Whipple's Castle

by Thomas Williams

  “Is that what you want him to do?”

  “No! That’s what you thought. Now, come on! That’s what’s so confusing. Shouldn’t I at least want him to want to?”

  “Well, you startled me,” he said.

  “Well, don’t treat me like a child, Davy. I’m a big girl now.”

  He wanted to ask her questions he wasn’t sure he wanted the answers to. He said, finally, “I just don’t want you to get in any trouble, Katie. I want you to be happy.”

  “Thank you, Davy,” she said in a low voice. Her eyes grew dark and concerned; she touched him on the cheek. Her emotion seemed a flaw in her beauty, and he knew how much he loved her—how much he really did, far and beyond all the kidding around and the ego points, that game they used to play.

  A breeze had come up again, and Kate’s light brown hair blew in long strands across her nose. She pushed them away. From above came Sally’s raucous, rumbling laughter.

  “Anything you want to know,” he said.

  “Okay. Well, tell me…” She blushed. “Tell me what you do when you make love to her. To Letty. I don’t mean all the way to the final sexual part. I presume that’s pretty mechanical once it gets down to that, although maybe I’m wrong. But how do you begin? What do you say? Like that. I mean, how does it start, from not feeling like making love to starting to?”

  He thought. “It’s a look,” he said. “It’s a funny little look, sort of steady and serious. It lasts about a second.”

  “You both have it?”

  “Yes. It sort of says ‘I’m a man,’ and hers says ‘I’m a woman.’ I never thought about it before. But it can happen any time. Sometimes it happens when we just happen to pass each other going back and forth to classes, and then we know all day long that we’ll make love that night.”

  “Do you both always feel the same? At the same instant?”

  “No, but it’s always better when we do.”

  “You mean you make love without that look?”

  “One can more or less persuade the other to, anyway,” he said.

  “But that’s not so nice?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Then what do you do? After the look.”

  “We touch each other.”

  “Do you kiss?”

  “Yes. Not always on the mouth, though. At least not at first.”

  “Where?”

  “On the neck, maybe. And other places. She has favorite places.”

  “It sounds lovely, Davy.” Kate sighed. “I’m sure it’s lovely for both of you.” She seemed thoughtful and rather unhappy. They sat up and kicked their feet in the water. Then she said, “Do you ever comb her hair?”

  “No, I never have. She never asked me to.”

  “Hmm,” Kate said. “Wayne likes to comb mine.”

  “What is he, a hair stylist or something? It sounds awfully queer to me.”

  “You mean strange?” she asked.

  “No, queer.”

  “You mean homosexual? I don’t think so. I’m kind of vague on the subject. But Davy, Wayne’s the only boy that ever treated me like a human being. I thought in college it would be different, but it isn’t. He’s the only one that talks to me—I mean straight to me, like what he wants to say he wants me to understand, because what he’s saying is important for itself. The others all treat me like a thing. I mean it. I’m not being paranoid, either.”

  “I know,” he said. “I guess I know how they feel.”

  “Sometimes I get so blue, and even angry, Davy. I feel I ought to do something drastic, or even shameful. You know? It’s being a thing, and I can’t stand it! Sometimes I think I ought to paint my teeth black, or never wash my hair, but I’m scared to do that!”

  “Katie.”

  “Well, damn it all!”

  “Hey, Kate,” he said. She was crying, actually crying, and he almost felt like crying too, just looking at her. This was impossible, especially here on the breezy lake, with the gabbing and laughter coming down from above. Horace had gone up there with the others.

  Kate rubbed her eyes and gave him a quick, contrite look.

  “Davy, I’m sorry! But I’ve been throwing college away. It’s only as easy as you make it, and I’ve been partying and cramming instead of getting involved. It’s all so silly. The whole thing. Sometimes I want to stand up and yell the worst thing I can think of. My profs can’t even look me in the eye. I want to stand up in class sometime and yell ‘Fuck’ or something. There!”

  A sailboat had been coming across the lake on a tack directly toward them. Now it came about with the white flash of sail and jib. David could barely make out that its sides were red, and he could just see a trace of white foam at its bow as it cut back on a better angle to the wind.

