The Beach Boy

VERY early in the mornings before the fishermen went down to the wharves, the woman could see the boy out there sweeping the bathhouse steps. He would wash the floors with a whitish, strong-smelling disinfectant. Then he hosed the walls and floors. Finally he scrubbed the foot baths and hung the clean signs on the doors, WOMEN and MEN. Floss Bixby knew that her husband had never employed a quieter, cleaner boy than this Skid Fenner.

“Young Fenner,” her husband would say fondly where everyone could hear him in his paternal mood. “Old Bloody Fenner was his granddad. Fought in the Civil War. This Skid’s got Chippewa blood. You can see it in the hair. They always have straight hair like that. He just came down from the woods.”

She had become accustomed to the image of her husband as a man of forty, big and sweaty in his Western clothes. He had never been west beyond the Dakotas but he hankered after the far West. He said it helped business to dress like this. “Everyone knows me from Hibbing to Lake of the Woods,” he said grandly. She was used to him and grateful because he had taken her from her home and all her mother’s children and her thin, rawboned mother who made a living sewing for the fishermen’s wives. Bixby had seemed like a miracle of good fortune to her, and she had admired him and even felt a kind of awe for him. She had been married to him almost five years now, and she was twenty-five. She thought of him as successful and popular among the natives — the fishing and trapping people, the miners, storekeepers, and guides.

She was a restless woman, but her restlessness had never destroyed her. There was always something to do. Bixby had a pleasant group of young men working for him in his resorts, trading posts, shops, cabins, and hotels. She went with him wherever he wanted to go, and she never tried to maneuver him or gold-dig. She had been thankful for everything he gave her; and until the beach boy, Skid Fenner, came along, she had stood quite comfortably in her place in the sun.

She was a tall, cool girl with restless hands and feverish, darting eyes, half hidden at times. The pale lights in these eyes often widened with some emotion she tried to keep from Bixby and the young men who danced with her and made much over her. Whenever she and Bixby drove in his big open car, she sat in the back seat with him while one of his young men drove, and she would watch the younger man’s hands on the wheel, the signet ring, or she would stare at the back of his head, the clean collar, the way the hair grew. Bixby had business everywhere and little time to do anything else, and so she danced with these young men who held her a little away from them. She had nothing to say to them. They spoke a language which Bixby admired. Every summer, there was one in particular whom she would love in a quick, fierce way that ended in a feeling of defeat.

The Fenner boy was the newest of Bixby’s young men. He wore blue swimming trunks and a faded, torn sweat shirt. He had made a bed for himself behind the men’s dressing rooms. It was fashioned with ingenuity out of sailcloth and old gunny sacks, and he aired this bed, piece by piece, after he finished the bathhouse. Floss could see the pieces out there on the hot rocks just off the shore. Then he swam and threw his trunks on the diving platform and washed himself thoroughly. After that, he washed his trunks and sweat shirt and let them dry while he swam in the bay. He was effortless and skilled in all that he did.

He had come from the primitive region after his grandfather’s death, three weeks before the season opened at Bixby’s. It was a late Saturday afternoon when he wandered along the water front and up toward Bixby’s fishing lodge. She and Bixby were sitting in the bar drinking with some fishing people from Chicago, and when she saw the boy, she felt a keen delight.

Bixby called to him. “I know this kind,” he said. “They’re shy like animals.”

She herself had felt the boy’s shyness. It was a memory of herself as a young girl in poor clothes. Someone had called her across the room, and she recalled every step of that journey, the burning and the sorrow of it. “Let him alone, she said in a low voice, but Bixby pretended not to hear her. They were watching the boy and his curious way of walking so that it seemed he did not touch the floor but passed over it with deliberate and native lightness and quietness. “You can do anything with these boys,” Bixby was explaining. “Teach them poise, make them into good businessmen.”

The boy stood near the table, and Floss looked at him and for a moment imagined that he looked at her, although their eyes did not meet openly.

“You. You’re Fenner,” Bixby said.

