Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! (11 page)

Natalia sighed. Marcus looked away and began blowing up balloons again.

Mrs. Hocker continued, “This is a good lesson for all of us. We mustn’t overrespond to people who take an interest in us. We must always keep things in perspective. A friend is just a friend.”

“Except when your parents tell you he can’t be your friend anymore,” Dinky said.

“Not anymore, not at the door,” Natalia said.

Mr. Hocker was carrying plates of food into the dining room.

“Dinky,” Mrs. Hocker said, “I’ll only say two more things on this subject. One is: I did not admire the particular friend in question. He was smug and narrow-minded. Two is: The particular friend in question did not admire you in the way you admired him. He was solely interested in exercising his authority over you.”

Dinky gave a helpless shrug, staring down at the floor.

“He wasn’t worthy of you, sweetheart,” Mrs. Hocker said.

“Supper is served! The Carollers are just down the street!” Mr. Hocker shouted from the dining room.

By this time the seven balloons were floating around the living room. Natalia and Marcus began poking them, reading them, and filling in sentences. Dinky got up and wandered toward the dining room. Tucker waited for Mrs. Hocker to enter the dining room before him.

Suddenly, she stopped.

She began to read aloud the words written on the balloons. “I think … I know … I want … I care … I need … I miss … I love.”

She stared at Tucker momentarily.

“Supper is
served
,” Mr. Hocker said. “Natalia, will you please help Dinky serve everyone?”

Natalia ran into the dining room with Marcus chasing her and poking a balloon in her direction.

Mrs. Hocker said to Tucker, “What did Dinky mean, Tucker, when she said the balloons are an inside joke?”

“They’re a game,” Tucker said. They were entering the dining room together.

“What kind of a game?”

“A word game.”

“I want? I need? I love?”

“Yeah.”

“I
want
? I
need
? I
love
?” Her tone of voice was edging on anger.

For a moment there was another heavy silence.

Then Dinky said, “I want you in bed. I need you in bed. I love you in bed. They sleep together, Mother.”

“Oh, man!” Marcus laughed.

“Dinky, go to your room! You are not the least bit amusing. You are a
most
unpleasant little girl.”

“I’m a most unpleasant big fat elephant!” Dinky said. She turned to Natalia. “I’m sorry you can’t rhyme elephant, Natalia.”

“Dinky!” Mr. Hocker barked. “Apologize!”

“Don’t apologize to lies,” Natalia said. She was standing in front of the buffet between the salad and the chili. Her face was pale.

“I won’t apologize to lies,” Dinky said. “Surprise, surprise.”

Mrs. Hocker’s temper snapped then. “You’re not
better
than you think you are at all, Dinky! You’re exactly like that Knight boy! Detestable! Detestable!”

“Dinky, go to your room,” Mr. Hocker commanded. “Helen, calm down.”

The “I love—” balloon floated down in front of Dinky. She smashed it with her hands.

Then she left.

“Let’s all cool down,” Mr. Hocker said.

“This is a swell looking spread,” Marcus said.

“Serve Marcus, please, Natalia,” Mr. Hocker said.

“Tucker,” said Mrs. Hocker, “you can explain your little inside joke to Mr. Hocker and me after supper.”

“Will you please serve Marcus?” Mr. Hocker told Natalia.

Natalia looked from the chili to the salad, as though she were trying to decide which one to put on the plate first.

“I’m starved!” Marcus said.

“Serve Marcus,” Mrs. Hocker said in a voice choking with rage.

Natalia did a strange thing then.

She took a large spoonful of the salad and put it on a plate. She took a large spoonful of chili and put it on top of the salad. Then she took two forks and mixed the salad and the chili together.

She handed the plate to Marcus.

She said, “It’ll all end up that way eventually, won’t it?”

Was she laughing or crying? Tucker couldn’t tell.

Then while everyone was just standing there, staring at the plate Natalia had handed Marcus, Nader let out a yowl. She had sniffed the pepper on the poinsettia plant. She came flying through the dining room with her ruff up. She leaped over the table and clawed her way up Mrs. Hocker’s drapes. She hung there screaming.

Outside, the Heights Carollers were singing: “Sing, choirs of angels,/Sing in exultation/Sing, all ye citizens of heav’n above.”

