Jerome Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I got my breath. I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I’m quite a heavy smoker, for one thing—that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out. Another thing, I grew six and a half inches last year. That’s also how I practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddam checkups and stuff. I’m pretty healthy, though.

Anyway, as soon as I got my breath back I ran across Route 204. It was icy as hell and I damn near fell down. I don’t even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it. After I got across the road, I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

Boy, I rang that doorbell fast when I got to old Spencer’s house. I was really frozen. My ears were hurting and I could hardly move my fingers at all. “C’mon, c’mon,” I said right out loud, almost, “somebody open the door.” Finally old Mrs. Spencer opened it. They didn’t have a maid or anything, and they always opened the door themselves. They didn’t have too much dough.

“Holden!” Mrs. Spencer said. “How lovely to see you! Come in, dear! Are you frozen to death?” I think she was glad to see me. She liked me. At least, I think she did.

Boy, did I get in that house fast. “How are you, Mrs. Spencer?” I said. “How’s Mr. Spencer?”

“Let me take your coat, dear,” she said. She didn’t hear me ask her how Mr. Spencer was. She was sort of deaf.

She hung up my coat in the hall closet, and I sort of brushed my hair back with my hand. I wear a crew cut quite frequently and I never have to comb it much. “How’ve you been, Mrs. Spencer?” I said again, only louder, so she’d hear me.

“I’ve been just fine, Holden.” She closed the closet door. “How have you been?” The way she asked me, I knew right away old Spencer’d told her I’d been kicked out.

“Fine,” I said. “How’s Mr. Spencer? He over his grippe yet?”

“Over it! Holden, he’s behaving like a perfect—I don’t know what… He’s in his room, dear. Go right in.”

They each had their own room and all. They were both around seventy years old, or even more than that. They got a bang out of things, though—in a half-assed way, of course. I know that sounds mean to say, but I don’t mean it mean. I just mean that I used to think about old Spencer quite a lot, and if you thought about him too much, you wondered what the heck he was still living for. I mean he was all stooped over, and he had very terrible posture, and in class, whenever he dropped a piece of chalk at the blackboard, some guy in the first row always had to get up and pick it up and hand it to him. That’s awful, in my opinion. But if you thought about him just enough and not too much, you could figure it out that he wasn’t doing too bad for himself. For instance, one Sunday when some other guys and I were over there for hot chocolate, he showed us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he and Mrs. Spencer’d bought off some Indian in Yellowstone Park. You could tell old Spencer’d got a big bang out of buying it. That’s what I mean. You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they can get a big bang out of buying a blanket.

His door was open, but I sort of knocked on it anyway, just to be polite and all. I could see where he was sitting. He was sitting in a big leather chair, all wrapped up in that blanket I just told you about. He looked over at me when I knocked. “Who’s that?” he yelled. “Caulfield? Come in, boy.” He was always yelling, outside class. It got on your nerves sometimes.

The minute I went in, I was sort of sorry I’d come. He was reading the Atlantic Monthly, and there were pills and medicine all over the place, and everything smelled like Vicks Nose Drops. It was pretty depressing. I’m not too crazy about sick people, anyway. What made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something. I don’t much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their bumpy old chests are always showing. And their legs. Old guys’ legs, at beaches and places, always look so white and unhairy. “Hello, sir,” I said. “I got your note. Thanks a lot.” He’d written me this note asking me to stop by and say good-by before vacation started, on account of I wasn’t coming back. “You didn’t have to do all that. I’d have come over to say good-by anyway.”

“Have a seat there, boy,” old Spencer said. He meant the bed.

I sat down on it. “How’s your grippe, sir?”

“M’boy, if I felt any better I’d have to send for the doctor,” old Spencer said. That knocked him out. He started chuckling like a madman. Then he finally straightened himself out and said, “Why aren’t you down at the game? I thought this was the day of the big game.”

“It is. I was. Only, I just got back from New York with the fencing team,” I said. Boy, his bed was like a rock.

He started getting serious as hell. I knew he would. “So you’re leaving us, eh?” he said.

“Yes, sir. I guess I am.”

He started going into this nodding routine. You never saw anybody nod as much in your life as old Spencer did. You never knew if he was nodding a lot because he was thinking and all, or just because he was a nice old guy that didn’t know his ass from his elbow.

“What did Dr. Thurmer say to you, boy? I understand you had quite a little chat.”

“Yes, we did. We really did. I was in his office for around two hours, I guess.”

“What’d he say to you?”

“Oh… well, about Life being a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean he didn’t hit the ceiling or anything. He just kept talking about Life being a game and all. You know.”

“Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.”

“Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.”

Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right—I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game. “Has Dr. Thurmer written to your parents yet?” old Spencer asked me.

“He said he was going to write them Monday.”

“Have you yourself communicated with them?”

“No, sir, I haven’t communicated with them, because I’ll probably see them Wednesday night when I get home.”

“And how do you think they’ll take the news?”

“Well… they’ll be pretty irritated about it,” I said. “They really will. This is about the fourth school I’ve gone to.” I shook my head. I shake my head quite a lot. “Boy!” I said. I also say “Boy!” quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen. It’s really ironical, because I’m six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head—the right side—is full of millions of gray hairs. I’ve had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. It’s partly true, too, but it isn’t all true. People always think something’s all true. I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am—I really do—but people never notice it. People never notice anything.

Old Spencer started nodding again. He also started picking his nose. He made out like he was only pinching it, but he was really getting the old thumb right in there. I guess he thought it was all right to do because it was only me that was in the room. I didn’t care, except that it’s pretty disgusting to watch somebody pick their nose.