brother herself and knows exactly what pretty Ellie has to put up with, wants to crack up but manages to keep a straight face. And that’s good. This girl’s a prisoner of her time and her age, the same as anyone else, which means that all of this is perfectly serious to her. Ellie hands her brother a can of Pepsi. “We’ll split the candybar outside,” she says.

“You’re gonna pull me in Buster,” Ralph says as they start toward the door, walking into the brilliant oblong of sun that falls through the window like fire. “Gonna pull me in Buster all the way back home.”

“Like hell I am,” Ellie says, but as she opens the door, Brother Boogersnot turns and gives Cynthia a smug look which says Wait and see who wins this one. You just wait and see. Then they go out.

Summer yes, but not just summer; we are talking July 15th, the very rooftree of summer, in an Ohio town where most kids go to Vacation Bible School and participate in the Summer Reading Program at the Public Library, and where one kid has just got to have a little red wagon which he has named (for reasons only he will ever know) Buster. Eleven houses and one convenience store simmering in that bright bald midwestern July glare, ninety degrees in the shade, ninety-six in the sun, hot enough that the air shimmers above the pavement as if over an open incinerator.

The block runs north-south, odd-numbered houses on the Los Angeles side of the street, even-numbered ones on the New York side. At the top, on the western corner of Poplar and Bear Street, is 251 Poplar. Brad Josephson is out front, using the hose to water the flowerbeds beside the front path. He is forty-six, with gorgeous chocolate skin and a long, sloping gut. Ellie Carver thinks he looks like Bill Cosby… a little bit, anyway. Brad and Belinda Josephson are the only black people on the block, and the block is damned proud to have them. They look just the way people in suburban Ohio like their black people to look, and it makes things just right to see them out and about. They’re nice folks. Everyone likes the Josephsons.

Gary Ripton, who delivers the Wentworth Shopper on Monday afternoons, comes pedaling around the corner and tosses Brad a rolled-up paper. Brad catches it deftly with the hand that isn’t holding the hose. Never even moves. Just up with the hand and whoomp, there it is.

“Good one, Mr Josephson!” Gary calls, and pedals on down the hill with his canvas sack of papers bouncing on his hip. He is wearing an oversized Orlando Magic jersey with Shaq’s number, 32, on it.

“Yep, I ain’t lost it yet,” Brad says, and tucks the nozzle of the hose under his arm so he can open the weekly handout and see what’s on the front page. It’ll be the same old crap, of course-yard sales and community puffery-but he wants to get a look, anyway. Just human nature, he supposes. Across the street, at 250, Johnny Marinville is sitting on his front step, playing his guitar and singing along. One of the world’s dumber folk-songs, but Marinville plays well, and although no one will ever mistake him for Marvin Gaye (or Perry Como, for that matter), he can carry a tune and stay in key. Brad has always found this slightly offensive; a man who’s good at one thing should be content with that and let the rest of it go, Brad feels.

Gary Ripton, fourteen, crewcut, plays backup shortstop for the Wentworth American Legion team (the Hawks, currently 14-4 with two games left to play), tosses the next Shopper on to the porch of 249, the Soderson place. The Josephsons are the Poplar Street Black Couple; the Sodersons, Gary and Marielle, are the Poplar Street Bohemians. On the scales of public opinion, the Sodersons pretty much balance each other. Gary is, by and large, a helpout kind of guy, and liked by his neighbours in spite of the fact that he’s at least half-lit nearly all of the time. Marielle, however… well, as Pie Carver has been known to say, “There’s a word for women like Marielle; it rhymes with the one for how you kick a football.”

Gary’s throw is a perfect bank shot, bouncing the Shopper off the Soderson front door and landing it spang on the Soderson welcome mat, but no one comes out to get it; Marielle is inside taking a shower (her second of the day; she hates it when the weather gets sticky like this), and Gary is out back, absent-mindedly fueling the backyard barbecue, eventually loading it with enough briquets to flash-fry a water buffalo. He is wearing an apron with the words YOU MAY KISS THE COOK on the front. It’s too early to start the steaks, but it’s never too early to get ready. There is an umbrella-shaded picnic table in the middle of the Soderson backyard, and standing on it is Gary’s portable bar: a bottle of olives, a bottle of gin, and a bottle of vermouth. The bottle of vermouth has not been opened. A double martini stands in front of it. Gary finishes overloading the barbecue, goes to the table, and swallows what’s left in the glass. He is very partial to martinis, and tends to be in the bag by four o’clock or so on most days when he doesn’t have to teach. Today is no exception.

