Americana

  I went out on the porch. It was only ten o’clock but it was already as hot as three in the afternoon. Jane came out and remembered that when we were younger we used to sit on the porch together and try to guess what kind of automobile would pass the house next. She remembered that she had once guessed three Buicks in a row and had been right every time. But it was Mary who had guessed the three Buicks in a row. I didn’t mention this to Jane.

  I walked down to the lake. There were swings and sliding ponds beneath the trees. I sat at the edge of one of the sliding ponds and watched little kids splashing in the shallow water and older boys and girls pushing each other off the white raft. The boys had white lotion on their noses and two girls sat on the raft with their backs to the sun and the straps of their bathing suits untied and hanging over their breasts. I turned and saw a small girl standing on the top step of the sliding pond. I moved out of the way and she bounced down the metal ramp slowly and clumsily. I didn’t feel like swimming or watching other people swim so I walked over to Ridge Street and bought a magazine in the drugstore. The store had a wooden floor and a soda fountain. I was in one of those lonely moods which come over sixteen-year-olds when it occurs to them that in other parts of the world young men are hunting condors on high white crags and making love to whispering women who were born in Singapore. In its lonely way this is the most romantic of moods. You go for long walks that are like episodes in French novels. You feel that some great encounter is about to take place, something that will change the course of your life. Some old gardener will take you into an attic room, play the violin as it has never been played before and tell you the secret of existence. A dark woman will draw alongside in a new convertible and then lean over, without a word, and open the door for you; she will drive you to Mexico and undress you very slowly. It was a baseball magazine. I went home to read it on the porch. Some people waved at me from a car. It was very hot and nothing moved now. My father came out.

  “What time’s the party?” I said.

  “Starts at eight.”

  “Do you think I’ll have to get dressed?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I hope it cools off tonight.”

  He went back in. In a little while my mother came out.

  “You’ll have to get dressed,” she said. “Make no mistake about that.”

  She went inside and I read another article in the magazine. Then I went inside. My mother was in the kitchen looking at a tray of French pastries. I sat in the living room. There was a feeling of density in the air. Tides of light came through the windows, pulsing with dust. I was sitting in my mother’s chair, a big green rocker. At my feet was a sewing basket. Is this how people die, I thought. My right arm was extended along the armrest, on the tight floral fabric, hand curled over the ornamental woodwork, a rounded section of rich mahogany in the shape of a lion’s paw. My left arm hung loosely over the side of the chair. My feet were crossed at the ankles. I was wearing brown loafers, white socks, dungarees and an old navy-blue sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off about four-fifths of the way up the arm. I was not rocking. My mood had changed from lonely wanderlust to an odd European species of nothingness. I felt I could sit there forever, suffering. It seemed a valuable thing to do. Sit still for years on end and eventually things will begin to revolve around you, ideas and people and wars, depending for their folly and brilliance on that source of light which is human inertia. If you stay in one spot long enough, generals and statesmen will come to you and ask for your opinion. Maybe it wasn’t European as much as Asian or North African. But it seemed European too, Russian at any rate, sitting in exile through long wolf-lean winters as governments fell and men made fools of themselves. Then finally a knock on the door. Word has reached us that you have been sitting here doing nothing. You must be a very wise man. Come to the capital and help us sort things out.

  I sat in my mother’s chair thinking of these things, more or less, and testing myself by trying not to blink. Then I heard a sound and when it grew louder I could guess what it was, motorcycles, a low throttling growl from that distance but coming closer now, rumbling and cracking, and I knew there would be more than two or three. I went to the window and then they came down the street with a sound that seemed to rip and sunder beneath the tires themselves, cracking off into smaller sounds which were then snapped apart by the next set of wheels and the next, and I counted ten, now twelve bikes, the riders screaming something as they went, eighteen now, an even twenty, dressed in silver and black, the colors of their bikes, and they went past screaming into the sounds of their machines, shouting a curse or warning over the empty lawns. They were gone in seconds and it was as though a hurricane or plague had struck the town. We were all in one piece. But now, as silence began to fill in the holes left by those marauding bikes, I could almost feel every man and woman in town looking from windows down that street and experiencing a strange mixture of longing and terror. We were all in one piece. But we were not quite the same people we had been ten seconds before.