  “I don’t want to smile any more,” Kate said.

  The sailboat went behind Pine Island, moving fast. It would come out the other side soon, then probably take the slower tack back toward them.

  “I wish I could help you be happier, Katie,” he said.

  “I don’t even talk like this with Wayne,” she said bitterly. “He does all the talking, anyway. That’s all he does is talk. Talk, talk, talk. He hardly ever listens.”

  “That sounds like him, all right,” David said.

  “Well, he’s brilliant!”

  “All right already!”

  “He is, Davy. But dammit all.” She stared morosely toward Pine Island, waiting, as he was, for the sailboat to reappear.

  He thought of going to see Wayne: Suh, I have come in order to determine the quality of yo’ intentions, suh, in ree-gard to a certain lady. But was Wayne a faggot? He didn’t resemble, in his small gestures, either of the two tame communists at Mrs. Salamonsky’s, but homosexual communists were rare birds anyway. Wayne had sold him a pair of sneakers last week, and he seemed odd enough, but not in that way. He had wanted to know all about the University of Chicago, and did they have any poets besides J. V. Cunningham (which Wayne pronounced J. V. Cunningum).

  But suppose he did go to see Wayne? The whole thing was ridiculous. He might tell Wayne to turn into a nice, square, honorable, straightforward type, undangerous and predictable, who would then drop his jaw and gaze upon Kate with that typical stunned awe that she despised. Or he could deal with this complex problem, using the methods of the Black Hand; how would Wayne look with his feet encased in a washtub of cement, his striped hair flowing, deep in the Cascom River? A strange weed down among the cans and bottles and the passing condoms. The idea seemed a little more feasible than it should have.

  The sailboat came into sight, nearer now. It came about onto an approaching tack, its bow waves curling like a little white mustache. It was a pretty little boat, leaning jauntily as it splashed across the waves. Its helmsman leaned the other way. Ensconced, David thought. No, what was the word for that rakish, somewhat regal pose there in the stem? He envied that sailor.

  Because it came straight toward them, the boat caught their attention; it seemed to have them in mind, the way anything that points, like an arrow or a gun, suggests a dreamlike intention to the eye. It came on until that vague idea of collision changed into the possible. It was like waking up, and there was the little sloop, red with a white deck forward, its stays and braces trim and neat. The sailor was Gordon Ward, Jr., all muscles and freckles and clashing red hair. The gusty wind had brought up whitecaps, and he worked his sheet constantly to keep on course. He came within ten yards of the dock and suddenly hove to, his sail fluttering. “Ahoy!” he called.

  “Avast!” David called back.

  “That’s a honey of a boat!” Harvey called from above.

  “You used to own it!” Gordon yelled.

  “Son of a bitch! Goddam!” Harvey yelled. “I didn’t recognize it! Used to be green and white. Well, it is a damn pretty boat!”

  Gordon was gathering sternway in the stiff wind. During this exchange he kept looking (who wouldn’t? David thought) at Kate. The damn pretty boat was in danger of bumping i
nto the rocks, and though Gordon’s mouth didn’t hang open, David was quite sure of what was going on in his head. People always looked at Kate twice, then had to drag their eyes away. It was as if they searched hungrily for an imperfection—just one, something, anything. She seemed to glow, her skin lighted from an inner source.

  Gordon had a little paddle out now, and was barely holding against the wind. “Anybody want a ride?” he called. “It’s great!”

  David got up and looked up the stairs. Peggy was sitting near Wood, talking to him and not paying any attention to Gordon and his boat. Horace was nowhere in sight. Then, behind him, he heard a splash. He was held for that second, having that choice, then turned swiftly and dove straight at the horizon.

  Gordon reached down, pulled Kate up and sat her lightly on the side of the cockpit. David clambered aboard the foredeck. They were dangerously close to the rocks, but with one swing of the tiller, the little boat turned, mainsail and jib snapped taut, and they were tearing out into open water.

  The dock receded, the cabin began to fade into its trees. Then he saw where Horace had been all this time. He must have been hiding, because he appeared beside the one boathouse wall that was still more or less vertical. He squatted there now, on a rock, gazing after them.

