I Will Fear No Evil (15 page)

(Pipe down, Boss. I’m going to finish this even if you blow every fuse.) The recitation went on—

(That does it, I guess—those are the words I had tagged in my mind never to use in your presence. Now tell me—was there even
one
you didn’t understand?)

(That’s not the point. A person should not use language which offends others.)

(I never did, Boss. In public. But I’m home now—or thought I was. Do you want me to go away again?)

(No, no, no! Uh, you were away?) (I certainly was, Boss. Dead. I suppose. But I’m here now and I want to stay. If you’ll let me. If I can relax and be happy and not have to be on guard all the time for fear of offending you. I can’t see why a Latin polysyllable makes me more a lady than a monosyllable with the same meaning. You and I think with the same brain—yours—eat with the same mouth—mine, or used to be—and pee through the same hole. So why shouldn’t we share the same vocabulary? Speaking of peeing—oh, pardon me, sir, I meant to say ‘micturition’—)

(None of your sarcasm, girl!)

(Just who are you calling a ‘girl,’ girlie? Feel yourself, go ahead and feel. Some knockers, eh, Boss?—and how you used to stare at them, you horny old goat. Made me tingle. But I was saying, speaking of micturition, that we are going to have to ring for a bedpan fairly soon, now that we no longer are rigged with plumbing . . . and there is no way for me to leave the room while you pee. I don’t dare leave; it’s
dark
out there and I might not find my way back. So it’s either get used to such things—or send me away forever—or bust your nice new bladder.)

(Okay, Eunice, you’ve made your point.)

(Have I offended you again, Boss?)

(Eunice, you have
never
offended me. Sometimes you have startled me, sometimes you have surprised me and often delighted me. But you have
never
offended me. Not even with that list of blunt words.)

(Well . . . as I saw it, if you already knew them, you couldn’t really be offended; if you didn’t understand them, then you couldn’t
possibly
be offended.)

(All right, dear. I’ll quit trying to correct your speech. But for the record—I used all those words long before your mother was born. Possibly before your grandmother was born.) (Grandma is sixty-eight). (Learned ’em all and used them with relish long before your grandmother was born—with relish because they were sinful, then. I take it they aren’t, to you kids now.)

(No, they’re just words. Short-talk.)

(Not short-talk, as they were used before video corrupted the language. Except—What was that one word? ‘Frimp’?)

(Oh. Shouldn’t have included that one, Boss; it’s not a classic word. Current slang, swing talk. It’s a general verb, one which includes every possible way to copulate—) (Pfui! You youngsters. When I was a kid, we had at least two dozen words meaning ‘frimp,’ some new, some old besides the standard taboo words for it.) (You didn’t let me finish, Boss.—every possible way to hook up two or more bodies—any number—of any sex, or combinations of all six sexes, and including far-out variations that would shock you right out of this bed. But swing is a today scene, so it’s not surprising you hadn’t heard the word ‘frimp’ before.)

(Oh, I’d heard it. I have news for you, infant.)

(Yes, sir? I mean ‘Yes, Miss Smith,’ dearie. ‘
Miss
’ Smith—what a giggle I got when I first heard it. But it’s nice, since it means both of us. Say, Rosy is all right, isn’t he? Puts more into hand-kissing than some studs do into a romp on the pad.) (Sweetheart, you not only have a dirty mind—but it veers.) (How can I help having a dirty mind when it’s actually
yours
, Boss—I’m hip deep in the stuff.) (Shut up, Eunice; it’s my turn. The swing scene is nothing new. The Greeks had a word for it. So did the Romans. And so on through history. The orgy was .relished in Victorian England. It was far from unknown in my youth in the heart of the Bible Belt, even though it was dangerous in those days. Eunice, as long as we are trying to get easy with each other, let me say this: Anything you’ve ever seen, or tried, or heard of, I did, or had done to me, before your grandmother was born—and if I liked it, I did it again and again and
again
. No matter how risky.)

The second voice was silent a moment. (Maybe we simply start younger today. Less risk and fewer rules.)

(Beg to doubt.)

(Oh, I’m sure we do. I told you how young I was when I got caught. Fifteen. And I started a year younger.)

(Eunice my love, the main difference between the young and the old, the cause of the so-called Generation Gap—a gap in understanding that has existed throughout all time—is that the young simply cannot believe that the old ever really were young . . . whereas to an old person his youth is something that happened just last week, and it annoys the hell out of him when someone in effect denies that this old duffer ever
owned
a youth.)

