The Hotel New Hampshire Part 12

'Now we'll bring you Dove,' said Junior Jones.

'Gently, Junior!' cried the Dean. 'For G.o.d's sake, gently gently!'

I stayed with Franny; Mother and Father came to the infirmary with her clothes. Coach Bob was left to babysit with Lilly and Egg - like the old old days, I thought. But where was Frank? days, I thought. But where was Frank?

Frank was out on a 'mission,' Father said mysteriously. When Father had heard that Franny was 'beaten up,' he'd never doubted the worst. And he knew that Sorrow would be the first thing she'd ask for when she was home in her own bed. 'I want to go home,' she would say; and then she'd say, 'I want Sorrow to sleep with me.'

'Maybe it's not too late,' Father had said; he'd left Sorrow at the vet's before the football game. If it had been a busy day for the vet, perhaps the old farter was still alive in some cage. Frank had undertaken the mission to go and see.

But it was like the rescue mission of Junior Jones; Frank arrived too late. He woke up the vet with his pounding on the door. 'I hate Halloween,' the vet probably said, but his wife told him it was one of the Berry boys asking about Sorrow. 'Oh-oh,' the vet said. 'I'm sorry, son,' the vet told Frank, 'but your dog pa.s.sed away this afternoon.'

'I want to see him,' Frank said.

'Oh-oh,' the vet said. The dog is dead, son.' dead, son.'

'Have you buried him?' Frank asked.

'It's so sweet,' the vet's wife told her husband. 'Let the boy bury his own dog, if that's what he wants.'

'Oh-oh,' the vet said, but he led Frank to the hindmost room of the kennel, where Frank was treated to the sight of three dead dogs in a pile, with a pile of three dead cats beside them. 'We don't bury things on the weekends,' the vet explained. 'Which one is Sorrow?'

Frank spotted the old evil-smeller instantly; Sorrow had begun to stiffen up, but Frank was still able to force the dead black Labrador into a large trash bag. The vet and his wife couldn't have known that Frank had no intention of burying burying Sorrow. Sorrow.

'Too late,' Frank whispered to Father, when Mother and Father and Franny and I arrived home - at the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re.

'Jesus G.o.d, I can walk by myself, you know,' Franny said, because all of us were trying to walk next to her. 'Here, Sorrow!' she called. 'Come on, boy!'

Mother started to cry and Franny took her arm. 'I'm okay okay, Mom,' she said. 'Really I am. n.o.body touched the me me inside me, I guess.' Father started to cry and Franny took his arm, too. I had been crying all night, it seemed, and I was all cried out. inside me, I guess.' Father started to cry and Franny took his arm, too. I had been crying all night, it seemed, and I was all cried out.

Frank pulled me aside.

'What the f.u.c.k is it, Frank?' I said.

'Come see,' he said.

Sorrow, still in the trash bag, was under the bed in Frank's room.

'Jesus G.o.d, Frank!' I said.

'I'm going to fix fix him for Franny,' he said. 'In time for Christmas!' him for Franny,' he said. 'In time for Christmas!'

'Christmas, Frank?' I said. 'Fix him?' him?'

'I'm going to have Sorrow stuffed stuffed!' Frank said. Frank's favourite course at the Dairy School was biology, a weird course taught by an amateur taxidermist named Foit. Frank, with Foit's help, had already stuffed a squirrel and an odd orange bird.

'Holy cow, Frank,' I said, 'I don't know if Franny will like that.'

'It's the next-best thing to being alive,' Frank said.

I didn't know. By the sudden outburst we heard, from Franny, we knew that Father had broken the news to her. A slight distraction to Franny's grief was caused by Iowa Bob. He insisted on going out and finding Chipper Dove himself, and it took some persuading to talk him out of it. Franny wanted another bath, and I lay in bed listening to the tub filling. Then I got up and went to the bathroom door and asked her if there was anything I could get her.

