Walter Van Tilburg Clark - The Portable Phonograph

The red sunset, with narrow, black cloud strips like threats across it, lay on the curved horizon of the prairie. The air was still and cold, and in it settled the mute darkness and greater cold of night. High in the air there was wind, for through the veil of the dusk the clouds could be seen gliding rapidly south and changing shapes. A sensation of torment, of two-sided, unpredictable nature, arose from the stillness of the earth air beneath the violence of the upper air. Out of the sunset, through the dead, matted grass and isolated weed stalks of the prairie, crept the narrow deeply rutted remains of a road. 

In the road, in places, there were crusts of shallow brittle ice. There were little islands of an old oiled pavement in the road too, but most of it was mud, now frozen rigid. The frozen mud still bore the toothed impress of great tanks, and a wanderer on the neighboring undulations might have stumbled, in this light, into large, partially filled-in and weedgrown cavities, their banks channeled and beginning to spread into badlands. These pits were such as might have been made by falling meteors, but they were not. They were the scars of gigantic bombs, their rawness already made a little natural by rain, seed and time. Along the road there were rakish remnants of fence. There was also, just visible, one portion of tangled and multiple barbed wire still erect, behind which was a shelving ditch with small caves, now very quiet and empty, at intervals in its back wall. Otherwise there was no structure or remnant of a structure visible over the dome of the darkling earth, but only, in sheltered hollows, the darker shadows of young trees trying again. 

Under the wuthering arch of the high wind a V of wild geese fled south. The rush of their pinions sounded briefly, and the faint, plaintive notes of their expeditionary talk. Then they left a still greater vacancy. There was the smell and expectation of snow, as there is likely to be when the wild geese fly south. From the remote distance, toward the red sky, came faintly the protracted howl and quick yap-yap of prairie wolf. 

North of the road, perhaps a hundred yards, lay the parallel and deeply intrenched course of a small creek, lined with leafless alders and willows. The creek was already silent under ice. Into the bank above it was dug a sort of cell, with a single opening, like the mouth of a mine tunnel. Within the cell there was a little red of fire, which showed dully through the opening, like a reflection or a deception of the imagination. The light came from the chary burning of four blocks of poorly aged peat, which gave off a petty warmth and much acrid smoke. But the precious remnants of wood, old fence posts and timbers from the longdeserted dugouts, had to be saved for the real cold, for the time when a man’s breath blew white, the moisture in his nostrils stiffened at once when he stepped out, and the expensive blizzards paraded for days over the vast open, swirling and settling and thickening, till the dawn of the cleared day when the sky was a thin blue-green and the terrible cold, in which a man could not live for three hours unwarmed, lay over the uniformly drifted swell of the plain.

Around the smoldering peat four men were seated cross-legged. Behind them, traversed by their shadows, was the earth bench, with two old and dirty army blankets, where the owner of the cell slept. In a niche in the opposite wall were a few tin utensils which caught the glint of the coals. The host was rewrapping in a piece of daubed burlap, four fine, leatherbound books. He worked slowly and very carefully, and at last tied the bundle securely with a piece of grass-woven cord. The other three looked intently upon the process, as if a great significance lay in it. As the host tied the cord, he spoke. He was an old man, his long, matted beard and hair gray to nearly white. The shadows made his brows and cheekbones appear gnarled, his eyes and cheeks deeply sunken. His big hands, rough with frost and swollen by rheumatism, were awkward but gentle at their task. He was like a prehistoric priest performing a fateful ceremonial rite. Also his voice had in it a suitable quality of deep, reverent despair, yet perhaps, at the moment, a sharpness of selfish satisfaction.

“When I perceived what was happening,” he said, “I told myself,” “It is the end. I cannot take much; I will take this.”

“Perhaps I was impractical,” he continued. “But for myself, I do not regret, and what do we know of those who will come after us? We are the doddering remnant of a race of mechanical fools. I have saved what I love; the soul of what was good in us here; perhaps the new ones will make a strong enough beginning not to fall behind when they become clever.”

He rose with slow pain and placed the wrapped volumes in the niche with his utensils. The others watched him with the same ritualistic gaze.

“Shakespeare, the Bible, Moby Dick, The Divine Comedy, “one of them said softly. ”You might have done worse.”

“You will have a little soul left until you die,” said another harshly. “That is more than is true of us. My brain becomes thick, like my hands.” He held the big, battered hands, with their black nails, in the glow to be seen.

“I want paper to write on,” he said. “And there is none.”

The fourth man said nothing. He sat in the shadow farthest from the fire, and sometimes his body jerked in its rags from the cold. Although he was still young, he was sick, and coughed often. Writing implied a greater future than he now felt able to consider.

The old man seated himself laboriously, and reached out, groaning at the movement, to put another block of peat on the fire. With bowed heads and averted eyes, his three guests acknowledged hid magnanimity.

“We thank you, Dr. Jenkins, for the reading,” said the man who had named the books.

They seemed then to be waiting for something. Dr. Jenkins understood, but was loath to comply. In an ordinary moment he would have said nothing. But the words of The Tempest, which he had been reading, and the religious attention of the three, made this an unusual occasion.

“You wish to hear the phonograph,” he said grudgingly.

The two middle-aged men stared into the fire, unable to formulate and expose the enormity of their desire.

The young man, however, said anxiously, between suppressed coughs, “Oh, please,” like an excited child.

The old man rose again in his difficult way, and went to the back of the cell. He returned and placed tenderly upon the packed floor, where the firelight might fall upon it, an old, portable, phonograph in a black case. He smoothed the top with his hand, and then opened it. The lovely green-felt-covered disk became visible.

“I have been using thorns as needles,” he said. “But tonight, because we have a musician among us” - he bent his head to the young man, almost invisible in the shadow - “I will use a steel needle. There are only three left.”

The two middle-aged men stared at him in speechless adoration. The one with the big hands, who wanted to write, moved his lips, but the whisper was not audible.

“Oh, don’t,” cried the young man, as if he were hurt. “The thorns will do beautifully.”

“No,” the old man said. “I have become accustomed to the thorns, but they are not really good. For you, my young friend, we will have good music tonight.”

“After all,” he added generously, and beginning to wind the phonograph, which creaked, “they can’t last forever.”

“No, nor we,” the man who needed to write said harshly. “The needle, by all means.” “Oh, thanks,” said the young man. “Thanks,” he said again, in a low, excited voice, and then stifled his coughing with a bowed head.

“The records, though,” said the old man when he had finished winding,“ are a different matter. Already they are very worn. I do not play them more than once a week. One, once a week, that is what I allow myself.”

“More than a week I cannot stand it; not to hear them,” he apologized.

“No, how could you?” cried the young man. “And with them here like this.”

“A man can stand anything,” said the man who wanted to write, in his harsh, antagonistic voice.

“Please, the music,” said the young man.

“Only the one,” said the old man. “In the long run we will remember more that way.”

He had a dozen records with luxuriant gold and red seals. Even in that light the others could see that the threads of the records were becoming worn. Slowly he read out the titles, and the tremendous, dead names of the composers and the artists and the orchestras.

The three worked upon the names in their minds, carefully. It was difficult to select from such a wealth what they would at once most like to remember. Finally the man who wanted to write named Gershwin’s “New York”.

“Oh, no,” cried the sick young man, and then could say nothing more because he had to cough. The others understood him, and the harsh man withdrew his selection and waited for the musicians to choose.

The musician begged Doctor Jenkins to read the titles again, very slowly, so that he could remember the sounds. While they were read, he lay back against the wall, his eyes closed, his thin, horny hand pulling at his light beard, and listened to the voices and the orchestras and the single instruments in his mind.

