s upset about him all the time.” Prudence sighed, and looked tired. She put her hands on her thick auburn hair, cupping the rolled fringes above her shoulders as though to fold them into neater rolls. It occurred to Wood that it was strange she never went out with boys, but perhaps the answer was her rather statuesque, forbidding handsomeness. She had a strong, firm chin, and seemed much older than she was, although her skin w
as perfectly clear and her green eyes were kind and unforbidding. She seemed bigger than she was; in school plays she had always been somebody’s mother.

  Soon the first show let out at the Strand, and people they knew began to come in. Donald Ramsey came in with Marilyn Jackson, who had evidently forgiven him for his part in the Susie Davis affair. He was one of Gordon Ward’s buddies, and had been in Wood’s class until he stayed behind a year. He generally tried to keep up Gordon’s old noise—the codelike words and the knowing yelps—but he was only an imitation. Whenever he laughed now he seemed a little lonely. Marilyn had fierce little brown eyes that always seemed to be looking for offense or triumph, and missed nothing.

  Shortly after them, Keith Joubert, who was David’s age, and a bully, came in by himself and sat at the counter. He was a rather stupid boy who said very little when alone, but in combination with others he could be extremely nasty. He had always been one of Horace’s tormentors. He didn’t take off his fingertip coat, but sat hunched up in order to make his shoulders look bigger. His blue gabardine pants were more than a little pegged, and lately his group affected jive talk. They were hepcats, and used words like “drape,” “cape,” and “lockit at the pockit”—these referred to clothes. Shoes were “garboes.”

  Others came in, and someone played “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” on the jukebox. Beneath that lively noise everyone seemed strangely hunched and secretive, too well aware of everyone else. Donald Ramsey, especially, seemed restless, as though he waited for a clue.

  Beady Palmer came in and sat down by himself at the counter without seeming to see anyone. He would have preferred Futzie’s Tavern, but he hadn’t quite turned twenty-one yet, and Futzie had found out about it, so he had been banished. He and Wood had long ago made up their quarrel, but in Beady Wood still felt some reserve, and he suspected that Beady could not quite forgive himself for having said what he had said. At work he never kidded Wood any more about girls, and there was a reserve that amounted to equality between them. Once Wood asked him why he never saw him out with his wife, and Beady said, “She’s got three to take care of now, and another thing is she’s knocked up higher than a kite.” This seemed a strange thing to say about one’s own wife—almost as though Beady had acknowledged Wood to be in some kind of league with him against women, and with these words had offered him something too intimate.

  When Prudence served Beady his frappe he smiled at her with his head tilted. Wood was sure he hadn’t asked Prudence his usual question.

  “Well,” Lois said, “your girl friend’s here—didn’t you see her?”

  “Who?” Confused by her tone of voice, he looked around. He hadn’t the slightest idea what she meant, and this was a strange thing to him. Then, behind the candy-display case, where one seat of a booth was partly hidden by the Fanny Fanner boxes, where the aisle at the rear was enclosed by another case displaying film and Brownie cameras, dark eyes were looking at him. It was Susie Davis, who looked at him with no recognition. Evidently his perplexed frown had caught her, and in that blank moment she stared past him and then turned her eyes back down. She sat alone. As she bent her head to her straw he saw only the blue babushka and her pale forehead. She didn’t look up again, and he couldn’t now signify that he had recognized her. It seemed a cold, inhuman moment, somehow typical of Leah. There was no ease, no freedom, only the short embarrassments of petty history.

  But with Lois there, his loyalty was divided. One or the other must be hurt if he was kind, or simply real. As he turned back to Lois he detested himself for not knowing what to do. It seemed too large a problem for him, and it seemed so petty and stupid he felt himself shrinking, wrinkling somewhere inside.

  Lois frowned unhappily. “What’s the matter?” she asked him. “Wood?”

  “Nothing,” he said, and so she was quiet.

  Bob Contois and Bruce Cotter came in. Bruce was short, dark and permanently cynical. He was rumored to be 4-F for some reason no one was sure about, and now he worked in his father’s lumberyard. He was one of the few who had a car, and for this reason he was fairly popular.

  Foster Greenwood and Jean Welch came in after them. That is, Foster came to the door and saw who was there, then Jean appeared beside him, seeming to hide in his tall shadow as they went to the back and found one of the narrow booths. Foster’s long legs would have to stick out into the aisle from that narrow place. Jean had not been made pregnant by what Foster called “that accident” at Lois’ house. But he’d also told Wood that she wouldn’t ever let him do it again. “Anyway,” he’d said, “I’ve got something to remember when I jerk off.”

