Boswell (5 page)

“I’ll have to lie on you.”

I maneuvered the two arms, pinning them next to his body, and then slowly I reached around my uncle’s sides and locked my hands behind his back. Oh, the sad, sad uses of strength, I thought. I leaned down over him, my face sliding across his shoulder and into position against his turned head. My ear was next to his throat, and I could feel the heavy pulsings of his jugular. At my back his leg slapped against his groin. When the leg relaxed for a moment I thrust my legs between his, but instantly his legs contracted and crashed against me. I waited for the leg to go slack and then tried to slip one foot through his knee’s arch. I missed and kicked his calf, but the second time I managed to push my leg under his. His leg came up again and for a moment we rolled dreamily. Then I was able to hook his errant leg between mine, and by pushing backwards with all my strength force it down. I lay now entirely on top of him, hugging him. I could feel his erection against my stomach. We lay like lovers. He was sobbing.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It can’t be helped.”

His body stiffened and relaxed, stiffened and relaxed, but gradually his convulsions subsided. I continued to hold him. His sobs shuddered through his body, and then, slowly, they subsided too. I relaxed my grip but did not get off immediately. Then I rolled over and stood up.

My uncle could not look at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “Oh, James, I’m so sorry.”

“I thought you were with a woman,” I said.

“Damn a man’s body,” he said.
“Damn
it,” he said angrily.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Really. Please, Uncle Myles.”

“You’d better change,” he said. “Your pajamas are damp.”

“I will,” I said. “It’s all right.”

“Damn a man’s body,” he said.

“I guess I’ll go change.”

When I came back my uncle was sitting on the edge of my bed.

“I brought you some tea,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Let’s drink it in the living room.”

“All right.” I carried the cup into the living room and sat down on my uncle’s sofa.

He took a seat across the room from me. “It’s not cold, is it?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “it’s fine.”

“Lipton’s is an old house,” he said. He was trying to get back his composure, to win back whatever he thought he had lost to me. His body had just shown him what he was, what we all are, and now he had to forget it.

“An old house,” he said, snug in his faith in the established firm.

“Sure,” I said. “That’s why the tea’s hot.”

“What?” he said. “Oh. Yes, of course.”

I wished he would get another hard-on right there in front of me, that he would vomit in his Lipton’s. But all he did was sigh, extending his palms along the hard wooden arms of his chair. He crossed his legs and one pajamaed leg swung smartly out from beneath his silk robe. I could see his white heel where the slipper hung slackly.

“I think we’d better talk seriously,” he said.

He seemed to be studying me. What he said next surprised me. “How much do you weigh?” he asked.

“Two thirty.”

He shuddered.

“James, people are frightened of you. Do you know that?”

I stared down at my feet like a damned kid.

“It’s true. You are actually frightening to people. Can you blame them? Two hundred and thirty pounds and barely twenty years old. What are you trying to prove? Do you want people to look at a man and see a horse? I don’t understand it. Look at that hand. It’s as murderous as a butcher’s cleaver. Your legs are like trees. You’ve the chest of a draft horse. It’s disgusting. It’s not attractive. Do you think girls would find it attractive? People are frightened.”

“Are you frightened?”

“I’m your uncle.”

“Are
you
frightened?”

“I would be. I know what you’re like, however. I’m your uncle. I… Yes. I’m frightened. Yes, I’m very much frightened. I think of the strength in you and I’m terrified that you won’t always control it.”

“Aren’t you afraid I might lose a little control over it right now?”

“We’re civilized,” he said. Sure we are, I thought. He was himself again: my uncle. Back in the saddle. I told you we weren’t very different. All right, my horseness was outside, visible. He kept his in stables of his own devising. What was the difference? His blood was on my hip, for Christ’s sake. Right now my pajamas were stiffening in the sink.

“I mean to talk seriously to you and I will,” he said. “What do you intend to do with your life?”

“I’d like to lift elephants, Uncle Myles. Tear phone books.”

“A strong man,” my uncle snorted. “In a circus. A side show, not even a circus. Strength is humiliating to a man, do you know that?”

