The Man Without a Face (14 page)

“Then don’t try. And if some day you stumble over it, don’t break your heart. We’re all fallible. Like me. Like you.”

I could imagine what all the kids I knew, even Joey, would say about the way I felt about McLeod. But here, lying beside him on the rock, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. Everything else, everybody else, seemed far away, unimportant.

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“I like you a lot,” I said.

There was something beating in his hand or mine, I couldn’t tell which. I wanted to touch him. Moving the arm that had been across my eyes I reached over and touched his side. The hot skin was tight over his ribs. I knew then that I’d never been close to anyone in my life, not like that. And I wanted to get closer.

But at that moment McLeod sat up and then stood up. He stood facing away from me for a minute. Then he jumped down onto the lower rock. In a minute he was back, dressed. He smiled down at me. “Up. You may not feel like it, but if you stay there longer you’ll get cold.”

“That’s a lot of bull.”

“Maybe. Have you forgotten you have three hours of study yet? To say nothing of eating something?”

“Couldn’t we take the day off?” I asked, as winningly as I could.

“Certainly not. Get dressed. The trip back up the cliff should wake you up. I’m going ahead of you. It’s easier up than down.”

As the car bumped over the path, and McLeod swerved to avoid the worst potholes, muttering under his breath when we hit one, something that had been bothering me suddenly made me say, “McLeod—”

“Yes? You can call me Justin, by the way.”

I was pleased. “All right.”

“What were you going to ask?”

I blurted out, “Do you think I’m a queer?”

“No, I do not think you’re a queer.” He glanced down at me. “Because of this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

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“No. Everybody wants and needs affection and you don’t get much. Also you’re a boy who badly needs a father.’’

That was what Barry had said. But I didn’t tell him about Barry and Mother. I didn’t want to think about home at all.

I felt like I was in a sort of golden cocoon and I didn’t want to break out of it.

CHAPTER 9

I lived in that golden cocoon for a month. Of course I didn’t know it was only going to be a month, or maybe I did. But whenever the thought that it might end came, I pushed it away, and little by little I came to believe it would last

forever.

I forgot everything else—the family, the gang, the cove, New York, even St. Matthew’s and the coming exam which was the reason I was there in the first place. And the fates that had conspired to louse everything up for me in the past, now changed their minds and made everything easy.

For one thing, for large parts of the time the family wasn’t even there. Mother and Barry spent the rest of his vacation in New York looking for a new apartment. Gloria’s father came back from his think tank on the coast and invited her to go with him and his wife to Mexico for a couple of weeks. Gloria was not as ecstatic as you would suppose. For one thing, there was the impending arrival of Sue Robinson, who might well use the time to re-annex Peerless Percy. For another, Gloria’s father, in a switch of taste, had married a tweedy English lady with all the correct intellectual viewpoints but a bad habit of reverting to outmoded discipline in such matters as doing one’s own thing—

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especially, Gloria complained, if it were her thing. But Mexico is Mexico. So Gloria went. With all of them gone, Meg left for a camp further down the coast for a couple of weeks, and I was officially boarded with the Lansings, which was no sweat for me, since they had been successfully brought up by their children never to ask where I’d been or intended to go.

Actually, most nights I spent at home on account of Moxie, which was great. He had the run of the house, various parts of which started smelling the way he does. I suppose I counted on Mother’s being too bride-minded to care. I don’t know what I thought. A sort of happy idiocy seemed to take hold of me.

McLeod said to me one day when I was in the water horsing around, “I don’t know whether to be flattered or frustrated at the change in you.”

“What change?”

“You’re getting younger by the hour.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing?”

He grinned. “If you’re fourteen to begin with it doesn’t leave much room for backing.”

We swam almost every day, because along with the other goodies was a spell of gorgeous weather.

“I feel free,” I said, lying on my back and paddling my feet.

“Which is what you always wanted to be. Did it ever occur to you that the word ‘free’ doesn’t mean anything by itself?”

