She was at ease, studying him; he hung on to the rake handle and stared back at her.
“I’m surprised to see you,” Nancy said. “Bob Junior doesn’t scare you?”
“If I want to stay around here, I guess it’s up to me.”
“How did you get the job?”
“I don’t know. The guy offered it to me.”
“For the summer?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“You’re not too sure of much, are you?”
He stared at her, waiting for the words, and she stared back at him. He had never had trouble talking to people, especially girls, and the feeling tightened him up. He didn’t like it and he thought, What are you being so nice for?
Nancy kept watching him, not smiling or rubbing it in, but watching him. She said, “Do you want to start over?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan said.
“You could come to my house and play.” She raised her arm and pointed. “That way, almost a mile. White stairs and a lamppost at the top.”
“I guess Mr. Ritchie’s not here.”
“Nope.”
“Who’s there with you? I mean, a maid or something?”
“Nobody.”
“Don’t you get scared, alone?”
She shook her head, touching her hair again. “I like it.”
“What do you do?”
“Different things.”
“Like what?”
“Come tonight and find out.”
“I don’t know.”
He watched her shrug and turn away. She was expecting him to say something. He was sure she was waiting for it and that was good. He watched her walk off waiting for it, not able to look back now. They could shake their tail and expect the guy to sit up, but he had done enough sitting up for one day. She’d come by this afternoon or tomorrow, same time, same station. So why get excited? Right?
You’re damn right, Ryan thought.
ONCE WHEN JACK RYAN WAS THIRTEEN, he hung from the roof of their apartment building, four stories above the alley, to see if he could do it. The first time he tried it, he didn’t hang all the way. He sat down on the edge, in the back of the building where there was no cornice, and rolled over and held on with his chest and forearms, his face close to the dry tar surface of the roof and his legs over the side. He pushed himself up, pressing his hands flat, until he could hook a knee over the edge and the rest was easy. He walked around the roof for a while, taking little breaths and letting his hands hang limp and flexing the fingers, the way a sprinter does before he turns and walks over to his lane and sets himself on the starting block. It was a summer morning and he was alone on the roof, above the round tops of the elms and the peaks of the houses and the chimneys and television antennas. He could hear cars on Woodward Avenue a half black away and a car below him in the alley moving slowly, squeaking, taking a long time to pass the building. When he was ready, he moved to the edge of the roof again and sat down with his legs hanging. He could do it and knew he could do it if he was careful and didn’t let himself get scared or do anything dumb. But just knowing he could do it wasn’t enough.
After, he would put on his dark blue sweatshirt with the cut-off sleeves and his baseball cap that was creased and squared the right way and go to Ford Field for practice. He would stand seven feet off third base in the sun and dust during batting practice and, with each pitch, crouch a little with his arms hanging loose, then wait for the next pitch, adjusting the squared cap, looking down at the good pocket in the Japanese glove and smoothing the ground in front of him with the toe of his spikes.
After practice and after lunch, sometime in the afternoon, he would bring some guys up on the roof and before they knew what he was doing he would be hanging from the eaves trough, four stories up. He could see their faces as he pulled himself up.
Do it or don’t do it, he thought, sitting there that morning, and he did it: rolled over on his stomach and let himself down gradually, holding the edge of the trough, which was round and comfortable in his hand and didn’t sag, until his arms were stiff above him, his toes pointing to the alley. Count to ten, he thought. He counted to five slowly, then began counting faster and almost started to pull himself up too quickly. But he made himself relax again and pulled himself up slowly, carefully, until his arms were over the edge and he was lying on his chest.
When he was up, away from the edge of the roof, he thought: Why tell anybody? If you can do it and know you can, what more do you want? That was a funny thing, he never did tell anybody or even hint at it. He kept it to himself. But every once in a while he would take it out and think about it.
He thought about it several times that morning while he raked the beach.
“If you’re not doing anything tonight,” Mr. Majestyk said, “stop in and watch some TV.”
“I don’t know. I might do something.”
“What’s her name?” Mr. Majestyk grinned, sticking a hunk of pork chop in his mouth. Chewing it, he said, “
“I’ve seen it.”
Donna had set the table on the porch: pork chops, scalloped potatoes, peas, applesauce, beer, homemade bread, fruit Jell-O for dessert. Ryan could hear her in the kitchen doing the pans.
“It reminds me of when I was in the service,” Mr. Majestyk said. “It isn’t real,
“I think so,” Ryan said.
“C.B. Construction Battalion. We maintained this airstrip on Los Negros in the Admiralty Islands. You ever hear of it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“New Guinea?”
Ryan nodded. He could picture it on the map, above Australia.
“Okay, north of New Guinea maybe four hundred miles,” Mr. Majestyk said. “That’s the Admiralties. We’d take and make bracelets and watchbands, you know, I.D. bracelets-all out of stainless or aluminum and put in these cat-eyes you get from the gooks. Little round stone like half a marble, brown, black, and white, maybe some green. Then we’d sell this junk to the Navy Air Force guys and, Christ, clean up. Just junk, but the hotshots would trade you a bottle of whiskey you could get thirty-five bucks for, for a piece of junk. The First Cavalry, they secured the island before we got there. But not on horses.”
“They’re in Vietnam,” Ryan said. “I know they don’t have any horses.”
“This place,” Mr. Majestyk said, “they went in I think on the west side of the island, where it was all coconut trees and crap; then these Seabees would knock the goddamn coconut trees down with bulldozers to cut machine gun lanes. There was a story-these guys, the First Cavalry, were still there before they went up to the Philippines and we used to sell them all kinds of crap-they were trying to take the airstrip, dug in on one side, and these
