The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [276]
Nice-looking boy you have there, they always say to his father, James Brown.
Fine boy, but you ought to see my daughter, she's the bee-yootey.
Willie Brown is very popular. The mothers of his friends always take to him, the teachers always make him a pet.
But he has a knack for squaring it. Aw, that old crow, he says of the teacher, I wouldn't spit on her. (Proceeding to spit on the dusty baked sod of the schoolyard.) I don' know why in tee hell she don' lea' me alone.
And his family is nice. Good stock. The father works for the railroad in Tulsa but he is an office man even if he has started in the yards. And they have their own house in the suburbs, a decent plot of ground behind it. Jim Brown is dependable, always improving his house a little bit, fixing the plumbing or planing the sill of a door that jams.
Isn't the kind of man who runs into debt.
Ella and me try to hold to one of those budgets, he says deprecatingly. If we find we're gone a little over, we jus' cut down on the liquor for the week. (Half-apologetically) I kinda look on liquor as a luxury, especially now when you gotta break a law to get it, and you're never sure when it'll leave you blind.
Keeps up with things too. The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's and back in the early twenties a charter subscriber to Reader's Digest. It all comes in handy for small talk when you're visiting, and the only dishonesty people have ever noticed him in is that he has a habit of talking about the articles without crediting the source.
Do you know thirty million people smoked cigarettes in 1928? he'll say.
The Literary Digest keeps him informed on politics. I voted for Herbert Hoover in the last election, he admits pleasantly, even though I've been a Democrat as long as I can remember. But I think I'll vote Democrat in the next. The way I look at it, one party's in power for a while and then you give the other a turn.
And Mrs. Brown nods her head. I allow Jim to show me the way for those political things. She does not add the business about keeping up her home, but you can guess. Nice people, nice family, church on Sundays of course. Mrs. Brown's only violent opinion is on the New Morality. I don't know, people aren't Godfearing any more. Women drinking in bars, doing God knows what else, it isn't right, isn't Christian at all.
Mr. Brown nods tolerantly. He has a few reservations, but after all women somehow just are more religious, really religious, than men, he will say in a confidential talk.
Naturally they're very proud of their children, and they'll tell you with amusement how Patty is teaching William to dance now that he's in high school.
We were worried about sending them to the State University what with the depression and all, but I think we can see our way clear now. Mr. Brown, she'll add, always has wanted them to go, especially since he missed it.
The brother and sister are good friends. In the sun parlor where the maple sofa is flanked by the vase (which had been a flower pot until the rubber plant died) and the radio, the girl makes him lead her.
Now, look, Willie-boy, it's easy. You just don' have to be afraid of holdin' me.
Who's afraid of holdin' ya?
You're not such a roughneck, she says from the vantage of senior year in high school. You're gonna be dating soon.
Yeah, he exclaims with disgust. But he feels her small pert breasts against his chest. He is almost as tall as her. Who's gonna date?
You are.
They shuffle along the smooth red stone of the floor. Hey, Patty, when Tom Elkins comes around to see you, lemme talk to him. I wanna know if he thinks I'll be big enough to get on the football team in a coupla years.
Tom Elkins, that ol' fool.
(It's sacrilege.) He looks at her in disgust. What's the matter with Tom Elkins?
It's all right, Willie, you'll make the team.
He never does get quite big enough, but by his junior year he is the head of the cheer leaders, and he has talked his father into buying him a used car.
You don't understand, Pop, I really need the car. A guy's gotta get