Dan Wakefield - Under the Apple Tree - A Novel

“I don’t know if I’d want to see Stella Dallas,” Mom said. “I already have her pictured in my own mind.”

“Don’t worry,” Dad said: “I’m not running out to buy any picture tube. We just bought us the barbecue grill.”

“Not only that,” Artie said, “ Life says there’s going to be ‘machines that think like men.’”

Roy made a harsh little laugh.

“Where does that leave the men?” he asked.

“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “Any machine, it’ll take a man to run it.”

“That’ll take ‘Whiz Kids,’” Roy said. “Math brains.”

“You have the brains, Roy,” Mom said. “You just have to use them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Roy asked.

“That we have all the confidence in you,” Dad said quickly.

Roy finished off his beer and squeezed up the can with his hand.

“Well, like I said, I’m not rushing into anything.”

“Nobody wants you to,” Dad said.

“If you ask me, you’d make a great football coach,” said Artie.

“I was just horsing around,” Roy said.

“Yeah, but I mean, if you wanted to—”

“If I wanted to, they’d tell me to go get a rinky-dink college degree in Phys. Ed.”

“You have the G.I. Bill,” Dad said.

“But I don’t have my high school diploma, so go ahead and say ‘I told you so’ and get it over with!”

Dad shook his head.

“I wasn’t going to say that at all.”

“You’d only have to finish up your last semester,” Mom said.

“If you think I’m going back and sit in a class with a bunch of kids, you’ve got another think coming.”

“I bet you could make it up at a college,” Mom said. “There’s probably a lot of G.I.’s doing that.”

“You could probably do it right at Urbana,” Artie said.

Roy took his beer can and heaved it as hard as he could in the neighbors’ yard.

“Will everyone get off my back?” he said.

“Roy, you know you’re welcome to come in with me at the station,” Dad said, “if that’s what you want.”

Roy jumped up, his fists clenched and his face flushed red.

“It’s not what I goddamn want. I don’t want a goddamn thing. I want to be left the hell alone!”

He turned and ran in the house.

“Dear Lord,” Mom said.

Dad put his hand on her arm.

“Don’t worry. He’ll find himself.”

Artie didn’t say anything, but he understood something.

Roy was afraid.

He was scared to death of what in the world he was going to do with his own life.

Artie got up and started collecting the paper plates and steak bones.

That was the end of the family’s first outdoor barbecue.

Roy came home drunk that night. He had got in a fight at the Purple Pony. His right eye was swollen, and his shirt was ripped. Artie helped Mom and Dad put him to bed, and afterward he sat in the kitchen with them.

“We’ve got to do something,” Mom said.

Dad sighed and shook his head.

“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”

“We can’t just sit back and watch him go to pieces,” Mom said.

“No,” Artie said. “We can’t.”

Mom and Dad stared at him, but he didn’t say anything else. He just gave them each a hug and went up to bed.

He knew it was up to him.

And Shirley Colby.

“You’re the only one can help him,” Artie told Shirley over Cokes at Damon’s Drugs.

“He doesn’t even want to see me.”

“He’s scared is why.”

“I saw him one day on Main Street, on the other side of the street. I waved, and he turned away.”

“Do you still love him? I mean, are you still in love with him?”

Shirley took the straw from her Coke and twisted the ends together in a little bow.

“I always will be,” she said.

“He will with you, too. No matter what he says.”

“In my heart, I believe it. But I don’t know what to do about it.”

“You got to be alone with him some way.”

“Well, I can’t go tie him to a tree.”

Artie put his Coke glass down and leaned across the table.

“That’s it!”

“Artie. Be serious.”

“I don’t mean the part about tying him up, I mean trees. The woods. The old place, where you went to be alone.”

“If only—”

“I’ll get him there.”

Artie stood up, and Shirley went around the table and hugged him, right in the middle of Damon’s Drugs.

On Saturday morning Artie took a cold bottle of milk up to Roy and woke him from his latest hangover.

“What the hell?” Roy said, blinking.

Artie handed him the bottle of milk.

Roy started gulping it down and then stopped to take a breath and looked suspiciously at Artie.

“Who are you supposed to be? Florence Nightingale?”

“I got to talk to you.”

“Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“Not here. Not in the house.”

“Uh-oh. Girl problems, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Roy finished off the milk, and flopped back on his pillow.

“Well, if you give me a chance to shower, we can take a little hike around the block.”

“That’s not enough.”

“Ohhhhhh. You ‘got it bad and that ain’t good,’ huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I guess we can take a spin out in the country, if the old man’ll let me touch the car again.”

“No. I mean, I’d just like to walk out to Skinner Creek, to the rock. You know? Where we used to go and talk.”

“That was the good old days, kid.”

“Well, it’s still there. The rock.”

“Hell, it’s November.”

“The sun’s out, though, and it’s way above freezing. Anyway, I’ll build a fire.”

Roy sat up on his elbows, squinting.

“Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,” he said.

“It’s really important.”

“Okay, okay! Put on some coffee, anyway. Then we’ll go freeze our tails.”

Artie grabbed the empty milk bottle and hustled downstairs.

They were almost to the rock but not in sight of it yet when Artie stopped.

“Hey, Roy, you go on,” he said. “I gotta see a man about a horse. Be there in a shake.”

“You hurry up and start that fire, Mr. Boy Scout.”

“Sure! Be right there!”

Roy walked on and Artie unzipped his fly and faced toward a tree. He even tried to pee, to make his lie more realistic, but he couldn’t. He just stood there, holding himself.

He didn’t hear any noise from Roy walking, and wondered if he was waiting to hear the sound of peeing, maybe suspecting something was up. Artie squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated everything on trying to make the water come, but nothing happened. He even made the sound of “pssssss” to himself like he used to do when he was a kid to get himself going, but that didn’t work either. Finally he put it back in his pants and zipped up his fly, figuring Roy had either got to the rock by now or was waiting on the trail to catch Artie in his lie, but either way it was too late now to pretend anymore. Whatever was going to happen would happen.

Artie would have given a cool million to go and sneak a look at what was happening, but he’d given Shirley his sacred word of honor, not as a Boy Scout but as a man, that he wouldn’t spy on them. He realized anyway that spying was kid stuff, something that belonged to his childhood. Next April he’d be fifteen, and that fall he’d be a Sophomore and a varsity man. He was not a little kid anymore, and he didn’t do kid stuff. He had done his part of the job, which was getting Roy to the rock, and now his only duty was to get the hell out of there. Still, he just stood where he was. Then he bowed his head and prayed.

“Dear God, make it all right with Shirley and Roy, and give me the willpower to go home now.”