Bread Upon the Waters (36 page)

“Do you want to tell me at just which stores you picked them up, as you put it?” Strand asked.

“I don’t remember their names,” Romero said and stood up. “Is there anything else, sir?”

“Not right now,” Strand said.

He went out. Strand sat at his desk, staring at the dusk growing deeper outside the window, faced with a moral problem that he did not want to try to solve. I must not get obsessed with that boy, he thought. I have other things to worry about.

The big Mercedes, with Conroy at the wheel, drove up to the entrance of the Malson Residence just before lunch-time on Saturday morning. Strand was on the steps of the house to greet Leslie and Caroline and Hazen as they got out of the car. Caroline was holding a small, wriggling black Labrador puppy. Strand was shaken by emotion at seeing his wife and daughter again but did not wish to make a scene of husbandly and parental affection in front of the two boys from the house who were watching from the steps.

For the moment, he avoided looking at Caroline. “Where’s Jimmy?” he asked. “I thought he was coming with you.”

“At the last minute Mr. Solomon sent him out to Chicago to take in some group that’s performing out there,” Leslie said. “It means he’s rising in the firmament, he tells me. He’ll try to call you when he gets back. He sends his regards.”

“Good of him,” Strand said dryly. Then, still without having taken a good look at Caroline, he asked almost gruffly, as he patted the dog, “Where did you pick
that
up?”

“Mr. Hazen gave him to me. Two days ago. When Dr. Laird took the bandages off.” She put the dog down. Smiling, but a little nervously, she touched her nose with the tip of her finger. “How do you like the job?”

“Fine,” he said. He thought she looked beautiful, but then he had always thought she was beautiful. “It actually looks real.”

Caroline laughed. “Oh, Daddy,” she said, “can’t you curb your enthusiasm?”

“The important thing is,” Strand said, “what do
you
think?”

“I think the ugly duckling has turned into a swan,” Caroline said gaily, as they went into the house. “I dread to think of what I’m going to do to the fellers from now on.”

“There’s no need to exaggerate,” Leslie said, looking sternly at the two boys who were examining Caroline with evident interest. “The operation was a success, but you’re not a movie star yet. And you’ll have to get over the habit of staring at yourself in the mirror a hundred times a day.” But she spoke affectionately and Strand could see that she was almost as pleased with Caroline’s new appearance as the girl herself.

She was not as pleased with the appearance of the apartment, although Mrs. Schiller had put flowers in vases at strategic places in the living room. “I hadn’t realized this place was quite so desolate,” she said, “although it’ll look better when we move our stuff in. But it certainly can stand at least a coat of paint.”

“I’ll talk to Babcock about it,” Hazen said. “I’m sure the school won’t go bankrupt if you have the painters in here for a couple of days.”

“I wouldn’t like to seem picky,” Leslie said. “Right from the beginning.”

“I’ll tell Babcock it’s my own idea,” Hazen said. “You’ll get your paint.”

“It’s time for lunch,” Strand said. “We’d better go over to the dining room. I told them you were coming and they’ve set up a visitors’ table with some other parents. We have the first game of the football season today and quite a few people have come down for it. By the way, Russell, our protégé Romero is on the squad.”

“What does he play—water boy?” Hazen laughed.

“No, seriously,” Strand said, as they started out of the house and walked along the path to the Main Hall. “He may not get in today but the coach told me he expects to use him in spot situations.”

“How is he doing generally?”

“I believe he’s keeping up with his classes,” Strand said cautiously. “I try not to look as though I’m meddling, but he seems conscientious enough and he doesn’t horse around in the study hours here like some of the other boys.”

“You’ll have to give me a list of his teachers. While I’m here I should have a word with them about him. I’m sure they’re not used to boys like that and I wouldn’t want them to be hard on him out of a lack of understanding of his background.”

Remembering Miss Collins, Strand thought it might be more rewarding if Hazen had a word with Romero and appealed to him not to be too hard on his teachers. He didn’t think it was wise to tell Hazen that, nor to mention anything about the set of Gibbon in Romero’s room. Hazen might fly into a rage and have the boy thrown out immediately and the experiment, which Strand now felt he had a stake in, would be over before it had a chance to begin.

