Page 40 - WTP VOl. X #3

Bitter Water (continued from preceding page)
“No!” he said in revulsion, “No, he didn’t show me
anything!”
“Because you know...” she began.
“He didn’t show me anything,” Jason said. He hated Cousin Andy for showing him poker, the green book, and the yellow meal that secreted from the corner
of his mouth, and for playing the trumpet, in his bedroom, apart, where he could have showed him anything, and (he shuddered) left him a pale sickly ‘little boy, little boy’ with haunted eyes and a quaver- ing voice. He resented his mother for entertaining the possibility, and he didn’t want to go to church
at all, to the bright lights, with his mother and his father and Cousin Andy and everybody else all there in a row, shoulder to shoulder. He felt sick and hot on the back of his neck, like he would spill out every which way and his parents would have to scoop him from the backseat. But he held his trembling insides together, and as he got out of the car, he felt betrayed angry ill and exposed.
X.
Jason had three columns: quarters, nickels, and dimes. Cousin Andy only had two quarters and two nickels, and he anted up with the nickels, and then took his cards and scowled at what he saw. Jason bet ten cents more and Andy tossed down his cards. As Jason took his winnings, Andy put the deck in its box.
“Don’t you want to play anymore?” asked Jason.
“I’m sure you do,” said Cousin Andy, “but if I play much longer you’ll make a poor man out of me. Obvi- ously,” he winked, “you’re a hustler.”
He eyed his two coins, and said sagely, “You know, should always keep two, so they can bring you more in the future. Never bet one of your last two. You know what one quarter can get you?”
“What?” asked Jason. Cousin Andy began to count on his thumbs and fingers.
“Eight M&Ms,” he said. “Or one gumball.” He smiled his sagging smile, pinned up in three places. He then scooted next to Jason and looked down at him.
“You have a lot of promise,” he said. His breath was warm and damp. “When I was your age, I thought about girls. That’s all I ever thought about. Well,
I may have had one or two other thoughts going through my head. But the whole engine was growl-
ing, ‘rrrrr, rrrrRRRRRrrrrr,’ and every rotation said ‘girls;girls;girls;girls;girls;girls;girls;girls,’” (and he moved his fist in rotation,) “girls;girls;girls, again and again and again, and at the time... well. Every thought started and ended with girls, but sometimes it would wander somewhere else in between. So I said to myself, say it launches a thousand thoughts an hour and only five percent of them ever hit on something useful, well that’s still, what, twenty useful thoughts? Not bad. A generative force.”
Jason nodded and thought of a girl he liked. Her name was Catherine.
“You have a good soul,” said Cousin Andy, “and a good mind. And the looks to go with it,” he added with a wink. “Let me give you some advice—waste as little time as you can obsessing over girls. There are other, better loves out there. You love books—that’s a start. But it’s only the beginning.”
He then began to tell Jason that he had once been young, athletic, talented, the envy of not a few high school boys. Second seed on the varsity tennis team, second trumpet in the orchestra. He said he won- dered what Jason would have thought of him back then. He fished for his wallet and took out a black- and-white photograph. There was a young Cousin Andy, his neck full, his hair thick and dark, his face smooth. He held a tennis racket backhand by his
clean cheek, and his unusual smile was possessed of a scalene intelligence, sharp in three places. Jason took it, looked at it closely, and handed it back. They sat there in silence, Jason thinking vaguely of the past in which his grandparents had run, and his parents had climbed trees. He felt a hand on his back and looked up to see Cousin Andy smiling down at him. Jason felt queasy, and heat on the back of his neck. The yellow meal had dried and cracked in the corner of Cousin Andy’s mouth, and he wanted to move away but didn’t know how, he had no reason, Cousin Andy was just being friendly. There were footsteps on the stairs. Jason’s mother called for them. Jason stood quickly and Cousin Andy watched him.
“We’re in here!” Jason called back. “We were just play- ing a card game.” He opened the door to see his mother’s face.
“Oh!” she said, bright smile, questioning. “It’s time to go to church!”
“Okay!” said Jason. He did not look back and see Cousin Andy rise hastily to join them.
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