“All right,” Gary says, “next case.” He then proceeds to make another Soderson Martini. He does this by a) filling his martini glass to the three-quarters point with Bombay gin; b) popping in an Amati olive; c) tipping the rim of the glass against the unopened bottle of vermouth for good luck.

He tastes; closes his eyes; tastes again. His eyes, already quite red, open. He smiles. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen!” he tells his simmering backyard. “We have a winner!”

Faintly, over all the other sounds of summer-kids, mowers, muscle-cars, sprinklers, singing bugs in the baked grass of his back yard-Gary can hear the writer’s guitar, a sweet and easy sound. He picks out the tune almost at once and dances around the circle of shade thrown by the umbrella with his glass in his hand, singing along: “So kiss me and smile for me… Tell me that you’ll wait for me… Hold me like you’ll never let me go…”

A good tune, one he remembers from before the Reed twins two houses down were even thought of, let alone born. For just a moment he is struck by the reality of time’s passage, how stark it is, and unappealable. It passes the ear with a sound like iron. He takes another big sip of his martini and wonders what to do now that the barbecue is ready for liftoff. Along with the other sounds he can hear the shower upstairs, and he thinks of Marielle naked in there-the bitch of the western world, but she’s kept her body in good shape. He thinks of her soaping her breasts, maybe caressing her nipples with the tips of her fingers in a circular motion, making them hard. Of course she’s doing nothing of the damned kind, but it’s the sort of image that just won’t go away unless you do something to pop it. He decides to be a twentieth-century version of St George; he will fuck the dragon instead of slaying it. He puts his martini glass down on the picnic table and starts for the house.

Oh gosh, it’s summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime, and on Poplar Street the living is easy.

Gary Ripton checks his rearview mirror for traffic, sees none, and swerves easterly across the street to the Carver house. He hasn’t bothered with Mr Marinville because, at the start of the summer, Mr Marinville gave him five dollars not to deliver the Shopper. “Please, Gary,” he said, his eyes solemn and earnest. “I can’t read about another supermarket opening or drugstore jamboree. It’ll kill me if I do.” Gary doesn’t understand Mr Marinville in the slightest, but he is a nice enough man, and five bucks is five bucks.

Mrs Carver opens the front door of 248 Poplar and waves as Gary easy-tosses her the Shopper. She grabs for it, misses completely, and laughs. Gary laughs with her. She doesn’t have Brad Josephson’s hands, or reflexes, but she’s pretty and a hell of a good sport. Her husband is beside the house, wearing his bathing suit and flipflops, washing the car. He catches a glimpse of Gary out of the corner of his eye, turns, points a finger. Gary points one right back, and they pretend to shoot each other. This is Mr Carver’s crippled but game effort to be cool, and Gary respects that. David Carver works for the post office, and Gary figures he must be on vacation this week. The boy makes a vow to himself: if he has to settle for a regular nine-to-five job when he grows up (he knows that, like diabetes and kidney failure, this does happen to some people), he will never spend his vacation at home, washing his car in the driveway.

I’m not going to have a car, anyway, he thinks. Going to have a motorcycle. No Japanese bike, either. Big damn old Harley-Davidson like the one Mr Marinville keeps in his garage. American steel.

He checks the rearview again and catches sight of something bright red up on Bear Street beyond the Josephson place-a van, it looks like, parked just beyond the southwestern corner of the intersection-and then swoops his Schwinn back across the street again, this time to 247, the Wyler place.

Of the occupied houses on the street (242, the old Hobart place, is vacant), the Wyler place is the only one which even approaches seedy-it’s a small ranch-style home that could use a fresh coat of paint, and a fresh coat of seal on the driveway. There’s a sprinkler twirling on the lawn, but the grass is still showing the effects of the hot, dry weather in a way the other lawns on the street (including the lawn of the vacant Hobart house, actually) are not. There are yellow patches, small right now but spreading.