He dropped behind the others to take Leslie’s arm and walk beside her. She smiled at him gratefully. “I missed you so much,” she whispered.

“I, of course, have been having the time of my young life here alone,” Strand said. “You have no idea what the orgies are like at teatime in the faculty common room.”

Leslie squeezed his arm. “You do look well,” she said. “It seems as though this place is going to agree with you.”

“It does. I hope it’s going to agree with you.”

“If you’re happy here,” she said, “I’m going to be happy here.” But there was a note in her voice, the slightest of inflections, that indicated doubt, reluctance, a shadow of fear.

When they entered the dining room, which was already filled with boys, Strand could tell by the way the boys stared at Caroline, with the puppy wobbling on a leash beside her, that the operation had indeed been a success. He noticed that Caroline even walked differently now. If he had to put a word to it, he decided, it would be haughtily.

After lunch, at which Hazen was pleased to find himself seated next to a man he knew from Washington who had something to do with the oil lobby and with whom he conversed animatedly, Strand walked Leslie back to the house, because she wanted to take a nap, while Hazen and Caroline and Conroy went over to the football field. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay with you?” Strand asked as he watched Leslie take her shoes off and lie down on one of the beds.

“There’s plenty of time later,” Leslie said. “I’m sure they’d be offended if you didn’t watch their game. And I’ve met enough people for one day.”

He bent down and kissed her forehead, then set out for the field. There were perhaps a thousand spectators in the open wooden stands but Hazen had kept a place for him next to Caroline. Hazen and Conroy sat on her other side. The game had already begun, but Hazen said nothing much had happened yet. “Which one is Romero?” he asked.

Strand scanned the bench. On one end, alone, with quite a space between him and the nearest player, Romero sat, bent over, staring at his hands hanging loosely between his knees and never looking at the field, as though he had no connection with what was happening there. “Number 45,” Strand said.

“God, he’s
tiny
,” Hazen said. “Next to those other kids he looks as though he should be in nursery school. Are you sure somebody’s not playing some sort of practical joke on him?”

“The coach takes him quite seriously.”

“The coach must be a sadist,” Hazen said glumly. “I think we ought to take an insurance policy out on him, full coverage, hospital, doctors and funeral expenses.”

“That might be the only way you’d ever get any return on your investment in him,” Strand said, thinking of the five hundred dollar bill at Brooks Brothers and the ten dollar a week allowance.

Hazen grinned across Caroline as Strand said this, taking it as a joke. Strand himself was not sure, after he had said it, that he really meant it as a joke.

The game was raggedly played, with many fumbles, missed plays, dropped passes and blocked kicks. A man behind them, whose son played tight end and dropped two passes in a row, kept saying “What do you expect, it’s the first game of the season.”

Whatever the quality of the play, it was pleasant sitting out there in the warm early autumn sunshine, watching swift young men racing across the fragrant green turf. There was none of the savage passion of professional football or of the games between the big-name universities and the only penalties were for offsides and too much time in the huddle and when one boy on the Dunberry team had the breath knocked out of him momentarily, the boy who had hit him knelt anxiously beside the injured boy until he sat up. Caroline, the puppy squirming in her lap, cheered loyally for Dunberry and smiled provocatively at some boys from the other school who turned around and booed her good-naturedly. “Just leave your name and telephone number,” one of the boys said, “and we’ll get even with you.”

“You can get it from my father.” Caroline pointed her thumb at Strand. “He teaches here.”

The boy laughed. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “But I’ll have a pencil and paper with me later on in the field house.”

Tea was to be served after the game in the field house for the students of both schools and their parents. Strand didn’t doubt that the boy would show up with his pencil and paper, but Caroline would be in Arizona in three days, Strand would be happy to tell him.

