Whistling for the Elephants Page 7

  ‘In charge. It says I am in charge.’

  No one said anything. We all saw, we all watched, and no one said anything. I like to think Father would have but I know he wouldn’t. I should have but I didn’t. I was too busy thinking about girls not rushing the plate.

  ‘Harry.’ Sweetheart spoke quietly to her son. He looked at her and I thought something was going to explode. Instead he stroked Judith’s neck and pulled her to him for a hug like he was just kidding. Judith laughed and moved away to smooth her hair. Harry carried on as if nothing had happened. Happy couple banter.

  ‘Hey, Dorothy, you’re not wearing one of those antiwar bracelets, are you? Eddie, you know your Donna Marie has one?’

  Eddie shrugged and pulled the liver from a trout. ‘Kids.’

  ‘It’s not just kids. That goddamn Martin Luther King riling up the black people against our boys.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Aunt Bonnie, opening another beer.

  ‘That’s not the point. It’s un-American. Why, I never even questioned serving my country. When I signed up…

  Sweetheart interrupted quietly. ‘Don’t upset yourself, son.’

  ‘I am not upset, but if those goddamn Commie people had never…’

  We didn’t hear what the goddamn Commies should never, because the fire alarm went off on the other side of the harbour. As the siren started, Harry threw off his apron.

  ‘I’ll get the car,’ yelled Uncle Eddie, divesting himself of fish scales on the run. The hooter carried on giving the signal as Aunt Bonnie counted.

  ‘Three-two-four. Over on Palmer, Eddie,’ she yelled after her husband. Harry nodded.

  ‘Come on, Charlie. Sounds like a big one.’ He gave Father no choice but grabbed his arm and in a second the men were gone.

  Almost every guy in Sassaspaneck was a member of the Volunteer Fire Brigade. It was partly to do with economic necessity in the town and partly to do with some kind of sperm-count display in the men. It was about as macho an organization as it was possible to find. Sassaspaneck was not a rich town. There had been a boom in the twenties when the Burroughs Boot Factories were going full-throttle, but nothing had been the same after the Depression. Fifty miles upstate from the city, it was a little too far to be commuter belt and no industry had ever settled along its shores again. Now the town didn’t have the money for a full-time fire brigade. The big horn over at the boatyard would suddenly start blasting and men from all over the town would close down stores, drop fishing rods and race to be first on the engine. They all wanted to drive the fire truck, or at least race through town clinging on in a yellow hat and big boots.

  Each street had a different series of blasts and the council printed a list of them so everyone in the neighbourhood could tell exactly where the fire was. The signals didn’t tell you where in the street, as it was generally reckoned if you couldn’t see the fire by the time you got there the owners had no business calling out the brigade in the first place. Mr Angelletta from the pizza parlour (Tony’s Pizzeria — a slice — Your Mother Should Make it so Good) was nearly always first on the engine as the firehouse stood between the pizza parlour and Torchinsky’s (It’s Your Funeral) Funeral Parlour. Mr Torchinsky always stayed behind.

  ‘Please God there are no fatalities,’ he would mutter outside his door as the engine pulled away. Then he would turn and polish the brass plate on his door. ‘Still, if it should happen…’

  The women sat quietly on the patio. Within a few minutes we could hear the sirens of the first engine pulling out toward Palmer. Judith went to get some sewing to do and Aunt Bonnie grabbed a fresh six-pack out of the garbage can. Sweetheart sat looking at Judith.

  ‘He means well. He’s not been himself since…’ Judith interrupted with a stab of her needle.

  Sweetheart shook her head and changed the subject.

  ‘So, Rosie, isn’t this nice? We have time to visit now the boys have gone off to play. What do you do with yourself all day?’ she asked. My mother smiled uncertainly. I was curious to hear the answer.

  ‘Oh, you know, the house, Dorothy… et cetera.’ The others nodded. It was a full life. Sweetheart smiled. Judith settled down to her Christmas tapestry in the warm summer air.

  ‘Sweetheart works as a candy-striper. You know, a volunteer at the hospital. Kind of fancy cleaner, isn’t it, Sweetheart?’

  ‘I work with the patients,’ replied Sweetheart quietly. It was obviously an old exchange. Judith hardly took a breath.

