A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) (7 page)

Rexie started off down the block and I followed her. Last night was a bad dream, that’s what it was, it never really happened. I took a deep breath. I could feel my chest bursting against my shirt as my lungs filled.

“Danny!”

Her soft, quiet voice stopped me in my tracks. Slowly I turned and
looked up at her stoop. She was standing there, her eyes wise and smiling. “Why did you run away last night?” she asked, almost
reproachfully
.

A bitter taste rose into my mouth. It was true. It wasn’t a dream, then; I couldn’t escape. I began to hate her. I spat on the sidewalk. “You bitch!”

She was still smiling as she came off the stoop toward me. Her body reflected the sureness she felt. Her walk reminded me of the way she’d looked last night in front of her window. She was close to me, her lips smiling up into my face. “You like me, Danny, so don’t fight,” she said cajolingly. “I like you.”

I stared at her coldly. “I hate your guts,” I said.

She stared back at me. The smile left her face, and an expression of excitement came into it. “You think you mean it, but you don’t,” she said, lifting her hands and making a curious gesture.

I stared at her fingers as she slid her forefinger around in the palm of her other hand. I looked up at her face again and she was smiling.

I turned quickly and ran down the block, calling Rexie. But I wasn’t really running after the dog; I was running away from her. And I knew I could never run fast enough to keep from growing up.

I
SAT
quietly on the stoop, my hand idly scratching Rexie’s head. It was my last night at home. Tomorrow morning Mr. Gottkin would pick me up in his Ford and we would go off to the country. I felt sad. It would be the first time I had been away from home for any length of time.

The night hung quietly around us. The house was dark. Only the kitchen was lit up, where Mamma and Papa were still talking. I leaned over the dog. “Now you be a good girl while I’m away,” I whispered to her. She wagged her tail slowly. She understood everything I said to her, she was the smartest dog I ever saw.

“The summer isn’t very long anyway,” I said. “Before you know it, it’ll be fall an’ I’ll be back.”

She nuzzled her cold nose into my hand, and I rubbed her under her chin. She liked that.

I heard the Conlons’ door open and looked up. Marjorie Ann came
out on the stoop. I got to my feet quickly, called Rexie, and started down the block. I didn’t want to talk to her.

“Danny!” I could hear Marjorie Ann’s footsteps running after me. I turned back. She caught up to me all out of breath.

“You’re going away tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” I nodded my head.

“Mind if I walk a little way with you?” she asked in a small, humble voice.

I looked at her in surprise. This didn’t seem like her at all. “It’s a free country,” I said, starting off again.

She fell into step alongside me. “Pass everything, Danny?” she asked sociably.

“Uh-huh,” I said proudly. “Eighty-five average.”

“That’s good,” she said flatteringly. “I almost flunked math.”

“Math. is easy,” I said.

“Not for me,” she replied brightly.

We turned the corner silently, our footsteps echoing hollowly on the sidewalk. We walked another block before she spoke again.

“Still mad at me, Danny?”

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. There was a hurt expression on her face. I didn’t answer.

We walked almost another block. Then I heard her sniff. I stopped and turned to her. If there was anything I hated it was a girl bawling. “Now what?” I asked harshly.

Her eyes shone with tears. “I didn’t want you to go away mad, Danny,” she sniffed. “I like you.”

I snorted derisively. “You have a funny way of showing it. Always teasing me and making me do things I don’t want to.”

She was really bawling now. “I—I was only trying to do what you’d like, Danny.”

I started on again. “Well, I don’t like it,” I said shortly. “It makes me nervous.”

“If I promise to stop, Danny, will you still be mad at me?” Her hand caught at mine.

I looked down at her. “Not if you really promise to stop,” I said.

“Then I promise,” she said quickly, a smile breaking through her tears.

I returned her smile. “Then I’m not mad any more,” I said. Suddenly I realized I had never really been mad at her. It was myself that I had been angry with. I had liked what she had done to me.

We walked along, her hand still holding mine. Rexie ran into some open lots, and we waited for her to come out.

Marjorie Ann looked up into my face. “Can I be your girl, Danny?”

“Holy cow!” The exclamation burst from me involuntarily.

Instantly the tears spilled over into her eyes again. She turned and began to run away from me, sobbing.

I stood there for a moment gawking after her. Then I ran and caught her by the arm. “Marjorie Ann!”

She turned to face me, her body still shaking with her tears.

“Stop bawlin’,” I said. “You can be my girl if you want.”

“Oh, Danny!” She threw her arms around my neck and tried to kiss me.

I dodged her. “Aw, cut it Marge. You promised.”

“Just a kiss, Danny,” she said quickly. “That’s all right if I’m your girl.”

I stared at her. There was no arguing with her logic. Besides, I wanted to kiss her. “Okay,” I said grudgingly, “but that’s all!”

She pulled my face down to her and kissed me. I could feel her warm lips moving under mine. I pulled her closer to me and she hid her face against my shoulder. I could hardly hear her voice. “I’ll do anything you want, now I’m your girl, Danny! Anything you want,” she repeated. “I won’t tease you any more.”

