Chapter 3
Boy-O walked through the town, and his eyes were everywhere. He recognized the nice bar where nice boys could take nice girls out for short beers and a dance to the juke box, and Don's Place where the nice boys went after they had taken their nice girls home at a respectable hour. Don's Place where the floor wasn't too clean but the two or three town tramps hung out, and where the nice boys lost their frustrations with the girls they met at Don's.
Swanik's Landing had two of almost everything. It was nice and neat. People were either good or bad, and no gray existed. Except among young men and that was called "sowing wild oats." And laughed about in men's rooms and locker room's and weekly meetings of the Elk's Club.
Boy-O's mother had done things all wrong. She'd fallen in love with the son of the town doctor and that was more than wrong, that was stupid. Because when he'd had his fun he had walked out and Janey Carter with only eighteen years behind her had been finished in Swanik's Landing.
After that, she hadn't been good enough for the good people to hire, no, not even to mop their floors, and the poor folk had had too much pride to pity her. She'd had nerve though. Lots of times Boy-O had thought of her, of how things must have been for her. He didn't understand why she had taken the responsibility for him. Unless it was an odd kind of pride. Like, "I'm not ashamed and I'll stand up for anything I did."
That would have been like her, like his dead mother. That might have been why she didn't ran away from Swanik's Landing and away from all the tiny souls that lived there. Because she wouldn't let them make her dirty.
One thing he'd never been able to understand though was the way his father had backed down. Had acted as if nothing had happened. He didn't care at all about Boy-O, had pretended not to notice that he had a son or a responsibility. Well, that louse would pay too. That was a second score for Boy-O to square.
He walked the streets until the summer sun copped out and the streets went gray. Men passed him on their way home from work. He didn't see them. Women sashayed past him, hoping to catch his eye with their swinging hips, but his eyes were on his past and on the town's past. He gathered to him every piece of gossip his childhood ears had ever heard and mulled it over in his mind, extracting the venom and filing the information. Somehow he would get even with them. Somehow he would make all of them pay.
Soft wind gathered speed somewhere out in the flat farm lands outside town and moved the leaves up and down the prosperous streets. He pretended not to notice and continued his long, lonely pilgrimage.
"Oh me! Oh my heavens!" It was more than an exclamation, it was a cry of dismay. Boy-O turned, jostled from his reverie. "Well now, look what I have done. Look at that mess!"
She was a fat, gray-haired woman, whose face was hidden between grocery bags. She'd been trying to carry three overflowing bags of food and one had slipped from her clutches and spilled onto the ground. Eggs were frying on the sidewalk.
Boy-O took the bags from her hands and set them down, propping them against the base of an old tree. Who' was she? He didn't remember. "Let me help you, ma'am."
"Thank you, young man. I do need some help, I'm afraid. Jed Crane the grocery man offered to drive me home, but I didn't think I needed to put him to the trouble. He's living outside of town now, you know. I guess he's just all excited about getting home every day. Didn't marry a local girl. I hated to take him out of his way."
She didn't stop talking, not when she grunted with bending over, or groaned at the lest eggs or reached out for a rolling orange. She kept up a stream of chatter while she refilled the bag and cleaned off the sidewalk. Boy-O helped her. He. remembered her now.
"Well, now. I think that does it. I don't know why I didn't do the shopping earlier in the day. My children are home on their vacations again and they take a lot of looking after so my whole schedule's off and I spend most of my time trying to catch up with myself. You know how that is, when you always feel late?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well, I can't imagine anything worse. My husband says to me in the morning. 'Now take it easy, Ethel. No one wants you to run all day.' And every morning I promise him I'll take it easy but I always seem to be behind myself. At least when the children are home. You're new here in town, aren't you?"
"Well, in a manner of speaking."
"In a manner of speaking? What kind of an answer is that?"
"Can I help you home with your groceries. Mrs. Jensen?"
"Why that would be kind of you, young man. What do you mean, in a manner of speaking?"
"I grew up here."
"Let me look at you."
Boy-O turned to face her, a bag of groceries in either arm. She cupped his chin in her free hand and peered into his ice blue eyes.