  We had cold cuts for lunch. On the radio Mel Allen was describing a nip and tuck ball game, the first of two, and he was saying there’s plenty of room out here, folks; you can see the remainder of this game and all of the next; so why don’t you come on out and bring the family. Then Jane began to talk about a course she was taking in the primitive religions of the world. It was given two nights a week at the YWCA in a nearby community. The Algonquin Indians heard dead men chirp like crickets. Fijian priests used to stare endlessly at a whale’s tooth and then have convulsions. In funeral services in Fiji, the major part of the ceremony was to strangle the dead man’s wives, friends and slaves. Jane went upstairs then to get her notebook. We ate in silence. She returned a minute later. Eisenhower was on the radio now with a brief recorded announcement in which he urged people to support their local community chest. The Chinese make a hole in the roof to let out the soul at death. When a Watchandi warrior slew his first victim, the spirit of the dead man entered the warrior’s body and became his woorie, or warning spirit; it resided near his liver and warned him of danger by scratching or tickling. It was the custom of the Aztecs to pour the blood of slaughtered victims into the mouths of idols. A Mandingo priest would hold a newborn child in his arms, whisper in its ear and spit three times in its face. The Ojibwas believed that hatchets and kettles have souls. A saying of the Zulus was that the stuffed body cannot see secret things. The Zulu doctor prepared himself for dialogue with the spirits by fasting, suffering and long quiet walks. The Yakuts of Siberia worshipped the bear, their beloved uncle. According to the Dayaks, the human soul enters the trunks of trees. Evil spirits had sexual congress with Samoan women at night, causing supernatural conceptions. The Nicaraguans offered human sacrifices to Popogatepec by tossing bodies into volcanic craters. The Ahts of Vancouver’s Island considered the moon as husband and the sun as wife. The Mintira people feared a water-demon which had a dog’s head and an alligator’s mouth. It sucked blood from men’s thumbs and big toes until they died. To the Assyrians, insanity was possession by demons. When a Kayan of Borneo died, his slaves were killed so that they could follow him to the next world and obey all his behests. First the female relatives of the deceased master wounded the slaves slightly with spears. Then the male relatives took up these same spears and killed the victims. The human soul weighs three to four ounces.

  “All that cruelty and superstition,” my mother said.

  “Life was cheap in those days, Ann.”

  “Who were all those people?” she said. “Think of them all, living in caves and huts. Back to the dawn of time. Worshipping bears and monkeys. Millions of souls. How insignificant they seem.”

  “I know what you mean,” my father said. “It’s almost impossible to conceive of all those people killing each other and praying to the sun. It makes you think that what you do in your life doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. Why should we be any more significant than those primitives?”

  “But we ar
e, Clinton.”

  “Those are good notes, Jane,” I said.

  “I take them down in shorthand and then copy them out later,” she said. “It’s the best way to do it.”

  “It’s incredible,” my father said. “The way they disregarded human life. But still they were men and women. We’re sitting here on a Sunday afternoon eating lunch and listening to the ball game. Those people couldn’t be more remote. And yet they were men and women. They believed in something.”

  “The more magical a race is,” my mother said, “the less significant the individual is. Magic overwhelms everything. We in the West value human life almost desperately because we have no magic.”

  “God is magic,” Jane said.

  “No. God is the opposite of magic. I’ve talked to William Potter about this. The subject is foreign to him. We all have magic in us, some more than others, but everything we’ve been taught tends to bury the magic. Consider what we’re eating, Clinton. The body of an animal. What could be more primitive?”

  “But we don’t worship the animal,” I said.

  “Only because God took human form. What if He had decided to visit earth in the guise of a lion? The primitives seem insignificant to us because they’re so remote in time and creed, as your father says, but also because they were so insignificant to each other. That was magic. Magic made them less important than the animals or planets they worshipped. They were not so far from the mark really. I hold with magic. I’m not sure whether it’s good or evil. But I know it’s there.”

  “That’s good, Ann,” my father said. “That’s extremely interesting.”