When the reading was done he spoke despairingly. “I have forgotten,” he complained. “I cannot hear them clearly.”

“There are other things missing”, he explained.

“I know,” said Doctor Jenkins. “I thought that I knew all of Shelley by heart. I should have brought Shelley.”

“That’s more soul than we can use”, said the harsh man. “Moby Dick is better.”

“By God, we can understand that,” he emphasized.

The doctor nodded.

“Still,” said the man who had admired the books, “we need the absolute if we are to keep a grasp on anything.”

“Anything but these sticks and peat clods and rabbit snares,” he said bitterly.

“Shelley desired an ultimate absolute,” said the harsh man. “It’s too much,” he said. “It’s no good; no earthly good.”

The musician selected a Debussy nocturne. The others considered and approved.

They rose to their knees to watch the doctor prepare for the playing, so that they appeared to be actually in an attitude of worship. The peat glow showed the thinness of their bearded faces, and the deep lines in them, and revealed the conditions of their garments. The other two continued to kneel as the old man carefully lowered the needle onto the spinning disk, but the musician suddenly drew back against the wall again, with his knees up, and buried his face in his hands.

At the first note of the piano the listeners were startled. They stared at each other.

Even the musician lifted his head in amazement, but then quickly bowed it again strainingly, as if he were suffering from a pain he might not be able to endure. They were all listening deeply, without movement. The wet, blue-green notes tinkled forth from the old machine, and were individual, delectable presences in the cell. The individual, delectable presences swept into a sudden tide of unbearably beautiful dissonance, and then continued fully the swelling and ebbing of that tide, the dissonant inpourings, and the resolutions, and the diminishments, and the little, quiet wavelets of interlude lapping between. Every sound was piercing and singularly sweet. In all the men except the musician, there occurred rapid sequences of tragically heightened recollections. He heard nothing but what was there. At the final, whispering disappearance, but moving quietly, so that the others would not hear him and look at him, he let his head fall back in agony, as if it were drawn there by the hair, and clenched the fingers of one hand over his teeth. He sat that way while the others were silent, and until they began to breathe again normally. His drawn-up legs were trembling violently.

Quickly Doctor Jenkins lifted the needle off, to save it, and not to spoil the recollection with scraping. When he had stopped the whirling of the sacred disk, he courteously left the phonograph open and by the fire, in sight.

The others, however, understood. The musician rose last, but then abruptly, and went quickly out at the door without saying anything. The others stopped at the door and gave their thanks in low voices. The doctor nodded magnificently.

“Come again,” he invited “in a week. We will have the “New York”.

When the two had gone together, out toward the rimed road, he stood in the entrance, peering and listening. At first there was only the resonant boom of the wind overhead, and then, far over the dome of the dead, dark plain, the wolf cry lamenting. In the rifts of clouds the doctor saw four stars flying. It impressed the doctor that one of them had just been obscured by the beginning of a flying cloud at the very moment he heard what he had been listening for, a sound of suppressed coughing. It was not near by, however.

He believed that down against the pale alders he could see the moving shadow.

With nervous hands he lowered the piece of canvas which served as his door, and pegged it at the bottom. Then quickly and quietly, looking at the piece of canvas frequently, he slipped the records into the case, snapped the lid shut, and carried the phonograph to his couch. There, pausing often to stare at the canvas and listen, he dug earth from the wall and disclosed a piece of board. Behind this there was a deep hole in the wall, into which he put the phonograph. After a moment’s consideration, he went over and reached down his bundle of books and inserted it also. Then, guardedly, he once more sealed up the hole with the board and the earth. He also changed his blankets, and the grass-stuffed sack which served as a pillow, so that he could lie facing the entrance. After carefully placing two more blocks of peat on the fire, he stood for a long time watching the stretched canvas, but it seemed to billow naturally with the first gusts of a lowering wind. At last he prayed, and got in under his blankets, and closed his smoke-smarting eyes. On the inside of the bed, next the wall, he could feel with his hand, the comfortable piece of lead pipe.

Albert Camus - The Guest (Exile and the Kingdom)

The schoolmaster was watching the two men climb toward him. One was on horseback, the other on foot. They had not yet tackled the abrupt rise leading to the schoolhouse built on the hillside. They were toiling onward, making slow progress in the snow, among the stones, on the vast expanse of the high, deserted plateau. From time to time the horse stumbled. Without hearing anything yet, he could see the breath issuing from the horses nostrils. One of the men, at least, knew the region. They were following the trail although it had disappeared days ago under a layer of dirty white snow. The schoolmaster calculated that it would take them half an hour to get onto the hill. It was cold; he went back into the school to get a sweater.
He crossed the empty, frigid classroom. On the blackboard the four rivers of France, drawn with four different colored chalks, had been flowing toward their estuaries for the past three days. Snow had suddenly fallen in mid-October after eight months of drought without the transition of rain, and the twenty pupils, more or less, who lived in the villages scattered over the plateau had stopped coming. With fair weather they would return. Daru now heated only the single room that was his lodging, adjoining the classroom. One of the windows faced, like the classroom windows, the south. On that side the school was a few kilometers from the point where the plateau began to slope toward the south. In clear weather could be seen the purple mass of the mountain range where the gap opened onto the desert.
Somewhat warmed, Daru returned to the window from which he had first seen the two men. They were no longer visible. Hence they must have tackled the rise. The sky was not so dark, for the snow had stopped falling during the night. The morning had opened with a dirty light which had scarcely become brighter as the ceiling of clouds lifted. At two in the after- noon it seemed as if the day were merely beginning. But still this was better than those three days when the thick snow was falling amidst unbroken darkness with little gusts of wind that rattled the double door of the class- room. Then Daru had spent long hours in his room, leaving it only to go to the shed and feed the chickens or get some coal. Fortunately the delivery truck from Tadjid, the nearest village to the north, had brought his supplies two days before the blizzard. It would return in forty-eight hours.
Besides, he had enough to resist a siege, for the little room was cluttered with bags of wheat that the administration left as a stock to distribute to those of his pupils whose families had suffered from the drought. Actually they had all been victims because they were all poor. Every day Daru would distribute a ration to the children. They had missed it, he knew, during these bad days. Possibly one of the fathers would come this afternoon and he could supply them with grain. It was just a matter of carrying them over to the next harvest. Now shiploads of wheat were arriving from France and the worst was over. But it would be hard to forget that poverty, that army of ragged ghosts wandering in the sunlight, the plateaus burned to a cinder month after month, the earth shriveled up little by little, literally scorched, every stone bursting into dust under one's foot. The sheep had died then by thousands and even a few men, here and there, sometimes without anyone's knowing.
In contrast with such poverty, he who lived almost like a monk in his remote schoolhouse, nonetheless satisfied with the little he had and with the rough life, had felt like a lord with his whitewashed walls, his narrow couch, his unpainted shelves, his well, and his weekly provision of water and food. And suddenly this snow, without warning, without the foretaste of rain. This is the way the region was, cruel to live in, even without men--who didn't help matters either. But Daru had been born here. Everywhere else, he felt exiled.
He went out and stepped forward onto the terrace in front of the schoolhouse. The two men were now halfway up the slope. He recognized the horseman as Balducci the old gendarme he had known for a long time. Balducci was holding on the end of a rope an Arab who was walking behind him with hands bound and head lowered. The gendarme waved a greeting to which Daru did not reply, lost as he was in contemplation of the Arab dressed in a faded blue jellaba, his feet in sandals but covered with socks of heavy raw wool, his head surmounted by a narrow, short chèche. They were approaching. Balducci was holding back his horse in order not to hurt the Arab, and the group was advancing slowly.
Within earshot, Balducci shouted: "One hour to do the three kilometers from El Ameur!" Daru did not answer. Short and square in his thick sweater he watched them climb. Not once had the Arab raised his head. "Hello," said Daru when they got up onto the terrace. "Come in and warm up." Balducci painfully got down from his horse without letting go the rope. From under his bristling mustache he smiled at the schoolmaster. His little dark eyes, deep-set under a tanned forehead, and his mouth surrounded with wrinkles made him look attentive and studious. Daru took the bridle, led the horse to the shed, and came back to the two men, who were now waiting for him in the school. He led them into his room "I am going to heat up the classroom," he said. "We'll be more comfortable there." When he entered the room again, Balducci was on the couch. He had undone the rope tying him to the Arab, who had squashed near the stove. His hands still bound, the chèche pushed back on his head, he was looking toward the window. At first Daru noticed only his huge lips, fat, smooth, almost Negroid; yet his nose was straight, his eyes were dark and full of fever. The chèche revealed an obstinate forehead and, under the weathered skin now rather discolored by the cold, the whole face had a restless and rebellious look that struck Daru when the Arab, turning his face toward him, looked him straight in the eyes. "Go into the other room," said the schoolmaster' "and I'll make you some mint tea." ''Thanks,'' Balducci said. "What a chore! How I long for retirement." And addressing his prisoner in Arabic: "Come on, you." The Arab got up and, slowly, holding his bound wrists in front of him, went into the classroom.
With the tea, Daru brought a chair. But Balducci was already enthroned on the nearest pupil's desk and the Arab had squatted against the teacher's platform facing the stove, which stood between the desk and the window. When he held out the glass of tea to the prisoner, Daru hesitated at the sight of his bound hands. "He might perhaps be untied." "Sure," said Balducci. "That was for the trip." He started to get to his feet. But Daru, setting the glass on the floor, had knelt beside the Arab. Without saying anything, the Arab watched him with his feverish eyes. Once his hands were free, he rubbed his swollen wrists against each other, took the glass of tea, and sucked up the burning liquid in swift little sips.

