The Moth Read online

  What she said I can’t tell you because Mrs. Legg jumped up like she’d been hit by a thousand-volt wire, and then Margaret did and Mr. Legg did, and then they all turned to me. I shrugged and spread out my hands, like I was just as buffaloed as they were. Then we all closed in on the machine.

  “Now, Willie and Helen, the government reports that coal production for last week, final week of the month just closed, was up one and one tenth per cent above production for the preceding week, which in turn was up one and two tenths per cent for the week before that, which in turn was up one per cent for the week before that. If production last week was eight million, eighty thousand, six hundred and forty tons, what was production the first week of the month?”

  Willie began to sing it back at him: “The government reports that coal coal coal coal production for last week, final final final final final final—” She said nothing, but I could feel her eyes close and her mind focus on that abacus, while her finger tips played little tunes on her thumbs. Then, before Willie had even finished his song, she cut in with a bunch of figures.

  “Right!”

  The announcer fairly yelled it and from then on she mowed Willie down like a field of hay. By the end of the third question, he couldn’t even talk, but sat there blubbering so bad you heard somebody mutter: “Better take him out,” and that was the end of him. Then, when the announcer got chummy and said: “Well—well—well—Helen, you are a surprise. Quite a surprise! And where did you learn all this higher mathematics?” she shot it just like we had rehearsed it up: “All that I have learned or achieved I owe to my beloved teacher Miss Josephine Lamson of the Sarah Read School, East Read Street.” But I could hear the shake in her voice that said she would explode if they would all kindly step out of the way so she wouldn’t injure anybody.

  I give you one guess how that set with the family, especially with Mrs. Legg, who never let you forget those “honors” she had taken in school, and was all hot, a little too hot if you ask me, for the girls to be a “credit” to her. We all went down to WFBR with Sandy, and got Helen, and brought her back, and when we got to the hotel who should be there, all excited and waiting for us, but Miss Lamson herself, and it knocked me over, that such a small slice of nothing could have been the cause of all the fuss. She was a tiny, dowdy little woman, in a rusty black coat and felt hat, maybe sixty years old, who giggled and laughed and took it all on herself that Helen had done what she had, and never even suspected that maybe there were a couple of other angles to it. To her, it was a surprise that Helen had saved up for her, nothing more. The rest of them, I’ll say that for them, knew some pretty good coaching had been pulled, and Mr. Legg was plenty grateful. Margaret, at the picture show that night, kept whispering I was a “swell guy,” and patting my hand, and in the studio, as long as her mother left us alone together, she was awful affectionate.

  But the real celebration came next day, when Helen came up to the house as usual, and as soon as Nancy and Sheila and the Old Man had had their say, and we had the door closed she did a standing broad jump into my arms and I swung her around and we had the light scrimmage we generally led off with, meaning a general roughhouse. But it didn’t last as long as usual, and pretty soon she pushed me over on the sofa and sat down beside me and began stretching her hand over mine like it was a piano keyboard and she was trying to touch octaves. She had small, slim hands, but she was always trying to measure them against mine. “Thanks, Jack.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything. Undumbbelling me.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “But you did it.”

  “All we did was get back at Lamson. And did we—”

  I started to cackle, but she wasn’t laughing. She was looking at me in a bashful, self-conscious, ashamed kind of way, and I asked her what the trouble was. “Nothing’s the trouble. But I want you to know I get it. That I know what it was you did for me—and it’s been a lot. That’s not so nice, to be a stumble-bum. Specially to that simpleton Lamson. Isn’t she a dilly, now? Isn’t she?”

  “Well—how does it feel to be famous?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Oh yes. Locally anyway. And rich, I imagine.”

  “No. Not on radio, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But they pay! Big!”

  “If you click.”

  “Well, what do you call clicking?”

  “Willie clicks.”

  “You’ve ruined him.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll never fill his shoes ... I noticed something. I mean, last night I found out why he clicks. Jack, it’s because he’s so slow and poky and silly. When somebody that mopey can turn up with the right answers, it is amazing, not to say amusing and highly laughable. But me, I’ll just be a smart brat—that is, if they try to promote me.”

