The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [206]
Hang 'em, Ike Cummings says, with the old man's quaver. In the war (the Civil War) we use to take 'em up, set 'em on a mare, and spank her rump, and watch them kick their heels a little.
Cy rustles his paper. Don't need to hang 'em. He looks at his hands, laughs dourly. Edward go to sleep yet?
She looks up, answers quickly, nervously, I think so, that is he said he was. He and Matthew said they were going to sleep. (Matthew Arnold Cummings is the younger one.)
I'll take a look.
In the boys' bedroom, Matthew is asleep, and Edward, age seven, is sitting in a corner, sewing snips of thread into a scrap of cloth.
The father steps toward him, throws his shadow across the boy's face. What are you doing, boy?
The child looks up petrified. Sewin'. Ma said it was okay.
Give it to me. And the scraps, the thread, are hurled into the wastebasket. Come up, 'Lizabeth.
He hears the argument raging about him, conducted in hoarse passionate whispers as a sop to his sleeping brother. I won't have him actin' like a goddam woman, you're to stop feedin' him all these books, all this womanish. . . claptrap. (The baseball bat and glove are gathering dust in the attic.)
But I didn't. . . I didn't tell him a thing.
You didn't tell him to sew?
Please, Cyrus, let him alone. The slap reddens his cheek from the ear to the mouth. The boy sits on the floor, the tears dropping on his lap.
And you're to act like a man from now on, do you understand?
Only when they have gone, too many things twist in his comprehension. The mother had given him the thread, told him to do it quietly.
The sermon ends in church. We are all children of the Lord Jesus and God, instruments of His compassion, committed unto earth to enact the instruments of His goodness, to sow the seeds of brotherhood and good works.
A fine sermon, the mother says.
Yeahp.
Was he right? Edward asks.
Certainly, Cyrus says, only you got to take it with a grain of caution. Life's a hard thing and nobody gives you nothing. You do it alone. Every man's hand is against you, that's what you also find out.
Then he was wrong, Father.
I didn't say that. He's right and I'm right, and it's just in religion you act one way, and in business, which is a lesser thing, well, you go about things in another way. It's still Christian.
The mother caresses his shoulder. It was a wonderful sermon, Edward.
Nearly everybody in this town hates me, Cyrus says. They hate you too, Edward, you might as well learn it early, ain't nothing they hate like a success, and you're sure gonna be one, if they don't like you they can still lick your boots.
The mother and the son pack up the paints and easel, start back in the chilly spring afternoon from their jaunt outside the town, sketching the meager hills on the plain.
Have a good time, Eddie dear? Her voice has a new trill in it now, a new warmth when they they are alone.
Loved it, Ma.
When I was a little girl, I always used to dream I'd have a little boy and I'd go out with him and paint, just like this. Come on, I'll teach you a funny song while we go back.
What is Boston like? he asks.
Oh, it's a big city, it's dirty, coooold, everybody's always dressed up.
Like Pa?
She laughs doubtfully. Yes, like Pa. Now, don't you say anything to him about what we did this afternoon. . .
Was it wrong?
No, now you just march right on home with me, and don't say a word to him, it's a secret.
He hates her suddenly, and is quiet, moody, as they walk back to the town. That night he tells his father, listens with a kind of delicious glee and fright to the quarrel that follows.
I'm going to tell you that that boy is all your fault, you indulge him, you bring out the worst in him, you never could get over leaving Boston, now, could you, we're really not fine enough out here for you.
Cyrus, please.
I'll be damned, I'm going to send him to military school, he's old enough to shift for himself, at nine years old a boy has to start thinking how to act like a man.
Ike Cummings nods. Military school's all right, that boy likes