The Night Listener and Others (3 page)

I started to notice the Youngers every day now, occasionally walking around the park, but mostly just sitting on the bench near the bandshell, whether a show was going on or not. For the life of me, I didn’t see how people were able to sit through “Babes on Broadway” once, let alone five times a day, six on weekends. But the Youngers were always there, holding the bench like a fort, watching with interest as our “professional cast” butchered songs from
A Chorus Line
and
Oklahoma!
, or when little kids scrambled up into the bandshell between shows and pretended that they were our music school dropouts who moved their mouths to the canned tunes.

And they kept giving away candy, too. I’d see them do it once or twice a week, and since I spent only a little of my time watching them, they must have done it far more frequently than that. It was the last week of July when I got suspicious. I saw the woman give a Hershey bar to a little girl of six or seven. I smiled, for I’d written the couple off as just nice, generous folks with no grandchildren of their own to spoil, getting their parental kicks by making kids happy with chocolate. But a few hours later, I saw the same little girl, white as a skull, sitting with her worried parents in the nurse’s station.

Little kids are always getting sick in the park—the station doles out twenty or thirty doses of Pepto-Bismol a day to deal with the gut-wrenching mixture of rides and junk food. But the little girl didn’t look nauseated. She looked drained, as if something were eating at her. I checked back an hour later, but Jeanie, the nurse, told me the girl felt better and that she and her parents had gone.

I’m a suspicious type to begin with—always been a little paranoid—so the combination of candy and illness put me on my toes, and I began thinking about the kind of crazies who put razor blades in apples. Something in the candy? A little rat poison? A shot of Raid? Were these nice old folks retired elementary schoolteachers with a taste for vengeance? I decided to keep a closer eye on the sweet old couple the next day.

I was stationed at the rear of the grove a full hour before they walked in at 9:30 and sat on their usual bench. They talked softly, but from their expressions and the gentle tones that drifted back to me, I knew it was the talk that people make when they’ve been with each other for a long time and are happy to stay that way. They looked up at the trees, stretched, turned, situated themselves differently. At times he would put an arm around her, or they held hands, and often they didn’t touch at all. Finally she took two paperbacks from her big straw purse, handed one to the man, and they both began to read. It looked like a long day.

At 10:45, when the park was beginning to fill up and people were grabbing benches for the 11:00 “Babes on Broadway,” the woman got up and went to the nearest snack bar. I followed and watched as she bought two Cokes and four Hershey bars, then returned to the bench, giving a Coke to her husband and setting the candy between them. In five minutes they gave one away to an Asian kid and his younger brother. There was no way they could have doctored it. I saw them all the time, watching their hands and the candy through the slats in the bench. All she did after she made the offer was pick up the Hershey bar and put it in the kid’s hand, and watch and wave as the boys scampered away.

I’ve got to confess that I was a little disappointed at not being able to nab two kiddie-poisoners, but the relief of knowing that if there
were
people like that they weren’t in
my
park more than made up for it. I gave the couple a clean bill, and left the grove feeling better about human nature.

But after lunch I saw the Asian boy in the nurse’s station, and that cool lump settled in my throat again. With him were the younger boy and a woman, obviously his mother, and I walked over to them. “Tummy ache, huh?” I said, trying not to sound too interested.

The woman smiled and nodded, not saying anything. The boy just looked ahead, his face pale. But the younger child answered. “I told him not to ride that scary ride, but he did it.

“Yeah,” I said sympathetically, “that happens, especially when you eat a lot of candy too. You have any candy today, champ?” I asked the older boy.

“Not him, not him,” said the younger one. “
I
had a Hershey bar.”

“You?…” I hoped I didn’t look as dumb as I felt.

“Sam gave it to me. A lady gave it to him and he gave it to me.”

“Uh-huh. You feel okay though, huh?”

“Yeah, I feel okay.”

“Is something wrong?” said the woman, understandably curious about my interest in her son’s diet.

“No, no.” I smiled, and left the station after a nod to Jeanie, who was also looking at me strangely.