She doesn’t know that water isn’t enough, Gary thinks, reaching into his canvas bag for another rolled-up Shopper. Her husband might've, but-

He suddenly realizes that Mrs Wyler (he guesses that widows are still called Mrs) is standing inside the screen door, and something about seeing her there, hardly more than a silhouette, startles him badly. He wobbles on his bike for a moment, and when he throws the rolled-up paper his usually accurate aim is way off. The Shopper lands atop one of the shrubs flanking the front steps. He hates doing that, hates it, it’s like some stupid comedy show where the paperboy is always throwing the Daily Bugle on to the roof or into the rosebushes-har-har, paperboys with bad aim, wotta scream-and on a different day (or at a different house) he might have gone back to rectify the error… maybe even put the paper in the lady’s hand himself with a smile and a nod and a have a nice day. Not today, though. There’s something here he doesn’t like. Something about the way she’s standing inside the screen door, shoulders slumped and hands dangling, like a kid’s toy with the batteries pulled. And that’s maybe not all that’s out of kilter, either. He can’t see her well enough to be sure, but he thinks maybe Mrs Wyler is naked from the waist up, that she’s standing there in her front hall wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Standing there and staring at him.

If so, it’s not sexy. It’s creepy.

The kid that stays with her, her nephew, that little weasel’s creepy, too. Seth Garland or Garin or something like that. He never talks, not even if you talk to him-hey, how you doin, you like it around here, you think the Indians’ll make it to the Series again-just looks at you with his mud-colored eyes. Looks at you the way Gary feels Mrs Wyler, who is usually nice, is looking at him now. Like step into my parlor said the spider to the fly, like that. Her husband died last year (right around the time the Hobarts had that trouble and moved away, now that he thinks of it), and people say it wasn’t an accident. People say that Herb Wyler, who collected stamps and had once given Gary an old air rifle, committed suicide.

Gooseflesh-somehow twice as scary on a day as hot as this one-ripples up his back and he banks back across the street after another cursory look into the rearview mirror. The red van is still up there near the corner of Bear and Poplar (some spiffy rig, the boy thinks), and this time there is a vehicle coming down the street, as well, a blue Acura Gary recognizes at once. It’s Mr Jackson, the block’s other teacher. Not high school in his case, however; Mr Jackson is actually Professor Jackson, or maybe it’s just Assistant Professor Jackson. He teaches at Ohio State, go you Buckeyes. The Jacksons live at 244, one up from the old Hobart place. It’s the nicest house on the block, a roomy Cape Cod with a high hedge on the downhill side and a high cedar stake fence on the uphill side, between them and the old veterinarian’s place.

“Yo, Gary!” Peter Jackson says, pulling up beside him. He’s wearing faded jeans and a tee-shirt with a big yellow smile-face on it. HAVE A NICE DAY! Mr Smiley-Smile is saying. “How’s it going, bad boy?”

“Great, Mr Jackson,” Gary says, smiling. He thinks of adding Except that I think Mrs Wyler’s standing in her door back there with her shirt off and then doesn’t. “Everything’s super-cool.”

“Are you starting any games yet?”

“Only two so far, but that’s okay. I got a couple of innings last night, and I’ll probably get a couple more tonight. It’s really all I hoped for. But it’s Frankie Albertini’s last year in Legion, you know.” He holds out a rolled copy of the Shopper.

“That’s right,” Peter says, taking it. “And next year it’s Monsieur Gary Rip ton’s turn to howl at shortstop.”

The boy laughs, tickled at the idea of standing out there at short in his Legion uniform and howling like a werewolf. “You teaching summer school again this year?”

“Yep. Two classes. Historical Plays of Shakespeare, plus James Dickey and the New Southern Gothic. Either sound interesting to you?”

“I think I’ll pass.”

Peter nods seriously. “Pass and you’ll never have to go to summer school, bad boy.” He taps the smile-face on his shirt. “They loosen up on the teacher dress-code a little come June, but summer school’s still a drag. Same as it ever was.” He drops the rolled-up Shopper on to the seat and pulls the Acura’s transmission lever down into drive. “Don’t give yourself a heatstroke pedaling around the neighbourhood with those papers.”

“Nah. I think it’s gonna rain later, anyway. I keep hearing thunder off and on.”

“That’s what they say on the-watch out!”

A large furry shape bullets by, chasing a red disc. Gary leans his bike over toward Mr Jackson’s car and is just feathered by Hannibal’s tail as the German Shepherd chases after the Frisbee.

He’s the one you ought to warn about heatstroke,” Gary says.

“Maybe you’re right,” Peter says, and drives slowly on.

Gary watches Hannibal snatch the Frisbee off the sidewalk on the far side of the street and turn with it in his mouth. He has a jaunty bandanna tied around his neck and appears to be wearing a big old doggy grin.

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