“Who shall I give the first piece to?” Lisabell cried.
She deliberated so long it seemed she must be put ting a part of herself into the soft color and spun suga r of the frosting.
She took two slow steps forward. She was not smiling now. Her face was gravely serious. She held out the cake upon the plate and handed it to Douglas.
She stood before Doug and moved her face so close to his that he could feel her breath on his cheeks.
Douglas, startled, jumped back.
Shocked, Lisabell opened her eyes as she cried softly a word he could not at fi rst hear.
“Coward,” she cried. “And not only that,” she added. “Scaredy-cat!”
“Don’t listen, Doug,” said Tom.
“Yeah, you don’t have to take that,” said Charlie.
Douglas moved back another step, blinking.
Douglas held the plate in his hands and the children stood around him. He did not see Quartermain wink at Bleak and jab him with his elbow. He saw only Lisabell’s face. It was a face with snow in it, with cherries, and water and grass, and it was a face like this late afternoon. It was a face that looked into him. He felt as if, somehow, she had touched him, here, there, upon the eyelids, the ears, the nose. He shivered. He took a bite of cake.
“Well,” said Lisabell. “Got nothing to say? If you’r e scared down here, I bet you’re even more scared up there.” She pointed upward, toward the far edge of the ravine. “Tonight,” she said, “we’re all going to be there. I bet you won’t even show up.”
Doug looked from her up to the top of the ravine and there stood the haunted house where, in the daytime, the boys sometimes gathered, but where they never dared to go at night.
“Well,” said Lisabell. “What are you waiting for? Will you be there or not?”
“Doug,” said Tom. “You don’t have to take that. Give her what for, Doug.”
Doug looked from Lisabell’s face up to the heights of the ravine and again to the haunted house.
The cake melted in Douglas’s mouth. Between looking at the house and trying to decide, with the cake in his mouth, sugar melting on his tongue, he didn’t know what to do. His heart was beating wildly and his face was a confusion of blood.
“I’ll…” he blurted.
“You’ll what?” taunted Lisabell.
“… be there,” he said.
“Thatta boy, Doug,” said Tom.
“Don’t let her fool you,” said Bo.
But Doug turned away from his friends.
Suddenly a memory came to him. Years ago, he had killed a butterfly on a bush, smashing it with a stick, for no reason at all, other than it seemed like the thing to do. Glancing up, he had seen his grandfather, like a framed picture, startled, on the porch above him.
Douglas dropped the stick and picked up the shattered flakes of butterfly, the bright pieces of sun and grass. He tried to fit it back together again and breathe a spell of life into it. But at last, crying, he said, “I’m sorry.”
And then Grandpa had spoken, saying, “Remember, always, everything moves.” Thinking of the butterfly, he was reminded of Quartermain. The trees shook with wind and suddenly he was looking out of Quartermain’s face, and he knew how it felt to be inside a haunted house, alone.
He went to the birthday table and picked up a plate with the largest piece of cake on it, and began to walk toward Quartermain. There was a starched look in the old man’s face, then a searching of the boy’s eyes and chin and nose with a sunless gaze.
Douglas stopped before the wheelchair.
“Mr. Quartermain,” he said.
He pushed the plate out on the warm air into Quartermain’s hands.
At first the old man’s hands did not move. Then as if wakened, his fi ngers opened with surprise. Quartermain regarded the gift with utter bewilderment.
“Thank you,” he said, so low no one heard him. He touched a fragment of white frosting to his mouth.
Everyone was very quiet.
“Criminy, Doug!” Bo hissed as he pulled Doug away from the wheelchair. “Why’d you do that? Is it Armistice Day? You gonna let me rip off your epaulettes? Why’d you give that cake to that awful old gink?”
Because, Douglas thought but didn’t say, because, well, I could hear him breathe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I’ ve lost, thought Quatermain. I’ve lost the game. Check. Mate.
Bleak pushed Quartermain in his wheelchair, like a load of dried apricots and yellow wicker, around the block under the dying afternoon sun. He hated the tears that brimmed in his eyes.
“My God!” he cried. “What happened?”
