Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! (4 page)

“Let Natalia answer,” Tucker said.

“She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to,” Dinky said.

“That’s all right,” Natalia said.

Tucker looked from one to the other. It suddenly occurred to him that Dinky had purposely butted in every time he asked Natalia a question about herself. It suddenly dawned on him that Dinky was actually protecting Natalia in some way, and this was a side of Dinky which Tucker had never seen.

Tucker mulled it over as they walked down past the Rock Garden toward Flatbush Avenue, and he didn’t say anything; no one did for a while.

Then Natalia said, “There was a boy at our school who always wore his clothes backward. He insisted on it. The teachers would make him change them around, but the minute he was out of their sight, he’d put them on backward again.”

Tucker didn’t ask why and neither did Dinky. There was something building up, and Tucker could feel it. Tucker’s Creative Writing teacher, Mr. Baird, would have described the feeling as “far-out vibes,” meaning there were certain peculiar vibrations in the air, with no real logical reason for their being there.

Then Natalia continued, “You see, until he came to our school, he was in a lot of other schools. His parents and a lot of psychologists had always thought he was a slow learner.”

“Shrinks are all crazy,” Dinky said. “I had to see a shrink once because of my glandular problem, and he said I ate too much because I had anger bottled up in me.”

“
Some
shrinks are all right,” Natalia said.

Tucker remained silent.

“I don’t have any anger bottled up in me,” Dinky said. “If anything, I lean the other way. Who else would take in some alley cat advertised for adoption on a tree?”

Natalia said, “This boy’s name was Tony. Before he came to our school they thought he was retarded. He was going to schools where all the others were really retarded. He stopped talking and he wouldn’t do anything but sit in a chair with his clothes on backward, staring at the wall. His mother was this mean woman who took out all her anger on him.
She
really did have anger bottled up in her, and she used to beat him black and blue when he was a baby …. Then one day he heard her say he was ‘backward.’ That’s when he began wearing all his clothes backward.”

Dinky said, “The shrinks should pay more attention to stupid mothers like that, and leave normal people with gland problems alone.”

“He’s okay now, though,” Natalia said. “He’s not even in our school anymore. He’s in regular school.”

“So are you now,” Dinky said.

“I hope so,” Natalia said.

Tucker said, “Where is this street vendor located on Flatbush Avenue?” His heart was beating very fast, and he had been unable to think of anything else to say. Then he hated himself for butting in with something about a street vendor, when obviously whatever was going on was more important than Dinky getting a cardboard carton of orange sugar water.

“I don’t care if Tucker knows,” Natalia said.

“I’m warning you, I’ve only known him about a month,” Dinky said, as though Tucker wasn’t there. “I only know him because Nader gave his father asthma. It’s about all we have in common.”

“For Pete’s sake!” Tucker said.

“For Pete’s sake
what
?” said Dinky. “I
don’t
know you.”

“That’s great!” Tucker said furiously.

“I trust Tucker,” Natalia said. “I don’t think it’ll make any difference to him that I’ve been in a special school.”

“It doesn’t make any difference at all,” Tucker said.

“It’s called Renaissance,” Natalia said. “That means ‘a new emergence.’ That’s where I went for Thanksgiving. Everybody at Renaissance has problems.”

“You’re all over yours,” Dinky said.

“Mental problems,” Natalia said.

“I get it,” Tucker said softly.

“I hope I’m okay now,” Natalia said.

“Now that you know about it,” Dinky said to Tucker, “don’t blab it all over Brooklyn Heights.”

Tucker didn’t even answer her.

“I’m not ashamed of it, if that’s what you think,” Natalia said. “But sometimes it’s harder when everyone’s looking at you for signs of something.”

“Another thing,” Dinky said. “When she rhymes, she’s nervous. I just found that out myself, last night.”

“That’s true, all right,” Natalia said. “True all right, crew all right, you all right, through all right—”

“Moo all night,” Dinky broke in, “drew all right—”

They were both laughing.

“It really does make you feel better,” Dinky said.

Tucker said, “Chew all right, shoe all right, stew all night—”

“Whew! All
right
!”Natalia ended it.

“One thing still puzzles me,” Dinky said when they’d stopped laughing and were almost to Flatbush Avenue.

“What’s that?” said Natalia.