“Is it?”

“Physical strength is humiliating to a man,” my uncle shouted. “Listen, do you know what distinguishes human beings from animals? Love? Law? Reason? The ability to walk upright? None of those things. None of them. Any lioness loves its cub. Every herd has rules. A fox has cunning. A horse can rear. No. Only one thing distinguishes men from beasts: respectability. I’m not talking about self-respect. That’s just ego. A cat has that. Respectability is grander. Do you know what it is? Do you? Respectability is the decision of the private man that the powers of this world are right. The decision of the private man to be one with those powers. Decency is nothing more than the condition that what he considers valuable,
you
consider valuable,
I
consider valuable.

“There is a universal assumption, James, that man has intrinsic worth. He has. If he has worth then his products have worth. If his products have worth then they should be conserved. If they should be conserved then it is a privilege to have as many of those products as one can. I’ll go further. It is the
duty
of the private man to have those products. He must get all he can. Not to do so is waste. Waste is sin. If waste is sin, hoarding is virtue. Put money in your purse, Boswell. Put things on your shelves, in your closets, your banks, your vaults. How much closet space is there in a circus trailer?”

“This is ridiculous.”

“No. Conserve. Conserve. Man is basically a collector.”

“A squirrel can do that.”

“That’s the squirrel’s decency then, that it can save. Conserve. Collect. Accumulate. Receive. Get. Take.”

“Have you?”

“Well, I’ve failed,” he said. “But I’ve tried. It’s not a sin to be poor, Boswell—no one says that. It’s only a sin to accept one’s poverty. Where are you going?”

“I have to make a call.”

“To one of your freaks?”

“Sure.”

“Not from my phone. I forbid it.”

“All right. I’ll go downstairs.”

I went into my bedroom and flung clothes on my body. I started out. “A strong man,” my uncle laughed, coming after me. “Is that what you want? To be gaped at? A respectable man doesn’t call attention to himself. His life is quiet, sedate.”

Kiss mine, Uncle Myles, I thought. He almost had me, the little bastard. He could make me ashamed of my size, all right, any time he wanted. But at the last moment I remembered
his
size. I remembered, of all things, my Uncle Myles’ erection and the weird spontaneity of everybody’s life. Why fight it? We’re all of us strong men. We taste like big game, I bet. We’re gamy. We taste like tiger and ape and zebra.

“So long, Uncle Myles,” I called back to him. “You throw a very sedate convulsion, do you know that? Clean that wound, Uncle Myles. Close up that skin. Put on a Band-Aid. Johnson and Johnson is a very old house.”

“Where are you going? James, where are you going?”

“To the freak show. That’s where.”

I knew I would not be back until I had seen it.

So I was out in the street. I was twenty years old and out in the winter street, and what I had were the clothes on my back and the back itself and a key to the gymnasium. That’s savings, right? That’s conservation and collection and accumulation. That’s getting, isn’t it? I had cornered the market. Boswelfare!

There are getters and there are spenders, Uncle Myles, I thought, and we both know what I am.

I thought of Penner, the man who was my friend, or who would have been my friend if I had had a friend. (Uncle Myles once told me that I didn’t make friends. He was right.) I would call Penner. It seemed very important. I went into a drug store and squeezed into a booth. I looked his name up in the book. Only just then something went wrong. The collection was temporarily embarrassed. I had no dime in the accumulation.

It is virtually impossible for a healthy but despondent two-hundred-thirty-pound twenty-year-old, with nothing but the clothes on his back and the key in his pocket and friendless and oldly orphaned and newly de-uncled and no dime to make a phone call and no visible prospects, to die in a phone booth. Something happens. It’s a life principle. Wheels turn. Conditions ripen. It isn’t much, you think? Lover, it is all I have. Don’t forget it and you will be happy and you will go far.

I went outside. The movies were letting out. Right in front of me people were coming out of the theater and heading for their cars. I ducked down a side street and looked for a car with no snow on it. When I spotted one I went around to the trunk and, stooping, lifted it by its frame. I moved carefully sideways toward the curb and settled the rear of the car into as fluffy a snow bank as you ever saw. Then I stepped into a doorway to wait.

