The Man Without a Face (16 page)

“Justin,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You’re a great guy. I mean you really are.”

“Thanks. Why?’’

“Because you’re not all over me asking a bunch of questions.”

“I’ve asked you some from time to time.’’

“Not when I didn’t want to answer them. How do you always know the difference?”

“I suppose because I—”

I turned over on my side, facing him. “Because you what?”

“Luck, I guess.”

“It’s not luck. You weren’t going to say that.” “Because we’re friends.”

“Yes. We are.” I was getting drowsy again. “I have a feeling that if I don’t think about it, it’ll suddenly come to me, why I got dizzy, I mean.”

“Probably.”

“Why do you think it happened?”

“Charles—how do I know?” His face turned a little and he looked at me. “You said you’d never been to church. It looks like you had and something happened there that

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upset you a lot only you don’t remember it. Maybe you deliberately blocked it out.”

It was true. I knew it, though I still couldn’t remember what it was. The sun was hot. I was still on my side, one arm under my head. Just as I was dropping off I put the ocher across his chest, feeling the skin and hair under my hand. A sort of an electric feeling went through me. I half sat up.

“Justin.”

“Go to sleep, Charles,” he said firmly. “And let me do

the same.”

It seemed like a good idea, so I lay back down again and went to sleep.

When I woke up I was in the same position, one arm under me, one across Justin’s chest. I yawned and tried to move. “My arm’s asleep.”

“Rub it,” he said unsympathetically. “I’m going in.”

After another swim we came back to the house. It was around four o’clock. Justin went out to see Richard. I went into the library and immersed myself in one of his Terence Blake books. I had long since swallowed whole the ones I hadn’t read. I was now rereading the lot. I only became aware of the passage of time when Justin switched on the lamp beside me.

“Thanks,” I muttered, and plunged back in.

A while later he came to the door. “Come on, Charles. Dinner’s ready.” I looked up. It was almost dark.

Dinner was more of the same: soup, bread, cheese, a Large salad, cold meat and fruit. By the time we were finished it was dark. I washed the dishes as a gesture towards not having done anything about dinner. When I was through he said, “I’ll drive you down to your house.”

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“Can’t I stay here tonight, Justin?’’ When I said it I knew that was what I had been planning to do all along.

“No. I think you’d better go on down. What if the Lansings suddenly remember their responsibilities and wonder where you are?”

“They won’t. Besides, I spend most of the nights at home anyway because of Moxie.”

“All right, what about Moxie? Who’s going to feed him?” Of course it was true that Moxie fed himself most of the year, but that was when the house had been shut up and he knew I’d gone. I hesitated. I don’t know whether I was still shook up or not, but I didn’t want to be alone. Or, more specifically, I didn’t want to be away from here.

Justin was watching me. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’d like to have you here. Any time and for as long as you wanted. But I think we’d better not push your luck.”

He was right, of course, although I didn’t like to be reminded of life outside the golden cocoon.

“Okay.’’

He dropped me off near the Lansings’. I went in. Nobody was there, which was more or less what I expected. The Lansings, with Pete away and Barney now at camp, did a lot of partying. I left a note saying I was going down to my house and went back out again and walked down along the shore to our cottage.

CHAPTER II

The downstairs light was on. It always is, so I didn’t think anything about it.

“Moxie,” I yelled.

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Usually there’s a gravelly meow and Moxie emerges from somewhere, or I hear him softly padding down the stairs.

But there wasn’t a sound. “Moxie, come on, boy. Dinnertime.” I moved towards the kitchen, and then I heard him. The stairs come down near the kitchen and he was lying at the bottom. It was a kind of low cry. He was lying on his side. There was blood around his mouth. He was trying to get up, but his back legs wouldn’t move.

“Oh, God, Moxie. What happened to you?” I bent down and tried to move him, which was dumb, dumb, dumb. But I wasn’t thinking. He gave a cry. More blood oozed out. I stroked his head and then went to the phone. I tried the only vet in the area that I knew of. There was no answer and no answering service although I dialed it three times and let it hang. Then I got the operator and she tried a couple more cm the other side of the county. One was away on vacation and his office was closed. His stand-in was away for the weekend. She tried another. He was on duty and couldn’t leave. He told me to try and get Moxie there in a car and gave me instructions as to how I should lift him. I called Justin. But there was no answer. I didn’t know what to do.