The boy contemplated Bixby quietly. He nodded. “Skid Fenner,” he said, and then he looked at Floss. She saw that he was frightened of this place, which was all new to him, and of these people in their proper clothes; and in his own way he felt at once her alliance with him.

“Skid Fenner?” Bixby said.

“Skidmore,” he said. “After the governor.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I suppose you’d like to hang around here.”

“Maybe,” the boy said.

“We can use a young fellow like you. I pay high, and some day you might work into something. You out of school?”

“Yes,” the boy lied. He hooked his thumbs into the top of his beltless jeans. His long, powerful hands spread fanwise over his flat, taut belly muscles.

“Swim any?”

“Some.”

“You know me, don’t you, Skid?”

“Mr. Bixby,” the boy said.

“Well, Floss?” Bixby asked.

She did not raise her eyes, but ran her lacquered nail over the edge of the table. All around her, the room tightened, and she desired to reach out to the boy standing there and touch his hand and feel the familiar, smooth, tanned skin these lake boys had. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. If she was for the boy too obviously, Bixby would reject him, and it might mean the boy would have nowhere to go. If she stood against the boy, Bixby might take him on to prove something, and then it would go rough with the boy.

“Floss knows the lake and woods people,” Bixby was saying. “She was once a little woods savage herself.” He turned to the boy. “You can bum around here, Skid. I’ll find work for you.”

The boy nodded.

2

AFTER that, Skid Fenner worked in the bathhouses and on the beach and ate at the lodge kitchen with the wharf men, so that she seldom saw him — except in the mornings when she rose early and sat by her window watching him. Every morning she did that, and she could not explain to herself why it was such a delight for her to watch him. She could not name the simple quality the boy possessed which somehow pleased Bixby as well as herself.

“You ought to buy the kid an outfit,” Bixby said.

“I like him the way he is,” she said.

“A jersey and some white ducks,” Bixby insisted.

She shrugged. “If you want him to look like a bellhop.”

That day she went into town and bought the outfit, and on the following morning, very early, she carried the box to the beach. The boy was lying in the water watching her. Then he made several quick movements to pull on his trunks and swam to shore.

“I brought you some things,” she said. With the water on him shining like this, his hair very wet and curly, he looked like a child. But then, in his eyes she saw the childish image fade and die away, and she moved a little from him, frightened because of this strange but delightful feeling which was almost like joy and yet was not joy or delight or awe.

“Thanks, Mrs. Bixby,” he said. He took the box and laid it on a flat stone, unopened.

“How do you like it here?” she asked. She bit her lip. She did not know quite what to say to him, because she could not figure him out — he was either very simple or very wise, and he was a new kind to her. A lot of the summer girls lay in the sands in the mornings and afternoons and sometimes until it was dark, and they all watched him, but nothing came of that, either. Then, as she lay in her room, hot and bored, she would hear his deep, unfamiliar voice talking to those girls.

Sometimes, one of the young men would dance with her in the lodge as Bixby sat at the tables doing business, but underneath it all, this summer was not the same. She was conscious of the boy out there on the beach, and this summer was nothing like last summer with Freddy Ensore, who had gone off suddenly to Canada to join the Air Force. Last summer she had grown fond of the long hot room, of Freddy and the juke box and the summer ballads and the smell of fish frying and the delicate, fresh winds coming off the lake.

Through all the long, idle afternoons, she would hear the boy on the beach and see him down there, and he seemed to taunt her in many ways. He was too familiar. He reminded her of the long shabby years with her mother and her brothers and the poor shack they had at Bird Island, the fishing town. Really, she should be able to talk to the boy easily since they had both come from the lake and wood country. She felt a curious anger that he would not talk to her as he talked to the summer girls from the cottages.

She ran her fingers through her thick, loose blonde hair and shook it out, and he watched her without expression. Some of the summer girls were coming down the road, and their soft voices rose in the hot, still morning air.

“I lived at Bird Island,” she said. She had not told that to anyone in years, and the name was awkward, and the memory now rose sharply. That was why she had married Bixby, to get away from Bird Island, and here she was making a point of it to the boy.

