In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [87]
“Well, it … it was dark!”
“It was dark?”
“Yeah! It was dark! It was … ah … raining! It was dark!” Miss Bryfogel took some paper clips out of her top drawer and straightened them up for a while and then said, even more quietly than before:
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“… …………yeah!”
“WHERE DID YOU GET THAT BOOK!?”
“… ……………….…home!”
“At home? Do they know that you read this book, at home? Does your mother know?”
“… …… yeah!”
“Are you sure?”
“Ah yeah.”
Miss Bryfogel picked up her pen and took a sheet of paper out of her desk drawer, and looked at me in a way that Jean Harlow never looked at Clark Gable.
“I’m going to give you a note. You are going to take it home to your mother, and in one hour I will call her to see that she got it.”
My socks began to itch. I had been through this note business before!
“… ….…okay.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“NO!”
This moment, this very instant in time, this millisecond was one of the great turning points in my life, and even then I knew it. Miss Bryfogel leaned back in her swivel chair. She was soft and warm again.
“Ah. Where did you get the book?”
“My father’s room.”
“Oh? Did he know you took it?”
“No.”
“You know that you did something wrong, don’t you?”
“… ….…yeah.”
“Did you like the book?”
Somehow I knew that this was a loaded question, a key question.
“… ….…yeah.”
“I see. It was pretty funny, wasn’t it?”
“… … no!”
I was telling the truth. It seemed like for the first time in two years I was telling the truth. I hadn’t gotten a single boff from the book. Funny! The only thing that I liked about it was castles and knights. There wasn’t a single laugh in it!
“Are you sure you didn’t find it funny anywhere?”
“No!”
She knew I was telling the truth.
“Well, that’s good. That’s much better. Now, will you promise me one thing—that you will not sneak into your parents’ room and get books any more, if I promise not to send a note home?”
“… … okay!”
“You can go now.”
A great crashing wave of relief roared over me, and, bobbing in the surf, I paddled frantically toward the door. Just before I was through it and out safely:
“Oh, Ralph?”
“What?”—Figuring she is about to welsh on the deal.
“I’m curious. Did you read all of it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s very good. I like to see stick-to-itiveness. Now go out and play.”
I sipped my warm Scotch thoughtfully as Miss Bryfogel’s voice faded off into the darkness of my memory forever. Arnold Palmer was coming into the 18th three under par, Julius Boros was lining up a putt. My knees were stiff; my soul was sick. Outside somewhere, far off, a siren droned into the distance. Wading through the papers I retrieved the Book Review Supplement. Yes, there he was, my old friend, the languorous youth, reclining provocatively. The nun looked down upon him as she had for all these centuries, and somewhere off in the fairy-tale background the cuckolds sang sweetly as they busily built their nests.
XXVII POLKA TIME
“I don’t get it,” Flick said.
“Get what?”
“All that stuff about a cuckold. Isn’t that one of them yellow birds they put in clocks?”
I was saved at this point by the sudden entrance of three large, pink-faced youths wearing work jackets and plaid corduroy caps who clattered noisily up to the bar.
“Man, were you hot last week! Boy, was you on!” One shouted at Flick with a noticeable, very familiar Polish accent.
“I throw a working ball, Stosh,” Flick shot back.
There followed a quick flurry of shouting between all four, regarding bowling, the Game, and a waitress called Ellie. I will spare you that. Finally, one of the men threw a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and bellowed:
“KEEP THEM BEERS COMIN’, FLICK, UNTIL WE HOLLER!”
They clumped over into a booth, after priming the jukebox, which immediately boomed out a deafening polka. Flick came back, after delivering the suds.
“That was Stosh and Joe and Yahkey. They’re good boys. They work in the Sheet Mill over at Youngstown.”
Inwardly I shuddered, realizing how narrowly I had missed being one of the boys myself, forever doomed to the Sheet Mill where I