“That’s true. But since trying to teach you when you’re like this is like trying to get a bell tone out of cotton wadding, I’d appreciate it if you would desist while I’m coaching you. That is, if you want to pass that exam—and not waste my time and yours.”
That sounded more like the old McLeod. But it was so much milder than I had expected that I felt almost let down. Besides, I had no intention anyway of smoking grass again.
He came over to the table and closed the book. “You might as well give yourself a holiday. You’re not doing anything. Come back when you feel better.”
I went back the next day. I still wasn’t up to form, but I wasn’t as zonked out as the day before. Another good night’s sleep had helped a lot.
As the days passed I worked hard, harder than I had done before. After a while I realized that I was trying to get things back on the footing they’d been on before I’d made that stupid move in a burst of sympathy or something. It felt like a year since that morning, but it was only a week. I found myself thinking about it a lot, whenever I wasn’t actually working. I still didn’t understand it. I didn’t under
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stand McLeod. I didn’t even understand me. But I saw what he meant about a wall, because he was back behind it.
In the background, I was vaguely aware that Mother and Barry were fluttering around on a kind of party circuit. Barry, who was now on vacation from his law firm, was nominally staying with some friends down the beach road, but every time I was at home he was there, amid much talk of wedding dates, apartment hunting, and what Gloria once acidly referred to as creeping kitsch. I tried a couple of times—but not very hard—to talk to Meg, but since she had left off visiting at her usual dawn hour and I was away from home during the day I didn’t get much of a chance. What with my early rising, walking to and from McLeod’s, and my six hours’ work in between, I almost went to sleep with my head on the dinner table. Fortunately, Mother was too starry-eyed to ask any more leading questions about where I was going and what I was doing. Also, with Gloria the only holdout from the general rejoicing, they were concentrating on winning her over. They took her and Peerless Percy to anything they showed the faintest interest in going to—swinging parties, any summer stock in the area, a couple of music festivals with all-day picnics listening to Beethoven under the trees. Not so dumb, my sister Gloria. She was melting, but not rapidly enough so that their solicitude and desire to please should flag in any way. I could see their progress at dinner. Instead of the usual scowl, there’d be a soft smile and a sidelong glance at Barry. Whether it fooled Barry or not, I somehow doubted. But it made Mother happy which, I grudgingly had to admit, was for him-the all-important thing. I finally also decided that he wasn’t as dumb as I had always thought, either. In his own way he was playing Gloria’s game as cannily as she was, which in his case meant sitting there as stolidly as a tree stump while
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she whinnied and pranced and did the siren bit, so that she couldn’t know she’d gotten anywhere—and (naturally) stop trying to please. But he’d pile on the outings, so she couldn’t get sour through failing to score any goals.
When Gloria wasn’t around, Barry’s frozen front would thaw. Meg knew, I guess, what he was doing and why, because when Gloria wasn’t around he’d kid and joke with her and she’d glow like a miniature sunflower. She was so happy, in fact, that she began eating less and looking less like a tub and more like the beginnings of a female. Not that I was up to noticing that much. But both Mother and Bury commented on it, and Meg lit up some more.
Nobody paid much attention to me. I think Barry had convinced Mother that my going to St. Matthew’s was not a catastrophic idea. Because other than saying once, ‘ ‘I don’t think you get enough exercise, Chuck,” she let me alone.
Curiously, McLeod one day said the same. I was in sort of a limbo these days. After what had happened down at the cove I had no desire to go there. Just thinking about Pete made me feel guilty. On the other hand the kind of open-door relationship with McLeod that had kept me up there until after five in the past seemed gone. Sometimes I felt he had slammed the door. Other times that I had. I wasn’t happy. I wanted to be friends with him, but every time I tried somehow to get through to him again I’d feel like Richard balking at a jump. I couldn’t account for it because I had never felt this way before. I’ve always been a loner. Mother—and all five school analysts—have talked to me about that ad nauseam. Until now, I’ve felt it was a good thing. It kept me loose. Now ail I could think about was that I had ratted cm McLeod. It made me sicker than ever. All by itself it got to be a wall around me getting higher and higher. And the higher it got the less I could do
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about it, and, with a real show of logic, the sorer I got at McLeod.