  There was nothing to do. All afternoon I sat on the porch, motionless, thinking of the wet bodies of women. It was getting hotter. The stillness was almost absolute. There was a taste of water in the air, warm salt biting the lips. I felt heavy. I wished it would rain. Is this how people die, watching along the street for some sign that will tell them the moment is here, at last, rise up and act, the time is upon us, quickly, into the streets, now, grenades and motorcycles, a warning word, salt on the wet bodies of women. Dr. Weber walked down the street. He was a short man with a mustache. The machete is a most effective weapon, doctor. You are surprised that I speak your language? Harvard. Class of ‘34. He was carrying his bag. He wore a dark suit. There was a gravy stain on his shirtfront. I waited for him to look toward the porch and give me that yellow smile which doctors and dentists employ so often, a clenched wry smile as the money changes hands, and when he did I turned away and yawned. Practitioner. Oath-taker. I rode out the afternoon on that yawn.

  Later, from the window of my room, I watched them arrive for the party. The Old Holly people came mostly on foot. Those from nearby suburbs or from the city, my father’s crowd, arrived in cars or took the cab from the station. There was no particular reason for the party but in a way it was something of a debut for me. It was judged that I was old enough now to partake in adult games, presumably on the fringe of things, nursing a tall cool rum collins (or something to that effect) while everyone admired my preppy manners and told me how much I had grown. Between forty and fifty people would be coming. It had been arranged—this I learned from Jane—that a couple named Loomis would be bringing along their daughter Amy, who was my age. Jane herself had invited her current boyfriend, John Retley Tucker, who was Big Bob Davidson’s immediate predecessor in virtually every sense of the word. I called him Sweatley Retley. Mary had not been told about the party because nobody knew where she was.

  They arrived with the setting of the sun—the Smiths, Bradshaws, Morgans, Hills, Rayburns, Gossages, Peppers, Stevensons, Halidays, Torgesons, Bakers, Hunters, Taylors, Colliers, Barbers and Fishers. Andrew Alexander drove up in his claret-colored Packard, a vintage model which was said to have been owned at one time by Al Capone or F. Scott Fitzgerald, depending on who was telling the story. William Judge and his wife looked up and saw me. I returned their wave and snapped into a midshipman smile, properly wholesome and humble. August Riddle strolled across the lawn. He was the town’s crusty old lawyer, reputed to know more about deeds and mortgages than any man in the county. He was a bachelor. His office was suitably cluttered and he was always drinking black coffee and smoking long thin cigars. Mary and I had decided some time ago that Lee J. Cobb or Paul Muni would star in his film biography. He poked his cigar in my direction. The evening was warm and still. I saw a hawk. No sign of rain.

  I put on a suit, white shirt and tie. I went downstairs and into the kitchen. The maid, Justina Simpson, who came in four days a week, had been joined for the party by her daughter Mae and her son-in-law Buford Long, who would be serving as bartender. I watched Buford set things up and I decided that tending bar might be a pretty good way to spend one’s life. Spanking down big foaming steins of beer to be encircled by the huge skeet-shooting hands of virile novelists. Rattling the cocktail shaker and doing a little samba step for the amusement of the ladies. To be an expert at something. I asked Buford how he liked tending bar and he said the ice made his knuckles cold and sent weird shooting pains up to his head. My mother looked in then and urged me to make an appearance. I stayed for a moment longer and watched Mae carving turkey. She wore a white uniform. She wasn’t wearing a slip and I could see the shadow of the inside of her thighs through the sheer white cotton. I went into the living room.

  “Why, you’re taller than Clyde,” Mrs. Hunter said.

  The Gossages felt me up, Henry and Lucy, and I spoke with Justin Hill about the Southeast Conference versus the Big Ten. My father had his arm around me for a few minutes. We were talking with Claire Collier, a tall good-looking woman. We were all talking simultaneously. I went over to the Rayburns and Taylors and said all the same things I had just said to Mrs. Collier. My mother usually referred to Mrs. Collier as “the Collier woman.” This seemed to imply some distant scandal. I was aware that Amy Loomis and I, who had been at opposite ends of the room, were slowly approaching a confrontation. It was as though all the energies broadcast from the bodies of those forty adults were impelling us toward each other. Amy was tiny. She was talking with Andrew Alexander, who kept patting his own head. My mother had my elbow in her hand and then she was introducing me to Amy, pinching my elbow during the brief silences and letting up as soon as I said something. Amy and I were alone.