(Boss?) The thought was gentle and soft.

(Yes, dearest?)

(Boss, I always knew you were young underneath, behind all those horrid liver spots—knew it when I was alive, I mean . . . and wished dreadfully that you weren’t old and sick in your body. It hurt me so, to see you hurt. Sometimes I went home and cried. Especially when it made you cross and you would say something you didn’t mean and then be sorry. I
wanted
you to get well . . . and knew you couldn’t. I was one of the first to sign up—Joe and I both—as soon as word reached us through the Rare Blood Club. Couldn’t do it sooner or you might have found out—and forbidden me to.)

(Eunice, Eunice!)

(Don’t you believe me?)

(Yes, darling, yes . . . but you’re making us cry.)

(So blow your nose, Boss, and stop it. Because everything turned out
all right.
Look, you wanted to hear about my little bastard—will that take your mind off troubles we no longer have?)

(Uh . . . only if you want to, Eunice. My love. My only love.)

(I made it plain that I
wanted
to tell you, didn’t I? I’ll tell all—and that’ll take a long time!—if you want to hear. If you won’t be shocked. Say ‘Please,’ Boss—because the details of my sex life ought to help you in handling your own sex life.
Our
sex life, that is. Or did you mean that stuff you were shoveling at Dr. Garcia about not being ‘actively female’?)

(Uh . . . I don’t know, Eunice, I haven’t been a woman long enough to know
what
I want. Shucks, darling, instead of thinking like a girl I’m still ogling girls. That little redheaded nurse, for example.)

(So I noticed.)

(Was that sarcasm? Or jealousy?)

(What? I do not intend to be sarcastic, Boss dear; I don’t want us ever to be nasty with each other. And jealousy is just a word in the dictionary to me. I simply meant that, when Winnie was making up our face and you were sneaking a peek down the neck of her smock every time she leaned over, I was staring as hard as you were. No bra. Cute ones, aren’t they? Winnie is female and knows it. If you were male in your body as well as in your head, I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could throw a bed.)

(I thought you said you weren’t jealous?)

(I’m not. I merely meant that Winnie. would trip you and beat you to the floor. But I was not criticizing her. I’ve nothing against girls. A girl can be quite a blast.)

Johann was slow in answering. (Eunice, uh, were you implying that you have—used to have—relations with other, uh—)

(Oh, Boss, don’t be so early-twentieth-century; we’ve turned the corner on the twenty-first. Tell it bang. Do you mean ‘Am I a Lez?’ Homosexual?)

(No, not at all! Well, perhaps I did mean that in a way. At least I wanted you to clear up what
you
meant. As it didn’t seem possible. You were married and—or was your marriage just a cover-up? I suppose—)

(Quit supposing, dear. Bang. I was not homosexual and neither is Joe. Joe is a tomcat always ready to yowl, and wonderful at it. Except when he’s painting; then he forgets everything else. But ‘homosexual’ isn’t a word that bothers anyone my age, either the word or the fact. And why not, with the Government practically subsidizing it with propaganda about too many babies that starts in kindergarten? If I had taken the Bilitis pledge, I would never have had that phony ‘rheumatic fever.’ But, while girls are cuddly and I’ve never had any inhibitions about them, I was—
always
—far too interested in boys to live on Gay Street. But which team are you on, Boss? One minute you’re telling me how you drool over Winnie, the next minute you seem upset that I drooled, too. So what are you going to do with us, dear? Left-handed? Right-handed? Both hands? Or no hands at all? I guess I could stand anything but the last. Do I have a vote?)

(Why, of course you do.)

(I wonder, Boss. You sputtered when I suggested that you could thank Doc Hedrick in bed . . . and sparked some more at the notion of going to bed with a girl. Sure you’re not planning on sewing it up?)

(Oh, Eunice, don’t talk silly! Beloved, happy as I am that we are together, that ‘Generation Gap’ is still there. My fault this time, as I have a lifelong habit of being careful in what I say to a woman, even one I am in bed with—)

(You’re certainly in bed with
me!
)

(I certainly am. And I’m finding it ever harder to be flatly truthful with you—‘tell it bang’ as you say—than it is to adjust to being female. But before Dr. Hedrick brought up the matter I saw the implications—and complications—and consequences—of being female . . . and young . . . and rich.)