  That’s how it turned out. She got the right answers, but they didn’t tune in. But somebody like that, of course she didn’t need a tutor any more, so a little before my first summer working in the hotel I got fired. I missed her the worst way. I had got to look forward to those roughhouses.

  The summer I graduated, right after I started working regular at the hotel, Mr. Legg took a place at Gibson Island, which is on the bay not far from Annapolis. The whole family stayed down there, though of course Margaret was driving into town all the time to buy this, that, and the other for the wedding. Every week end, naturally, I’d be invited. But it turned out that Helen, once more, needed help. Because, what with having a rep as a mathematical whiz, and actually being a mathematical punk, things had got crossed up at the school, and she’d been promoted too fast, and was in trouble again, this time with algebra. I’d hate to tell you how glad I was, that they’d send her up to me, at the hotel, by Sandy every day, so I could explain to her why (a + b) (a – b) = a2 – b2, and how upset I was, one of my first week ends at the island, at what Mr. Legg had to say about the people that had taken the cottage next door: “The Finleys, one of the best families in the state, Lee Finley’s in the Fidelity and Deposit, she’s a Dawson, from Prince Georges County, the boy, Dick, goes to Gilman—I was delighted when I heard who the place had been leased to... But, Jack, that boy runs liquor. He’s in and out with that boat he’s got at all hours of the night, he has a pistol, and he’s thick with Zeke Torrance.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He runs the Log Cabin.”

  “Oh—that place near Glen Burnie?”

  “That’s the man. If Dick’s car is parked outside of there, it might be a wild boy stopping for a drink. But when Zeke is down here, it’s business, and Zeke has only one business. I complained about the pistol, but Finley only got disagreeable. It seems it’s owned under permit, and the boy uses it only for target shooting as he’s permitted to do. But—he wears it. It’s on him all the time, and he goes around with a silly grin on his face, giving a fifth-rate imitation of some character in a ninth-rate movie, and I don’t like it. And—he keeps tagging after Helen.”

  “What?”

  “‘Let’s go get a soda, ‘Let’s got to the picture show,’ ‘How about a swim’—”

  “Does she go?”

  “No. She thinks he’s funny. But—I don’t know anything in years that has made me so nervous. He keeps following her around, and looking at her.”

  The next morning was Sunday, and Margaret wanted to fish from an outboard boat they had, so I was on the porch fixing hand lines, knives, and bait, and the rest of them were out front on canvas recliners, reading the papers. I had just checked my snoods when I saw this wild-looking boy cross over from next door, in dungaree pants and rough shoes and checked shirt. He was around seventeen I would say, fairly big, and heavy sunburned, with shaggy hair and a hangdog grin. He sat down, though I didn’t notice anybody ask him to, and then Mr. Legg said something and Helen looked surprised and came inside the screened-in porch, where I was. “Well, Jack, what’s the big idea?”

  “Whose?”

  “Dad’s. ‘Go put on your beach robe.’
—?”

  “The young visitor, maybe.”

  “Dick? He’s a child.”

  “Little children got big eyes.”

  “And all this talk whenever Dick wants a date. ‘We don’t want her taken out yet, she’s much too young to be going around.’ What am I? Little Eva or something?”

  “Going around with him, maybe your father means.”

  “Well, who would?”

  “He’s got to be told something.”

  “But—”

  She looked down at herself, where she was, just a sliver of brown in a wisp of blue bathing suit, and then went inside and I could see her looking at herself in a mirror. Then she came out with the robe and began putting it on. “I don’t know my own strength, apparently.”

  I swear it happened that quick. What went in was a child, that you’d look at because she was pretty and graceful and friendly, but not for any other reason. What came out was a woman, only twelve years old yet, but one you couldn’t take your eyes off of, for all the reasons there are. She wrapped the robe around her and knotted the belt, then rolled her eyes in a resigned kind of way and went switching out there.

