In the afternoon Feuermann came in to see me. He was visiting the cemetery again. Rain was still gray and whispering, and I spoke of it. He smiled at wet window glass. “Sun’s up beyond it somewhere.”
“Jacob” — we were on first-name basis now — “do you know anything about this Digger-Mudhawk business? Hate to see Angelo mix into that.”
“Kid stuff, I guess. Hard to get him to talk about it.”
“Seems the Diggers include older boys, some of ’em tough.”
“So?” He was concerned, but not seriously. “I figure a boy’s pretty much a wild animal. They work it out of their systems. Not that I’d favor it for Angelo. But that Kell kid seems to be all right.” I still wondered. “Where does he live, do you know?”
“South Calumet Street neighborhood somewhere, the crumby section. I believe his parents are dead. Lives with a relative, guess it’s an aunt.” Jacob had found my discarded newspaper, and was forgetting Billy Kell. “Or some woman who adopted him, I don’t know. They get sort of casual in the south end. He’s in Angelo’s class in school, supposed to be a good student, so I hear…. Hey, did you see this? Max is in jail again.”
“Max?” I recalled a front-page item. It was a New York City paper, with the usual random mass of political maneuverings, speeches, oddities, personalities, disasters. One Joseph Max had been arrested for causing a near riot with a handful of followers at a meeting addressed by some senator. There was a write-up on Max himself, but I had not followed its continuation on an inner page.
“An heir of Huey Long.” Feuermann was reading intently “Missed my paper this morning. Long, and Goat-gland Brinkley and the Ku Klux, with a dash of communazi to flavor the brew… Ach, they never die!”
“One of those? Don’t think I’ve heard of Max before.”
“Maybe the Canada papers didn’t bother with him. All he needs is a special-colored shirt. He turned up first in 1960, I think, with — now wha’d he call it? — Crystal Christian League, some damn thing, made capital of the word ‘Christian.’ Christian like a snapping turtle. You know how the freak parties always emerge in a presidential year. Froth on the pond.”
“Yes, they thought Hitler and Lenin were froth, for a while.”
“Well, I tell you, it’s the damn human way, not to look at what scares us. Max dropped out of sight for a couple years, started making headlines again a year ago. ‘Purity of the American race.’ It says here. We never learn.”
“That’s Max’s line?”
“Yeah, but it looks as though he’d chucked some of the fantastic stuff. He’s formed something he calls the Unity Party. Claims a million of the faithful, nice round number. ‘Right will prevail!’ says he on his way to the clink after busting a few heads. Hope they don’t make a martyr of him — what he wants, naturally.”
(I believe it might be worth a full-time Observer, Drozma, if one has not already been assigned.) “You think he might become big-time?”
Feuermann sighed. His good engineer’s hands knotted and relaxed in his lap. “I sit around too much, Ben, and think too much. I’d give an awful lot to be out on the rails again; 509 and me, we were sort of friends” — he was shy about — “you understand? Active all my life, hard to get it through your head you’re old. Maybe I imagine things. Sitting around… no, likely Max is just froth. Ought to be enough common sense in the country to sort of disinfect him before he gets a-going. Wouldn’t you think, all the time we’ve had, troubles we’ve seen, we could do a little better, Ben? Use more love and less pride? Hang onto your own self but treat the other guy like he had one too? Do unto others… Care for a drive to Byfield?”
He was lonely, but I declined, blaming the rain. He left me, with a characteristic, openhearted smile on his face that I never saw again….
The rain ended in late afternoon. I found Angelo and Billy Kell on the front steps, lazy in the moist warmth. Probably the quality of their talk altered when I appeared and fussily spread a newspaper on the top step to sit on. It was my second face-to-face meeting with Billy. Angelo introduced us formally, and Billy gave no open sign of remembering me. He was polite, as a fourteen-year-old can readily learn to be. Ironically, I thought. He offered a skillful imitation of grown-up small talk — Canada, baseball, this and that. He had an unlimited fund of it, and I couldn’t isolate any one part of it to call it mockery.
Sharon appeared on the other side of the street in what I believe was a new pink dress. She looked small and lonesome as well as starchy in the waning sunlight, studiously tossing her red rubber ball on its elastic string. Angelo called: “Hey, kid! C’m’on over!” She turned her back. Angelo poked Billy’s ribs. “One of her moods.”
“Deep bleep,” said Billy Kell. A teen-age formula, I guess.
Having made her point, Sharon did approach. She marched up the steps with no recognition for the boys, and addressed me in brittle dignity: “Good evening, Mr. Miles. I wondered if I’d find you here.”
I gave her some of my newspaper to sit on. “The steps are still damp, and that looks to me like a new dress.”
“Thank you, Mr. Miles.” She accepted the paper with absent-minded queenliness. “I am glad to know one’s efforts are not wholly unappreciated.”
Angelo’s ears turned flame color. I was in the cross fire and saw no way to get out of it. Billy Kell was enjoying it. Angelo mumbled: “Time for some catch before supper — huh?”
“I oughta be on my way,” said Billy Kell.
“Mr. Miles, have you ever noticed how some people are always persistently changing the subject?”
I attempted sternness: “I might change it myself. How have the lessons been going this week, Sharon?”
That reached through her thin-drawn politeness. She talked of the lessons with pleasure and relief, not forgetting, of course, to use the conversation as a saw-toothed weapon, but nevertheless enjoying it. The lessons were terrific and getting terrificker all the time. Mrs. Wilks was going to give her a real piece to memorize Monday. She could almost stretch an octave, Sharon said — anyhow by rolling it a little; it was true that her fine fingers were long in proportion to her size. Angelo suffered in silence, and in spite of his remark Billy Kell was lingering. At length Sharon ran down and began to repeat herself. Angelo turned, not smiling at all. “Sharon, I’m sorry.” He put his hand on her shoe tip. “Now tell me, what should I be sorry for, huh?”
She ignored her own foot, allowing it to remain where it was. She addressed an imaginary Mr. Miles somewhere on the rooftops across the street: “Mr. Miles, have you any idea what this child is talking about?”
“Oh, bloop,” said Angelo, and Billy Kell guffawed. I sought myself for a change of subject, asking whether Mr. Feuermann usually stayed in Byfield as late as this.