John Barth - Lost in the Funhouse

A young man whom Ambrose did not recognize came out first. He had dark eyes and hair and a black moustache, and though he was clean-shaved, his jaw was blue with coming whiskers. He wore a white shirt and a tie and a yellow sweater under his leather jacket, and had dirtied his clean trousers on the Den floor. He stood up and scowled at the ring of boys as if he were going to be angry — but then grinned and brushed his pants-knees.

“Sorry, mates. Didn’t know it was your hut.”

The girl climbed out after. Her brown hair was mussed, her face drained of color, there were shards of dead leaf upon her coat. The fellow helped her up, and she walked straight off without looking at any of them, her right hand stuffed into her coat pocket. The fellow winked at Peter and hurried to follow.

“Hey, gee!” Herman Goltz whispered.

“Who was the guy?” Sandy Cooper wanted to know.

Someone declared that it was Tommy James, just out of the U. S. Navy.

Peter said that Peggy Robbins would get kicked out of nurse’s training if they found out, and Herman told how his big sister had been kicked out of nurse’s training with only four months to go.

“A bunch went buckbathing one night down to Shoal Creek, and Sis was the only one was kicked out for it.”

The Sphinxes all got to laughing and fooling around about Herman Goltz’s sister and about Peggy Robbins and her boyfriend. Some of the fellows wanted to take after them and razz them, but it was agreed that Tommy James was a tough customer. Somebody believed there had been a scar across his temple.

Herman wailed “Oh lover!” and collapsed against Peter, who wrestled him down into the creepers.

Cheeks burning, Ambrose joined in the merriment. “We ought to put a sign up! Private Property: No Smooching. ”

The fellows laughed. But not in just the right way.

“Hey guys!” Sandy Cooper said. “Amby says they was smooching!”

Ambrose quickly grinned and cried “Like a duck! Like a duck!”; whenever a person said a thing to fool you, he’d say “Like a duck!” afterward to let you know you’d been fooled.

“Like a duck nothing,” Sandy Cooper rasped. “I bet I know what we’ll find inside.”

“Hey, yeah!” said Peter.

Sandy Cooper had an old flashlight that he carried on his belt, and so they let him go in first, and Peter and Herman and the others followed after. In just an instant Ambrose heard Sandy shout “Woo-hoo!” and there was excitement in the Den. He heard Peter cry “Let me see!” and Herman Goltz commence to giggle like a girl. Peter said “Let me see, damn it!”

“Go to Hell,” said the gritty voice of Sandy Cooper.

“Go to Hell your own self.”

Perse Goltz had scrambled in unnoticed with the rest, but now a Sphinx espied him.

“Get out of here, Perse. I thought I smelt something.”

“You smelt your own self,” the little boy retorted.

“Go on, get out, Perse,” Herman ordered. “You stink.”

“You stink worst.”

Somebody said “Bust him once,” but Perse was out before they could get him. He stuck out his tongue and made a great blasting raspberry at Peter, who had dived for his leg through the entrance.

Then Peter looked up at Ambrose from where he lay and said: “Our meeting’s started.”

“Yeah,” someone said from inside. “No babies allowed.”

“No smooching allowed,” another member ventured, mocking Ambrose in an official tone. Sandy Cooper added that no something-else was allowed, and what it was was the same word that would make him laugh sometimes instead of sicking his Chesapeake Bay dog on you.

“You and Perse skeedaddle now,” Peter said. His voice was not unkind, but there was an odd look on his face, and he hurried back into the Den, from which now came gleeful whispers. The name Peggy Robbins was mentioned, and someone dared, and double-dared, and dee-double-dared someone else, in vain, to go invite Ramona Peters to the meeting.

Perse Goltz had already gone a ways up the beach. Ambrose went down the high bank, checking his slide with the orange roots of undermined trees, and trudged after him. Peter had said, “Go to Hell your own self,” in a voice that told you he was used to saying such things. And the cursing wasn’t the worst of it.

Ambrose’s stomach felt tied and lumpy; by looking at his arm a certain way he could see droplets standing in the pores. It was what they meant when they spoke of breaking out in a cold sweat: very like what one felt in school assemblies, when one was waiting in the wings for the signal to step out onto the stage. He could not bear to think of the moustachioed boyfriend: that fellow’s wink, his curly hair, his leather jacket over white shirt and green tie, filled Ambrose’s heart with comprehension; they whispered to him that whatever mysteries had been in progress in the Den, they did not mean to Wimpy James’s brother what they meant to Peggy Robbins.

Toward her his feelings were less simple. He pictured them kicking her out of the Nurses’ Home: partly on the basis of Herman Goltz’s story about his sister, Ambrose imagined that disgraced student nurses were kicked out late at night, unclothed; he wondered who did the actual kicking, and where in the world the student nurses went from there.

Every one of the hurricanes that ushered in the fall took its toll upon the riverbank, with the result that the upper beach was strewn with trees long fallen from the cliff. Salt air and water quickly stripped their bark and scoured the trunks. They seemed never to decay; Ambrose could rub his hands along the polished gray wood with little fear of splinters. One saw that in years to come the Jungle would be gone entirely. He would be a man then, and it wouldn’t matter. Only his children, he supposed, might miss the winding paths and secret places — but of course you didn’t miss what you’d never had or known of.

On the foreshore, in the wrack along the high-water line where sandfleas jumped, were empty beer cans, grapefruit rinds, and hosts of spot and white perch poisoned by the run-off from the canneries. All rotted together. But on the sand beach, in the sun and wind, Ambrose could breathe them deeply. Indeed, with the salt itself and the pungent oils of the eelgrass they made the very flavor of the shore, exhilarating to his spirit. It was a bright summer night; Peggy Robbins had just been kicked out of the Nurses’ Home, and the only way she could keep everybody from seeing her was to run into the Jungle and hide in the Sphinx’s Den. As it happened, Ambrose had been waked by a clanking in the alleyway and had gone outside to drive off the black dogs or the Arnie twins, whichever were rooting in the garbage. And finding the night so balmy, he strolled down to the rivershore and entered the Jungle, where he heard weeping. It was pitch black in the Den; she cringed against the far wall.

“Who is it?”

“It is the only man who ever really loved you.”

She hugged and kissed him; then, overcome by double shame, drew away. But if he had accepted her caresses coolly, still he would not scorn her. He took her hand.

“Ah Peggy. Ah Peggy.”

She wept afresh, and then one of two things happened. Perhaps she flung herself before him, begging forgiveness and imploring him to love her. He raised her up and staunched her tears.

“Forgive you?” he repeated in a deep, kind voice. “Love forgives everything, Peggy. But the truth of the matter is, I can’t forget.”

He held her head in both his hands; her bitter tears splashed his wrists. He left the Den and walked to the bank-edge, leaned against a tree, stared seaward. Presently Peggy grew quiet and went her way, but he, he stayed a long time in the Jungle.

On the other hand perhaps it was that he drew her to him in the dark, held her close, and gave her to know that while he could never feel just the same respect for her, he loved her nonetheless. They kissed. Tenderly together they rehearsed the secrets; long they lingered in the Sphinx’s Den; then he bore her from the Jungle, lovingly to the beach, into the water. They swam until her tears were made a part of Earth’s waters; then hand in hand they waded shoreward on the track of the moon. In the shallows they paused to face each other. Warm wavelets flashed about their feet; waterdrops sparkled on their bodies. Washed of shame, washed of fear; nothing was but sweetest knowledge.