The Hunter and Other Stories Part 31

Felix asked Christina, "Does he always talk like this?"

"Not if he means no."

Wally, working on his pistol again, said, "He's got carbon paper blood in him."

Felix straightened up and looked at Christina's costume. "Still live in the water?"

"It's one of the few things I'm still young enough for." She was thirty-one. "How about a swim before it starts raining?"

"Isn't it chilly?"

"Not yet. South America hasn't dried you out that much."

"OK, I'm as willing to risk pneumonia as anybody else. Where are my things?"

"You've got Saint George's room. Ines has been using your old one since she got sick. If you haven't got trunks-"

"I've got them. I'll be right with you." He went upstairs.

Jim said, "I'm glad to see Felix, but by G.o.d he's as hard to get along with as ever."

Christina said, "Tell him we're swimming in the cove and to bring a towel for himself. Come on Morgan." We went out. On the porch she asked, "Did I ever tell you what I really think of your brother Jim? Or do you want to make something of it?"

"Not me."

"I wish all my step-children were like you."

"Most of them are all right."

"I know it," she said and patted my arm through the towels I was carrying. "I just say those things. I'm going to be a nasty old woman."

On the edge of the corn field Gene Frozen was boring a hole down the center of a stump. He was a dark stern-faced thirty-year-old Negro of medium height who looked fat but wasn't. And, boy, could he box! He pulled at his cap and said, "Morning, Mrs. Clerk; morning, Mr. Morgan."

"Good morning," Christina said. "What are you doing now?"

"Fixing to burn these stumps out in the spring." He liked to explain things. "I put some saltpeter and water in these holes and plug them up till spring and then I put in a little bit of coal oil and set fire to it and it burns them out right down to China, roots and all." He looked at me. "I thought I saw a mink running along the sea-wall down by the point this morning."

Christina said, "A rubber one, I hope, that I can stretch into a coat."

"His fur wouldn't be much good this time of year." He stopped smiling. "But he's not going to do the chickens and rabbits much good either."

"Well," I said, "let's try to get him."

We went on down to the cove. The sky was grey and low and made the water look colder than it was and across the Sound, Long Island was a vague band of mist. I took off the pants and s.h.i.+rt I had on over my trunks-I was barefoot-and waited for Christina to finish tucking her hair under the yellow cap again.

"Morgan, how long does it take to get up here from Chile?" she asked as she came down to the water.

"I don't know, what with planes and all. Ask Felix."

"It doesn't matter," she said.

We swam out in the general direction of Long Island, fast until we were warmed up, and then back more slowly, and were floating on our backs in the cove when Felix arrived. He asked how the water was and we a.s.sured him it was all right, but pretended our teeth were chattering. He and I raced out to the nearest oyster bed marker and back. I beat him, but he made me work to do it.

"Through school yet?" he asked as we stood up puffing a little in the shallow water.

"Yes, this year. You've lost weight, haven't you?"

"Not much. I'm around a hundred and fifty-five. What do you weigh now?"

"A hundred and ninety, a couple of pounds one way or the other."

"Did that make you a football player?"

"Only when enough people ahead of me got hurt." I had done better at basketball.

Christina had gone up on the beach and was drying herself.

"What are you going to do now?" Felix asked me.

"I don't know. I'd like to paint, but I don't think I'd be good enough. I like farming too."

"You're young enough to make stabs at a couple of things before you decide what you want. How does Papa feel about it?"

"He's all right. He'll let me do what I want, but I don't know."

Christina had put on her robe and was sitting on a rock lighting a cigarette. "Cigarettes?" she asked.

We said yes, she lit them for us, and we went up on the sand to let her stick them into our mouths.

Felix sat down cross-legged beside Christina's rock and looked up at me through smoke he was blowing out. "He likes you, doesn't he?"

"Papa? I guess so."

Christina said, "You guess so?"

I said, "He likes all of us. I mean-I never understood why you and he-"

"Sh-h-h," Felix said. "There's his wife."

Christina stood up and ground her cigarette into the sand with the toe of one sandal. "If his wife stays here any longer she'll be too weak from starvation to carry tales. Don't be too long, breakfast must be almost ready by now."

When she had pa.s.sed out of sight where the path bent around the tulip tree Felix asked, "What's really bothering you?"

"About you and Papa?"

"No."

"Oh, the other. I don't know. It's such a mixed-up world. What's going to happen, Felix?"

"Where?"

"In Europe, and here. Is there-?" I felt myself turning red. "I don't even know how to ask questions."

Felix stood up, reached for one of the towels on the rock and began to rub himself with it. "When you know what questions to ask you know practically everything."

I tried again. "What I mean is that I like farming, but economically it's not so hot and isn't likely to be. I don't mean that I want to make a lot of money. I don't care much about that, but-well-it's kind of out of the main stream the way I'd be doing it, and I guess I feel the same way about painting. What I'm trying to say is that they'd be all right if everything was settled-or reasonably settled-but with things happening in the world the way they are and still more to come I wouldn't want to be up a blind alley. I guess I mean I'd want to be part of my times. Does that sound silly?"

He nodded. "A little bit, but what you mean isn't silly."

When I bent over to take off my trunks a couple of raindrops fell on my back. I wrung out my trunks and began to dry myself. Felix found a thin flat stone and spun it out across the surface of the water, making it skip twice. Wally's voice at its loudest came from the house, making a long-drawn-out word of "Breakfast."

I called back, "Coming," and put on the trunks again with my s.h.i.+rt and pants over them.

Felix said, "A lot of things are going to happen."

Because I still felt embarra.s.sed I asked quickly, "What are they going to do in Czechoslovakia?" and then hoped he wouldn't think I was cutting him short.

"It'll depend on the people-Czech, French, and British. It usually does."

"You think the governments-"

"Governments act as badly as people will let them." He put his towel over his bare shoulders and we started toward the house. "I'm talking in epigrams this morning. It's a shame you haven't got a pencil. We'll have time to talk about this."

"Sure," I said.

Papa came around the house and stopped on the porch steps to wait for us, though neither he nor Felix looked at the other. Felix went on indoors. Papa asked me, "What did we get for the apples?"

"A dollar and a quarter a basket. We ought to average around a dollar seventy-five for the cauliflower, if the truck strike in New York doesn't fix us."

He nodded. "Are you going to be around this afternoon?"

"If you want me. I was going over to Doctor Klauber's for lunch."

"No, go ahead, son," he said. "She seems like a nice healthy girl."

I laughed and said, "She wants to get in the movies and/or marry a millionaire."

"All young girls have notions," he told me as I followed him into the house.

Christina, now in tan skirt and beige sweater, was saying, "Let Felix get some clothes on so we can eat."

He said, "Don't wait for me," disentangled himself from Alice and Sue and went upstairs three steps at a time.

Alice and Sue were identical twins-though anybody could tell them apart-and were just a couple of weeks past their sixteenth birthday. Alice was very secretly engaged to a boy named Painter who spent most of his time tinkering with outboard motors until he had them in shape to swap them for better ones and then fixing those up to trade for still better ones and so on and on. There must have been something wrong with his system somewhere or he would have owned the Queen Mary's engines by this time. n.o.body knew about the engagement except people Alice talked to. Sue was the dominant partner in the twins.h.i.+p: Wally thought she had designs on a boy of her own and had made Alice snare Painter so she could see how an engagement at that age worked out before risking such a serious step herself. I didn't think she was that subtle.

end.