“He’s alone too much,” his mother said. “He needs friends, and things to do.”
“Then why doesn’t he find some? He isn’t going to find any standing on his head in front of that bookcase.”
“Maybe he can’t,” his mother said. “Maybe he doesn’t know how. Maybe he’s ashamed of what we do, have you thought of that? Maybe he thinks the other kids laugh at him. I know he used to. I wish …”
Bruce hung there waiting to hear what she wished, for it was sure to be something about him, and he was a subject in which he took the greatest interest. But they had fallen silent, perhaps sensing that he hadn’t gone outside after all, and might still be within earshot. Easing the screen open, he slid out through it, let it close softly, and sat down quickly on the porch rail in a narrow band of shade.
His mother came into the kitchen. She gave him a worried, encouraging smile through the screen. “You’re in the house so much,” she said. “Couldn’t you find someone to play with? Baseball? Maybe just play catch?”
“I don’t know anybody.”
“Oh, you know dozens of boys at school!”
“None of them live around here.”
“Maybe if you went down to the Municipal. It seems to me that when we lived down by there, Chet could always find some game going on.”
“It’s too hot.”
“Maybe you could go swimming.”
“Where? There’s only Warm Springs, and last time I was out there I got a bealed ear.”
“Yes,” she said, troubled. “I’m afraid that place isn’t as clean as it should be. Well, isn’t there someone you could telephone? Somebody who has a bike, and could come over? It would be all right. You could play cards or something. I could get Pa to go out and get some ice cream.”
“It’s all right. I’m O.K.”
The last thing he wanted was to hunt somebody up and invite him over. Anybody worth asking would be doing something else, anyway. And anybody was likely to see or feel something, catch some family tension, or hear his old man bawl him out about something.
He set the glass in the sink and went outside and read on the lawn, under a tree. When his mother at supper asked him what book he had had his nose in all afternoon, he gave her a mumbled answer. He did not like to talk about books in front of his father, who despised them, or at least despised their capacity to pull him away from reality. But also, he lived his life in compartments, and his mother no more belonged in the compartment of school and books than his father did. The only compartment in which she had a place was the home one, the one in which his physical needs of food and clothing and sleep were taken care of.
Nevertheless, it was she who found the tennis club. And how did she find it? By going along with his father when he made a delivery to the little Italian called Murphy who managed the place. If the old man hadn’t been the club bootlegger she would never have discovered it, and neither would Bruce.
He could imagine, remembering, how it would have seemed to her when she came into that blazing white space insulated inside its high walls of vine. She would have sat in the deep shade of the arbor while the old man and Murphy conducted their business inside. She would have felt the intense seclusion, the privilege, of that modest little temple to sport. She would have heard the strange musical ping of rackets on balls, and heard the running feet, the gritty sound as someone slid into a shot on the clay, the burst of laughter and release at the end of a rally. She would have seen the bare-legged girls in white dresses, tanned and healthy, and heard their chatter and laughter, and thought how pleasant their company would be for her solemn solitary son, reading himself blind back at the house. She would have watched youths in white ducks fight each other for points out on the bright courts, marvels to her of coordination and skill, and wished she could somehow make it open and accept him.
She had a way of being quietly and single-mindedly efficient when she wanted something for Bruce. She must have gone to work on his father the minute he and Murphy came out of the unused bowling alley and stood by her under the arbor.
A night or two afterward, she started quizzing Bruce at supper. Had he ever played tennis? Did he know how?
He could see that she had in mind some scheme or other, something she wanted him to do for his own good, and he answered evasively. Yes, sure, he had played a few times.
Did he like it?
Like it? Sure, it was all right.
He hadn’t played tennis this summer, even with a lot of time on his hands. Was that because he didn’t like it, or didn’t have anybody to play with, or didn’t have a racket, or what?
He didn’t know. Some of everything, he supposed. Anyway, the only public courts were away down in Liberty Park, and always full besides.
