“I knew it all the time, but I think it was mean of you to tell me.”
“Whole lot of cake and stuff coming in and they didn’t want you to see it. Bum old cake from the bakery.”
“It’s not bum old cake. It’s a special birthday cake with my name on it in icing.”
“How do you know?”
“I peeped and saw it. It’s going to have candles on it and they’re going to bring it out in front of everybody and then I’m going to cut it.”
“Old stale cake they had left over from last week and then they put your name on it in icing.”
“It is not.”
“Phooie!” He spat in the water and sat there laughing, mumbling, and shaking his head, as though the ignoble tricks of the whole human race were quite beyond him.
She sat up and began to fluff out her hair. “Are you invited, Burwell?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I kind of said one or two things so they wouldn’t forget to invite you.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Are you coming?”
“Is that a laugh! Is that a laugh!”
“I don’t see anything funny.”
“Am I coming? Say, is that a laugh! Me come to a bum birthday party with a lot of sissies and an old stale cake the bakery couldn’t give away but your old man came and bought it cheap and had your name put on it in icing. Well! Is that a laugh!”
“Aren’t you really coming, Burwell?”
“Who, me?”
“I was going to give you the first piece of cake.”
“That stale stuff.”
“Tell me, Burwell. Why aren’t you coming?”
“Phooie! I’m busy.”
“How do you mean, busy?”
“Don’t you wish you knew? Don’t you wish you knew?”
She looked at him and he had a sensation of having to think fast. “Are you really busy, Burwell?”
“Sure, I’m busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Why — I got to work.”
The agreeable degree of her astonishment surprised even him. “Have you got a job, Burwell?”
“Sure I got a job.”
“What kind of a job? Tell me.”
“Helping Red.”
Now this wasn’t true. The only relation it had to truth was that he had been considering a plan whereby he would offer to help Red for a night or two, in return for the extinguishment of the ten-cent debt. But actually he had made no such offer, and whether he would ever make it was problematical for Red was a brisk young man, rather hard to talk to, despite his professional affability.
“Honest?”
“Busy guy these days. Me go to a party? Say, is that a laugh!”
“I haven’t seen you with Red.”
“I’m inside the truck.”
“What doing?”
“Oh, lot of things.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, I pass out the stuff to him. Drive the old bus, so he don’t all the time have to be jumping in and out, saves him a lot of time. Keep things going. Ring up the cash. Lot of things.”
“Do you get paid for it?”
“You think I’m doing all that for nothing?”
“Well, I didn’t know. I thought he might just give you ice cream. You know. A free cake if you wanted it.”
“A fat chance.”
“When did you start?”
“Oh, I don’t just remember. I’ve been at it quite a while. Maybe a week.”
“Just think! And I didn’t know a thing about it.”
He rather fancied his new job now. As a matter of fact, the truck had a wheel that had always taken his eye; it was a big, horizontal wheel, something like the wheel on the rear end of a hook-and-ladder, and there now leaped into his mind a picture of himself behind it.
“Say, you ought to see me in there, swinging her around corners, dodging traffic, shooting her up beside the curb, ringing the bell — I forgot that. I’m the one that rings the bell.”
He acted it out, his feet hanging over the water, his hands caressing the wheel. He shifted gears, pedaled the brake, sounded the bell, pulled up short just in time to avoid a collision with a lady pushing a gocart containing an infant, went on with a noble, though worried, look on his face. A captious listener might have reflected that evening was a strange time for infants to be abroad in gocarts; might have taken exception, too, to a certain discrepancy between the critical situations in which this ice-cream truck seemed always to find itself, and the somewhat innocuous tinkle of the bell which accompanied its doings. However, his listener wasn’t captious. She gazed at him with wide-open eyes, and a rapture so complete that all she could think of to say was an oft-repeated “My!”
They took turns dressing, and as they started home he glowed pleasantly under her admiration. Yet admiration, even now, was not quite enough. He craved definite superiority.
“Beat you to the edge of the woods.”
“No you can’t.”
She started so suddenly he was taken by surprise, and as she raced ahead of him he had one twinge of fear that she not only could dive better than he could, but run faster. But the distance was in his favor. She tired, and as he clattered past her he had at last what he had craved all afternoon: the hot, passionate feeling that he was better than she was; that from now on she must be his creature, to worship him without question, to look on from a distance while he dazzled her with tricks. It was short-lived. He felt a jolting, terrible pain in his face, having tripped on the wet bathing suit and slammed down in the road, the dust grinding into his mouth, the little stones cutting his cheek. He set his jaws, closed his eyes, screwed up his face in an agony of effort not to cry.
“It’s all right, Burwell. You’re not hurt bad. You’re just scratched up a little bit. Here, I’ll wipe it off for you.”
He felt the wet bathing suit wiping his face, then the soft dry dabs of her handkerchief. The effort not to cry was becoming more than he could stand. He clenched his fists.
“Open your mouth and close your eyes, I’ll give you something to make you wise.” A quick, warm little kiss alighted on his mouth, stayed a moment, pressed hard, and then left.
A wave of happiness swept over him. The strain eased, he hadn’t cried. He opened his eyes. She was gone.
They were at supper when he got home, and his mother jumped up when she saw him. “Mercy, Burwell, what on earth has happened to you?”
“I fell down.”
“Mercy! Mercy!”
“I’m all right.”
“Are you sure? My, I’ll have to put something on your face before you come to the table.”
“I don’t want any supper.”
She felt his brow.
“I’m going to bed.”
“I don’t think he has any fever.”
“I’m all right, but I’m going to bed.”
However, at this point Liza, the cook, appeared with a platterful of sliced watermelon, then hastily backed out: “Ah thought you-all was th’oo.”
His eye caught the wet redness, and he couldn’t shake it out of his mind. “Well, maybe I could eat a little bit.”
“Then sit right down, and I’ll put something on your face later.”
He sat down, and permitted himself to be coaxed into eating three pieces of fried chicken, two new potatoes, four ears of corn on the cob, a dish of pickled beets, and two big slices of watermelon.
While he was putting this away, his mother kept up a sort of running soliloquy: “I wonder if I ought to let him go to that party tonight. It seems a pity to have him miss it, and yet — we’ll see.”
It annoyed him that his mother seemed to have forgotten he didn’t want to go to the party, and discussed it as though it were something he had been looking forward to for his whole life. However, there was nothing to do but fall in with that view of it, and dodge the main issue, if possible.