James Cain - The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction

“Bunch of sissies.”

“Is every boy a sissy that has some kind of manners and does what his mother tells him to once in a while without always having to argue?”

“I’m not going.”

“What will Marjorie think?”

“Marjorie Lucas. The belle of Home Room Twenty-nine.”

“Why do you always have to be so mean to Marjorie? What has she ever done to you?”

“The face that only a mother could love.”

“I haven’t time to stand around and argue with you. You write the card right now — ‘Happy Birthday to Marjorie from Burwell’ — and then you go out and black your shoes. They’re on the back porch, and there’s a new can of blacking in the things that came up from the market.”

He wrote the card, then went out on the back porch and looked at his shoes. Then he looked at the sun. Then he looked at the sun again, making certain calculations based on its position in the heavens and its relation to the general progress of the afternoon. Then he drifted into the backyard, took his swimming suit off the line, and slipped quickly through the hole in the hedge.

The creek was deserted, but damp spots on the boat landing showed that Red, to say nothing of his more solvent customers, wasn’t long gone. Burwell peeled off his clothes, had a moment of wild determination to go in naked, but compromised on trunks, without shirt. The water felt queer, and all his tricks seemed shriveled: He kept opening his mouth to yell, “Hey, look at this one,” but there was nobody to look. He tried a back dive, but all he got out of it was a pair of smarting shins, where they slapped the water as he came over. He tried a feat of his own, for which he imagined he had acquired quite a local reputation: to go down under and stay down under, with only his feet sticking out; but something seemed to be wrong with it. As a rule, he could stay down under at least five minutes — or, at any rate, so he frequently asserted, in the absence of any watch to time him, and in the absence also of any knowledge that even one minute is a prodigious time for holding the breath; but now, for some unexplainable reason, he was no sooner down than he had to come up again, puffing grievously.

Treading water, about to try again, he felt a tingle in his back: somebody, he knew, was watching him. This time, as he lazily flipped himself under, all was as it should be. He stayed down at least ten minutes, crossing his feet as they stuck out in the air, wiggling his toes, sending up bubbles, and in other ways putting in subtle artistic touches. When he came up he tossed the hair out of his eyes nonchalantly and breathed through his nose — to conceal the puffing, and to show that, staggering though the performance might be, it had been done with ease.

Marjorie was on the boat landing. “Hello.”

“Hello.”

“My, but you scared me.”

“Me scare you?”

“I thought something had happened to you. When I saw your toes wiggle I thought something had you. I thought I would die.”

“Oh, that. That wasn’t nothing.”

He put his face in the water and blew through his mouth, at the same time uttering loud noises. He conceived this to be a peculiarly terrifying experience for the beholder.

However, she didn’t seem to be paying much attention. “I wish I could go in.”

“Well, come on.”

“I didn’t bring my suit.”

He became a steamboat, churning up a great deal of foam, but stopped when she wandered into the canoe house. When she came out she had his swimming shirt.

“Are you going to be wearing this?”

“Only sissies wear shirts.”

“I could pin it at the bottom. It’s pretty big for me, and I could pin it so it would be all right.”

“I don’t mind.”

She went back into the canoe house again, and he began doing all his tricks, one after the other. Presently she came out, a bit suggestive of diapers and safety pins here and there, but in the main clad neatly in a one-piece bathing suit, made of his shirt. He let go with a jackknife; then climbed out with an air of triumph mixed with boredom.

She climbed down the cleats and felt the water with one toe.

“What’s the matter? You scared?”

“I’m not scared. But I always like to know if it’s cold or not.”

“You’re scared.”

“Well, I always am. A little.”

“If you’re scared, you’ve got to dive in.”

“I’m going to.”

“Well, why don’t you?”

“I’m going to. In a minute.”

He had a moment of vast, soul-warming contempt, but it congealed within him to a drop of bitter, cruel gall. She was climbing the piling. He watched her, stunned, saw her poise far above his head, then go off and cut the water so cleanly that only a high spurt of foam marked her entering it.

Nobody had told him that little girls dive better than little boys. Nobody had told him that little girls could possibly do anything better than little boys. All he knew was that he had never had the nerve to climb the piling and dive off, and here she had done it; and not only done it, but done it, apparently, without even knowing that it was hard.

He jumped up, as soon as her head came out of the water, and yelled at her: “So you think you’re smart, hey? That’s nothing. I can do it too. I’ve done it plenty of times. I can even do a back dive from up there.”

“Can you really?”

She said it with honest admiration, and he climbed up. But when he got there a sick feeling swept down his throat and into his stomach. It was higher than he imagined. It was higher than he had ever imagined anything could be. The water was way, way down, far removed from anything that he could possibly dive into.

He tried to get set for a dive, but couldn’t even stand up. All he could do was squat there, holding the tops of the piles with his hands, and gulp.

“If you’re scared,” she said, “you’ve got to dive in.”

The ancient apothegm, quoted so blandly by himself not two minutes ago, was spoken innocently, yet it floated up from the water with a terrible mockery.

“Who’s scared?”

“Well, my goodness, anybody can be scared.”

“I’m not scared. I’m just taking it easy.”

“It just comes from being dizzy.”

“Why don’t you kick your feet when you swim? That’s no way to swim. Why don’t you kick your feet like I do?”

“I can’t swim very well, but I like to dive.”

“Well, anybody can dive. Swimming’s the important thing. If you can swim good you might save somebody from drowning, but what good is diving?”

“Maybe if you sat down on the big pile and then let go, it would be like jumping off.”

“Who’s asking you?”

She climbed up beside him. “What makes you dizzy is looking down. Why don’t you look up at the sky and try it? like this.”

She threw back her head, gripped the pile with her toes, stiffened, sprang. But he didn’t see her swash into the water. The pilings shuddered so sickeningly from her leap that he had to clutch them tight with his fingers, looking cravenly into the cracks of the wood. When the swaying stopped he looked up at the sky and tried to stand. He couldn’t. She climbed up there again. This time she turned her back to the water, leaned out. He knew it was a back dive, but he didn’t see that one either. She stretched herself out on the boat landing to rest, and there was nothing he could do but climb down. He was panting when he reached her, not from exertion, but from rage.

“I know what you’re doing here. I know why you’re not home. It’s your birthday, and they’re giving you a surprise party, and they ran you out of the house so you wouldn’t see them getting ready for it. Yah! Got run out of the house. Yah!”

“I knew it all the time, but I think it was mean of you to tell me.”