The Folded Leaf (20 page)

Armstrong’s girl was wearing his jeweled fraternity pin on her coral-pink cashmere sweater. She unpinned it for Sally to admire and Sally, turning it over to examine the safety clasp, dropped it.

“Oh, that’s just like you, Forbes!” the other girl exclaimed.

“Well I didn’t
go
to drop it,” Sally said, trying to peer under the table. “It just slipped through my—”

“Don’t step on it, anybody,” Armstrong said. “Don’t move your feet for a second while we look for it.”

He and Spud slid out of their seats and got down on their knees in front of the booth and began searching.

“If that pin meant as much to you, Sally Forbes, as it does to me—” the girl said bitterly. Spud’s head rose above the table. “Did you find it?” she asked anxiously.

He had the fraternity pin in his hand and put it on the edge of the table. As if the pin exercised a kind of foolish fascination for her, Sally started to pick it up again. The other girl snatched it from her and pinned it on the front of her sweater, above her heart. In her gratification at getting the pin back, she forgot to thank Spud.

Both boys got up, dusted the knees of their trousers, and then sat down again. The palms of Spud’s hands were black from the dirt that he had been fingering, under the table. He tried to clean them off with his handkerchief. Armstrong’s hands were still immaculate. He offered a package of Camels around. Spud shook his head but the girls each took one. Armstrong lit a match with his thumbnail and cupped his large hand around it as he held the match toward Eunice first and then for Sally. It was the gesture of a full-grown man, not a boy, and must have required practice.

Armstrong was a senior and a good campus politician. He had just missed out on being class president, in one of the off semesters. He looked well in his clothes and under all ordinary circumstances (that brief unpleasantness in the gymnasium hardly counted) he was easy and sure of himself. When people are too obviously and too variously blessed there is always a natural desire to find some flaw in them. The only thing that one could object to in Armstrong was that his full, heavy face, although handsome, had no character. Any number of boys in
the university at that time could, from a distance, have been mistaken for him. And those qualities which made him outstanding in college probably meant that he would be a mediocrity later in life; though that didn’t necessarily follow. He knew hundreds of people and had no trouble in keeping them straight. Boys kept nodding to him, on their way in or out of the Ship’s Lantern with their dates, and he spoke to them by name. He spoke to the girls as well.

A tall thin boy with a crew haircut let his girl walk on ahead while he stopped and asked, “How are you, fella?”

“Not bad,” Armstrong said.

“What did you get in that psychology exam Friday?”

“B minus,” Armstrong said. “What did you get?”

“You’re lying. You didn’t get a B minus out of Lovat. He never gives higher than a C. No kidding, Army, what did you get?”

“I got a B minus, no kidding.”

The tall boy put out his hand. “Let me feel you. I just want to touch a guy that got a B minus from Lovat.”

“I got an A,” Armstrong’s girl said.

“That doesn’t mean a thing,” the tall boy said. “If you’re a girl all you have to do is sit in the front row and cross your legs once in a while.”

“You know Spud Latham?” Armstrong asked. “This is Bill Shearer.”

“Glad to know you, Latham,” the tall boy said and held out his hand. “I’ve seen you around.”

There was no way that Spud could shake hands without revealing the dirt on the palm of his right hand. He nodded stiffly, and kept both hands under the table, making an easy enemy for the rest of his college life. The tall boy, flushing slightly, turned back to Armstrong.

“What about that accountancy problem for tomorrow?” he asked. “Have you done it yet? We could do it together.”

“Okay,” Armstrong said.

“Come over right after dinner.”

“I can’t,” Armstrong said. “We’ve got a volley ball game with the A.T.O.’s.”

“Who’ve they got?”

“Short and Harrigan and—”

“Harrigan’s good.”

“You’re telling me. They’ve also got Safford, Rains—”

“Is Rains an A.T.O.? I thought he was a Delt?”

“That’s his brother you’re thinking of. His brother is a Delt. This guy’s an A.T.O.”

“I wonder why he didn’t pledge Delta Tau Delta?”

“He could have, I guess,” Armstrong said. “But you know how brothers are with each other. He probably wanted to show his independence so he came down to school and pledged A.T.O. But anyway, he’s good.”