I didn’t get it, but I wanted to, so I went back to the grove and parked behind the old couple again. This time I didn’t have long to wait. They gave a little girl a candy bar in less than fifteen minutes after I’d gotten there, and this time I trailed the kid, who joined some friends, showed them the candy, and broke it up into pieces to share. A half hour later, after only two rides and nothing else to eat, she began to slow down and look a little sick. She sat on a bench with one of her friends, while the others tackled the Sooper-Loop, but in a few minutes she was back on her feet, as though whatever had troubled her had passed quickly, and I let her get lost in the crowd.

Coincidences. It was possible, but I didn’t believe it, so I decided to find out a little more about the generous golden-agers who so dependably held down that bench. I figured they’d have to have season passes, so the next morning I asked Pete, the old guy who heads the ticket-takers, to do me a favor. I told him there was a couple I’d seen in the park who I thought I knew, but that I couldn’t place their names, and maybe he’d check for me when they showed their passes. I thought it sounded dumb, and the frown he gave me showed that he did too, but he said he would. I stood by his side until I saw the couple walking in from the parking lot. The man’s cane was gone, and there was no sign of a limp. I nudged Pete and pointed in their direction. When he saw them he crumpled up his mouth as if he’d tasted vinegar. “Don’t need to see their pass,” he said softly. “Name’s Younger. Carl and Ethel Younger.”

“You know them?”

“Never spoke to them. But I’ve seen their passes enough times that I remember their names.”

I felt I had something. “How long have they been coming to the park?”

Old Pete snorted. “They’ve had season passes ever since this place got civilized. And before that…” He paused.

“What?”

He turned and looked at me, his gray eyes stone cold and serious. “They were here when I ran The Whip. In the old days. Used to be over by the grove.”

“I remember,” I said. And I did, from when I was a kid.

“I remember them from then,” he went on. “They used to sit by the band-shell all the time, talking to kids.” His eyes narrowed. “What are you really interested in them for?”

“I told you, I…”

He smiled grimly. “Yeah, you told me.”

“They must have been a lot younger then,” I said with a little smile, trying to get him back on the track.

“They looked pretty much the same as they do now.”

“Well then, they age well.”

“Damn right they do,” Old Pete said. “I ain’t run The Whip for twenty-five years, and I saw them a long time before that yet.” My smile vanished. “Anything else? Or can I get to my work now?”

I thanked him and went to the nearest water fountain. My throat had gone dry. Pete must have been wrong, I thought. Twenty-five years? Hell, they looked sixtyish now, so if they were sixty back when Pete had seen them first, that meant they must be eighty-five, ninety, even older.

I walked over to the grove again and watched them. When Carl Younger got up, he walked briskly over to the snack bar to buy the candy. When he returned, they sat and talked, then started to read their books. Neither, I noticed, was wearing glasses. I moved closer, so that I stood a couple of yards behind them. The grayness I’d seen in their hair at the start of the summer had nearly vanished, and Carl Younger’s hand that lay on his wife’s shoulder looked strangely smooth and youthful for a man of his years.

They didn’t seem to notice me, and after a while a young girl passed, and Ethel Younger looked up. “Miss,” she said, “would you like this candy? I’m afraid I bought too many for just us.’’

The girl hesitated, then looked at me standing nearby in my uniform, as if asking for permission. I gave a little nod, and just as I did, both Youngers turned around and saw me. Their smiles never faded and, after only a flicker of interest touched their shining eyes, they looked back at the girl. Ethel Younger held out the Hershey bar. The girl smiled back, said “thank you” softly, and took it, her fingers just brushing those of the woman as the exchange was made. She tucked the candy in a red plastic purse, and walked away.

The Youngers looked straight ahead, apparently neither curious nor bothered by my being there. But there was a smugness to the set of their shoulders, a stealthy triumph in the way they held their heads. My heart was beating quickly, and I felt my ears growing hot. They had done something, something while I was standing right there beside them, and it was as if they knew I couldn’t stop them, as if they were laughing inside over the great joke they’d played.

I choked down my anger until I thought I could speak clearly. Then I sat down on the bench next to Ethel Younger, looking at her face in profile, her blue eyes staring out across the benches, the crow’s feet in their corners only small lines now, almost unnoticeable.

