“Oh leave me alone,” Halsyon said. “Go prove yourself on somebody else.”
Rennahan, with two swift motions, knocked Halsyon ’s books from under his arm and ripped his fly. There was nothing for it but to fight. Twenty years of watching films of the future Joe Louis did nothing for Halsyon. He was thoroughly licked. He was also late for school. Now was his chance to amaze his teachers.
“The fact is,” he explained to Miss Ralph of the fifth grade, “I had a run-in with a neurotic. I can speak for his left hook but I won’t answer for his Id.”
Miss Ralph slapped him and sent him to the principal with a note, reporting unheard-of insolence.
“The only thing unheard of in this school,” Halsyon told Mr. Snider, is psychoanalysis. How can you pretend to be competent teachers if you don’t — ”
“Dirty little boy !” Mr. Snider interrupted angrily. He was tall, gaunt, bitter. “So you’ve been reading dirty books, eh?”
“What the hell’s dirty about Freud?”
“And using profane language, eh? You need a lesson, you filthy little animal.”
He was sent home with a note requesting an immediate consultation with his parents regarding the withdrawal of Jeffrey Halsyon from school as a degenerate in desperate need of correction and vocational guidance.
Instead of going home he went to a newsstand to check the papers for events on which to get a bet down. The headlines were full of the pennant race. But who the hell won the pennant in 1931 ? And the series? He couldn’t for the life of him remember. And the stock market? He couldn’t remember anything about that either. He’d never been particularly interested in such matters as a boy. There was nothing planted in his memory to call upon.
He tried to get into the library for further checks. The librarian, tall, gaunt, bitter, would not permit him to enter until children's hour in the afternoon. He loafed on the streets. Wherever he loafed he was chased by gaunt and bitter adults. He was beginning to realize that ten-year-old boys had limited opportunities to amaze the world.
At lunch hour he met Judy Field and accompanied her home from school. He was appalled by her knobby knees and black corkscrew curls. He didn't like the way she smelled either. But he was rather taken with her mother who was the image of the Judy he remembered. He forgot himself with Mrs. Field and did one or two things that indeed confounded her. She drove him out of the house and then telephoned his mother, her voice shaking with indignation.
Halsyon went down to the Hudson River and hung around the ferry docks until he was chased. He went to a stationery store to inquire about typewriter rentals and was chased. He searched for a quiet place to sit, think, plan, perhaps begin the recall of a successful story. There was no quiet place to which a small boy would be admitted.
He slipped into his house at 4:30, dropped his books in his room, stole into the living room, sneaked a cigarette and was on his way out when he discovered his mother and father ambushing him. His mother looked shocked. His father looked gaunt and bitter.
“Oh,” Halsyon said. “I suppose Snider phoned. I'd forgotten about that.”
“Mister Snider,” his mother said.
“And Mrs. Field,” his father said.
“Look,” Halsyon began. “We’d better get this straightened out. Will you listen to me for a few minutes? I have something startling to tell you and we’ve got to plan what to do about it. I — ”
He yelped. His father had taken him by the ear and was marching him down the hall. Parents did not listen to children for a few minutes. They did not listen at all.
“Pop… Just a minute… Please! I’m trying to explain. I’m not really ten years old. I’m 33. There’s been a freak in time, see? On account of a mysterious mutant strain in my makeup which — ”
“Damn you! Be quiet!” his father shouted. The pain of his big hands, the suppressed fury in his voice silenced Halsyon. He suffered himself to be led out of the house, four agonizing blocks to the school, and up one flight to Mr. Snider’s offlce where a public school psychologist was waiting with the principal. He was a tall man, gaunt, bitter, but sprightly.
“Ah yes, yes,” he said. “So this is our little degenerate. Our Scarface A 1 Capone, eh? Come, we take him to the clinic and there I shall take his journal intime. We will hope for the best. Nisi prius. He cannot be all bad/ 1
He took Halsyon’s arm. Halsyon pulled his arm away and said, “Listen, you’re an adult, intelligent man. You’ll listen to me. My father’s got emotional problems that blind him to the —”
His father gave him a tremendous box on the ear, grabbed his arm and thrust it back into the psychologist’s grasp. Halsyon burst into tears. The psychologist led him out of the office and into the tiny school clinic. Halsyon was hysterical. He was trembling with frustration and terror.
“Won’t anybody listen to me?” he sobbed. “Won’t anybody try to understand? Is this what we’re all like to kids? Is this what all kids go through?”
“Gently, my sausage,” the psychologist murmured. He popped a pill into Halsyon’s mouth and forced him to drink some water.
“You’re all so damned inhuman,” Halsyon wept. “You keep us out of your world, but you keep barging into ours. If you don’t respect us why don’t you leave us alone?”
“You begin to understand, eh?” the psychologist said. “We are two different breeds of animals, childrens and adults. God damn. I speak to you with frankness. Les absents ont toujours tort. There is no meetings of the minds. Jeez. There is nothing but war. It is why all childrens grow up hating their childhoods and searching for revenges. But there is never revenges. Pari mutuel. How can there be? Can a cat insult a king?”
“It’s… S’hateful,” Halsyon mumbled. The pill was taking effect rapidly. “Whole world’s hateful. Full of conflicts’n’insults ’at can’t be r ’solved… or paid back… S’like a joke somebody’s playin’ on us. Silly joke without point. Isn’t?”
As he slid down into darkness, he could hear the psychologist chuckle, but couldn’t for the life of him understand what he was laughing at…
5
He picked up his spade and followed the first clown into the cemetery. The first clown was a tall man, gaunt, bitter, but sprightly.
“Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?” the first clown asked.
“I tell thee she is,” Halsyon answered. “And therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.”
“How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defense?”
“Why, ’tis found so.”
They began to dig the grave. The first clown thought the matter over, then said, “It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches; it is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly.”
“Nay, but hear you, goodman delver — ” Halsyon began.
“Give me leave,” the first clown interrupted and went on with a tiresome discourse on quest-law. Then he turned sprightly and cracked a few professional jokes. At last Halsyon got away and went down to Yaughan s for a drink. When he returned, the first clown was cracking jokes with a couple of gentlemen who had wandered into the graveyard. One of them made quite a fuss about a skull.
The burial procession arrived; the coffin, the dead girl’s brother, the king and queen, the priests and lords. They buried her, and the brother and one of the gentlemen began to quarrel over her grave. Halsyon paid no attention. There was a pretty girl in the procession, dark, with cropped curly hair and lovely long legs. He winked at her. She winked back. Halsyon edged over toward her, speaking with his eyes and she answered him saucily the same way.