In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs (6 page)

“Where are you going for Christmas?” Eugene asked.

“Baltimore.”

“Baltimore? What's in Baltimore?”

“My aunt and uncle live there. How about you?”

“I'm heading on up to Boston.”

This surprised me. I had assumed he would return to Indiana for the holidays. “Who do you know in Boston?”

“Nobody. Just Tab is all.”

“Talbot? You're going to be staying with Talbot?”

“Yeah. And his family, of course.”

“For the whole vacation?”

Eugene gave a sly grin and rolled his eyes from side to side and said in a confidential tone, almost a whisper: “Old Tab's got himself an extra key nobody knows about to his daddy's liquor closet. We aim to do some very big drinking. And I mean very big.”

I went to the door. “If I don't see you in the morning, have a Merry Christmas.”

“You bet, buddy. Same to you.” Eugene grabbed my right hand in both of his. His fingers were soft and damp. “Take it easy on those Baltimore girls. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

Jaime had been called home the week before by his mother's death. His bed was stripped, the mattress doubled over. All the pictures in the room had gone with him, and the yellow walls glared blankly. I turned out the lights and sat on my bed until the bell rang for dinner.

 

I had never met my aunt or uncle before. They picked me up at the station in Baltimore with their four children, three girls and a boy. I disliked all of them immediately. During the drive home my aunt asked me if my poor father had ever learned to cope with my mother's moods. One of the girls, Pammy, fell asleep on my lap and drooled on me.

They lived in Sherwood Park, a brick suburb several miles out
side the city. My aunt and uncle went out almost every night and left me in charge of the children. This meant turning the television set on and turning it off when they had all passed out in front of it. Putting them to bed any earlier wasn't in the cards. They held on to everything—carpets, electrical cords, the legs of tables and chairs—and when that failed tried to injure themselves by scratching and gouging at their own faces.

One night I broke down. I cried for almost an hour and tried to call Talbot to ask him if I could come up to Boston and stay with him. The Nevins's number was unlisted, however, and after I washed my face and considered the idea again, I thought better of it.

When I returned to school my aunt and uncle wrote my father a letter which he sent on to me. They said that I was selfish and unenterprising. They had welcomed me as a son. They had opened their hearts to me, but I had taken no interest in them or in their children, my cousins, who worshipped the very ground I walked on. They cited an incident when I was in the kitchen reading and the wind blew all my aunt's laundry off the line and I hadn't so much as
asked
if I could help. I just sat there and went right on reading and eating peanuts. Finally, my uncle was missing a set of cuff links that had great sentimental value for him. All things considered, they didn't think my coming to Baltimore had worked out very well. They thought that on future vacations I would be happier somewhere else.

I wrote back to my father, denying all charges and making a few of my own.

 

After Christmas Talbot and I were often together. Both of us had gone out for basketball, and as neither of us was any good to the team—Talbot because of an ankle injury, me because I couldn't make the ball go through the basket—we sat together on the bench most of the time. He told me Eugene had spoiled his stepmother's Christmas by leaning back in an antique chair and
breaking it. Thereafter I thought of Mrs. Nevin as a friend; but I had barely a month to enjoy the alliance because in late January Talbot told me that his father and stepmother had separated.

Eugene was taken up with swimming, and I saw him rarely. Talbot and I had most of our friends among the malcontents in the school: those, like Talbot, to whom every rule gave offense; those who missed their girl friends or their cars; and those, like me, who knew that something was wrong but didn't know what it was.

Because I was not rich my dissatisfaction could not assume a really combative form. I paddled around on the surface, dabbling in revolt by way of the stories I wrote for
off the record
, the school literary journal. My stories took place at “The Hoatch School” and concerned a student from the West whom I referred to simply as “the boy.”

The boy's father came from a distinguished New York family. In his early twenties, he had traveled to Oregon to oversee his family's vast lumber holdings. His family turned on him when he married a beautiful young woman who happened to be part Indian. The Indian blood was noble, but the boy's father was disowned anyway.