I stood there, wondering which of the neighbors to call first, which one had a car here. The thing about our summer community is that you don’t need a car once you’re here. That's supposed to be the beauty of it. Men bring their families here, leave them, and drive back. Often they take their own vacations out in long weekends, but by Sunday night most of them have gone. I tried one or two. Either r>e> weren’t home or didn’t have a car. I rang the Lansings, In case they had returned. But there was no reply. I tried to make my mind work efficiently, but I was watching Moxie, who was obviously dying. I tried a couple more

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places. The Brandons didn’t have a car and Maurice had already left. The Goulds didn’t answer. I dialed Justin again. No answer. I knew, because he told me, that he often took walks at night.

Of course the local directory was no good. People are only here for the summer and their names aren’t listed. I never used the telephone so I couldn’t figure how Mother knew to call people until I remembered that she has a personal book—a blue one—in which she wrote down all the numbers she needed. I opened the drawer under the telephone and threw all the directories on the floor. There was the local one, one for Manhattan, one for Westchester, one for Connecticut, one for Boston. The yellow pages. But no little blue book. I decided it would probably be in her room—or Gloria’s. Gloria was forever on the phone.

I took the stairs two and three at a time and went first into Mother’s room. Turning on the light I zipped through everything that was visible, blessing her, for once, for her neatness. Meg’s room came next. I switched on the light and gave a quick look. Meg is not neat. As I looked through her books and magazines I flung them onto the floor and then went through her drawers. No book. I knew I didn’t have it so I went back past Mother’s room to Gloria’s.

The moment I opened the door I knew that Moxie had been in here and done something bad. I switched on the light. Right in the middle of the bed he had given his all. The blue book was there all right, on Gloria’s dresser.

I took it and was headed for the stairs when I heard sounds. There was a voice talking and then a loud metallic squeak. It could only come from my room and my bed. I veered off, thrust open the door and switched on the light.

Peerless Percy and Gloria were there. And I didn’t need

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any advanced class in sex education to know what they were doing.

Gloria gave a gasp. “Get out,” she shrieked.

Percy turned. “Cripes!” He made a snatch at his pants.

But I wasn’t looking at either him or Gloria. I was staring at his tan Mexican boot on the floor right in front of me. There was blood drying on it and in the blood were stuck some ginger hairs.

Rage exploded in me. “You—you! ...” The words jammed in my throat. Then I got my voice. “You kicked Moxie. You’ve nearly killed him! Did you know that, you creep—you lousy stinking slob?” A fury I had never known possessed me.

Percy is four years older than I am and on his freshman hockey team. There was a baseball bat in the comer. I picked is up and waded in.

I don't remember too much of what immediately followed. Gloria shrieked again and kept on shrieking. I kept trying to land one on Percy and succeeded in whacking him do the shoulder a couple of times. At first he kept saying ne didn’t mean to hurt Moxie, but I wasn’t listening. Then ne got mad. He won, of course. He could hold my arm long enough to keep me from braining him, and with some judicious biting Gloria managed to get the bat from my hand. I still fought and got in a couple of kicks, but he finally socked me and I fell against the bed’s headboard.

Listen, kid,” he said, feeling the arm where I had left I *felt. “Just thank your stars I don’t really teach you a lesson You freaking brat. You deserve one.”

I was panting and trying hard not to cry. “You jerk! You tilled my cat. That’s all you’re good for, kicking helpless animals.”

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Gloria had run out. Percy was struggling into his boots.

“It’s your fault letting him mess up the house. The place stinks.”

My head was aching where it had cracked against the headboard. Also that blind, blazing rage had receded. What was I doing here, with Moxie downstairs? I sprang up. Percy pushed me back on the bed. “Not so fast,” he said, straightening his shirt. “You’ll go when I say.”

“Moxie’s down there. I’ve got to get him to a vet. Let me by.”

I shot past him and down the stairs. Moxie was still alive, but only just. I knew there was no use. His eyes were beginning to glaze. All I could do was wait it out with him. I sat on the floor beside him, stroking him and talking to him.

