The Orphan Read online

  Charles looked down the double line of kids with strings in their mouths, boys on one side, girls on the other, strings hanging in a V shaped canyon between them with a piece of homemade taffy at the vertex of the canyon. Charles vowed he would play the game fair and try to get the candy, even if it meant meeting Mary Mae in the middle, for she was no slouch as a competitor. Tenison mounted as last-minute adjustments were made, hands were placed behind backs, somebody’s string got tangled and Miss Wrigley had to undo it, and finally she cried out, “Go!” and everyone began eating string furiously.

  Paul Holton was disqualified for illegally pulling the string in his teeth, thus pulling the whole wad out of Sally Marshall’s mouth, little Joe Ricci was winning until he choked and Miss Wrigley discovered to her horror that he had swallowed all the string on his side of the candy, Douglas Bent and Martha Portola got to their candy at the same time and Douglas got a bitten lip, and Charles found himself nose to nose with Mary Mae as they came down to the candy exactly together. He did not flinch but pushed on bravely as Mary Mae’s lips had almost closed on the prize and got his teeth in the taffy. He and Mary Mae had their faces mashed together, spit on their cheeks, Mary Mae’s red blushing face panting with excitement, her blue eyes crossed, Charles’s panting breath whistling through his teeth that were locked on the taffy, sounding like a stud horse (as Paul Holton later said), until Mary Mae in a frenzy gnashed her teeth against Charles’s teeth, and in surprise he let go. The string came reeling out of his mouth as Mary Mae straightened up and pulled back with the prize. The candy piece, with Charles’s tooth marks in it, was hers. And only then did they realize that the rest of the contestants had finished and everyone had been watching them and cheering.

  While the apple bobbing was going on, Charles and Douglas and some of the other boys walked out into the dark playground. Paul Holton had a cigarette and lighted it and passed it around. When it came to Charles, he took it, dragged the smoke in and choked so badly he thought he would vomit. The other boys laughed tolerantly but did not make fun. It was too easy to do the same thing, and besides, Charles was almost above being laughed at for something like that. On the other hand, he was vulnerable where girls were concerned.

  “I thought old Mary Mae was gonna eat your face off,” Paul Holton said, dragging expertly on the cigarette.

  “They was tradin’ spit,” said Carl Bent, at fifteen the oldest boy in the school.

  “Oh come on,” Charles said, wiping his face again. He had ducked it in the first apple tub before he came out just to clean himself up.

  “I didn’t know you was so bad off for a piece … of candy,” Kick Jones said, making an allusion only he and Carl knew. They laughed nastily, making Charles feel stupid.

  Charles thought about going out into the dark and shifting and coming back as if he were in costume. That would be funny, he thought, smiling, but then I’d have to show people the costume. He giggled involuntarily, and Douglas said they’d ought to go back in before they all got caught. Charles said that was okay if someone would lend him a sheet so he could hide from Mary Mae, and they all laughed.

  In the wink ’em game, Charles began to feel good again, and found himself forgetting the leers of Mary Mae who tried to get into his chair even though he had not winked at her. His chair was empty. He looked around the circle of girls, big and small, pretty, not pretty, fat, bony, all looking expectantly while their guards held their hands at the ready like Western gunfighters waiting to shoot it out with a faster gun. Betty Bailey sat almost directly across from him looking rather bored with half shut eyes and her hair curled perfectly. She wore a jumper that emphasized her precocious bust development, and Charles thought he had never seen a more beautiful person in his life. He looked along the line to distract Kick who was her guard, and suddenly glanced back at her and winked. She tried to get up, but in a slow and genteel way so that Kick had her by the arms before she could even lean forward. Charles looked along, passing over Mary Mae, Kick’s twin sister Carol, little Ellie Gustafson a second grader, came to Brenda Gustafson, her older sister, a sixth grader, and winked. Brenda lunged forward and bashful Kenny Grattan missed her completely. Brenda eased into Charles’s chair as if she felt at home, looking around with quiet triumph. She was a calm, plain faced girl who was good at sports and sometimes got chosen to play softball with the boys. Charles liked her in a comradely way and managed to hold her while the battle raged around them. Part of the game, of course, was to offer an excuse for boys and girls to make some physical contact. Dancing was practically unknown except for formalized round dances and an occasional square dance formation, so there were hardly any legitimate ways boys and girls could touch each other without being teased for having romantic inclinations. When a boy and girl did decide to be “together,” they had to put up with a withering round of teasing that often went on for weeks.