"Good," said Daru. "And where are you headed?"
Balducci withdrew his mustache from the tea. "Here, Son."
"Odd pupils! And you're spending the night?"
"No. I'm going back to El Ameur. And you will deliver this fellow to Tinguit. He is expected at police headquarters."
Balducci was looking at Daru with a friendly little smile.
"What's this story?" asked the schoolmaster. "Are you pulling my leg?"
"No, son. Those are the orders."
"The orders? I'm not . . ." Daru hesitated, not wanting to hurt the old Corsican. "I mean, that's not my job."
"What! What's the meaning of that? In wartime people do all kinds of jobs."
"Then I'll wait for the declaration of war!"
Balducci nodded. "O.K. But the orders exist and they concern you too. Things are brewing, it appears. There is talk of a forthcoming revolt. We are mobilized, in a way.”
Daru still had his obstinate look.
Listen, Son," Balducci said. "I like you and you must understand. There's only a dozen of us at El Ameur to patrol throughout the whole territory of a small department and I must get back in a hurry. I was told to hand this guy over to you and return without delay. He couldn't be kept there. His village was beginning to stir; they wanted to take him back. You must take him to Tinguit tomorrow before the day is over. Twenty kilometers shouldn't faze a husky fellow like you. After that, all will be over. You'll come back to your pupils and your comfortable life."
Behind the wall the horse could be heard snorting and pawing the earth. Daru was looking out the window. Decidedly, the weather was clearing and the light was increasing over the snowy plateau. When all the snow had melted, the sun would take over again and once more would burn the fields of stone. For days, still, the unchanging sky would shed its dry light on the solitary expanse where nothing had any connection with man.
"After all," he said, turning around toward Balducci, "what did he do?" And, before the gendarme had opened his mouth, he asked: "Does he speak French?"
"No, not a word. We had been looking for him for a month, but they were hiding him. He killed his cousin."
"Is he against us?"
"I don't think so. But you can never be sure."
"Why did he kill?"
"A family squabble, I think one owned the other grain, it seems. It's not all clear. In short, he killed his cousin with a billhook. You know, like a sheep, kreezk!"
Balducci made the gesture of drawing a blade across his throat and the Arab, his attention attracted, watched him with a sort of anxiety. Daru felt a sudden wrath against the man, against all men with their rotten spite, their tireless hates, their blood lust.
But the kettle was singing on the stove. He served Balducci more tea hesitated, then served the Arab again, who, a second time, drank avidly his raised arms made the jellaba fall open and the schoolmaster saw his thin, muscular chest.
"Thanks, kid," Balducci said. "And now, I'm off."
He got up and went toward the Arab, taking a small rope from his pocket.
"What are you doing?" Daru asked dryly.
Balducci, disconcerted, showed him the rope.
"Don't bother."
The old gendarme hesitated. "It's up to you. Of course, you are armed?"
"I have my shotgun."
"Where?"
"In the trunk."
"You ought to have it near your bed."
"Why? I have nothing to fear."
"You're crazy, son. If there's an uprising, no one is safe; we're all in the same boat."
"I'll defend myself. I'll have time to see them coming."
Balducci began to laugh, then suddenly the mustache covered the white teeth.
"You'll have time? O.K. That's just what I was saying. You have always been a little cracked. That's why I like you, my son was like that."
At the same time he took out his revolver and put it on the desk.
"Keep it; I don't need two weapons from here to El Ameur."
The revolver shone against the black paint of the table. When the gendarme turned toward him, the schoolmaster caught the smell of leather and horseflesh.
"Listen, Balducci," Daru said suddenly, "every bit of this disgusts me, and first of all your fellow here. But I won't hand him over. Fight, yes, if I have to. But not that."
The old gendarme stood in front of him and looked at him severely.
"You're being a fool," he said slowly. "I don't like it either. You don't get used to putting a rope on a man even after years of it, and you're even ashamed--yes, ashamed. But you can't let them have their way."
"I won't hand him over," Daru said again.
"It's an order, son, and I repeat it."
"That's right. Repeat to them what I've said to you: I won't hand him over."
Balducci made a visible effort to reflect. He looked at the Arab and at Daru. At last he decided.
"No, I won't tell them anything. If you want to drop us, go ahead. I'll not denounce you. I have an order to deliver the prisoner and I'm doing so. And now you'll just sign this paper for me."
"There's no need. I'll not deny that you left him with me."
"Don't be mean with me. I know you'll tell the truth. You're from hereabouts and you are a man. But you must sign, that's the rule."
Daru opened his drawer, took out a little square bottle of purple ink, the red wooden penholder with the "sergeant-major" pen he used for making models of penmanship, and signed. The gendarme carefully folded the paper and put it into his wallet. Then he moved toward the door.
"I'll see you off," Daru said.
"No," said Balducci. "There's no use being polite. You insulted me."
He looked at the Arab, motionless in the same spot, sniffed peevishly, and turned away toward the door. "Good-by, son," he said. The door shut behind him. Balducci appeared suddenly outside the window and then disappeared. His footsteps were muffled by the snow. The horse stirred on the other side of the wall and several chickens fluttered in fright. A moment later Balducci reappeared outside the window leading the horse by the bridle. He walked toward the little rise without turning around and disappeared from sight with the horse following him. A big stone could be heard bouncing down.
Daru walked back toward the prisoner, who, without stirring, never took his eyes off him. "Wait," the schoolmaster said in Arabic and went toward the bedroom. As he was going through the door, he had a second thought, went to the desk, took the revolver, and stuck it in his pocket. Then, without looking back, he went into his room.
For some time he lay on his couch watching the sky gradually close over, listening to the silence. It was this silence that had seemed painful to him during the first days here, after the war. He had requested a post in the little town at the base of the foothills separating the upper plateaus from the desert. There, rocky walls, green and black to the north, pink and lavender to the south, marked the frontier of eternal summer. He had been named to a post farther north, on the plateau itself. In the beginning, the solitude and the silence had been hard for him on these wastelands peopled only by stones. Occasionally, furrows suggested cultivation, but they had been dug to uncover a certain kind of stone good for building. The only plowing here was to harvest rocks. Elsewhere a thin layer of soil accumulated in the hollows would be scraped out to enrich paltry village gardens. This is the way it was: bare rock covered three quarters of the region. Towns sprang up, flourished, then disappeared; men came by, loved one another or fought bitterly, then died. No one in this desert, neither he nor his guest, mattered. And yet, outside this desert neither of them, Daru knew, could have really lived.
When he got up, no noise came from the classroom. He was amazed at the unmixed joy he derived from the mere thought that the Arab might have fled and that he would be alone with no decision to make. But the prisoner was there. He had merely stretched out between the stove and the desk. With eyes open, he was staring at the ceiling. In that position, his thick lips were particularly noticeable, giving him a pouting look. "Come," said Daru. The Arab got up and followed him. In the bedroom, the schoolmaster pointed to a chair near the table under the window. The Arab sat down without taking his eyes off Daru.
"Are you hungry?"
"Yes," the prisoner said.
Daru set the table for two. He took flour and oil, shaped a cake in a frying-pan, and lighted the little stove that functioned on bottled gas. While the cake was cooking, he went out to the shed to get cheese, eggs, dates and condensed milk. When the cake was done he set it on the window sill to cool, heated some condensed milk diluted with water, and beat up the eggs into an omelette. In one of his motions he knocked against the revolver stuck m his right pocket. He set the bowl down, went into the classroom and put the revolver in his desk drawer. When he came back to the room night was falling. He put on the light and served the Arab. "Eat," he said. The Arab took a piece of the cake, lifted it eagerly to his mouth, and stopped short.

