The Short History of a Prince (32 page)

The sweat spun off their faces as they turned past each other. They stood panting, watching from either side, counting to themselves, their feet and heads marking the beat, waiting to spring after Mrs. Manka played her introductory measures. They took off, flying to the center, meeting for an instant in a landing that was itself the beginning of the next jump. “And two and three,” Mr. Kenton called, “point your feet, Walter, one, head up, Mitch, and three, arms through first, and plié and finish.” In one sequence they bumped into each other. It was Mitch who placed both of his hands on Walter to set him firmly upon his course.

After class they stripped off their wet clothes, carelessly mopped themselves, rubbed at their wet heads with a towel, wrestled their pants over their damp legs. “Good night,” they called into the office to Mr. Kenton.

He was standing at his desk, studying his ledger. He looked up, started to speak, removed his cigarette from his mouth. “Good night then, boys,” he said.

The door slammed behind them, but they didn’t mean the noise, didn’t mean anything in their loose easy motions. “Good night then, boys,” Walter whispered. Mr. K. had taken the butt from his mouth so he could speak distinctly, so he could give them his full attention and his benediction. Walter felt as if he could jump down the shaft and land on his feet twelve stories below. “Let’s not wait for the elevator,” he said to Mitch, lightly touching the sleeve of his friend’s blue nylon jacket. “Let’s walk.”

“Yeah,” Mitch said, “fuck the ride.”

As if they had been released at that moment like birds into the great wide open, they made for the stairs, arms outstretched, taking them three, four, five at a time. They whooped as they vaulted down and at each floor rushed headlong around the corner to the next flight. When they got to the lobby they pushed past the girls who were just getting off the elevator. They burst into the terrible cold of the night. The air itself seemed to have made all the lines of the city straighter, cleaner, as if the cold with its own mysterious power had gone and hacked away at the stone and metal, trued up the buildings, the parked cars, the traffic lights. On the way to the el station they ducked halfway down the stairs that led to the Grant Park underground garage and rolled a joint. Maybe the grass was a mistake, Walter thought, sucking in the smoke that scratched down his throat. He was elated and the hit might make him feel giddy, or else drowsy, rather than cranking up his mood to the ecstatic.

He was right. In the heat of the train, ten minutes later, they fell asleep, sitting across from each other, their heads banging on the window with every jolt. Their mouths hung open. Walter felt the thin stream of saliva trickling down his chin and could not stop it, could not shut his unhinged jaw. The train went past Cicero, Central, Austin, Ridgeway, Parkview, and their stop, Elmdale. They did not get off. They slept past Oakland and Division. They slept as the train stood at Radley, at the end of the line. The conductor, walking through, checking the cars, had to shake them. “Hey, pal,” he said to Mitch, “time to get a move on.”

They stood on the platform waiting for the train to reverse itself, to start back to the city. But they didn’t get back on. They were awake, out in the still, clear cold, out in the dark. So what if they had missed their stop? What was two miles on a sub-zero night, the goods in their pockets? When the train passed the outer wooden section of the station, they both took a long toke, and another, and one more. They were on their way to getting good and stoned, Handy Spandy, Jack-a-Dandy. Down the long cement stairs, pocked with pigeon crap, wheeee, they hardly touched the steps, and out into the street. Mitch was shaking, holding his thin collar closed with one hand, the other
slapping at his left ear, and right eat, back and forth. They would have liked to piss in the snow, to see if they had some steam left inside.

It was the hardware-store window, filled with gallons of paint and a dusty display of brushes, that brought the memory back to Walter. He stopped and stared at the white-and-green tins stacked in a pyramid. It was Thursday night and all the stores were open in Oak Ridge. An old image came to him, and from it, in the blink of an eye, a plan of great beauty. “Ah!” he cried. It was a scheme that surely had been foreordained. “Oh!” He was practically speechless. Mitch was already ahead, at First Fidelity, but he turned when he heard Walter. He was hopping from foot to foot, clapping at his head. His jacket looked to be stationary while he jumped up and down inside it. “Mitch!” Walter called. He never used his friend’s name in front of him. He shouted, “Mitch!” He flapped his arms and ran. “Here,” he said, pushing a wad of bills into the boy’s glove. “Go across the street to the toy store and get us some balloons, some of those big party things, the helium kind. Get a bagful. The biggest bag.” He thrilled to his own words.