“I know Bird Island,” he said. “That’s the best place on the northern peninsula.”

She waited, but he had nothing more to say about it. “I don’t look much like it now,” she said. “You change.” She admired her lacquered toenails. “There are a lot of nice girls here,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Pretty, too,” she said.

“Sure,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to open the box?” she asked.

“It’s clothes,” he said. “I heard Mr. Bixby talking about it one time.”

She wondered how old he was — sixteen or seventeen, and he knew everything. Her heart shrank inside of her, and the touch of her own skin under her fingers was distasteful to her in this moment. She had forgotten all of it so easily, eagerly forgetting what it was to live up in the northern lands. And now she belonged to Bixby’s kind of life, the life she admired so much. She bit her lip again, and her mouth felt dry and empty. “I hope you like them,” she said quickly. She started back over the dry sand toward the lodge. I am only twenty-five, she kept thinking, and he is a child, and yet he knows everything and I know nothing — or else I’ve forgotten. I’ve forgotten all of it, and now I’m sad.

The boy was climbing into his white watchtower. The summer girls came down on the sand, and she could hear them call to him and his reply.

3

DID you take the boy his clothes?” Bixby asked. “Yes,” she said.

The young man named Grover grinned at her. His eyes were small and close together, and he always smiled at her like that. Today she wanted nothing to do with Grover.

“You can get dressed, Floss,” Bixby said. “I have to go up to the peninsula. Afterwards, we can stop for dinner.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Floss,” he said in his low, controlled voice, “what about the beach boy? Think we can use him around here?”

“He might not like it up here,” she said frankly. The water and the beach were the boy’s places.

“He’ll do what he’s told, I think,” Bixby said.

“He won’t like it up here,” she said.

“Don’t baby the boy, Floss,” Grover said.

“I’m not babying him. Only he does very well down there. You said that, Charles.” She looked at Bixby, and then she felt herself flush under his eyes, the little brown eyes squinting and searching like that. It was an old look from him. She ought to be used to it, the suspicion and the sneer he gave her when he compared his kind of life with the life from which he had taken her.

“I have to get a little more out of him, and he might as well pick up a few pointers.”

“I’m against it, though,” she said.

They looked off toward the tower where the boy sat, his arms folded, his face turned toward the water. His flat body was dark and erect, and there was an air of security and peace around him. A few women and children sat comfortably on the beach. Farther out the young girls dived off the high tower into the calm water of the bay. Watching them, she wanted to be with them and like them.

“He manages well,” Bixby said. “I’m growing fond of that boy.”

Grover shifted uneasily. “He’s all right,” he said flatly.

The next day, in the morning while she was watching the boy from the window, Bixby began to talk of his plans. “I’ll go down there and speak to him,” he said. “You come along, Floss.”

Floss dressed quickly. This year she was wearing starched summer dresses and almost no make-up, and whenever Bixby mentioned this, she shrugged it off. “I have to change my style,” she explained. She looked like one of the summer girls, but she felt that everything was beginning to go wrong. She didn’t want the boy hurt or confused. He was sweeping the cement steps. He did this well as he did everything. He scooped the sand from the steps into his hands so that it would not fall on the grass around the bathhouses. Then he carried the sand down to the water. This morning, she felt curiously awake as she walked toward the boy. When Bixby began to speak, she watched the boy’s face, and she felt that she was with him and not with her husband in any way.

“I like it down here, Mr. Bixby,” the boy said. A thin vapor of sweat covered his face.

“Well, you can always learn new things,” Bixby reasoned smoothly. “You could come up to the lodge one or two nights — maybe three hours a night.”

“Yes,” the boy said.

“I want you to feel that you can go a long ways in this business,” Bixby said.

She knew the boy was not pleased and that Bixby was disturbed by this lack of pleasure. “A nicelooking, smart young boy like that ought to get onto hisself,” he said on the way back to the lodge. She smiled secretly. With the boy, she had shared this feeling, for Bixby had once talked to her in the same fashion, only she had been confused by it.

