“She doesn’t like Hely, either.”
Pemberton sneezed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “What’s going on with you and Hely, anyway? Is he not your boyfriend any more?”
Harriet was horrified. “He never was my boyfriend.”
“That’s not what he says.”
Harriet kept her mouth shut. Hely got provoked and shouted out things he didn’t mean when Pemberton pulled this trick, but she wasn’t going to fall for it.
————
Hely’s mother, Martha Price Hull—who had gone to high school with Harriet’s mother—was notorious for spoiling her sons rotten. She adored them frantically, and allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, never mind what their father had to say; and though it was too soon to tell with Hely, this indulgence was thought to be the reason why Pemberton had turned out so disappointingly. Her fond child-rearing methods were legend. Grandmothers and mothers-in-law always pulled out Martha Price and her boys as a cautionary example to doting young mothers, of the heavy grievance someday to fall if (for instance) one allowed one’s child for three whole years to refuse all food but chocolate pie, as Pemberton had been famously permitted to do. From the ages of four to seven, Pemberton had eaten no food but chocolate pie: moreover (it was stressed, grimly) a special kind of chocolate pie, which called for condensed milk and all sorts of costly ingredients, and which doting Martha Price had been forced to rise at six a.m. daily in order to bake. The aunts still talked about an occasion when Pem—a guest of Robin’s—had refused lunch at Libby’s house, beating on the table with his fists (“like King Henry the Eighth”) demanding chocolate pie. (“Can you imagine? ‘Mama gives me chocolate pie.’ ” “I would have given him a good whipping.”) That Pemberton had grown to adulthood enjoying a full head of teeth was a miracle; but his lack of industry and gainful employment were fully explainable, all felt, by this early catastrophe.
It was often speculated what a bitter embarrassment Pem’s father must find his eldest son, since he was the headmaster of Alexandria Academy and disciplining young people was his job. Mr. Hull was not the shouting, red-faced ex-athlete customary at private academies like Alexandria; he was not even a coach: he taught science to junior-high-school students, and spent the rest of his time in his office with the door shut, reading books on aeronautical engineering. But though Mr. Hull held the school under tight control, and students were terrified by his silences, his wife undercut his authority at home and he had a tough time keeping order with his own boys—Pemberton in particular, who was always joking and smirking and making rabbit ears behind his father’s head when the group photographs were taken. Parents sympathized with Mr. Hull; it was clear to everyone that nothing short of knocking the boy unconscious was going to shut him up; and though the withering way he barked at Pemberton on public occasions made everyone in the room nervous, Pem himself seemed not bothered by it in the slightest, and kept right up with the easy wisecracks and smart remarks.
But though Martha Hull did not mind if her sons ran all over town, grew their hair past their shoulders, drank wine with dinner or ate dessert for breakfast, a few rules in the Hull household were inviolable. Pemberton, though twenty, was not allowed to smoke in his mother’s presence; and Hely, of course, not at all. Loud rock-and-roll music on the hi-fi was forbidden (though when his parents were out, Pemberton and his friends blasted the Who and the Rolling Stones across the entire neighborhood—to Charlotte’s befuddlement, Mrs. Fountain’s complaints, and Edie’s volcanic rage). And while neither parent could now stop Pemberton from going anywhere he pleased, Hely was forbidden at all times Pine Hill (a bad section of town, with pawn shops and juke joints) and the Pool Hall.
It was the Pool Hall where Hely—still in his sulk over Harriet—now found himself. He had parked his bicycle down the street, in the alley by the City Hall, in case his mother or father happened to drive by. Now he stood morosely crunching barbecued potato chips—which were sold along with cigarettes and gum at the dusty counter—and browsing through the comic books at the rack by the door.
Though the Pool Hall was only a block or two from the town square, and had no liquor license, it was nonetheless the roughest place in Alexandria, worse even than the Black Door or the Esquire Lounge over in Pine Hill. Dope was said to be sold at the Pool Hall; gambling was rampant; it was the site of numerous shootings and slashings and mysterious fires. Poorly lit, with cinder-block walls painted prison green, and fluorescent tubes flickering on the foam-panelled ceiling, it was on this afternoon fairly empty. Of the six tables, only two were in use, and a couple of country boys with slicked hair and snap-front denim shirts played a subdued game of pinball in the back.
Though the Pool Hall’s mildewy, depraved atmosphere appealed to Hely’s sense of desperation, he did not know how to play pool, and he was scared to loiter near the tables and watch. But he felt invigorated just to stand by the door, unnoticed, munching his barbecued potato chips and breathing the same perilous ozone of corruption.
What drew Hely to the Pool Hall were the comic books. Their selection was the best in town. The drugstore carried Richie Rich, and Betty and Veronica; the Big Star grocery had all these and Superman, too (on a rack situated uncomfortably, by the rotisserie chicken, so that Hely couldn’t browse too long without thoroughly roasting his ass); but the Pool Hall had Sergeant Rock and Weird War Tales and G.I. Combat (real soldiers killing real gooks); they had Rima the Jungle Girl in her panther-fur bathing suit; best of all, they had a rich selection of horror comics (werewolves, premature burials, drooling carrions shuffling forth from the graveyard), all of which were, to Hely, of unbelievably riveting interest: Weird Mystery Tales and House of Secrets, The Witching Hour and The Specter’s Notebook and Forbidden Tales of the Dark Mansion.… He had not been aware that such galvanizing reading matter existed—much less that it was available for him, Hely, to purchase in his own town—until one afternoon, when he had been forced to stay after school, he had discovered in an empty desk a copy of Secrets of Sinister House. On its cover was a picture of a crippled girl in a creepy old house, screaming and frantically trying to roll her wheelchair away from a giant cobra. Inside, the crippled girl perished in a froth of convulsions. And there was more—vampires, gouged eyes, fratricides. Hely was enthralled. He read it five or six times from cover to cover, and then took it home and read it some more until he knew it backwards and forward by heart, every single story—“Satan’s Roommate,” “Come Share My Coffin,” “Transylvania Travel Agency.” It was without question the greatest comic book he had ever seen; he believed it to be one of a kind, some marvelous fluke of nature, unobtainable, and he was beside himself when some weeks later he saw a kid at school named Benny Landreth reading one quite similar, this one called Black Magic with a picture of a mummy strangling an archaeologist on the cover. He pleaded with Benny—who was a grade older, and mean—to sell the comic to him; and then, when that didn’t work, he offered to pay Benny two dollars and then three if Benny would only let him look at the comic for a minute, just one minute.
“Go down to the Pool Hall and buy your own,” Benny had said, rolling up the comic book and slapping Hely across the side of the head.
That was two years ago. Now, horror comic books were all that got Hely through certain difficult stretches of life: chicken pox, boring car trips, Camp Lake de Selby. Because of his limited funds and the strict interdiction against the Pool Hall, his expeditions to purchase them were infrequent, once a month perhaps, and much anticipated. The fat man at the cash register didn’t seem to mind that Hely stood around the rack for so long; in fact, he hardly noticed Hely at all, which was just as well as Hely sometimes stood studying the comics for hours in order to make the wisest possible selection.