The Leeds School

Leedston, Maine

December 27th

DEAR TUCKER
,

This will be my new address as of the first of the year.

Actually, it is only about thirty miles from my aunt’s, so I will be able to visit her when I want to.

My aunt is getting along in years (she is 55 now) and not as sharp a thinker as she used to be. She laughs and says she guesses she is mellowing in her old age, but like many Americans, she is going soft and fuzzy-headed.

She actually let some hippies use an acre of her land for a commune last summer. Not surprisingly, their crops failed. They were trying to farm without using insecticides. Leeds School is her idea. It is run like a farm, and all the students have to share in the work. I’ll believe that when I see it. Guess who’ll probably be doing most of the work?

Please ask Mr. Baird to send me my poem about the Chinese in the U.N., and my short story “Answered Prayers.” He still has them. Leeds also has Creative Writing.

Please give the enclosed letter to Susan. How is she?

Best wishes,

P. John Knight

105 Joralemon Street

Brooklyn, New York

January 1

Dear P. John,

A lot has happened since I last saw you.

Christmas Day at the Hockers turned into this big fiasco which is too complicated to go into. I didn’t even get supper. I don’t think anyone ate but Marcus. Everyone was fighting with everyone else, and I was told I can’t see Natalia anymore. According to Mrs. Hocker, I upset her too much. So now we are both blacklisted.

Then when I was walking home from there, I saw all this black smoke coming from Montague Street. My uncle got drunk and fell asleep smoking a cigarette on this sleigh bed in our new health store. Our ex-health store now. We were wiped out.

Anyway, we are all going to church this morning and pray like mad for a miracle of some kind. I hope it won’t turn out like your version of “Answered Prayers.”

I haven’t seen Susan or Natalia since Christmas. I’ll get your letter to her somehow. She received your gift and really liked it.

I hope Leeds turns out to be a good place
.

Best,

Tucker

“Almighty God,” the minister intoned, “the fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our weaknesses before we sin; we beseech thee to forgive and have compassion upon our infirmities—”

Tucker opened one eye and looked in Jingle’s direction. He could only see Jingle’s profile. Jingle was kneeling with his elbows resting on the pew in front of him and his fingers at his mouth, as though he were biting his nails. His hands were bandaged to cover his burns, and there was a small bandage over his left eye. He was sitting on the aisle, next to Tucker’s mother. Tucker sat between his mother and father. Tucker’s father was barely speaking to Jingle.

Tucker couldn’t decide whether Jingle’s face looked so red because all the references to “weaknesses,” “forgiveness,” and “infirmities” embarrassed him, or whether Jingle just had the usual Sunday-morning hangover.

Dinky was sitting with her parents three pews ahead of the Woolfs. Natalia was not with them.

Tucker had not been able to get Dinky’s eye, but after the Collect, when everyone rose to sing the Recessional, she glanced back at him.

Everyone was singing, “… Ring, happy bells, across the snow:/The year is going, let him go:/Ring out the false, ring in the true.”

Dinky rolled her eyes to the rafters as if to say A
-men
!

“
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
,” Tucker’s father sang with fierce conviction.

“…
Ring out the feud
…” Tucker’s mother trilled ardently.

When the service was over, Dinky headed down the aisle toward Tucker.

“I’m sorry your store burned down, Mr. Woolf,” she said.

“Thank you,” Tucker’s father said.

“Tucker, do you want to go for a walk?”

Tucker’s mother answered for him. “Do you have your mother’s permission, Dinky?” Tucker had told his mother a little bit about what had happened over at the Hockers’ on Christmas Day, but the fire had overshadowed everything.

“She has my permission, of course,” Mrs. Hocker’s voice came from behind Dinky. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Woolf. Hello there, Tucker,” she said sweetly, just as though Christmas Day had never happened.

Tucker didn’t even look over his shoulder at her. He didn’t even answer her.

“You and Dinky go ahead,” she purred. “We aren’t having dinner for another hour.”

Mr. and Mrs. Hocker began telling Tucker’s mother and father how sorry they were that Help Yourself burned down. Dinky grabbed Tucker’s arm and pulled him down the aisle.

