The Winter After This Summer Page 8

  Margaret never lost control of herself, never raised her voice, but her lips set menacingly as she digested this insult. Then she said with cold deliberation, “Daniel Egan, you are a filthy little stinker. If Mother were here she’d despise you. You are a filthy little stinker, and I’m going to tell Father about it, and he’ll beat the life out of you.”

  So I hit her. I swung my fist as hard as I could into her face, and when she staggered back and cried out I fled with the sense of the skies crashing around me. I raced out to the dirt road that led down to the river and followed it to the clay bank overlooking the brickyard, and there, out of sight of the avenging world, I stood for a long time, first blubbering softly to myself, and then making pellets of the clay I dug out of the bank and flinging them as hard as I could into the water. It was a soothing activity, and when at last I was tired of it I turned back toward the house, almost ready to make amends. But not quite. Some wild inspiration stopped me midway on the road and turned me in the direction of the Gennaro farm. I pushed through a growth of underbrush, worked my way under the barbed-wire fence that marked the boundary of the farm, and started off across a stubbly field to the cluster of houses that stood in the distance like a small village. There were five houses, and Mia, I knew, lived in one of them. Then I was pulled up short by the problem of an introduction, and so I went back to the barbed-wire fence and very deliberately, holding my breath all the while and squeezing my hand tight around the wrist of my left arm to steady it, drew that arm over one of the barbs. The mark it left looked like a scratch at first, then it suddenly welled blood, and I hastily wrapped my handkerchief around it. By the time I knocked at the door of the biggest and most impressive house on the farm—it never entered my mind that Mia would live in any other than the most impressive house there—the handkerchief was sodden through with blood.

  That was how I came to meet and know the Gennaros.

  Ben, who was about three years older than I, had just started high school at the time, which alone was enough to awe me. But more than that, Ben Gennaro was one of those fortunates destined to slide over the miserable years between childhood and maturity without fouling up every day of them in some way or another. I know that I went through adolescence as if I were being swung back and forth on a huge pendulum between shouting exuberance and silent misery, between the arrogance of self-realization and the despair of utter insufficiency. That was not for Ben. In the middle of a family that was loud, argumentative, and overcharged with whatever emotion struck it at the moment he was a cool, remote figure, speaking softly, smiling a little at what went on around him, amused by it but contemptuous of it. That was not a pose, nor was it something I saw through the distorting lens of my idolatry. The Gennaros saw it, too, and responded to it with respect, and my father, whom I had talked deaf, dumb, and blind about Ben the few times we had family reunions, finally met Ben and was immediately conquered. According to all the textbooks, I should have been moved to bitter jealousy by that, but I was not. I had at last produced something for my father that he approved of, and I reveled in that triumph.

  But idolater I was, along with Aldo, Ben’s younger brother and my closest friend those years at Maartenskill, and what jealousy I had was reserved for Aldo, who, after all, was own brother to the hero while I was doomed for eternity to be an outsider. So Aldo and I fought regularly and bloodily, nearly all the fights being instigated by me when the jealousy in me rose high enough in my throat to choke me. And because Ben was often an interested spectator, nearly all the fights were won by me. I learned early that where a punch in the face may hurt briefly, there is no salve for it like the impact of your own fist landing in return. It was a tribute to Aldo’s inherent good nature that he never picked up a fence post and simply split my skull with it to settle his grievances once and for all.

  But there were ways of serving Ben aside from displays of gladiatorial combat. On lazy days when heat pressed steamily down on the valley Ben and a high-school friend of his would allow me to wield the oars of one of the rowboats that the Gennaros moored on the river. He and the friend, who, for the moment, shared Ben’s luster in my eyes, would bring aboard fishing tackle and a bottle of white wine pressed in the Gennaro cellars, and then while I slowly rowed them across the river and back, trying not to splash with the oars, they would set their lines in the water and take turns at the wine. It was hard work rowing in that heat, and nerve-racking at times, because when a freighter, pounding its way along the channel between New York and Albany, would come into sight I would be ordered to ship oars in mid-channel until the steel prow would seem to rise above me mountain high and the warning whistle would deafen me, and then at the last moment I would be allowed to dig the oars into the water and pull clear. It was an insane game to play, but I played it with the knowledge that Ben’s eyes were fixed on me and that the little smile on his lips was challenging me.

