New Moon (43 page)

When my roommates returned I feigned joining them, falling into ambush after ambush. They assumed it was Tony, Greg, and Charlie and vowed revenge.

The phone rang in the middle of the night. “Oh hell,” Stan groaned. “They must be kidding.”

Our group filed out, past morning papers tied in wire bundles beside the shut souvenir stand, past a dozing clerk … boarded a bus idling with its headlights on, travelled along bumpy backroads, then accelerated onto a highway … falling asleep, awakened, onto a train, asleep again, awakened in Toronto to switch trains. Barely conscious, I was stretching in the aisle when a girl named Shelby asked me to carry her suitcase. “To where?” I asked.

“As far as we go.”

Sporting a distinctive pineapple-like hairdo, she was tall and thin with tiny Oriental eyes, a long black dress, utterly appealing, prettier than Lucy on an imponderable scale that I, like most males, kept. I carted her bag proudly. Only later did I realize it belonged to her grumpy overweight friend—Alan was portering hers. Bamboozled again!

Afternoon rolled by—long rows of haystacks, children standing outside their homes to watch the train pass, cows resting in the shadows of trees. I dialed the radio obsessively in hopes of getting the Mets Triple A Syracuse club against Toronto—the
Sporting
News
said they were starting their two bonus rookies in a doubleheader—but the dial alternated hum with static.

We were roused near dawn at Port Huron, divided into groups, and put in small cabins aboard a waiting cruise ship. Three shrill blasts of the whistle … then the shore levitated away, black smoke pouring against blue sky. Shelby stood by Alan on the deck, chic sunglasses, orange kerchief whipping.

“It’s quite a liner,” he said.

“Well now it ain’t the
Queen Mary,”
she smirked.

As the Great Lake stretched to horizons, we were set free, denizens of a floating hotel. I attached myself to Shelby and Alan. We explored various sections of the deck, in our meanders being served tea and cookies by a travelling maid and shooting a few rounds of shuffleboard. Then we went to the piano room where Shelby played tunes and sang witty flirtations to Alan:
“Am I the one for you? For who? For you?”

He seemed amused, nodding his fixed Bogart grin. Feeling like a third wheel, I tossed an imaginary sidearm pitch. Shelby didn’t miss the gesture. “I’d play ball with you,” she offered, “but I didn’t bring my glove.”

Alan looked askance.

“You don’t believe me? I have a Marty Marion model, and I played shortstop for my camp. How about them there potatoes?”

As the tour assembled in the dining room, the god of tricks came back to me, and I was a cut-up at our table. With a spoon I fished the single very tiny strand of spaghetti out of my soup (which was nonetheless called “spaghetti soup”) and stared at it with exaggerated scrutiny. The table was in an uproar. I had already loosened the tops of the shakers so that Greg got a plate full of salt.

I was out of control; the deranged blueprint just kept popping into my mind. I told “The Shaggy Dog Story” until they were literally falling off chairs onto the floor. Even as I despised this performance, I kept going: “Why that’s the shaggiest, shaggiest, shaggiest, shaggiest, shaggiest dog I’ve ever seen…. ”

“I’ve had enough!” Marcia screamed. “Enough!”

“No,” Shelby insisted. “I don’t think I’ve got it yet. What was it?”

“Why that’s the shaggiest, shaggiest, shaggiest, shaggiest, shaggiest, shaggiest dog I’ve ever seen.”

“If you don’t shut up,” Barry said, “we’re going to throw you overboard.”

Then Laurie got us going on “No Soap, Radio,” the non-joke ending in a false punch line.

Alan and Barry stared in confusion. “I just don’t get it,” Alan complained again.

“No soap…. right?” I repeated. “No soap…. radio!”

Lucy erupted in fake laughter. Shelby was holding her hand over her mouth as though she wanted to laugh but really shouldn’t. Alan shook his head.

Finally Lucy told him: “Don’t you get it? The joke is that there’s no joke, but everyone laughs.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” Barry said, grabbing her by the waist and giving her a sloppy kiss.

As the meal dispersed, I went to the cabin to get my radio and journal. Alan was my lone roommate and I dislodged his bed from its moorings. Then I propped a ladder against the door to fall outwards when opened.

I hurried onto the deck. A cold wind slapped the waves. Foghorns sounded far away. I felt a mood-shift; instantaneously the shenanigans were gone.

