The other guys shook their heads no, and I said, “Hey, why don’t I help out by taking these library books.”
Abe asked me, “What do you want with a pile of dusty old books, Pete?”
“Nothing. A little night table reading.”
“That stuff? Before bed?” Jerry meant, I guess, Martyrs Mirror.
Bill said, “Barbara and I often enjoy thrillers before turning out the lights.”
“Well, Bill,” I said, commencing stacking — dictionaries and Martyrs Mirror on the bottom, miscellaneous professional-level science and psychology texts in the middle, a few soiled paperbacks on top—“Well, Bill, reading of any kind is better than no reading at all.”
Of course I left behind the thesaurus, which I honestly consider pernicious.
Evening, and the park’s dense thickets of trees and bushes seemed washed in eerie, nighttime shades. About that landscape one could truly claim: It was a jungle. Now off we went, single file down the gazebo steps, into it. The books in my arms rode heavy, towered head-high; I was forced to gaze around them in order to see the back of the man in front of me, Bill’s back. In front of Bill, Abe and Jerry pushed through the weeds. Tom walked far out in front — point man. The trust-and-estates lawyer was visible as the red fabric of his backpack, audible as the sound of beer cans clinking softly, musically inside the pack, and as a gentle voice drifting back down the line, man to man, issuing safety commands: “Step high,” or “Easy over these rocks,” or “Let’s go left around these wood lilies, okay?” Meanwhile the precious books shifted and slid between one another, their dark and light spines touching my face, bumping my face. Small dry kisses on the nose, and my arms aching from the cumbersome weight of paper. A few paces ahead, Bill lumbered through thorny briars that snapped back in his wake to slap or drag across the backs of my hands — a painful, localized flogging. Consider the martyrs. Here was my punishment: a hundred herbal lashes across the wrists and forearms for delivering literature out of the wilderness. How exciting, this difficult passage toward hearth and home. How I ached, along the long walk, for Meredith’s touch. Desire came, a dull electric hum situated low in the belly, giving me the beginnings of an erection. Or perhaps this was merely the result of the steady, jostling pressure against my groin of all the weighty books. The configurations of the erotic are many and varied, and who can deny the arousing and, might I add, altogether requisite function of narrative in sexual fantasy. I imagined us sprawled together, my fish wife and I, open-mouthed and fucking in lovely harmony atop a sea of books, some scattered open (I’d offer to recline on the books myself, to protect Meredith from the sharp corners of the bindings), their pages damp and turned to vital texts describing the orgiastic death wails of the burned, the impaled, the drowned, and the flayed. I couldn’t wait to get back to the house, to show Meredith my wounds and let her tenderly apply ointment and gauze bandages while I recounted the events of this brave day with the town fathers, The Day of Much Blood and Pain, and the Saving of the Schoolbooks. It gave me a nice idea for a mayoral-campaign slogan: PETE ROBINSON BLEEDS FOR YOUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE. I made a mental note to scribble this gem down when I got home, so as not to forget it once my hands were healed and no longer hurting.
Sad to say, the comforts of domestic life would have to wait. For when Tom Thompson finally called out, jubilantly, “Guys, we made it, we made it, here’s the road,” I heard also, at my back, another voice, a familiar, boyish whisper rising softly on the breeze that bore salty ocean scents over the tortured land.
“Mr. Robinson.”
It was, in fact, my former pupil Ben Webster. So, he was still out roaming the gloom. I turned back briefly in the direction of the youngster’s voice, but the tyro guerrilla was nowhere to be seen. He’d sounded so close. Clearly Ben had become adept in the techniques of jungle subterfuge. What a fast learner. It made me proud.
I whispered into the trees, “Ben, wait here for me,” then turned and headed out to the road and our cars and a round of hearty farewells to Jerry, Abe, Tom, and Bill. Abe offered again to cart the books back to the library, seeing as he had the van and all. He was quite adamant, he kept at it, “Sure you don’t want me to drop those off? I’ve got the van. I’m going that way anyway. No trouble for me. Really, no trouble. Sure? Sure?” Finally Jerry snapped, “Abe, let Pete take the fucking books.” There was, for a moment, between the two friends, some tension; it was a miniature alpha male, beta male face-off, though in this case with no readily distinguishable beta. Jerry tends to lead the pack, but Abe is of substantial build, he’s physically intimidating, always a factor in these kinds of contests. Watching the two men glare at one another across the roof of Tom’s metallic Mazda, it occurred to me that perhaps Abe’s offer to return the books, his insistence in the matter, was actually cover for a visit — a tryst, even — with Jerry’s wife, Rita, and that, at some level, Jerry knew or suspected his friend’s mantled intent.
Bill stepped up to the Mazda and tamed the beasts by saying, “Hey, guys, come on, let’s go over to Sandpiper’s,” which is the name of a happy hour bar on South Main. It was pretty clear that the man had a problem with alcohol. None of his buddies seemed to notice or be bothered by this. They all answered Bill’s suggestion for continued drinking with hearty cheer: “Yeah, yeah,” “First round’s on me,” “Okay, let’s go for it.” Most likely, Bill’s friends misunderstood his heavy intake as a function of choice and disposition, of personal style rather than compulsion. Poor Bill. And poor Barbara. No wonder she always looked beat. Was she a drinker? Or merely suffering the ravages of marriage to one?
“You guys go ahead.”
One by one the men climbed into their vehicles and fired up engines, destroying the silence of falling night. I watched their ruby taillights grow dim along the narrow road to Main Street. At last the cars disappeared. Quiet returned. It was that eerie time of night when the air becomes calm and the birds settle down and the world seems timeless. I dumped the books in the Toyota, wiped my bleeding hands on my pants, and sauntered back to the woods.
A few feet inside the fringe of trees Ben greeted me. It’s amazing how much a person’s appearance can change in a week. The former A student seemed to have dropped twenty pounds, aged a good twenty years. His bony, unclean face was the face of an urchin, his eyes were fugitive’s eyes. Scrubby adolescent beard tinted jaundiced cheeks black; ripped clothes told of scrambling pursuits through the park’s untended greenery. Ben wore his gun belt low over the hip, in the rakish style of a movie-matinee quick-draw shootist. He smelled bad.
“Hello, Ben.”
“Mr. Robinson,” nodding, beckoning toward the jungle, a discreet, soldierly instruction to follow his wraith figure creeping away, now, without delay, noiselessly creeping over the forest floor blanketed in lichen and deadfall and unidentifiable black shapes that mushed underfoot like things wetly alive. Forward we advanced into the dark heart of the recreational grounds, skirting open areas and the relatively unobstructed pathways beneath the pine stands, blazing a trail instead through untamed tracts. The going was harsh. At one point I made out, on my right, the shadowy unlit facade of the boathouse. We stayed clear of it. According to Ben, Turtle Pond was regularly patrolled by hostile Bensons pedaling recreation-services fiberglass paddleboats. This news saddened me. Meredith and I had spent many pleasant hours lazily steering pink or blue or green paddleboats across the pond’s tranquil waters. Sometimes, far out at pond’s center, beyond sight of either sandy beach or boathouse dock, we’d stop and drop anchor, and Meredith would remove the top of her bathing suit, lie low on her back in the bow of the boat, and sun her beautiful breasts. Oh, love.