The Bell Tolls for No One

  Meanwhile, it was said that the President of the United States, himself, was secretly angry because of the incident and because James was good friends with the Vice President.

  “This thing has all kinds of implications,” said John Manley, then hung up.

  When little Gladys came home from first grade she was crying.

  “Mama, the boys called me a ‘cunt.’ They screamed it at me over and over: ‘Cunt! Cunt! You’re a cunt!’ Mama, what’s a ‘cunt’?”

  “Gladys, please, leave your mother alone. She’s not feeling well!”

  Gladys left the room. The phone rang again. Blanche picked it up. It was the man with the high voice again. “I can come six times in one night. Six times I can squirt that juice into your cunt. I can drive you mad. I can . . . .”

  Blanche hung up.

  It was a somber dinner that night, Blanche, Henry, Gladys and Blanche’s mother. Blanche’s mother had made the dinner: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, peas, tossed salad with olives, baked biscuits . . . . The conversation was general for some time, then Blanche’s mother turned to Henry.

  “Henry, what’s a ‘cunt’?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Grace!”

  “I want to know: what’s a ‘cunt’? Why doesn’t anybody tell me what a ‘cunt’ is?”

  “Yes,” said Gladys, “I want to know what a ‘cunt’ is too.”

  “Henry,” said Blanche, “there have been some terrible phone calls, absolutely terrible!”

  “Yes?”

  “Obscene, terribly obscene . . . two men . . . one with a weak high voice, the other with a heavy slow voice . . . ”

  “Bastards!”

  “I know. What can we do?”

  “There must be something we can do. The phone company, the police, the FBI, somebody . . . .”

  “Listen,” said Blanche’s mother, “I DEMAND TO KNOW WHAT A CUNT IS!”

  “Oh, mother, please . . . .”

  “Henry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Take her in the other room and tell her.”

  “What?”

  “Take her in the other room and tell her.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I mean it. I can’t stand it any longer.”

  Henry and his mother-in-law walked into the kitchen. He swung the door closed. They sat down, a vase of half-wilted roses between them.”

  “Well?” said Grace.

  “Well, mother, a ‘cunt’ is rather a vulgar term for something each woman possesses.”

  “Do I have one?”

  “I’m sure you have. But I’m surprised you’ve never heard the term.”

  “Henry, I was raised among God-fearing people.”

  “I see.”

  “Henry, where is my cunt?”

  “Down there.”

  “Down where?”

  “Between your legs.”

  “Down here?”

  “There.”

  “Am I touching it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what’s wrong with the ‘cunt’? It’s part of the body.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why is Blanche so upset?”

  “The man inferred that she was a cheap $2.00 one, in other words, a cheap prostitute.”

  “Henry?”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s a ‘prostitute’?”

  “Oh my god, Grace . . . .”

  “Why are you angry?”

  Henry got up from the table, pushed the door open and walked into the other room, sat in a chair. Blanche and Gladys were sitting on the couch.

  “Did you tell her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what’s the matter? You look upset. I’m the one who ought to be upset, I’ve been getting those phone calls . . . .”

  The door opened and Grace walked in.

  “Listen, Blanche, I’ve got to know what a prostitute it. He won’t tell me . . . .”

  Henry stood up.

  “Listen, I’ve got to get out of here for a while . . . .”

  “Henry, don’t you dare leave me in this crisis!”

  Henry left anyhow. He got in his car and started driving south. He drove past a stop sign without stopping. The country was going to hell. First Watergate, and now this . . . .

  Back at the house the phone rang. Blanche’s mother got there first. It was a man’s voice, about medium pitch.

  “Hello,” said Blanche’s mother.

  “Listen,” came the voice, “I’ll eat your entire cunt with my tongue. I’ll chew your whole damned cunt to pieces. I’ll drive you crazy, I’ll suck your whole pussy right off of your body, I’ll . . . .”

