Dad pondered a moment. ‘Having permission would spoil everything, I suppose? It’s sneaking out to the lake, the graveyard, the rail tracks, the peach orchards summer nights that counts. . . .’
‘Gosh, Mr Halloway, did you once – ‘
‘Yes. But don’t let the women know I told you. Up.’ He motioned. ‘And don’t come out again any night for the next month.’
‘Yes, sir!’
Jim swung monkeywise to the stars, flashed through his window, shut it, drew the shade.
Dad looked up at the hidden rungs coming down out of the starlight to the running-free world of sidewalks that invited the one-thousand-yard dash, and the high hurdles of the dark bushes, and the pole-vault cemetery trellises and walls. . . .
‘You know what I hate most of all, Will? Not being able to run any more, like you.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said his son.
‘Let’s have it clear now,’ said Dad. ‘Tomorrow, go apologize to Miss Foley again. Check her lawn. We may have missed some of the – stolen property – with matches and flashlights. Then go to the Police Chief to report. You’re lucky you turned yourself in. You’re lucky Miss Foley won’t press charges.’
‘Yes, sir.’
They walked back to the side of their own house. Dad raked his hand in the ivy.
‘Our place, too?’
His hand found a rung Will had nailed away among the leaves.
‘Our place, too.’
He took out his tobacco pouch, filled his pipe as they stood by the ivy, the hidden rungs leading up to warm beds, safe rooms, then lit his pipe and said, ‘I know you. You’re not acting guilty. You didn’t steal anything.’
‘No.’
‘Then why did you say you did, to the police?’
‘Because Miss Foley – who knows why? – wants us guilty. If she says we are, we are. You saw how surprised she was to see us come in through the window? She never figured we’d confess. Well, we did. We got enough enemies without the law on us, too. I figured if we made a clean breast, they’d go easy. They did. At the same time, boy, Miss Foley’s won, too, because now we’re criminals. Nobody’ll believe what we say.’
‘I’ll believe.’
‘Will you?’ Will searched the shadows on his father’s face, saw whiteness of skin, eyeball, and hair.
‘Dad, the other night, at three o’clock in the morning – ‘
‘Three in the morning – ‘
He saw Dad flinch as from a cold wind, as if he smelled and knew the whole thing and simply could not move, reach out, touch and pat Will.
And he knew he could not say it. Tomorrow, yes, some other day, yes, for perhaps with the sun coming up, the tents would be gone, the freaks off over the world, leaving them alone, knowing they were scared enough not to push it, say anything, just keep their mouths shut. Maybe it would all blow over, maybe. . .maybe. . . .
‘Yes, Will?’ said his father, with difficulty, the pipe in his hand going dead. ‘Go on.’
No, thought Will, let Jim and me be cannibalized, but no one else. Anyone that knows gets hurt. So no one else must know. Aloud he said:
‘In a couple of days, Dad, I’ll tell you everything. I swear. Mom’s honour.’
‘Mom’s honour’ said Dad, at last, ‘is good enough for me.’
28
The night was sweet with the dust of autumn leaves that smelled as if the fine sands of ancient Egypt were drifting to dunes beyond the town. How come, thought Will, at a time like this, I can even think of four thousand years of dust of ancient people sliding around the world, and me sad because no one notices except me and Dad here maybe, and even us not telling each other.
It was indeed a time between, one second their thoughts all brambled airedale, the next all silken slumbering cat. It was a time to go to bed, yet still they lingered reluctant as boys to give over and wander in wide circles to pillow and night thoughts. It was a time to say much but not all. It was a time after first discoveries but not last ones. It was wanting to know everything and wanting to know nothing. It was the new sweetness of men starting to talk as they must talk. It was the possible bitterness of revelation.
So while they should have gone upstairs, they could not depart this moment that promised others on not so distant nights when man and boy-becoming-man might almost sing. So Will at last said, carefully:
‘Dad? Am I a good person?’
‘I think so. I know so, yes.’
‘Will – will that help when things get really rough?’
‘It’ll help.’
‘Will it save me if I need saving? I mean, if I’m around bad people and there’s no one else good around for miles, what then?’
‘It’ll help.’
‘That’s not good enough, Dad!’
‘Good is no guarantee for your body. It’s mainly for peace of mind – ‘
‘But sometimes, Dad, aren’t you so scared that even – ‘
‘ – the mind isn’t peaceful?’ His father nodded, his face uneasy.
‘Dad,’ said Will, his voice very faint. ‘Are you a good person?’
‘To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man’s a hero to himself. I’ve lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself – ‘
‘And, adding it all up. . .?’
‘The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I’m all right.’
‘Then, Dad,’ asked Will, ‘why aren’t you happy?’
‘The front lawn at let’s see. . .one-thirty in the morning. . .is no place to start a philosophical. . .’
‘I just wanted to know is all.’
There was a long moment of silence. Dad sighed.
Dad took his arm, walked him over and sat him down on the porch steps, relit his pipe. Puffing, he said, ‘All right. Your mother’s asleep. She doesn’t know we’re out here with our tomcat talk. We can go on. Now, look, since when did you think being good meant being happy?’
‘Since always.’
‘Since now learn otherwise. Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter half the time he’s covering up. He’s had his fun and he’s guilty. And men do love sin. Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colours, and smells.
Times come when troughs, not tables, suit our appetites. Hear a man too loudly praising others, and look to wonder if he didn’t just get up from the sty. On the other hand, that unhappy, pale, put-upon man walking by, who looks all guilt and sin, why, often that’s your good man with a capital G, Will. For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two.
I’ve known a few. You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog. I suppose it’s thinking about trying to be good makes the crack run up the wall one night. A man with high standards, too, the least hair falls on him sometimes wilts his spine. He can’t let himself alone, won’t lift himself off the hook if he falls just a breath from grace.
‘Oh, it would be lovely if you could just be fine, act fine, not think of it all the time. But it’s hard, right? with the last piece of lemon cake waiting in the icebox, middle of the night, not yours, but you he awake in a hot sweat for it, eh? Do I need tell you? Or, a hot spring day, noon, and there you are chained to your school desk and away off there goes the river, cool and fresh over the rock-fall.
Boys can hear clear water like that miles away. So, minute by minute, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops, you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that’s what the dock ticks, that’s what it says in the ticks. Run swim, or stay hot, run eat or lie hungry. So you stay but once stayed, Will, you know the secret, don’t you? don’t think of the river again. Or the cake. Because if you do, you’ll go crazy.
Add up all the rivers never swum in, cakes never eaten, and by the time you get my age, Will, it’s a lot missed out on. But then you console yourself, thinking, the more times in, the more times possibly drowned, or choken on lemon frosting. But then, through plain dumb cowardice, I guess, maybe you hold off from too much, wait, play it safe.
‘Look at me: married at thirty-nine, Will thirty-nine! But I was so busy wrestling myself two falls out of three, I figured I couldn’t marry until I had licked myself good and forever. Too late, I found you can’t wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else. So at last I looked up from my great self-wrestling match one night when your mother came to the library for a book, and got me, instead.
And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a women half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That’s you, Will, for my money. And the strange thing is, son, and sad, too, though you’re always racing out there on the rim of the lawn, and me on the roof using books for shingles, comparing life to libraries, I soon