The boy's parents prospered in spite of this and raised a large, gifted family. The boy was the most gifted of all, and his father sent him back East to Hoatch, the traditional family school. What he found there saddened him: among the students a preoccupation with money and social position, and among the masters hypocrisy and pettiness. The boy's only friends were a beautiful young dancer who worked as a waitress in a café near the school, and an old tramp. The dancer and tramp were referred to as “the girl” and “the tramp.” The boy and girl were forever getting the tramp out of trouble for doing things like painting garbage cans beautiful colors.

I doubt that Talbot ever read my stories—he never mentioned them if he did—but somehow he got the idea I was a writer. One
night he came to my room and dropped a notebook on my desk and asked me to read the essay inside. It was on the topic “Why Is Literature Worth Studying?” and it sprawled over four pages, concluding as follows:

Talbot had received an F on the essay.

“Parker says he's going to put me in summer school if I flunk again this marking period,” Talbot said, lighting a cigarette.

“I didn't know you flunked last time.” I stared helplessly at the cigarette. “Maybe you shouldn't smoke. Big John might smell it.”

“I saw Big John going into the library on my way over here.” Talbot went to the mirror and examined his profile from the corner of his eye. “I thought maybe you could help me out.”

“How?”

“Maybe give me a few ideas. You ought to see the topics he gives us. Like this one.” He took some folded papers from his back pocket. “‘Describe the most interesting person you know.'” He swore and threw the papers down.

I picked them up. “What's this? Your outline?”

“More like a rough draft, I guess you'd call it.”

I read the essay. The writing was awful, but what really shocked me was the absolute lack of interest with which he described the most interesting person he had ever known. This person turned out to be his English teacher from the year before, whose chief virtue seemed to be that he gave a lot of reading periods and didn't expect his students to be William Shakespeare and write him a novel every week.

“I don't think Parker is going to like this very much,” I said.

“Why? What's wrong with it?”

“He might get the idea you're trying to criticize him.”

“That's his problem.”

I folded up the essay and handed it back to Talbot with his notebook.

“You really think he'll give me an F on it?”

“He might.”

Talbot crumpled the essay. “Hell.”

“When is it due?”

“Tomorrow.”

“
Tomorrow
?”

“I'd have come over before this but I've been busy.”

We spent the next hour or so talking about other interesting people he had known. There weren't many of them, and the only one who really interested me was a maid named Tina who used to masturbate Talbot when she tucked him in at night and was later arrested for trying to burn the Nevins's house down. Talbot couldn't remember anything about her though, not even her last name. We finally abandoned what promise Tina held of suggesting an essay.

What eventually happened was that I got up at four-thirty next morning and invented a fictional interesting person for Talbot. This person's name was Miles and he was supposed to have been one of Talbot's uncles.

I gave the essay to Talbot outside the dining hall. He read it without expression. “I don't have any Uncle Miles,” he said. “I don't have any uncles at all. Just aunts.”

“Parker doesn't know that.”

“But it was supposed to be about someone interesting.” He was frowning at the essay. “I don't see what's so interesting about this guy.”

“If you don't want to use it I will.”

“That's okay. I'll use it.”

I wrote three more essays for Talbot in the following weeks: “Who Is Worse—Macbeth or Lady Macbeth?”; “Is There a God?”; and “Describe a Fountain Pen to a Person Who Has Never Seen One.” Mr. Parker read the last essay aloud to Talbot's class as an example of clear expository writing and put a note on the back of the essay saying how pleased he was to see Talbot getting down to work.

 

In late February the dean put a notice on the bulletin board: those students who wished to room together the following year had to submit their names to him by Friday. There was no time to waste. I went immediately to Talbot's dorm.

Eugene was alone in the room, stuffing dirty clothes into a canvas bag. He came toward me, winking and grinning and snorting. “Hey there, buddy, how they hangin'? Side-by-side for comfort or back-to-back for speed?”

We had sat across from each other at breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day now for three weeks, and each time we met he behaved as if we were brothers torn by Arabs from each other's arms and just now reunited after twenty years.