Wasn’t there a tennis club in town? Had he ever heard of one?
Yes, but that was where the good players played.
Did he know anybody who played there?
He didn’t know. Maybe some of the high school tennis team did.
Would he like to play with them if he had the chance?
They wouldn’t play with him, they were way too good.
But he could learn.
Oh, sure, he supposed so.
Would he like to belong to the tennis club?
What for? He didn’t have a racket or anything.
But if he had a racket?
Maybe. But those guys were all a tight little crowd. You couldn’t just crash in.
He didn’t like the way she couldn’t keep from smiling. And his father was listening, looking almost agreeable. It was some kind of conspiracy. His mother got up and went into the kitchen and came back with her hands behind her.
“Because you do have a racket!” she cried, and produced it. It was secondhand, with stained adhesive tape spiraled around the handle. Bruce took it, pretending pleasure, and tapped it on the heel of his left hand. Dreadnaught Driver, it said on the throat.
“And you do belong to the tennis club!” His mother said. A pink flush had appeared on her cheekbones and she could not control her smiling. “Pa’s bought you a membership for the rest of the summer. I got the racket from Murphy, it’s just been restrung. And here’s two new balls. I got you some tennis shoes and some white pants, too, that’s what they all wear.”
What could he say? Thanks. Gee whiz, Ma, thanks. Thanks, Pa. This is swell.
“Murphy said he’d introduce you to people. He’s a customer of your dad’s so you’d have to be a little … careful.”
“Yeah, sure.”
But that killed it, if it had ever been alive. His father sat watching him, and though Bruce had in his hands, and heard in his mother’s happy voice, evidence of his good will, what he felt was his father’s opinion of his son’s response. His lack of enthusiasm disgusted him. The boy was unappreciative and mule-headed. He had thrown away his money. Maybe he thought Bruce was thankless, maybe he understood that Bruce wanted nothing to do with Murphy or any other customer. He veiled his eyes and finished his supper in silence.
Just the same, he had to go down the very next morning. It would have been like hitting his mother in the face if he hadn’t. He had to get dressed up in his new white embarassing ducks and sneakers. She practically forced him out the door, she watched him go down the block. He was scared to death she would suggest coming along, to protect and introduce him as if he were a little kid starting school.
He considered never going near the club—just disappearing for a few hours and coming back with some story or other, and going on with the pretense until she forgot or gave up. But if he didn’t show up there, word would get back through Murphy. So about midmorning, watchful and unwilling, he went through the gate and stood a minute, looking around.
Two girls were playing on the first court. They banged the ball ferociously, they ran like sprinters, they slid and changed directions and charged up and fell back, they chopped and lobbed and drove and smashed and volleyed in grim, breathless competitiveness, they chased each other f
rom corner to corner and from net to base line. One of them, Bruce saw from her gestures, was deaf and dumb.
His heart was down. In this place where his interfering mother had got him, even deaf-and-dumb girls played with a power and skill that demoralized him. In his fraudulent white ducks, carrying his secondhand Dreadnaught Driver and his two new balls—and why had she got only two? Even he knew there should be three—he sneaked past the clubhouse and hid himself in a wicker chair under the arbor, where he became a spectator.
He had been there for perhaps ten minutes, and was thinking of sneaking out again, when Joe Mulder came out of the clubhouse. Bruce knew him from high school. He had played end on the same football team on which Chet had been a halfback, and he was captain of the school tennis team. One of the big guys, but not one of the stupid ones. He had spoken to Bruce once or twice in the halls.
“Well, hey there, Mason,” he said, and gave Bruce a surprised blue glinting look from under his pink eyebrows. He flopped into a chair and pitched his racket into another. His ducks had obviously been wadded, sweaty and soiled, into a locker. His sneakers were so worn that only the laces kept them on his feet. He smelled of stale sweat and stiff gym socks. The three balls he laid on the strings of his racket were worn fuzzless. Bruce wished he had had the wit to sit down on some curbstone and get the seat of his new pants dirty. If Joe hadn’t been looking at him, he would have wiped his sweaty hands on his legs to dull the whiteness and obscure the crease.