In the bar and restaurant, the boy was as quiet as he had been on the beach, only here his quietness showed itself more. He learned the names of the regular customers, and he was always pleasant and quick to serve, but he did not like his work, and she knew it. “Dance with the ladies, boy,” Bixby said. “Keep them amused and happy. That’s part of our business, too.”

And so in the evenings, the boy came off the beach dressed in his striped jersey and white ducks. He danced with the women whose husbands had gone off fishing or camping. Some of the young men at Bixby’s were there doing business or dancing with these idle women or drinking at the bar waiting for something rich to fall into their mouths.

Floss loved to dance with the boy. It was like the summers at home, long ago, and they danced in silence. Grover and the others stood around watching them. She knew that now they were remembering Freddy Ensore and the others. They think this is the same, she thought, and the idea would flame and flower shamefully in her mind, a memory of something that had passed and was now suddenly distasteful to her. We are both lonely. We are both young. But though she thought many things, her lips with only a pale tint of lipstick never shaped the words for the boy to hear.

He was a wonderful dancer, but his face was always grave and slightly worried. The women liked to dance with him and send him on errands and tell him little stories which somehow puzzled him, though he laughed a little. He soon ceased altogether to help around the bar. “It’s not necessary, boy,” Bixby said. “You dance too well to waste yourself. Let someone else do the work.”

4

TOWARD late summer, the women had made a pet of him, going down to the beach when he was there, so that the summer girls no longer sat around him, joking. Bixby was pleased. “That boy will do all right with me,” he said many times.

But the other young men did not like the boy. He was not their kind, and they complained among themselves. They said he was a handsome hick kid with a curious way of looking at all of them, the women and the men. They talked about Floss’s favorites from other summers. She would hear them talking like that, and she would go away quietly and not dance with the boy that evening. But he grew accustomed to asking her, and she felt that perhaps he liked her a little now and felt they shared a lot of things. After a time, he began to talk to her slowly and shyly, and she understood him. They talked of the woods and lake and their homes. She listened to him with such attention that he no longer felt he was alone in this big, low room filled with smoke and many eyes.

At first, the women talked of Floss and the boy in low voices, and Floss knew it. And then, as women will, they carried the news to their husbands, and she knew that, too. So that, in time, she knew the gossip would reach Bixby as well, and she was frightened. Bixby thought he knew everything about her. She would lie across her bed fully dressed, her hair brushed out, her lipstick pale and faint on her full, quiet mouth. She would stare at nothing for hours, and she knew this disturbed him.

“What’s on your mind, Floss?” he asked.

“I want to go home sometime soon, Charles,” she said.

He swore. “Back to that dump?”

“I want to see the folks again.”

He roared with laughter. “After I drag you out of that place and give you everything! Oh no you don’t. Floss.” He held her face between his hands and tried to see into her curious eyes, to see what enchanted her so deeply, but he could see nothing. “Red Casey’s wife went back to her folks that way. She stayed.”

“I won’t stay.”

“No,” he said again.

“I promise, Charles,” she said.

“You’re off your base.”

She contemplated him calmly. “What kind of people are we, Charles?”

“Busy people. Rich people.”

“Don’t you ever feel tired?” she asked.

“No,” he blustered. “I’m fit as a fiddle.”

“Sometimes I feel tired,” she said.

“You dance too much,” he said in a manner that told her plainly that he knew what everyone said about her and the boy. She knew that his mind was growing black and thick with suspicion. But she hoped for the best. Surely, she reasoned, surely there was nothing wrong in this. The boy was her friend, and she needed a friend.

One day Bixby said, “ People are talking about you and the beach boy.” He spread his hands wide and uneasily on the table in the barroom. “I don’t want to sound suspicious, Floss, but I think maybe you and Skid had better not see too much of each other.”

“He’s my friend, Charles,” she said.

“He’s no kid,” Bixby said.