"Why it's young Carter. Is that who you are?"
"Yes, Mrs. Jensen. It's me all right"
"As I live, and breathe. Why it's been ten years, hasn't it?"
"Thirteen, ma'am."
"That long! It's been that long. Well, welcome home, Stephen. It's good to have you back."
"No one calls me Stephen now, Mrs. Jensen. I go by Boy-O."
"Well, I won't call you that. Why'd you let people call you that in the first place? Boy-O that's not a name, that's ah insult. I always thought so."
"It'll do as well as any other name."
"No, it won't and you don't think so either. You got that name shining shoes and delivering your ma's laundry and it will always mean that to you. It will always be an insult, a way of looking down on you. Isn't that so, Stephen?"
"Not really. When you get used to something like a name, you don't hear it any more."
"Not when you get it that way. I always think a name is an important thing. Somehow, it's a way of thinking of yourself. Now I don't care what you say, I'm going to keep calling you, Stephen."
"Okay. If you want to."
"Are you home to stay, Stephen?"
"This isn't my home. Let's just say that I'm passing through. Nothing definite."
"You're hard, son. You've been alone too long."
"Maybe."
"You know, Stephen, there's something I have been wanting to tell you for all these thirteen years. I think of it every so often. About the way your mother went. So quick and after such a long sickness. Mr. Jensen and I both felt bad that we didn't get a chance to talk with you, Stephen, and let you know that we felt sorry and maybe ease your pain a little. I've thought of that a lot."
"That's all right. Nothing to spend time thinking about."
"No. It was wrong of us. I always felt bad."
"Well, if it makes any difference, I always knew you and Mr. Jensen were kind folk, and I never held it against you that you didn't pay your respects." Boy-O listened to himself falling back into the hick groove of his home town. Mrs. Jensen spoke the dialect of the small town, and she spoke so much that her flavor seeped into Boy-O's own speech. He noticed it with displeasure. But he had always liked the Jensens. Of all the people in that hole of a town, they had been the nicest to him when he'd been a child.
"Will you come to dinner, Stephen?"
"No. I don't think so."
"No? I won't take that for an answer. You know my children are home. Well, I guess they hadn't left when you were here last. But they're home. You know what? Since they have been away I've forgotten how to cook for a family and now that they're 'back I almost always make too much. So you have to come in for dinner. Or they're sure to tease about all those starving Europeans again."
"No, but thank you anyway."
"No anyway about it; come along."
Boy-O followed her. On second thought maybe he could get some information on his father from her, and maybe some confirmation about what he had guessed about Sam Revere.
"Where's everybody?" Mrs. Jensen bellowed as she entered the kitchen. Then turning to Boy-O she said, "I don't know why I bother to ask. I know. Lewis is upstairs with his nose buried in a book and Jeanni is fetching her father from the office. I often wonder if everyone else's children are so predictable."
"Everybody is predictable if you know them." Boy-O hated himself for liking Mrs. Jensen.
"Tell me, what have you been doing with yourself?"
"Nothing much."
"Are you still so angry?"
"At who?"
"At the world."
"That's a waste of time."
"Wasting time has never stopped anybody from hating. I guess you do. I can't say I blame you, but I wish I could make you stop. Shall I tell you something a foolish old woman thinks about living?"
"Sure. I'll be grateful."
"No you won't, but you have decided to humor me. Well, I don't mind. Seeing is a matter of personality. I mean, a person sees what he wants to see. If you want the world to look beautiful, it will and if you want it to look ugly and hate it, it will look ugly. Now what do you think about that?"
"I never think about it that way. You've got to take it as it comes. If it comes rotten, pull out. Split. Change it. Or get even. A man's got those choices."
"Well, think like you have to. I picked some peas from the garden this morning. Shell them for me?"
Boy-O helped her make dinner. He shelled the peas and set the table. He did all the things he hadn't done since his mother died. And in an odd way, he enjoyed it. He liked listening to Mrs. Jensen.
When the front door slammed, Boy-O felt suddenly apprehensive. The family was home. That would be Mr. Jensen and their daughter Jeanni Try as he might, Boy-O could find no memory of Jeanni at all.
