Going All the Way (21 page)

When Mr. Libby left, Nina mixed a batch of martinis for everyone, saying they certainly had something to celebrate. The beginning of Gunner's artistic career.

Gunner's eyes had begun to move back in his head, and he had a sort of blank, zombie expression.

“Now that you're having
real
art lessons,” Nina said, “you won't have to spend so much time with that little Jewish girl.”

“Her name is Marty,” Gunner said wearily. “You could just call her Marty. You don't have to put in the ‘Jewish' all the time.”

“Oh. Does it bother you? That she's Jewish.”

“No, Mother. It bothers
you
.”

“Are you trying to accuse me of being prejudiced?”

“I'm not accusing anybody of being anything.”

“I better get going on home pretty soon,” Sonny said, but no one seemed to pay any attention to him. He was mainly trying to give Gunner an excuse to get out, but Gunner seemed in some stage beyond really being bothered, like he had switched off a whole set of nerves, or injected Novocain into his mind. Maybe it was some kind of Zen trick he'd learned in Japan. The Japs seemed to know the answer to everything—fucking and turning your mind off.

“I never said a word when you took out those little Jewish girls in high school, and even in college,” Nina went on. “I'm as broadminded as the next person. But now, it's a different story.”

“Why?” Gunner asked, out of the depths of his trance.

“For heaven sake, you're a
man
now. You'll be getting married.”

“I will?”

“Well, won't you?”

“I don't know.”

“Of course you will. You're at the age when any girl is a potential wife. You know that as well as I do. Don't play dumb.”

“I'm not.”

“Not going to marry her?”

“Not playing dumb.”

“Then you
are
going to marry her, is that what you're saying? You're telling me you're going to marry a Jewish girl?”

“What if I am?”

“Listen to him!” Nina said frantically, looking to Sonny for consolation. “Do you hear what he's saying?”

“Well, I'm not sure,” Sonny said, swallowing what he hoped was enough martini to get him to the place where Gunner seemed to be.

“Of course, you're playing dumb, too.” Nina said. “I forgot, she's a friend of yours. You introduced her to Gunner, didn't you?”

“No, ma'am,” Sonny said.

“We all met at once,” Gunner said. “At the museum.”

“That's beside the point! Don't you know what it means, marrying a Jewish girl? Don't you know what they do, before they get married?”

“What do they do?” Gunner asked with real curiosity.

Nina started sobbing. “I hope she has a handsome father. I hope that much.”

“Why?” Gunner asked. He sat forward, as if waked from his coma, still calm but now genuinely curious.

“Don't you know?” she sobbed. “Don't you know what they do before a daughter is married? Oh, God.”

“What do they do?” Gunner asked.

“The father, the night before the wedding. He does it with his own daughter! It's part of the Jew religion—they make them do it!”

The tears were streaming down Nina's cheeks and dropping into her martini, which she clutched with both hands.

“Where did you hear that, Mother?” Gunner asked quietly. “How did you happen to come by that little nugget?”

“Everyone knows,” she screamed. “It's common knowledge!”

She rushed to the bedroom, sobbing, and slammed the door.

Gunner ran a hand over his forehead and then slugged down the last of his martini. “Well,” he said. “You learn something every day.”

“Jesus, where do you suppose she got that?” Sonny asked.

“I dunno. Sunday school, maybe. Wherever it was she learned that Catholic priests charge two hundred dollars for praying the soul of a sinner into Purgatory.”

“Two hundred?” Sonny asked.

“That was when I was a kid,” Gunner said. “It's probably gone up, like everything else.”

4

Sonny was relieved to know that Gunner was still his friend, but he realized there wouldn't be as much chance to hang around with him now, what with the sexy Jewish girl providing him with afternoons of art and evenings of lustful abandon. Or so at least Sonny imagined Gunner's schedule—a full life if there ever was one. Sonny determined once again to fill the long, hot days of his own existence with something more than whipped-cream desserts and television, swore he would try to “pull himself together,” as his father put it. The summer was melting away like the unfinished ice cream Sonny left on his plate at breakfast, running out in a soupy mess.

