Exposition, Chapter 10 (p. 184-190)

In the evening, D. unpacked her clothes into the empty drawers of the desk in her room. She felt listless, as if with her time in the house and the activities with which she filled it at her discretion, the ability to do anything left her unable to find any one thing that she actually wanted to do. To this day, she had merely been filling time spent primarily waiting for the ability to leave. She had returned planning only to meet this personality who was so intriguing that nearly a dozen fully grown men would return summer after summer seemingly for the sole purpose of telling stories about him. Of course, she knew that there must be more to it than this, so she left her plans after Nathaniel's arrival ambiguous. Now, with the end of her current situation indefinite, she felt listless, as if she needed a project to intersperse with the reading that she intended to do — some sort of goal.

She heard Jim barking somewhere outside of the house, and it occurred to her for the first time that he had been strangely absent from their walk that afternoon. Whatever the reason for Jim's absence, she had had Huck to protect her, and then Steinbeck, as well. She noticed that she had forgotten, at some indiscernible time, that she was in need of protecting. She didn't want to admit it, even to herself, but the idea that there was somebody wandering in the forest and concentrating solely on frightening her kept a titillating tinge of fear in the atmosphere. She scoffed at thoughts of her impending boredom because she still had, at least, the specter of Alex to cast a shade of danger upon even the most mundane of activities, especially when she did them alone.

Her heart picked up its pace just a bit. She was alone at the moment. In fact, she had been standing with her back to the door and her senses dimmed to the world, and with her senses keyed up once again, a tap at the window made her jump a little. It was a branch reminding her of the wind. She giggled at herself and put her hand to her chest with an inwardly laughing smile, but the heart under her hand was unsoothed. Tilting her head to discover other sounds of which she had been unaware, D. felt a rising discomfort because there were no other sounds. She held her breath, feeling silly for longing so much to hear Jim bark again or John snore or someone talking.

Silence.

After a long moment of near, and largely self-inflicted, agony, she heard feet shuffling toward her from the eastern end of the house. She strained her ears to determine the number of steps but couldn't tell if it was two or four feet making their way down the northern balcony. Panicking whimsically, but with real anxiety, she slid backwards toward the window, planning to open it as a means of escape. She glanced about for something, anything, that might be used as a weapon, feeling a little ridiculous about herself for being so nervous. She had hardly seen Alex during the past month, and the other seven men in the house were no apparent threat to her, and they were all nearby. Surely, it would be Huck coming to offer her an evening snack. Or maybe it was Holden coming to petition for her approval. In fact, she felt as if the fact that she had just been considering the danger of Alex meant that it could not possibly be him. Fate seems always to be bent on disproving itself, so the appearance of Alex now would be a too coincidental a proof that Fate existed.

It was Alex. His sly looking green eyes slipped around the door frame, and his head and body followed. D.'s heart stopped. She would scream. He wouldn't dare attack her here, now.

As Alex's shoulder came into view, D. saw that there was a large hand on it. Jake stepped behind him.

"I found this young man pinned against a tree by Jim this afternoon just after you and Huck left. We've had a little talk."

D. breathed deeply but struggled to not show it. "Oh, I had been wondering where he had gotten to," she said, not sure, herself, which "he" she meant.

"Well, Alex here has something to say to you, don't you, Alex?"

Alex shuffled his feet and grunted something barely audibly.

"What was that? I don't think she heard you."

His face was toward the floor, and his sneaky eyes crept from his feet, to the side, at D.'s feet, and then back to his own. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Jake squeezed his shoulder, "Speak up!"

"I'm sorry!" Alex jerked at the squeeze and looked at D. His voice had cracked over the "o" in "sorry," and suddenly his entire effect on her had changed. Suddenly the dangerous and unpredictable young devil was replaced by a kid in his late teens, perhaps no less dangerous, but infinitely more overt.

Jake smiled at D. "He understands that he'll be asked to leave if he can't manage to be more cordial to you. And you don't want to be asked to leave, do you?" Alex mumbled and looked away, but not before D. caught a look that slithered across his face, begun by a slight snarl of upper lip and culminating in an undulation that passed across his eyebrows. In a fancy of imagination, D. thought that she had seen something, not an impression, but something tangible and manifest slip past the black holes of his eyes, and D. knew simultaneously that there was more to the threat than being asked to leave and that there was still something in Alex of which she ought rightfully to be afraid. She hoped that Jim had become accustomed to sleeping in her room at night.

