Absent Friends

BOYS' OWN BOOK

Chapter 13

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Turtles in the Pond

September 2, 1979

It's Sunday, it's Labor Day weekend, summer's turning to fall. Jimmy and Marian show up at noon at Markie and Sally's place, the apartment they rent from the O'Neills, who live upstairs. Marian's got her arms around a paper bag: franks, buns, and sauerkraut. Jimmy's hefting a couple of six-packs. Marian goes inside with Sally, to talk about potato salad and nail polish and whatever girls talk about; Jimmy roots in the garage for the basketball, bangs layups into the hoop over the driveway while Markie fires up the grill. That hoop, all the O'Neill boys played there, their little sister, too, right with them. Danny, the youngest, he's the one Mr. and Mrs. O'Neill fixed up the downstairs apartment for; but Danny went off to Vietnam, and when he came back he didn't stay long. He's in Alaska now, working on the pipeline: says he wants to be as far away from the jungle as he can get, for the rest of his life.

Smoke from the grill suddenly switches direction, trying to ambush Jimmy, but he's too smart, dribbles the ball up the driveway to get away. Markie jumps back, too, but not fast enough, coughs and wipes his eyes. Through the kitchen window, Jimmy and Markie hear the girls hooting with laughter about something.

Must be a potato escaped, Jimmy says to Markie, while the cloud of smoke swoops like a flock of pigeons and soars over the next-door fence. Potato's probably running all over your house, man, tearing up the place.

Yeah, probably, says Markie. Think we should go in and rescue the girls?

Potato rescue, says Jimmy, I'm great at that.

But they don't have to, because Marian and Sally come out the back door and down from the porch, Marian with two big bowls, Sally with Kevin. She puts Kevin in his crib on the grass, but the kid's too big for a crib and he knows it. He wails, so Jimmy goes and picks him up. Right away Kevin giggles, grabs for Jimmy's nose, looks in his baby hand to see if it's there.

Markie, man, says Jimmy, this kid's so big and good-looking, if it wasn't saying something bad about Sally, I'd just know he wasn't yours.

Because he's smart, too, says Markie, knows enough to take after her side of the family. He lays the franks on the grill, grins at Kevin in Jimmy's arms.

They eat franks, cole slaw, potato salad, pop open beers, watch Kevin stomp around the tiny yard in that funny kid walk. You'd think he'd tire himself out, but he can't sit still. When he falls, his eyes get wide like he can't believe it, then he just laughs. Sally and Markie take turns jumping up and grabbing him back from crawling through the bushes, running up the driveway, chewing on sticks; he's just like Markie, Jimmy thinks, the kid'll try anything, never thinks ahead. Then laughs at himself: for Pete's sake, he's a baby, how's he gonna think ahead? Jimmy and Marian jump up after Kevin, too, because Kevin, it's like he's everyone's first kid.

Marian doesn't say she got a promotion at work, so Jimmy does. Oh, Jimmy, it's no big deal, Marian protests, but Jimmy says, Come on, you've only been there two months, I mean, come on. Markie and Jimmy talk about cars: Sally tells them that Steve Fagan at the repair shop says Markie's got the best hands of any mechanic ever worked there. Jimmy tells funny stories about the firehouse. Sally says, The Chinese restaurant fire, Jimmy, I heard you were a big hero in that one.

Yeah, well, says Jimmy. I mean, the pressure was on. You save a Chinese restaurant from burning down, you know they send free egg rolls to the firehouse for the rest of your life?

Everyone laughs, and no one asks anything else about the Chinese restaurant fire, what it was like in the greasy black smoke, how it felt to grab that guy with flames all over him, roll him over and over in that tablecloth, save his life. No one asks about the fire under Jimmy's skin. No one knows anything about it, to ask.

Marian says to Sally, I'm glad your dad's better; Sally's dad's been sick on and off all summer. Everyone toasts Marian with beer cans because her middle sister, Eileen, just left to go to college. Not in New York like Marian; Eileen's going away, she got a scholarship to a fancy school in Boston. Oh, come on, you guys, I didn't do anything, says Marian, Eileen's just smarter than anyone.

Yeah, you only brought them up, your sisters and Davey, says Markie.

Well, Davey can take care of himself. But the girls, someone had to keep guys like you away from them. Marian says this and everyone laughs, but they all can see how proud Marian is.

They finish the franks and start to play a little ball, the girls against the boys like back in grade school, but Kevin tries to play. Jimmy bends down and hands the ball off to him. The kid takes it in both arms and lifts it toward the hoop, hops up, and lets it go with a big grunt like he really expects it to fly up there. Sally starts cracking up, and then Markie does, too, and then they're all laughing too hard and they have to stop. Jimmy, sitting in a rickety lawn chair, sips a cold beer, swears he can feel the heat from the sun leaning on him like it weighed something, thinks he could just sit here like this forever.

But he can't. The sun keeps moving, gets to where half the yard's shaded by the branches of the big oak tree old man O'Neill's father planted when he bought the place. Marian needs to drop in on her dad and her two sisters who still live at home, just to check up. And Kevin's getting cranky: he needs his nap, says Sally. She scoops him up, tells him to wave bye-bye to Uncle Jimmy. Marian goes in with her, carrying the bowls and plates they used. Jimmy hears the water running in the kitchen, thinks, Well, now's the time.

Markie, man, he says, just him and Markie in the yard now, the shadow of the oak tree's trunk dark on the grass between them, Markie, you seen Jack around lately?

Jack? Yeah, around, sure. How come? Markie looks away from Jimmy when he says this, quick and then back at the grass, like there's something he wants to see. But there's nothing there, and in that looking-away and looking-back Jimmy knows he's right.

Tom and Big Mike, they know enough to keep away from Markie. Whatever Markie thinks he wants, it wouldn't work out, and Tom and Mike know it even if he doesn't. But Jack thinks differently. Like always, Jack will try something just to see what happens. If trouble comes, well, that'll be what happened. Markie's always had that in him, too, though more than once Jimmy's seen on Jack's face that the trouble, for Jack, sometimes that can be the good part. For Markie, it's not that. It's more he never sees the trouble coming.