The sky was a planetarium. As I turned the dial, ball games came from everywhere, Richmond-Jacksonville, Indians against someone, Pirates-Colts. A long, thin cloud passed across the moon. Inside the cabin, much of the Arista tour was gathered in serenade:
“The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home…. ”

I wrote: “Stephen Foster, penniless and ill at the end of his life, imagined those words, that melody, in a place far from here. We don’t have a right to his prayer.”

“Someone sabotaged the whole damn room,” Alan announced angrily, as I pretended to check for more traps under the bed. “There’s a real wise guy somewhere!”

The next morning Arista Teen Tour strolled off the boat at Port
Arthur, Ontario. I was standing mesmerized in the sun when Shelby grabbed a FUNERAL PARKING ONLY sign off the street and handed it to me to conceal under my jacket for her. I was scared of getting caught but hung on in two-fold desperation. Further down the street she managed to charm an empty box from a department store clerk and then slipped the sign into it. On the customs form she filled out COMICAL SIGN, added her signature, and mailed it home.

“That’s about the coolest thing,” pronounced Greg, “that anybody has done so far on the trip.”

She smiled proudly.

A group of us wandered past Main Street into town. We stopped at a bowling alley, but it turned out to involve tiny holeless balls and only five gigantic pins. Too bad—this wasn’t my game. But it
was
Alan’s. “Duckpins!” he proclaimed and proceeded to knock down more of them than the rest of us put together.

I felt sorry for the proprietor because it was a shabby old hall and we were the only customers. He seemed so pleased to have us, but we weren’t real, we were dumb Americans on a teen tour. We didn’t acknowledge him, just charged into action as if he were the butler. I asked him about the history of his establishment and the game. He talked enthusiastically, making me even sadder. I felt sorry for the alleys too, the lonely alleys, thinking they were being called into operation for real bowlers rather than spoiled American teens.

Outside, Shelby inexplicably turned to me. “Let’s take in the sights,” she proclaimed, grabbing my arm. “You and I’ll hit all of Port Arthur.”

We traipsed along Main Street, staring into clothing and pawnshop windows. We weren’t a couple, we weren’t even friends; I didn’t know what we were. In the back of my mind I held a detached image of myself on a pitching mound, throwing strikes, again and again my right arm brought around, fastball down the middle, mirror image after mirror image. Shelby selected a hamburger place for lunch. The flag whipped in from left; I checked second and fired. The batter was way behind the thump in the mitt. I was a kid pitcher against blue sky, number 12 on my back, the quick
feet of Al Jackson, the sudden twirl of Art Mahaffey.

We were headed in the door when Alan came up behind us from nowhere and swooped Shelby up, putting his arm around her and turning the corner—identical to what had happened leaving the train in Buffalo, only this time the whole person rather than just the suitcase.

I saw the ball bunted down third and raced over, grabbed it barehanded, and fired to first—just in time!

From the train my mind followed silos, trees, patches of forest, farms, a stately rhythm of endless prairie into sunset. Through a core of apple-clouds a gleam of orange shot; far away on a hilltop, two windows reflected the ray. Then nightfall….

In small groups my trainmates, those still awake, began to pick up each other’s songs, “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore,” “They Call the Wind Mariah,” and “Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home.” Others stirred, lolled, idly joined the chorus. In a corner Barry and Lucy, Harve and Laurie were two inseparable heaps. Stan had his arm inside a chubby girl’s blouse. Other couples nestled and kissed, the Simmonses oblivious or uninterested. This all seemed to have arisen from nowhere, my exclusion from it axiomatic.
“The rain is Tess, the fire’s Joe…. ”
I settled into memory, figments of long ago—Pine Cove, the Knickerbocker sign blinking over the city, Jonny fighting ghosts, all past redemption now….
“and they call the wind Mariah.”

We travelled the entire next day on the train. The girls from Florida and Georgia continually reprised a clapping song. They stood in a circle and pounded their hands in rhythm to:
“The spades
[pronounced “spides”]
go two lips together, tie them together, bring back my love to me.”
Then the chorus:
“What is the me-ee-ea-ning of all these flow-ow-ers? They tell the stor-or-y of love from me to you—cha cha cha.”
After that, they fell together, laughing.

We reached Winnipeg at nightfall and checked into our hotel.

I was fast asleep when Stan’s voice jolted me. His breath was right up against me as he grabbed my blankets and tossed them on the floor.

“Hey!” I said.

“Shut the hell up.”

“What’s this all about?”

“I’m warning you. Shut up or I’ll kill you.” He stuck his fist under my chin.