“He’s damn good,” the tall boy said. “Herb Porter was talking about him. You know Porter, don’t you?”

“Delta Chi?”

“Chi Psi.”

“I meant Chi Psi. Yeah, I know him.”

“Well, good luck anyway.”

“Oh, we’ll beat ‘em,” Armstrong said.

The tall boy shook his head admiringly. “You boys aren’t overmodest, I’ll say that for you.”

Armstrong smiled. “Why don’t you go bag your head, Shearer,” he said.

“My girl’s making motions. She’ll give me hell if I don’t… Okay, fella. Be seeing you.”

“Okay, fella,” Armstrong said.

There were three of these conversations, all within fifteen minutes. Spud took no part in them. The girls talked to each other, but he sat back with a stiff expression on his face—the expression his mother put on sometimes when she found herself among women whose husbands were more successful than Mr. Latham, and whose diamond rings were more showy than hers. At four o’clock when Spud got up to go, Armstrong took the check and left with him. As soon as they had gone, Armstrong’s girl leaned forward, as if she had something to say which must not be overheard. “Army noticed Spud at our house dance.”

“Is that so?” Sally said.

“He likes Spud. He told me so. He thinks Spud is a very good guy. I do too, Sally. Only I think it’s too bad that he doesn’t belong to a fraternity. For your sake, I mean.”

“I’ll manage,” Sally said.

“I don’t mean that. Of course you’ll manage. All I’m trying to say is that Spud
ought
to belong to a fraternity. I think it would be very good for him.”

With her lips curling slightly, Sally said, “And very good for the fraternity.”

When Lymie appeared on the top floor of the gymnasium later that afternoon, Spud and Armstrong were boxing. They went at it easy, and after a few minutes Army said that he had had enough, and pulled the gloves off and went back to the iron rings. Spud turned to the punching bag for a while and then he walked up to Lymie, took the rope away from him, and held out the pair of gloves that Armstrong had been using. “Here,” he said, “put these on.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Lymie asked.

“Go on.” Spud unlaced one of the gloves. “Put your hand in here and shut up.”

“I don’t want to box with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t.”

When the glove was on Lymie’s hand, Spud wrapped the strings twice around Lymie’s thin wrist and then tied them. “Hold out your other hand,” he said.

“You’ll forget,” Lymie said, “and the first thing you know they’ll be sending for the pulmotor.”

“No, I won’t, Lymie. Honestly. I’ll take it easy. I promise. I just need somebody to practice with.”

“Well, keep off my feet, whatever you do,” Lymie said, and looked down at the gloves with distaste. Spud put on another pair and walked across the floor to the low parallel bars and held out his, gloves for a sophomore named Hughes to tie.

“Now,” he said, when he came back. “You want to fight with one foot flat, see? And your weight on the ball of the other foot. Or you can shuffle—the idea being that you always stand so that you can move somewhere else in a hurry.”

“I see,” Lymie said earnestly, and stood with one stockinged foot flat and his weight on the ball of the other.

“Watch me,” Spud said. “Hold your arms like this and remember you’ve got to cover yourself no matter what happens.” He stepped out of position and shifted Lymie’s tense arms so that the elbows were in close to his sides and the gloves one in front of the other.

“Something tells me I’m going to get killed,” Lymie said.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you. Stop worrying.”

“Okay,” Lymie said, and led with his right and followed with his left and caught Spud almost but not quite unprepared.

“That’s fine. Always get the first punch, if you can, for the psychological effect…. No, cover yourself…. That’s it… there…. No … you’re wide open, Lymie…. See, I could have taken your head off if I’d really wanted to. I could have knocked you cold. Keep covered … that’s it… that’s it….”

Stepping backward, and then backward again, trying vainly to defend himself from the incessant rain of blows, Lymie tripped over his own feet and sat down.

“Did you hurt yourself?” Spud asked.

Lymie shook his head and got up again.

“You forgot what I told you about keeping on the balls of your feet. Keep moving, as if you were dancing almost.”

When they stopped to rest, Lymie leaned against the wall, panting, his face red from the exertion. Spud turned away to the punching bag, and let fly all the energy he had been so carefully restraining. For a moment it seemed likely that the bag would break from its moorings and go flying across the gymnasium.

“Time,” Spud said.