Bleak said he wasn’t sure whether it was a significant loss or a small victory.
“Don’t small victory me !” Quartermain shouted.
“All right,” said Bleak. “I won’t.”
“All of a sudden,” said Quartermain, “in the boy’s—”
He stopped, for he could not breathe.
“Face,” he continued. “In the boy’s face.” Quartermain touched his mouth with his hands to pull the words out. He had seen himself peer forth from the boy’s eyes, as if from an opened door. “How did I get in there, how?”
Bleak said nothing, but pushed Quartermain on through sun and shadow, quietly.
Quartermain did not touch the hand-wheels of his moving chair. He slumped, staring rigidly beyond the moving trees, the flowing white river of sidewalk.
“What happened?”
“If you don’t know,” said Bleak, “I won’t tell you.”
“I thought I’d defeated them. I thought I was mean and smart and clever. But I didn’t win.”
“No,” said Bleak.
“I don’t understand. Everything was set up for me to win.”
“You did them a favor. You made them put one foot in front of the other.”
“Is that what I did? So it’s their victory.”
“They might not know it, but yes. Every time you take a step, even when you don’t want to,” said Bleak. “When it hurts, when it means you rub chins with death, or even if it means dying, that’s good. Anything that moves ahead, wins. No chess game was ever won by the player who sat for a lifetime thinking over his next move.”
Quartermain let himself be pushed another block in silence and then said: “Braling was a fool.”
“The metronome? Yes.” Bleak shook his head. “He might be alive today if he hadn’t scared himself to death. He thought he could stand still or even run backward. He thought he could trick life. Tricked himself right into a fine oration and a quick burial.”
They turned a corner.
“Oh, it’s hard to let go,” said Quartermain. “All my life I’ve held on to everything I ever touched. Preach to me, Bleak!”
Bleak, obediently, preached: “Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. It’s like boats.
You keep your motor on so you can steer with the current. And when you hear the sound of the waterfall coming nearer and nearer, tidy up the boat, put on your best tie and hat, and smoke a cigar right up till the moment you go over. That’s a triumph. Don’t argue with the cataract.”
“Take me around the block again.”
“Here we go.”
The leaf-light flickered on the paper-thin skin of the old men’s wrists, the shadows alternating with fading sunlight. They moved in a soft whisper.
“All of a sudden. In that boy’s face… He gave me a piece of cake, Bleak.”
“I saw him.”
“Why, why did he do it? He kept looking at me as if I were someone new. Was that it? Or what? Why did he do it? And there I was, me, staring out of his face. And I knew I’d lost.”
“Let’s say you didn’t win, maybe. But you didn’t lose.”
“What broke me down all of a sudden? I hated that monster, and then, suddenly, I hated myself. Why?”
“Because he wasn’t your son.”
“Ridiculous!”
“Nevertheless. You never got married that I knew…”
“Never!”
“Never had children?”
“Never!”
“And the children never had children.”
“Of course not. Impossible!”
“You cut yourself off from life. The boy has recon nected you. He is the grandson you should have had, to keep the juices flowing, life staying alert.”
“Hard to believe.”
“You’re coming around. You can’t cut all the phone lines and still be on speaking terms with the world. Instead of living inside your son and your son’s son, you were really heading for the junkyard. The boy reminded you of your utter and complete fi nish.”
“No more, no more!” Quartermain grabbed the hard rubber wheels of his chair, causing them to stop short.
“Face up to it,” Bleak said. “We’re both dumb old fools. A little late for wisdom, but better an ironic recognition than none at all.”
Uncurling his friend’s fingers from the spider web wheels, Bleak pushed the chair around a corner so the light of the dying sun stained their faces a healthy red, and added, “Look, life gives us everything. Then it takes it away.
Youth, love, happiness, friends. Darkness gets it all in the end. We didn’t have enough sense to know you can will it—life—to others. Your looks, your youth. Pass it on. Give it away. It’s lent to us for only a while. Use it, let go without crying. It’s a very fancy relay race, heading God knows where.
Except now, in your last lap of the race, you find no one waiting for you on the track ahead.