In five minutes there they were—some fat-throated, deep-voiced guy and his juicy wife. I swear I could see the wild sports coat beneath his overcoat, his wife’s blond hair under the babushka. They had just seen David Niven and she was telling him what a cute picture it was. They were laughing and he opened the car for her and then went around to the driver’s side. He got in and started the motor. It was a beautiful thing to hear. It purred like a dream and David Niven was a good actor and Detroit made swell cars and in a few minutes the heater would be blowing out hot air like a blast furnace and when he got home he was going to thump Blondie. Only—only the bottom fell out of his world. The rear wheels were spinning nine hundred miles an hour. The car was a slush- maker, an ice machine. He got out to see what was wrong, then came around behind the car and moved his fedora professionally back on his brow.

“What is it? Let’s go, I’m cold,” his wife said.

“Yeah, well, I’m in a damned snowdrift.”

“Well, get out of it. I don’t want to freeze to death out here.”

“I’ll have to rock it.”

He got back into the car and heaved it forward an inch and backwards an inch. The car settled down into the snow until spring. He gave it more gas and stalled the motor. He tried it in first, in second, in high, in reverse. In neutral. He got out of the car again.

“Will you have to call the motor club?”

“Shut up.”

“Maybe if you rocked it some more,” she said.

“It needs traction. It’s got no damned traction.”

“That’s too bad,” she said. “It’s so cold.”

“It needs more traction.” He stooped down and patted some snow into the ruts.

“You’ll get a heart attack,” his wife said.

“Get behind the wheel and put it in first. I’ll push.”

“Call the motor club already.”

“Just put it in first, will you!”

“It’s so cold,” she said. She lowered her voice. “It’s not a safe neighborhood.”

They tried it once his way and then she came out of the car. “You’ll get a heart attack and freeze to death in the street,” she said. “Let me push.”

“Get back in the car,” he shouted. “Get back in the god-damned car.”

It was time. I came out of the doorway and walked past them. The man looked at me and his wife whispered something to him. “Maybe if two people push,” he said loudly.

“Are you having car trouble, sir?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I seem to be stuck in a drift. I figured if we both pushed while my wife tried to drive we might get out.”

I walked over to the car. “It’s in pretty deep, isn’t it?”

“One solid shove and I think we could move it,” he said hopefully.

“That’s a two-dollar shove,” I said.

He looked at me. He hated me, but he understood me. I think he may even have admired me.

“All right,” he said. “You get me out of here and I’ll give you two dollars.”

“Get in the car,” I said.

“You can’t do it by yourself.”

“Get in the car and turn off the motor.”

“Turn it off?”

“I’m going to lift your car.”

I bent down over the car and pressed my face against the cold trunk. I placed my hands underneath the frame and lifted. “Because my heart is pure,” I said, and heaved the car out of the snow bank.

The wife gasped. . The husband coughed nervously.

“Two dollars,” I said.

“Certainly,” he said. He turned his back to take his wallet out, then handed me two dollars. “You’re pretty strong,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Well, I guess I’ll be going,” he said, backing into the car.

“Watch the way you park it from now on,” I advised him.

I went around to the wife’s side. I could see her push the little button down that locks the door. She was looking up at me as her husband drove off. I winked at her and waved. I tried to let her know in that wink, and I think she may have understood, that there are forces in the world against which even David Niven is helpless, against which cuteness is about as effective as snow piled against a tire for traction.

I put the two dollars in my pocket next to my key and walked off whistling. It was the first time I had ever turned my strength to account. My uncle would have thought I was crazy, but Herlitz, Herlitz would have been proud!

I called Penner.

“Penner?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Boswell.”

“Who?”

“James Boswell. From the gym.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“Listen—Penner? I wonder if you could put me up for a few days. I’ve had some trouble with my uncle.”

“Oh.”

He put his hand over the receiver. There was somebody there. I knew what he was feeling. You just hate to turn people down if they don’t mean anything to you.