“How so?”

“Free to do what? Free from what?”

One of the answers was easy and I had already answered it: free to do what I wanted. The other required some thought. In that water you don’t laze about too long. I

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took some slow-motion strokes thinking about it. Freedom from what?

From being crowded.

From Mother.

From Gloria.

From home.

I told this to McLeod.

“I know they get in your hair. You probably get in theirs just as much. But don’t you love them at all?”

That word. “I don’t like the word ‘love,’ ” I said.

“It’s become debased, overused. It’s still a good word. Why do you dislike it?”

I stopped swimming and trod water. The shore seemed far away, a wavy green line between two blues. “I don’t know. It’s always turned me off, as far back as I can remember.” I tried to push my memory back. All I got was darkness. But the darkness was full of an uncomfortable feeling. “Something,” I said. “I can’t exactly remember.”

“But it’s linked to your dislike of the word ‘love’?”

I started to nod. My head went under a little and I swallowed some water. Then I felt it, a much colder stream seemed to grab my feet and pull. It frightened the daylights out of me. I couldn’t get to the surface. I kicked out as hard as I could and made it. When I got up I thought I must have blacked out for a minute and been swept out miles from the shore because it was nowhere in sight. The fear turned into an iron ball inside me. The cold from the current seemed to shoot up through me. Then I must have turned, because there was the shore. But I was right about one thing. I was further out.

“Justin,” I cried.

“Right here.” He was behind me. “Come on, Charles, let’s go in, slow and easy.”

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“I’m being pulled.”

“That’s the undertow. If you start swimming now you’ll be all right. It doesn’t reach the surface, so level out. Swim.”

His voice broke my panic enough to make me try to do what he said. But it wasn’t enough. “I can’t. It’s pulling me.”

“You can. Now do as I tell you. At once!”

There was that authoritarian lash that always made me furious. Fascist, I thought, kicking savagely. Wait till I get back.

We were about halfway to the shore before I realized the icy undertow was no longer pulling at my feet. By comparison the water felt warm.

“Want some help?” McLeod said. He was less than a yard from me. .

“You can keep your help,” I muttered, and swallowed some water.

“Good thing there’s no sewage this way.”

That happy comment almost brought the water up. I coughed and spat and gave him a dirty look.

“You and your delicate stomach,” he said amiably, rolling over like a porpoise. I was tired but I gathered myself and ducked under. Just as I was about to butt him where it could knock the wind out of him, I felt my hair grasped. The next thing, I was being hauled up like a bunch of seaweed.

“Gently, Tiger, gently. Mustn’t butt teacher.”

I tried to get at him, flailing my arms. But his arm was too long.

“Tut!” Then he let go my hair and was off. It wasn’t far to the shore, but I saw how he could really move. There was a streaking flash through the water and then he had pulled himself up on the diving rock and was watching me.

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Feeling about as agile as a barge, I lumbered up. At what I thought would be just about my last stroke I reached the rock and crawled up. All I wanted to do was lie down.

He threw my towel at me. “Take off your wet trunks and rub hard.”

“Later.”

“Now.”

“For Christ’sake,” I moaned. “Do I have to do everything your way?”

“At the moment, yes. I want you to be dry this time before you lie down.”

I pulled off my trunks and rubbed the towel sideways and diagonally and across my back. I rubbed my chest and stomach and legs. Then I climbed up onto the flat rock and lay down.

“And I don’t like profanity,” Justin said from somewhere below me.

“So sorry, sir,” I said, and the next moment was asleep.

I awoke when cold water splashed on my face.

“All right, Endymion, let’s move.”

McLeod was standing over me in his jeans, but no sweater which, in a minute, I realized was over me, along with his towel. He was pouring water over my face from a rusted can.

I sat up on my elbows. “What time is it?” We had come out at noon and the sky didn’t look like it was anywhere near noon.

“About three.”

I gave a huge yawn and got up.

