Whipple's Castle

by Thomas Williams

  “Away,” Horace said. He put her bathrobe around her and led her back to her room.

  “Oh, Horace,” she said. “What in the world are you doing?”

  “You may be the goddam janitor,” Sam said, “but it don’t follow you got a right to come in here and wash my girl!” A gust of drunkenness hit him and he rolled along the wall. Without spilling his beer he fell to one knee. “I ought to call the cops,” he said.

  “It’s too late for you,” Horace said.

  “What? What?”

  “All you are is a drunk.”

  “I’m a farmer!”

  “You’re a drunk.”

  “I’m a farmer! Susie, ain’t I a farmer? Tell him!” Sam began to blubber. “If he takes you away, what happens to me? Answer me that! What happens to me?”

  “If I don’t take her away, what happens to her?”

  “It ain’t fair!” Sam cried.

  Horace let her down on the bed and pulled the spread over her. From her bureau he began to gather her clothes.

  “Horace, what are you doing?” She tried to get up on her elbow, but fell back with a groan. “I’m so drunk. It’s got me.”

  “I’m getting your clothes together.”

  “What happens to me?” Sam cried.

  “You’ve taken money from Gordon Ward,” Horace said.

  “Who says so?” Sam was terribly indignant.

  “I’ve seen. Do you think I’m blind? I know everything. He buys your liquor for you.”

  “It ain’t true!” Sam was truly indignant; no one could be accused of such a thing. Horace saw his true indignation. Sam could not believe how things could be summed up.

  “Daddy,” Susie called in a sick voice. “Let me talk to Horace. Go away and leave us.”

  “Well, I don’t know, now,” Sam said. “It don’t seem right, somehow, to leave him in here when you got no clothes on.”

  “Shut up, Daddy. Go get yourself another beer.”

  “It don’t seem proper.”

  “Oh, God!” Susie groaned.

  Muttering and complaining, Sam went out of the room.

  “Haven’t you got a suitcase?” Horace said.

  Susie sat up and tried to look at him. She held the spread across her chest, and her damp hair fell over her shoulder and back. “What?” she said.

  “A suitcase,” Horace said.

  “What you doing?”

  “I’m going to pack your things. You’ve got to tell me what you want to wear.”

  She had fallen back. “Sick, Horsie. Can’t you see ‘m sick.”

  He leaned over her and grabbed her face. “Listen!” he said, shaking her face back and forth. Her lips slid over her teeth; he had made that grimace with his hands, and he was afraid he hurt her. She opened her eyes.

  “Can I make you happy, Horsie? I think I’m going to sleep, so hurry up.”

  “No!” he shouted. “Wake up! You’re acting crazy!”

  She tried to wake up, he could see. She shook her head. “I don’t get it,” she said in a rational voice. “What is it, Horace? If you want to, go ahead. Go ahead if you want to.” She began to pull the spread from her body, and he pulled it back and held it to her shoulders.

  “I want you to go away with me,” he said clearly. “Do you understand? I’ve saved up a lot of money, and I want to take you away from Leah. We can go right now. I’ve got it all planned.”

  “Give me a cigarette.”

  “Don’t you understand, Susie?”

  “I’m not thinking too good, Horace.”

  He held the match to her cigarette and she took a long drag. The blue cone of smoke sighed from her throat, and her eyes flickered.

  “Susie, please listen to me!”

  “Get me a beer. Maybe that’ll wake me up.”

  “You don’t want a beer!”

  “I want to make you happy, Horace. It makes me happy to make you happy.”

  “Will you go with me?”

  “Oh yes, yes. Anything you say, Horace.” She dropped the cigarette and he picked it up and put it in the ashtray.

  “Do you understand what I want? Susie! Do you really understand?”

  “Yes, Horace.”

  If only he could pick her up right now and take her out of this house. But he couldn’t think of a place. If only he had learned to drive when David tried to teach him, instead of freezing up tight. He groaned. If he could get her dressed he could call Grimes’ taxi. But he couldn’t lug her out like a sack of meal. Grimes would take one look and tell him to put her to bed, enjoying it all immensely too.

