Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

Gunner let out a long breath and said quietly, “O.K., forget it, man.”

Wilks took his hand away and Gunner picked up his T-shirt and khakis, wadding them into a ball.

“Still ole buddies, Guns?” Wilks said as heartily as possible.

“Sure, man, sure,” Gunner said and started for the car. Sonny went beside him, feeling all those eyes like hot little suns boring into his back. Then suddenly the air was filled with splashes and splats and yelps and whistles as the pool unlocked into life again.

Sonny didn’t say anything when he got in the car, and neither did Gunner. He drove back to his mother’s place at the Meadowlark, and Gunner took a cold shower and then mixed up a batch of seabreezes, pouring two tall glasses full and handing one to Sonny.

“Once when I was a junior at Shortley,” he said quietly, “the first hot day of summer, me and a bunch of guys piled into Andy McGovern’s old thirty-eight Buick and went to the Riviera for a swim. You know the damn Rivvy, it’s no damn country club, it’s ten bucks a year or something and you don’t have to be anybody to join. There were about six of us, and Sammy Katzman was with us and he said he didn’t belong, but, hell, you can take a guest on your card and all the rest of us belonged, and so we piled out and we start walking up to the pool building, the bunch of us, and out comes old man Barlow, that bald old fart who used to be the manager, and he stands on the steps with his legs apart and points a finger right at Sammy and he says, ‘You kids can’t bring that Jew-boy in here.’ Maybe he knew Sammy from someplace or had seen him play ball and knew his name, or maybe he just had a Jew-detector or something. I don’t know, but it was like getting hit in the face with a wet rag, I was that surprised, I guess we all were—except maybe Sammy, who hadn’t really wanted to go all along—and we stopped dead in our tracks and then Blow Mahoney started yelling and cussing at the old bastard and us joining in saying, ‘Yeh, you prick, this guy’s our friend, he’s better than you any day, you old turd-head,’ and the old bastard gets beet red and starts yelling he’s going to call the police and Sammy keeps saying, ‘Come on, you guys, let’s go, let’s get the hell out of here,’ and finally we pile back in the car and felt like shit, and Sammy kept trying to make a joke of it like he always did about that stuff, he kept saying, ‘I wish you guys would get the word around that I didn’t kill that character, maybe the Jews killed him but I didn’t kill that guy and hang him up on the cross, not me, it was some other bunch of Jews.’ Finally we all got horsing around and tried to forget about it, but we all still felt like shit. It was the first time I’d seen something like that happen, and it wasn’t like some story you read about a Jew getting discriminated against, it was our buddy, it was Sammy Katzman. He was one of us .”

“Yeh,” Sonny said.

Gunner got up and started pacing the room, rattling the ice in his glass and munching on his lips, and then he suddenly stopped and wheeled around toward Sonny, his face alive with some discovery.

“You know the only goddam person who didn’t even mention the beard when he first saw it, who acted like I was the same guy and nothing different had happened?”

“No,” Sonny said, knowing it sure as hell wasn’t him and feeling ashamed of that. “Who?”

“Marty’s father.”

“Yeh?”

“Bet your ass. You oughta meet that guy. Man, what a guy. I could sit around and shoot the shit with that guy for hours.”

“Yeh, I’d like to. Meet him.”

“We’ll fall by there sometime.”

“Great.”

Gunner poured them each another Seabreeze and put on a Brubeck. He was getting back in his regular spirits after the swimming-pool business, and Sonny felt a lot better himself. He was really relieved that there hadn’t been a fight and was secretly glad that he didn’t have to go swimming after all. Maybe he could make it through the whole damn summer. By October, everyone else would be white, too, and he wouldn’t have to worry about it again till the following June.

Gunner’s mother got home unexpectedly early; they had let people off because of the heat. She kicked off her shoes, flopped down on the couch, and said to Sonny, “What do you think of my fine-feathered friend here?”

“Oh. The beard?”

He took a long sip of his seabreeze, hoping he didn’t have to get into it with Mrs. Casselman. He didn’t want to let Gunner down by sounding as if he disapproved, but he didn’t want Nina to think he was a far-out guy who liked beards. She wouldn’t let it drop, though.

“Do a lot of your friends have beards?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” Sonny said, twisting in his chair.

“Well, don’t you think it looks a little weird?”

“For God sake, Nina,” Gunner said, “what do you expect him to say?”

“I expect him to say what he thinks .”

Trying to sound both loyal to his friend and patriotic, too, Sonny said feebly, “Lincoln had one.”

“Oh, so you approve, then,” Nina said, as if her worst suspicions had been confirmed.

“He didn’t say that, Nina.”

“I heard what he said.”

“Let me get you a drink,” Gunner said and went to the kitchen.

“I suppose his girl friend likes it too,” Nina said.

Sonny cleared his throat and said, “I really don’t know.”

“You’re a friend of hers, aren’t you?”

“Well,—yes, I guess.”

“Of course, a beard is more common to the Jews. Their rabbis have to have them.”

“I don’t know,” said Sonny.

Gunner came in with the drink for Nina and said, “Please, Mother, let’s not get on the Jews again.”

“I’m not ‘on’ them. I just made a statement.”

She turned to Sonny and said, “My son believes I’m prejudiced. His own mother.”

“Please, Nina.”

“Actually, I’ve become very interested in their religion and history. They have quite a long history, you know.”

“Yes,” Sonny said, “I understand they do.”

“I’ve been reading up on it.”

“Oh?”

“She took out a book,” Gunner explained.

Nina got up and handed a library book to Sonny. It was called Judaism from Ancient Times . Sonny turned it over in his hands, not knowing what to say.

“Must be interesting,” he finally commented.

“Fascinating,” Nina said. “But there’s still a lot I haven’t come across yet. Gunner, you say Marty’s father’s so smart, would you ask him something for me? About one of their customs?”

“What is it, Nina?” Gunner said evenly.

“Well, when they have their funerals—”

“Yes?”

“Is it true that they bury their dead standing up?”

Gunner grasped at his forehead and stared at Nina out of eyes that seemed to have looked at an atom blast without dark glasses.

“No, Mother,” he said in a dry, flat tone. “They lay ’em down, just like the rest of us.”

A few days after they didn’t go swimming, Gunner took Sonny to see Marty’s studio. It was in an old three-story house in a dingy block down around the museum. A commercial artist and his wife owned the building and rented out rooms for studios and also for living quarters for students who studied at the museum school. Marty’s room was on the top floor, and it had one of those curving windows that protrudes like a turret. The room was completely bare except for the art stuff—canvases, paints, buckets of turpentine, a huge easel, a table smeared with colors and cluttered with brushes and tubes and jars. There was also a hot plate with an old coffeepot on it, and a hunk of cheese that looked a couple centuries old. And yet, Sonny felt charged up, just being in the room. There was an excitement about it, a feeling of purpose and creation. Something was happening here. Someone was making something. Sonny felt a tingle that went through his shoulders and his arms, down to his fingers.