after all, and maybe we deserved our bad luck. Maybe it was even God warning us to
go home. What were we doing, anyway, going to look at some kid that had gotten
himself all mashed up by a freight train?
But we were doing it, and none of us wanted to stop.
We had almost reached the trestle which carried the tracks across the river
when Teddy burst into tears. It was as if a great inner tidal wave had broken through a carefully constructed set of mental dykes. No bullshit–it was that sudden and that
fierce. The sobs doubled him over like punches and he sort of collapsed into a heap,
his hands going from his stomach to the mutilated gobs of flesh that were the remains
of his ears. He went on crying in hard, violent bursts. None of us knew what the fuck
to do. It wasn’t crying like when you got hit by a line drive while you were playing
shortstop or smashed on the head playing tackle football on the common or when you
fell off your bike. There was nothing physically wrong with him. We walked away a
little and watched him, our hands in our pockets.
‘Hey, man…’ Vern said in a very thin voice. Chris and I looked at Vern
hopefully. ‘Hey, man’ was always a good start. But Vern couldn’t follow it up.
Teddy leaned forward onto the crossties and put a hand over his eyes. Now he
looked like he was doing the Allah bit -‘Salami, salami, baloney,’ as Popeye says.
Except it wasn’t funny.
At last, when the force of his crying had trailed off a little, it was Chris who
went to him.
He was the toughest guy in our gang (maybe even tougher than Jamie Gallant,
I thought privately), but he was also the guy who made the best peace. He had a way
about it. I’d seen him sit down on the curb next to a little kid with a scraped knee, a kid he didn’t even fucking know, and get him talking about something–the Shrine
Circus that was coming to town or Huckleberry Hound on TV–until the kid forgot he
was supposed to be hurt. Chris was good at it. He was tough enough to be good at it.
‘Listen, Teddy, what do you care what a fat old pile of shit like him said about
your father? Huh? I mean, sincerely! That don’t change nothing, does it? What a fat
old pile of shit like him says? Huh? Huh? Does it?’
Teddy shook his head violently. It changed nothing. But to hear it spoken of in
bright daylight, something must have gone over and over in his mind while he was
lying awake in bed and looking at the moon off centre in one windowpane, something
he must have thought about in his slow and broken way until it seemed almost holy,
trying to make sense out of it, and then to have it brought home to him that everybody else had merely dismissed his dad as a loony… that had rocked him. But it changed
nothing. Nothing.
‘He still stormed the beaches at Normandy, right?’ Chris said. He picked up one of Teddy’s sweaty, grimy hands and patted it.
Teddy nodded fiercely, crying. Snot was running out of his nose.
‘Do you think that pile of shit was at Normandy?’
Teddy shook his head violently. ‘Nuh-Nuh-No?’
‘Do you think that guy knows you?’
‘Nuh-No! No, b-b-but-‘
‘Or your father? He one of your father’s buddies?’
‘NO!’ Angry, horrified at the thought. Teddy’s chest heaved and more sobs
came out of it.
He had pushed his hair away from his ears and I could see the round brown
plastic button of the hearing aid set in the middle of the right one. The shape of the hearing aid made more sense than the shape of his ear, if you get what I mean.
Chris said calmly, ‘Talk is cheap.’
Teddy nodded, still not looking up.
‘And whatever’s between you and your old man, talk can’t change that.’
Teddy’s head shook without definition, unsure if this was true. Someone had
redefined his pain, and redefined it in shockingly common terms. That would (loony)