all hours of the day and evening to the stores on Ridge Street. There were no parking lots in the middle of town, no need for them, and no shopping center or aluminum custard stand flanked by a miniature golf course and a driving range. There were many small hills, nagging little curves instead of neat intersections, and the sight of headlights picking out trees through low fog was, to a boy, something beautiful and rare, for the car was alien to this environment, its passage difficult and bizarre. Most of the people who lived in Old Holly worked there as well, tradesmen, factory hands, professional men, and the train depot was never crowded at the regular commuter hours. We were a town then, American in our outlook, plain and meat-eating, relatively unhurried, willing to die for our country, or for photographs of our country.
Harkavy Clinton Bell, my father's father, spent the last seven years of his life in Old Holly. Before retiring he had been one of advertising's early legends, the second man to use a coupon in a newspaper ad. It was he who left the house to my father. I was six when we moved from West End Avenue; Jane was nine and Mary ten. I was happy there as a child. It was a house of dubious architectural parentage, a bastard house, a stray, to be loved as mongrels are. Harkavy's portrait was over the mantelpiece, misty hills behind his head, and he looked like Mona Lisa's corrupt uncle. I filled my room with fishing rods, college pennants, baseballs and model planes.
Winter of my twelfth year.
The boys vanished in the heavy snow. I ran inside and took off my boots, coat and hat. I was always running then and I was always leaving on my hat till last. I stood by the window and watched the snow pile up. It was the first snowfall of the year, filling the evening with silence and falling heaviest inside the light of the streetlamps. A parked car was covered, humped in white, and nothing moved but soft light across sleeves of snow on the branches of every tree. It was warm inside the house and I could hear my mother and older sister preparing dinner. Soon my father came home and I ran to greet him. He stood in the hallway, big and pink, shaking off snow, clapping his gloves together, breathing smoke. After dinner I went back to the window and chewed on homemade cookies. Mary washed the dishes; Jane drew a picture of my mother with chalk on a slate; my father turned the pages of a magazine; the radiator whistled. All these sounds in the warm house, of water running and steam, of shrill chalk and the rustling of paper, of voices known and of time moving down the grandfather clock, all these, inflections of the house itself, all-comforting and essential, told me that I was safe.
And then the first sound of men with shovels was heard.
I could not see them but I knew they were out there, bulky men folded behind their shovels. The shovels chipped at ice, scraped on concrete, and my father began to get interested. He stirred and put down the magazine. My mother quoted something she had read the day before, grim statistics about shoveling snow and heart attacks, about pneumonia, sprained backs, broken hips. My father said he had a long way to go before he started worrying about such things and in a little while he got up and put on his coat. There is no denying a man who wants to shovel snow.
Outside a car went by, slowly, wipers working, and then my father emerged from the basement with the shovel. I could see three streetlamps from the window and each beam of light brimmed with snow. Soon it would be Christmas and there would be visitors and gifts and too much food. And if we were lucky enough to have snow then it was that much better because there was nothing ahead but school and the bleak dark months before the first true day of spring. But it was too early to look forward to spring because there was still Christmas ahead. The worst stretch was after Christmas. It was a long time to spring and there was nothing but school. My mother began to cry.
I went outside and stood by the gate. My father was shoveling snow and didn't see me and all up and down the street other men were shoveling and not talking and they were all breathing smoke and in the quiet and unfaltering tenor of the snow they Looked like ancient men engaged in timeless professions, shepherds in a field or patient fishermen whose lines sprawl in the water of a winter lake. The night air was keen and thin. No cars passed and it was too cold now for walking your dog or for boys testing the snow for its snowball qualities. I wanted to do some shoveling myself but there was only one shovel and it was something I knew my father enjoyed so I let it go. I thought of all the people in town I liked and all those I didn't like. I imagined myself crawling through the woods, a commando, with a knife between my teeth. It was hot and the jungle birds were screaming. I moved up to the house on my belly through the trees. It was the doctor's house, Weber's, and I climbed through the window. He came downstairs and I stood behind the kitchen door. He walked in and reached for the light-switch and then quickly, hand over mouth, knife to throat, softly, softly, whispering my vengeance to his warm ear, I killed him.