  By the time they were to change the order, with boys sitting and girls winking, Charles was mildly excited by the game and the chance grabs and embraces he had had of various girls. He was finding that girls were interesting, smelled good, felt amazingly soft and alive, and were much more exciting than any sport he had played out on the playground. As they switched positions to music played by Miss Wrigley at the piano, there was little choice of partners. Charles ended with little Lula Bright standing behind him and knew he could get away if he really wanted to. First it was one of the notorious Portola sisters, Charles thought it was Fern, but it could have been Flossie. Whichever one it was, she kept blowing on his neck and tickling his ear until he was so goosepimply that he felt like a cactus. Worse than that, the fifteen-year-old girl was exciting him in a new way. He was getting an erection and was horribly embarrassed that it might be noticed, so that when Mary Mae winked at him, he made a heroic lunge, sliding out of Fern’s grip and half crawling across the circle to Mary Mae’s chair. It looked to everyone as though he must be desperate to get back to Mary Mae, and she got an appropriately smug look when he settled into her chair, sure, he thought, never to get away for the rest of the evening. He was called several times, once by the same Portola twin who gave him an enormously seductive wink that made him want to jump up and do something else suddenly, but he could not get away from Mary Mae’s sure grip. She had a way of pinching into the skin of his shoulder that hurt and made him settle back rather than leave part of his shoulder in her fist. He had just determined almost in anger that such a grip was unfair, even for a girl, when Betty Bailey’s captive got away, Paul Holton getting up slowly enough for her to stop him with one finger, and Betty not seeming to be aware of his leaving until he was in the middle of the circle. It made everyone laugh as Paul ambled over to Fern Portola’s chair, sat down, and put Fern’s hand on top of his head like a cap.

  Betty winked at several other boys, Kick, Carl Bent, Runt, while their girls hung on like death, although Carl almost ended on the floor with the other Portola twin. And finally she winked at Charles who had been watching her so closely he felt inside her head and started out of the chair even before her two remarkably pretty eyelashes came together in the signal. But Mary Mae was ready and dug her nails into both of Charles’s shoulders so he felt like he was being bitten. He struggled on, dragging away from her, feeling the nails digging in and getting desperate, pulling harder, watching Betty’s smiling face and additional winks of encouragement as he struggled with the girl on his back. He pulled away from the chair with a new burst of energy, the chair slid to the floor under both of them and folded up with one of Char1es’s fingers in the hinged seat and Mary Mae flopping down on top of him. Charles cried out and pulled his finger free, crawling now across the circle to the screams and laughter of the other kids, the folded-up chair flat behind him and Mary Mae Martin riding his back still clinging with her arms around his neck now, choking off his breath.

  And he never got there. Miss Wrigley stopped the game at that point, announcing cake and punch for everyone and the awarding of the prizes for the earlier games. C
harles stayed on all fours for a moment as the game broke up and Mary Mae disengaged herself from his back. He looked up to find Betty Bailey, but she was gone in the crowd. He flopped down the floor and turned to look up at Mary Mae’s flushed face. She stood with her hands on her hips looking down at him, her short mousey curls wet with sweat.

  “Looks like you win,” Charles said, grinning.

  “Oh ha, ha, to you Charles Cahill,” Mary Mae said, her face twisting with anger. To Charles’s intense surprise, she began to cry. And then, shaking her head hard so the tears whipped off her cheeks, she ran toward the girls’ cloak room and disappeared into that forbidden territory.