“Where's Talbot?” I asked.

“He had a phone call. Be back pretty soon.”

“Aren't you supposed to be at swimming practice?”

“Not today.” He smirked mysteriously.

“Why not?”

“I broke the conference butterfly record yesterday. Against Kent.”

“That's great. Congratulations.”

“And butterfly isn't even my best stroke. Hey, good thing you came over. I was just about to go see you.”

“What about?”

“I was wondering who you were planning on rooming with next year.”

“Oh, well, you know, I sort of promised this other guy.”

Eugene nodded, still smiling. “Fair enough. I already had someone ask me. I just thought I'd check with you first. Since we didn't have a chance to room together this year.” He stood and resumed stuffing the pile of clothes in his bag. “Is it three o'clock yet?”

“Quarter to.”

“I guess I better get these duds over to the cleaners before they close. See you later, buddy.”

Talbot came back to the room a few minutes afterwards. “Where's Eugene?”

“He was taking some clothes to the cleaners.”

“Oh.” Talbot drew a cigarette from the pack he kept hidden under the washstand and lit it. “Here,” he said, passing it to me.

“Just a drag.” I puffed at it and handed it back. I decided to come to the point. “Who are you rooming with next year?”

“Eugene.”

“
Eugene
?”

“He has to check with somebody else first but he thinks it'll be all right.” Talbot picked up his squash racket and hefted it. “How about you?”

“I don't know. I kind of like rooming alone.”

“More privacy,” said Talbot, swinging the racket in a broad backhand.

“That's right. More privacy.”

“Maybe that South American guy will come back.”

“I doubt it.”

“You never know. His old man might get better.”

“It's his mother. And she's dead.”

“Oh.” Talbot kept swinging the racket, forehand now.

“By the way, there's something I meant to tell you.”

“What's that?”

“I'm not going to be able to help you with those essays any more.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

“I've got enough work of my own to do. I can't do my work and yours too.”

“I said okay. Parker can't flunk me now anyway. I've got a C+ average.”

“I just thought I'd tell you.”

“So you told me.” Talbot finished the cigarette and stashed the butt in a tin soap dish. “We'd better go. We're gonna be late for basketball.”

“I'm not going to basketball.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't feel like going to basketball, that's why not.”

We left the building together and split up at the bottom of the steps without exchanging another word. I went down to the infirmary to get an excuse for not going to basketball. The doctor was out and I had to wait for an hour until he came back and gave me some pills and Kaopectate. When I got back to my room the dorm was in an uproar.

I heard the story from the boys in the room next to mine. Big John had caught Eugene smoking. He had come into Eugene's room and found him there alone and smelled cigarette smoke. Eugene had denied it but Big John tore the room apart and found cigarettes and butts all over the place. Eugene was over at the headmaster's house at this moment.

They told me the story in a mournful way, as though they were really broken up about it, but I could see how excited they were. It was always like that when someone got kicked out of school.

I went to my room and pulled a chair over to the window. Just before the bell rang for dinner a taxi came up the drive. Big John walked out of the dorm with two enormous cardboard suitcases and helped the driver put them in the trunk. He gave the driver some money and said something to him and the driver nodded and got back into the cab. Then the headmaster and the dean came out of the house with Eugene behind them. Eugene was
wearing his hat. He shook hands with both of them and then with Big John. Suddenly he bent over and put his hands up to his face. The dean reached out and touched his arm. They stood like that for a long time, the four of them, Eugene's shoulders bucking and heaving. I couldn't watch it. I went to the mirror and combed my hair until I heard the door of the taxi bang shut. When I looked out the window again the cab was gone. The headmaster and the dean were standing in the shadows, but I could see Big John clearly. He was rocking back on his heels and talking, hands on his hips, and something he said made the headmaster laugh; not really a laugh, more like a giggle. The only thing I heard was the word “feathers.” I figured they must be talking about Eugene's hat. Then the bell rang and the three of them went into the dining hall.