the open windows and the triangled leaves of the sycamore trees stirring in the breeze, the picture upon the wall over the mantelpiece of soft green hills, a winding country road, a stone wall, a house and barn, and over it all the mistiness of early spring. SPRING AT WOODSTOCK , the top of the frame read. Woodstock, Vermont, was his mother’s hometown, and the picture, she always said, kept her from being homesick here in Ohio. But there seemed nothing more to say, and he went on his way to his room and bed.
All during the long summer he lived a double life, his own and his father’s. His own was troublesome enough, for at twelve he was large for his age and he seemed strange to himself, his feelings strange and new, his body changing, growing so fast that clothes he wore easily enough one day were too small for him a month later. His emotions quickened, whether because he knew now that his father was dying, or because his body was taking on a life of its own, his muscles strengthening, his whole being impatient for what he could not define, his penis enlarging and making its own demands on him as though it were some sort of separate being with a life separate from himself, a querulous creature whose demands he did not know how to satisfy.
His father’s weakening hold on life made him unwilling, almost ashamed, to inquire why his own life was burgeoning, and his mother, he reasoned, would not be able to understand. It was then that he thought of Chris, that early friend whom he had scarcely seen in the intervening years. Not since he had stopped going to public school had he seen Chris, except occasionally on the street. He had learned that Chris had dropped out of school and was working at his father’s gas station at South End.
South End was the opposite side of town and there was nothing to bring them together. He knew now that he and Chris belonged to different worlds, as far apart as different planets, even. He knew this and yet the knowledge made him desperate with loneliness.
The knowledge, also, that his father was dying added even more to his loneliness.
Inside his father’s gaunt frame there grew a cancer, a creature insensate and mindless, yet with a life of its own. It fed upon his father’s flesh and bones, it sucked his father’s life away, it spread its crablike tentacles farther and farther into his father’s frame until his father was the appendage and the thing the creature. His father became an image of pain, drowsy with drugs, drawing one slow breath after another until each seemed it must be the last.
And all this time the summer went on its luxuriant way, the corn growing tall, the wheat ripe, the hay cut.
“Two months—maybe,” the doctor said.
Two months—an endless time to endure, yet too swift, and his father was already out of his reach. A faint smile when he came into his father’s room, the skeleton hand reaching and clinging for a moment and then loosening, the eyes half-closed and glazed with pain, and this was all he knew now of his father. He was wildly restless, angry, rebellious, and there were times when he wept, alone and helpless.
ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON THEhouse grew intolerable. His mother was relieving the nurse they had now to employ and the house was empty. He could not read in the tensity of waiting and yet waiting with unutterable dread for his father’s last fluttering breath. One month of the two had passed and this last month was eternity. Everything was changed. His mother was far away, wrapped in her own stern solitude of sorrow. All the people they knew—his parents’ friends, his schoolmates, everyone—were infinitely far away. He needed to see someone who knew nothing of what he was suffering, who would not ask him how his father was. He needed youth and health and life and in impetuous desperation he set forth to find it. He set out to find Chris.
“THAT AIN’T YOU, IS IT?” Chris shouted. He had grown into a burly youth, red-faced, loud-voiced,
All during the long summer he lived a double life, his own and his father’s. His own was troublesome enough, for at twelve he was large for his age and he seemed strange to himself, his feelings strange and new, his body changing, growing so fast that clothes he wore easily enough one day were too small for him a month later. His emotions quickened, whether because he knew now that his father was dying, or because his body was taking on a life of its own, his muscles strengthening, his whole being impatient for what he could not define, his penis enlarging and making its own demands on him as though it were some sort of separate being with a life separate from himself, a querulous creature whose demands he did not know how to satisfy.
His father’s weakening hold on life made him unwilling, almost ashamed, to inquire why his own life was burgeoning, and his mother, he reasoned, would not be able to understand. It was then that he thought of Chris, that early friend whom he had scarcely seen in the intervening years. Not since he had stopped going to public school had he seen Chris, except occasionally on the street. He had learned that Chris had dropped out of school and was working at his father’s gas station at South End.
South End was the opposite side of town and there was nothing to bring them together. He knew now that he and Chris belonged to different worlds, as far apart as different planets, even. He knew this and yet the knowledge made him desperate with loneliness.
The knowledge, also, that his father was dying added even more to his loneliness.
Inside his father’s gaunt frame there grew a cancer, a creature insensate and mindless, yet with a life of its own. It fed upon his father’s flesh and bones, it sucked his father’s life away, it spread its crablike tentacles farther and farther into his father’s frame until his father was the appendage and the thing the creature. His father became an image of pain, drowsy with drugs, drawing one slow breath after another until each seemed it must be the last.
And all this time the summer went on its luxuriant way, the corn growing tall, the wheat ripe, the hay cut.
“Two months—maybe,” the doctor said.
Two months—an endless time to endure, yet too swift, and his father was already out of his reach. A faint smile when he came into his father’s room, the skeleton hand reaching and clinging for a moment and then loosening, the eyes half-closed and glazed with pain, and this was all he knew now of his father. He was wildly restless, angry, rebellious, and there were times when he wept, alone and helpless.
ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON THEhouse grew intolerable. His mother was relieving the nurse they had now to employ and the house was empty. He could not read in the tensity of waiting and yet waiting with unutterable dread for his father’s last fluttering breath. One month of the two had passed and this last month was eternity. Everything was changed. His mother was far away, wrapped in her own stern solitude of sorrow. All the people they knew—his parents’ friends, his schoolmates, everyone—were infinitely far away. He needed to see someone who knew nothing of what he was suffering, who would not ask him how his father was. He needed youth and health and life and in impetuous desperation he set forth to find it. He set out to find Chris.
“THAT AIN’T YOU, IS IT?” Chris shouted. He had grown into a burly youth, red-faced, loud-voiced,
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