This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff Read Free Book Online Page B

That’s the ticket! Have a seat, Rosemary. Right over here. Sit down, Jack, that’s the boy. You like peanuts? Great! Judd, bring him some peanuts. And for Christ’s sake get these bottles out of here.” He sat next to my mother on the couch and smiled steadily at me while Judd stuck his fingers into the bottles and carried them clinking away. Judd returned with a dish of nuts and left with the rest of the bottles.
    “There you go, Jack. Dig in! Dig in!” He watched me eat a few handfuls, nodding to himself as if I were acting in accordance with some prediction he had made. “You’re an athlete,” he said. “It’s written all over you. The eyes, the build. What do you play, Jack, what’s your game?”
    “Baseball,” I said. This was somewhere in the neighborhood of truth. In Florida I’d played nearly every day, and gotten good at it. But I hadn’t played much since. I wasn’t an athlete and I didn’t look like one, but I was glad he thought so.
    “Baseball!” he cried. “Judd, what did I tell you?”
    Judd had taken a chair on the other side of the room, apart from the rest of us. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head at the other man’s perspicacity.
    My mother laughed and said something teasing. She called the man Gil.
    “Wait a minute!” he said. “You think I’m just shooting the bull? Judd, what did I say about Jack here? What did I say he played?”
    Judd crossed his dark legs. “Baseball,” he said.
    “All right,” Gil said. “All right, I hope we’ve got that straightened out. Jack. Back to you. What other activities do you enjoy?”
    “I like to ride bikes,” I said, “but I don’t have one.”
    I saw the good humor leave my mother’s face, just as I knew it would. She looked at me coldly and I looked coldly back at her. The subject of bicycles turned us into enemies. Our problem was that I wanted a bike and she didn’t have enough money to buy me one. She had no money at all. She had explained this to me many times. I understood perfectly, but not having a bike seemed too hard a thing to bear in silence.
    Gil mugged disbelief. He looked from me to my mother and back to me. “No bike? A boy with no bike?”
    “We’ll discuss this later,” my mother told me.
    “I just said—”
    “I know what you said.” She frowned and looked away.
    “Hold on!” Gil said. “Just hold on. Now what’s the story here, Mom? Are you seriously telling me that this boy does not have a bicycle?”
    My mother said, “He’s going to have to wait a little longer, that’s all.”
    “Boys can’t wait for bikes, Rosemary. Boys need bikes now!”
    My mother shrugged and smiled tightly, as she usually did when she was cornered. “I don’t have the money,” she said quietly.
    The word money left a heavy silence in its wake.
    Then Gil said, “Judd, let’s have another round. See if there’s some ginger ale for the slugger.”
    Judd rose and left the room.
    Gil said, “What kind of bicycle would you like to have, Jack?”
    “A Schwinn, I guess.”
    “Really? You’d rather have a Schwinn than an English racer?” He saw me hesitate. “Or would you rather have an English racer?”
    I nodded.
    “Well then, say so! I can’t read your mind.”
    “I’d rather have an English racer.”
    “That’s the way. Now what kind of English racer are we talking about?”
    Judd brought the drinks. Mine was bitter. I recognized it as Collins mix.
    My mother leaned forward and said, “Gil.”
    He held up his hand. “What kind, Jack?”
    “Raleigh,” I told him. Gil smiled and I smiled back.
    “Champagne taste,” he said. “Go for the best, that’s the way. What color?”
    “Red.”
    “Red. Fair enough. I think we can manage that. Did you get all that, Judd? One bicycle, English racer, Raleigh, red.”
    “Got it,” Judd said.
    My mother said thanks but she couldn’t accept it. Gil said it was for me to accept, not her. She began to argue, not halfheartedly but with resolve. Gil