Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

I give you one guess how that set with the family, especially with Mrs. Legg, who never let you forget those “honors” she had taken in school, and was all hot, a little too hot if you ask me, for the girls to be a “credit” to her. We all went down to WFBR with Sandy, and got Helen, and brought her back, and when we got to the hotel who should be there, all excited and waiting for us, but Miss Lamson herself, and it knocked me over, that such a small slice of nothing could have been the cause of all the fuss. She was a tiny, dowdy little woman, in a rusty black coat and felt hat, maybe sixty years old, who giggled and laughed and took it all on herself that Helen had done what she had, and never even suspected that maybe there were a couple of other angles to it. To her, it was a surprise that Helen had saved up for her, nothing more. The rest of them, I’ll say that for them, knew some pretty good coaching had been pulled, and Mr. Legg was plenty grateful. Margaret, at the picture show that night, kept whispering I was a “swell guy,” and patting my hand, and in the studio, as long as her mother left us alone together, she was awful affectionate.

But the real celebration came next day, when Helen came up to the house as usual, and as soon as Nancy and Sheila and the Old Man had had their say, and we had the door closed she did a standing broad jump into my arms and I swung her around and we had the light scrimmage we generally led off with, meaning a general roughhouse. But it didn’t last as long as usual, and pretty soon she pushed me over on the sofa and sat down beside me and began stretching her hand over mine like it was a piano keyboard and she was trying to touch octaves. She had small, slim hands, but she was always trying to measure them against mine. “Thanks, Jack.”

“For what?”

“Everything. Undumbbelling me.”

“That’s impossible.”

“But you did it.”

“All we did was get back at Lamson. And did we—”

I started to cackle, but she wasn’t laughing. She was looking at me in a bashful, self-conscious, ashamed kind of way, and I asked her what the trouble was. “Nothing’s the trouble. But I want you to know I get it. That I know what it was you did for me — and it’s been a lot. That’s not so nice, to be a stumble-bum. Specially to that simpleton Lamson. Isn’t she a dilly, now? Isn’t she?”

“Well — how does it feel to be famous?”

“I’m not.”

“Oh yes. Locally anyway. And rich, I imagine.”

“No. Not on radio, if that’s what you mean.”

“But they pay! Big!”

“ If you click.”

“Well, what do you call clicking?”

“Willie clicks.”

“You’ve ruined him.”

“Maybe, but I’ll never fill his shoes... I noticed something. I mean, last night I found out why he clicks. Jack, it’s because he’s so slow and poky and silly. When somebody that mopey can turn up with the right answers, it is amazing, not to say amusing and highly laughable. But me, I’ll just be a smart brat — that is, if they try to promote me.”

That’s how it turned out. She got the right answers, but they didn’t tune in. But somebody like that, of course she didn’t need a tutor any more, so a little before my first summer working in the hotel I got fired. I missed her the worst way. I had got to look forward to those roughhouses.

The summer I graduated, right after I started working regular at the hotel, Mr. Legg took a place at Gibson Island, which is on the bay not far from Annapolis. The whole family stayed down there, though of course Margaret was driving into town all the time to buy this, that, and the other for the wedding. Every week end, naturally, I’d be invited. But it turned out that Helen, once more, needed help. Because, what with having a rep as a mathematical whiz, and actually being a mathematical punk, things had got crossed up at the school, and she’d been promoted too fast, and was in trouble again, this time with algebra. I’d hate to tell you how glad I was, that they’d send her up to me, at the hotel, by Sandy every day, so I could explain to her why (a + b) (a — b) = a2 — b2, and how upset I was, one of my first week ends at the island, at what Mr. Legg had to say about the people that had taken the cottage next door: “The Finleys, one of the best families in the state, Lee Finley’s in the Fidelity and Deposit, she’s a Dawson, from Prince Georges County, the boy, Dick, goes to Gilman — I was delighted when I heard who the place had been leased to... But, Jack, that boy runs liquor. He’s in and out with that boat he’s got at all hours of the night, he has a pistol, and he’s thick with Zeke Torrance.”

“Who’s he?”

“He runs the Log Cabin.”

“Oh — that place near Glen Burnie?”

“That’s the man. If Dick’s car is parked outside of there, it might be a wild boy stopping for a drink. But when Zeke is down here, it’s business, and Zeke has only one business. I complained about the pistol, but Finley only got disagreeable. It seems it’s owned under permit, and the boy uses it only for target shooting as he’s permitted to do. But — he wears it. It’s on him all the time, and he goes around with a silly grin on his face, giving a fifth-rate imitation of some character in a ninth-rate movie, and I don’t like it. And — he keeps tagging after Helen.”

“What?”

“‘Let’s go get a soda, ‘Let’s got to the picture show,’ ‘How about a swim’—”

“Does she go?”

“No. She thinks he’s funny. But — I don’t know anything in years that has made me so nervous. He keeps following her around, and looking at her.”

The next morning was Sunday, and Margaret wanted to fish from an outboard boat they had, so I was on the porch fixing hand lines, knives, and bait, and the rest of them were out front on canvas recliners, reading the papers. I had just checked my snoods when I saw this wild-looking boy cross over from next door, in dungaree pants and rough shoes and checked shirt. He was around seventeen I would say, fairly big, and heavy sunburned, with shaggy hair and a hangdog grin. He sat down, though I didn’t notice anybody ask him to, and then Mr. Legg said something and Helen looked surprised and came inside the screened-in porch, where I was. “Well, Jack, what’s the big idea?”

“Whose?”

“Dad’s. ‘Go put on your beach robe.’—?”

“The young visitor, maybe.”

“Dick? He’s a child.”

“Little children got big eyes.”

“And all this talk whenever Dick wants a date. ‘We don’t want her taken out yet, she’s much too young to be going around.’ What am I? Little Eva or something?”

“Going around with him, maybe your father means.”

“Well, who would?”

“He’s got to be told something.”

“But—”

She looked down at herself, where she was, just a sliver of brown in a wisp of blue bathing suit, and then went inside and I could see her looking at herself in a mirror. Then she came out with the robe and began putting it on. “I don’t know my own strength, apparently.”

I swear it happened that quick. What went in was a child, that you’d look at because she was pretty and graceful and friendly, but not for any other reason. What came out was a woman, only twelve years old yet, but one you couldn’t take your eyes off of, for all the reasons there are. She wrapped the robe around her and knotted the belt, then rolled her eyes in a resigned kind of way and went switching out there.

By that time darling Dickie was gone, but when I got out there with my gear he was back, and had his gun on him, in a holster, over his right hip. He started to talk, but Helen kept snickering like he must be crazy, and Margaret and Mr. Legg and Mrs. Legg kept looking at each other in a nervous kind of way while he talked: “Honest, folks, I don’t think you’ve thought this thing through. I’m not taking out Helen in any formal way, you understand. I’m only asking her to the picture show tonight. It’s not like she was making her debut or something. And frankly I think it would be good for her. If you ask me, Mr. Legg, she doesn’t go out enough.”