Actually, as far as Randall was concerned, things hadn’t worked out badly. Stories about what had transpired had widely circulated by the time he returned to school on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and when the other kids saw the way he looked, he recognized their admiration. Even better, the teachers made no objection to his wearing sunglasses indoors, a privilege never before extended. But strangest of all was the immediate camaraderie extended him by the very boys who had thrashed him so mercilessly. He met several of them in the halls that first day in school, and they all grinned knowingly, as if to suggest that in their book he was all right. They had shared something and were from that day forward blood brothers. They would do to anyone who bothered him precisely what they had done to him.
No doubt a significant portion of their newfound respect was due to the fact that Randall had stubbornly refused to implicate anyone. When the principal called him in, he denied having been in a fight at all, explaining he was playing basketball and had inadvertently run into the bleachers. Though the principal didn’t believe this explanation, he was greatly relieved by it. He hated trouble, and it seemed that every time he took disciplinary action against a student, someone took disciplinary action against him. His tires were flattened, or an obscene suggestion was written on the hood of his car with shaving cream. Besides, at the moment the principal had real problems. Apparently a genuine maniac was on the loose. He had assaulted one of the boys on school property, injuring him badly, and the boy’s parents, two huge, pear-shaped people who smelled of perspiration and, unaccountably, lemon juice, were threatening a suit. So he accepted Randall’s improbable account.
Randall saw no reason not to be cheerful. Miraculously, he still had all his teeth, and his injuries had begun healing already. And it was difficult to hold much of a grudge against Boyer Burnhoffer, his tormentor, because he’d warned Randall for months that he was going to do it, and Randall himself had been prideful to assume that he could escape forever. Besides, the beating squared things all around, because he was no longer considered in arrears, the beating representing a kind of receipt for payment in full. Indeed Burnhoffer personally approved of this arrangement. Of late he’d been in more trouble than usual and knew that one more episode would land him back in reform school. He was resigned to returning one day but wasn’t looking forward to it or to the necessity of killing the person responsible for sending him there when he got out.
Randall wasn’t worried about being murdered by Boyer Burnhoffer, but the current misunderstanding about his rescuer did prey on the boy’s mind. Fortunately, the now notorious Wild Bill Gaffney had somehow vanished. No one in Mohawk had seen him for days and wild rumors had begun circulating. Among the adolescents of Nathan Littler Junior High, he had long been legendary, largely due to his mutant appearance and vocal peculiarities. But special notice was now taken by their parents, who had self-consciously looked the other way whenever they encountered Wild Bill on the street. Since the assault their daughters had told them about Wild Bill’s huge member, alternately compared to a rope and a garden hose, which someone had seen him use to water the side of the dumpster in the alley outside the Mohawk Grill. How many times the good people of Mohawk had passed him without suspecting how dangerous he was, never considering that he might be more than a simple retard. It was frightening. Several junior-high boys to whom Bill had made gifts of condoms now remembered and confessed, pulling them and their disintegrating plastic wrappers out of the secret compartments in their wallets where they had long awaited the right circumstances. The citizens of Mohawk could not have hunted more enthusiastically if they’d been on the trail of Jack the Ripper.
Very few people knew what really happened the day Wild Bill Gaffney came to Randall Younger’s rescue. Anyway, it was far more pleasantly chilling to think of Wild Bill Gaffney as a maniac and consequently the stories that began to circulate about him were increasingly colorful and imaginative. Soon the switchboard at city hall began to light up, everyone wanting to know what was being done to make the streets of Mohawk safe again. Some callers were Wild Bill’s classmates many years ago, and they remembered him, now that they stopped to think, as never having been exactly right. For years he had been drinking the contaminated water of the Cayuga Creek, which had given him brain cancer. The whole town was on the lookout, conventional wisdom being that a man with a brain half-eaten away with contamination couldn’t outsmart the constabulary and citizenry of Mohawk County for more than a few days. He’d turn up, all right.