  ***

  It is no longer strange that Charles can arouse in me emotions of which he is largely ignorant. For the two nights between the party at the school and the one scheduled at the Baileys’ I am in an intense state of frustration that I cannot seem to overcome by any of my usual activities. Even the trickery that is usual and accepted on this holiday has not made me feel better. I have pushed over outhouses with people inside in the dark, listening to their curses as they struggle to get out, thinking it is neighborhood boys; I have put gates on top of barns, and at one farm tossed the two yard dogs to the rooftree of the house where they clung like terrified fledglings unable to walk on the steep pitched roof and howling like a couple of fiends; I have frightened people almost out of their skins and made mysterious noises under windows and eaten three lambs, a dozen ducks and chickens, and a saucy cat that I still regret.

  But the nights are getting colder. Soon it will be snowing, and I will be restricted in my movements, perhaps even feel like hibernating. These frustrating feelings are part of the growth process, and they will be dealt with in time. Meanwhile, I must try to get closer to Charles’s life and partake more of his experiences. Perhaps in this way I can assuage the irritation that runs in my veins. I notice, in a more objective mood now, that the power to control creatures does not yet extend to people, at least not for me. I extended a feeling of attraction one night to a late walker along the highway, but it seems to have little effect other than to make him nervous. He hurries faster, but does not otherwise react. The power does work on all beasts and is a convenience and some consolation in an otherwise frustrating time.

  In honor of the Baileys’ party, Charles had bought a pair of black wool pants, a belt, and a white shirt and clip-on bow tie. He had to be content to put blacking on his work shoes, running out of money short of a new pair of shoes. But, looking at himself in the old-gold rimmed mirror in his bedroom, he thought he looked not half bad. At least everything fit. He had not thought that it might be cold, and that he would have to walk more than a mile to the Bailey’s farm with nothing to wear over his white shirt except an old jacket he had been given by Douglas to work in. The evening was cold, but he could not bear to put the old dirty brown jacket over his clean clothes, as it smelled of sweat and manure. He decided to run most of the way there and back, trying to preserve a balance between getting all sweaty and getting frozen. Mrs. Stumway was sitting in her rocker in the parlor as she usually did, reading by lamplight with her little elliptical spectacles on. She looked over them at Charles as he sauntered through the dining room on his way out.

  “Charles,” she said loudly. “How old are you?”

  “Twelve, I think,” Charles said rather selfconsciously.

  “You’re a big twelve, then,” she said. “Fact, you look bigger than when you first came here.” She looked back again. “Young kids. Never saw one grow that fast.” And her voice subsided into an unintelligible mumble.

  Charles continued to stand just outside the circle of lamplight.

  “Well, go on,” Mrs. Stumway said, shaking her white curls that stuck out under the aviator’s helmet. “You’re pretty in your new clothes.”

  Charles grinned. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said and dashed out into the frosty night.

  Although he lost his bow tie twice, he eventually arrived at the Bailey farm, panting and straightening himself out while he stood outside the white gate and looked at the big house with electric lights shining like a city hotel. He stood for a minute getting his breath and thinking about what might happen this evening, and then with a final look and a deep breath he strode up the front walk and knocked on the big white door with the window panels on both sides of it.

  He stood in the glare of the porch light, feeling like an actor on a stage when the door opened and Mrs. Bailey, plump and beautiful, smiled at him in a bright and welcoming way.

  “Come in, Charles,” she said, putting one hand on his back and guiding him into the hallway. “May I,” she said, and then noticing he had no coat, passed over it. “It is rather brisk out tonight, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Charles said, walking ahead slowly as she lightly pushed him toward the sound of conversation he heard in the living room. “It’s an invigorating night for a run, I mean a walk,” Charles said, grinning.

  “Here is our young hero,” Mrs. Bailey said to the room full of people who seemed suddenly to Charles to all be strangers. They all turned to look at him while conversation stopped for a moment.

  “Happy Halloween,” Charles said brightly, smiling.