  “Listen, Susie!”

  “Cigarette.”

  He handed her the cigarette.

  “Listen, Susie. I’m taking you away. We’re going to start all over again, like when you were a little girl. Remember? You and me.” His words seemed all at once hopeless, a weird echo of something hopeless he had heard before.

  “Okay.”

  She didn’t understand at all.

  “You’re so sweet, Horsie. Oh my, I feel so clean and so sleepy.”

  Suddenly he was discouraged. He couldn’t fight her lethargy, her absent mind. Even if he managed to take her away now, it wouldn’t be Susie, it would only be that bright flesh and hair he had washed and dried. He would have to leave and continue his own preparations. He hadn’t even thought to pack a suitcase for himself, and he didn’t want to spend their money on clothes. Evidently she didn’t have a suitcase. Her drawers were full of silky female things, and strange boxes and ointments she’d probably need. These petty considerations had him caught, like a haunting blow from the past when elbows and angles always reached for him and stung him. For a second his vision turned red and he considered tearing the doorframe out of the wall. This grimy, sill-rotten building, bought with a cheat and a lie, with its stinking drains and sweating pipes.

  He shouldn’t leave her here even for a moment.

  Susie moaned and rolled toward him. “Gimme cigarette.”

  He pushed her back. “Go to sleep.”

  “Mmm.”

  He put his hand on her breast; beneath the rubbery flesh was the even beat of her heart. She half woke. “Did you come, Horace? Did you like it? Did you do like to give me a baby?” With a sigh, she slept.

  He melted, and wrung his face with his hands. He couldn’t leave her unprotected. He considered the possibility of the eight o’clock bus to Wentworth Junction; could he get her organized by morning? He would have to leave her here for a while with no defenses, not even her wits, with that broken fool her father. Gordon Ward might come, or Keith Joubert, Donald Ramsey, Bruce Cotter, Junior Stevens, even David. No, he would keep his plan for a while longer, reorganize it and perfect it. He would consider things like suitcases this time, and train reservations. He would know their destination. It would be Springfield, Lawrence or Providence, not just some vague city to the south. He would present the plan to her not in breathless desperation but with calm strength.

  She breathed evenly now, with a little repeating tick of mucus in her nose—a little-child noise he found so moving tears came to his eyes. Her hair was drying glossy and soft, and he rearranged it on the pillow. Beneath her lids her gentle eyes moved in a dream. He would sit beside her and be her sentinel until dawn.

  They parked by the first tee and crossed the lawn in the balmy summer air, Gordon’s hand lightly on her elbow. The Country Club was gay with Japanese lanterns hung all around the wide porches. As they approached, band music, laughter and light came from the windows and verandas, proclaiming a kind of disorganized joy. Tall elms stood over the Country Club like fond giants—parents, even—guarding it into the dusk. The young deserved their gaiety, did they not? They walked so firmly, breathed so easily. The air they drank was friendly to their energies.

  Inside, she and Gordon danced among the others, everyone gracefully passing and turning. Gordon moved lightly on his feet, and she couldn’t combine this Gordon with the Gordon Ward of high school who had seemed
so big and crude. The two boys simply would not come together in her mind. It reminded her of the depth finder in her camera with its two images, one gold and the other plain. They were supposed to slide together to make one image, but her memory would not do that to the bright boy who held her. This Gordon, who was slenderer than the other one, hadn’t the cruel laugh and swagger she remembered.

  The song was “Sweet Eloise,” the last of a set of old fox trots, so when it was over they found a table near the band and sat down. The players knew Gordon, or remembered him, and they smiled and nodded as they put their instruments down by their chairs.

  She knew David was worried about her going out with Gordon, but she found herself smiling with pleasure at this thought. David had even been worried about Wayne, who had never seriously kissed her. Wayne would always have to be acting. He would bow, saying some ironic thing, and kiss her hand or her forehead. When Gordon first kissed her he knew enough to just plain take her in his arms and do it, without any joking or asking for permission or any words at all. He was very hard and strong, but very gentle in his strength. She had the sense of that restraint, of the strong man being so gentle with her. When he held her with that powerful but gentle intent she thought she must be in love with him.

