Mrs. Bridge (6 page)

“Why don’t you tell India what you said to your science adviser yesterday?” his mother suggested. She was wearing moccasins and white wool athletic socks and a baggy skirt and sweater, so that she looked like a high-school girl, except for her face, which was creased and shriveled like the face of a very old woman.

“Lucienne, really!” said her son. “How can I possibly express myself in regard to a man so jejune?” And he drew on his cigarette with a look o boredom. Mrs. Bridge was fascinated and exasperated whenever he pulled out a cigarette; the whole

thing was beyond her understanding*

Although Douglas was absent whenever Mrs. Leacock and Tarquin were around, he was evidently somewhere within earshot, because one evening during an argument with his father about the size of his allowance he blurted, “Jeez, how am I supposed to express myself with nothing but a measly fifty cents a week?”

“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Bridge, lowering the newspaper through which the discussion had been carried on.

“Well, I gotta express my personality, don’t I?”

“Express your personality?” asked Mr. Bridge, and gazed at his son curiously.

“That’s what Tarquin does. He gets to express it whenever he feels like it.”

Mr. Bridge and Douglas studied each other for a while, one of them bemused and the other defiant, and Mrs. Bridge waited uneasily to find out how it was going to end.

“You’ll express yourself when 1 say you can,” Mr. Bridge replied quietly. He shook up the newspaper and continued reading.

There was another expressionist in the neighborhood, a boy several years older than Tarquin Leacock, whom Douglas avoided with equal assiduity, though for a different reason. His name was Peters and he was a bully.

One evening It was long after dark when Douglas finally came home. He was exhausted and covered with dirt, although this in itself was not remarkable.

“Where have you been?” Mrs. Bridge cried, rushing toward him the moment he entered the house. “We’ve been looking high and low for you. I was just about to phone the police.”

“It was that big Peters guy’s fault/’ Douglas said in a low voice. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his sweatshirt and trudged upstairs to his room.

“Well, thank heavens you’re safe, at least/’ she resumed when he came down. He looked a little more respectable. “Where on earth were you?”

He replied that he had been on top of Pfeiffer’s garage.

“Until twenty minutes to nine?” she asked with as much sarcasm as she could muster, and this was not much.

“I figured it was probably later than that/’ he muttered very glumly. “It felt like it was about midnight/’

She followed him to the breakfast room, where Harriet was setting his place.

“What were you doing on Pfeiffer’s garage? I’m sure they didn’t want you up there.”

He started to answer, then sneezed, started to wipe his nose with his hand and then, thinking better of it, took out his handkerchief.

“I was hiding/* he said and sneezed again.

“Hiding! From whom, may I ask?”

“From that big Peters guy/’ he replied with some annoy-ance, as though she should have known. “What did you think I was going to do, stick my head up and get it blown off?”

“I think you’d better explain yourself, young man, or your father’s going to hear about this/*

“That’s okay with me,” he muttered.

“All right, now. Begin at the beginning.”

“Well,” he said, wearily buttering a slice of bread, “he just chased me up there, that’s all there is to it.”

“Who chased you? What are you talking about?”

He put down the bread and explained with elaborate emphasis. “That big fat slob Peters. He trapped me on top of Pfeiffer’s garage and wouldn’t let me come down. Every time I’d stick my head up he took a shot at me. He almost hit me a couple of times/*

“Do you mean he had a gun?*’

“Well, what did you think he was shooting at me with?” He glanced uncertainly at his mother, knowing he had been rather impertinent, knowing secondly that he was not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, but he saw that this time he would get away with both. She had the shocked look she sometimes got.

“What sort of a gun?”

“Oh, it was a beebee gun, one of those pump guns. He’d pumped it up about seventy-five times, I guess, because every time he took a shot at me it’d knock off a piece of cement-I guess,” he added thoughtfully, “you could just about kill a horse with a good pump gun if you pumped long enough.”

Mrs. Bridge did not know exactly what he was talking about, but she did know that he knew what he was talking about.

“Why on earth was he shooting at you?” she asked, rather weakly. She had never come up against a situation like this.