“How did he go to the John?”

“Who?”

“Tony. How did he go to the John with his pants on backward?”

Tucker actually blushed while the girls collapsed with laughter again.

When Tucker got back to the town house, Jingle had poster boards and poster paint spread out on the living-room floor. He was making signs for the walls of Help Yourself, chain smoking, and listening to a recording of
Carmina Burana
.

“Your mother and father are walking across Brooklyn Bridge for some exercise,” Jingle told Tucker. “Sit down and listen to the music. You ought to listen to more good music. Your rock music can make you deaf, did you know that? In fact, I’m going to do a sign about that.”

Several finished posters were drying across the coffee table:

BONE MEAL CAN RELIEVE ANXIETY

EACH PUFF OF A CIGARETTE COSTS 45 SECONDS OF LIFE

YOUR NERVES NEED CHOLINE.

B12 FOR BETTER EYESIGHT

Tucker got a Coke in the kitchen and brought in a clean ashtray to replace the overflowing one at Jingle’s elbow. By Jingle’s own calculation, Tucker figured Jingle had used up 900 seconds of his life that afternoon alone.

“Listen to this record carefully,” Jingle said. “Monks sang these songs in the 13th century, only they’re not religious songs so don’t look like you’re going to toss your cookies, Tucker.”

“It isn’t the songs,” Tucker said. “It’s the stale smoke.”

“Listen!” Jingle said, and then Jingle translated the words after the chorus sang them. “‘Pretty is thy face/the look of thine eyes/the braids of thy hair; o how beautiful thou art!’”

Tucker was just beginning to get interested when Jingle added, “For a young man in love, you have no soul, Tucker. Now
this
is a love song. This has poetry, Tucker.”

“Who said I was in love?” Tucker said. “I don’t happen to be.”

His tone of voice, like Jingle’s posters, didn’t carry a lot of conviction.

On the other hand, his pulse was normal, he slept well most nights, and he didn’t think of her
all
the time.

He had some of the symptoms, he allowed … but not the actual disease.

T
HE FIRST DAY OF
December, all over Tucker’s school, mimeographed notices announced:

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE FIFTIES!

DRESS UP, DANCE, AND DO IT LIKE

THEY DID IN THE
1950s.

SONGS FROM THE FIFTIES—LIVE!

REFRESHMENTS!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, IN THE RICHTER SCHOOL GYM;
8
O’CLOCK AT NIGHT.

$1.00
SINGLE;
$1.50
WITH DATE.

Tucker took down one of the notices and wrote across the bottom:
Natalia, want to go to this with me? T.

The next afternoon while Dinky, Natalia, and Tucker were watching the 4:30 movie over at the Hockers’, Tucker passed her the note when Dinky wasn’t looking. Natalia took it into the bathroom to read, and Tucker tried to exercise Nader by throwing a balled-up empty pack of Kent cigarettes for her to retrieve. Dinky’s eyes were glued to
I Died a Thousand Times
, starring Jack Palance and Shelley Winters. She was working her way through a box of Hydrox cookies.

When Natalia returned, she had written something under Tucker’s invitation.

I’ll go if Dinky has a date for it too.

To Tucker’s mind, that was like Natalia saying she’d go if it snowed for three months straight in Biloxi, Mississippi, or if all the Republican members of Congress asked for asylum in Russia.

Tucker Woolf had never had a date in his life, and besides feeling the unfairness of Natalia’s demand, he felt relief. He gave a shrug of his shoulders across the room in Natalia’s direction, as if to say, “Well, that’s the way the ball bounces, old girl.”

Then the following day, P. John Knight got up in Creative Writing to read his poem called “Thanks to the United Nations.”

P. John Knight was not a popular character at Richter School.

The poem he stood up to read said a lot about P. John.

Aren’t you glad the Chinese are in the U.N. now?

Oh boy! And how!

Who wants to live forever?

Do you? Do I? Welcome, slant-eye.

Aren’t you glad we’ll wake up in our beds,

Someday taken over by the Reds?

Who are also Yellow?

Give a Chinese cheer: Chop!

Give a cheer: Hip!

Give a Chinese boo: Suey!

Give a boo: Phooey!

Give a two-timing U.N. cheer:

Hip phooey! Chop suey! Yea!