“Hi,” he said.
The grass under the arbor was long and uncut, stained with fallen druit. Wasps were busy there. Joe reached up for a cluster of grapes, tasted one, made a face, and threw the bunch away. “How’s Chet?”
“He’s up in Idaho or somewhere.”
“Playing ball?”
“I guess. He doesn’t write very often.”
He wondered if Joe Mulder knew about the raid. There was no way to tell.
“I didn’t know you were a tennis player,” Joe said, and now he was looking pointedly at Bruce’s unbaptized clothes.
“Well,” Bruce said, “a little.”
The deaf girl chased a ball down their way, and Joe wagged his fingers at her through the screen. She gave him a broad grin and heaved her arms in the air as if gesturing an explosion. She was sweating like a man out there in the heat.
“You belong to the club now?”
“I just joined.”
“Good.”
He seemed genuinely pleased. For a minute they sat with nothing to talk about, and then Bruce said, “I don’t know many members, I guess. Who’s around this summer?”
“Oh, most of us. The whole East High team—Kreps and Bailey and McBride and me. Some guys from the U. Al Anderson, you know him? Writes sports for the Deseret News, always writes himself up as ‘the little star,’ and ‘Anderson, with his flashing all-court game.’ I don’t know—most of us. Chick Belton, he’s state and intermountain champ. Quite a few Old Joe Gettems that you think you can mop up on and never can. Cagey old bastards that can’t run and can’t hit it and never make an error. And some girls. Amy out there, the deaf one, ought to win some tournaments this year. Lots of people.” He picked up the Dreadnaught Driver from where Bruce had leaned it against a chair. “This yours?”
“Yes,” Bruce said, and added, “My old one.”
“Jesus, it’s heavy, isn’t it? That’d break my arm.”
His arm looked about as breakable as a sawlog. Bruce was conscious of how skinny his was by comparison, and he cursed his mother for letting Murphy sell her an old clunker that even Joe Mulder couldn’t swing.
“My other one’s got a busted string,” he said. “That’s lighter.”
Joe Mulder’s glinting, quick eyes touched Bruce’s white perfection and withdrew. “What’s your other one?”
In panic Bruce searched the vacancy of his mind for some name, some scrap of information, some echo of an advertisement or a conversation, and found nothing. He could feel his ears reddening. “It’s a … a …”
Joe picked up his own racket and tested the tone of its strings, laid it down to pick up Bruce’s and get a duller tone. As he laid his down, Bruce read its throat.
“It’s an HA!” he said. “Spalding HA. Like yours.”
“Yeah?” Joe was smiling. Bruce would have sworn that he had lifted that racket to give him a clue. “I like an old HA, don’t you? Old pancake turner. It isn’t so good for serving, do you think? It’s so wide in the top you don’t seem to get as much zing on a serve. But for ground strokes, it’s the one.”
Bruce couldn’t have agreed with him more.
“You going to the U this fall?” Joe asked.
“Yes. Are you?”
“Yeah. Going out for tennis?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Nearly the whole university team graduated. Some of us ought to have a chance to make it. Freshmen can earn a letter in tennis. Better come out.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Let’s take over the whole beeswax.”
“You’ll make it, for sure.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Kreps might, too. Maybe Bailey, if he’d train a little and remember to stay eligible.” Leaning, he squinted upward at the glitter of sun through the grapevines. “God damn Bailey, he’s never been on time in his life. We had a date for ten. I’ve got to be at work at twelve. You waiting for somebody?”
“No, I just wandered by.”
“Want to hit some till Bailey comes? If he ever comes?”
Bruce would have lied if he could. But if he wasn’t prepared to play, why was he sitting there in tennis clothes, with a racket and two new balls? He couldn’t even say he wasn’t feeling well. Obviously, up till then, he was.