  That was the same expression I met when, one Sunday morning while the Gennaros were at church and I had ascended the ladder to the hayloft of the barn to await their return, I found at the head of the ladder that I was staring at Ben and a strange girl sprawled on the loose hay, both mother-naked and both taking a heated interest in an activity which I knew only through rumor and anecdote up to then. Then the girl caught a glimpse of me as I stood balanced on the ladder gaping at her, and she squawked like a dismayed chicken and wildly flung Ben off her recumbent body, so that he sat there in surprise, legs straddled wide and outraged nature between his legs clamoring for fulfillment, the most ridiculous position that the male animal can be caught in, and when he saw me he made no move to change that position. He smiled and said, “Think you’re ready for some of this, Danny?” and that sent me half sliding, half floundering down the ladder.

  Afterward—and it took me a few days to recover from the experience—I discovered that there are cases where the eavesdropper can feel all the guilt that the sinner does not. Ben did not make it easier for me. Whether out of malice or a sense of obligation I don’t know, but he took pains to explain to me that the hayloft was a sort of Sacred Grove where I was welcome to practice the rites any time I wanted to. Aldo and most of the other Gennaro males my age had already been initiated. Didn’t I think it was time for me to find out what it was all about?

  I did, but I resisted temptation. There were two good reasons for that. Since Ben would be the one to obtain my partner for me it seemed likely that he’d be getting a report on my lack of prowess afterward, and I was terrified at the thought of failure before him. But the second reason, and by far the more important one, was Mia.

  The trouble was that the scene in the hayloft now sent my feelings for Mia below the navel, and I recoiled from that realization. My head was stuffed with romantic furniture, and Mia sat enthroned among it as Lorna Doone—Fair Elaine—the subject of all the impassioned doggerel and inaccurate drawings I toiled over in the privacy of my own room. Suddenly there was a diminution of that subject, a tarnishing of her halo, and I knew when I lay hotly twisting and turning in my bed at night that I was at fault for that. The picture of Mia somehow merging with the picture of the girl Ben had been puffing and panting over, the dirty soles of her bare feet turned up at me, was enough to make me feel that I was constantly defiling Mia. Unwittingly, I was a fanatic devotee of the double standard, but where this neat device for settling the contradictions between romance and reality is supposed to bring comfort to its adherents, it brought me only anguish. Mentally—and that is a kind word to use in defining whatever goes on in the head of a moonstruck adolescent—I did not want to replace the idealized Mia with the fleshly Mia. Emotionally, I could not help doing so.

  It never dawned on me that Mia herself might be interested in this inner war I was waging, or that she might have any hopes as to its outcome. I knew that she tolerated me, and that was all I asked. Only once—we were all of thirteen then—was I offered a clue to something hidden deeper, but it is not in the nature of the romantic to properly interpret any suc
h clues. Not, at least, if they conflict with his own woolly imaginings. And yet this clue was so shoutingly obvious that I can only look back now on my own innocence and ignorance with amazement.

  It happened the afternoon I was helping the junior Gennaros carry live fowl from one poultry house to another. The old poultry house reeked with droppings and dirt; it would have to be cleaned and repainted, and meanwhile its occupants would be stored in temporary headquarters some distance away. Their transportation was easy enough if you had strong wrists and nerves; it consisted of grabbing two chickens by their legs in each hand and carrying them upside down, squawking insanely and battering away at the air with their wings, to the wired enclosure that awaited them. Since Ben never carried less than two birds in each hand at a time, it was a point of honor for Aldo and me to do the same. It was not easy to do, but honor prevailed, and I made several such trips successfully.