Douglas shrugged. “He just wanted to. I don’t know. I didn’t ask him, you can bet on that. He’d of probably shot my block off.”

“But you must have provoked him.”

“Oh, sure! A guy about sixteen times as big as me that’s got a pump gun. That’s a big laugh. Hah!”

“I’m going to telephone the police,” she said resolutely, because it did seem like something the police would be interested in.

“Okay by me,” said Douglas. “I guess they can find him easy enough if they just hang around Pfeiffer’s garage. He’s probably got somebody else up there by this time.”

“Well, who is he? Does he live around there?”

“I don’t know. All I know is he just hangs around that garage.”

“But why?” There was something nightmarish about the whole affair.

Douglas, however, was not in the least mystified. “Well, because it’s a good garage for trapping littler kids so they can’t get away. It’s flat on top and it’s got this kind of a little tiny wall around the top. So he just hangs around there and usually about the time school gets out he catches somebody on their way home and starts shooting, so naturally they go up the telephone pole and scrooch down behind the wall. He always runs them that way/’ he added as a final explanation. After a pause he said moodily, “I usually detour, but I guess today I was thinking about something else and forgot. Then all of a sudden zing! and boy, I jumped about a thousand feet in the air, believe me! So anyway I went up the telephone pole like I said, because I figured he could probably outrun me even i he is a big slob, and then there wasn’t any way to get down except the same way and he was there with that old pump gun. I didn’t think he was ever going to leave.”

“Why didn’t you call for help?”

“Well, because if I did he’d of probably got sore at me and then I’d really’ve got fixed.”

Mrs-Bridge had become so confused that she could not even begin to understand this statement; she gazed at him in despair. “Well, don’t you know where this boy lives?” Douglas shook his head.

“He must go to school somewhere, doesn’t he?” Douglas didn’t know. “He’s one of those big high-school guys, except he’s probably too dumb. They probably expelled him.”

“But you must know something about him.”

“He’s a big fat slob!” Douglas said, flaring up. He was getting peeved with his mother for asking so many questions; he had been trapped on the garage, he had escaped, that was all there was to it. He hated Peters, but that was irrelevant. He wished his mother would drop the subject.

The case had begun to seem a little weaker to Mrs. Bridge. She was on the point of telephoning the Sixty-third Street police station, for she was certain Douglas was telling the truth and she knew perfectly well that a beebee gun could put out someone’s eye, and yet she could not very well call the police station to report a high-school boy with a beebee gun just that and nothing more.

“But can’t you tell me anything about him? Anything at all?”

Douglas shook his head. He could have found out more about Peters, but there was no need to. He would avoid Pfeiffer’s from now on and that was all there was to it.

“I’m going to tell your father about that boy,” she said positively. “Something ought to be done about him.”

“Okay by me/ 1 Douglas assented. “Can I have some more potatoes and gravy?”

“May I?”

“Okay, may I?”

Mr. Bridge did hear about the next adventure.

On his way home from the public school one afternoon shortly before the start of summer vacation, Douglas came across Tarquin seated beneath a chestnut tree. There was a book in his lap and he seemed to be innocently reading. Douglas was carrying a weed he had pulled up, and was using it to whip the horse on which he was making an escape from some Indians.

“Whoa!” said Douglas softly, reining to a stop. Then, conscious that Tarquin knew about the fictitious horse and was snickering at him, he abandoned the game and dropped the weed.

“Hello,” Tarquin said without moving,

After a pause Douglas said, “H’llo.” After another pause, during which he gazed up into the branches of the chestnut tree and industriously scratched first one ankle and then the other, he added, “What’re you doing here?”

“Haven’t I a right to be here?”

Douglas was thinking this over when Tarquin suddenly threw a rock at him. He had kept the rock hidden under the book. Douglas saw it coming and ducked, but even so it scraped the side of his head.

“Okay,” he said. “You asked for it,” and ran forward with his fists doubled up.