'Thank you,' she whispered. 'Just go out and get me yesterday and most of today,' she said. 'I want them back.'

'Is that all?' I said. 'Just yesterday and today?'

'That's all,' she said. Thank you.'

'I would if I could, Franny,' I told her.

'I know,' she said. I heard her sinking slowly in the tub. 'I'm okay,' she whispered. 'n.o.body got the f.u.c.king me me in me.' in me.'

'I love you,' I whispered.

She didn't answer me, and I went back to bed.

I heard Coach Bob, in his rooms above us - doing push-ups, and then some sit-ups, and then a little work with the one-arm curls (the bar-bells' rhythmic clanks and the old man's enraged breaths) - and I wished he had been allowed to find Chipper Dove, who would have been no match for the old Iowa lineman.

Unfortunately, Dove was was a match for Junior Jones and the Black Arm of the Law. Dove had gone straight to the girls' dorm, and to the room of a doting cheerleader named Melinda Mitch.e.l.l. She was called Mindy and she was gaga over Dove. He told her he'd been 'fooling around' with Franny Berry, but that when she started fooling around with Lenny Metz and Chester Pulaski, too, it had put him off. 'A c.o.c.k tease,' he called my sister, and Mindy Mitch.e.l.l agreed. She had been jealous of Franny for years. a match for Junior Jones and the Black Arm of the Law. Dove had gone straight to the girls' dorm, and to the room of a doting cheerleader named Melinda Mitch.e.l.l. She was called Mindy and she was gaga over Dove. He told her he'd been 'fooling around' with Franny Berry, but that when she started fooling around with Lenny Metz and Chester Pulaski, too, it had put him off. 'A c.o.c.k tease,' he called my sister, and Mindy Mitch.e.l.l agreed. She had been jealous of Franny for years.

'But now Franny's got the black bunch after me,' Dove told Mindy. 'She's pals with them. Especially Junior Jones,' Dove said, ' - that goody-goody spade who's a fink for the Dean.' So Mindy Mitch.e.l.l tucked Dove into her bed with her, and when Harold Swallow came whispering at her door ('Dove, Dove - have you seen Dove? Black Arm of the Law wants to know'), she said she didn't let any boy into her room and she wouldn't let Harold in, either.

So they didn't find him. He was expelled from the Dairy School in the morning - along with Chester Pulaski and Lenny Metz. The parents of the gang-bangers, when they heard the story, were grateful enough that nothing criminal was being charged that they accepted the expulsion from school rather graciously. Some of the faculty, and most of the trustees, were upset that the incident couldn't have been suppressed until after the Exeter game, but it was pointed out that Iowa Bob's backfield was a less embarra.s.sing loss than losing Iowa Bob himself - for the old man surely would have refused to coach in a game with those three still on his team.

It was an incident that was hushed up in the best private school tradition; it was remarkable, really, how a school as unsophisticated as the Dairy School could at times imitate exactly the decorum of silence in dealing with distasteful matters that the more sophisticated schools had learned like a science.

For 'beating up' Franny Berry - in what was implied to be merely an extension of the general roughhouse quality of a Dairy School Halloween - Chester Pulaski, Lenny Metz, and Chipper Dove were expelled. Dove, it appeared to me, got off scot-free. But Franny and I had not seen the last of him, and perhaps Franny already knew that. We had not seen the last of Junior Jones, either; he became Franny's friend, if not exactly her bodyguard, for the duration of his stay at Dairy. They went everywhere together, and it was clear to me that Junior Jones was responsible for helping Franny feel that she was, indeed, a good girl - as he was always telling her. We had not seen the last of Jones when we left Dairy, although - once again - his style of rescuing Franny would distinguish itself by his late arrival. Junior Jones, as you know, would play college football at Perm State, and professional football for the Browns - until someone would mess up his knee. He would then go to law school and become active in an organization in New York City - which would be called, at his suggestion, the Black Arm of the Law. As Lilly would say - and one day she would make this clear to us - Everything is a fairy tale.

