Hearts in Atlantis(9)

'Yeah. It's like he's looking for someone, isn't it?'

'Or looking out for them,' Carol replied.

Sully-John resumed Bo-lo Bouncing. Pretty soon the red rubber ball was blurring back and forth again. Sully paused only when they passed the Asher Empire, where two Brigitte Bardot movies were playing, Adults Only, Must Have Driver's License or Birth Certificate, No Exceptions. One of the pictures was new; the other was that old standby And God Created Woman, which kept coming back to the Empire like a bad cough. On the posters, Brigitte was dressed in nothing but a towel and a smile.

'My mom says she's trashy,' Carol said.

'If she's trash, I'd love to be the trashman,' S-J said, and wiggled his eyebrows like Groucho.

'Dojyow think she's trashy?' Bobby asked Carol.

'I'm not sure what that means, even.'

As they passed out from under the marquee (from within her glass ticket-booth beside the doors, Mrs Godlow - known to the neighborhood kids as Mrs Godzilla - watched them suspiciously), Carol looked back over her shoulder at Brigitte Bardot in her towel. Her expression was hard to read. Curiosity? Bobby couldn't tell. 'But she's pretty, isn't she?'

'Yeah, I guess.'

'And you'd have to be brave to let people look at you with nothing on but a towel. That's what I think, anyway.'

Sully-John had no interest in la femme Brigitte now that she was behind them. 'Where'd Ted come from, Bobby?'

'I don't know. He never talks about that.'

Sully-John nodded as if he expected just that answer, and threw his Bo-lo Bouncer back into gear. Up and down, all around, whap-whap-whap.

In May Bobby's thoughts began turning to summer vacation. There was really nothing in the world better than what Sully called 'the Big Vac.' He would spend long hours goofing with his friends, both on Broad Street and down at Sterling House on the other side of the park - they had lots of good things to do in the summer at Sterling House, including baseball and weekly trips to Patagonia Beach in West Haven - and he would also have plenty of time for himself. Time to read, of course, but what he really wanted to do with some of that time was find a part-time job. He had a little over seven rocks in a jar marked BIKE FUND, and seven rocks was a start . . . but not what you'd call a great start. At this rate Nixon would have been President two years before he was riding to school.

On one of these vacation's-almost-here days, Ted gave him a paperback book. 'Remember I told you that some books have both a good story and good writing?' he asked. 'This is one of that breed. A belated birthday present from a new friend. At leasf T hope I am your friend.'

'You are. Thanks a lot!' In spite of the enthusiasm in his voice, Bobby took the book a little doubtfully. He was accustomed to pocket books with bright, raucous covers and sexy come-on lines ('She hit the gutter . . . AND BOUNCED LOWER!'}; this one had neither. The cover was mostly white. In one corner of it was sketched - barely sketched - a group of boys standing in a circle. The name of the book was Lord of the Flies. There was no come-on line above the title, not even a discreet one like 'A story you will never forget.' All in all, it had a forbidding, unwelcoming look, suggesting that the story lying beneath the cover would be hard. Bobby had nothing in particular against hard books, as long as they were a part of one's schoolwork. His view about reading for pleasure, however, was that such stories should be easy - that the writer should do everything except move your eyes back and forth for you. If not, how much pleasure could there be in it?

He started to turn the book over. Ted gently put his hand on Bobby's, stopping him. 'Don't,' he said. 'As a personal favor to me, don't.'

Bobby looked at him, not understanding.

'Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map.'

'But what if I don't like it?'

Ted shrugged. 'Then don't finish it. A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it. You prime a pump with your own water, you work the handle with your own strength. You do this because you expect to get back more than you give . . . eventually. Do you go along with that?'

Bobby nodded.

'How long would you prime a water-pump and flail the handle if nothing came out?'

'Not too long, I guess.'

'This book is two hundred pages, give or take. You read the first ten per cent - twenty pages, that is, I know already your math isn't as good as your reading - and if you don't like it by then, if it isn't giving more than it's taking by then, put it aside.'

'I wish they'd let you do that in school,' Bobby said. He was thinking of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson which they were supposed to memorize. 'By the rude bridge that arched the flood,' it started. S-J called the poet Ralph Waldo Emerslop.

'School is different.' They were sitting at Ted's kitchen table, looking out over the back yard, where everything was in bloom. On Colony Street, which was the next street over, Mrs O'Hara's dog Bowser barked its endless roop-roop-roop into the mild spring air. Ted was smoking a Chesterfield. 'And speaking of school, don't take this book there with you. There are things in it your teacher might not want you to read. There could be a brouhaha.'

'A what?'

'An uproar. And if you get in trouble at school, you get in trouble at home - this I'm sure you don't need me to tell you. And your mother . . . ' The hand not holding the cigarette made a little seesawing gesture which Bobby understood at once. Your mother doesn't trust me.