“Well,” said Mr. Baird, the instructor, when P. John sat down, “that’s more politics than poetry.”

“All great poets mix politics with poetry,” P. John said. “Yevtushenko, Joel Oppenheimer, Pablo Neruda.”

“Who’s Pablo Neruda?” Mr. Baird asked.

P. John heaved an exasperated sigh. “He
only
won the Nobel Prize for 1971, Professor!”

You had to hand it to P. John: he
did
know his facts.

Mr. Baird said, “But your politics overwhelm your poetry.”

“Nobody ever thinks so when a pinko puts anti-American sentiments into a poem,” said P. John. “My politics just aren’t your politics.”

The truth was, P. John’s politics weren’t like anyone else’s at Richter School, and P. John himself wasn’t much like anyone in the school. He had a real old-fashioned haircut, nearly as short as a Marine boot’s, and he always wore double-breasted suits, old-style button-down shirts, and striped neckties. He
was
a year older than most of the students, but at sixteen he looked middle-aged.

But it was not the way P. John dressed, and it was not P. John’s poem, which suddenly drew Tucker’s attention that afternoon in Creative Writing. It was something so basic about P. John that Tucker would have been inclined to ignore it altogether, if it hadn’t been for the Fifties dance.

P. John Knight was a fat
boy.
He was nearly six feet, with red hair, freckles, and red-apple-cheeks, and he weighed around 220 pounds…

“Wait up!” Tucker yelled at P. John after class.

P. John looked around surprised, with a
who, me?
expression on his face. No one at Richter went out of his way to walk with P. John.

“That was an interesting poem, P. John,” Tucker said.

“How come you didn’t write one?”

“I didn’t finish it,” Tucker said.

“No one in this place is very diligent,” P. John said. “What was your unfinished poem about?”

Tucker wasn’t sure how P. John would react to his giving thanks for the library in Brooklyn Heights, so he said, “It was about Brooklyn Heights. I just moved over there.”

P. John said, “People who live in Brooklyn Heights never say they live in Brooklyn, do they? They always say Brooklyn Heights so nobody will think they’re commoners.” P. John laughed wisely and shook his head as though there was no end to the folly of the human race.

“You know too much for your own good, P. John,” Tucker began buttering him up. “That’s why everyone envies you.”

“‘Whoever envies another,’” P. John said, “‘secretly allows that person’s superiority.’ Horace Walpole wrote that, and it’s true.”

“What does it mean?” Tucker said.

“Well, for instance, everyone around here allows me to be superior, so I’ll take up all the class time reading my work. That way it’s never discovered that nobody else did his work.”

“All work and no play makes Jack miss the fifties dance,” said Tucker.

“Are you selling tickets?”

“I’m just trying to locate a superior person to escort a friend of mine,” Tucker said.

“Who are
you
escorting?”

“A friend of hers.”

“I see,” P. John said.

“We could double date.”

“Why me?” P. John said.

“This girl reads a lot. She just finished this book about this man in Victorian England. Ashley Montagu wrote it,” Tucker said.

“
What
man?
What
book?”

“I can’t exactly remember.”

“This girl sounds like she needs to be rescued from her inattentive peers, if you’re an accurate sampling of her peer group.”

“I am,” Tucker said. “I don’t remember things down to a fine point.”

P. John stopped and removed a small leather notebook from his coat pocket.

“Can you remember her name and address?”

On the night of December 10th, P. John appeared at the Joralemon Street town house promptly at 7:30.

Tucker’s father and Jingle were in the living room going over a shipment of rosehip Vitamin C tablets, Chew-C-Vites, Herb Blend Tea, Papaya Liquid Cleansing Cream, et cetera. Tucker’s mother was darting around in the background trying out yogurt makers and food choppers.

Jingle explained Help Yourself to P. John, and P. John nodded his head in that old wiser-than-all-the-world way and said, “You’ll probably attract a lot of radicals.”

“Just what does
that
mean?” Tucker’s father looked up from a carton of Wheat Germ Oil Caps with a cranky frown on his forehead. His new business venture had done nothing to improve his mood. He was beginning to take all the health-food literature very seriously. He had cut out coffee, substituting papaya-mint tea, so that breakfast with him was like eating next to someone with all the symptoms on the side of a Compoz box.