Chester Pulaski would suffer his his racist nightmares most of his life, which would be over in a car. The police would say that he must have had his hands all over someone while he was supposed to be paying attention to the steering wheel. The woman was killed, too, and Lenny Metz said he knew her. When his collarbone healed, Metz went right back to carrying the ball; he played college football somewhere in Virginia and introduced Chester Pulaski to the woman he killed over one Christmas vacation. Metz would never be drafted by the pros - for a p.r.o.nounced lack of quickness - but he was drafted by the U.S. Army, who didn't care how slow he was, and he died for his country, as they say, in Vietnam. Actually, he was not shot by the enemy; he did not step on a mine. It was another kind of combat that Lenny Metz succ.u.mbed to: he was poisoned by a prost.i.tute, whom he had cheated. racist nightmares most of his life, which would be over in a car. The police would say that he must have had his hands all over someone while he was supposed to be paying attention to the steering wheel. The woman was killed, too, and Lenny Metz said he knew her. When his collarbone healed, Metz went right back to carrying the ball; he played college football somewhere in Virginia and introduced Chester Pulaski to the woman he killed over one Christmas vacation. Metz would never be drafted by the pros - for a p.r.o.nounced lack of quickness - but he was drafted by the U.S. Army, who didn't care how slow he was, and he died for his country, as they say, in Vietnam. Actually, he was not shot by the enemy; he did not step on a mine. It was another kind of combat that Lenny Metz succ.u.mbed to: he was poisoned by a prost.i.tute, whom he had cheated.

Harold Swallow was both too crazy and too fast for me to keep up with. G.o.d knows what became of him. Good luck to you, Harold, wherever you are!

Perhaps because it was Halloween, and Halloween's atmosphere pervades my memory of Iowa Bob's winning season, they have all become like ghosts and wizards and devils and creatures of magic, to me. Remember, too: it was the first night we slept in the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re - not that we slept for most of it. Any night in a new place is a little uneasy - there are the different sounds of the beds to get used to. And Lilly, who always woke up with the same dry cough, as if she were a very old person - and we'd be constantly surprised to see how small she was - woke up coughing differently, almost as if she were as exasperated with her own poor health as Mother was. Egg never woke up unless someone woke him, and then he behaved as if he'd been awake for hours. But the morning after Halloween, Egg woke up by himself - almost peacefully. And I had heard Frank m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e in his room for years, but it was different hearing him do it in the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re - perhaps because I knew that Sorrow was in a trash bag under his bed.

The morning after Halloween, I watched the early light fall in Elliot Park. There'd been a frost, and through the frozen rinds of someone's mangled pumpkin I saw Frank trudging to the bio lab with Sorrow in the trash bag over his shoulder. Father saw him out the same window.

'Where the h.e.l.l is Frank going with the garbage?' Father asked. Frank going with the garbage?' Father asked.

'He probably couldn't find the trash barrels,' I said, so that Frank could make good his escape. 'I mean, we don't have a phone that works, and we phone that works, and we were were out of electricity. There probably aren't any trash barrels, either.' out of electricity. There probably aren't any trash barrels, either.'

'There are so,' Father said. 'The barrels are out at the delivery entrance.' He stared after Frank and shook his head. The d.a.m.n fool must be going all the way to the dump,' Father said. 'Jesus, that boy is queer.'

I s.h.i.+vered, because I knew that Father didn't know that Frank really was was queer. queer.

When Egg was finally out of the bathroom, Father went to use the facilities and found that Franny had beaten him to the door. She was drawing another another bath for herself, and Mother told Father, 'Don't you say a word to her. She can take all the baths she wants.' And they went away, arguing - which they rarely did. 'I told you we'd need another bathroom,' Mother said. bath for herself, and Mother told Father, 'Don't you say a word to her. She can take all the baths she wants.' And they went away, arguing - which they rarely did. 'I told you we'd need another bathroom,' Mother said.