“I’m not in your class,” he said, and having tried the truth with his toe, he immediately fell in all the way. “I’m just a beginner. All I’d do is make a horse’s ass of myself.”
A half smile was stuck on Joe’s freckled, amiable face. “When did you get so humble?” he said. “I thought you were the guy that ate people alive. Once I heard you offer to tear the arm off old fat-ass Kirkham and beat him over the head with the bloody end of it. You were a terror, boy. Little, but oh my.”
“Yeah, well, that was …”
“The funny thing was, he wasn’t sure you wouldn’t do it. You had him buffaloed.” Joe laughed, made a surprised face, plucked a handful of his stained shirt away from his armpit, sniffed, and reeled. “Jesus, the Beau Brummel of the courts. It’s all right once it gets warmed up, but cold it’s worse than chloroform. Let’s hit some before I asphyxiate myself.”
“You don’t want to hit any with me.”
“Sure I do. Come on.”
So Bruce went out and disgraced himself, hit three or four over the fence, lost one of his new balls in the vines, pushed and patted like a girl (not one of those on number 1), and was never once made to feel his clumsiness. Joe corrected his grip and showed him how to take a backswing and follow through. He showed Bruce where his feet should be, and how his weight ought to be coming through the ball, and how his eye ought to be on it till impact. In twenty minutes he taught him more than he had expected to learn all summer, and when Bailey finally arrived, he sent Bruce over to the bangboard off number 5, to practice what he had shown him.
“You’ve got a good eye,” he said. “Your reactions are fast. You’re coordinated. All you need to do is practice and play a lot.”
From down at the end, in moments when he was walking after his ball, Bruce watched Joe and Bailey slug with one another from the base line, and he was envious but not discouraged. In a half hour, Joe Mulder had him belonging where he had never hoped to belong. By October he was taking an occasional set from Bailey or Kreps, and he had beaten one of the Old Joe Gettems that even Joe had trouble with.
Bruce Mason lifted his nose into the night wind. Bless that slovenly, confident, grinning, friendly horse. He had known Bruce Mason inside out from the first minute
under the arbor, but still liked him and found him for some reason interesting and amusing. Bruce had spent that whole first day on the bangboard, and had come home blown, blistered, sunburned, soaked with sweat, just in time for supper. His mother had been delighted at the success of her plot. But it was not his mother that Bruce’s heart thanked. It was Joe.
He would have played five sets barefoot on broken glass for him. Joe rescued his summer and perhaps his life. He taught Bruce not only tennis but confidence, and not only confidence but friendship. Simply by accepting that outcast, he made him over. If Bruce Mason knew anything at all about magnanimity, he learned it from Joe Mulder.
The night wind was moving the branches of the trees. The light of the arc lamp fluttered in the street. It seemed an endless way from Beirut and the terrace of the St. Georges, an incomprehensible distance from this tennis club and the fifteen-year-old who haunted it in the summer of 1925 to the State Department Building, the string of embassies, the array of foreign hotels and American compounds where accident and opportunity and perhaps the line of least resistance had later led him. The truth was, he felt at least as close, right at that moment, to the fifteen-year-old as to the ex-ambassador, the editor, the expert on Middle Eastern oil.
He opened the door and stepped out. The air was alive overhead, the shadows moved in a flow like the current of a river. He waded across the street and up onto the lawn, searching the dark beyond the building to see if perhaps they had kept the vine-covered fences. Those were a coolness in summer, a glory in fall. At any time of the year the ball came at you out of that even background in three dimensions, so plain you could read the label on it.
He bent over the sign planted in the lawn, but could not read it in the flaky light. Finally he struck a match, cupping it against the wind, and moved it along the plank in which letters had been cut with a router.
“Senior Citizens’ Recreation Center,” it said.
Angrily he shook the match out and dropped it. He went straight to the car and turned the switch and looked at his watch under the cowl light. Ten-twenty. Why not? he thought. If his house is dark I can simply drive past and turn around and go back to the hotel.