  And then they came unfrozen and began to take on familiar proportions and faces. Here was Betty coming forward to welcome him, her beautiful oval face more perfect than usual, her hair absolutely gleaming like polished mahogany in the electric light, her eyes darkened with something, and looking in all at least twenty years old in a party dress that was low cut to emphasize her bust. There were the Portola twins with identical scarlet mouths, semi-formal dresses with flounces around the bottom and daringly open bosoms; there was Carl, Douglas’s brother, and Kick and Carol Jones, and Brenda Gustafson and Paul Holton and even the big, aloof Waldo Wickham. There were others Charles knew less well. Alfred was there in an open shirt with a silk scarf at the throat that Waldo whispered was called an Ascot, and Mr. Bailey in a dark gray pinstripe suit and a silk tie that made him look like a blue jawed gangster, and some other older people Charles did not know at all. He soon felt at home among the school friends and with the comforting ministrations of Mrs. Bailey who saw that he got a Coca-Cola with ice cubes in it and was shown where a table full of strange delicacies awaited his pleasure in the dining room. Charles held down the awe he felt at the dangling crystals of the chandelier in the dining room, the huge fireplace with brass fire dogs and a lively log fire in the living room, and at the grandeur, glimpsed through the swinging door, of a real electric refrigerator in the kitchen that kept food cold without ice and made ice cubes such as the ones in his Coke. He talked with his friends and moved with mock assurance among this glitter and opulence as if he had been born in a palace and attended school in the Taj Mahal at least. Betty was laughing at his airs, which he was exaggerating for her benefit, and he was not at all displeased to see Alfred turn away from that sight to talk with Waldo who was standing like a curly topped ornamental urn next to the fireplace.

  “Now you take these, for instance,” Charles said, a milk bottle lid in his eye for a monocle, “these little devils are fiendish hard to capture.” He held up an hors d’oeuvre shaped like a tiny black cat arched on a cracker.

  Betty Bailey laughed delightedly, putting her white, delicate hand on Charles’s shoulder for support, and Charles felt that heaven was not far away.

  “Betty,” Alfred Kearny said, suddenly very close and tall. “Hadn’t you better put on some music now? I think some of our guests would like to dance.”

  Charles looked narrowly at Alfred’s red silk Ascot which was about at his eye level. “Now here’s something you don’t find every day,” he began, but Alfred turned away abruptly with his hand on Betty’s arm, turning her also from the scene.

  Charles had not thought they would dance. It was something he had never seen done in his life except in magazine pictures, and had not the least idea how it might be done. An electric gramophone was started, a lar
ge black record put into it, and the music of Glen Gray’s Casa Loma orchestra filled the living room where the rugs had been removed so people could dance if they wished. Charles sat in a large overstuffed chair with Paul Holton on one side and Carl Bent on the other watching as Betty and Alfred did graceful steps across the polished oak floor. The Portola twins were dancing, one with Waldo in a very stiff manner, the other with an older man of about twenty who might be Alfred’s brother from the bigness of his ears. The dancers seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely, talking brightly, except for Waldo who walked ponderously and silently around the room while the Portola twin smiled up at his double chin as if she were receiving secretly some delightful message.

  For the second record, only Alfred and Betty and Fern Portola and Alfred’s brother danced. It was fast, something with a lot of drums in it that the dancers did a lot of gyrating to. Charles felt he might be able to do the slow kind, but he knew he would trample on his partner in a dance like that one.

  Then Mrs. Bailey came sailing into the room, smiling with a frown, as Charles thought of it, looking at her expression. She stopped in front of the three boys sitting in a row and looked mock forlorn.

  “Wouldn’t one of you handsome men like to dance with me?”

  Charles looked up at her, the glittery dress with the deep bosom open, the pearls in a triple string, the smooth rouged cheeks and hair piled up on her head, the eyes so much like Betty’s, and he thought, well, this has got to be done.

  “Yes, Mrs. Bailey, I would,” he said, getting up and making sure his tie was still on. “But I don’t know much about it.”

  “Nothing to it, darling,” Mrs. Bailey said, taking his right hand and putting it around her waist. “I’m sure such a courageous and gallant young man as you will learn it in no time.”

  Charles moved stiffly at first, his left hand holding Mrs. Bailey’s arm out straight while he looked down between their bodies at his feet. As they moved away into the middle of the room, he looked up and caught sight of the large breasts in front of him and realized that he might have been looking down the woman’s dress as well as at his feet. He smiled into Mrs. Bailey’s eyes and determined not to look down again. She guided him quite as a dance teacher would, leading him, forcing him to move more loosely, catching him gently when he got off balance, and not once getting her feet under his, so that at the end of the record, Charles felt he had done very well.