  ‘I mean, I think it is wonderful to give your hours but being married I just don’t have the time.’

  There was some problem here but I couldn’t work out what it was. Judith was getting at Sweetheart but I didn’t know how. Aunt Bonnie flipped open another beer. Judith stabbed at a festive reindeer and ploughed on.

  ‘I don’t know how you stand that hospital. The place is full of people who don’t pay their bills. Harry was talking to Doc Martin today. Doc had a woman up there who had been admitted with terrible back pain. Turns out she only works as a furniture remover! She said to the doc, “What can I do?” He said, “You can start by behaving like a lady and stay home.”‘

  Aunt Bonnie nodded. ‘Doc Martin, he’s a funny guy.’

  Sweetheart fanned herself. ‘Going to be a hot summer.’ She shifted to get more comfortable and sighed.

  Judith looked up. ‘You still haven’t been down to the store, have you, Sweetheart? I keep telling you. Do you have an eighteen-hour girdle yet, Rosie? They are fabulous. Harry can’t get enough of them. They just sell the minute they come off the truck into the store. I keep telling Sweetheart. Your own son and you won’t go.’

  ‘I like my old girdle just fine,’ said Sweetheart, fanning herself.

  ‘A woman shouldn’t have to suffer.’ Judith pulled herself upright. ‘You should try one, Bonnie, might give you a better shape.’

  ‘Who gives a hang?’ barked Bonnie into her beer.

  Judith eyed Bonnie, who was slumped on the grass. ‘Might give you a shape at all. I’m sure Eddie would like it.

  ‘If Eddie don’t like my shape he knows what he can do.’

  I looked at the four women, Bonnie, Judith, Sweetheart and my mother, and I knew I didn’t want to be any one of them. I wanted to be driving the fire truck.

  Chapter Five

  Inside Harry and Judith’s house Donna Marie and Eddie were watching TV in the den. I was shunted away from the women’s talk ‘to make friends’. I stood in the doorway of the small room where the black and white TV blared. Eddie Jr looked at me.

  ‘Hey, English, where’s the tie?’

  ‘I took it off,’ I answered, trying to make my vowels sound right. He turned back to the TV.

  ‘Made you look like a freak.’

  ‘They got freaks out at the zoo.’ Donna Marie never looked up as she spoke. ‘Maybe you oughta go out there.’

  The friendship wasn’t going that well. I was still too different. I went and looked in the sitting room. On a nest of tables a small, strange—looking goldfish was making its way erratically across the waters of a crystal bowl. It was strange-looking because it couldn’t swim straight. It tumbled pathetically through the water.

  ‘It’s the way they’re bred.’ Sweetheart came quietly up behind me. ‘It’s called a tumbrel. They are bred and rebred to encourage the spine to curve unnaturally. It’s a fish freak. Here, look.’ Sweetheart took a small pocket mirror from her bag and held it down into the bowl. The tumbrel stopped its bumbling course and seemed to stare at the mirror for a moment. Then the ridiculous fish turned painfully and swam awkwardly back where it had come from.

  ‘Donna Marie called me a freak,’ I said.

  ‘Curvature of the spine. That’s what’s wrong with it. They say goldfish only remember things for a few seconds.’ Sweetheart laughed. It was the light sound of a small bird.

  ‘I used to know a man called John Junior who knew all about animals. He used to say goldfish would be a nightmare for a fish doctor. You’d
have to keep on telling the tumbrel it was sick, because it wouldn’t remember. Of course if the doctor was a goldfish as well the whole thing would take for ever.’ Sweetheart pretended to play both parts but her light voice made the two indistinguishable. ‘I’m afraid, Mr Tumbrel, we have bad news. Oh no! Yes. I’m afraid, Mr Tumbrel, we have bad news. Have I already told you this? We have bad news. Oh no! Yes.’

  Sweetheart looked at me and put her hands on my shoulders. ‘I once knew a man called Fred from Chicago. He had a very strange throat. Kind of wide. It didn’t look right. I guess he was a kind of freak. He changed his name to Monsieur Cliquot from Paris and took up sword swallowing. Eventually he could swallow an electric light bulb connected to an eight-volt battery while juggling and made a lot of money. I knew a bearded lady too but she was never very happy. Really she wanted to be a bareback rider but she could not get the hang of it. The lovely Madame Josephine Clofullia from Switzerland.’