  Then Michael Spinelli came in with Carol Oakes. They were both in David’s class. Mike was obviously proud, and a little awed by, his date with the class glamour girl. He was laughing as they came in—the first real laughter Wood had heard in that somber company. But Mike Spinelli laughed at anything. Carol smiled dimly and with care steered her large breasts toward the small table Mike selected in the middle of the store, then lowered herself undulantly onto the wire-backed chair, as though she were more than aware of the treasures she carried in breast and hip and thigh. Most faces turned toward her and then glanced away, dreamy and somewhat stunned behind facades of indifference, even of truculence.

  The jukebox played “Der Fuhrer’s Face,” and “Scatterbrain,” then “Bei mir bist du schon,” and those who spoke seemed secretive. Lois had been telling him in a carefully low voice about going to college, what she thought it would be like. Because she knew really nothing about what it would be like, and knew he didn’t either, her questions began “I wonder…” and “Do you suppose…?” She wasn’t really interested, so he didn’t have to think of answers.

  The silence changed. That is, it seemed even amid the noise of the jukebox to have been a silence, almost a silence of intent among all the words they had all been speaking to each other. Bruce Cotter had gone over to Susie’s booth. He bent over and spoke to her, and everyone turned around to look. Wood turned back quickly, seeing all those interested faces.

  When the jukebox stopped playing they heard Susie’s voice—polite, almost friendly. “No thanks, I don’t want a ride home.”

  The faces, weighted with the one idea, turned away. Marilyn Jackson’s sharp brown eye gleamed almost black, and Wood had the hallucinatory feeling that he could see images in her very mind. Donald’s parts—he thought he saw that kind of mechanical awareness in her bright and practical eyes—shoved deep and against that creamy and alien girl. Marilyn’s finger actually trembled as she took her straw in finger and thumb. Donald, enjoying both his reputation and Marilyn’s knowledge, and also, Wood thought, Marilyn’s capitulation, seemed pleased, although he didn’t actually grin. He hadn’t that much power over Marilyn yet. And Wood knew he would never have it, either. She was seventeen, Donald was eighteen, and Wood seemed to see with great weariness a relationship, going on and on through the years, of attempted domination, really of hatred. Why did she want to marry a boy so much less intelligent than herself? Whatever charm he had now in his exuberant youth would quickly fade when he had to produce something for the world. Then she would have him impaled by his own mediocrity, and maybe that was what those bright brown eyes wanted ever after to have done.

  There seemed a tenseness emanating from Susie’s corner, though the observing eyes were shy. Wood turned around, and as his head turned he found Bob Contois’ eye upon him. Keep out of it, Bob seemed to say. Bruce had sat himself down across from Susie, and spoke now in a soft, private voice. “Oh, come on, Susie.” Wood heard, and turned back.

  Lois was caught staring at him—a hard look that made him think vaguely of Marilyn Jackson.

  “Is it any of your business?” she said.

  He wondered if it was.

  “After all,” Lois said coldly, “she does, doesn’t she?”

  He thought of asking Lois in a stern voice what exactly it was Susie did, but felt that would be unkind. No, not really; it w
ould involve him with Lois too deeply in that question.

  “She does it for boys,” Lois said, conscious of her cruel words; she blushed a little.

  “You don’t know the whole story,” he said.

  “You mean how many?”

  “Lois.”

  “Look,” she said, “I can’t lose any more pride with you. What difference does it make what I say?” She made a noise like “urrr!” clenched her fists on the table and put her forehead down on them.

  “No, thank you,” Susie said again, just before the jukebox played and covered whatever else she and Bruce were saying. She had sounded firm, but she also sounded pleased, somehow, by Bruce Cotter’s attention.

  He wanted to protect Susie from her own loneliness, but that was impossible, because he could offer no alternative except himself, and that he wouldn’t give. And he saw that his relationship with Lois was much the same. He would take no gifts because he could not deserve them. He wanted them, though. Sometimes he could think of neither Susie nor Lois except in postures of submission to him. Lace, silk, fresh skin of thigh and the tenderness of their acceptance. Didn’t they know what a bad bargain that would be? They both seemed so childlike and defenseless, even suicidal in their generosity. They would give him everything, even in the knowledge that he was not ready to protect or support them. He seemed to see this irresponsibility everywhere; everyone he knew seemed in one way or another as essentially irresponsible as the two girls.

  Lois raised her head and looked at him for a long time. “Are you going to marry me?” she said, finally.

  “Lois,” he said.

  “Answer the question.” Her mouth turned hard, and she trembled as if she were very much afraid of her recklessness.

  “I don’t know the answer,” he said, recognizing in his voice a weariness that must have hurt her.

  “Why are you so worried about Susie Davis?”

  “I think she’s a nice girl. She’s been kind to Horace, for one thing.” Into his voice crept force, which he couldn’t stop. “And just because that cruel son of a bitch Gordon Ward raped her doesn’t mean she’s fair game for every horny little bastard in town. Do you see what I mean now?”