When he got home later that afternoon, after stopping by the high school to watch the track team at practice, and having searched the bleachers for valuables, he was disconcerted to find not only that his father was at home but that he had heard about the fight with Tarquin. Mrs. Leacock had telephoned Mr. Bridge at the office.

“Well, he started it/’ said Douglas defensively, and when told to continue with his version of the fight he said, “Well, he sort of jumped up and took out across the streetcar tracks toward Wornall Road, so I took after him and boy, I just about didn’t make it and he kept yelling over his shoulder how I better not touch him because he knew how to fight with jiu-jitsu and “

“What do you mean you just about didn’t make it? Didn’t make what?”

“Boy, that streetcar just about got me. But anyway, he “

“Tell this to me again,” said Mr. Bridge. He had been standing up; now he seated himself and listened to the story with extreme attention. “Do you mean/’ he asked, “that Tarquin threw the rock at you and led you across the tracks in front of a streetcar?”

Douglas nodded enthusiastically. He had, in fact, come very close to being hit.

“I see/’ Mr. Bridge said. For a long time he was lost in thought, but finally he glanced up and said, “I understand you caught him/’

“Oh, sure. He runs like a girl. That’s because he’s knock-kneed.”

“So then what transpired?”

Douglas gazed at his father doubtfully.

“What happened next?”

“Oh. Well, let’s see. I sort of punched him in the nose once or twice, I think.”

“You think?”

“I guess I did.”

“Was that the end of the fight?”

“Pretty much. I suppose you could actually say It was because he started to bawl like a little kid, so uh that’s about all/’

“Go on.”

Douglas groaned and made an agonized face. He was embarrassed about this next item because he knew he had not behaved very well. Unfortunately it was impossible to distract his father in the way he could usually distract his mother, so he did not even try to change the subject. Reluctantly he said, “I can’t stand cry-babies/’

“Go on/’

Douglas heaved a deep sigh. “Okay, okay. I hauled off and socked him one in the breadbasket/’

“While he was lying down?”

“He was up. I mean he was up when I let him have it in the breadbasket. Then he fell down again and wouldn’t get up any more even when I dared him to. He only lay there and screamed about how he was going to stab me to death/’ Scarcely had he finished saying this when he became aware of a change in his father’s attitude; inquiringly he looked at his father, and next at his mother, who had been lingering in the hall.

With modest pride he concluded, “I guess he won’t bother anybody any more, not after what I did to him/’ He was astonished when his father reached forward and grabbed his arm. “I can fix his wagon any old dayl” Douglas shouted. He was frightened at finding himself caught like this and he did not know what was going on.

“Listen, son,” his father said earnestly. “If that boy starts another fight I want you to do something. Are you listening to me?”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to walk away. Don’t take your eyes off him, just walk away, that’s all,”

Douglas attempted to twist out of the grip on his arm. He was deeply surprised by his father’s strength. His arm had begun to throb from the pain. He was confused and defiant, and all that occurred to him was that he was being asked to run away from a fight, and not only that but from a boy he knew he could lick.

“Do you hear me?”

“Well, why?”

“Never mind why.”

“Okay,” he responded grudgingly, but added, as soon as his arm was released, “only he better cut out throwing rocks at me.”

“Under no circumstances. I want this clearly understood.”

“All right,” he said. He was resentful and ashamed. More than anything else he was afraid of being thought a coward.

After he had gone upstairs his parents were silent for a few minutes. Mr. Bridge was thoughtful and Mrs. Bridge was waiting for what he would say.

“That Leacock boy is going to kill somebody one of these days,” he observed.

“I do think they let him run wild,” she agreed, “but I’m certain he wouldn’t do anything really wrong.”

‘You just watch,” he said angrily.

“It was awfully strange about setting the garage on fire,” she admitted. “And gracious, I certainly don’t approve of fighting, but it does seem that Douglas can look out for himself.”

“Douglas is a boy and thinks like a boy. Tarquin Leacock has the mind of an adult.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Bridge as she put on her reading glasses and opened the latest copy of The Tattler, “if that’s the case, I shouldn’t think there’ d be much to worry about.”