Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

But there was Billy’s America signaling him: in a multitude of white-capped semaphores breaking out in mid-channel of the Hudson. Forget everything, try to push it all behind, get away, get clear. Ira goaded himself into quickened pace as the two descended from Broadway’s terrace to the boathouse on the riverbank. Common sense, at last; it was only common sense to accept America’s offer. He could never be Billy, but he could model himself after him, remodel himself into something like him. And he had the chance to. If he rejected Larry’s “values,” as he repeatedly called them, he had access to Billy’s model of life. In fact, he had no other so definite.

Whitecaps on the river, lapping the bright air, like so many tongues, clean and white. Start anew, start afresh. A wordless but visible choir, all saying the same thing. Start anew, start afresh. Break away from what held him. A Jewish Dick Whittington hearkening to watery Bow Bells on the river. Almost the same. Remember when you stood on the diving rock? Ira reminded himself of those desperate moments. The river promised you then. Boy. A circumcised Dick Whittington — Dick. Will you cut it out? Yeah, cut it out. I mean it. Get up before breakfast Sunday morning, before Mom leaves. Beat it out of the house.

Once in the boathouse, they went to the rack where the canoe was stored, took hold of each end of the small craft, carried it out, and gently set it down on its keel on the wind-rocked little wharf. Then Billy led the way back into the boathouse to the locker where paddles and cushions were stowed. Here the two could leave their neckties, felt hats, briefcases, while they paddled to the other shore. Maybe he’d spend half the night, munch on Billy’s box of crackers and jar of peanut butter, maybe mooch off other guys with a campfire. Who knew? With Billy, they’d meet some really nice guys—

“Even if you didn’t place,” Billy said, fishing in his pocket for the locker key, “heck, I bet you could work your way through Cornell. My dad worked his way through.” He continued to dig into his pockets. “He did all kinds of things around the college, maintenance work on the grounds, mowing lawns, repairing campus walks. Oh, gosh. He even spent a term being a busboy in the college cafeteria. Your dad’s a waiter.” Billy grinned. “That ought to come easy. Where the heck is that key? I had it this morning.”

“Did you have it at school?”

“Yes. I had it in the gun room. I know I had it.”

With mounting determination, mounting gravity, and then with vexation such as Ira had never seen Billy display before, he went through everything he owned; he ransacked pockets, wallet, his briefcase; probed pants cuffs; riffled through the pages of his textbooks. The key was nowhere to be found. “Heck, I had it this morning,” he kept repeating.

“Maybe you locked it in the gun room?” Ira suggested. “I mean, you left it there?”

“No, I had it afterward. I had it upstairs in the cafeteria, when I paid for lunch.”

Billy was certain he had the key after they left school. Perhaps he had lost it getting carfare out of his pocket on the subway station. Worst of all, he didn’t have a spare at home; it was the only key he had. In the end, they had to give up their planned outing. They picked up the canoe from the small dock. Ira felt something funereal, like a pallbearer, as with hoisted canoe they marched in step up the cleated gangway to the boathouse. Once inside, they returned it to the brackets the little craft had rested on, left it there as on a perch.

Disconsolately they retrieved street clothes and other belongings, strewn on the upturned keels of neighboring canoes. “Well, lucky we didn’t lose the key afterward,” Ira offered in consolation as he slipped on his tie. “We still got our stuff.”

“Yeah.” Billy shouldered into his jacket, restrained his frustration with crimped cheeks. “My dad’s got a hacksaw in his tool chest. It’s too good a padlock, though. That’s the trouble.”

“What d’you mean?”

They picked up their briefcases, stopped before the locker, where Billy hefted the brass base of the padlock. “This U-part that goes through the hasp is hardened steel. I don’t know whether even a bolt-cutter would go through it.”

“A bold-cutter?” Ira queried.

“No. A bolt-cutter,” Billy said impatiently. “Has a compound leverage, long handles.”

“Oh.”

“It’s all right for a regular steel bolt, but not that. You can read it on this U-part. It says ‘hardened.’”

“Say, I got an idea, Billy. Maybe I can borrow a little hydrochloric acid from the lab. You know, bring a small bottle from the house, and snitch a little in chem lab. Maybe we could dissolve it.”

“You think so?”

“It interacts with iron, any metal, I think. You want to try it?”

“That darn key! I wouldn’t care if I lost anything else.”

“I’ve got lab on Tuesday. I’ll sneak out a bottleful.” Ira depicted volume with encircled fingers. “We’ll go to your house first, and you get a glass. Not too big. Just big enough for the lock to fit in. We’ll let the lock soak in it.”

Tuesday afternoon, they repeated their trip to the boathouse. Ira emptied the hydrochloric acid into the tumbler Billy had provided, and raised it until the padlock was submerged. Instead of the furious interaction that Ira looked for, that he had seen take place between hydrochloric acid and metal chips or filings, a few bubbles formed reluctantly on brass and iron. Interaction was taking place, but at a rate beyond feasibility, certainly beyond the ability of either one to stand holding up the glass tumbler for the lock to drown in and dissolve. After a few minutes, Ira admitted defeat. “I guess my idea won’t work.”

“I’ll get someone to open it.” Billy’s optimism had returned. “It’s all right. I talked to my dad, and he told me the easiest way to get the darn lock open was to get a locksmith.”

“Yeah?”

“That key isn’t anything special.” Billy mitigated Ira’s chagrin. “Dad thinks his garageman would help him out with his acetylene torch, if he asked him. That might be easier than anything else.”

Billy succeeded somehow in getting the locker open, whether by means of locksmith or acetylene torch. In the gun room, perhaps for the last time together, Ira congratulated him, congratulated Billy, as Ira would recall later, with a peculiarly impersonal, an accommodating approval, like that of a friendly spectator. And after they ran the last cleaning patches through the bores of the rifles, and were oiling the rope to pull through the firearms for storage over the summer, for the new team, as if observing the end of something they had both held dear, and emboldened by imminent freedom from high school, they dared light up a single cigarette in their gun-club den under the stairs in the assembly hall. Giggling at each other in the camaraderie of mischief, they passed the butt from one to the other, inhaled a few puffs, exhaled down into a corner of the windowless niche, and trusted the stagnant air to retain the odor.

XXII

Graduation exercises approached in late spring just as the pavement began to buckle with the onslaught of New York summer heat.

“ Noo , you’ll take me?” Mom asked eagerly. “Maybe your father will come along too, my paragon.”

“I’m not going,” Ira responded.

Her short throat flushed, skin crimson and scaled. “Again? A plague on you! Why not?”

“I’m working at Madison Square Garden that night. There’s a big prizefight on. I can make some money.”

“I’ll give you the few shmoolyaris you’ll earn that night.” Mom denigrated both the sound and value of the dollar. “Let it be my gift for your graduation. Why are you so intent on earning a few dollars that very night? Since when have you become my breadwinner?”