I listened to Franny, drawing her bath. 'I love you,' I whispered at the locked door. But - over the sound of the healing water - it is unlikely that Franny ever heard me.

5

Merry Christmas, 1956 .

I remember the rest of 1956, from Halloween to Christmas, as the length of time it took Franny to stop taking three baths a day - and to return to her natural fondness for her own good, ripe smell. Franny always smelled nice to me - although at times she gave off a very strong smell - but from Halloween to Christmas, 1956, Franny did not smell nice to herself. And so she took so many baths that she did not smell at all.

In the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re, our family took over another bathroom and sharpened our skills at Father's first family business. Mother took charge of the cranky pride of Mrs. Urick, and the plain-but-good production of Mrs. Urick's kitchen; Mrs. Urick took charge of Max, in spite of his being well hidden from her, on the fourth floor. Father handled Ronda Ray - 'not literally,' as Franny would say.

Ronda had a curious energy. She would strip and make up all the beds in a single morning; she could serve four tables in the restaurant without botching an order or making anyone wait; she could spell Father at the bar (we were open every evening, except Monday, until eleven) and have all the tables set before breakfast (at seven). But when she retired, to her 'dayroom,' she seemed either in hibernation or in a deep stupor, and even at the peak of her energy - when she was getting everything done, on time - she looked looked sleepy. sleepy.

'Why do we say it's a dayroom dayroom?' Iowa Bob asked. 'I mean, if Ronda goes back to Hampton Beach, when does she do it? I mean, it's all right that she lives here, but why don't we say say she lives here - why doesn't she lives here - why doesn't she she say so?' say so?'

'She's doing a good job,' Father said.

'But she's living living in her dayroom,' Mother said. in her dayroom,' Mother said.

'What's a dayroom?' Egg asked. It seemed everyone wanted to know that.

Franny and I listened to Ronda Ray's room on the intercom for hours, but it would be weeks before we we learned what a dayroom was. At midmornings we would switch on Ronda's room and Franny would say, after listening to the breathing for a while, 'Asleep.' Or sometimes: 'Smoking a cigarette.' learned what a dayroom was. At midmornings we would switch on Ronda's room and Franny would say, after listening to the breathing for a while, 'Asleep.' Or sometimes: 'Smoking a cigarette.'

Late at night, Franny and I would listen and I would say, 'Perhaps she's reading.'

'Are you kidding?' Franny would say.

Bored, we would listen to the other rooms, one at a time, or all together. Checking out Max Urick's static, over which we could - occasionally - hear Max's radio. Checking the stockpots in Mrs. Urick's bas.e.m.e.nt kitchen. We knew that 3F was Iowa Bob, and we would tune in the sound of his barbells every once in a while - often interrupting him with our own comments, like: 'Come on, Grandpa, a little quicker! Let's really snap those babies up - you're slowing down.'

'You d.a.m.n kids!' Bob would grunt; or at other times he would slap two iron weights together, right next to the speaker-receiver box, so that Franny and I would jump and hold our ringing ears. 'Ha!' Coach Bob would cry. 'Got you little b.u.g.g.e.rs that that time, didn't I?' time, didn't I?'

'Lunatic in 3F,' Franny would broadcast on the intercom. 'Lock your doors. Lunatic in 3F.'

'Ha!' Iowa Bob would grunt - over the bench presses, over the push-ups, the sit-ups, the one-arm curls. 'This hotel is for for lunatics!' lunatics!'

It was Iowa Bob who encouraged me to lift weights. What happened to Franny had somehow inspired me to make myself stronger. By Thanksgiving I was running six miles a day, although the cross-country course at Dairy was only two and a quarter miles. Bob put me on a heavy dose of bananas and milk and oranges. 'And pasta, rice, fish, lots of greens, hot cereal, and ice cream,' the old coach told me. I lifted twice a day; and in addition to my six miles, I ran wind sprints every morning in Elliot Park.