To help himself get in a better mood, Sonny went out and bought a record of
Victory at Sea
. It was written by the great Richard Rodgers to go with a TV documentary about the glorious Battle of the Pacific in World War II, and when Sonny saw a rerun of the program he found himself closing his eyes and just listening to the music. It gave him gooseflesh and made him feel like a different kind of person. He played the record in his room on the portable Victrola he got for high-school graduation, and felt transformed. The music stirred him, made him aspire to finer things; as he lost himself in it, let it take him, he seemed to feel his mind and soul expand, as if they were getting oxygen. He imagined himself in a spotless white suit, doing noble and dangerous things, at considerable sacrifice to himself. Immersed in that music, he was cleansed of all desire for pussy, and he felt if he could just keep the music playing in his head he would never again be plagued by dirty thoughts. He would never even have to jack off anymore if he could just keep the lofty spirit of the music in him. Da-da, da-
da
dumm-dumm; da-da, da
da
dum-dum.… The sun on the water. Salt spray of the sea. Clean winds, whipping banners of Right and Justice. Men standing tall; chest out, shoulders back, stomach in. A sense of pride and honor. The best in man. A man who lived with that melody, who moved with that rhythm, would never be caught eating late-morning breakfasts of fudge ripple ice cream; such a man would never loll around the house all day, letting his life slip by, rotting his teeth with Pepsi-Cola.

After Sonny brought the record home and played it alone in his room, twice over, he did five push-ups and ten sit-ups. Even that much had him sweating and breathing hard, and he took a long shower, making it as cold as he could stand it at the end, gritting his teeth and feeling frozen but proud.

He put on clean, fresh clothes and sat down at his desk with a pencil and a piece of lined notebook paper. At the top he printed “Things To Do.” The lettering looked rather faint, and Sonny went downstairs and sharpened the pencil with a paring knife. When he came back up he crumpled the paper and printed the title on a new piece. He stared at the paper awhile and then lit a cigarette. After a while he wrote under the heading:

—Job, career

—Photography?

—Talk to Biff Barkely, Indianapolis
Star

Instead of writing more “Things To Do” he called up Biff, who said to come on by, he didn't go to work till four that afternoon. Mrs. Burns had the car, but Sonny figured it would do him good to take a brisk walk to the Barkelys' house, they only lived five or six blocks away. It was one of those cloudless days of glaring heat where you saw what looked like puddles of water on the street that disappeared when you got up close. Not a single leaf stirred. People were sheltered inside behind curtains and blinds, and nothing moved except the cars that slipped by, blazing with sudden reflections of sun. The discomfort hardly even bothered Sonny, and in fact made him feel tough, like a Foreign Legionnaire.

The thought of going to see Biff Barkely affected him almost like listening to
Victory at Sea;
it added a little bounce to his walk. Biff had been his first boss at the paper when Sonny was just a high-school kid submitting pictures of the principal handing a certificate to the winner of the American Legion Oratory Contest, or the home-ec teacher showing her girls how to operate a new sewing machine, stuff like that. Biff had taken an interest in Sonny, got him a summer-replacement job at the paper after his junior year in college, and became a kind of mentor to him. Mrs. Burns was always telling people that “Sonny thinks Biff Barkely hung up the moon,” saying it with a grudging sort of amazement, as if she didn't quite understand it but supposed it was O.K. Sonny had noticed, even as a kid, that when he got to like someone a whole lot his mother sort of got mad at them, in a funny way. She would try to get to know them herself and treat them extra nice, but there was always a certain edge in her voice when she talked about them.

Biff was almost old enough to be Sonny's father, but he didn't seem that old. He was actually almost forty, but he wore a crew cut and sport shirts and seemed so damned active and alive that you thought of him as being a young guy. He talked like a young guy, too, not in what he said but in the way he said it—quick and to the point and often funny. Watching him moving along the sidelines shooting a football game was to Sonny a beautiful thing to see, like a complicated dance performed with grace and agility. Beside him, Sonny felt waterlogged.

