Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

He wondered whether to start up the path once more, and turned to estimate the distance he had yet to travel. He looked again below him. He saw the drained pool. A little water, like a stain on the smooth white tile, still remained at the bottom. Some reflected light flashed against his eyes and he turned, instinctively shielding them with one cupped palm.

“I didn’t think you’d see me,” someone said.

Preminger stepped back. He hadn’t seen anyone, but assumed that the boy who was now coming from within the trees that bordered the path had mistaken his gesture as a wave and had responded to it.

“If you’re trying to hide,” Preminger said, “you shouldn’t wear white duck trousers. Law of the jungle.” The bare-chested boy, whom he recognized as the lifeguard, came cautiously onto the path where Preminger stood. Preminger thought he seemed rather shamefaced, and looked into the green recess from which the boy had come, to see if perhaps one of the girls from the hotel was there.

“I wasn’t hiding,” the boy said defensively. “I come up here often when I’m not on duty. I’ve seen you down there.”

“I’ve seen you too. You’re the lifeguard.” The boy looked down. They were standing in a circle of sunlight that seemed, in the woodsy arena, to ring them like contenders for a title of little note. He noticed uncomfortably that the boy was looking at his shoes. Preminger shuffled self-consciously. The boy looked up and Preminger saw that his eyes were red.

“Have they been talking about me?” the boy asked.

“Has who been talking about you?”

The boy nodded in the direction of the hotel.

“No,” he said. “Why?” He asked without meaning to.

“Mr. Bieberman said I shouldn’t hang around today. I didn’t know anywhere to come until I remembered this place. I was going all the way to the top when I heard you. I thought Mr. Bieberman might have sent you up to look for me.”

Preminger shook his head.

The boy seemed disappointed. “Look,” he said suddenly, “I want to come down. I’m not used to this. How long do they expect me to stay up here?” For all the petulance, there was real urgency in his voice. He added this to the boy’s abjectness, to his guilt at being found, and to the terror he could not keep to himself. It wasn’t fair to let the boy continue to reveal himself in the mistaken belief that everything had already been found out about him. He didn’t want to hear more, but already the boy was talking again. “I’m not used to this,” he said. “I told Mr. Bieberman at the beginning of the summer about my age. He knew I was sixteen. That’s why I only get two hundred. It was okay then.”

“Two hundred?”

The boy stopped talking and looked him over carefully. He might have been evaluating their relative strengths. As though he had discovered Preminger’s weakness and was determined to seize upon it for his own advantage, he looked down at Preminger’s knees. Preminger felt his gaze keenly.

“Does anyone else know?” Preminger asked abruptly.

“Mrs. Frankel, I think,” he said, still not looking up.

Preminger shifted his position, moving slightly to one side. “She’ll be going home today,” he said. “I saw her this morning. She didn’t say anything.” He did not enjoy the cryptic turn in the conversation. It reminded him vaguely of the comical communication between gangsters in not very good films. A man leans against a building. Someone walks past. The man nods to a loitering confederate. The confederate lowers his eyes and moves on.

He made up his mind to continue the walk. “Look,” he said to the boy, “I’m going to go on up the path.” Having said this, he immediately began to move down toward Bieberman’s. He realized his mistake but felt the boy staring at him. He wondered if he should make some feint with his body, perhaps appear to have come down a few steps to get a better look at some nonexistent activity below them and then turn to continue back up the path. The hell with it, he thought wearily. He could hear the boy following him.

Some pebbles that the boy dislodged struck Preminger’s ankles. He watched them roll down the hill. The boy caught up with him. “I’m going down too,” he said, as though Preminger had made a decision for both of them. The path narrowed and Preminger took advantage of the fact to move ahead of the boy. He moved down quickly, concentrating on the steep angle of the descent. Just behind him the boy continued to chatter. “He needed someone for the season. It was the Fourth of July and he didn’t have anyone. I got a cousin who works in the kitchen. He told me. Mr. Bieberman knew about my age. I told him myself. He said, ‘What’s age got to do with it? Nobody drowns.’ I had to practice the holds in my room.” The path widened and the boy came abreast of him. He timed his pace to match Preminger’s and they came to the bottom of the hill together.

He began to jog ahead of the boy but, soon tiring, he stopped and resumed walking. Though the boy had not run after him, Preminger knew he was not far behind and that he was still following him. He went deliberately toward one of the tables on Bieberman’s lawn, thinking that when he reached it he would turn to the boy and ask him to bring him a drink. He did not notice until too late that it was Mrs. Frankel’s table he was heading for. The wide, high-domed beach umbrella that stood over it had hidden her from him. He saw that the only way to take himself out of her range was to veer sharply, but remembering the boy behind him and the mistake he had made on the hill, he decided that he could not risk another dopey movement. What if the kid turned with him, he thought. They would wind up alone together on the golf course. He would never get away from him. He considered between Frankel and the kid and chose Frankel because she didn’t need advice.

Mrs. Frankel, in her hot, thick city clothing, looked to him like a woman whose picture has just been taken for the Sunday supplements. (“Mrs. Frankel, seated here beneath a two-hundred-pound mushroom she raised herself, has announced…”) But when he came closer he saw that she would not do for the supplements at all. Her legs, thrown out in front of her, gave her the appearance of an incredibly weary shopper whose trip downtown has failed. Her expression was disconsolate and brooding. It was an unusual attitude for Mrs. Frankel and he stood beside her for a moment. She stared straight ahead toward the useless pool.

“It’s funny,” she said, turning to him. “A little girl.” He had never heard her talk so softly. “Did you see her? Like she was just some piece of cardboard that had been painted like a child. It’s too terrible,” she said. “To happen here? In the mountains? Just playing like that? All right, so a child is sick, it’s awful, but a little child gets sick and sometimes there’s nothing you can do and the child dies.” He was not sure she was talking to him. “But here, in the mountains where you come for fun, for it to happen here? It’s awful — terrible. A thing like that.” She looked directly at Preminger but he could not be certain that she saw him. “Did you see the mother? Did you see the fright in the woman’s eyes? Like, ‘No, it couldn’t be.’ I was there. The child wanted an ice cream and the mother told her that her lips were blue, she should come out. She looked around for a second, for a second , and when she turned around again…” Mrs. Frankel shrugged. “How long could she have been under — five seconds, ten? Is the pool an ocean, they had to search for her? No, it’s more important the lifeguard should be talking to his girl friends so when he hears the screaming he should look up and holler ‘What? What? Where? Where?’ Who’s to blame?” she asked him. “God? We’re not savages. Let’s fix the blame a little close to home.”