  26

  David had reason to remember Horace hiding there, because a week or so later he thought he saw Horace doing something like that again. He was at Futzie’s Tavern with Gordon one night, and he turned toward the front window to see what he thought was Horace’s wide, cragged face lit by the ghastly blue neon, staring in through the grime of the front window. Then the face was gone, but he was quite sure he’d seen it.

  Gordon had decided to take David up. He stopped by the cabin several times, twice in the sailboat, this night in his Mercury convertible. They had been in the murky brown barroom for an hour or more, beer sticky on the booth table, smoke flowing slowly toward the exhaust fan above the door. Gordon was telling a story about leave in Naples, while David tried and gave up trying to find anything comparably exotic in his own stateside service. He could feel the beer, and felt like bragging about something or other, but decided that being seen with Gordon, that legitimate hero, was enough to confer upon him an aura, at least, of veteran service and heroics. He wore his Ike jacket, minus insignia. He also felt vaguely traitorous to aspirations of his that were not public and did not concern bragging or posing at all. Letty was real, perhaps even more so at this distance, and his future was real. Whatever talent and passion he had for this life waited, he knew, while Gordon tried to charm him. One of Gordon’s methods was an undefined assumption that David, too, had seen and been through much. Never would he allude to David’s merely stateside service. It was a strange, collusive situation, in which he was not always sure why he was being charmed. It had much to do with Kate, of course; whenever Gordon thought of her or tried to speak of her his green eyes flickered, as if a sneaky little wind had nearly blown them out.

  At the bar several old men, the regulars, sat on the stools and leaned into their beers. One woman at the end of the bar sat alone, wearing a pre-new-look dress that showed her baggy milk-white legs. Donald Ramsey and his girl had been in for a quick rye and ginger before the movie, and in the booths a few of the old Trask’s Pharmacy crowd, now graduated to beer, fed the jukebox here as they had the Wurlitzer at Trask’s. “Peg O’My Heart” was playing, and it gave David a sad, chill memory of Letty, if only for the reason that they had heard it so often at the University Tavem on Fifty-fifth Street.

  Sam Davis pushed the door open, stepped halfway into the doorway, and the door came back to hit him a light but nearly staggering blow on the shoulder. He was very drunk. When he regained his balance he came carefully down the aisle of booths toward Gordon’s outstretched legs. Something like vomit, or at least something distributed like vomit, discolored his green work clothes. His eyes were all one shade of dull pink, his face and neck covered with gray bristles. Futzie had been serving a booth toward the front, but he cut around to head Sam Davis off.

  Sam managed to see Gordon’s legs sprawled across the aisle, and he stopped tipsily and glared down at them. “Git your goddam legs out of the way!” he said. Then he saw whose legs they were. Gordon looked up at him with fierce but not unfriendly interest. “Now, Sam,” he said.

  Futzie arrived, and took Sam by the shoulder. “Sam, you’re too drunk to be in here you! You wanna lose my license?”

  Sam stared at Gordon. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  “Sam?” Gordon said, smiling at him. “Sit down and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Sam said. His shoulders straightened with a proud jerk, but this only seemed to stun him.

  “Sam, you go home,” Futzie said, wiping his hands nervously on his apron. “You been sick too. I can smell it.”

  “Snakes, pigs, buzzards, pig fuckers,” Sam said.

  “Sam!” Futzie said, shocked.

  “Now wait. Wait,” Gordon said. “He needs a drink, Futz, and I’m buying. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of old Sam Davis. Go on, now, Futz.” While saying this he’d got up and actually forced Sam down into the booth—manhandled him. “What’s your pleasure, Sam?” he asked.

  Sam growled like a dog. He couldn’t see straight, and he fumbled for the table edge with both hands. His head nodded and nodded. He looked sick to death.

  “All right,” Futzie said. “One beer, you get him the hell out.”

  “We’ll take him home and tuck him in bed. Right, David?” Gordon winked.

  It was then David thought he saw Horace’s pale blue face at the window.

