The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [169]
You do not lie You do not cheat
You do not swear You do not screw
And you go to church.
Always of course with the booming voice, the meaty palm of Bill Hearn in the background, combined somehow -- never believably -- with dancing lessons on Saturday mornings, and the persistent avid aspirations of Ina Hearn. Bobby, why don't you take Elizabeth Perkins to your Junior Dance?
Deep in the womb which covers me,
Green as grass from house to house. . .
Only that idea comes later.
The week after he graduates from Fieldmont Country Day, he goes on a drinking bout with a few contemporaries, fellow graduates, to a shack out in the woods, owned by one of their fathers. A two-story shack with a built-in bar.
At night they sit around in one of the upstairs bedrooms, passing the bottle after swigging at it gingerly.
If my old man knew.
To hell with your old man. They are all shocked, but it was Carsons who spoke, and his father committed suicide in 1930. Carsons can be forgiven.
Here's good-bye to Fieldmont, good old FCD, we had a lot of time there.
That's no lie.
The Dean wasn't bad but I never could figure him out, and you remember what a good-looking wife he had.
Here's to the wife, I heard she left him last year for a month.
Oh, no. The bottle goes on its second and third circuit.
All in all we had a good time there, only I'm glad to be out, I sure wish I was going with you fellows to Yale.
In a corner the football captain of the previous season is bending Hearn's ear. I wish I could be back for this next fall, what a team we're going to have with those juniors, you mark my words, Haskell is going to be All-American in four years, and while we're on the subject, Bob, I would like to give you just a little word of advice 'cause I've kept my eye on you for a long time now, and you don't try hard enough, you don't pull, you could've made the team 'cause you're big and you got natural ability but you didn't want to, and it's a shame because you ought to pull harder.
Stick your head in a bucket of ice.
Hearn's drunk, the captain yells.
Look at old Hearn off in the corner again. I bet he busted up with Adelaide.
She's a keen girl, but she necks around an awful lot, I bet Lantry used to worry about it before he went off to Princeton.
Aw, brothers don't care, that's my theory. I've got a sister, and she doesn't fool around, but I wouldn't care if she did.
You're only saying that 'cause she doesn't, I mean if she did, oh, that liquor is going around in my head. Who's drunk?
Yippeeee! It is Hearn standing in the middle of the floor with his head tilted back, gasping at the spout of the bottle. I'm a sonofabitch, what I say is all you men put your cards on the table.
Man, is he potted.
Go ahead, dare me to jump out the window, watch me pull my oar. Sweating, his face red with sudden anger, he pushes one of them away, opens the window and teeters on the sill. I'm gonna jump.
Stop him.
Yippeeeeeee! And he is gone, leapt out into the night. There's a thud, a crash of some bushes, and they rush horrified to the window. How are you, Hearn, are you all right, where are you, Hearn?
Fieldmont, Fieldmont über alles, Hearn roars back at them, lying on the ground in darkness, laughing, too drunk to have hurt himself.
What an odd egg Hearn is, they say. Remember last year when he got potted?
The last summer before college is a succession of golden days, and shining beaches, the magic of electric lights on summer evenings, and the dance band at the summer bathing club, AN AIRLINE TICKET TO ROMANTIC PLACES, and the touch and smell of young girls, lipstick odor, powder odor, and the svelte lean scent of leather on the seats of convertibles. The sky always has stars, always has moonlight gilding the black trees. On the highways the headlights lance a silver tunnel through