There was a lot of scoring and toward the end of the last quarter the other school was leading 26 to 20. The boys on both benches were standing now, cheering on their teammates, but Romero still kept to himself, seated, studying his hands. When the whistle had blown, indicating only two more minutes to play, the coach strode down toward Romero and spoke to him. Romero stood up slowly, almost leisurely, put on his helmet and trotted out onto the field. The other team had the ball on its own forty yard line and it was fourth down and eight yards to go and a punt was the obvious play.

Romero took up his position at safety, on his own twenty yard line, his hands negligently on his hips. When the kick came and the ends came rushing down on him, he juggled the ball, then dropped it. There was a groan from the stands as it bounced erratically toward the sidelines, Romero chasing it, the opposing team’s red jerseys in hot pursuit. He grabbed the ball on a dead run, then suddenly stopped. Two of his opponents flew past him helplessly. Fleeing, he ran back almost to his own goal line, then veered just as it seemed he was about to be tackled and ran, twisting, toward the opposite sideline. He evaded another tackier, Rollins threw an opportune block, and suddenly he was in the clear, running close to the sideline with no one near him and the red jerseys helplessly outdistanced. He crossed the goal line, even slowing down contemptuously for the last ten yards, stopped and carelessly tossed the ball to the ground.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Hazen said, speaking loudly to be heard over the cheers of the crowd, “I thought I was sending a student to Dunberry and it turns out I sent a rabbit.”

Romero’s teammates crowded around him, clapping him on the back and shaking his hand, but he submitted to the gestures of approval rather than acknowledging them. It was only when he started trotting back toward the bench and Rollins grabbed him and lifted him as though he were a child that he permitted himself a smile.

As he went off the field he waved once, casually, without glancing toward the stands, where everyone was standing and applauding.

He trotted slowly toward the bench, his face calm, and went to the place at the end where he had been sitting for almost the entire game. He took off his helmet and once more sat staring at his hands hanging loosely between his knees. As the teams lined up for the point after touchdown the coach came over and patted him on the shoulder, but he didn’t look up even then.

The place kick was wide and there was just time for a final kickoff when the time ran out with the final score twenty-six to twenty-six. Romero hurried to the field house to shower and dress before he could be reached by the crowd of fellow students who rushed after him.

Tables and chairs had been set out in the field house, and there was a long buffet with small sandwiches and cakes behind which faculty wives stood to pour tea. Strand and Hazen sat at a table while Caroline and Conroy went to get the tea. Strand smiled as he saw the boy who had asked for Caroline’s address at the game quickly intercept her and walk with her to the buffet.

There was a quiet murmur among the groups of parents and students and a general sharing of pleasure in the way the afternoon had turned out.

As he watched the polite movement of the hearty, convivial middle-aged men and their handsomely turned out wives, Strand suddenly had the feeling that by some unacknowledged bond they were all related to Russell Hazen. They were the bankers, the lords of trade and commerce, the chairmen of the boards, the quiet movers and shakers, the judges and interpreters of the laws, the managers of great fortunes and institutions, the architects of political victories, the men who had the ear of senators and lawmakers, their children the princelings of a class which in America would not admit it was a class but, as Romero would recognize, comprised what the old Romans honored as the equestrian order.

As for the teachers, both men and women—the men deferential or at least reticent in manner, struggling against humility, the women willingly being of service—they were like the learned slaves imported to the capital to instruct the privileged young in virtue, valor and the arts of government.

As the students and guests of the school passed the table, Strand heard Romero’s name mentioned several times with approval. Strand was not sure if it was the praise bestowed on a gladiator who had shone that afternoon in the arena or a token that the equestrian order was open from time to time to barbarians of merit.

He shook his head impatiently, displeased with the way his thoughts had run, and stood up to greet Johnson, the football coach, who was approaching the table, a smile on his face. Strand introduced the coach to Hazen, who also stood. “Too bad you fellows couldn’t make that extra point,” Hazen said.

The coach shrugged. “I tell you, sir, I was happy to settle for a tie today. That boy is something, isn’t he? I was ready to kick him off the squad right then and there when he started running back toward our own goal.” He laughed. “But nothing succeeds like success, does it? Two or three more runs like that and we’ll have to change the name of your house from the Malson Residence to Romero Gardens.”