In the snow now the joyous men shoveled. I went up the stairs and felt something hit me in the back. I turned and saw my father shaking the snow from his hands and smiling. I waited until he returned the shovel to the basement. Then we went into the house together.
My best friend was Tommy Valerio. Whenever I went to his house, his mother would squeeze my cheeks and rub her knuckles on my head. It used to embarrass me and soon I found excuses to stay away. When Tommy was sixteen his father died of a heart attack and Tommy took possession of the family car, a '46 Chevy. We kept a bayonet under the front seat. We didn't have licenses and Tommy used to sit on a pillow when he was driving so that he would look taller and therefore older. One day he told me that the police chief's youngest daughter, Kathy, was available for experiments of all kinds. We drove her over to the yacht club and took turns in the back seat. She chewed gum throughout. The police chief's name was Brandon Lovell. He and my father used to shoot skeet together. I was going to prep school in New Hampshire but I was home about six weekends that winter and there would always be one afternoon in the yacht club parking lot. One Saturday I borrowed the car and drove over to the drugstore on Ridge Street. Kathy was there and I took her to the lot. She told me that her father used to walk around the house naked. That was why her two older sisters had left home. Once he wore his gunbelt and holster and nothing else and fired six bullets into the sofa. I asked her who she liked better and she said Tommy. I took the bayonet out from under the seat and asked her again. I didn't know whether I was kidding or not. She said Tommy. I hit her in the jaw with the blunt end of the bayonet and threw her out of the car.
That summer, with my father's consent, I got a junior driver's license. He owned an MG at the time and we went driving almost every weekend. One night he agreed to lend me the car even though I wasn't supposed to drive after dark. I told him that a friend of mine from Larchmont, a classmate, had just died of amnesia, and this was the last night of the wake. I had spent a long time working out the minor details of the lie but he gave me the keys without asking questions. There was a movie I had to see.
I sat through it twice. During the intermission an usher came around with a tin can for the heart fund. It was even better the second time. There was an immensity to Burt which transcended plot, action, characterization. In my mind he would be forever caught in that peculiar gray silveriness of the movie screen, his body radiating a slight visual static. I saw him in person once at Yankee Stadium and even then, before he left in the fourth inning because the autograph hunters would not leave him alone, even then, in civvies and dark shades, Burt was the supreme topkick, inseparable from the noisy destinies of 1941. I was glad I had not asked anyone to come to the movies with me. This was religion and it needed privacy. I drove home slowly. My father followed me up to my room. I was sitting on the bed, one shoe just off, still in my hand, when he entered.
'How could anybody die of amnesia?' he said.
'Amnesia? I thought I said anemia.'
'You said amnesia, sport. I didn't realize it till you left. But even granting you meant anemia, the question still goes. Who dies of anemia today? Didn't this friend of yours get enough to eat?'
'It's a blood thing, dad. It has nothing to do with malnutrition. The red corpuscles don't get enough hemoglobin. Something like that.'
'You were out with that little piece of tail, weren't you? Lovell's daughter. If you don't get the clap off her, you'll never get it. That's dynamite you're fooling around with, pally. Lovell's a friend of mine but he's got some kind of maniac inside him. Some big mean redneck waving a shotgun. If he finds out you're fooling around with his daughter, he'll blow your head off. What I'm giving you is sound advice based on a pragmatic interpretation of the facts as I see them. I'm not moralizing, Dave. That's your mother's department. Listen to your old man. Have I ever given you a bum steer?'
'I went to the movies,' I said.
'Yeah.'
'It's the truth this time.'
'Let's forget it.'
'Can I drink beer at the dinner table from now on?'