“What for, what the—”

“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you in a minute. My mouth is so dry I can hardly talk. I’ve had an inspiration, a gift, maybe from G-God, I’m utterly serious. I’ve got to get some paint back there, at the hardware store.”

Walter went into Gilman’s. The cold had penetrated his coat, gone through his sweater and his clammy T-shirt. He was freezing and thirsty, but he was so excited the discomfort did not matter. How he loved the worn oak floor of Gilman’s, the rows of wooden drawers with washers and drill bits, the nails and screws, the outlets and light-bulbs, the brooms, the hammers, the hoes, the posthole diggers. Everything in the store was a promise for improvement, all around Walter the raw materials of hope. He stood in front of a bin of copper piping and he let himself remember first loving Mitch, first knowing he loved him. He’d had the urge, not to remove Mitch’s clothing or kiss him or sidle up close. He’d wanted, instead, to fill balloons with paint and drop them from a high place. He’d wanted to watch them break. It didn’t matter that he was bonged out at the moment; he was
in command, he knew that the balloons bursting, spilling their colors down the avenue, had been, and was still, the expression and celebration of the feeling that had run so pure through him. He could be potted, pickled, stewed, and all through the merriment and the cloud over his senses he could maintain his standards, keep his eye fixed on the truth.

He picked out four gallons of paint, the primary colors and also white. “Thank you, thanks a million,” he said to the gentleman at the counter. Joyce had given him enough money for a month of lunches, for el fare and also a new pair of ballet shoes, and Walter counted all but thirty cents of it into the hand of the storekeeper. “I love paint, don’t you?” he said, smoothing the paper labels on the cans. “My grandfather McCloud was in the business. The Nubian Paint Company, it was called, ever hear of it? Black paint and varnish was the specialty. Nubia was some godforsaken kingdom in the Nile River Valley, I think. All over the map with religion and conquered the pants off of Egypt way back when. Got Jesus sometime after B.C., but then the Moslems captured the entire nation-state, or whatever the heck it was, no more Christmas, you bow five times a day to the east, or else. Some dam project, excuse me, a dam project, and also a damnable one, flooded the whole place a few years back. Anyway, thanks a bundle, and you have a good night!”

He whistled as he walked out the door—God, but he was feeling fine! He could sleep through history class and educate Mr. Gilman all in the same day. The brittle air was sharp in his nostrils and went stinging down into his lungs. Who cared? Who cared! Under the heat lamps in the bus shelter on Lake Street, Walter explained his plan to Mitch. It took sixty seconds. Like the proofs their geometry teacher, Miss Guest, so loved, this idea too, was simple, inevitable and elegant. They took off at a run, home to the McClouds’, each boy swinging two gallons by the wire handles.

When they got to Walter’s block they slowed. Heads down, the cans to their chests. The fact that they were supposed to be model young men for the duration of Daniel’s sickness came back to them only briefly, and then was gone with Walter’s whisper, “Who cares?” They noted that the McCloud house was dark except for the light in the back, the light over the kitchen table. Good. They slipped in the
front door, closing it softly behind them. It was Daniel, Joyce and Susan there in the kitchen, they could tell by the boy voice, the light voice and the squall of the slut. There was the smell of fish. Duke’s tags dinking his pan of water. Robert McCloud would be at work until ten or eleven, busy with a season of rush orders for the invaluable nut and bolt.

Susan’s glittering laugh obscured the noise of the marauders creeping up the front stairs. “If I was dying, fish is the last thing I’d eat,” Walter murmured as he opened the attic door. “The place stinks like the reedy waters where the fat perch—”

“Sh—shush.” Mitch shook Walter’s arm. “Shut up.”

The attic was just as cold as the enormous outdoors. They stood in the middle of the floor and took a hit. The genius of their project was droll all right, droll as hell freezing over. Walter couldn’t help sniggering, the laughter coming out of his nose like blasts of steam. “Sh, sh, sh, sh,” Mitch kept on between his own giggles. “Should we take off our shoes?” Why they hadn’t thought of that detail was funny in itself, and Mitch had to clap his hand over his mouth in an effort to swallow his horselaugh. They stumbled around trying to keep their traps closed, trying to find a screwdriver so they could open the paint. The attic was lit by the thin bluish lights coming up from the alley. There was no reason a screwdriver should be lying around on the attic floor. Walter walked in circles, appealing to God. “P-p-please, God,” he chattered, “a f-f-f-ucking screwdriver.” And, as if He were looking upon them, Mitch went straight to the windowsill and found a file.