At first, I just put on weight.

'Lay off the bananas,' Father said.

'And the ice cream,' said Mother.

'No, no,' said Iowa Bob. 'Muscles take a little time.'

'Muscles?' Father said. 'He's fat.'

'You look like a cherub, dear,' Mother told me.

'You look like a teddy bear,' Franny told me.

'Just keep eating,' said Iowa Bob. 'With all the lifting and running, you're going to see a change in no time.'

'Before he explodes explodes?' Franny said.

I was going on fifteen, as they say; between Halloween and Christmas I gained twenty pounds; I weighed 170, but I was still only five feet six inches tall.

'Man,' Junior Jones told me, 'if we painted you black and white, and put circles around your eyes, you'd look like a panda panda.'

'One day soon,' said Iowa Bob, 'you're going to drop twenty pounds and you'll be hard all over.'

Franny gave an exaggerated s.h.i.+ver and kicked me under the table 'Hard all over!' she cried.

'It's gross,' Frank said. 'All of it. The weight lifting, the bananas, the panting up and down the stairs.' In the mornings when it rained, I refused to run wind sprints in Elliot Park; I sprinted up and down the stairs of the Hotel New Hamps.h.i.+re, instead.

Max Urick said he was going to throw grenades down the stairwell. And on a very rainy morning, Ronda Ray stopped me on the second-floor landing; she was wearing one of her nightgowns and looking especially sleepy. 'Let me tell you, it's like listening to lovers go at it in the room next to mine,' she said. Her dayroom was nearest the stairwell. She liked to call me John-O. 'I don't mind the sound of the feet, John-O,' she told me. 'It's the breathing that gets me,' she said. 'I don't know if you're dying or trying to come, but it curls my hair, let me tell you.'

'Don't listen to any of them,' said Iowa Bob. 'You're the first member of this family who's taken a proper interest in his body. You've got to get get obsessed and obsessed and stay stay obsessed,' Bob told me. 'And we have to beef you up before we can strip you down.' obsessed,' Bob told me. 'And we have to beef you up before we can strip you down.'

Thus it was, and so it is: I owe my body to Iowa Bob - an obsession that has never left me - and bananas.

It would be a while before those extra twenty pounds came off, but they would come off, and they have stayed off ever since. I weigh 150 pounds, all the time.

And I would be seventeen before I finally grew another two inches, and stopped for life. That's me: five feet eight inches tall and 150 pounds. And hard all over.

In a little while I will be forty, but even now, when I work out, I remember the Christmas season of 1956. Now they have such fancy weight machines; there's no more sliding the weights on the bar, and forgetting to tighten the screws and having the weights slide together and mash your fingers, or fall off the end of the bar on your toes. But no matter how modern the gymnasium, or the equipment, it only takes a little light lifting to bring back Iowa Bob's room - good old 3F, and the worn oriental rug where his weights were, the rug Sorrow used to sleep on: after weight lifting on that rug, Bob and I would be covered with the dead dog's hair. And after I've been pus.h.i.+ng the weight for a while, and that long-lasting, luxurious ache starts creeping over me, I can bring to mind every scruffy person and every stain on the canvas that dotted the horsehair mats in the weight room of the Dairy School gym, where we would always be waiting for Junior Jones to finish his turn. Jones took all the weights in the room and put them on one barbell, and we would stand there with our empty bars, waiting and waiting. In his days with the Cleveland Browns, Junior Jones weighed 285 and could bench-press 550. He was not that that strong when he was at the Dairy School, but he was already strong enough to suggest to me a proper goal for the bench press. strong when he was at the Dairy School, but he was already strong enough to suggest to me a proper goal for the bench press.