  But then she would look, as she did now, at his large freckled hand sporting his class ring, the biggest model obtainable, and a sort of dull, unwelcome warning sounded. Something was wrong. And something was wrong with his watchband—a series of gold S-shaped bars that flexed and glittered. Why did these little things strike her that way? She remembered feeling the same guilt about her evidence when she looked at Wayne’s hickish clothes. Gordon wasn’t hickish, he was deliberately Ivy League, but was that watchband some kind of miscalculation, or what? Was it too right, or just a little wrong? In any case, Gordon looked like money and he knew he looked like money. He’d told her once that a headwaiter always looked at your shoes, and could always tell. One time they’d decided to eat at the Inn in Northlee, a rather formal place, when they’d been driving back from Vermont and were wearing sports clothes. When Gordon had asked the hostess if they were dressed too informally, a man at the reception desk had turned to another and said in their hearing, “A forty-dollar sweater and he’s worried?” This pleased Gordon; he seemed pleased that people could look at your clothes and know exactly what they cost.

  Were the people here appraising them in this fashion? As she looked around to see who was here, the always slightly embarrassing thing occurred; faces caught looking at her and Gordon turned slightly, eyes changed their focus slightly. There was Lois Potter, pretty dark hair and alabaster skin, and that also Ivy League boy must be her fiancé from Brown. With them were Foster and Jean Greenwood, who looked strange whenever they danced because he was so tall and she was so short. It looked just a little possible that Jean was pregnant again. John Cotter was there with, of all people, Minetta Randolf. He was a quiet, silent boy and she was as sexy-looking as Carol Oakes, only sultrier. There were a lot of couples in their early thirties, and they were the ones who were a little drunk and noisy. Some of the men had red faces and ears. She knew very few of the names of the couples in that group.

  Their drinks came—a gin rickey for Gordon and a Coke for her. The waiter, probably a college boy, seemed to be a great admirer of Gordon’s. She didn’t know who he was, but Gordon called him “Skink,” and Skink seemed joyful at that recognition.

  Mr. and Mrs. Ward came over to say hello, Gordon rising with a mock-gallant flourish to ease his mother’s chair. The tall old couple were all decked out and glittering. They were both more vivid than life, with whiter hair, bigger jewels and sparklier teeth than anyone their age ought to have.

  “We won’t bother you youngsters for more than a minute!” Mr. Ward said. Another waiter brought their drinks from their table.

  “How are you, my dear?” Mrs. Ward said. “My, you make such a striking couple. Everybody looked up when you came in!” She’d had a few drinks, evidently, because her voice was a little slurry and a little more honest in its intonations than it was when she was totally sober. She affected what David called “the East Coast upper-class accent,” but all her affectations were harmless because she was a character, not a real force. Kate liked her.

  She leaned toward Kate conspiratorially, her veined waxy hand glowing beneath its jewels, and said, “Like father, like son. Aren’t my men dashing?” Gordon and his father were laughing at something, and Mrs. Ward looked at them proudly.

  There was a sort of charm to that life. Kate could feel it, expensive and dashing, possessed of the richest and best of things. How gray and fussy Wayne’s round of life seemed compared to the Wards’. She thought of them as walking upon their green manicured lawns, or riding in great silent cars, always having a kind of holiday.

  She and Gordon danced, and the Wards went back to their friends. At the next intermission they went out to the car, where she had a real drink, a gin and collins Gordon skillfully prepared from his leather-covered portable bar. The night was warm and starry, so Gordon put down the top of the car. The sweet smell of mown grass, damp from the night sprinklers they heard busily hissing, wafted across the golf course.

  After that drink of gin she seemed to dance more lightly, perhaps a little abandonedly. Gordon was always there, turning and coming back to her, pleased by her lightness. Later they went out to the car again, a tune following them across the lawn. “Falling in love with love” came smoothly from among the happy noises inside the Country Club. The Japanese lanterns along the verandas glowed inside themselves, not casting any light at all.

