Part 21 (1/2)

”Yes, it would. I'd like to beat h.e.l.l-”

”Look at the boy's face, Sid.”

Sid looked and began to slump.

The son, standing there in the burning glare of sun and water, was proud. The way he held his head, the way his eyes took fire, the way his naked shoulders carried the burden of goad or instruction, was all pride.

It was the logic of that pride which finally caved Sid in. Weighted with some small despair, he sank back down to his knees.

”Are we going to have to sit here all afternoon, and watch this dumb game of-” Sid's voice rose in spite of himself ”-Simon Says?!”

The fattier heard. In the midst of stacking towels on the far side of the pool, he froze. The muscles on his back played like a pinball machine, making sums. Then he turned smartly, veered past his son who still stood balanced a half inch from the pool's rim, gave him a glance, nodded with intense, scowling approval, and came to cast his iron shadow over Sid and myself.

”I will thank you, sir,” he said, quietly, ”to keep your voice down, to not confuse my son-”

”I'll say any d.a.m.n thing I want,” Sid started to get up.

”No, sir, you will not” The man pointed his nose at Sid; it might just as well have been a gun. ”This is my pool, my turf, I have an agreement with the hotel, then-territory stops out there by the gate. If I'm to run a dean, tucked-in shop, it is to be with total authority. Any dissidents-out. Bodily Bodily. On the gymnasium wall inside you'll find my jujitsu black belt, boxing, and rifle-marksman certificates. If you try to shake my hand, I will break your wrist. If you sneeze, I will crack your nose. One word and your dental surgeon will need two years to reshape your smile. Company, tenshun tenshun!”

The words all flowed together.

His son stiffened at the rim of the pool.

”Forty laps! Hut!”

”Hut!” cried the boy, and leaped.

His body striking the water and his beginning to swim furiously stopped Sid from any further outrage. Sid shut his eyes. The father smiled at Sid, and turned to watch the boy churning the summer waters to a foam.

There's everything I never was,” he said. ”Gentlemen.”

He gave us a curt nod and stalked away.

Sid could only run and jump in the pool. He did twenty laps himself. Most of the time, the boy beat him. When Sid came out, the blaze was gone from his face and he threw himself down.

”Christ,” he muttered, his face buried in his towel, ”someday that boy must haul off and murder that son of a b.i.t.c.h!”

”As a Hemingway character once said,” I replied, watching the son finish his 35th lap, ”wouldn't it be nice to lap, ”wouldn't it be nice to think think so?” so?”

The final time, the last day I ever saw them, the father was still marching about briskly, emptying ashtrays (no one could empty them the way he could), straightening tables, aligning chairs and lounges in military rows, and arranging fresh white towels on benches in crisp mathematical stacks. Even the way he swabbed the deck was geometrical. In all his marching and going, fixing and re-aligning, only on occasion did he snap his head on, flick a gaze to make sure his squad, his platoon, his company still stood frozen by the hour, a boy like a ramrod guidon, his hair blowing in the summer wind, eyes straight on the late afternoon horizon, mouth damped, chin tucked, shoulders back.

I could not help myself. Sid was long gone. I waited on the balcony of the hotel overlooking the pool, having a final drink, not able to take my gaze off the marching father and the statue son. At dusk, the father double-timed it to the outer gate and almost as an afterthought called over his shoulder: ”Tenshun! Squad right One, two-”

”Three, four!” cried the boy.

The boy strode through the gate, feet clubbing the cement as if he wore boots. He marched off toward the parking lot as his father snap-locked the gate with a robot's ease, took a fast scan around, raised his stare, saw me, and hesitated. His eyes burned over my face. I felt my shoulders go back, my chin drop, my shoulders flinch. To stop it, I lifted my drink, waved it carelessly at him, and drank.

What will happen, I thought, in the years ahead? Will the son grow up to kill his old man, or beat him up, or just run away to know a ruined life, always marching to some unheard shout of ”Hut” or ”harch!” but never ”at ease!”?

Or, I thought, drinking, would the boy raise sons himself and just yell at them them on hot noons by far pools in endless years? Would he one day stick a pistol in his mouth and kill his father the only way he knew how? Or would he marry and have no sons and thus bury all shouts, all drills, all sergeants? Questions, half-answers, more questions. on hot noons by far pools in endless years? Would he one day stick a pistol in his mouth and kill his father the only way he knew how? Or would he marry and have no sons and thus bury all shouts, all drills, all sergeants? Questions, half-answers, more questions.

My gla.s.s was empty. The sun had gone, and the father and his son with it.

But now, in the flesh, straight across from me on this late night train, heading north for unlit destinations, one of them had returned. There he was, the kid himself the raw recruit, the child of the father who shouted at noon and told the sun to rise or set.

Merely alive? half half alive? alive? all all alive? alive?

I wasn't sure.

But there he sat, thirty years later, a young-old or old-young man, sipping on his third martini.

By now, I realized that my glances were becoming much too constant and embarra.s.sing. I studied his bright blue, wounded eyes, for that is what they were: wounded, and at last took courage and spoke: ”Pardon me,” I said. ”This may seem silly, but-thirty years back, I swam weekends at the Amba.s.sador Hotel where a military man tended the pool with his son. He-well. Are you that son?”

The young-old man across from me thought for a moment, looked me over with his s.h.i.+fting eyes and at last smiled, quietly.

”I,” he said, ”am that son. Come on over.”

We shook hands. I sat and ordered a final round for us, as if we were celebrating something, or holding a wake, n.o.body seemed to know which. After the barman delivered the drinks, I said, ”To nineteen fifty-two, a toast. A good year? Bad year? Here's to it, anyway!”

We drank and the young-old man said, almost immediately, ”You're wondering what ever happened to my father.”

”My G.o.d,” I sighed.

”No, no,” he a.s.sured me, ”it's all right A lot of people have wondered, have asked, over the years.''

The boy inside the older man nursed his martini and remembered the past.

”Do you tell tell people when they ask?” I said. people when they ask?” I said.

”I do.”

I took a deep breath. ”All right, then. What did happen to your father?”

”He died.”

There was a long pause.

”Is that all all?”

”Not quite.” The young-old man arranged his gla.s.s on the table in front of him, and placed a napkin at a precise angle to it, and fitted an olive to the very center of the napkin, reading the past there. ”You remember what he was like?”

”Vividly.”

”Oh, what a world of meaning you put into that 'vividly'!” The young-old man snorted faintly. ”You re member his marches up, down, around the pool, left face, right, tenshun, don't move, chin-stomach in, chest out, harch two, hut?”