“What?” I said quietly. Her head didn’t turn, but her eyes shifted, looking at a spot on the ground a yard in front of my feet. “What are you doing?”

She looked at me then, her head pivoting slowly. “Doing?” Her eyebrows arched in a question.

“To the kids,” I said, still almost whispering. “To the children.”

Now Carl Younger was looking at me too, leaning forward slightly to see past his wife. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said calmly.

“I’ve been watching you,” I said. “You give them candy and they get sick.”

Carl Younger shrugged. “I’m sorry to hear that.” Then he smiled. “I hope they get better?”

“Yeah,” I said. “They get better.’’

“I hope there’s nothing wrong with the candy,” said Ethel Younger. “We buy it right here at the concession stand.”

“I know. I’ve seen you buy it.”

“Oh.” Her mouth grew round. Her teeth were very white. “And have you seen us do anything to it afterwards?’’

“No,” I said. “You don’t touch it.”

She cocked her head. “Well then?…”

“It’s not poison,” I said. “It’s not the candy.”

She looked at her husband, then back at me. “Well then,” she repeated.

I nodded. “That’s what I want to know. Well then what?” I stood up in front of them, trying to look big, look tall, look like my silly gray and gold uniform meant more than it did. “It’s
you
,” I said. “I want to know what the hell you’re doing here.”

Carl Younger gave an exasperated smile. “What does anyone do here? We enjoy the shows, we look at the people, we never had any children of our own, so it’s nice to be able to give—”

“We take,” Ethel Younger said, interrupting her husband, who jerked his head around to look at her, panic in his eyes.

“Ethel…” he warned.

“No,” she said, waving her hand as if she were brushing off a fly, her voice suddenly low and cold. “We take.”

“Ethel, shut up…”

“It doesn’t matter.” She kept looking at me, a smirk on her face. “Let him know. He deserves to know. After all these years, he’s the
only
one, the only one to notice.”

Carl Younger just looked at her in surprise for a moment, then back at me. Then he smiled too, a smile that turned to a smirk just as nasty and self-confident as his wife’s. “You’re right,” he said. “It won’t matter. Who’d believe him? What could he do?”

“You want to stop talking about me like I’m not here?” I said harshly. I didn’t like the way they were watching me. But it wasn’t hunger, just the overwhelming desire to share a secret they’d kept for years, an unknown accomplishment they were proud of.

“Sit down then,” Ethel Younger said, patting the bench. “Sit down and we’ll talk to you,” and she held out a hand as if expecting me to take it.

“I’d rather stand.”

“Suit yourself.” She shrugged.

“You said you take. What did you mean?
What
do you take?”

“We take a little time,” she said. “Is that so much? I mean, certainly people have asked
you
for a little time—’Do you have a few minutes?’” She laughed softly, genuinely amused. “That’s all they lose. Maybe more than a few minutes, maybe some days, a week or two, perhaps a month, but they never know it. They never miss it.”

“You take…time?” I repeated.

“Time is what it boils down to. Actually I suppose you could call it a little strength…a little…”

“Vitality,” her husband said.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Vitality. And as you so cleverly noticed, it may make them ill for a bit, but children are always getting ill in amusement parks, aren’t they? And they recover. They feel fine in an hour or so. They grow up, they grow old—maybe not quite as old as they would have, but what are a few days to an old person? Unless you can take those days…and multiply them.”

“You touch them,” I said dully. “When you give them the candy, you touch them.”

“Yes. Just a touch.” She smiled again. “A touch, I do confess’t!” and then she laughed. “It feels so
good
to confess it, so good for someone to know at last. You’ve no idea how hard it—”

“How do you do it?”

She shook her head shortly and looked at her husband, who raised his eyebrows. “How do you walk?” she replied. “It’s been so long since we’ve had to think about it that I doubt if we could explain it in words, even to ourselves. It’s just something we do.”

“Instinctive,” said Carl Younger.

“Yes, instinctive. We had to learn at first. Self-taught, I don’t quite remember how. But once we knew we could, once we were able to control it, it became quite second nature. One short season of sharing, and we are primed, charged, secured from the grip of Gerontion until the next summer. And then we begin again.” She sighed. “Retirement has proven to be a most rewarding time.”