"And you?" he asked.
"After you. I'll eat too."
The thick lips opened slightly. The Arab hesitated, then bit into the cake determinedly.
The meal over, the Arab looked at the schoolmaster. "Are you the judge?"
"No, I'm simply keeping you until tomorrow."
"Why do you eat with me?"
"I'm hungry."
The Arab fell silent. Daru got up and went out. He brought back a folding bed from the shed, set it up between the table and the stove, perpendicular to his own bed. From a large suitcase which, upright in a corner, served as a shelf for papers, he took two blankets and arranged them on the camp bed. Then he stopped, felt useless, and sat down on his bed. There was nothing more to do or to get ready. He had to look at this man. He looked at him, therefore, trying to imagine his face bursting with rage. He couldn't do so. He could see nothing but the dark yet shining eyes and the animal mouth.
"Why did you kill him?" he asked in a voice whose hostile tone surprised him.
The Arab looked away.
"He ran away. I ran after him."
He raised his eyes to Daru again and they were full of a sort of woeful interrogation. "Now what will they do to me?"
"Are you afraid?"
He stiffened, turning his eyes away.
"Are you sorry?"
The Arab stared at him openmouthed. Obviously he did not understand. Daru's annoyance was growing. At the same time he felt awkward and self-conscious with his big body wedged between the two beds.
"Lie down there," he said impatiently. "That's your bed."
The Arab didn't move. He called to Daru:
"Tell me!"
The schoolmaster looked at him.
"Is the gendarme coming back tomorrow?"
"I don't know."
"Are you coming with us?"
"I don't know. Why?"
The prisoner got up and stretched out on top of the blankets, his feet toward the window. The light from the electric bulb shone straight into his eyes and he closed them at once.
"Why?" Daru repeated, standing beside the bed.
The Arab opened his eyes under the blinding light and looked at him, trying not to blink.
"Come with us," he said.