  But disaster was waiting, and it struck just as I had completed my final journey. As I swung my load into the enclosure one chicken pulled free and fluttered off, landing heavily twenty feet away and starting across the ground with the lurching, bobbing motion that makes a chicken the most graceless and ungraceful of all God’s creatures. I raced after it, made a desperate clutch at it, and at that moment the chicken suddenly stopped short. It was too late for me to stop myself. I landed headlong and with all my weight on top of it, and I could have sworn that there was a popping noise under me as I landed. When I got up I was confronted, not so much by a totally dead chicken, as by precious property entrusted to me which I had utterly destroyed.

  The only thought that entered my head then was to get rid of the evidence. I started scrabbling furiously at the ground to dig a proper grave, and in the midst of my scrabbling I was stricken by the sight of bare legs—brown, slender, beautiful legs which I recognized immediately—standing before me. I looked up at Mia, my heart in my mouth, and she looked down at me and my victim, her eyes bright with interest.

  “You didn’t have to chase it,” she said. “It would have come back to the coop when it got hungry.”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “No, I guess you didn’t.” She kneeled down beside me, and the brushing of her bare arm against mine, the smell of sweat rising from her, the queer emotions that the spectacle of the dead chicken had stirred in me all merged together into a potent brew. The impact of my chest on the chicken had not been altogether horrifying. I had gone hunting a few times with Ben and some of the other Gennaros behind a yelping, badly trained pack of beagles, and the moment of explosion when I saw my rabbit leap and twist convulsively in the air and then fall kicking had provided me with that same sort of feeling, a flicker of pity washed away by the excitement of the kill and the sense of power boiling over in me. All this was weirdly mixed up with the closeness of Mia’s body next to mine, with the musky odor of it and the whisper of wind through the tall grass around us and the feel of soft black earth under my hands. I felt a retching in my belly and throat and braced myself on my hands, head hanging down but lips compressed to keep myself from vomiting. All I knew was that I might as well die on the spot as vomit.

  Mia pushed my shoulder. “Oh, stop,” she said. “It’s only one chicken. We’ve got a thousand of them. Here, I’ll help you dig.”

  I fought off the qualm and I joined her in scooping dirt from the hole until it was deep enough to receive the corpse committed to it. We covered the hole and stood up to tamp down the dirt with our feet, and then facing her I said pleadingly, “You won’t tell Ben, will you?”

  She looked at me gravely. “Why should I?”

  “I know. But you won’t tell him, will you?”

  “Are you scared of Ben?”

  “No, but I don’t want him to know.” Then I said reasonably, “A chicken costs money. If I have to pay for it I’ll have to get the money from my sister and she’ll be sore.”

  “Then you’re scared of your sister.”

  “I’m not scared of anybody. I just don’t want any trouble because of a stinking chicken.”

  “I know,” Mia said. “All right, I won’t tell anybody, Danny. Don’t you think I can keep a secret?”

  She kept that one until we had gotten back to the old poultry house where Ben and Aldo were busy with shovels and hoes. Then while I stood stunned she walked up to Ben, her skirt flirting back and forth over her buttocks in a strange and special kind of walk, and said to him, “Ben you missed the funniest thing. One of the hens got loose from Danny, and when he was chasing it he fell flop on it. It’s dead as anything now, but you should have seen it, Ben. You would have laughed and laughed—”

  And to my relief, my slack-muscled, knee-sagging relief, Ben only said impatiently, “All right, I would have laughed and laughed. What did you do with it?”

  “We buried it,” Mia said. “Isn’t that touching?”

  “Well, I hope you buried it deep enough so that the dogs can’t dig it up,” Ben said. “They can choke on those bones,” and that, I knew, was the end of it for him.

  But not for me. I followed Mia toward the house, and when we were out of sight behind it I laid hands on her for the first time. I caught hold of her arm and swung her around to face me, almost pulling her off her feet. “Why did you do that?” I demanded in a fury. “You said you wouldn’t tell, and then you did!”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You’re a liar!”