We bumped back most of the way in silence. I was remembering what had happened, rather ashamed both of my panic and my bad temper. I wondered if he thought I was chicken.

With that kind of ESP he had, he said, “I shouldn’t have

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let you go out so far. I was listening to what you said and wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry.”

I was beginning to put things together. “Is that why you started giving orders like a Nazi SS colonel?”

“It wa6 the fastest way to get some adrenaline going in you. I could have towed you in. But I thought you’d like it better if you made it on your own.”

“Do you think I’m chicken?”

‘ ‘Feeling afraid isn’t chicken. ’ ’

“But acting like it is.”

“You want instant heroism?”

“You mean it takes practice?”

“Yes. Like everything else.”

“Like you,” I said.

He said sharply, “I’m not a hero, Charles. Don’t make me one.”

“Why not? I think you are.”

“Because.” He veered the car around a large hole, stopped the car, and looked down at me. “One day you’ll find I have clay feet—and knees and legs. If you’ve built me up as a hero you’ll never forgive me for breaking that image. Do you understand?”

I didn’t, really. I was holding the golden cocoon together. I shook my head.

“Then take my word for it.” He started the car up again and we bumped down to his gate.

I decided he was just underrating himself and to forget about it.

The next day I remembered what we had been talking about when I hit the undertow. I tried to explain to Justin about the sense of darkness and discomfort when I tried to

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remember too far back. We had finished the coaching early and I was drinking some milk and eating some cheese and fruit and locally made bread that Justin said was better for me than a pound or so of cookies. I cut a large hunk of cheese and put it on a piece of bread.

He grunted. “Well, I am neither a detective nor a psychiatrist and I’m not sure self-probing—except when necessary and when you know what you’re doing—doesn’t make things worse rather than better. Some things you just have to accept.’’

I took a large bite. “I thought knowing yourself was supposed to be a big deal,’’ I said around it. It didn’t come out too clearly.

“Try that again after you’ve swallowed—and before you take the next bite.’’

I swallowed. “A teacher at my school said that manners are an elitist device for preserving status by giving the proletariat a sense of inferiority.’’

“I think it’s worth risking. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

I remembered Peerless Percy and all the wet doughnut around his teeth. “Okay.”

“What was it you said before?”

“I thought knowing yourself was supposed to be the big

deal.”

“Self-knowledge is one thing, self-preoccupation another. Do you still want to go in the Air Force?”

“Yes.” I said, and realized I hadn’t thought about flying for a couple of weeks. “But I haven’t thought about it lately. Why—don’t you like the idea?”

“If that’s what you really want, it’s fine. But not if it’s just an escape fantasy.”

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“How will I know whether it is or not?”

“Is space—being an astronaut—any part of your ambition?”

It was something I had never said to anyone, astronauts, as part of the military-industrial establishment, not being very highly thought of at my school. “Well . . . yes.” “Then you’ll know how real your ambition is when you come to the mathematics you’ll have to know to be one. It takes work—not daydreaming.”

“Meg said mathwise I was still with the Wright brothers.” “That’s the sister you like?”

“Yes, Meg’s okay.”

“She’s also right about your math. You’re going to have to buckle down, Winsocki, buckle down.”

“What’s that—a poem?”

“An old song, long before your time.”

“Do you think I can do it—be an astronaut? They’re very bright.”

“You’re bright as you need to be. All this talk about your being stupid is so much smoke screen. It’s a combination of self-pity and cop out. It lets you off having to work at things you don’t want to do.”

“Thanks a lot.”

He smiled—he had a really great smile. “Don’t mention it.”

I wasn’t mad. I didn’t really think any more that I could be mad at him, not the way I was when I slammed out to the cove that day. Except for Joey I’d never had a friend, and he was my friend; I’d never really, except for a shadowy memory, had a father, and he was my father. I’d never known an adult I could communicate with or trust, and I communicated with him all the time, whether I was actually