Her eyes were shining earnestly. She didn’t seem like the same girl I had known all this time. There was a warmth in her that I had never seen before.

I kissed her again, slowly. I could feel her pressing closely against me, and a fever rising in my blood. A pulse began to pound in my temples. Quickly I pushed her away.

“Then let’s go home, Marjorie Ann,” I said gravely. “This is all I want.

Papa called me as I started up the stairs. I came back to him. “Yes, Papa?”

There was an embarrassed look on his face. He looked at Mamma, but she was reading the evening paper and didn’t even look up. He fixed his eyes somewhere on the floor and cleared his throat. “You’re going away for the first time, Danny,” he said awkwardly.

“Yes, Papa.”

He was looking up at the ceiling now, carefully avoiding my eyes. “You’re a big boy, Danny, and there’s certain things your mother and I feel we ought to tell you.”

I grinned. “About girls, Papa?” I asked.

He looked down at me in surprise. Mamma had put down her paper and was watching me.

I smiled at them. “You’re a little late, Papa. They teach those things in school nowadays.”

“They do?” he asked incredulously.

I nodded my head, still grinning. “If there’s anything you want to know, Papa, don’t be shy. Just ask me.”

A smile of relief came to his lips. “See, Mary,” he said, “I told you we didn’t have to say anything to him.”

Mamma looked at me doubtfully.

I smiled at her reassuringly. “You don’t have to worry, Mamma,” I reassured her. “I can take care of myself.”

I went up the stairs still smiling. They just didn’t know who they were talking to. I was an expert on girls. Hadn’t I just proved that this evening?

“D
OES
she lay, Danny?” I glanced at the boy disgustedly. His face was flushed as his eyes followed the girl on to the porch.

I reached down and locked the concession counter before I answered him. If I had heard the question once, I had heard it a thousand times since I’d come up here. This was my third summer at the Mont-Fern Hotel and Country Club.

“They all do,” I replied casually. “What the hell do you think they come up here for, fresh air and sunshine?”

The other boys around the counter all joined in the laughter, but he was still watching her. “Man,” he said in an awed voice, “there’s something about some dames in slacks!”

“Who looked at the slacks?” I asked carelessly. “I’m strictly a blouse man myself.” I started to lock up the concession while they were still laughing. These waiters and bus-boys never spent a dime. They were up here for the few bucks and the tail. They weren’t even good at their work, but the hotel didn’t care. All they wanted them for was to keep the guests happy, and the guests were mostly dames, so everybody was happy with the arrangement.

The boys drifted out on the porch and I watched them go. Most of them were older than me, but I thought of them as kids. I felt old. Maybe it was my size—I was five eleven—or maybe it was just because I was a veteran of three summers. I picked up the daily receipts report
and began to make it out. Sam liked to have his reports in order.

I remembered my first summer up here. I was real green then. That was right after my Bar Mitzvah. I was just a punk kid sucking after Gottkin, hoping it would get me into the football team in the fall. But Gottkin never came back to school. The first night up here he cleaned out the concessionaire in a crap game. The next day he was in business. Before the first week had passed, he knew he wasn’t going back. “This is for me,” I remembered him saying. “Let some other shmoe wet-nurse a bunch of kids.”

I helped him instead of working for the hotel, and he did all right. Hit the Miami Beach route in the winter, and the next summer he took over the concession at the next hotel along the road as well as this one. This summer he had five working. A couple of boys in each place and all he did was come around once a day and pick up the dough. No more Ford for him; he drove a Pierce roadster with the top down now.

But that first summer had been rough. I guess the green stuck out of my ears. I was the butt of every joke the boys could think of, and all the girls teased hell out of me. Sam finally had to tell them to lay off. He was afraid I would lose my temper and belt one of them.

I didn’t want to go back the next summer, but when Sam came over to the house and told me that he had picked up the second spot and I would run this one, I had gone with him. We needed the money. Papa’s business was really up the creek. I picked up five hundred dollars for my end of the summer.

I remember Mamma’s face when I put the dough on the kitchen table and told her to keep it. There were tears in her eyes; she turned to Papa, trying to hide them from me. Her lips were quivering, but I could hear what she said: “My Blondie.” That’s all.

Papa came close to tears himself. Each day in the store had become more frustrating than the one before. The money would go a long way. But his lips had tightened with stubborn pride. “Put it in the bank, Danny,” he had said. “You’ll need the money to go to college.”

I had smiled. He wasn’t kidding me, I knew better. “We can use the dough now,” I had said with undeniable logic. “I got two more years before college stares me in the face. We can worry about it then.”

Papa had looked at me for what seemed like a very long time. Then he reached out a trembling hand and picked up the money. “All right, Danny,” he had said, “but we’ll remember it. When things get better, you’ll get it back.”

But even as he spoke we all knew the money was gone. Business wasn’t getting any better, it was getting worse. It went the same way everything else did, down the drain.

But that was last summer and I had already kissed the dough goodbye. This summer Sam had promised me an extra hundred if I beat last year’s take. I finished the report and summed up the season’s business thus far. All I needed was a break during these last few weeks of the season and I was set. I looked at my watch. There was just time enough for me to grab a swim before lunch.