Biff could shoot anything at all but he mainly liked working sports, probably so he could use up some of his wiry energy running back and forth and getting into weird positions and bolting out of them to scoot down the sidelines and catch the next bit of dramatic action. He had won some top awards and twice had pictures in the Best Sports Photography Annual, which wasn't just an Indiana thing but the best in the whole country. Sonny would have followed Biff into trenches or flaming walls, and maybe because his devotion was plain and simple, Biff confided in him sometimes about the intrigues and bureaucratic baloney at the paper and how things got screwed up by management guys who didn't know their business and tried to tell other people how to do their job. It was maddening. It was like that in life. Unfair.

Biff had a couple little kids and a good-natured, pretty wife whom he liked to tease, but not in a mean way. Sonny was very impressed that Biff never cussed or used dirty words in front of his wife. When she was around, Biff would come to the part for those words and just pause, like leaving a blank space, and then go on. Sonny really liked that. He wished he would meet some girl he felt that way about. And live happily ever after, never again dreaming of sexy whores in filmy black underwear. All he had to do was find a girl to marry who was just like the one in the song, soft to the touch, with a skin like a baby and smelling like perfume, and nobody else could have her but you, sort of like having your own kewpie doll or Raggedy Ann but a lot cuter.

Sonny was humming that song, thinking the words to himself, as he got to the Barkelys' house. He stopped then, feeling a little embarrassed, not wanting to give anyone the impression he was covetous of Biff's wife, in case anyone was reading his mind at the moment. Someone like God. Even though Sonny didn't believe in Him, he sometimes feared that God might be reading his mind at any given moment, trying to catch him thinking something wrong. That wouldn't be hard.

Biff's wife answered the door, wearing a sundress, a flowered apron, and her usual cheery smile. She made Sonny think of daisies.

“Welcome
home
, Sonny. Come in.”

“Hi, Carolyn.”

He had always called her and Biff by their first names, even when he was a high-school kid. That's the way she and Biff were, like friends instead of older people. Biff came hustling downstairs, shook hands, and said, “Coffee's on.”

They went to the kitchen, where the coffee was on. It was always on. Black and strong. Biff consumed it with a nervous sort of hunger, morning and night. Coffee and cigarettes were his vices.

“Well,” Biff said, “you're free, white and—twenty-two?”

“Three in October,” Sonny said.

“So now you seek your fortune.”

“I guess,” Sonny said. “Soon, anyway.”

“One generation riseth, and another generation passeth away.”

“Not
you
” Sonny said with some alarm, not wanting Biff to think of himself as old or passing.

Biff bit on his cigarette, making it tilt upward, like FDR. “Not yet,” he said.

“Naw,” said Sonny. “Hey, I liked your Speedway stuff.”

“Yeh? You go to the race this year?”

“No.”

“Mr. Vukovich did right nicely.”

Biff always called sports guys “Mister,” maybe because most other people called them by their first names even when they didn't know them.

“I saw he did,” Sonny said.

Biff bent his head down and sipped at his coffee. He smacked his lips and said, “So, you ready to come to the paper and make a nice, dishonest living?”

“Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't even know if they'd hire me. Regular.”

“Only trouble is those pinch-penny”—he looked in the front room, where Carolyn was doing some darning, and instead of saying the word with which he would have described the management, he paused, making the blank space, and continued—“probably won't hire anyone new till one of our speed-graphic grandpas kicks off. We got enough deadwood around there to build a raft.”

“Well, it might be a long time,” Sonny said, “till there's an opening.”

Biff shrugged. “Might. But we're not the only paper in town. Not to say in the country. Ever think of getting out?”

“Well, I
have
been thinking about the GI Bill. I could get a masters in something.”

“Ah-ha! And Uncle Sam foots the bill.”

“Most of it, anyway.”

“What're you waiting for? You could go to Chicago, New York, even Paris. Pick yourself up some free-lance work with the camera.”