Читать книгу Kings Row - Henry Bellamann - Страница 21
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Оглавление“I wish I had something to do!”
It was a plaint heard frequently from Parris these days.
“Why don’t you go to see your friends sometimes?” It did not occur to Madame von Eln that he missed school.
Parris seldom replied to this. The truth was that he felt like an outsider when he saw other boys, and he saw that they felt the same way. All except Drake McHugh, who was always the same, and—and Jamie Wakefield. It was odd, he realized, how his mind always seemed to stumble when he thought of Jamie Wakefield—just as though he didn’t really want to think about him. He tried hard to think just what it was, as he had tried before, but he couldn’t make up his mind—not quite. He liked Jamie. Yes; he was sure about that. But why was he always a little embarrassed about it? The other boys didn’t seem to dislike Jamie—they, well, they merely seemed to push him aside somewhat. They called him girly names. Certainly, he was girlish, but he was really all right. Anyway, he thought a bit ruefully, Jamie was actually the only one who wanted to be his friend.
One evening Parris stayed in town rather late. He liked the streets at evening; and the strange look of familiar places in the changing light gave him a sense of adventure.
He was walking slowly up Walnut Street trying to make up his mind to go home. This was supper hour in Kings Row, and the streets were deserted. He walked more slowly. Might as well go home, he decided.
Upper Walnut Street was without a sidewalk, and a wide path of fine white dust took its place. Parris kicked little puffs ahead of him as he wavered from side to side.
“Hello, Parris.”
Jamie Wakefield’s slightly muffled voice startled him.
“Oh, I didn’t hear you coming. Hello.”
Jamie was a little out of breath. “Where you going?”
“Nowhere. Home, I guess.”
“What for?”
“No place else to go, I guess.”
“Let’s walk a while.”
“Looks like that’s what we are doing.”
“Aw, Parris.”
Parris looked at Jamie with a little surprise. Jamie seemed so—so anxious about something.
“What’s the matter, Jamie?”
“Nothing. I just wish you wouldn’t go home yet.”
“All right. What let’s do?”
Jamie’s face flushed. More like a girl than ever, Parris thought.
“Let’s walk over to the college campus. It’s pretty over there.”
“Kind of dark and lonesome at night, though.”
“It’s not night yet. Besides, there is a full moon. It’ll be coming up later.”
“All right.”
Parris felt a bit puzzled. Jamie seemed so ridiculously happy over nothing. He chattered all the way out to the Aberdeen campus. Parris could hardly put in a word, but he was pleased somehow. He was glad to be with Jamie—grateful that Jamie wanted to be with him. Jamie’s fluent color came and went with the excitement of his talk, and Parris found himself more interested in Jamie’s face than in what he said.
Goodness, he thought, he is good-looking. He’s prettier than Cassie Tower. And then some small sense of trouble came over him. The way Jamie walked, almost sideways, looking up as he talked, reminded him of Renée.
Jamie saw the slight change of expression in Parris’ face. “What’s the matter?”
“With me? Nothing. Why?”
“You looked sort of funny—just for a second.”
“Nothing’s the matter with me.” He threw his arm across Jamie’s shoulder in a sudden rush of warmth. Very shyly Jamie put his arm around Parris, and they walked slowly through the deep grass, thrusting the fall of yellow leaves aside and leaving a dark trail behind them as they went.
They came out on a broad walk that stretched along the edge of a steep decline.
“Sunset Walk,” said Jamie.
“Is that the name of it? This walk?”
“That’s what I call it. I just named it myself.”
“Oh! I thought I never had heard it called that. It’s pretty up here, though.”
“It’s beautiful. I—I come here lots of times.”
“What for?”
“To see the sunsets.”
“That’s a funny thing to do. Can’t you see the sunset anywhere?”
“Not good. You can see all around the country from here. It’s beautiful. You come up here with me sometime—I’ll show you.”
“All right.”
“Let’s sit down here.” Jamie veered toward a low wooden bench. His voice sounded suddenly husky as he spoke. That breathless quality struck Parris as being a little odd—and familiar. It reminded him of something, he couldn’t recall just what, but something troubling and unhappy. What was it?
Jamie snuggled close, and Parris stretched his arm along the back of the bench.
“Seems cold when you sit down, doesn’t it?”
Parris didn’t answer. He was still trying to remember something.
“Doesn’t it, Parris?”
“Eh? Oh, yes, a little. Not much.”