  “I am not!” She struggled like a snared bird to pull away from me, hitting at me all the while with her free hand. “Let go,” she said breathlessly. “You’re hurting me. If you don’t let go I’ll yell.”

  The enormity of what I was doing suddenly cut through my rage. I hastily released her arm, and she stood there rubbing it, not moving away, but rubbing it slowly, and looked at me with veiled eyes. “You hurt me,” she said accusingly. “You like to go around hurting girls, don’t you?”

  I was staggered by this charge. Not only was it totally inaccurate, but it immediately gave me the feeling, as in the case where I had caught Ben in flagrante delicto, that I was somehow guilty of wrongdoing when I was in reality only the victim of circumstances. Or, as in this case, of malicious intent. But I was disarmed and helpless before Mia’s anguish. There would be a bruise on that lovely arm, I knew, and, even worse, there would be the shadow of my assault on her lying long between us. I groveled in my eagerness to dispel it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Honest to God, I didn’t mean to hurt you. If you want to take a sock at me, go ahead.”

  She forgave me with her eyes. “Silly. And all on account of a dumb old hen. And it was funny. You know it was.”

  “I guess it was.”

  “And the funniest thing was the way you were scared of Ben. You don’t have to be scared of Ben, Danny. He likes you. Everybody around here likes you.”

  “I know.”

  “They like you a lot better than they like your sister. You’re not stuck-up the way she is.”

  “No, she isn’t,” I said loyally. “She’s very nice.”

  “She is stuck-up,” said Mia, and her smile was very much like Ben’s. “Even Ben says she is, and he kissed her. I saw them. They were parked in the pickup truck right near your mailbox, and they were kissing like anything. So I guess he knows, doesn’t he?”

  The picture that leaped to my mind of Ben and Margaret locked in each other’s arms in the cab of the truck left me with a distaste for Margaret that I didn’t want to feel. “I don’t believe it,” I said weakly.

  “Why not? All the girls are crazy about Ben. You think there’s something wrong with kissing if you like each other?”

  “I don’t know. Anyhow, Margaret’s not like that.”

  “She’s a girl, isn’t she?” said Mia. “And there’s nothing to it, really. It’s like this.” And, miracle of miracles, she took a step forward and suddenly pressed her lips to mine in a warm, wet kiss. I stood rigid receiving it, my whole body an exposed nerve to the feel and touch
and smell of her, my arms at my sides, and what was left of my sane and controlled thoughts telling me that to spend a lifetime like this was all I could ever ask of heaven and earth. Her lips moved away from mine momentarily, and then returned to the attack so violently that her teeth cut painfully into my lower lip and that only added to my bliss. But when I put an arm around her waist—as much, I think, to keep from being knocked flat on my back as in passion—she pulled away and said sharply, “No!” and we stood facing each other like two enemies under a flag of truce that neither of them trusted too much.

  I wanted to say something—anything—but nothing that came to mind seemed to suit the occasion. It was Mia who broke the silence. She pointed to my lip and said, “It’s swelling up. You better go home and put something on it.”

  “I can do it here.”

  “No,” Mia said furiously. “You fix it up home, and you better not come around here again until it’s all right.” She shoved me hard in the chest, starting me backward in the direction of the highway. “You stupid ox,” she said, and she was really angry and never more beautiful than as I saw her then, before I obediently turned away and went home, feeling—and looking, no doubt—like one of the beagles after it had been caught mangling a rabbit it had only been supposed to scent.

  That was my clue to the other Mia, the fleshly Mia, but I didn’t recognize it then, and I didn’t recognize it during the years that followed. Those were the years of growing up when Margaret and I went back to the city to live with my father, and Ben went on to become a football star in high school, and Mia went off to St. Cecilia’s, where good little Catholic girls were sent to stay good. We were far apart then, and the only thing that made life bearable for me was being allowed to spend my summers and holidays at the Egan farm at the very time when Ben and Mia would be home with their family.