  Blanche’s mother held the phone in her hands but the receiver and mouthpiece had fallen off and were whirling and dangling in the air from the cord. When Blanche’s mother finished the first scream, she started another one. And through the receiver of the phone, dangling down near the floor you could hear his voice:

  “Ha, I’ve got ya hot, haven’t I, baby? Got ya hot, haven’t I? Hah, ha, ha . . . .”

  Emil and Steve were the tough toughest guys in our grammar school, Hampton Road Grammar School, and Hampton Road was the toughest grammar school in town, and we were on the west side, which is unusual. It just happened that way. We grew up fast. Morrie Eddleman had more hair on his chest than any man I had ever seen. But most of the guys had grown up fast, and big. We all just happened to be in the same grade. It was an accident. Nelson Potter was hung like a horse and the girls stayed away from him but they talked about him and we talked about him.

  Even when we were in the 4th grade our baseball team was beating the 6th graders and when we got to the 6th grade the boys from Templeton Jr. High used to come over after school and we’d beat them at baseball. Morrie Eddleman was a real home run hitter. He bounced them off the side of the school so much that they had to put up iron bars to keep the windows from getting broken. We all bought these blue baseball caps and we wore them when we played and we always won. We looked good in those blue baseball caps, those Jr. High School kids were really afraid of us but they tried to pretend not to be. I couldn’t make the beginning lineup, I was a substitute, but I still got to wear the blue cap. Emil and Steve were the really tough guys though, Emil and Steve Yuriardi. They were even too tough to play baseball. Emil was in the 6th grade and his brother was in the 5th. But Steve was almost as tough as Emil. Those guys just stood behind the screen and watched. They wore these leather straps around their wrists and smoked cigarettes cupped in their hands and just watched us. And they looked at the girls as if they were nothing.

  When we didn’t have a baseball game after school, we had a fight, there was always a fight and the teachers were never around, nobody was around, and it wasn’t Emil and Steve beating somebody up, sometimes it was somebody else doing it. They always got some sissy, some guy nicely dressed, and they beat on that sissy, really punched at him. Whoever it was would get the sissy up against the fence and we’d gather around and watch. I mean, the beatings were good, but even the sissies at Hampton Road Grammar School were tough. They never cried, the blood coming out of their noses and mouths, they stood up against the chain link fence and did the best they could. I mean, you just thought they were beat, their hands in front of their faces trying to cover up from the blows and then suddenly they’d punch out and land one. They never begged or asked for mercy. We had some tough school.

  All of us were white guys except for Emil and Steve and they weren’t black or Mexican, but they did have this darkness to their skin, a dark even brown, and it looked rough, they were rough, and they never spoke to anybody and they always traveled together, sneering at the girls and sneering at us. They didn’t get into too many fights because they never said anything and they didn’t bump into anybody and that’s how things got started, by talking or bumping. I don’t know how they got into fights but when they did it was damn near murder. They didn’t get excited. They just stood back and pumped them in and every swing
hit. They never missed a lot of punches like the rest of us. And they weren’t as tall as most of us but they were stocky and they were mean. I really admired Steve. Even during a fight sometimes he’d take time to look around at us; he’d give us that same sneer and then the smallest of a smile, and when he did that it meant: look, this can happen to you, too, and then he’d land a very hard one. I would have given anything to be Steve.

  I didn’t know about Steve in class because he was one grade behind, but Emil acted dumb in class. He wasn’t dumb, you could tell by his eyes and the way he sat, but he acted dumb, he liked to act dumb. Miss Thompson would ask him, “Now Emil, what is the capital of Peru?” and Emil wouldn’t answer, he’d just stare at Miss Thompson with that stare. And Miss Thompson would say again, “Emil, what is the capital of Peru?” and still Emil wouldn’t answer. And he’d answer, “I don’t know.” It was the way he said it, like he was insulting her.

  “Emil, did you do your lessons last night?”

  “No.”