In the middle of the night, Daru was still not asleep. He had gone to bed after undressing completely; he generally slept naked. But when he suddenly realized that he had nothing on, he hesitated. He felt vulnerable and the temptation came to him to put his clothes back on. Then he shrugged his shoulders; after all, he wasn't a child and, if need be, he could break his adversary in two. From his bed he could observe him, lying on his back, still motionless with his eyes closed under the harsh light. When Daru turned out the light, the darkness seemed to coagulate all of a sudden. Little by little, the night came back to life in the window where the starless sky was stirring gently. The schoolmaster soon made out the body lying at his feet. The Arab still did not move, but his eyes seemed open. A light wind was prowling around the schoolhouse. Perhaps it would drive away the clouds and the sun would reappear.
During the night the wind increased. The hens fluttered a little and then were silent. The Arab turned over on his side with his back to Daru, who thought he heard him moan. Then he listened for his guest's breathing, become heavier and more regular. He listened to that breath so close to him and mused without being able to go to sleep. In this room where he had been sleeping alone for a year, this presence bothered him. But it bothered him also by imposing on him a sort of brotherhood he knew well but refused to accept in the present circumstances. Men who share the same rooms, soldiers or prisoners, develop a strange alliance as if, having cast off their armor with their clothing, they fraternized every evening, over and above their differences, in the ancient community of dream and fatigue. But Daru shook himself; he didn't like such musings, and it was essential to sleep.
A little later, however, when the Arab stirred slightly, the schoolmaster was still not asleep. When the prisoner made a second move, he stiffened, on the alert. The Arab was lifting himself slowly on his arms with almost the motion of a sleepwalker. Seated upright in bed, he waited motionless without turning his head toward Daru, as if he were listening attentively. Daru did not stir; it had just occurred to him that the revolver was still in the drawer of his desk. It was better to act at once. Yet he continued to observe the prisoner, who, with the same slithery motion, put his feet on the ground, waited again, then began to stand up slowly. Daru was about to call out to him when the Arab began to walk, in a quite natural but extraordinarily silent way. He was heading toward the door at the end of the room that opened into the shed. He lifted the latch with precaution and went out, pushing the door behind him but without shutting it. Daru had not stirred.
"He is running away," he merely thought. "Good riddance!" Yet he listened attentively. The hens were not fluttering; the guest must be on the plateau. A faint sound of water reached him, and he didn't know what it was until the Arab again stood framed in the doorway, closed the door carefully, and came back to bed without a sound. Then Daru turned his back on him and fell asleep. Still later he seemed, from the depths of his sleep, to hear furtive steps around the schoolhouse. "I'm dreaming! I'm dreaming!" he repeated to himself. And he went on sleeping.
When he awoke, the sky was clear; the loose window let in a cold, pure air. The Arab was asleep, hunched up under the blankets now, his mouth open, utterly relaxed. But when Daru shook him, he started dreadfully staring at Daru with wild eyes as if he had never seen him and such a frightened expression that the schoolmaster stepped back. "Don't be afraid. It's me. You must eat." The Arab nodded his head and said yes. Calm had returned to his face, but his expression was vacant and listless.
The coffee was ready. They drank it seated together on the folding bed as they munched their pieces of the cake. Then Daru led the Arab under the shed and showed him the faucet where he washed. He went back into the room, folded the blankets and the bed, made his own bed and put the room in order. Then he went through the classroom and out onto the terrace. The sun was already rising in the blue sky; a soft, bright light was bathing the deserted plateau. On the ridge the snow was melting in spots. The stones were about to reappear. Crouched on the edge of the plateau, the schoolmaster looked at the deserted expanse. He thought of Balducci. He had hurt him, for he had sent him off in a way as if he didn't want to be associated with him. He could still hear the gendarme's farewell and, without knowing why, he felt strangely empty and vulnerable.
At that moment, from the other side of the schoolhouse, the prisoner coughed. Daru listened to him almost despite himself and then furious, threw a pebble that whistled through the air before sinking into the snow. That man's stupid crime revolted him, but to hand him over was contrary to honor. Merely thinking of it made him smart with humiliation. And he cursed at one and the same time his own people who had sent him this Arab and the Arab too who had dared to kill and not managed to get away. Daru got up, walked in a circle on the terrace, waited motionless, and then went back into the schoolhouse.
The Arab, leaning over the cement floor of the shed, was washing his teeth with two fingers. Daru looked at him and said: "Come." He went back into the room ahead of the prisoner. He slipped a hunting-jacket on over his sweater and put on walking-shoes. Standing, he waited until the Arab had put on his chèche and sandals. They went into the classroom and the schoolmaster pointed to the exit, saying: "Go ahead." The fellow didn't budge. "I'm coming," said Daru. The Arab went out. Daru went back into the room and made a package of pieces of rusk, dates, and sugar. In the classroom, before going out, he hesitated a second in front of his desk, then crossed the threshold and locked the door. "That's the way," he said. He started toward the east, followed by the prisoner. But, a short distance from the schoolhouse, he thought he heard a slight sound behind them. He retraced his steps and examined the surroundings of the house, there was no one there. The Arab watched him without seeming to understand. "Come on," said Daru.
They walked for an hour and rested beside a sharp peak of limestone. The snow was melting faster and faster and the sun was drinking up the puddles at once, rapidly cleaning the plateau, which gradually dried and vibrated like the air itself. When they resumed walking, the ground rang under their feet. From time to time a bird rent the space in front of them with a joyful cry. Daru breathed in deeply the fresh morning light. He felt a sort of rapture before the vast familiar expanse, now almost entirely yellow under its dome of blue sky. They walked an hour more, descending toward the south. They reached a level height made up of crumbly rocks. From there on, the plateau sloped down, eastward, toward a low plain where there were a few spindly trees and, to the south, toward outcroppings of rock that gave the landscape a chaotic look.
Daru surveyed the two directions. There was nothing but the sky on the horizon. Not a man could be seen. He turned toward the Arab, who was looking at him blankly. Daru held out the package to him. "Take it," he said. "There are dates, bread, and sugar. You can hold out for two days. Here are a thousand francs too."
The Arab took the package and the money but kept his full hands at chest level as if he didn't know what to do with what was being given him.
"Now look," the schoolmaster said as he pointed in the direction of the east, "there's the way to Tinguit. You have a two-hour walk. At Tinguit you'll find the administration and the police. They are expecting you."
The Arab looked toward the east, still holding the package and the money against his chest. Daru took his elbow and turned him rather roughly toward the south. At the foot of the height on which they stood could be seen a faint path. "That's the trail across the plateau. In a day's walk from here you'll find pasturelands and the first nomads. They'll take you in and shelter you according to their law."
The Arab had now turned toward Daru and a sort of panic was visible in his expression. "Listen," he said.
Daru shook his head: "No, be quiet. Now I'm leaving you." He turned his back on him, took two long steps in the direction of the school, looking hesitantly at the motionless Arab and started off again. For a few minutes he heard nothing but his own step resounding on the cold ground and did not turn his head. A moment later however he turned around. The Arab was still there on the edge of the hill his arms hanging now, and he was looking at the schoolmaster. Daru felt something rise in his throat. But he swore with impatience, waved vaguely, and started off again. He had already gone some distance when he again stopped and looked. There was no longer anyone on the hill.
Daru hesitated. The sun was now rather high in the sky and was beginning to beat down on his head. The schoolmaster retraced his steps at first somewhat uncertainly, then with decision. When he reached the little hill he was bathed in sweat. He climbed it as fast as he could and stopped, out of breath, at the top. The rock-fields to the south stood out sharply against the blue sky but on the plain to the east a steamy heat was already rising. And in that slight haze, Daru, with heavy heart made out the Arab walking slowly on the road to prison.
A little later standing before the window of the classroom the school master was watching the clear light bathing the whole surface of the plateau but he hardly saw it. Behind him on the blackboard among the winding French rivers sprawled the clumsily chalked-up words he had just read. "You handed over our brother. You will pay for this." Daru looked at the sky, the plateau and beyond the invisible lands stretching all the way to the sea. In this vast landscape he had loved so much, he was alone.

Somerset Maugham - The Man with the Scar

It was on account of the scar that I first noticed him, for it ran, broad and red, from his temple to his chin. This scar spoke of a terrible wound and I wondered whether it had been caused by a saber or by a fragment of shell. It was unexpected on that round, fat and good-humored face. He had small features and his face went oddly with his large and fat body. He was a powerful man of more than common height. I never saw him in anything, but a very shabby grey suit, a khaki shirt and an old sombrero. He was far from clean. He used to come into the Palace Hotel at Guatemala City every day at cocktail time and tried to sell lottery tickets. I never saw anyone buy, but now and then I saw him offered a drink. He never refused it. He walked among the tables, pausing at each table, with a little smile offered the lottery tickets and when no notice was taken of him with the same smile passed on. I think he was the most part a little drunk.

I was standing at the bar one evening with an acquaintance when the man with the scar came up. I shook my head as for the twentieth time since my arrival he held out his lottery tickets to me. But my companion greeted him, kindly.
"How is life, general?"
"Not so bad. Business is not too good, but it might be worse."
"What will you have, general?"
"A brandy."
He drank it and put the glass back on the bar. He nodded to my acquaintance.
"Thank you."
Then he turned away and offered his tickets to the men who were standing next to us.
"Who is your friend?" I asked. "That’s a terrific scar on his face."
"It doesn’t add to his beauty, does it? He’s an exile from Nicaragua. He’s a ruffian of course and a bandit, but not a bad fellow. I give him a few pesos now and then. He took part in a rebellion and was general of the rebellious troops. If his ammunition hadn’t given out he’d have upset the government and would be minister of war now instead of selling lottery tickets in Guatemala. They captured him together with his staff, and tried him by court-martial. Such things are usually done without delay in these countries, you know, and he was sentenced to be shot at dawn. I think he knew what was coming to him when he was caught. He spent the night in jail and he and the others, there were five of them altogether, passed the time playing poker. They used matches for chips. He told me he’d never had such bad luck in his life: he lost and lost all the time. When the day broke and the soldiers came into the cell to fetch them for execution he had lost more matches than a man could use in a life-time.
"They were led into the courtyard of the jail and placed against a wall, the five of them side by side with the firing squad facing them. There was a pause and our friend asked the officer commanding the squad what the devil they were keeping him waiting for. The officer said that the general commanding the troops wished to attend the execution and they awaited his arrival.
"Then I have time to smoke another cigarette,’ said our friend.
"But he had hardly lit it when the general came into the courtyard. The usual formalities were performed and the general asked the condemned men whether there was anything they wished before the execution took place. Four of the five shook their heads, but our friend spoke.
"‘Yes, I should like to say good-bye to my wife.’
"‘Good,’ said the general, "‘I have no objection to that. Where is she?’
"‘She is waiting at the prison door.’
"Then it will not cause a delay of more than five minutes."
"‘Hardly that, Se?or General.’
"‘Have him placed on one side.’
"Two soldiers advanced and between them the condemned rebel walked to the spot indicated. The officer in command of the firing squad on a nod from the general gave an order and the four men fell. They fell strangely, not together, but one after the other, with movements that were almost grotesque, as though they were puppets in a toy theatre. The officer went up to them and into one who was still alive emptied his revolver. Our friend finished his cigarette.
"There was a little stir at the gateway, A woman came into the courtyard, with quick steps, and then, her hand on her heart, stopped suddenly. She gave a cry and with outstretched arms ran forward.
"‘Caramba, said the general.
"She was in black, with a veil over her hair, and her face was dead white. She was hardly more than a girl, a slim creature, with little regular features and enormous eyes. Her loveliness was such that as she ran, her mouth slightly open and the agony on her beautiful face, even the indifferent soldiers who looked at her gave a gasp of surprise.
"The rebel advanced a step or two to meet her. She threw herself into his arms and with a cry of passion: ‘soul of my heart,’ he pressed his lips to hers. And at the same moment he drew a knife from his ragged shirt — I haven’t a notion how he had managed to keep it — and stabbed her in the neck. The blood spurted from the cut vein and dyed his shirt. Then he threw his arms round her and once more pressed his lips to hers.
"It happened so quickly that many didn’t know what had occurred, but the others gave a cry of horror; they sprang forward and seized him. They laid the girl on the ground and stood round watching her. The rebel knew where he was striking and it was impossible to stop the blood. In a moment the officer who had been kneeling by her side rose.
"‘She’s dead,’ he whispered.
"The rebel crossed himself.
"‘Why did you do it?’ asked the general.
"‘I loved her.’
"A sort of sigh passed through those men crowded together and they looked with strange faces at the murderer. The general stared at him for a while in silence.
" ‘It was a noble gesture,’ he said at last, ‘I cannot execute this man. Take my car and drive him to the frontier. I honor you, Senor, as one brave man must honor another.’
"And between the two soldiers without a word the rebel marched to the waiting car."
My friend stopped and for a little while I was silent. I must explain that he was a Guatemaltecan and spoke to me in Spanish. I have translated what he told me as well as I could, but I have made no attempt to change his rather high-flown language. To tell the truth I think it suits the story.
"But how then did he get the scar?" I asked at last.
"Oh, that was due to a bottle that burst when he was opening it. A bottle of ginger ale."
"I never liked it," said I.