They sat for a while without talking.
“Look!” Jamie pointed to a faraway house that stood on the very crest of the long western rise. It stood sharp and white against the stained-glass blue of the sky.
“The moon’s coming up back of us.” Jamie almost whispered the words. “It catches that house first thing. Look, Parris, it’s like a wonderful enchanted country. I guess Italy must look like that—you know, with white villas and all.”
It was not yet dark, but a deep stillness seemed to settle over the world. Both boys began to talk in half-hushed voices.
Jamie took Parris’ hand between his own. Parris was slightly embarrassed again, but the gesture was rather warming. Jamie certainly had curious ways. He couldn’t imagine holding hands with Drake McHugh, for instance, or Willy Macintosh. The thought increased his discomfort, but the feeling passed. He decided that maybe he liked Jamie’s ways, after all. Jamie was just different, but he was all right.
“You know what I want to be, Parris?”
“What?”
“A poet!”
“A poet?”
Jamie nodded, rubbing his head against Parris’ shoulder.
Parris considered this idea for a moment. “Well, but Jamie—how do you get to be a poet?”
“You write poetry.”
“Can you write poetry?”
Jamie nodded again, more shyly.
“How did you learn?”
Jamie sat up and a little quiver of excitement came into his voice.
“Listen, Parris, do you know Bob Callicott?”
“You mean Mr. Callicott that’s an editor, or something in The Gazette office?”
“Yes, Mr. R. E. Callicott, he’s the one. I—he lets me call him Bob, though.”
Parris was a little astonished at this. Jamie spoke quickly. The huskiness was gone from his voice now. “Haven’t you ever seen the poems he prints in The Gazette—most every week?”
“I guess I’ve seen them. I never did read any of them, though.”
“You’ve got to read them, Parris. They’re beautiful.”
“You mean they’re sure-enough poetry—like Shakespeare—and Milton?”
“I guess they’re not much like Shakespeare, or Milton, but they’re good. They’re different.” Jamie hesitated. “They’re lyric poems.”
“Say, you know all about poetry, don’t you? What’s lyric poetry?”
“Well, I can show you some. I’ve got a whole book. They’re short, not like long plays—and things.”
“Well, ain’t—isn’t it awfully hard to think up rhymes and all those things?”
“Not as hard as meter.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t you know what meter is? It’s the way you count the feet—I mean, you got to have so many syllables and accents in a line.”
“Sa-ay. Jamie! Do you mean that the poets, Shakespeare and all of them, had to count up how many words, or syllables, or whatever it is, they put in every line?”
“Of course they did. And there are a whole lot of different kinds of meter with different accents.”
“Is it like time in music?”
“It’s just exactly like it.”
“It sounds like it would be hard to do!”
“Sometimes it is. Well, what I started to say a while ago was that Bob Callicott helps me. He told me all about meter and stanzas and how you scan—”
“Scan?”
Jamie shrugged impatiently. “How to count feet and accents. Don’t your tutors teach you anything? I think Bob is a fine poet. It’s just that nobody appreciates him. He thinks it’s the greatest thing in the world to be a poet.”
Parris nodded gravely.
“And I do, too,” Jamie added. “Say, you know he plays the violin. Why don’t you come along with me to his house sometime? You could play accompaniments.”
“All right. I guess I’d like to.” Parris spoke with a sudden enthusiasm. “Yes, I would like to. But listen, Jamie, will your father let you be a poet?”
Jamie sank back. “That’s going to be the trouble, I expect. He keeps saying I got to go to work in the bank when I get through school and college and everything.”
“Can’t you work in the bank and be a poet, too?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to work in the bank.”
“Oh!”
“What are you going to be, Parris?”
“A doctor, I guess.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“Do you think so?”
“Don’t you? Don’t you want to be?”
“I don’t know. I guess so. You have to be something.”
Jamie sat up again. “Let’s always be good friends, Parris, and tell each other how we feel about everything.”
Parris smiled. Jamie was really very nice. “All right.”
“Will you, honestly?”
“Of course.”
“I think friendship is a wonderful thing, don’t you?”
“Why—I guess so. I guess I never did think much about it.”
“Gee, Parris!”
Jamie’s face wore a rapt look. Parris thought again that Jamie was better-looking than anyone he knew. He was like velvet.
Parris slipped forward and leaned his head on the back of the bench. He felt lazy and comfortable. He was going to like Jamie a whole lot better than he ever had. He knew that.
