The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [157]
Bill, I wish you wouldn't talk that way.
Well, you can't change a sow's ear, Ina. I got my business and you got your social engagements, and each of us oughta be happy. Only it seems to me you could give a little time to Robert, that kid's a big kid, and he's healthy, only he's like a cold fish, and there's just no life in him.
He's going to camp this summer, and we're starting him at Country Day in the fall.
The truth is we shoulda had another kid, or a bunch of them.
Let's not go into that, Bill. Ina is settling down under the covers.
No, not from your end anyway, I swear, Ina.
Bill!
Now, fellows, the counselor says, if you're a good fellow you co-operate and if you're square and honest you do your part of your duties. Who was it that left his bed undone this morning?
No answer. It was you, Hearn, wasn't it?
Yes.
The counselor sighs. Fellows, I'm going to give this tent a demerit because of Robert.
Well, I don't see why you have to make a bed when you just got to take it apart at night. The kids snicker.
What's the matter, Hearn, are you filthy, how were you brought up if you don't make a bed? And why didn't you come out like a man and say you were guilty?
Aw, leave me alone.
Another demerit, the counselor says. Fellows, it's up to you to make Robert behave.
Only he wins back the demerits at the team boxing matches that afternoon. He shuffles in clumsily against the other kid, his arms tired from the heavy gloves, and swings his fists desperately.
His father has come up to see him for the day. Sock it to him, give it to him, Robert, in the head, in the stomach, give it to him.
The other kid jolts him in the face, and he pauses for a moment, drops his gloves, and dabs at his outraged nose. Another punch makes his ear ring. Don't let up, Bobby, his father shouts. A missed punch travels around his head, the forearm scraping the skin on his face. He is ready to cry.
In the belly, Robert.
He swings out feverishly, flailing his arms. The other kid walks into a punch, sits down surprised, and then gets up slowly. Robert keeps swinging at him, hitting him, and the kid goes down again, and the referee stops the fight. Bobby Hearn on a TKO, he shouts, gives four points to the Blues. The kids yell, and Bill Hearn is putting a bear hug around him as he climbs out of the ropes set up on the grass. Oh, you gave it to him, Bobby, I told you to give it to him in the belly, that was the way to fight, kid, goddam, I got to hand it to you, you're not afraid to step in and mix it.
He wiggles out of the hug. Leave me alone, Pop, let me go, and he runs away over the grass to his tent, trying not to cry.
There are the summers in Charlevoix, the expanding house in the Chicago suburb, the world of long green lawns, and quiet beaches, and croquet courses and tennis courts; there are all the intimate and extensive details of wealth, the things he takes for granted, and understands, separates only later. There is also six years at Fieldmont Country Day, more of the fellows and demerits, the occasional sermon, the individual regular-fellow ethic borrowed from more exclusive eastern prep schools.
You do not lie You do not cheat
You do not swear You do not screw
And you go to church.
Always of course with the booming voice, the meaty palm of Bill Hearn in the background, combined somehow -- never believably -- with dancing lessons on Saturday mornings, and the persistent avid aspirations of Ina Hearn. Bobby, why don't you take Elizabeth Perkins to your Junior Dance?
Deep in the womb which covers me,
Green as grass from house to house. . .
Only that idea comes later.
The week after he graduates from Fieldmont Country Day, he goes on a drinking bout with a few contemporaries, fellow graduates, to a shack out in the woods, owned by one of their fathers. A two-story shack with a built-in bar.
At night they sit around in one of the upstairs bedrooms, passing the bottle after swigging at it gingerly.
If my old man knew.
To hell with your old man. They are all shocked, but it was Carsons who spoke, and his father committed suicide in 1930. Carsons can be forgiven.