J. D. Salinger - The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls

His shoes turned up. My mother used to tell my father that he was buying Kenneth's shoes too large for him, or to please ask somebody if his feet were deformed. But I think his shoes turned up because he was always stopping on the grass, rolling his seventy-five or eighty pounds forward to look at things, to turn things over his fingers. Even his moccasins turned up.

He had straight new penny-red hair, after my mother, which he parted on the left side and combed unwetted. He never wore a hat and you could identify him at great distances. One afternoon at the club when I was teeing off with Helen Beebers, just as I pressed my pin and ball into the hard, winter-rules ground and was getting into my stance, I felt certain that if l turned around I would sec Kenneth. Confidently I turned around. Sixty yards or so away, behind the high wire fence, he was sitting on the bicycle, watching us. He had that kind of red hair.

He used a southpaw's first basemen's mitt. On the back of the fingers of the mitt he copied down lines of poetry in India ink. He said he liked to read it when he wasn't at bat or when nothing special was going on in the field. By the time he was eleven he had read all the poetry we had in the house. He liked Blake and Keats best, and some of Coleridge very well, but I didn't know until over a year ago - and I used to read his glove regularly, - what his last careful entry had been. When I was still at Fort Dix a letter came from my brother Holden, who wasn't in the Army then, saying he had been horsing around in the garage and had found Kenneth's mitt. Holden said that on the thumb of the mitt was one he hadn't seen, and what was it anyway, and Holden copied down the lines. They were Browning's "I would hate that death bandaged my eyes and forbore, and bade me creep past." They weren't such hilarious lines quoted by a kid with the severest kind of heart trouble.

He was crazy about baseball. When he couldn't get up a game, and when I wasn't around to knock out flys to him, for hours he would throw a baseball up on the slant of the garage roof and catch it on the roll down. He knew the batting and fielding averages of every player in the major leagues. But he wouldn't and didn't go to any of the games with me. He went just once with me, when he was about eight years old, and had seen Lou Gehrig strike out twice. He said he didn't want to see anyone really good strike out again.

"I'm going back to Literature again, I can't keep this thing under control."

He cared for prose as well as poetry; chiefly fiction. He used to come into my room at any hour of the day and take one of my books down from the case and go off with it to his room or to the porch. I rarely looked up to see what he was reading. In those days I was trying to write. Very tough work. Very pasty-faced work. But once in a while I looked up. One time I saw him walk out with F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night", and another time he asked me what Richard Hughes' "The Innocent Voyage" was about. I told him, and he read it, but the only thing he would say about it, when I asked him later, was that the earthquake was fine, and the colored fella in the beginning. Another day he took from my room and read Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw''. When he finished it, for a week he wouldn't talk to anyone in the house.

***

I'm doing fine.

I can remember every detail of that tricky, dirty Saturday in July, though.

My parents were at the summer theater singing a first matinee performance of "You Can't Take It With You". In summer stock productions they were two very irritable, passion-tearing, perspiring players, and my younger brothers and I rarely went to see them. My mother was especially poor in summer stock. Watching her, even on a cool evening, Kenneth used to cringe in his seat till he was almost on the floor.

On that Saturday I had been working in my room all morning, had even eaten my lunch there, and not till late afternoon did I come downstairs. At about three-thirty I came out on the porch and the Cape Cod air made me a little dizzy, as though it were stuff brewed too strong. But in a minute it seemed like a pretty good day. The sun was hot all over the lawn. I looked around for Kenneth and saw him sitting in the cracked wicker, reading, with his feet drawn underneath him so that he was supporting his weight on his insteps. He was reading with his mouth open, and he didn't hear me walk across the porch and sit down on the railing opposite his chair.

I kicked his chair with the toe of my shoe. "Stop reading, Mac" I said. "Put down that book. Entertain me." He was reading Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises."

He put down the book when I spoke to him, recognizing my mood, and looked up at me, smiling. He was a gentleman; a twelve year-old gentleman; he was a gentleman all his life.

"I get lonesome up there," I told him. "I picked a lousy profession. If I ever write a novel I think I'll join a choir or something and run to meetings between chapters." He asked me what he knew I wanted him to ask me. "Vincent, what's the new story about?"

"Listen, No kidding Kenneth. It's terrific. Really," I said, getting set to convince us both. "It's called 'The Bowler'. It's about this guy whose wife won't let him listen to the fights or the hockey matches on the radio at night. No sports. Too noisy. Terrible woman. Won't ever let the guy read cowboy stories. Bad for his mind. Throws all his cowboy story magazines into the wastebasket." I watched Kenneth's face like a writer. "Every Wednesday night is this guy's night to go bowling. After dinner every Wednesday night he takes his special bowling ball down from a shelf of the closet, puts it in a special little round canvas bag, kisses his wife good-night and goes out. This goes on for eight years. Finally he dies. Every Monday night his wife goes to the cemetery, puts gladioli on his grave. One day she goes on a Wednesday instead of a Monday, and sees some fresh violets on the grave. Can't imagine who could have put 'em there. She asks the old caretaker, and he says, 'Oh, that there same lady that comes every Wednesday. His wife, I guess.'

'His wife?' screams the wife. 'I'm his wife!' But the old caretaker is a pretty deaf old guy and he isn't much interested. The woman goes home. Late in the night her neighbors hear the crashing sound of broken glass, but they go on listening to the hockey game on the radio. In the morning, on his way to the office, the neighbor sees a broken window in the next house, and a bowling ball, all dewey, glistening on the front lawn."

"How do you like it?"

He hadn't taken his eyes off my face while I had told him the story.