When he didn’t, the topic of conversation turned to what would happen to him when he did. At the junior high there was considerable speculation. Boyer Burnhoffer advanced a theory that wires would be hooked up to Wild Bill’s head and then, Zzzzzt! Boyer demonstrated graphically, his knees and arms quivering, his jaw slack. “I don’t see what good that would do,” someone said. Boyer didn’t know either, only that it was done. “It sure makes your pecker stand up,” he observed. He’d been given a shock treatment once in reform school, and this unexpected effect had lingered in his memory.
The more Randall listened, the more uneasy he became. When school let out on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, he had a knot in his stomach the size of a fist. Though he tried everything he could think of to ignore his gnawing conscience, nothing worked. He told himself that Wild Bill hadn’t really rescued him. Burnhoffer was nearly finished rubbing his face in the gravel when Wild Bill showed up. Everyone said he was crazy, and there were reasons to think so. Hadn’t he forced the gift of a condom on Randall, a perfect stranger? Hadn’t he done the same with half the young boys in Mohawk, as it now turned out? It was one thing to go out on a limb for a friend, but Randall couldn’t see the advantage of doing so for the likes of Wild Bill. And in the long run the poor man would probably be happier where there were no kids to make fun of him. That night after dinner he decided he would sidle up to the subject with his grandfather, who always had pretty good advice when it came to thorny problems.
He found Mather Grouse seated in his favorite armchair in the living room, his face behind a book. Mrs. Grouse hummed quietly over the remains of the dishes. Once she finished this chore, she would take off and rinse out her stockings, hanging them to dry over the edge of the tub. When the bathroom door closed behind her, Randall opened the proceedings. He thought it best to keep things relatively abstract, at least at first. When his grandfather was reading, it was sometimes possible to carry on an entire conversation without his looking up from the page. He hoped this would be the case, for Mather Grouse had a penetrating gaze that Randall feared would pierce his heart, especially in its present swollen condition. “Is there any good way to know what’s the right thing to do,” he asked.
Mather Grouse immediately lowered his book a few inches and peered over the top at his grandson. Randall wasn’t sure from this immediate reaction whether his question was very good or extremely silly. He anticipated a long involved answer full of qualifications, but again Mather Grouse surprised him. “No,” his grandfather said with such conviction that Randall suspected that the single word might represent the end of the conversation. “Of ourse, you could always ask yourself what you want to do and then do the opposite, but even that isn’t one hundred percent reliable because every now and then people actually want to do the right thing. I don’t know why.”
“How do you decide?”
“I forget. It’s been so long since I’ve had a decision to make about anything important. Mostly I just try not to upset your grandmother.”
“Were you ever scared to do what you thought was right?”
Mather Grouse frowned and found his bookmark. It looked like he might find it necessary to put the book down. “Yes,” he said. “Many times.”
“But you did the right thing anyway?”
“Sometimes. Not always.”
“Can you tell me about one of the times you didn’t?”
“No. I will not.”
Randall nodded. He always understood his gran
dfather and wondered if that was why he loved him especially. The boy took a deep breath. “Have you ever seen the man who is always wandering around downtown? They call him Wild Bill?”
Mather Grouse started imperceptibly at the name and stared at his grandson as if he suspected the boy of clairvoyance. “His name is William Gaffney.”
Randall nodded. “If you thought something bad might happen to somebody like that, on account of something that wasn’t his fault, would you do something, even if it maybe meant trouble for yourself?”
Mather Grouse did not answer right away. His slender fingers tapped the scrolled, worn arms of his reading chair as if they were hitting notes on an imaginary keyboard. “It would be good,” he said finally, “if you could help a William Gaffney. But there are many William Gaffneys and there is little that can be done for them. They can be given food or warm clothing or medicine, but the time is past for the William Gaffneys. Once somebody might’ve done something, and nobody did. But that should not be a burden upon you. I don’t think you could do anything for a William Gaffney now. I doubt anyone could.”