'What you weigh?' he'd ask me. 'Do you even know?' And when I'd tell him what I weighed, he'd shake his head and say, 'Okay, double it.' And when I'd doubled it - and had put 300 pounds or so on the barbell - he'd say, 'Okay, down on the mat, on your back.' There were no benches for doing bench presses at the Dairy School, so I'd lie down on the mat on my back and Junior Jones would pick up the 300-pound barbell and place it gently across my throat - there was just enough room so that the bar depressed my Adam's apple only slightly. I gripped the bar in both hands and I felt my elbows sink down into the mat. 'Now lift it over your head,' said Junior Jones, and he'd walk out of the weight room, to get a drink of water, or go take his shower, and I'd lie there under the barbell - trapped. Nothing happened when I tried to lift 300 pounds. Other, bigger people would come into the weight room and see me lying there, under the 300 pounds, and they'd respectfully ask me, 'Uh, you gonna be through with that, after a while?'

'Yeah, just resting,' I'd say, puffing up like a toad. And they'd go away and come back later.

Junior Jones would always come back later, too.

'How's it going?' he'd ask. He'd take off twenty pounds, then fifty, then one hundred.

'Try that,' he'd keep saying; he kept going away, and coming back, until I could extricate myself from under the barbell.

And all 150 pounds of me has never bench-pressed 300 pounds, of course, although twice in my life I have done 215, and I believe that doubling my own weight is not impossible. I can get in a marvellous trance under all that weight.

Sometimes, when I'm really pumping, I can see the Black Arm of the Law moving through the trees, humming their tune, and sometimes I can recall the smell of the fifth floor of the dorm where Junior Jones lived - that hot, jungle nightclub in the sky - and when I run, about the third mile, or the fourth, or sometimes not until the sixth, my own lungs remember, vividly, the feeling of keeping up with Harold Swallow. And the sight of a slash of Franny's hair, fallen across her open mouth - no sound coming from her - as Lenny Metz knelt on her arms and pinched her head between his heavy, running-back's thighs. And Chester Pulaski on top of her: an automaton. I sometimes can duplicate his rhythm, exactly, when I am counting out the push-ups ('seventy-five, seventy-six, seventy-seven'). Or the sit-ups ('one hundred and twenty-one, one hundred and twenty-two, one hundred and twenty-three').

Iowa Bob simply introduced me to the equipment; Junior Jones added his advice, and his own marvellous example; Father had already taught me how to run - and Harold Swallow, how to run harder. The technique and routine - and even Coach Bob's diet - were easy. The hard part, for most people, is the discipline. As Coach Bob said, you've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. But for me, this was also easy. Because I did it all for Franny. I'm not complaining, but it was all for Franny - and she knew it.

'Listen, kid,' she told me - from Halloween to Christmas, 1956 - 'you're going to throw up if you don't stop eating bananas. And if you don't stop eating oranges, you're going to have a vitamin overdose. What the h.e.l.l are you pus.h.i.+ng so hard for? You'll never be as fast as Harold Swallow. You'll never be as big as Junior Jones.

'Kid, I can read you like a book,' Franny told me. 'No way is it going to happen again again, you know. And if it does - and you actually are strong enough to save me - what makes you think you'll even be be there? If it happens again, I'll be someplace far away from you - and I'll hope you never know about it, anyway. I promise.' there? If it happens again, I'll be someplace far away from you - and I'll hope you never know about it, anyway. I promise.'

But Franny took the purpose of my workouts too literally. I wanted strength, stamina, and speed - or I desired their illusions. I never wanted to feel, again, the helplessness of another Halloween.

There was still the evidence of a mangled pumpkin or two - one at the curb of Pine Street and Elliot Park, and another that had been thrown from the bleachers and burst upon the cinder track around the football field - when Dairy hosted Exeter for the last game of Iowa Bob's winning season. Halloween was still in the air, although Chipper Dove, Lenny Metz, and Chester Pulaski were gone.