  ‘Did she really have a beard?’

  ‘Of course.’ Sweetheart winked at me so I wasn’t sure. ‘She finally did get to work with horses but it didn’t go well. John Junior, he had shows all over the country. He put her in the Western Wonder Show of the World with Stupendous New Equine Features, but she sued him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It only had one horse in it. That always made Phoebe laugh. She said Madame Josephine had no imagination. The taking of Troy was a one-horse show and that was pretty spectacular.’

  I remembered. ‘Phoebe. In the wheelchair. And John Junior — the big man?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sweetheart looked at me. ‘How do you know that?’

  I blushed. I was sure I shouldn’t have been there. ‘The big house… there’s a picture… I saw it.

  Sweetheart sat down on a plastic-covered chair and smiled at me. I plumped down on the floor in front of my new friend.

  ‘I forgot about the picture. That day! The day the painter came, the noise was unbearable. I think he was quite a distinguished artist as well. If you can imagine the collective noise of a giraffe, a bunch of lions, several tigers, a leopard, a polar bear, assorted hyenas and a sea lion making their way home from the train station after a long day’s journey then you might have it about right. The poor painter. He did his best but the giraffe ran off and got entangled in the garden pagoda. It stuck its head through the top and proceeded to drag the entire thing toward the house. It caused havoc with the rhododendrons. Phoebe was crying with laughter. All the time John was shouting to her, “Look what I brought you! You told me to get you a souvenir from Africa. Look!” Not that there weren’t enough animals already. He just kept bringing more.’

  ‘Did you know him — John?’

  Sweetheart stared into the fish bowl. ‘I sure did. It was a long time ago. John Barton Burroughs Junior. He was a good man. Rich and bored, but he was a good man. He built that house for his wife.’

  ‘Phoebe?’

  ‘No, Phoebe was his sister. Billie. Billie Blake. Of course, that’s not the house in the picture. That was the old Burroughs House. It was nice too, just not grand like the new one. It was square, red-brick, nothing fancy. Billie pronounced it “a thoroughly reliable, respectable and dull building”, so John built her a new one.’

  ‘The house of love,’ I said. Sweetheart looked surprised, but I wasn’t a trainee spy for nothing.

  ‘Yes, the house of love. Whatever Billie wanted. They had the money then… ‘twenty-six or ‘twenty-seven … must have been nineteen twenty-seven, before the Crash anyhow.’

  ‘What was wrong with Phoebe?’

  ‘Polio, and then I guess she was always weak. You see…

  Judith tottered into the room, patting her hair. ‘There you are. What are you two doing in here? I’ve been looking everywhere.’

  ‘I was telling Dorothy about the old Burroughs’ house.’

  Judith looked at Sweetheart for a moment and didn’t say anything. She glanced at Pearl’s picture and gave a slight shake of her head.

  ‘Yes, well, I never go there any more.’

  ‘You should,’ said Sweetheart.

  Judith gave a little jiggle of her head. The weight of hair made the move work its way right down to her feet.

  ‘Look, Sweetheart, you know it makes Harry uncomfortable, and.., yes, well, Dorothy, you kids could eat now. We’ll wait for the men, of course, but you kids could start.’

  It was two hours before the men returned from the fire. Donna Marie, Eddie Jr and I had burgers but the women waited for the men. Judith fussed over everything while we munched.

  ‘The men will be hungry. We had better save as much food as possible, don’t you think? Eddie Junior, another cheeseburger? Men eat a lot anyway, don’t they, but after tonight… well, they will have been doing men’s work.’ Judith sprayed the side of the ketchup bottle with disinfectant and polished it with a cloth. Men’s work? I couldn’t imagine what Father would be doing.

  Sweetheart got everyone another drink but no one else moved. Aunt Bonnie was still on the lawn with a can of beer. She had made a little necklace out of the beer-can tabs. Sweetheart went and sat on the porch swing with Mother.

  The women’s abstinence from food turned out to be pointless. In fact, the men returned fully sated. The fire had been at the General Amherst Restaurant. Once they had realized it was out of control, the brigade of boys had fanned the flames round the kitchen to roast all the meat in there and enjoyed the biggest cook-up the town had ever seen. They came back full, filthy and pumping with their own virility. Even Father had a smudge and had loosened his tie. Harry steamed into the yard and plunged his hand in the iced garbage can. He threw a beer at Father who, always alert to unexpected bouncers, grabbed it deftly. To my surprise he opened it and began to drink without asking for a glass.