They sat for a long time without speaking. Jamie unfastened Parris’ wristband and slipped his hand into the sleeve. Parris was a little startled by the sensation. Jamie had strange hands—small, and plump for so slight a boy. His fingers left a tingle where they touched. But Parris felt puzzled about something, he didn’t know just what. He kept trying to think his way through entangling and conflicting ideas, when—without warning—Jamie leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. Parris was too amazed to move, too amazed to think. He felt as if a gust of flame swept him from head to foot. He was not too clearly aware of anything for a while except Jamie’s caresses and his flattering hands which carried both violence and appeasement in their touch.
Finally he pushed Jamie away and stood up.
“Come on, let’s go.”
“Aw, why, Parris?”
“I’ve got to go home.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you want to go home?”
“Yes.”
Jamie did not reply to this. Parris could feel a hurt in the silence.
“Parris!” Jamie’s voice was husky again.
“What?”
“Are you mad at me?”
Parris swallowed hard. Something rushed at his brain out of the nerveless warmth and strengthlessness that had enveloped him and all of his senses as in a sleepy haze. That phrase! “Are you mad at me?” He could hear himself saying it—that terrible, terrible afternoon. He sat down quickly on the bench, glad that Jamie couldn’t see that he was about to cry.
This ... this ... no, he didn’t want to think about it. In spite of all that happened to Renée and to himself following discovery, he could never feel sorry for the happening itself. He had shut it away and there it was, like those colored pictures sealed in glass which lay on the center table in the parlor at home. But this—this had nearly broken through.
“Parris! Are you—?”
“Please don’t say that again! Please!”
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Let’s go home.”
“Won’t you come up here with me again, ever?” Jamie’s real distress touched Parris. But he felt better. He wanted to hit Jamie. He realized that it was the first time he had ever wanted to hit anyone—not for this night but for a strange ugly trail that Jamie was breaking across an area in his memory he had thought inviolable.
“Is that why you wanted me to be friends with you?” Parris was surprised at the hard cruelty in his own voice.
“Oh, Parris! Of course not.”
Parris walked fast, and Jamie hurried to keep up with him. They reached Federal Street without speaking.
“Please, Parris, don’t be—”
“Oh, shut up!”
Jamie whimpered and turned away. He began to run. Parris watched him disappear.
On the way home he picked up a stick and cut viciously at the goldenrod beside the road.
“Darned fool!” he kept saying as he lopped the dusty blossom heads from their stems. “Darned fool! Darned fool!”
Parris did not sleep well. He watched the moonlight lying watery green against the straight white curtains at his windows, falling in a broken rectangle on the floor and creeping along the sides of his bed. It felt like a presence, and his imagination invested it with all sorts of sinister qualities.
Jamie ... Jamie ... little fool! He tried to hate Jamie, but that didn’t come off very well.
He couldn’t keep Renée out of his thoughts. Over and over he saw her, and remembered her. When she was very young—in the faded skimpy little dresses she wore to school. Later in the green dress he had brought her from Philadelphia, and as they walked that fateful day toward their “secret lake.” He was near to crying, but he thought of Drake. He was sure Drake wouldn’t cry about a girl. But Renée, and everything about Renée, was different—entirely different.
It was Renée who troubled him most tonight. It seemed, as he thought of what had happened (and he could not keep from thinking about it), that Jamie had done something to Renée.
Acute embarrassment struck him again and again. He felt hot, and threw the covers aside. Then he sneezed and replaced the blanket.
He began to dramatize his sleeplessness. Older people often spoke of troubled and wakeful nights. He felt that he had entered into the company of grown-up suffering. There was a surprising comfort in this, and he was interested in the thought. But grown-up troubles were very real, and somewhat fantastic. A whole world of intolerable possibilities loomed in that direction. He considered several of the more picturesque varieties, but others less desirable intruded. Troubles of the world of older people were terrifying.
A lot of things could happen. He visualized catastrophes he had heard discussed, events and consequences having no relation to the immediate cause of these wakeful hours. The stories he had heard of fugitives and prisons magnified and merged, reappeared in new combinations, lost reality and loomed as illogical specters of half-waking, half-sleep.
He started and pulled the covers over his head. The dark was protective and comforting. He felt that now at last—in this smothering secrecy—he could cry. He tried screwing up his face, but no tears came. Presently he was asleep.