She was only a year or two younger than he and built like a dream, slim and boyish with tender button breasts and buttocks that made up for everything. Her hair was soft brown and pulled back sleekly into a bun at the nape of her neck. She was class and looked it. Everything about her shouted class. It was almost too much.
Something was off. Something showed in her eyes. They were a bit too quick, darting around the room, her own living room, in a way that was almost frightened. Jeanni had a secret, Boy-O said to himself. And filed it away in his mind.
Mr. Jensen had hardly aged since Boy-O had last seen him. Still long and lanky, still too tall and thin, his hair a little grayer maybe, but the grin was there and the eyes still attentively twinkling at every joke his wife made. Mrs. Jensen introduced Boy-O to Jeanni and he noticed that her eyes jumped a little. She had heard of him. Maybe Mrs. Jensen had spoken of him in the thirteen years he'd been away. Mr. Jensen shook his hand vigorously and warmly and offered hum a drink before he ate dinner. Boy-O refused. It was what he should do. Nobody drank much in Swanik's Landing, and never before dinner.
"Lewis! Lewis! Dinner's on. Come to table," Mrs. Jensen called at the top of her voice to the second story of the house. No answer. "Jeanni, get your brother, will you?"
Boy-O watched Jeanni as she complied with her mother's request. He saw that she obliged her too readily, that she walked gingerly through the house she'd grown up in. Jeanni has got a hundred dollar secret, he thought to himself and a good hundred dollar body to go with it. Boy-O listened to his boyish body. It wasn't responding in the sure-fire way. For a moment he was almost sorry he'd begun working at Sarah Revere. Life in Swanik's Landing wasn't going to be dull at all.
He turned his eyes to Mrs. Jensen. She was talking again, going on and on about that grocery man, Jed Crane, and his new wife, and his farm, and on and on. He heard footsteps on the stairs at the same time she did. Was he mistaken? Or did he see her shoulders tense slightly. His ice-blue eyes swept across the room to the door.
Lewis Jensen was a parasite. There was damned Ettie doubt about it. Boy-O was almost surprised. If he hadn't seen and felt the tension in the room he might have been caught off guard. Certainly he hadn't expected young Jensen to turn out to be a bum. No wonder the kids weren't at home more. Ma Jensen no wonder she couldn't get through her day. She knew about him too. It showed in the color in her face, and in the frown between Mr. Jensen's deep-set eyes.
He wondered how that had happened to the Jensen's. What had done that? Was that Jeanni's secret?
"Lewis, do you remember Stephen Carter?"
"I don't believe so. Did I know you?"
"Yep. I was two years ahead of you in school."
"I don't know how I could have forgotten." He spoke sarcastically. Boy-O repressed his grimace. He was going to have trouble with Lewis; he could tell by the light in the other boy's eyes. Time to handle that as it came, and it wouldn't be too long coming if he knew trouble makers.
"Lewis, what are you doing now? Your mother tells me that you don't live here in town."
"I'm at the university. But that doesn't make much difference. After school, I won't live in this town either."
"Isn't it funny," Mrs. Jensen picked up the conversation but her voice was too gay. "Chicks always go the other way from their parents. The young people moving into town are the ones who were raised in the cities. Our children all want to go away. I suppose that is the way of the world, but when I was a girl, it wasn't that way. We all wanted to keep our roots."
"Ethel, how about some food, now that everybody is here." Right on cue, Boy-O thought to himself. Mr.
Jensen knows his wife and he knew how to help; when company is to dinner and Lewis is home, the best way to help is to give her an excuse to leave the room.
"I'm sorry, dear. Just be a minute." And she was gone. It was amazing that so much weight could move so fast.
Boy-O felt that he should carry the conversation. Everyone was terribly embarrassed. Everyone but Lewis. He was having a fine time.
"Where will you go, Lewis?"
"New York. That's the only place to be."
"Ever been there?"
The bov shook his head. "Have you?"
"Twice."
"Really?" Jeanni was in the ring now too. Boy-O couldn't help looking at her breasts. "Did you like it?"