  “You happy, Kate?” Gordon asked. She had been humming the song.

  “Yes, I guess I am,” she said.

  “I’m serious about you,” he said.

  The moon had come up, lighting the strong angles of his face, so that he seemed very noble and important. He turned and kissed her, steadily but uninsistently. When he drew his lips away she wasn’t ready for that departure—it was almost like loss.

  “Let’s go for a drive,” Gordon said. “It’s such a warm night. Top down. How about it?”

  As they drove she leaned her head back and watched the trees swing by overhead, dipping their great dignified branches as if in salute, as if the smoothly running car were a sort of throne, or sedan, passing down wide dark aisles. She hadn’t noticed where they were going, or even that they had climbed a hill, when they stopped in front of her house.

  “What?” she said, recognizing the towering house with surprise.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Gordon said. “Go get your bathing suit and we’ll go for a swim. What do you say?”

  “Where?”

  “At our cabin, where else?”

  “My goodness. What time is it?”

  “Ten-thirty. It’s early. Come on, Katie, it’ll cool us off. Then I’ll light a fire in the fireplace and warm us up again.”

  “I don’t know.” She wondered how she could tell him what her worry was. She wanted to be with him, but she was a little—just too tantalizingly little—afraid of him.

  “You can trust me,” he said, laughing. “Anyway, Mother and Dad’ll be there at midnight, and I’ll bring you home. Safe as hell! Even I can be trusted for an hour and a half!”

  “All right,” she said, thinking that it was peculiar but that she wanted to run her fingers over his wound, over the livid burn that smeared his freckled arm.

  The Wards’ cabin was on the sandy side of the lake. The cabin itself was less like a camp than a year-round house, with finished and polished furniture, a large brick fireplace and a chromed and enameled modern kitchen. She changed, into her yellow one-piece suit, in Gordon’s parents’ bedroom, leaving her clothes on one of the twin beds.

  When she came out, Gordon had already changed and was lighting the fire. When the papers flamed, his wiry hair turned red as the fire, and his chest glowed warmly. He was all live skin and curls.

  He rose and turned toward her. “We
’ll have one for courage. Then, splooshl Last one in’s a rotten egg!” He opened a knotty-pine cabinet, revealing all kinds of bottles—short, tall, amber, green, even red and yellow ones. “I’m going to make you a special potion,” he said, rubbing his hands like a movie villain. “It’s small, and green, ha! ha! It will make you my slave, Kate Whipple!”

  His green eyes did glitter with almost evil intent, and she shivered as she laughed.

  “You may laugh, me proud beauty,” he said. Then his voice changed and he came to her and took hold of her arms. “Katie, I’m absolutely serious now. I want to marry you. I love you, God damn it, and I want to marry you.”

  The man offered himself to her, totally, for all time, altogether. The generosity of this offer stunned her. She couldn’t speak, but she found her hand sliding up the marble-smooth scar tissue on his arm. God! What had she been thinking? She knew too much, she saw too much. That contract had to be perfect, without any reservations at all. The world, something else, must still be out there for her. “Gordon,” she said.

  “Now, now, Katie, I know. Bad taste to spring such a proposition on you without warning, right?”

  She nodded, and he said, “However, the offer stands, pending notification by the party of the first part of intent to cancel. You understand? Serious. Thought out. Even discussed with parents. I’ve got it so bad I look at building lots.”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she squeezed his hand. They went down to the beach, subdued and silent. The sand was cooler than the water. They eased into the black water, and she felt the motion and the pressure of the man swimming beside her, easily pushing through the warmth. They swam slowly out into the lake, where it was all water and chilly moon-light. He rolled slowly, like a seal, and they swam back toward the lights of the cabin. When she could touch bottom he touched her, and she came against his cool slippery skin.

  “I forgot all about the potion,” he said. “I should have given you the potion first. But when you fall in love your timing gets all screwed up.”