“Maybe first you’ll tell me what’s wrong.”

“Who said you could take the big bed and leave me with the cot?”

“Remember, it’s my turn. I had the cot in Niagara Falls.”

“You asked for that cot, goddamnit!”

“I’ll trade if it means so much to you.”

“It will solve only one problem. What’s it going to do about Alan’s bed? What’s it going to do about our sheets and the water traps? What about the light bulbs? What if we had retaliated against Greg and Tony? I bet
that
would have been hilarious.”

It was the moment of retribution I had been awaiting. I wondered how I had been found out, how long people had been mocking me behind my back. Though Horace Mann and Amherst were my calling cards, I wasn’t superior to them; in fact, I was more of a dork than anyone else. After a flutter of vertigo I summoned all my rationality and candor, sat up, and said: “I
meant
to tell you. I don’t know why I did it.” It was the truth.

“Great. And what about your stupid jokes at supper? What about your interfering with Alan and Shelby? What’s it going to do about the fact everyone thinks you’re an idiot?” I stared in stunned silence. “Going for that walk with Shelby was just so stupid, so obvious; how could anyone do that. Alan’s trying to score with her, and you’re getting in his way. She’s using you against him. Don’t you understand that? She’s a cock-teaser, and he’s working for the honor of all men.”

I didn’t really. It was as though I was in a play with Alan, Shelby, and Stan. Not only hadn’t I learned my lines, I didn’t understand the script or roles assigned to the other characters.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m guess I’m acting like a jerk. I don’t know why. But I’ll try harder.”

“Will you keep your ass away from Shelby?”

I couldn’t believe I was a threat to Alan, but I promised.

Then Stan gave me a friendly shove. “You’re taking this amazingly well. You make me think human beings are worth my trouble.”

I thanked him and started to get up.

“Stay where you are. I’ll sleep in the fucking cot.”

Next morning in Winnipeg we were told not to leave the hotel pool area. We were there only one day, and the city wasn’t supposed to be interesting enough for sightseeing. But I had read in the paper that the Class C Winnipeg Goldeyes were playing Grand Forks that day, so I grabbed a map and transit schedule off the front desk, figured out the route, and surreptitiously slipped onto the summery street.

The ballpark was miles from town, so I boarded a bus along Portage Avenue and took a seat in the last row, relishing my freedom as signets of an unknown city rolled by. This was my own excursion, not on the roster, not included in Arista’s sales pitch to parents: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Hiking past houses on Telfer Street, I darted in and out of lawn sprays, delighting in newly cut grass, the tall trees, the rural spaciousness—Goldeye Stadium in the distance: orbital apogee.

I arrived in the sixth inning, no admission fee. The audience was so diffuse that I could hear individual names as the fans cheered for home-team players (only one of them, pitcher Chuck Taylor, would ever play in the majors). Minutes later I grabbed a foul ball ricocheting off a nearby seat, my Northern League treasure! From there I savored my separation from Stan, Shelby, and the rest … then gauged parallax all the way to apartment 8C in New York City. I was a needle in a haystack, beyond the naked eye. If I had known how never to return, to start my life over here, I would have.

Reversing the route, I slipped back into the group at dinner. No one knew I had gone.

From Winnipeg we boarded a train west to the Columbia icefields where we clambered aboard tractors for a ride across a glacier. We stared down through the rainbow ice of potholes and made snowballs of dinosaur crystals. All day Stan and Alan kept joking about how much that glacier and Shelby had in common. I was now their
confidante and ally.

We journeyed from Jasper to Vancouver and spent an afternoon touring Stanley Park. Live penguins—little white, black, and yellow beings—inspired Shelby to do a zigzag penguin walk. She wore a tight skirt with a shiny black belt and a short-sleeved blouse with a man’s jacket over it. For the first time she and Alan were apart, and she made a conspicuous effort to avoid him, hanging around with me instead. He had found another companion, an older girl named Judy, and was walking a few strides away from the group, arm around her shoulders.

At an outdoor cafe Shelby took the chair next to me and continued to play buddy-buddy. As we waited for our food she peeled back the cardboard layers of two matches to form stick figures; then she placed one atop the other and lit them. The torsos twisted and curled about one another, the limbs rising in flames. Fire crawled down the arms and legs, making a surprisingly realistic depiction of sexual intercourse. “See that,” she said. A thin stream of smoke rose from the quivering ash as the figures clasped and held tight.