  Sam poured half his beer on his chest and passed out, so they took him by the armpits and carried him, his feet dragging, across the street and into the tenement. Gordon knocked on the apartment door. “Papa, dear Papa, come home with me now,” he said.

  The door opened upon Beady Palmer’s friendly, ridged and jerky face. His eyes plotted them out. “One, two, three!” he said. He turned toward the room behind him and said, “Special delivery, C.O.D.”

  They carried Sam into the kitchen, where Candy Palmer sat at the table with Susie Davis.

  “Is he just drunk?” Susie said. She tossed her thick brown hair back and got up. “God, he’s a mess!” she said. “Bring him into the bathroom.” She led the way through a dark room, into a little hallway and switched on the bathroom light. “Somebody must have got him some hard stuff again. Where’d you find him?”

  “He wandered into Futzie’s, where he met a couple of good Samaritans,” Gordon said.

  “Oh, sure,” Susie said. “Hello, David.”

  “Hi,” David said.

  “He needs some sleep and I need a drink,” Susie said. “Leave him in the bathtub and I’ll take care of him later.”

  “Hell, Suze, leave us do it. We’ll hose him off and tuck him in,” Gordon said.

  “Well, make sure he’s through puking before you put him in bed.”

  “Okey-doke.”

  They looked down at the wreck in the bathtub. His red neck was lined and crosshatched; tendons and veins laced it like half-unraveled knots. All but the shreds of the vomit had soaked into his shirt and pants. Water from the faucets was dripping on one of his run-over work shoes, and David, his shoulder against the moist commode reservoir, untied his laces and pulled the shoes from strangely clean white socks. Gordon went after the shirt buttons.

  “Glah,” Gordon said, averting his face for a moment. “In combat we’d cut his clothes off.”

  David was startled by Sam’s baby-smooth, ivory feet. As they removed his shirt and pants, this strange metamorphosis continued. They peeled away his long underwear, and his smooth white skin was as pure and unblemished as a peeled egg. A delicate blue vein shone through the translucent white of his chest, where a few limp blond hairs grew. This could hardly be the body that had grown that ravaged head and those scarred and filthy wrists and hands. His genitals looked young and unmarked; relaxed, fa
miliar between the alabaster thighs, they looked like David’s own. Sam’s bellybutton hid in its little dent and crease.

  They looked for something to pour water from. Gordon found Susie’s douche bag hanging under her housecoat on the back of the door, so they filled it with warm water and squirted Sam with its little hose. Gordon thought this was funny.

  “The old coot,” he said, chuckling as he hosed him down from chin to crotch. “If he only knew!”

  There was the grizzled head, mouth hanging open to show an ancient brown tooth, then a pallor of chest that was deathlike, yet new. The man was such a total drunk he must be close to the idea of his own death. He would take with him to the embalmer’s whatever fair skin and working organs he had left. It seemed unfair to the good parts of him that they should have to die.

  They toweled him off, at least the top of him, and hauled him into his room down the hallway, David taking the smooth white feet. Gordon seemed to know his way around the place. They hoisted Sam into the deepest depression of the hammocky bed and pulled a sheet over him.

  “Man, is he out of it,” Gordon said. “He doesn’t even know what a nice douche we gave him. You know douche means a regular shower in French? Did you know that?”

  They went back to the kitchen. “We put him beddie-bye,” Gordon said. “He’s dreaming of great brown bottles and elephant cunts.”

  “Don’t be such a foul mouth,” Susie said, glancing at David.

  Candy Palmer had reared back to laugh, her breasts heaving under her silky blouse. David could smell her perfume all around her in the air, and he wondered if she could smell it. She wore a pair of shorts so short they were practically panties, and she moved on her chair so that he and Gordon could see more of her. Before she stopped giggling she adjusted a breast and touched her white-blond hair. She was so made-up, so somehow meant only to be looked at, he thought how strange it would seem if she had to do anything—like get a meal or clean up the sink. She didn’t seem made for anything like that. She was a bit old for this glamour act, however; tiny red lines appeared here and there on her thighs, and there was a slight downiness to her chin. He had heard she was older than Beady, who now reached over and put his hand on her knee as if to prove his ownership of this showboat.