I finished locking up the concession and went out on the porch. The new broad and the boy with big eyes were playing table tennis. The girl had style all right, but her backhand could stand a little work.

I walked up behind her and took the racket out of her hand. “Loose, baby, loose,” I said confidently. “Watch me. You’re too stiff.”

Big Eyes glared at me viciously and slammed the ball at me. Easily I returned it. He smashed it back at me. Again I returned it. I was good and I knew it. The next time I cut a little english on to the ball and it veered away sharply from his frantic stab.

I smiled at the girl. “See, baby, it’s easy.”

“The way you do it,” she snowed me, smiling back, “but not for me.”

“Sure it is,” I said casually. “I’ll show yuh.”

I put the racket in her hand and stood behind her. I reached out and held her hands from the back. Slowly I brought her right arm across her left side almost shoulder-high. She pressed back against me as our arms crossed together. She couldn’t help it, I had her tied up. I could feel her breasts taut against my forearm. I smiled knowingly at Big Eyes. He was flaming with anger, but he didn’t dare open his yap. I was too big for him.

I looked down smiling. “Isn’t it easy?” I asked conversationally.

Her face was turning red. I could see the colour coming up from her throat. Unobtrusively she tried to shake my grip. She could just as easy have tried to fly. She couldn’t. I was too strong for her. She didn’t dare say anything because all the fellows were watching us and she’d be marked lousy. “I—I guess so,” she finally answered.

I grinned and let her go. That was one ping-pong lesson she wouldn’t forget in a hurry. The fellows wouldn’t forget it either. I saw them watching me, envy in their eyes. Dollars weren’t the standard up here; dames were. None of them would ever suspect now that all I ever got out of my summers here was dough.

“Just keep practisin’, baby,” I said, and sauntered off the porch feeling pretty satisfied with myself.

I cut off across the ballfield toward the casino. Sam and I shared a one-room bungalow behind it. The first year we had been up here we had slept in a room over the casino and had never been able to get
any rest. This year Sam had taken the bungalow and we used it as a combination stock-room and sleeping-quarters. Sam even had a telephone put in so he could keep in touch with the other concessions.

I unlocked the door of the bungalow, went in, and looked around me disgustedly. The place was a mess. Cartons and boxes were all over the room. It seemed I never could get time to straighten it out.

From a line over the bed I took a faded pair of gaberdine
swim-trunks
and slipped into them. Stepping carefully over the boxes, I made my way to the door and out. I promised myself I would straighten up the room this afternoon. I locked the door carefully and walked to the pool.

The pool was the way I liked it—deserted. I liked room to swim in. That’s why I came down in the morning; the guests rarely showed up until after lunch. I looked at the old sign over the entrance to the pool as I walked under it. I got a kick out of that sign. It used to be a bright red colour at the beginning of the summer, when it was newly painted, but now it was faded and only a gentle whisper:

I obeyed its order religiously. One thing I didn’t want was athlete’s foot. I stood there almost two minutes before I walked out on the rim of the pool, my feet leaving wet tracks on the cement walk.

I looked down at the porch to see if anyone was watching me. Big Eyes and the dame were still at the tennis table. Nobody was looking. I felt oddly disappointed.

I cut into the water smoothly and swam briskly down to the far end of the pool. The water was cold this morning and I’d have to keep on swimming if I didn’t want to chill. Good enough. I could practise up on my crawl stroke while there was nobody around. Sometimes I would lose my count and inhale when I should exhale and I’d get a noseful of water. Then I’d come up sputtering and choking and feeling like a fool.

I settled into the stroke, counting grimly. I had been swimming for about fifteen minutes when I heard a man’s voice calling me. Startled, I lost my count and got a mouthful of water. I looked up angrily.

It was one of the bellhops. “There’s a dame down at the desk lookin’ for your boss.”

I swam over to the side of the pool and looked up at him. “You
know he ain’t here,” I said heatedly, “so why bother me? Tell her to blow.”

“I tol’ her,” the bellhop said quickly, “’nen she asked for you.”

Who could be asking for me? “She say who she is?” I asked.

The bellhop shrugged his shoulders. “How’n hell would I know? I didn’t ask. I was too busy lookin’ at this babe. I’d see ’er ’f I were you. She’s really got it.” He rolled his eyes expressively and smacked his lips.

I grinned and climbed out of the pool. The water ran down off me and formed small puddles around my feet. I reached for a towel and began to dry myself. “What are you waitin’ for, then?” I asked. “Send her up here.”

As I finished drying myself and sat down on a bench to slip into my sandals, a shadow fell across my feet. I looked up.

“Hello, Danny.” Miss Schindler was standing there smiling at me.

I jumped to my feet, suddenly self-conscious. With surprise, I realized I was a good head taller than she was. “Muh—Miss
Schindler
,” I stammered.

She looked up into my face, still smiling. “You’ve grown, Danny. I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

I stared down at her. It was funny how she made me think of home. It was almost like another world up here. Suddenly I remembered that I had to answer Mamma’s letter. It had been lying on the table back in the bungalow for almost a week.