Lymie advanced from the wall to meet him. In the second round Spud tapped him on the nose harder than he had meant to. He dropped his arms immediately and said, “Oh God, Lymie, did I hurt you?”

Instead of stopping to feel the injury, Lymie lost his head and sailed into Spud with such a sudden and unexpected fury that he backed Spud against the brick wall. In Lymie’s eyes was the clear light of murder. Spud made no effort to defend himself and after a few seconds Lymie stopped, confused by the lack of opposition. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Spud turned and leaned against the wall and laughed until he was weak. When he had gathered himself together again he
saw that it was not Lymie’s nose but his feelings that had been hurt. Spud put his arms around him and said, “There, Lymie, old socks, I didn’t mean to laugh at you, honestly. I just couldn’t help myself. The look on your face was so funny. You were doing right well, though. Fine, in fact. If you keep on like that, you’ll be the next featherweight champion of the world. All you need is a few lessons.”

But Lymie wouldn’t box any more. He pulled the gloves off without bothering to untie them, and returned to the skipping rope. Later, after Spud was dressed and as they were leaving the gymnasium, Armstrong, whose locker was on the other side of the swimming pool, caught up with them and began talking about Christmas vacation, which was three weeks off. His remarks were addressed exclusively to Spud, although he had seen Lymie just as often upstairs and knew that they roomed together. Spud answered in monosyllables, and Lymie walked along with his hands in his pockets and his eyes off to the side—the nearest he could come to deafness, dumbness, blindness, and utter nonexistence.

He had to wait two days for Spud’s reaction to these rather pointed attentions. The reference, when it came, was oblique, but Lymie was used to that. They were in their room studying, after supper, and although Spud’s head was bent over his German reader, he had not turned a page for some time. When he was actually studying, you could always tell it. His eyes went back and forth continually between the day’s assignment and the vocabulary at the back of the book.

“Do you think,” he began, in a faraway voice, “—do you think Sally would like me better if I belonged to a fraternity?”

D
uring Christmas vacation Mr. Peters’ cousin, Miss Georgiana Binkerd, who was a very wealthy woman, came through Chicago. She had agreed to pay half the expense of Lymie’s college education (Mr. Peters paid the other half) and now felt a proprietary interest in him. The three and a half hours that she allowed for having lunch with Mr. Peters and Lymie was ample, but it did not allow her to find out very much about them. From the fact that she had her hat on and was waiting when the taxi driver rang the bell in the vestibule of the apartment building, one might gather that Miss Binkerd had arrived in Chicago with her conclusions already formed (Mr. Peters was the black sheep of the family) and wished to leave with them intact.

Miss Binkerd was in her late forties and there was nothing about her to suggest that she had ever been any younger, but Mr. Peters could remember her when she was nine and had a brace on her right leg. Georgiana Binkerd’s mother and his mother were half sisters, and as a boy he had been taken to visit the Ohio relatives every summer. His two little cousins used to tease him because he stuttered, and since they were both older than he was and both girls (so he couldn’t hit them when he felt like it), they always got the best of every argument. At that time they lived outside of Cincinnati in a big square yellow brick farmhouse with a cupola on it and a double row of Scotch pine trees leading from the road to the front porch. What Mr. Peters remembered best about this place was the long room which took up half of the downstairs and had parquet floors. It was intended as a formal drawing room but his uncle used it as a place to store feed. At night the rats ran all over the house,
inside the walls. As a boy Mr. Peters used to lie awake listening to them and imagining that he had a shotgun in his hands.

He liked his aunt but he was afraid
of
his uncle, who had a beard and wore a gold collar button in his shirt on Sundays and didn’t like children. During those years his uncle was a farmer. Later he made a fortune in railroad stock, lost it, and made another fortune in a patent medicine which was still on sale in drugstores, with his uncle’s name and picture on it. They lived now—his aunt and Georgiana and her sister Carrie—in a big ugly house in the best residential section of Cincinnati. Mr. Peters had visited them there also, after he was grown. By that time the old man was stripped of his authority. No matter what he said, his wife and daughters corrected him. Under the guise of caring for his health, they had taken complete charge of his mind, his habits, the way he dressed, what he ate, his very life. When it finally dawned on the old man that he was never going to get any of these things back, he died. The women were still flourishing.