“Oh, really?”
“As I say, I think so,” Teddy said. “I’m not sure, though. It may be different if you’re in uniform. Anyway, thank you for the information. Goodbye!” He turned and took the stairs up to the Promenade Deck, again two at a time, but this time as if in rather a hurry.
He found Booper, after some extensive looking, high up on the Sports Deck. She was in a sunny clearing—a glade, almost—between two deck-tennis courts that were not in use. In a squatting position, with the sun at her back and a light breeze riffling her silky, blond hair, she was busily piling twelve or fourteen shuffleboard discs into two tangent stacks, one for the black discs, one for the red. A very small boy, in a cotton sun suit, was standing close by, on her right, purely in an observer’s capacity. “Look!” Booper said commandingly to her brother as he approached. She sprawled forward and surrounded the two stacks of shuffleboard discs with her arms to show off her accomplishment, to isolate it from whatever else was aboard ship. “Myron,” she said hostilely, addressing her companion, “you’re making it all shadowy, so my brother can’t see. Move your carcass.” She shut her eyes and waited, with a cross-bearing grimace, till Myron moved.
Teddy stood over the two stacks of discs and looked down appraisingly at them. “That’s very nice,” he said. “Very symmetrical.”
“This guy,” Booper said, indicating Myron, “never even heard of backgammon. They don’t even have one.”
Teddy glanced briefly, objectively, at Myron. “Listen,” he said to Booper. “Where’s the camera? Daddy wants it right away.”
“He doesn’t even live in New York,” Booper informed Teddy. “And his father’s dead. He was killed in Korea.” She turned to Myron. “Wasn’t he?” she demanded, but without waiting for a response. “Now if his mother dies, he’ll be an orphan. He didn’t even know that.” She looked at Myron. “Did you?”
Myron, non-committal, folded his arms.
“You’re the stupidest person I ever met,” Booper said to him. “You’re the stupidest person in this ocean. Did you know that?”
“He is not,” Teddy said. “You are not, Myron.” He addressed his sister: “Give me your attention a second. Where’s the camera? I have to have it immediately. Where is it?”
“Over there,” Booper said, indicating no direction at all. She drew her two stacks of shuffleboard discs in closer to her. “All I need now is two giants,” she said. “They could play backgammon till they got all tired and then they could climb up on that smokestack and throw these at everybody and kill them.” She looked at Myron. “They could kill your parents,” she said to him knowledgeably. “And if that didn’t kill them, you know what you could do? You could put some poison on some marshmellows and make them eat it.”
The Leica was about ten feet away, next to the white railing that surrounded the Sports Deck. It lay in the drain gully, on its side. Teddy went over and picked it up by its strap and hung it around his neck. Then, immediately, he took it off. He took it over to Booper. “Booper, do me a favor. You take it down, please,” he said. “It’s ten o’clock. I have to write in my diary.”
“I’m busy.”
“Mother wants to see you right away, anyway,” Teddy said.
“You’re a liar.”
“I’m not a liar. She does,” Teddy said. “So please take this down with you when you go . . . C’mon, Booper.”
“What’s she want to see me for?” Booper demanded. “I don’t want to see her.” She suddenly struck Myron’s hand, which was in the act of picking off the top shuffleboard disc from the red stack. “Hands off,” she said.
Teddy hung the strap attached to the Leica around her neck. “I’m serious, now. Take this down to Daddy right away, and then I’ll see you at the pool later on,” he said. “I’ll meet you right at the pool at ten-thirty. Or right outside that place where you change your clothes. Be on time, now. It’s way down on E Deck, don’t forget, so leave yourself plenty of time.” He turned, and left.
“I hate you! I hate everybody in this ocean!” Booper called after him.
Below the Sports Deck, on the broad, after end of the Sun Deck, uncompromisingly alfresco, were some seventy-five or more deck chairs, set up and aligned seven or eight rows deep, with a
isles just wide enough for the deck steward to use without unavoidably tripping over the sunning passengers’ paraphernalia knitting bags, dust-jacketed novels, bottles of sun-tan lotion, cameras. The area was crowded when Teddy arrived. He started at the rearmost row and moved methodically, from row to row, stopping at each chair, whether or not it was occupied, to read the name placard on its arm. Only one or two of the reclining passengers spoke to him—that is, made any of the commonplace pleasantries adults are sometimes prone to make to a ten-year-old boy who is single-mindedly looking for the chair that belongs to him. His youngness and single-mindedness were obvious enough, but perhaps his general demeanor altogether lacked, or had too little of, that sort of cute solemnity that many adults readily speak up, or down, to. His clothes may have had something to do with it, too. The hole in the shoulder of his T shirt was not a cute hole. The excess material in the seat of his seersucker shorts, the excess length of the shorts themselves, were not cute excesses.
The McArdles’ four deck chairs, cushioned and ready for occupancy, were situated in the middle of the second row from the front. Teddy sat down in one of them so that—whether or not it was his intention—no one was sitting directly on either side of him. He stretched out his bare, unsuntanned legs, feet together, on the leg rest, and, almost simultaneously, took a small, ten-cent notebook out of his right hip pocket. Then, with instantly one-pointed concentration, as if only he and the notebook existed—no sunshine, no fellow passengers, no ship—he began to turn the pages.
With the exception of a very few pencil notations, the entries in the notebook had apparently all been made with a ball-point pen. The handwriting itself was manuscript style, such as is currently being taught in American schools, instead of the old, Palmer method. It was legible without being pretty-pretty. The flow was what was remarkable about the handwriting. In no sense—no mechanical sense, at any rate—did the words and sentences look as though they had been written by a child.
Teddy gave considerable reading time to what looked like his most recent entry. It covered a little more than three pages:
Diary for October 27, 1952
Property of Theodore McArdle
412 A Deck
Appropriate and pleasant reward if finder promptly returns to Theodore McArdle.
See if you can find daddy’s army dog tags and wear them whenever possible. It won’t kill you and he will like it.
Answer Professor Mandell’s letter when you get a chance and the patience. Ask him not to send me any more poetry books. I already have enough for 1 year anyway. I am quite sick of it anyway. A man walks along the beach and unfortunately gets hit in the head by a cocoanut. His head unfortunately cracks open in two halves. Then his wife comes along the beach singing a song and sees the 2 halves and recognizes them and picks them up. She gets very sad of course and cries heart breakingly. That is exactly where I am tired of poetry. Supposing the lady just picks up the 2 halves and shouts into them very angrily “Stop that!” Do not mention this when you answer his letter, however. It is quite controversial and Mrs. Mandell is a poet besides.