“Then it wouldn’t be too bad if you didn’t try?”
“It would probably be no good either way.”
Randall went to bed early that night, but he remained awake long after his mother locked up the house and turned off all the lights. The house and street were silent, and there was no way the boy could’ve known that his grandfather lay awake a floor below and that Wild Bill Gaffney was also the subject of Mather Grouse’s thoughts. Any more than he could’ve known that Mather Grouse would have to get out of bed and down on all fours, the cold seeping up through his palms and pajama knees until he was as icy as the hardwood floor he knelt upon, his ragged breathing tugging at him like some insistent beast.
17
Thanksgiving dawns gray and cold in Mohawk. Even Kings Road looks bleak, its tall skeleton oaks black as stumps after a forest fire, its groomed hedges stripped, looking like piles of balanced sticks. The golf course is deserted, the flag on the eighth green beside the Wood home flapping briefly before falling limp again. Diana Wood has prepared a turkey to place in the oven for the midafternoon meal, a huge bird that will take a very long time to cook. Diana cannot imagine how she and her mother and husband—none of them big eaters—will be able to make much of a dent in the animal. Already she knows that today will be one of her mother’s bad days.
At eight-thirty, Milly cannot decide whether she will get up or not. She is cross with her sister’s husband because Mather Grouse has vetoed Milly’s suggestion that the two families celebrate the holiday together at the Wood home. It infuriates her that there should be so few means at her disposal to implement her will. Instead of getting people to do what she wants them to, she often has to satisfy herself with making them wish they had, and this constitutes a cruel diminution of power. Of course Mather Grouse has always been a tough nut to crack, always so insular and self-sufficient. No doubt her sister torments him for being so obstinate, but he will allow himself to be badgered only so far before calling a halt to it. The only way Milly can think of to get back at him is to have her daughter Diana rush her to the hospital. Her feet are swollen and she knows that if she complains of pain, her daughter will take her in at once. The flaw in this plan is that, once there, Diana will prove considerate and refuse to inform the Grouses until certain they’ve completed their holiday meal. She might not call at all, unless the situation is an obvious emergency, and Milly herself is doubtful she can parlay her swollen feet into a true crisis. The alternative to the hospital is to remain in bed and watch the parade on her portable set. Later she can always refuse to eat when Diana brings in the tray. That wouldn’t be getting back at Mather Grouse exactly, but it would make her opinion known. A species of retribution, even if imprecisely focused. Milly wishes she weren’t hungry.
“How about handing me my coat?” Dan says when his wife glides in from the kitchen.
Diana frowns. “It’s cold out. Why don’t you relax and watch the parade?”
“I’m feeling blue. The Rockettes can only make it worse.”
Diana ignores him, listening. “Is that Mother again?” Theirs is a large house and her mother’s room is at the other end. The old woman is capable of making herself heard, but she prefers to call feebly so that she can relate to her daughter how many pleas she made before anyone bothered to heed them.
“Take a pillow and smother her, will you?”
“That’s not funny, even in joking.”
“You’re absolutely right. I’d never joke about such a thing.”
Diana stops to think. Despite long years under the same roof, she has never sufficiently understood her husband’s humor to feel confident about responding to it. What angers her is that he uses it to distance himself from her. She pulls his windbreaker from the closet and tosses it at him. “I’m sorry I’m no Rockette.”
Dan realizes he has somehow contrived to hurt her feelings, that maybe he intended to. “What’s the matter, sweet?”
Diana shrugs. “I’m sorry. I thought that was your point.”
“Come here,” he says, reaching for her hand. But Milly calls again, this time more audibly, and Diana turns away. On impulse he grabs a blue-green decorator pillow and flings it the length of the hall in pursuit of his wife; it lands at her feet. “You forgot something.”