Then one day as I was being particularly thick-headed He said, “I think you must need more exercise.”
“I get enough.”
“Doing what?”
“Climbing up here and down again, for one thing.” “For a boy—and an athletic one—of your age, who are you trying to kid?” He paused. “What about swimming?” “It’s too cold.”
“I didn’t know you were in such bad physical shape.”
I could see by the clock on the chimney piece that it was eleven twenty. “Isn’t it time for your ride?”
“That can wait.”
He was looking at me and I was trying to read his expression. It certainly didn’t show the warmth I had once seen. Sometimes I thought I would give almost anything to see it again, but the moment I thought that, a wave of sickening guilt came over me. Then I’d be like a stalled car.
“Well, this isn’t getting us anywhere.” He got up and left the room. Relieved, I waited to hear Richard’s hooves. But in a few minutes McLeod was back carrying a knapsack in his hand.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“Never mind. Just come.” The command was given in his usual autocratic fashion and was easier to obey than argue with. Besides, I didn’t have much fight.
To my surprise he led me outside across the path to his car. “Get in.”
“Where—?”
“Just get in.”
It vaguely occurred to me that someone might see me
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■
with him. But that didn’t seem important, either. When we got to the gate, instead of turning left onto the main road, he turned right into the cliff road that grew narrower and bumpier as it climbed. But the view from the top was really spectacular. I’d never seen it.
“Wow,” I said. The sea was so blue it was almost green.
There wasn’t a house or a soul in sight. Just dark green rocky hills at left and in front, and to the right, the high edge of the cliff and the sea.
“Okay. Out you get.”
I got out. “Where’re we going?”
He came round the car. “We’re going to play follow the leader. I lead. You follow.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” I muttered. What did he think I was— a scout troop? But man, could he move!
We went straight for the cliff edge and then to my horror he stepped down into what looked like nothing. He turned, saw my face and laughed. “Don’t worry. There’s a path here.”
There was: rocky, winding slowly down where, for a change, the cliff bulged out instead of in. Part of the path was where the rock naturally shelved out. Part looked as though it had been hammered out.
“How’s your head for heights?” McLeod asked.
“Okay.”
He started down. I followed.
I said, “You must be a climber.”
“Yes.”
“Where’d you climb?”
“Tetons, Rockies, Alps, Dolomites.”
“What’s the matter with Everest?”
“Too crowded.”
A few minutes later we were down onto big, flat boulders.
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“Here.” McLeod pulled some towels and trunks out of his knapsack. “Put these on.”
They fit, but they looked ancient. “Where did these come from, the Ark?”
“I suppose you’d think so. They were mine, when I was about your age.”
He had put his own on underneath his jeans, so all he did was step out of them and pull off his sweater. I guess he must have ridden Richard here a lot because he was tanned a lot darker than I. But all over one side of his body and down his leg were bums, some red, some paler, the skin shiny. Like his face, the other side was good—very thin, except for the hard muscles around his shoulders and arms and thighs.
“Dive in, Charles. It looks like an armchair but isn’t. There’s a current underneath. I’ll go first.” With that, he stepped to the edge of the rock and dived in. He came up about thirty feet away. “What are you waiting for?”
I went to the edge and headed in. It had been about two weeks since that day in the cove, and the water here, on the other side of the point, was colder. The shock almost paralyzed me. I came up by instinct more than anything else.
McLeod had swum back a little to where I was. “AH right, now. Swim. Straight out.”