  By that time darling Dickie was gone, but when I got out there with my gear he was back, and had his gun on him, in a holster, over his right hip. He started to talk, but Helen kept snickering like he must be crazy, and Margaret and Mr. Legg and Mrs. Legg kept looking at each other in a nervous kind of way while he talked: “Honest, folks, I don’t think you’ve thought this thing through. I’m not taking out Helen in any formal way, you understand. I’m only asking her to the picture show tonight. It’s not like she was making her debut or something. And frankly I think it would be good for her. If you ask me, Mr. Legg, she doesn’t go out enough.”

  “I wasn’t asking you, Dick.”

  “Oh? Oh? Oh?”

  The little grin kept coming and going, and Mr. Legg kept licking his lips and looking at the gun. I don’t smoke, but there was a package of cigarettes in the sand and I picked it up and stuck a cigarette in my mouth and began slapping myself like I wanted a match. Then I stepped over toward Mr. Legg, like I would borrow one from him. Dickie paid no attention. I caught him on the chin with everything I had and he went down soft, which meant he was out. I unbuckled the holster, pulled it clear, then gave him some toe under the ribs. He rolled over. “Get up.”

  “What are you doing to me, you big—”

  “I said get up.”

  I yanked him to his feet and he staggered around a little but pretty soon he could stand. Out of the tail of my eye I could see another boy, about his age but quite a lot bigger, come out of the Finley house and stand there watching. I gave Dickie a cuff on the jaw and said: “Now you cheeky little louse, suppose you get out and stay out or there’ll be more of the same, only a lot more. And leave Helen alone. Don’t speak to her or look at her or think about her, or it’s going to be most unfortunate. And don’t bring any more guns. What do you say?”

  “So O.K., you hit me when I wasn’t looking, you—”

  I clipped him again and he went down and when he got up I impressed on his mind he was to call me sir and he did it. Then he went stumbling through the sand to his house and the pal began looking at the marks on his face. Mr. Legg said: “Thanks, Jack.”

  “Sometimes it’s the only way.”

  “I’ll take that gun. I’m making an issue with Finley about it. This thing has gone far enough.”

  “I’ll save you the trouble.”

  I swung the holster and gave it a heave and it and the gun went flapping through the air about a hundred feet out into Chesapeake Bay. That was the one dumb thing I did. Because I was no sooner unarmed than the pal said something and here the two of them come, one piling in on one side, one on the other. They hit me and I went down but jumped up and backed away. Mr. Legg said something about phoning the state police and Margaret and Mrs. Legg ran into the house. A shell clipped Dickie on the head and he ripped out some cussword and turned. My heart jumped when I saw it was Helen that had thrown it. Mr. Legg began shooing her into the house.

  All that took maybe one second, maybe two or three. After I went down, Dickie did, and his pal did, and nobody moved fast, because in the sand you slid and lurched and tripped yourself. I backed, though, some kind of way, and they plowed along after me. I felt damp sand under me and then I was in the water, and they were, but getting closer, as they could see where they were going and I couldn’t. Then I did something I’d seen linemen do on many a football field. I grabbed for their heads, but instead of headgears, I caught hair. I jerked them off their feet, and when their faces went in the water I held. They began to wriggle and kick and I held and kept on holding. Bubbles came up and the kicks got slower. By now, in addition to Mr. Legg and Helen, quite a few people, maybe seven or eight, were there, most of them yelling at me to let them have it, it served them right. Then a guy that seemed to be Dickie’s father splashed in and began shaking me and screaming I was murdering his boy. I let them up and dragged them out. They had water in their lungs and I put Pappy to working it out, with artificial respiration. When they could get up I let them have a couple of kicks and chased them out of there. Next thing, I was on the porch and Mr. Legg was pouring me a drink and people were arguing about it and it was pretty unanimous I had done a good thing for the island. Mr. Legg kept saying it was “magnificent,” and apologizing for not doing more to help me out. Then he told Helen to tell Margaret there was no need for the police, and to stop calling them, and she went inside. But before she did she gave me a funny, sidelong look, like she was seeing me for the first time. Mr. Legg kept on talking: “Jack, I can’t tell you what it did to me. I wouldn’t be capable of it in a million years, I may as well admit it.”