Percy came down and past without saying anything. When he got to the door he turned.

“I’m sorry about Moxie,” he said. “I only used my boot when he went for Gloria with his teeth and claws. He’s your cat, man. You let him take over the place. It was my boot, but you did it as much as me.”

I didn’t say anything.

Moxie died about an hour later. Percy was telling the truth. It was his boot. But it was as much my fault as his. I sat there on the floor for a long while. Then I got an old laundry bag from the hall closet, put Moxie in it, and took him out behind the garden up the hill. There was a bright moon, but I slipped a flashlight in my pocket anyway. I also took a shovel from the basement.

I dug a grave up the hill under the big sycamore tree, so I would always know where Moxie was buried. It took much longer than I had thought it would, although I didn’t care.

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But the soil is rocky and it had been a dry summer. Then I came back to the house and cleaned up the mess on the floor.

Then I went upstairs.

When I got to my room my bed had been smoothed. In the middle of the blue spread were some sheets of paper clipped together, with a note in Gloria’s handwriting:

I've been saving these for you.

They were duplicated news clippings. And they told me everything I had always wanted to know about my father.

I stood there, reading. Some of it, of course, I knew: graduate engineer M.I.T., Navy pilot Korean War, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Navy Cross, both of which I had in New York.

What I didn’t know was that he had died of chronic alcoholism in Sydney, Australia, where he had been living on skid row for some years.

I suppose I could have called Justin, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly. For one thing, the minute I read the news clipping I remembered, mostly, what had happened in church that evening long ago. I had gone with my father. Then I had gone to sleep. When I woke up two men were hauling him out. They hadn’t seen me. I remembered his head, sagging between them. I remembered that it was cold, the bunches of candles making one blurred light, and I remembered running down the church aisle after the men, screaming at them. It was dark when I got outside and found Father sprawled on the pavement.

Tonight, Moxie, this morning, that evening—all went together, like one of the new flicks. It made sense of Father, Mother, and me. Mostly me.

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I put on a pea jacket, stuffed the papers in my pocket, and put the flashlight in the other. Then I left the house and started on the long climb up to Justin’s.

I didn’t think on the way up there. Pictures slid in and out of my mind in no particular order: the church this morning with Justin, Father’s blond head in the sun with me on his shoulders, the same head sagging between the two men and the way it looked on the pavement outside, Moxie with blood coming out of his mouth, Gloria and Peerless Percy on the bed, the sycamore tree in the moonlight, Justin—on the rock, in the water, sitting opposite me in the kitchen, the feel of his skin under my hand, the way he looked in my dream. The pictures of him were like a rope pulling me up there. I don’t think I actually thought going up there would solve anything—what was there to solve? But it’s as far as my imagination went.

Mickey came thundering down when I went through the gate and gave a couple of loud barks, but as soon as he smelled me he loped over and licked my face.

The door was unlocked. I didn’t turn on the light. Moonlight filtered into the hall from the dining room on the right. I went upstairs and into Justin’s room. There were no curtains, or at least they were drawn back. I could see his bed quite easily. He was asleep.

“Justin,” I said. And then more loudly, “Justin.”

I was going over to the bed when he moved and sat up. “Who is it?”

“It’s me. Charles.”

He switched on the light beside his bed and then sat up. “Charles! What’s the matter?” His shoulders looked brown against the white pillow.

It all spilled out like a lanced boil. “Moxie’s dead.

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That creep Percy kicked him downstairs. He and Gloria were . All the words for it had gone out of my mind, which was funny, because nobody I knew was backward about using them. “They were on my bed. . . . It’s my fault. Moxie had made a big mess on Gloria’s bed. I guess that’s why they were on mine. I should have stopped him going all over the house. But everybody was away. Gloria left me this—” I pulled the news clipping out of my pocket. “You know why I don’t have a father? Because he’s a drunk. He died on skid row. He just walked out and left me. Him and his putrid medals. He walked out on me. I always thought it was Mother’s fault. That’s why I wanted—” I saw Justin reach for his robe and pull it around him as he got up. “Easy, Charles. Easy.”