(‘Rich.’ I hadn’t thought about
that
one.)

(Eunice beloved, we’re going to
have
to think about it. Of course we’re going to be ‘actively female’—)

(
Hooray!
)

(Quiet, dear. If we were poor, the simplest thing would be to ask your Joe to take us back. If he would have us. But we
aren’t
poor; we’re embarrassingly rich—and a fortune is harder to get rid of than it is to accumulate. Believe me. When I was about seventy-five, I tried to unload my wealth while I was still living so that it would not go to my granddaughters. But to give away money without wasting most of it in the process is as difficult as getting the genie back into the bottle. So I gave up and simply arranged my will to keep most of it out of the hands of my alleged descendants.)

(‘Alleged’?)

(Alleged. Eunice, my first wife was a sweet girl, much like yourself, I think. But the poor dear died in childbirth—bearing my one son, also dead for many years now. Agnes had made me promise to marry again and I did, almost at once. One daughter from that marriage and her mother divorced me before the child was a year old. I married a third time—again one daughter, again a divorce. I never knew my daughters well and outlived both of them and their mothers. But—Eunice, you’re a rare-blood yourself; do you know how blood types are inherited?)

(Not really.)

(Thought you might. Being mathematically inclined, the first time I laid eyes on an inheritance chart for blood types I understood it as well as I understand the multiplication tables. Having lost my first wife to childbirth, with both my second and third wives I made certain that donors were at hand before they went into delivery rooms. Second wife was type A, third was type B—years later I learned that both my putative daughters were type O.)

(I think I missed something, Boss.)

(Eunice, it is impossible for a type-AB father to sire type-O children. Now wait—I did
not
hold it against my daughters; it was none of their doing. I would have loved Evelyn and Roberta—tried to, wanted to—but their mothers kept me away from them and turned them against me. Neither girl had any use for me . . . until it turned out that I was going to dispose of a lot of money someday—and then the switch from honest dislike to phony ‘affection’ was nauseating. I feel no obligation to my granddaughters since in fact they are
not
my granddaughters. Well? What do you think?)

(Uh—Boss, I don’t see any need to comment.)

(So? Who was it not five minutes ago was saying that we ought to be absolutely frank with each other?)

(Well . . . I don’t disagree with your conclusion, Boss, just with how you reached it. I don’t see that heredity should enter into it. Seems to me you are resenting something that happened a long time ago—and that’s not good. Not good for you, Boss.)

(Child, you don’t know what you’re talking about.)

(Maybe not.)

(No ‘maybes’ about it. A baby is a baby. Babies are to love and take care of and that’s what this whole bloody mess is about, else none of it makes sense. Eunice, I told you that my first wife was something like you. Agnes was my Annabel Lee and we loved with a love that was more than a love and I had her for only a year—then she died giving me my son. Then I loved
him
just as much. When he was killed something died inside me . . . and I made a foolish fourth marriage hoping to bring it alive again by having another son. But I was lucky that time—no children and it merely cost me a chunk of money to get shut of it.)

(I’m sorry, Boss.)

(Nothing to be sorry about now. But I was telling you something else—Eunice, when we’re up and around, remind me to dig into my jewelry case and show you my son’s ‘dog tag’—all that I have left of him.)

(If you want to. But isn’t that morbid, dear? Look forward, not back.)

(Depends on how you look back. I don’t grieve over him; I’m proud of him. He died honorably, fighting for his country. But that military dog tag shows his blood type. Type O.)

(Oh.)

(Yes, I said ‘O’. So my son was no more my physical descendant than were my daughters. Didn’t keep me from loving him.)

(Yes, but—you learned it from his identification tag? After he was dead?)

(Like hell I did. I knew it the day he was born; I had suspected that he might not be mine from the time Agnes turned out to be pregnant—and I accepted it. Eunice, I wore horns with dignity and always kept suspicions to myself. Just as well—as all my wives contributed to my cornute state. Horns? Branching antlers! The husband who expects anything else is riding for a fall. But I never had illusions about it, so it never took me by surprise. No reason why it should, as I got the best parts of my own training from married women, starting clear back in my early teens. I think that happens in every generation. But horns make a man’s head ache only when he’s stupid enough to believe that
his
wife is different—when all the evidence he has accumulated should cause him to assume the exact opposite.)