Dan Wood struggles into his windbreaker and wheels outside. The pool, now drained, is a gaping concrete maw in the center of his backyard, a few brittle leaves stirring near the drain. He watches them energetically dance and swirl up the turquoise sides of the pool before sliding back down to await another gust. It occurs to him that he had allowed himself to get more keyed up over the operation than he should’ve. The resulting disappointment was as slow and subtle in coming as the realization that, yes, once again he’d somehow gotten his hopes up. His grip on reality had always been a point of pride with him, and he felt a little like a backsliding AA member for losing that grip. Hope was a luxury he could not afford—a cruelty, really.
He didn’t need anyone to tell him what the problem was. He hadn’t even seriously considered further operations until Anne’s return to Mohawk. But seeing her again had recalled him from the comforting numbness that had made life bearable. Naturally, she didn’t realize this. She was too kind to steal the anesthetic knowingly, and he couldn’t think of a way to explain to her, even if he wanted to. And he didn’t want to, not really. Even pain was preferable to numbness, at least for a while, and hope, once indulged, was only as delicious as it was short-lived.
He should’ve realized that it would be dangerous. From the beginning, everything about Anne had been risk. She had always seemed to him to be deep-down wild, the wilder because she harnessed that wildness most of the time. Never wantonly playing the part of temptress, she, nevertheless, remained his personal temptation. “I will never say I don’t love you,” she once told him. “I’ll be as circumspect as you need me to be. We won’t talk about what you want to avoid. But I will love you and go on loving you, and you’ll have to live with that much, whether it embarrasses you or not.”
In the beginning he had not believed she could be so circumspect. Neither Diana nor anyone else could have inferred anything between them from her behavior. Ironically, there were times when Diana probably suspected that her husband was partly in love with Anne, but only because Anne was so lovely that any sensible man would be in love with her, at least a little.
There was no way to know if Diana resented her cousin, no way to read what Diana wanted to remain a closed text. It was perhaps the oddest thing about his wife that she could be so open about her delights yet so secretive about her wounds, always retreating into some dark inner place to nurse herself back to health rather than admit to having been injured or reveal the scar. At her center was a code, something formulated when she was so young that the reason for it was long forgotten, a code that governed her most intimate thoughts and behavior and made her so fu
ndamentally decent that she could never be otherwise. If Dan both admired and regretted any single quality in his wife, it was this profound spiritual stability.
And perhaps it was its lack in Anne Grouse that qualified her as his personal temptress. At her center was not law but profound lawlessness. Its initial revelation had left him stunned, excited, afraid—because it corresponded to something he had long suspected in himself. Her physical beauty seemed to him an expression of this inner wildness and was perhaps the reason Anne had changed so little since the night he had returned through the black woods to the lakeshore, moving quietly, holding his breath, until he stumbled over Dallas, passed out in his own mess, and finally found Anne, drying herself in the sliver of moon. She alone had remained unchanged throughout the years, when he himself had been reduced and Diana had been worn away by the friction of nearly constant giving. Even Dallas seemed diminished, as the already narrow circle of his experience and desire had tightened around him. But neither time nor childbirth nor disappointment seemed to have touched Anne, whose daily existence, the undeniable reality of it, seemed unconnected to that inner life, which remained as feral and hopeful as ever.
He had stayed away as long as he could, as if the length of time she required to seduce him might prove important later on, proof that he had not been utterly reckless. Since that night at the lake when they had kissed and each had felt the flush of excited confession—yes, I do love you, I’ve loved you from the start, as you know, as you must’ve known—he had not seen her for days nor called nor written. Then, on Friday, Diana had come down with a severe cold, and when Dan went to see Dallas, he found him at the garage with the thousand or so parts of his Chevrolet laid out before him on the floor, glistening, promissory.
Dallas himself hadn’t seen Anne in the week following his disgrace. For two days he didn’t see anyone, didn’t stir from the sofa where Dan had deposited him, didn’t go to work or even to the telephone. Now he was better physically, though still sick at heart. “To hell with her. She doesn’t love me.”