“Where’s Natalia?” Tucker said.

“I’ll get to that later,” Dinky answered. “Right now my mind’s on more important things.”

When they got outside, she hurried so fast that Tucker had to jog along the icy pavements to keep up with her.

“Where are we going?” Tucker said.

“You’ll see,” she said, turning down Henry Street.

They slipped and slid all the way down to Atlantic Avenue, until Dinky finally stopped before a small doorway. The sign above the doorway said
FRENCH RESTAURANT ATLANTIC
.

It was a small wood-paneled room with a large globe light hanging from the ceiling over every table.

The waiter brought them menus when they sat down, and Tucker glanced at his, put it face down on the table, and said, “Shish kebab? Curry? What are we doing here? They’re serving lunch!”

“I know what they’re serving,” Dinky said. “The menu’s mostly Middle-Eastern, despite the sign out front.”

“I thought we were going for a walk.”

“We did, didn’t we? Didn’t we walk down here?”

“I can’t even afford a Coke,” Tucker complained. “Coke’s sixty cents, for Pete’s sake!”

“It’s my treat,” Dinky said. “I got money for Christmas.”

“Is this what we almost broke our necks for?” Tucker said.

“This place fills up fast after church,” Dinky said. “You didn’t want to have to wait for a table, did you?”

“I didn’t even want to come here,” Tucker said.

“Order a crepe,” Dinky told him. “The crepes are the only French thing on the menu.” She turned around and told the waiter, “I’ll have a baklava and a Turkish demitasse, and he’ll have a raspberry crepe and a Coke.”

Before Tucker could protest, she said, “We’ll trade back and forth. Then you can taste the crepe
and
the pastry.”

“Would it make any difference if I said I wasn’t hungry?” Tucker said.

“It’d make a difference of about one thousand calories where I’m concerned,” she answered. “Waste not, want not.”

“I’ve got a letter for you,” Tucker said, reaching into his coat pocket for it. He placed it on the table. “It’s from P. John.”

Dinky didn’t even pick it up.

“In case you’re interested,” she said, “Natalia is spending a few days at Renaissance House. She always goes back there when anything upsets her.”

“How upset is she?” Tucker said.

“Time will tell. She’s supposed to be back for school in three more days.”

“What made her mix the food up that way?” Tucker said. “Was she just rattled?”

“She was the only one who made any sense that whole Christmas Day,” Dinky said. “It
does
all end up that way in your stomach, doesn’t it? Everyone else was getting so basic, why shouldn’t she?”

“Was
I
getting so basic?” Tucker said.

“Primitive is the word for you,” Dinky said. “You were practically drooling with all those stupid balloons.”

“I didn’t mean them that way.”

“My mother isn’t interested in what
you
mean. She’s interested in what
she
means, and you played right into her hands.”

“Then how come she was so nice to me at church?”

“She’s always nice in church. That’s when she’s at her best. There was a big fight Christmas night after you left. My father said she jumped to conclusions.”

“That fight started before I left.”

“It lasted all night,” Dinky said. “My mother even dragged Natalia out of bed and made her explain your stupid balloon game.”

“Does she believe that it was only a game, now?”

“Yes. But she says behind every game there’s a deeper meaning.”

“She’s evil,” Tucker said.

“Evil but not often wrong,” Dinky said.

“Don’t you want to read P. John’s letter?”

“I’ll read it when I get around to it.—Why is the service so slow in this place? A person could starve to death in this place.”

“She’s really wrong about P. John, Susan.”

“Don’t call me Susan anymore. It’s laughable.”

Then, abruptly, she changed the subject.

She told Tucker this long story about a one-armed man who was hanging around a lovers’ lane in Prospect Park. There were rumors that he tried to get in the cars and carry off the girls. He banged on the windshields with his hooked wooden arm and frothed at the mouth. He only said two words:
bloody murder
; and his voice was high and hoarse.

Dinky claimed this girl who went to St. Marie’s was up in Prospect Park one night with a boyfriend. The girl and her boyfriend began discussing the one-armed man while they were parked. They both got frightened and decided to leave. The boy dropped the girl off at her house, and drove home. When he got out of his car, he found this hook attached to his door handle.