Jerome Salinger - Nine Stories

Boo Boo closed the screen door behind her.

She stood on the slight downgrade of her front lawn, with the low, glaring, late afternoon sun at her back. About two hundred yards ahead of her, her son Lionel was sitting in the stem seat of his father’s dinghy. Tied, and stripped of its main and jib sails, the dinghy floated at a perfect right angle away from the far end of the pier. Fifty feet or so beyond it, a lost or abandoned water ski floated bottom up, but there were no pleasure boats to be seen on the lake; just a stern-end view of the county launch on its way over to Leech’s Landing. Boo Boo found it queerly difficult to keep Lionel in steady focus. The sun, though not especially hot, was nonetheless so brilliant that it made any fairly distant image—a boy, a boat—seem almost as wavering and refractional as a stick in water. After a couple of minutes, Boo Boo let the image go. She peeled down her cigarette Army style, and then started toward the pier.

It was October, and the pier boards no longer could hit her in the face with reflected heat. She walked along whistling “Kentucky Babe” through her teeth. When she reached the end of the pier, she squatted, her knees audible, at the right edge, and looked down at Lionel. He was less than an oar’s length away from her. He didn’t look up.

“Ahoy,” Boo Boo said. “Friend. Pirate. Dirty dog. I’m back.”

Still not looking up, Lionel abruptly seemed called upon to demonstrate his sailing ability. He swung the dead tiller all the way to the right, then immediately yanked it back in to his side. He kept his eyes exclusively on the deck of the boat.

“It is I,” Boo Boo said. “Vice-Admiral Tannenbaum. Nee Glass. Come to inspect the stermaphors.”

There was a response.

“You aren’t an admiral. You’re a lady,” Lionel said. His sentences usually had at least one break of faulty breath control, so that, often, his emphasized words, instead of rising, sank. Boo Boo not only listened to his voice, she seemed to watch it.

“Who told you that? Who told you I wasn’t an admiral?”

Lionel answered, but inaudibly.

“Who?” said Boo Boo.

“Daddy.”

Still in a squatting position, Boo Boo put her left hand through the V of her legs, touching the pier boards in order to keep her balance. “Your daddy’s a nice fella,” she said, “but he’s probably the biggest landlubber I know. It’s perfectly true that when I’m in port I’m a lady—that’s true. But my true calling is first, last, and always the bounding—”

“You aren’t an admiral,” Lionel said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You aren’t an admiral. You’re a lady all the time.”

There was a short silence. Lionel filled it by changing the course of his craft again—his hold on the tiller was a two-armed one. He was wearing khaki-colored shorts and a clean, white T-shirt with a dye picture, across the chest, of Jerome the Ostrich playing the violin. He was quite tanned, and his hair, which was almost exactly like his mother’s in color and quality, was a little sun-bleached on top.

“Many people think I’m not an admiral,” Boo Boo said, watching him. “Just because I don’t shoot my mouth off about it.” Keeping her balance, she took a cigarette and matches out of the side pocket of her jeans. “I’m almost never tempted to discuss my rank with people. Especially with little boys who don’t even look at me when I talk to them. I’d be drummed out of the bloomin’ service.” Without lighting her cigarette, she suddenly got to her feet, stood unreasonably erect, made an oval out of the thumb and index finger of her right hand, drew the oval to her mouth, and—kazoo style—sounded something like a bugle call. Lionel instantly looked up. In all probability, he was aware that the call was bogus, but nonetheless he seemed deeply aroused; his mouth fell open. Boo Boo sounded the call—a peculiar amalgamation of “Taps” and “Reveille”—three times, without any pauses. Then, ceremoniously, she saluted the opposite shoreline. When she finally reassumed her squat on the pier edge, she seemed to do so with maximum regret, as if she had just been profoundly moved by one of the virtues of naval tradition closed to the public and small boys. She gazed out at the petty horizon of the lake for a moment, then seemed to remember that she was not absolutely alone. She glanced-venerably—down at Lionel, whose mouth was still open. “That was a secret bugle call that only admirals are allowed to hear.” She lit her cigarette, and blew out the match with a theatrically thin, long stream of smoke. “If anybody knew I let you hear that call—” She shook her head. She again fixed the sextant of her eye on the horizon.

“Do it again.”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

Boo Boo shrugged. “Too many low-grade officers around, for one thing.” She changed her position, taking up a cross-legged, Indian squat. She pulled up her socks. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though,” she said, matter-of-factly. “If you’ll tell me why you’re running away, I’ll blow every secret bugle call for you I know. All right?”

Lionel immediately looked down at the deck again. “No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because I don’t want to,” said Lionel, and jerked the tiller for emphasis.

Boo Boo shielded the right side of her face from the glare of the sun. “You told me you were all through running away,” she said. “We talked about it, and you told me you were all through. You promised me.”

Lionel gave a reply, but it didn’t carry. “What?” said Boo Boo.

“I didn’t promise.”

“Ah, yes, you did. You most certainly did.”

Lionel resumed steering his boat. “If you’re an admiral,” he said, “where’s your fleet?”

“My fleet. I’m glad you asked me that,” Boo Boo said, and started to lower herself into the dinghy.

“Get off!” Lionel ordered, but without giving over to shrillness, and keeping his eyes down. “Nobody can come in.”

“They can’t?” Boo Boo’s foot was already touching the bow of the boat. She obediently drew it back up to pier level. “Nobody at all?” She got back into her Indian squat. “Why not?”

Lionel’s answer was complete, but, again, not loud enough.

“What?” said Boo Boo.

“Because they’re not allowed.”

Boo Boo, keeping her eyes steadily on the boy, said nothing for a full minute.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said, finally. “I’d just love to come down in your boat. I’m so lonesome for you. I miss you so much. I’ve been all alone in the house all day without anybody to talk to.”

Lionel didn’t swing the tiller. He examined the grain of wood in its handle. “You can talk to Sandra,” he said.

“Sandra’s busy,” Boo Boo said. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk to Sandra, I want to talk to you. I wanna come down in your boat and talk to you.”

“You can talk from there.”

“What?”

“You can talk from there.”

“No, I can’t. It’s too big a distance. I have to get up close.”

Lionel swung the tiller. “Nobody can come in,” he said.

“What?”

“Nobody can come in.”

“Well, will you tell me from there why you’re running away?” Boo Boo asked. “After you promised me you were all through?”

A pair of underwater goggles lay on the deck of the dinghy, near the stem seat. For answer, Lionel secured the headstrap of the goggles between the big and second toes of his right foot, and, with a deft, brief, leg action, flipped the goggles overboard. They sank at once.

“That’s nice. That’s constructive,” said Boo Boo. “Those belong to your Uncle Webb. Oh, he’ll be so delighted.” She dragged on her cigarette. “They once belonged to your Uncle Seymour.”