"I guess so. It's like every place else. Taller though, but so what?"
"Where else have you been, Stephen?" Mr. Jensen began carving the large roast his wife had carried in from the kitchen.
"All over. This whole country. Mexico. South America for a while."
"Why?" Jeanni's voice was low. Boy-O wished she'd thought up a longer sentence.
"Why not?"
Lewis' strident nasal voice cut through the living room. "Does it have anything to do with being born a scandal?"
The silence was broken only by his mother's embarrassing gasp, "Lewis!"
Lewis defended himself. "I think scandals are boring."
"Only when they're your own." Boy-O kept his voice pleasant. He wished he had never let himself get talked into his dinner. Affection for people always got in the way of things. I deserve whatever I get for liking that old lady, he thought to himself.
"I'm sorry if I offended you "
"You didn't offend me. But tell me why you pretended not to remember me when you came into the room."
"Meeting for the second time is like beginning again. Why not pretend it is the first time and save a lot of uppity small talk about childhood diseases." Lewis was baiting him. Who does he think he is. Boy-O wondered. One more crack like that and I'll sock him into the living room.
"How about you, Jeanni?"
"Jeanne's singing in Chicago. A night club job. Lewis, help yourself to some potatoes. You've got to put some meat on those bones." Mrs. Jensen passed Boy-O the vegetables. "Jeanni and Lewis both want to go into show business. Isn't that odd?"
Boy-O said he didn't think so. And then he said something else. All in all he talked more through dinner than anyone else, but he couldn't stand to see the utter helplessness in Mrs. Jensen's eyes. So he kept the conversation moving and Mr. Jensen helped him. When she cried herself to sleep that night at least the old lady would be able to think she had put one over on Boy-O Carter. And that would make her happier.
Mr. Jensen was so grateful for Boy-O's distraction that he offered him a cigar after dinner, and Mrs. Jensen offered him a bed for the night. Boy-O managed to get out of both.
"I do need a place to .stay, though. Widow Kramer still running her boarding house?"
"Goodness no. She died five years ago. There's a new one though. In the same place and as far as I know, they're never full."
"What about a job, son?"
"Have to find one. Know of any?"
"I can use a good clerk in my office."
"No thanks. I like to work outside. First thing tomorrow I'll look around the farms."
"There's Jed Crane. He fired his handy man last week. Why just today he was telling me that he had so much work to be done on that place that it was doing him in."
"You're fibbing. That's his wife that's doing him in."
"Lewis. Watch your tongue. Stephen, first thing tomorrow I'll take you around and introduce you to Jed. I imagine he's so hard up for a hand that he'll forget to notice how handsome you are and put you to work right away."
"Thanks, ma'am." And thanks, and thanks, and let me out, Boy-O said to himself. He'd had about as much kindness as he could stand for one night.
"Jeanni, drive Stephen over to the rooming house."
"I'll do it, Ma."
"Lewis, I asked Jeanni."
Boy-O was thankful to be spared the drive with Lewis. He had had enough of families for one night and not enough of Jeanni. His appetite for women was returning. He could feel that glowing. She didn't notice, yet. Her whole manner was indifferent. Jeanni had a secret, he reminded himself-she'd notice him. His loyalty to the Jensens didn't matter that much to him.
The family car was a convertible. That was the first thing that was out of character with the older Jensen's.
"This yours?"
"What? The car? Yes, as a matter-of-fact it is. How did you know?"
"Yellow your favorite color?"
"Just because the car is yellow? As a matter-of-fact, no."
He settled back in his seat and looked at the stars. Then turning his' head he looked at her; he was about directly on a line with her small, apple breasts. "It's a nice night," he said. "And a nice view."
She sighed, and made no effort to continue-the conversation. Boy-O was a trifle irked. He was also intrigued. He lit a cigarette and exhaled gratefully in the cool of the night. Never taking his eyes from her face, and holding the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he laid his hand carelessly and coniidently on her leg. She didn't flinch.
That tells me part of Jeanni's secret, he said to himself.
"Happy?" He kept his voice casual. "Tired." There was no fear showing anywhere. "If I were driving, do you know where I'd go?"