  “It’s mostly muscle.”

  “More than that.”

  “And practice. I’ve spilled a few guys.”

  “It’s more than muscle and more than practice. It’s—what they used to call courage and now they call guts.”

  “Well—who am I to—”

  I tilted the drink and he went on. He was, as I’ve said, a small, pink man with a little white mustache, and I don’t know how he ever expected to be much good in a fight. People began going home, and in a few minutes it was all awful quiet. Mr. Legg was worried about what Finley might be up to, and he kept watching. Then after a while he said: “Just the same, I think I’ll send her back. At the hotel Mrs. Brems will look out for her perfectly well, and if she’s not here the main source of trouble will be out of the way.”

  “You mean—Helen?”

  “Yes. I see it now. He’s showing off for her.”

  “And the rest of you will stay here?”

  “It’s not fair to ruin everybody’s summer.”

  So I sat right in the boat, watched it drift out from the bank, turn in the current, and head for Niagara Falls, without lifting a finger to stop it or steer it or sink it. What was I thinking of, to do a thing like that? Who says I was thinking? Maybe I’d lost the capacity to think. For three years I’d been living in a dead house in a dead city in a dead state, going to a dead school studying the dead history of a dead country. Maybe you’ve forgotten 1930, 1931, and 1932, but I haven’t. All the things I’d been taught, about life and love and what it was all about, those lights I was to steer by, had turned into fish scales on me until they were just stuff for guys in college to gag about when they were half shot with beer. If I’d had the money I’d earned, that might have helped, anyway until I could figure out where I was at. But it was gone, because the things my father had learned had turned to fish scales on him, and it didn’t help much that the broker had been gentleman enough to knock himself off with a gun. So I’d let myself in for this marriage I didn’t want to a girl I didn’t want and a job I didn’t want, because I had as much use for the hotel business as a fish has for grass. All the thinking I was doing, I’d say, was thinking how not to think. If that meant drifting down the stream with this child, who was
almost as unhappy as I was, it later turned out, picking flowers off the bank, listening to the bees, and watching the moon come up, then I was a sap all right, no argument about that. But all it meant at the time, so far as either one of us knew, was that it took two minds of what was weighing down two hearts, and wasn’t due to last any longer than the landing we were headed for, that would put an end to the trip. That we might shoot past it, that anything lay beyond it, never once entered my mind, and I’m sure it didn’t enter hers.

  Not that I told her anything about it, or touched her or kissed her or did anything out of line, or even wanted to, that I remember. It was just that I was with her all the time, when I lived in a misty gold dream, and when I wasn’t with her I wasn’t even living. By now, she was growing to a woman so fast it made you catch your breath. Her hair had lost that ratty, kid look it had sometimes had, and was soft and glossy over its red-gold color. There were dark circles under her eyes and she had an expression like you see in the paintings of Madonnas. Her movements, that had been quick, all slowed down, so she was the most graceful thing in skirts I think I ever saw. Every motion she made was controlled, it began the right way and ended the right way, it wasn’t too fast and it wasn’t too slow.

  I lived in the hotel now, but for the tutoring we used Margaret’s studio. Whichever shift I worked, we’d get the lessons in, and the rest of the time we’d swim in Clifton Park, where there’s a big lake they use for a pool, or go somewhere and dance, or see a picture. Mrs. Brems, the housekeeper, thought it was wonderful we should be such pals, and often put up little lunches, especially when we went swimming, so we could loaf at the pool and really enjoy ourselves. But what we did mostly, if I was free at night, was drive. We drove all over, down into southern Maryland, up into Pennsylvania, over into Virginia. But if we only had a little time we’d drive out to Lake Roland, where there was a place we could park and sit, or get out and walk around. One of those nights she touched my arm. “Jack ... up there ... in the trees.”