Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [16]
Naturally, this would have to be an educational experience. There were bound to be lectures and criticisms attached. Cody sighed and lowered the bow. His father stooped to put his shoe on, squirming his foot in without undoing the laces, the way Cody’s mother hated. The heel of his black rayon sock was worn so thin it was translucent. Cody looked off in another direction. He was fourteen years old—too big to be dragged on family outings any more and definitely too big for bows and arrows, unless of course you’d just leave the equipment to him and his friends, alone, and let them horse around or have themselves a contest or shatter windowpanes and streetlights for the hell of it. How did his father come up with these ideas? This was turning out to be even less successful than most. Cody’s mother, who was not the slightest bit athletic, picked dried flowers beside a fence. His little sister buttoned her sweater with chapped and bluish hands. His brother, Ezra, eleven years old, chewed a straw and hummed. He was missing his whistle, no doubt—a bamboo pipe, with six finger holes, on which he played tunes almost ceaselessly. He’d smuggled it along but their father had made him leave it in the car.
At this moment, Cody’s two best friends were attending a movie: Air Force, with John Garfield and Faye Emerson. Cody would have given anything to be with them.
“Now, your left arm goes like this,” his father said, positioning him. “You want to keep your wrist from getting stung, you see. And stand up straight. It was archery gave us our notions of proper posture; says so in the instruction book. Used to be that people slouched around any old how, all except the archers. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?”
No, he didn’t know that. He stood like something made of clay while his father poked him here and prodded him there, molding him into shape. “In the olden days …” his father said.
Cody let go of the bowstring. Thwack. The arrow hit the edge of the target, more sidewise than endwise, bounced off harmlessly and fell among the tree roots. “Now! What’d you go and do that for?” his father asked him. “Did I tell you to shoot yet? Did I?”
“It slipped,” said Cody.
“Slipped!”
“And anyhow, it couldn’t have stuck in the target. Not with that hard fat tree trunk behind it.”
“It most certainly could have,” his father said. “Like always, you just had to jump on in. Impulsive. Had to have it your way. When are you going to start keeping a better rein on yourself?”
Cody’s father (who never kept any sort of rein on himself whatsoever, as Cody’s mother constantly reminded him) lunged off toward the target, muttering and grabbing fistfuls of weed heads which he then threw away. Seeds and dry hulls spangled the air around him. “Willful boy; never listens. Don’t know why I bother.”
Cody’s mother shaded her eyes and called, “Did he hit it?”
“No, he didn’t hit it. How could he; I wasn’t even through explaining.”
“People have been known to hit a target without a person explaining it beforehand,” Cody muttered.
“What say?”
“Let Ezra try,” Cody’s mother suggested.
His father picked up the arrow and jammed it into the bull’s-eye, dead center. “Want to tell me it can’t stick?” he asked Cody. He pointed to the arrow, which stayed firm. “Look at that: steel-tipped. Of course it sticks. And spongy bark on the tree. I chose that tree. Of course it sticks. You could have lodged it in easy.”
“Ha,” said Cody, kicking a clod of earth.
“What say, son?”
“Let Ezra try,” Pearl called again. “Beck? Let Ezra try.”
Ezra was her favorite, her pet. The entire family knew it. Ezra looked embarrassed and switched the straw to the other side of his mouth. Beck waded back to them. “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know. I wonder sometimes,” he said.
“Ezra? See if you can hit it, honey,” Pearl called.
Beck’s glance at Cody might have been sympathy, or else disgust. He pulled another arrow from the cardboard tube. “All right, Ezra, come on and try,” he said. “Just don’t get carried away like Cody here did.”
Ezra came over,