"To a motel."
"No. To the lake. That's always better outside." She pulled her car over to the side of the road. "Look, stud."
"Careful."
She ignored his warning. "Look, stud," repeating the word, she twisted the sound into a curse. He didn't try to stop her this time. "My mother and father are the kindest blindest people in the world, but not me. Not Jeanni. You don't stand a chance with Jeanni, stud. So look around somewhere else, huh?"
She reached for the gear shift, but he was faster then she was. He pulled the key out of the ignition without changing his smile.
"Give me the key."
"What will you give me?"
She opened the car door and tried to leave, but he held his hand on her shoulder. "Shall I tell you about you now, hon?" She wrenched herself from his grasp and' started to walk down the street.
Boy-O didn't know what had happened to him, what it was that made him lose control like that. He jumped from the car and followed her. When he caught up with her he backed her against a tree and held her there until he finished.
"What club do you sing in, Jazzy Jeanni? Do you sing?"
"Club Lido."
"Don't make me laugh. You don't have the style."
She tried to move away again, but still he locked her in his grip. "Be good to me, baby, or I'll find out where you really sing and I'll spell it out on Main Street."
Jeanni's struggling increased; her breasts rubbed against his arm. Boy-O held her tightly against the tree until she exhausted herself. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. "Why do you want me? I loathe you, you cheap crumb."
"Don't call me that."
The smile slipped involuntarily from his lips. She placed one on hers. He mashed his mouth on hers, and slammed his body against her. She didn't struggle.
And she didn't stop smiling. .
His hands pressed her, but she showed no sign of sensation. That was as if she didn't feel his touch.
Boy-O pressed closer to her. The more she ignored his caresses and his kisses the more difficult that became for him to restrain himself. He was afraid he would throw her onto the ground and take her there, in the most frequented part of town, on someone's damned lawn.
He pulled away from her and stood there crouching indecisively, ready to kill her if she made a move. "Can I go now?"
"No!" That was a growl. "You can't go now."
He grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her into the car. Onto the back seat. The worst of that was that she knew how much he wanted her, that she was driving him crazy by pretending to be indifferent.
She let him push her down onto the back seat, let him kiss and caress her breasts and didn't sigh when his teeth bit at her neck.
"God," he muttered under his breath. Every trick he had ever learned he played for her, but still she lay quietly, enduring but not accepting.
His lips tunned to ice and his brain to fire. He was strong. He was ready. He had never had a woman who didn't want him and he was determined to make desire burn this chick.
He pulled her skirt up to her waist and his hands sang along her legs. He was reaching for her pants to rip them off when she suddenly woke up.
She moved against his body. She held him close with arms that pulled his head to hers Warm breath ran against his ear.
"Stop that. Let me...."
Fire and throbbing.
"Stop that," he cried.
But she wouldn't stop. Her breath rushed faster and faster with her efforts and he groaned as his hands tried to disentangle her from him. He pulled at her and pushed her down, and his hands fumbled with his belt and she was at him again. Her teeth played with his ear and her breath enraged his hearing.
Then. Then. The explosion.
She went limp against him and the only motion he felt from her was the movement of her muscles as laughter shook her body. Then she said, "Can I go now?"
He rose from her without looking at her, fumbled his way from the car. He threw her key into the front seat, and walked away.
Behind him he heard the car start. In the street he saw his shadow as her headlights silhouetted his body. The car drew up alongside him.
"Let me drive you to the boarding house."
He kept his eyes on the cement and his feet moving.
"Well, I guess you know where it is. You were born here."
Then she was gone, in a roar of the yellow convertible that caught the light from the street lamps and he was left with the pain in his mind and the exhaust from her car.
Boy-O Carter had roamed the world wide. His good, handsome body had won all the women, all the women that had wanted him.
There were always plenty of those.
So he had never spent any time learning how to woo a woman, or how to make a woman like him. From the time he had been a punk kid, the girls had clustered around Boy-O, fighting over him, feeding him, bidding for him. All he had ever had to do was show them what they wanted and then take their ripe and lovely bodies and embrace them with his. Boy-O Carter had never lost. Until now.