Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

A safe car was the secret, he said. And clean plates. And not speeding, not getting stopped by the law, staying among transients in RV parks, one or two nights, then roll.

They picked up a young man hitchhiking, to tease him. Sarge reached for Beanie’s blouse, saying, “Like these, kid?” and Leon, “Where’s your job?” When the student said, “There’s no jobs anymore,” Leon stopped the car and screamed, “Get a job, loser!” Sarge got out, panting. He dragged the boy onto the road. “Drop and give me fifty!”

At a small town, they asked directions at the local police station, one of Sarge’s dares. Leon whispered “Look” at the posted mug shots, Level 2 Sex Offenders, with details of their offenses and their home addresses.

Leon said, “A hajji.”

They visited the man — Leon’s idea, and he was the one who knocked. “Police,” Leon said, the heel of his hand on his holstered gun. “We have a serious complaint,” and stepped inside while the others waited in the car.

Afterward, trembling in the back seat, he said, “Beanie, while I was in there, did he touch you?” and held his raw swollen hands against his thighs.

Beanie pressed her lips together and faced him with widened eyes.

“I couldn’t help myself.” Leon’s pale face showed pink-blotched cheeks. His wet hands had blackened the cloth of his jeans.

“Me, that’s my problem too,” Sarge said. “Thrill up my leg. I used to wonder why fat people are always hungry. I guess I know now.”

At the RV park that night, Leon said, “Beanie and I need to talk. We’ll be right back.”

“Hurry up. Three whole days here,” Sarge said. “This isn’t the safest of places.”

After their months of absence, Beanie and Leon resumed living in the family house. Whenever Sarge’s name came up, Beanie said, “It was all his fault. We should never have hooked up with him.”

Leon said, “He was my buddy over there.”

“Big buddy.”

Leon shrugged. “One of those vets that keeps his gun.”

But Beanie showed Leon that she had the gun. Soon afterward she got rid of it, threw it overboard from the boat at Hollins Pond.

“Why did you do that?”

“If you want it so bad you can swim for it.”

Leon winced. Instead of replying, he gripped the sides of the boat and steadied himself.

“But I don’t need a gun where you’re concerned. I know what you did.”

“Cut it out.”

He said it again. He knocked and repeated it that night at her bedroom door.

When Leon drowned in the boating accident, Beanie alerted the police. The pond was dragged, but Leon’s body was not found until a week later, swollen, buoyant, bumping the bars of the spillway where the river began.

The local newspaper reporting his death wrote that they could not describe Leon without describing Beanie. They were both twenty-two, graduates of the high school, and lived with their grandparents, who rarely visited the school, even when Leon and Beanie were performing.

In school, Leon and Beanie Turner were known as the dancers, and seeing them dance put the audience in mind of one person and a shadow, smooth and symmetrical their moves, the way they glided and swayed, old-fashioned, back and forth. They practiced all the time in the basement.

Leon had proudly served his country, and after his discharge had returned home.

They spoke of turning professional, calling themselves the Turner Twins.

The death of Leon utterly changed Beanie. She was still grieving, people said. She vanished, then reappeared months later with a newborn infant — not a surprise. But after the blood tests on the baby and the subsequent questions, there was a knock on her door.

When Beanie answered, she saw two policemen.

“I knew it.”

MY FATHER WAS a suspicious man — and, as a widower, wounded, too. My mother died when I was ten, and he was overly concerned about my welfare. He showed it in the following way: he would take my chin and use it to lift my head and smell it, as though examining a melon for ripeness. He was checking for cigarette smoke, a girl’s perfume, the reek of the poolroom or a back alley, for the odor of disobedience. There was never anything. Even so, to test me, he’d say, “Where?” meaning, “Where have you been?”

He was thrifty in all ways, with money, with time; he always tore a stick of chewing gum in half and put the other half in his pocket for later. And he was thrifty in using the fewest possible words. If he wanted me to move out of the way he said, “Shift,” or if I asked for a favor he said, “Never.” He hated explanations.

Gruff with me but talkative with customers, he seemed to me to be two people. That did not surprise me. I was also two people, the obedient son stacking shoes at the foot of the stairs and, out of my father’s sight, someone else, I was not sure who, but certainly not the person he was used to.

All through high school I worked for him at the shoe store, hating every minute of it, like confinement. He claimed he needed me, but business was slow (“Slack”). I knew he had me there, tidying the store, sorting shoe sizes, to keep me out of trouble. His letterhead was printed Louis Lecomte and Son, which looked important, but the reality was my father dozing in one of the customers’ chairs upstairs and me in the basement stacking boxes.

My father’s worry about me made me think I was dangerous. I could hear the tremor in his voice when he called out, “Albert,” and if I didn’t reply, he’d call again, “Al!” then “Bertie!” with growing alarm — where was I? — until at last I said, “Yuh?” and he was calmed. Cruel of me to delay like that, but I was trapped. I missed all the school football games. I never joined a team myself because I couldn’t take time off to practice. My friends hung around Brigham’s after school, looking for action.

My father had succeeded. Sometimes I felt very young, other times like an old man; no action for me.

As a menial (no pay, just pocket money), I dusted the shoes on display, helped take inventory, or polished the Brannock Device, which was a metal clamp-like contraption for measuring feet — the width and length. I also ran errands.

I was on one today; the errands were the only freedom I had. But it was always the same trip — picking up a pair of shoes, sometimes two, from a warehouse in Boston, near South Station, on Atlantic Avenue.

Before I left, my father raised his hand and said, “No Eddie,” meaning, “Don’t associate with Eddie Springer,” whom he considered a bad influence. What I liked about Eddie was his saying, “I’m a wicked-bad influence.”

I took the electric car to Sullivan Square, climbing the stairs, waited on the platform in front of Spitting Is Forbidden, then rode the subway to South Station, and repeated the shoe size to the man at the warehouse counter. He did not greet me or even comment. He made out an invoice by hand, measured a length of string, and tied the box while I leaned on the counter.

A woman at a desk behind him smiled at me. “You look just like your father.”

I didn’t know what to say. My father was more than fifty years old. I could smell her perfume, like strong soap, and I imagined that her blond hair, too, had a fragrance. Seated, she seemed small, doll-like, but sure of herself.

The man said, “Ask your father why he only buys one pair at a time.”

The woman winked at me. She said, “His father only sells one pair at a time.”

“And when is he going to pay me what he owes me?”

“I’ll ask him.” The suggestion that my father might be tricky did not dismay me; it reassured me in my own weakness and made me admire him.