  “Do you know Jim Gibson?” she said.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “He’s got a green catamaran called Belleweather?”

  “What’s his name again?”

  “Jim Gibson.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “That cat really flies.”

  “I’d like to get one myself. They really go.”

  “Do you know Marty Hammer?” she said.

  “It sounds familiar.”

  “His father’s got a yawl? He gave Marty carte blanche with the yawl for his sixteenth birthday? It’s something like fifty-five feet?”

  “No, that’s not the one I’m thinking of. Does he have a brother named Frank?”

  “No.”

  “Then that’s not the one,” I said.

  “Do you know Tim Lerner?”

  “Didn’t he drown in Peconic Bay last summer?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Do you know Billy Shaw?”

  “I know two Billy Shaws,” she said.

  People were filling plates with sliced ham and turkey and trying to eat standing up. It was very warm in the room. The Gossages joined us. Henry rubbed my shoulder. Lucy Gossage held my hand as she talked to Amy. Mrs. Loomis came over with Tod Morgan and asked how we were doing. Lucy Gossage held my hand up near her breast and kept caressing it with her other hand. Ray Smith came over and went into the boxing routine he always used when we met. Head tucked down on his left shoulder, he threw some mock lefts and rights at my belly, snorting with each punch. Then there was a brief lull and we heard Mrs. Loomis telling Amy to smile once in a while. Then we all started talking. Jane stopped by and introduced
her boyfriend to everyone. Tod Morgan handed me what he called a real drink. It was scotch and water. It made me very warm and I didn’t like the taste much. But I seemed to be having a good time. They were nice people. They had no scars or broken noses. They dressed more or less the same. They talked the same way and said the same things and I didn’t know how dull they were or that they were more or less interchangeable. I was one of them, after all. I was not a stranger among them and I liked their hands on my body.

  “Did anyone see those motorcycles today?” Tod Morgan said.

  The Collier woman and I stood by the fireplace drinking. I assumed a clubby slouch. Then Lucy Gossage had her arm around me and her husband, Henry, was whispering a dirty joke in my ear. I had trouble picking up his words. Soon he started laughing and I knew the joke was over. We both stood there laughing. Henry looked right into my face, searching for genuine appreciation, wanting to be sure I understood the point of the story. I kept nodding and laughing. When he was satisfied he went away.

  August Riddle had a teardrop of flesh on each sagging jowl. I watched him. Amy was talking to me about somebody named Bobby Springer’s Austin Healey. Mr. Riddle was talking with the Stevensons. He lit his cigar and then waved out the match with a circular flourish. He dropped the match on the floor. Mae carried a platter of pineapple rings into the room. I tried to catch her eye so I could smile at her. Amy was talking into my chest. It was all settled as far as she was concerned. It was between Wellesley and Bryn Mawr. She had red hair and big green eyes. I imagined being in bed with her and her mother. Amy was drinking the champagne punch. Nobody seemed drunk yet. I asked her if she wanted to go out on the porch where it would be cooler and she said no. Just plain no. There was a terrible silence then which made me nervous and I found myself asking her if she knew by any chance how the Yankees had made out in the second game. My father came over and shook my hand for some reason. Then he was gone. Andrew Alexander was talking to Amy. You young people, he kept saying. You young people. He patted his own head. He couldn’t have been trying to keep his hair in place, for it was cut short and it was thick and firm. Every time he patted, his eyeballs rolled up. He and Amy were discussing the color beige. I watched his eyeballs slide up and down. He asked if Amy and I were engaged. I excused myself then and went into the kitchen to watch Buford Long mix drinks. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Pouring club soda with his right hand, he took a matchbook out of his breast pocket with the other hand, flipped up the cover with his thumb and, using his index finger and his thumb again, bent a match at its middle and struck it. I liked the way he did that. I had never seen anyone do that before. I also liked the fact that he was left-handed. Left-handed people seem to do things with more style. I’ve always envied them. Warren Spahn the stylish southpaw.