She turned away from him quickly for the tears that came into her eyes. She could see the boy on the beach as always, the hot sun moving around him, and she was afraid that Bixby would do something to spoil all of it. “You have to let him alone,” she said.

“It’s like that, hey?”

“Oh, no,” she said quickly. Still, she had no words to explain. “You see, he’s my kind of people. And he’s a friend. He needs a friend down here.” The very simplicity of her own words shocked her. “Just let him alone, Charles.” If he would forget the other times, he might understand how she felt about the boy.

“That boy’s clever. All those people are clever,” he said.

“He doesn’t know the first meaning of the word.”

“He’s a fox,” Bixby said angrily.

“No.”

“I know his kind. You pick them up out of nowheres, and they do you dirt. Like you are doing me now, Floss.”

5

SHE felt no fear at his words. It was as if inside herself she were grateful to Bixby for all he had done for her, but suddenly she saw that it did not matter. He can do nothing to me, nothing at all, she thought. “I want you to leave him alone,” she said firmly. “That’s all I want.” She went up to her room, but she watched and saw him go outside and stand looking down toward the beach. After a moment, she followed him.

“Look here,” he was saying to the boy. “Look here, now —”

The boy was pulling on his jersey. His face was pleasant but closed to them, and Bixby was breaking out into a sweat. She felt that if Bixby hit the boy, the boy would do nothing about it. Bixby motioned for her to go away, but she stood so that she could see them and hear them.

“Something wrong, Mr. Bixby?” the boy asked.

“Plenty,” Bixby said. “I want to know about this business between you and my wife.”

“I guess you don’t want me to dance with her any more,”the boy said. “You want me to dance with the others because they’re customers.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Bixby said through his teeth.

The boy waited. He looked at her. But what could she do? She said, “Charles, he doesn’t even know what you’re talking about. Stop before it’s too late.”

The boy stared at her. Then, a startled expression crossed his face. It was as if she, personally, had struck him or betrayed his confidences. “It’s all my fault,” she said quickly. Yes, it is my fault because of the other times. I am his friend, and I wouldn’t harm him. I could never do anything to harm him, but it’s too late now.

Bixby told her to be quiet. “Now get me, boy,” he said. “I like you fine, but I can’t have anything like this.”

The boy shook his head. “We always talk,” he said. “She comes down here, and we talk. Sometimes we talk when we’re dancing. I thought that was what — I mean, you said to dance with people.”

“People are talking plenty,” Bixby said.

The boy made a kind of sighing sound and turned away so that his face was hidden. The whole pose of his body took on a rigid aspect, and watching him she knew that now, of his own accord, he would go away. This was some weird, mossy scene she had dreamed, and in a moment, if she raised her hand, she would wipe away the mist of this dream and find it untrue. She was crying without sound.

“You’re a good beach boy,” Bixby was saying. “You stay down here and mind your own business. We don’t want any talk — no hard feelings, either.” He put out his hand, feeling paternal, but the boy did not take it. His face was white, and his eyes were large and empty.

“No,” he said. He ran toward the bathhouse, leaving them there together. Bixby stared after him and then looked at her, crying so that she could not stop.

“I just thought—” he began, his face red and sweaty.

She shook her head violently. “I don’t want to talk about it, Charles. No!” She ran up the ledge, slipping on the rocks, running to her room. She knew what it was the boy had had, the name of the quality, and it was innocence and knowledge at the same time. Once long ago, back home, she herself — But that was so long ago she could now scarcely recall the place at Bird Island. If she went home, it might not be as she hoped, and then that would make it worse.

She knew at the same time she would not leave. The moment had passed. She might resolve to go home, pack for the trip, even write the letter, but she would not go. I have no one now, she thought, no one to be my close friend. The soft music from the juke box came to her, and she saw Bixby coming up from the beach, slowly in his confusion. After all, he had been good to her, and she was no child and therefore shouldn’t be as hopeful as a child who did not know the score. She was twenty-five. At the same time, she found herself watching through the window to see the beach boy once more before he left, just this once and never again.