“Ask, and it shall be given you,” Mitch recited, knowledgeable after years of Saturday catechism class. “Knock,” he said, prying off the lid of the red can, “and it shall be opened unto you.”

They couldn’t see very well, and their hands were stiff. Walter had enough clarity to move the rug so they could spill on the floor. They’d cover the mess over with the green wool piece of shit when they were done. He found an old cracked plastic bowl they could pour over. They were thinking! Ace derelicts even if they were wearing shoes. They weren’t so swacked they couldn’t fucking think! A funnel would have been nice, but you couldn’t ask for everything and get it at the snap of the fingers. Mitch held the balloon necks open with his thumb and first two fingers, and Walter poured the paint down, the rubber
growing, swelling, the body of each balloon dipping to the floor. The two boys smirked at the lewdness of the ripe balloons, the pregnant balloons, the knocked-up-with-no-husband balloons. The red house paint covered Mitch’s hands and ran down the arms of the jacket.

“Mom probably thinks we’re the squirrels in the attic,” Walter said. They opened their mouths wide and screamed under their breaths. “Squirrels!” Mitch managed to say once, before he doubled over. “Jesus, Walter,” he gasped. “You are so fu-fuh—” But he could not finish the sentence. It was hilarious, and he, himself, Wally, Wally McCloud, was priceless, funny ha-ha, hysterical. He was going to die laughing, perish, he thought, go .dead in the water, kick the bucket, meet his Maker and bite the dust; he was going to be like a cat with nine lives, nine deaths, so he could use all of the expressions for his untimely end.

They gulped the air. They cupped their hands at their mouths, trying to feed oxygen to themselves, trying to get a shock by ingesting the cold. It didn’t help. They couldn’t stop. They laughed under their breath, in a stream, as if they were humming. How they filled and tied the twenty-five balloons with assorted colors they could not account for afterward. They vaguely remembered mixing the shades in the bulb of the balloon and Walter tying the knots, cursing and blowing at his fingers. The finished product went into an empty cardboard box that had once held a chest of drawers. Their sleeves and arms and hands were a brownish purple by the time the balloons were all filled. “We’re ready, pal, oh pal,” Walter said. He had never called anyone pal, and the sound of it in his own mouth made him feel very far away from himself. He thought that he’d perhaps been acquitted of being Walter McCloud, and that he could use train conductors’ expressions freely, without being false, without recrimination.
Time, pal, to get a move on
.

He carefully opened the window, Mitch saying, “Sh, sh, sh, sh, sh, sh,” at every creak. Leg over the sill, hop, other leg over. The sleeping-porch roof was flat, no danger of slipping down an incline, falling three stories to the ground and killing themselves. The box of balloons was inside, right by the window, within easy reach. They looked over the neighborhood. Outside the hardware store, when the vision had come to Walter, there had been no question about where they’d
do the balloon toss. He had not had to explain why the Gambles were their target; no need to justify what had long ago been laid out for the carport roof in Mrs. Gamble’s heavenly chart.

For once in twenty years the Gambles’ yard light wasn’t on, and the carport spots were also off. It had to be the work of the Lord. They shook each other’s painty hands.

“Congratulations, Anderson!”

“Congratulations, McCloud!”

“Her roof will be like a Jackson Pollock painting,” Walter said. “She’ll love it. She’ll be crazy about the top of her Shrine that will look like it came from the Art Institute, in the bargain extra-satin finish of latex supergloss.”

They lay down on the shingles, writhing, holding their wide-stretched mouths and their empty, aching stomachs. Mitch’s laughter was so thin and high it sounded like whining. Walter curled up, his cheek against the shingles, against what felt like the skin of a pineapple. He was panting or he was laughing, he couldn’t tell which, each spasm coming up from his worn-out, racked diaphragm. It was funny how it wasn’t even funny anymore. They had to get up and start whacking the Gambles’ carport roof with the party balloons or they’d freeze to death with their mouths open, still laughing; both of them dead and laughing, something on the order of chickens running around after their heads are gone.