  ‘Hey, great catch, Charlie.’

  Joey Amorato arrived with Eddie. He was the last of our immediate neighbours. Joey was really small for a man. Small and wide. I knew if I grew up to be a man, which I knew I wouldn’t, but if I did, then I would look like Joey. Not that I would want to, but life isn’t fair. He wore light brown pants and a matching work shirt but it had been some time since either one had seen a washing machine. Apparently it was because he lived alone and his mother had died. No one said why he couldn’t do it himself. The shirt was tucked into Joey’s pants but it protested at every button. His belly hung like a precipice over his work boots, which had also seen years of service. There was a popular men’s hairspray ad on TV at the time announcing, ‘The wet head is dead. Long live the dry look.’ Joey hadn’t heard about it. He was going bald with some speed. What was left of his hair was greased back into a DA you could fry an egg on. I’m trying to think of good things to say about Joey. He smiled a lot, which was good because he had no chin to speak of. His face kind of fell off at the smile, but at least the smile was a good finish. I don’t know how old he was. Everyone was just a grown-up. I think he went to school with Judith, which would have made him her age, but he was so short that he looked like a man who wasn’t done with growing yet. Anyway he was whatever you are when you’re more than thirty and not dead yet. —

  Donna and Eddie Jr went back inside when Joey arrived.

  ‘Hey, it’s the dog catcher,’ yelled Eddie Jr as he ran inside. ‘Bet you can’t catch me.’

  Joey laughed uncertainly. ‘Kids today,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Looking great, Judith,’ he mumbled as she passed him a drink. She gave that giggle again which I thought really let her down.

  Harry laughed. ‘You cruising my wife again, you dumb schmuck?’

  Joey looked down at what he could see of his feet. ‘No, no.’

  I knew the kids didn’t like Joey. He had been bitten by a dog as a boy and the close of those canine jaws had determined his whole life. A life dedicated to revenge. I had seen him in his dog-catcher van. He drove with intense purpose, stopping only to carry out his duties or dust the framed photograph on his dashboard. It was a picture of himself with Vice—Pr
esident Hubert Humphrey, taken at a whistle-stop tour in the ‘64 election. The VP’s train had made an unscheduled halt in Sassaspaneck and Joey had been the only member of the local administration anyone could get on the phone. I wondered where dog catcher put him on my Chinese list. Stray dogs were number 7, but I wasn’t sure about people who spent time with them.

  On his day off, Joey shot rats on the waterfront with a rifle. If he was in a bad mood he would just stun them with a BB gun and finish them off with large rocks. The gun fired little plastic pellets and he had once winged the Good Humour Ice Cream man by mistake, but everyone balanced this up with his useful function of keeping down the rodent population.

  The men began drinking heavily and the women fussed around them. No one ate the huge steaks which withered on the grill. I went to watch TV in the house but the others wouldn’t let me have a say about the channel. After The Brady Bunch and Bewitched I came out. Only the women were still in the yard. Mother was sitting with Sweetheart. Aunt Bonnie sat on the grass smoking and Judith was sewing on a canvas chair. Judith was in the middle of one of those adult conversations which stops the minute a kid appears.

  ‘Harry won’t even read her letters. I mean Pearl—’

  Everyone looked at me.

  ‘Where’s Father?’ I asked.

  ‘The men are dealing with a dangerous smell in the house.’ Aunt Bonnie giggled.

  ‘We’re doomed, doomed,’ intoned my mother in a false Scottish accent. I knew instantly. Drunk, the lot of them.

  I went in to find my sensible father. In the kitchen Uncle Eddie, Father and Harry were sitting among floorboards.

  There was a terrible smell in the room. They had taken up the entire floor and Harry and Father were now taking turns looking under it with a torch. Joey had actually climbed down between the joists and was yelling into the darkness.

  ‘It ain’t here. I swear it ain’t comin’ from here. Ain’t nothing here.’

  ‘So anyway,’ Father’s faint voice pushed itself forward, ‘I served under General Ha Ha Splendid Shepherd.’