  “Emil, go stand out in the hall.”

  Emil would get up in his certain way, slowly and easily, with this disgust and open the door and be gone.

  “Henry, what are you sneering at?”

  This always shocked me because I hadn’t realized that I had been sneering.

  “Henry, what is the capital of Peru?”

  I knew that the capital of Peru was Bolivia, but I didn’t want the guys to think I was a sissy.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Henry, did you study your lessons last night?”

  “No, I didn’t feel like studying my lessons.”

  The class giggled, mostly the girls giggled, and one or two of the guys laughed out loud.

  “We’ll have some silence here or everybody is going to lose recess.”

  Miss Thompson looked right at me, directly, she was around 32, wore very tight dresses but her hair at the back was done in a bun, and her eyes looked right into mine, and for a moment I couldn’t help thinking as I looked back—I am in bed with you. Miss Thompson caught that immediately but ignored it.

  “Now, Henry, what did you say about your lessons?”

  She never pressed Emil like that and I wondered why. I guess it was because Emil was Emil. The class waited. I said, “I just didn’t feel like doing my lessons. I’m not interested in the capital of Peru. I don’t think it matters.”

  I’d heard a girl behind me say that and I thought that sounded clever. I looked at Miss Thompson and she was almost crying. I was surprised.

  “Henry,” she said, “that’s what separates humans from animals, the ability to learn more intricate things and evolve ideas and feelings from them, don’t you see?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with animals.”

  “Henry, I didn’t say there was. Don’t you understand?”

  Miss Thompson brought out a small white handkerchief and poked the sharp corners at her eyes. Then she put her handkerchief back in her pocket. There were two pockets on either side of her skirt. She had a wonderful figure. She began to write upon a small square of paper. Then she folded it up and looked at me.

  “Henry, I want you to take this to the principal’s office.”

  The girl behind me who had said the capital of Peru didn’t matter said to me, “Henry, you ought to apologize to Miss Thompson.”

  So when I went up to get the slip of folded paper for the principal’s office, I said very quietly to Miss Thompson, “Miss Thompson, I apologize, I’m sorry.”

  “Just take that slip of paper to the principal’s office, Henry.”

  When I went out the door there was Emil leaning against the wall near the water fountain. He looked very comfortable. I tried to get a look from him as I went toward the principal’s office but he ignored me. I walked on down and opened the door. Mr. Waters was sitting behind his desk, looking very irritated. There was an iron sign on his desk: Martin W. Waters, Principal. I handed him the note and he unfolded it and read it. Then he looked at me:

  “My boy, what makes you act like this?”

  I didn’t answer. Mr. Waters had on a pin-striped suit, grey and white, with a light blue necktie. All of him came down around that light blue necktie. I looked at the light blue necktie.

  “My boy, we no longer use a ruler on the wrist for recalcitrant. That was abandoned last semester.”

  He let me stand there and he read the note again.

  “Henry, what makes you act like this?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You refuse to answer?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Suppose your mother and father heard about this?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Mr. Waters suddenly threw the note into the wastebasket. He looked at me. “You go stand in the phone booth until I tell you to come out.”

  I walked over to the phone booth, opened the door, closed the door and stood there. It was hot in there. I looked down under the telephone. There were two magazines there. I tried to read them to pass the time. They were Harper’s Bazaar and The Ladies’ Home Journal. I closed the magazines and stood there. It was much worse than you can imagine. It was simply dark and stuffy and boring and dull, so dull, and I stood there and my legs ached and the minutes passed, I kept listening to the bells, and I thought, yes, that’s the lunch bell and there’s the afternoon recess bell, and there’s the bell for back from recess, and now there’s the fire alarm bell, they’re all marching out into the yard and they’re standing there and now there’s the final bell, they’re going home or they’re going out to play or to fight, and then it seemed like another hour and the phone booth door opened. Mr. Waters was standing there still irritated and he said, “All right, Henry, you can go home now.”