I didn’t hesitate—not with that cold. I plunged out. Feeling came back and suddenly I felt much better. Taking great mouthfuls of air I cut through the water. I hadn’t swum like that in a long time, because mostly at the cove and the pier and the beach we just fool around. I kept on going until I was ready to stop, McLeod about two yards to one side and keeping even. Then I started to play. I rolled over and
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duckdived, then came up and rolled over some more and lay on my back, thrashing my feet, and then tried a backward dive. Coming up, I saw McLeod above me in the water and butted him gently in the stomach then shot away laughing as I came up. I felt marvelous. He turned, shaking the water out of his hair, and started after me. I knew I couldn’t outswim him, so I went down again and swam underwater and looked around and there he was, so I surfaced and changed course and then went down and butted him again on the side.
I forgot he was an adult and a teacher and forty-seven years old. I even forgot what I had done to him. I forgot everything but the water and being in it and chasing and being chased, far from the shore with nothing around or moving except us. It was like flying. I thought suddenly, I’m free. And the thought was so great I poked him again on the way up. We swam some more, this time parallel with the shore, then played some more, then back to where we’d been.
“Okay. Let’s go in,” he said and turned towards the shore. I turned and we went together, although he took about one stroke to my three, if I hadn’t seen how far one stroke carried him I would have thought he was just fooling around.
When I pulled onto the rock I realized that if I had been out any longer I would have been tired instead of just relaxed. The sun was hot and we lay on towels on a big flat rock above the one we used as a diving board.
The happy euphoric feeling should have gone on to a happy drowsy one, but even though I was physically relaxed, it didn’t. It was as though by stepping out of the water I had lost that sense of freedom. It was too bad, I thought, really too bad. But that terrible weight was back.
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And then McLeod, lying beside me, reached out and with his hand grasped my arm, just the way I had his two weeks ago.
“All right, Charles. Whatever it is, spill it. I’m not just prying. But you can’t carry it around any longer. And I don’t think I can watch any longer. It’s making you sick.” I thought of getting up and going, but his hand was there, holding me. I could imagine it withdrawing when he knew what I had done. I thought about the water and the afternoon. His hand tightened. “Come on, son.”
Maybe it was the “son” that did it, although I’d never liked it before when somebody said it.
“I ratted on you. I told Pete that day we were all smoking grass how you got your scar, about being drunk and the kid with you. It wasn’t even that I was stoned—I was later, a real bad trip, but not then. I just wanted—I was sore at you. You made me feel like I’d made some kind of pass at you. And they were mad at me for studying and knew I came up here because Pete saw me come. So he asked me how you got the scar. So I told ’em. I’m sorry, McLeod. I feel like an absolute skunk. A real fink.”
What I wanted to do was cry like a baby. But I couldn’t do that, of course, so I put my other arm over my eyes like the sun was getting into them. Curiously, he hadn’t withdrawn his hand. I waited to see if he would in a delayed reaction, but he didn’t.
“It's my fault as much as yours. I knew I had . . . had hurt you, which was why I tried to talk to you about it. I should have made you listen. Then you wouldn’t have been carting this load around.”
But the load had rolled away. “Then we’re still friends?” “Yes/Charles. Still friends.”
That great feeling I had in the water like, I guess, a sort
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of a high, came back. The sun was hot on my skin. The air smelled of salt and pines and grass (the real kind!) and hay. I felt super. I moved the arm he was holding and he let go instantly, but all I did was to slide my hand in his.
I felt his fingers close around it.
After a while he said, “Tell me about that bad trip.”
So I told him, and then about the dream. Until that moment I really hadn’t thought much about it. But when I was finished I said, “I guess that means I wish you were my father.”
“I wish so too.”
“Did you ever have any sons?”
“No.”
My mind drifted off. Then I said, “Meg asked me if I thought you’d be interested in marrying Mother.”
There was a muffled laugh. “Your mother might not have cared for that arrangement.”
“Maybe not. But when I think of The Hairball and Meg’s father I’d think she’d be thrilled.”
“Do you remember your own father?”
“A little.” And then out of nowhere I said, “I have a funny feeling there was something wrong about him. Something the others know that I don’t.” I told him about the fracas at the beach three years ago with Gloria. “But I can’t get anything out of anyone.”