"Aw, Vincent," he said. "Aw, gee."

"What's the matter? That's a damn good story."

"I know you'll write it swell. But, gee, Vincent!"

I said to him, "that's the last story I'm going to read to you, Caulfield. What's the matter with that story? It's a masterpiece. I'm writing one masterpiece after another. I never read so many masterpieces by one man." He knew I was kidding, but he only gave me half a smile because he knew I was blue. I didn't want any half smiles. "What's the matter with that story?" I said. "You little stinker. You redhead."

"Maybe it could've happened, Vincent. But you don't know that it happened do you? I mean, you just made it up didn't you?"

"Sure I made it up! That kind of stuff happens Kenneth."

"Sure, Vincent! I believe ya! No kidding, I believe ya," Kenneth said. But if you're just making stuff up, why don't you make up something that's good. See? If you just made up something good, is what I mean. Good stuff happens. Lots of times. Boy, Vincent! You could be writing about good stuff. You could write about good stuff, I mean about good guys and all. Boy, Vincent!" He looked at me with his eyes shining - yes, shining. The boy's eyes could shine.

"Kenneth," I said - but I knew I was licked; "this guy with the bowling ball is a good guy. There's nothing wrong with him. It's just his wife that isn't a good guy."

"Sure, I know, but - boy, Vincent! You're taking revenge for him and all. Wuddya wanna take revenge on him for? I mean. Vincent. He's all right. Let her alone. The lady, I mean. She doesn't know what she's doing. I mean about the radio and the cowboy stories and all," Kenneth said. "Let her alone, huh, Vincent? Okay?"

I didn't say anything.

"Don't have her throw that thing out the ~window. That bowling ball. Huh, Vincent? Okay?"

I nodded, "Okay," I said.

I got up and went inside to the kitchen and drank a bottle of ginger ale. He knocked me out. He always knocked me out. Then I went upstairs and tore up the story.

I came down and sat on the porch railing again, and watched him read. He looked up at me abruptly.

"Let's drive down to Lassiter's for some steamers," He said.

"All right. You want to put on a coat or something?" He only had on a striped T-shirt, and he got sunburnt the way red haired people get sunburnt.

"No I'm all right." He stood up, dropping his book on the seat of the wicker. "Let's just go. Right away," he said.

***

Rolling down my shirtsleeves, I followed him across the lawn, stopping at the edge of it, and watched him back my car out of the garage. When he had backed it into the driveway a ways, I walked over. He slid over to the right as I got into the driver's seat, and began to lower his window - it was still in a raised position from my date with Helen Beebers the night before; she didn't use to like her hair to blow. Then Kenneth pressed the dash button, and the canvas top, helped by an overhead slam of my hand, began to go to its act, collapsing finally behind the seat.

I pulled out of the driveway and into Caruck Boulevard and out of Caruck onto Ocean. It was about a seven mile drive to Lassiter's, on Ocean. The first couple of miles neither of us had anything to say. The sun was terrific. It showed up my pasty hands; ribbon-inky and nail-bitten at the fingers; but it struck and settled handsomely on Kenneth's red hair, and that seemed fair enough. I said to him, "Reach in that there compartment, Doctor. You'll find a package of cigarettes and a fifty-thousand dollar bill. I'm planning to send Lassiter through college. Hand me a cigarette."

He handed over the cigarettes, saying, "Vincent, you oughtta marry Helen. No kidding. She's going nuts, waiting around. She's not so smart or anything but that's good. You wouldn't have to argue with her so much. And you wouldn't hurt her feelings when you're sarcastic. I been watching her. She never knows what you're talking about. Boy, that's good! And boy, does she have swell legs."

"Why, Doctor!"

"No. No kidding, Vincent. You oughtta marry her. I played checkers with h er once. You know what she did with her kings?"

"What'd she do with her kings?"

"She kept them all in the back row so I wouldn't take them. She didn't want to use them at all. Boy, that's a good kind of girl, Vincent! And you remember that time that I caddied for her? You know what she does?"

"She uses my tees. She won't use her own tees."

"You know the fifth hole? Where that big tree is right before you get to the green? She asked me to throw her ball over that ole tree. She said she never can throw it over. Boy, that's the kind of girl you wanna marry, Vincent. You don't wanna let her get away."

"I won't." It was as though I were talking to a man twice my age.

"You will if you let your stories kill you. Don't worry about them so much. You'll be good. You'll be terrific."

We rode on, me, very happy.

"Vincent."

"What."

"When you look in that crib they got Phoebe in, are you nuts about her? Don't you feel like you're even her?"

"Yes," I said, listening to him, knowing just what he meant. "Yes."

"Are you nuts about Holden too?"

"Sure. Nice fella."

"Don't be so reticent." Kenneth said.

"All right."

"Tell everybody when you love somebody, and how much." Kenneth said.

"All right."

"Drive faster, Vincent," he said "really step on that thing."

"I gave the car all it could take, getting it up to about seventy-five.

"Attaboy!" Kenneth said.

***

In just a couple of minutes we were at Lassiter's joint. It was an off hour and there was only one car, a De Soto sedan, in the parking space; it looked locked and hot, but not oppressive because we were feeling pretty slick. We sat down at a table outside on the screened porch. At the other end of the porch a fat, baldheaded man in a yellow polo shirt sat eating blue points. He had a newspaper propped up against a salt shaker. He looked very lonesome and very much the owner of the hot, empty big sedan baking outside in the parking space.

While I tipped my chair back, trying to catch sight of Lassiter through the fly-buzzy hallway to the bar, the fat man spoke up.

"Hey Red, where'dja get that red hair?"

Kenneth turned around to look at the man, and said:

"A guy gave it to me on the road."

That nearly killed the guy. He was bald as a pear. "A guy gave it to you on the road, eh?" he said. "Think he could fix me up?"

"Sure." Kenneth said. "You gotta give him a blue card, though. Last year's. He won't take this year's."

That really killed the guy. "Gotta give him a blue card, eh?" he asked, shaking.

"Yeah. Last year's." Kenneth told him.

The fat man shook on as he turned back to his newspaper; and after that he looked over at our table frequently, as though he had pulled up a chair.

Just as I started to get up, Lassiter rounded the corner of his bar and saw me sitting there. He raised thick eyebrows in greeting, and started to come forward. He was a dangerous number. I had seen him, late at night, break an empty quart beer bottle against his bar, and holding on to what was left of the neck of it, go out into the dark, salty air looking for a man whom he merely suspected of stealing fancy radiator caps from cars in his parking space. Now, coming down the hallway, he couldn't wait to ask me: "You got that smart redheaded brother a yours with you?" He couldn't see where Kenneth was until he was out on the porch. I nodded to him.

"Well!" he said to Kenneth, "How you doin kid?" I ain't seen you around much this summer.

"I was here last week. How you doin Mr. Lassiter? You beat anybody up lately?"

Lassiter chuckled with his mouth open. "What'll it be, kid? Steamers? Lotta butter sauce?" Getting the big nod, he started to go out to the kitchen, but stopped to ask:

"Where's your brother? The little crazy one?"

"Holden," I identified. "He's away at summer camp. He's learning to shift for himself."

"Oh, yeah?" said Lassiter, interested.

"He isn't crazy." Kenneth told Lassiter.

"Ain't crazy?" Lassiter said. "If he ain't crazy, what is he?"

Kenneth stood up. His face was almost the color of his hair. "Let's get the hell out of here." Kenneth said to me. "C'mon."

"Aw, wait a minute, kid," Lassiter said quickly. "Listen, I'm only kidding. He ain't crazy. I didn't mean that. He's just mischeevious like. Be a good kid. I didn't say he was crazy. Be a good kid. Lemme bring ya some nice steamers."

