When the old man got home from work, he looked at me and said, “Where the hell you been?” and I said, “Been? You know God-damn well where I’ve been. I’ve been up to Pipskill going to school and playing basketball, that’s where I’ve been,” and he said, “Don’t hand me that. The God-damn school closes up for Christmas, at least. Why the hell didn’t you come home for Christmas? You afraid you’d have to buy someone a present or something?” and I said, “Now isn’t that a crying shame! Since when did anyone in this crummy family ever buy anyone else a Christmas present? What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway? You know damn well you don’t give a damn if I come home for Christmas or any other time, and the way it looks to me, it looks like you’d rather I wouldn’t, as a matter of fact.”
He looked at me for a minute without saying anything, and then he said, “Well, now, maybe that’s just the Goddamn way it is, now that you mention it, and I’ll tell you something else, too. Your old lady and I know you been getting paid a hundred dollars a month to play basketball up there at Pipskill, so there’s no use trying to tell us any of your Goddamn lies about it, and if you’re planning to louse around here all summer, you’ll damn well pay board, and that’s all of it.”
“You’re crazy as hell,” I said. “They don’t pay me anything during the summer,” and he said, “They sure as hell paid you something during the winter, and you better have some of it left if you expect me to fill your belly any longer,” and then the old lady jumped in and asked the old man who the hell he thought he was to be throwing her only son out of the God-damn house without asking her anything about it, and he was surprised at that, and so was I, to tell the truth, and he said, “Who the hell pulled your string?” and she said, “He cusses me and abuses me and breaks my heart and is a bum in general, but he’s my own flesh and blood and poor Eddy’s own brother, and I won’t have him thrown out of the house,” and he said, “Well, mother, maybe you’d like to pay for the God-damn chow he’s going to eat,” and they kept at it back and forth and forgot about me, and I went out in the kitchen and ate and got the hell out of there for a while, and the old man kept threatening to throw me out off and on all summer but never did.
I had an idea I’d pick up again with Marsha Davis, which would have made the summer something to tell about, but the high school had quit two weeks earlier than Pipskill, and by the time I got home she’d already gone off somewhere with her old lady, to some God-damn lake or somewhere, and she never got back while I was there, and as a matter of fact I never did pick it up again, and I guess it was just as well in the long run, but I didn’t think so at the time. For a while I loused around with old Bugs, as much as I could stand him, and the truth is, he was always making snotty remarks about big shots and stuff and how some guys got swelled heads over nothing, and it was a lot of crap in general because I made a special effort not to break it off in him, feeling kind of sorry for him because he was too damn dumb to go to college, but finally I got sick of it and knocked him on his tail, and that was the end of it. After that I shot a little rotation and stuff and went out to the high school and got permission to sharpen up my eye in the gym while no one else was using it, and nothing much happened until just a few days before it was time to go back to Pipskill, and it was then I got even with Gravy Dummke, and I’ll have to tell about it.
It was one morning about nine o’clock, and I was walking along the street and just happened to look down this alley that went in back of Gravy’s cigar store, and there was old Gravy up on a ladder looking over the edge of the building at the roof. I guess he’d been up there doing some work or something, and maybe had just stopped at the top of the ladder on his way down to see how it looked from there, but anyway he was just standing there, and I went down the alley fast and quiet and got between the ladder and the building and pushed the God-damn ladder over backwards. Old Gravy screamed like a crazy woman, honest to God, and you could have heard him a mile away, and he came down like a barrel of lard on the bricks, which is what the alley was made of, and I was a little scared at first because he didn’t move, and I thought I’d killed him sure as hell, but it turned out he only had a concussion and broke his God-damn arm and was only in the hospital a couple of weeks.
Considering Gravy and everything, it was a good thing it was time to leave town, and I left and went back up to Pipskill and got set in the frat house with Micky, and we went around and reported to Barker Umplett in the field house when the time came. Most of last year’s team had graduated, which was good riddance of bad rubbish, but there were a couple of guys left over who were seniors and pretty good, and it was plain enough right from the start that the first five would be them and Micky and old Carboy and me. Old Carboy had practiced all summer on his hook shot, but it hadn’t done him a hell of a lot of good, and usually when he tried to hook one over it was just the same as throwing the God-damn ball away, and old Umplett would stand him up like a kid in grade school, all seven feet of him, and he’d look at him for a while with his little eyes like a couple of nasty smears in his face, and then he’d start in a low voice to chew old Carboy out, and when it came to chewing old buller Mulloy and even Dilky had been sissies compared to Umplett. He always talked low and never bellowed or threw himself around like Mulloy had done, but he never had any prejudice against cussing, and more than anything he actually said, it was the tone of his voice that counted. He sounded like he hated your guts, and his little eyes looked like he hated your guts, and as a matter of fact he sure as hell did. I found out about that a couple of weeks after we’d started practicing, and this is the way I found it out.
I was on my way to practice, and I stopped in this place called the Pink Pig, which was a place just off the campus where a lot of us guys hung out and bought malts and stuff, and I happened to run into this girl I knew, name of Ellen, and I set up a malt for her, and she said, “I just happen to have the old man’s car at school this week, Skimmer. How about running out to the Barn for a couple of beers?” Well, the Barn was a place out on the highway about a mile, and I said, “I haven’t got time. I got to get to basketball practice,” and she said, “Basketball practice? You rather go to basketball practice than out to the Barn with me? I must be slipping,” and I said, “It’s not that. It’s just that old Umplett gets pretty mean when you miss practice,” and she laughed and said, “Oh, if you’re afraid of getting your wrist slapped, you can just forget I asked you.”
“Who the hell’s afraid?” I said, and she said, “It looks to me like you are,” and I said, “Well, I’m ready to go out to the Barn any time you are, and I’ll tell you right now you better have more than a couple of beers to offer, too,” and she laughed and said, “That’s the way I like to hear you talk. Rough and ready,” and that was no lie, because she did like it and was pretty much that way herself, and whenever you were with old Ellen you could count on going on from a couple of beers to other things, and she always knew what she wanted and didn’t mind letting you know it, a lot like Marsha had been and nothing at all like old Sylvia, who had been a cry baby besides being crazy.