Vic upends his burlap bag onto the grass with a clatter. Jack asks Henry if Vic Boucher always travels with his own game of horseshoes, and Froelich replies, “I don’t know. This is my first time to have a social occasion with him. And Dr. Ridelle too — Steve.”
Froelich has lived in the PMQs longer than any of them, yet he has socialized so little. Perhaps this is the first time anyone has asked him about his real subject of “how things go.” Jack senses that Froelich is a conversational treasure trove. You can almost feel the congenial heat of a fireplace when the man warms to his subject. And the sparks of impatience when he’s going full tilt. Typical German, thinks Jack. Now that he knows how much Henry likes to talk, he will pick another argument at the first opportunity. He watches Vic drive the metal post into the lawn with his foot and reflects that it just goes to show you’ll never find out anything if you don’t ask — Vic comes up to them, gold and silver horseshoes in hand, “Gentlemen, faites vos jeux”—you could be living next door to an Einstein or a Picasso and never know it. It’s important to know your neighbours. In the air force especially, because, in the absence of family and old friends, neighbours are what you have.
Froelich takes a horseshoe and raises it to eye level, taking aim. A burst of laughter from the women reaches them, the steel horseshoe glints in Henry’s hand, sterling in the late summer sun like the wing of an aircraft, and Jack is suffused with happiness. Pure and untethered by any good reason, happiness born of this warm evening, the proximity of friends — brand-new yet so deeply familiar — the smell of grass and tobacco, the dying coals of the barbecue, the deep blue dome above, sunlight on silver in his neighbour’s hand. He blinks into the big sun over the horizon because tears have come to his eyes and, to his mind, the words of a poem he learned years ago.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds — done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
The young air force pilot who wrote the poem also had an accident while training, and never got to go operational. He was killed. Jack watches the horseshoe leave his neighbour’s hand.
PIED PIPERS
QUICK, EVERYONE RUN to the schoolyard, there’s a guy down there with a motor scooter and he’s giving people rides!
This was the information picked up by kid radar that drew Madeleine and the others from the barbecue and the singsong, and sent them tearing down the street like wildlife from a burning forest. Before they could see it they heard the engine, revving like a souped-up lawn-mower. They cut through between the houses at the bottom of the street and into the freshly mown field toward the school, where a crowd had gathered. There must have been at least fifty kids of all ages, on bikes, trikes, wagons and on foot — and beyond them, zipping past, his head and shoulders visible above the throng, a dark-haired boy. A teenager.
“Oh my God!” cried Auriel and crumpled.
Lisa likewise crumpled. “Ricky Froelich!” They burst into giggles, joined hands and ran toward the playground, turning to shriek, “Madeleine, hurry up!”
As Madeleine caught up, Auriel grabbed her hand, and the three of them ran in a line like cut-out dolls in time to see Ricky Froelich, on his red motor scooter, zoom off behind the school with a little kid on the back. Madeleine could also see that Mike had already barged to the front of the crowd with Roy Noonan. Music was coming from somewhere — someone must have a transistor radio. Auriel seized Madeleine’s arm. “There’s Marsha Woodley.”
“She babysits us,” hissed Lisa urgently.
“Us too,” Auriel hastily put in.
Marsha Woodley. Over by the swings, remote and serene, the CO’s daughter. Flanked by two girlfriends. Twin-sets, penny loafers and ponytails. Marsha wears her cardigan draped around her shoulders, buttoned at the top, a pleated skirt and ankle socks. These girls don’t attend J. A. D. McCurdy, they go on the bus to high school. High atop Mount Olympus. The transistor is in Marsha’s hand — Dion’s irresistibly swaggering voice—“‘Well I’m the type o’ guy who will never settle down….’”
The motor scooter zooms back and deposits the little kid, and the crowd closes in. “Ricky! I’m next, take me, Ricky!”
He dismounts. A tall boy in faded jeans and a red cowboy shirt. Dreamboat. Colleen’s brother — and Elizabeth’s. Holy mackerel.
Auriel shoves Madeleine forward. “Ask him for a ride!”
“You ask him, you love him.”
“I do not!” squeals Auriel and swats Madeleine.
Madeleine watches as Ricky lets Mike sit on the scooter by himself and twist the throttle. Auriel murmurs, “He doesn’t even know I’m alive.” Ricky trots alongside the scooter, holding Mike steady.
Lisa says, “Your brother’s cute.”
“Yuck!” cries Madeleine, shocked.
“Oh Mikey,” swoons Auriel, and begins kissing her own arm.
Lisa succumbs to her raspy laugh and likewise smooches her arm: “Oh Ricky, oh Rock!”
Auriel erupts in giggles, barely able to speak. “Oh Cary Grant! Oh Gina Lollobrigida!” The two of them fall down.
Madeleine looks at her friends. They have lost their minds. Dion floats on the air, carefree and insinuating — as she watches Mike take off on his own around the schoolyard, his face red — he is trying not to smile. “‘They call me the wanderer, yeah I’m the wanderer, I roam around ’n’ round, ’n’ round, ’n’ round….’”
Madeleine says, “Do you dare me to ask for a ride?”
Auriel and Lisa sober up immediately.
As Mike comes to a stop, Madeleine walks through the crowd and straight up to Ricky Froelich. “Can I have a try?”
“Not by herself,” says Mike in his deepest voice, “she’s too little.”
“Mike, I am not!”
“She’s my sister.”
Ricky climbs back onto the scooter and turns to Madeleine. He has shiny black hair and dark brown eyes, his shirt is open at the collar. His Adam’s apple moves as he says to her, “Hop on, pal.”
Madeleine gets on the back and grasps the bar behind her. He twists the throttle and she feels herself jerked back as they accelerate across the pavement, then onto the field — it’s exactly the way she imagines surfing must feel, the rubber wheels riding waves of grass, the soft seat vibrating beneath her. “Hang onto me,” he calls over his shoulder, and speeds up. She slips her hands around his waist and threads her fingers across his stomach, warm and firm beneath his soft shirt. Her hands feel small. Panels of muscle stiffen as he leans into a turn, the feel of them reminds Madeleine of how boys look in their bathing suits — smooth chests, arc of ribcage just visible, and that line down the middle of their stomachs….