With his fists clenched, Kenneth looked at me, but I gave him no sign, leaving it up to him. He sat down. "Be your age," he told Lassiter. "Gee! Don't go calling names."

"Don't get tough with Red, Lassiter!" the fat man called from the table. Lassiter didn't pay any attention to him - he was that tough.

"I got some beauty steamers, kid" he told Kenneth.

"Sure Mr. Lassiter."

Lassiter actually stumbled his way up the single step leading to the hallway.

***

When we left I told Lassiter the steamers had been swell, but he looked doubtful until Kenneth slapped him on the back.

We got back in the car, and Kenneth dropped down the door of the side compartment and comfortably propped one foot into the cavity. I drove the five miles up to Reechman Point because I felt we both wanted to go there.

At the point I pulled the car up at the old spot, and we got out and started to stride from stone to stone down to what Holden used to call, for some reason of his own, the Wise Guy Rock. It was a big, flat job about a run and a jump from the ocean. Kenneth led the way ... balancing himself by holding out his arms like a tight-rope walker. My legs were longer and I could go from rock to rock with one hand in my pants pocket. Also, I had several years head start on him.

We both sat down on the Wise Guy Rock. The ocean was calm and it had a good color, but there was something I didn't like about it. Almost the instant I noticed there was something I didn't like about it, the sun went under a cloud. Kenneth said something to me.

"What?" I asked him.

"I forgot to tell ya. I got a letter from Holden today. I'll read it to you" He took an envelope out of the hip pocket of his shorts. I watched the ocean and listened. "Listen to the thing at the top. The heading." Kenneth said, and started to read the letter which came in this form.

Camp Goodrest

for slobs

Friday

Dear Kenneth,

This place stinks. I never saw so many rats. You have to make stuff out of lether and go for hikes. They got a contest between the reds and the whites. I am supposed to be a white. I am no lousy white. I am coming home soon and will have some fun with you and Vincent and eat some clams with you. They eat eggs that are runny here all the time and they don't even put the milk in the icebox when you drink it.

Everybody has got to sing a song in the dining room. This Mr. Grover thinks he is a hot singer and tried to get me to sing with him last night. I would of, only I don't like him. He smiles at you but is all the time very mean when he gets the chance. I got the 18$ mother gave me and will probly be home soon maybe saturday or sunday if that man goes in to town like he said so I can get a train. They got me austersized now for not singing in the dining room with Mr. Grover. None of these rats can talk to me. One is a very nice boy from Tenesee and is near as old as Vincent. How is Vincent. Tell him I miss him. Ask him if he ever read corinthans. Corinthans is in the bible and is very good and pretty and Web tailer read me some of it. The swimming stinks here because there are no waves even little waves. What good is it without any waves and you never get scared or turned all over. You just swim out to this raft they got with a buddy. My buddy is Charles Masters. He is a rat and sings in the dining room all the time.

He is on the white team and is the captain of it. He and Mr. Grover are 2 of the biggest rats I ever met yet, also Mrs. Grover. She tries to be like your mother and smiles all the time but she is mean like Mr. Grover too. They lock the bread box at night so nobody can make sanwiches and they fired Jim and everything you get here you have to give 5¢ or 10¢ for and Robby Wilcoks parents did not give him any money. I will be home soon probly sunday. I sure miss you Kenneth also Vincent also Phoebe. What color hair has Phoebe got. It is probly red I bet.

Your

brother Holden Caulfield

Kenneth put the letter and envelope back into his hip pocket. He picked up a smooth reddish pebble and looked at it, turning it over, as though he were hoping there were no flaws in it's symmetry; then he said more to the pebble than to me: "He can't make any compromises." He looked at me bitterly. "He's just a little old kid and he can't make any compromises. If he doesn't like Mr. Grover he can't sing in the dining room even when he knows if he sings that everybody'll leave him alone. What's gonna happen to him Vincent?"

"I guess he'll have to learn to make compromises," I said, but I didn't believe it and Kenneth knew it.

Kenneth stuck the smooth pebble into his watch pocket of his shorts and looked out at the ocean with his mouth open.

"You know what?" he said. "If I were to die or something, you know what I would do?"

He didn't wait for me to say anything.

"I'd stick around," he said. "I'd stick around a while."

His face got triumphant - the way Kenneth's face got triumphant; without implications of his having defeated or outdrawn anybody. The ocean was terrible now. It was full of bowling balls. Kenneth stood up from the Wise Guy Rock, looking very happy about something. From the way he stood up I could tell he was in a mood for a swim. I didn't want him to go swimming around in all those bowling balls.

He yanked off his shoes and socks. "C'mon, lets go in" he said.

"You gonna wear those shorts?" I asked him. "You'll be cold on the way back. The sun's gone down."

"I have another pair under the seat of the car. C'mon. Let's go."

"You'll get cramps, from the clams."

"I only ate three."

"No, don't - " I started to stop him. He was pulling off his shirt and didn't hear me.

"What?" he said when his face was in the clear.

"Nothing. Don't stay in long."

"Aren't you gonna come in?"

"No. I haven't a cap." He thought that was pretty funny, and slammed me back.

"Aw, c'mon in , Vincent."

"You go ahead. I can't stand that ocean today. It's full of bowling balls."

He didn't hear me. He ran down the flat of the beach. I wanted to grab him and haul him back and drive off fast.

When he was finished kidding around in the water he came out by himself, without my being able to tell anything. He stepped out of and past the wet-ankle, sloshy part of the water; he even rushed and passed the dry, faint-footprint part of the flat without my being able to tell anything except that his head was down. Then, as he barely reached the soft of the beach, the ocean threw its last bowling ball at him. I yelled his name at the top of my voice, and ran crazily to the spot. Without even looking a t him I picked him up; carrying him, I ran jerky-legged to the car. I put him in the seat and drove the first mile or so with the brakes on; then I gave it everything I had.

***

I saw Holden sitting on the porch before he saw me or anything. He had a suitcase next to the chair, and he was picking his nose until he saw. When he saw, he screamed Kenneth's name.

"Tell Mary to call the doctor." I said, out of breath. "The number's on the thing by the phone. In red pencil." Holden s creamed Kenneth's name again. He pushed out his crummy-looking hand and pu shed, nearly struck, some sand off Kenneth's nose. "Quickly, Holden, damn it!" I said, carrying Kenneth past him. I felt Holden rush through the house to the kitchen after Mary.

A few minutes later, even before the doctor arrived, my mother and father drove into the driveway. Gweer, who was playing the juvenile lead in the show, was with them. I signaled to mother from the window in Kenneth's room, and she ran like a girl into the house. I spoke to her for a minute in the room; then I went downstairs, passing my father on the stairs.

Later, when the doctor and my mother and father were all upstairs in Kenneth's room, Holden and I waited around on the porch. Gweer, the juvenile, hung around too for some reason. At last he said to me quietly, "I guess I'll be going."

"All right," I said vaguely. I didn't want any actors around.

"If there's anything - "

"Go home, willya fella?" Holden said.

Gweer smiled at him sadly, and started to leave. He didn't seem to like his exit. He was also curious after his little chat with Mary, the maid. "What is it - his heart?

He's only a kid, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Go home. Willya?"

Later on I felt like laughing. I told Holden the ocean was full of bowling balls, and the little dope nodded and said,

"Yeah, Vincent," as though he knew what I was talking about.

He died at ten after eight that night.

Maybe setting all this down will get him out of here.

He's been in Italy with Holden , and he's been in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and part of Germany with me. I can't stand it. He shouldn't be sticking around these days.