  I went home because I didn’t feel good about things and the next day in class there was Miss Thompson, she acted like nothing had happened, the whole class acted as if nothing had happened. There wasn’t much that day except once Miss Thompson scraped the blackboard with the chalk like it happens and we made these sounds and Miss Thompson turned around and laughed. That was about all. Miss Thompson didn’t ask me any questions and she didn’t ask Emil any questions, she mostly asked the girls.

  After school we had another baseball game with the guys from Templeton Jr. High, and they knew it and we knew it—that we would beat them but it was only a matter of how much and each time they came over we beat them worse. I put on my blue cap and sat on the bench. We were leading 7 to 3 at the end of the 4th inning when one of their guys ticked one off the bat and it rolled up the netting toward the back of the backstop. I was sitting on the end of our bench and I stood up and ran over and as the ball came on over the top of the backstop I was still running and in full motion I caught the ball as it came down, strolled out with it around the backstop and winged it back to our pitcher, hard. But it wasn’t accurate. It went far to his right, took a hard bounce by our shortstop who made a rather casual and effortless attempt to get it, then it rolled on out to Morrie Eddleman who’d already homered and doubled, and he got it neatly, winged it on back in on one bounce to our pitcher, Clars Thurman. Thurman got it and whirled a 3d strike past a guy 3 years older. We were going to win another, easy.

  It was then that I noticed Emil looking at me. He kept his eyes on me. He was over behind the backstop. I thought, well, here goes. I stood up and walked toward him. His brother Steve was standing right beside him but Steve was looking off elsewhere. I walked toward them. I walked around the end of the backstop and moved toward them. They both had these leather straps around their wrists. I walked up, Emil kept looking at me. I got about 3 feet away from him and stopped. He gave me the tiniest of a sneer and motioned me in. I stepped forward another foot. He still kept staring the steady stare. Then I stepped right up to him, although I think my eyes were closed, almost closed. But I did see his hand quietly lift from his side and his hand was cupped and it was his right hand and under it was a cigarette, I could see the smoke curling around, and he han
ded me the cigarette and there was some screaming about something that had happened in the baseball game and I felt the cigarette in my hand, and I gloved it, I covered it, and almost without notice, I’m sure nobody saw, I took a good drag, I sucked it in, inhaled, held it, lifted the cigarette back to him out of sight of all, then I stood and let the smoke out most quietly. Then I went back and sat at the end of the bench. I watched the rest of the game. We beat them good, 13 to 4, and they never came back again.

  A Day in the Life of an Adult Bookstore Clerk

  It was the usual type of adult bookstore: tip sheets, the Racing Form, the daily papers . . . Further, it was divided into three sections—the legit section with the regular magazines and non-porno paperbacks; the section you entered through the swinging door where the porno bits are housed; and the section that led from the porno section to the arcade room where you could see a quick dirty flick for a quarter. It cost 50 cents to get into the porno section but you were given a silver token which was applicable to a purchase.

  It was Marty’s first day on the job and he had the day shift. He stood on the raised platform that gave him full view of the porno room. He couldn’t see the arcade room.

  Well, it seemed a better job than the furniture factory. It was clean and it was quiet. You could look at the boulevard and see the cars going by, you could see people walking by. The yellow cabstand was just outside.

  It was 8:15 A.M. A guy around 35 in a yellow t-shirt and long sideburns walked in. Grey pants, long arms, black and white shoes, very pink clean face, large open blue eyes. He stood there and looked up at Marty.

  “You got anything without hair on the box?”

  “What?”

  “Young girls, man.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t read the stuff?”

  “I don’t read it.”

  “I gotta pay 50 cents and take my chances?”

  “That’s right.”

  The guy put the 50 cents up and Marty gave him the token and he walked through the swinging doors. There were already two other guys in there. 30 minutes passed. The guy in the yellow t-shirt came out.