Even so, despite any lingering uncertainty, D. felt safer. Safe enough, in fact, to marvel at the fortuitous timing of the day's events. If it were a script, or a game, a line had been drawn in her favor, and she hoped that the extra work to which Alex would be put in order to harass her would dissuade him from trying. It's much harder to see that sort of activity as a game when the odds are more heavily stacked on the victim's side, and D. thought that, in his consciencelessness, Alex had merely been playing the game of the youth of his day.

After dark, the whole crew was gathered at the house, and it seemed to D. that the vacation atmosphere was becoming more defined. She was leaning back in the grass of the courtyard, twiddling the leaves of a nearby weed between her fingers listening to the rhythmic undulation of summer night bugs, and she looked around for the first time as a guest, not haphazardly and in glimpses between other, more immediate, thoughts, but thoroughly and carefully as if creating a picture in her mind. The light in the courtyard, she observed, was not merely the ethereal glow of the moon overhead, as it had previously seemed in a vague sort of non-thought, but was largely provided by candles that were placed sporadically around the yard and the balcony, each flickering unevenly with the occasional breeze that managed to sift its way into the yard.

She supposed that somebody along the way had figured out that putting candles in different spots and at varying altitudes would prevent any but the strongest and craziest winds from blowing them all out simultaneously. Occasionally, if enough candles had flickered out to make a palpable difference, or merely in passing, one of the party would relight the more easily reached of them. Looking at a candle that balanced precipitously on a balcony overhead, dripping its wax down a banister until it hung down over the grass of the yard like an opaque summer icicle, D. wondered if anybody ever worried about fire. She asked and received as an answer a varying bunch of looks, some suggesting mildly agreeing concern, some indifferent, and some offered through knowing smiles as if to say, "That could never happen here."

She wondered how much time John, who was presently asleep on his chair, might have to spend during the winter scraping wax from wood. Then she detected several banisters that were unusually thick with darkened wax and decided that that particular demand on John's time must be limited.

Apparently in reference to something that he was reading, crouched over the book on the piano bench with a candle so close at hand that D. worried for his hair, Steinbeck spoke, "I wonder why it is that we as a society have allotted so much recognition and money for superficial entertainers."

Martin, who was flipping idly through his dictionary, casting sidelong glances at everyone and smiling nervously at D. when she caught his eyes on her, nodded in agreement, "The money would be more decently spent on essentials," he said, and everybody understood that he meant those essentials that he, himself, provided.

"I think it's valuable as hell for people to distract everyone or something," said Holden, apparently thrilled to be able to hold up his end of a conversation. "I mean, who wants to give all the money that they have to work so goddam hard for to somebody who's only going to do something that doesn't distract them. Not me. But I don't care. Really, I don't. Because just because a person makes alot of money and all doesn't mean that everybody thinks they're more important than them."

"You're wrong, Holden," Jake told him matter-of-factly. He had been fingering the books against the northern wall. "We give the most power and money — and they're really the same thing these days — to those who give us the most in return, and if the person to whom we give the money and power has more of it than we do, then we are admitting that they provide us with something with which we can't provide ourselves. We don't always think of it that way, but maybe we should."

Sitting up from his book to better parry the idea, Steinbeck suggested, "I agree. Certainly, one does not need money to feel important or even to keep one's self occupied, but it would be in ignorance of the facts to claim that it isn't a method of approval that makes life much easier. And I agree with you, too, Holden, that distraction is a valuable commodity. What I can't seem to understand is why we manage to pool so much of it for people who distract us for such a short time and do that poorly. It just seems that, if we were to consider our own thoughts to be the finest of distractions, then our distracters would have to work harder at their creations in order to give us more to consider. I believe that we can choose to enjoy less obvious means of entertainment."

Huck spoke up from his position under the willow. "Take Nathaniel. Such a mind in his head and a c'ncern fer humanity, but I don't 'magine he makes what 'mounts to a spit on a bonfire 'pared ta well regarded acters an' athletes. I re'lize that he don' need as much reward from de money givers, on account of it comin' from elsewhar fer him, but are th'others really worth a hun'red times him in th'world's eyes?"

Although none of them were talking loudly, a breath of their conversation had wafted its way up to Nick, who stood sipping champagne in the southern tower; he called down an answer. "I'll tell you why they're worth so much. If you work at a desk or doing some otherwise useful but uninteresting task, who would be willing to watch you work? What distraction or story could an everyman offer? That's why celebrities make so much: people want to watch them work. I bet that I could name a greater number of frivolous celebrities than any of you could name great thinkers."

Steinbeck turned toward Nick's voice. "That's only true in two limited senses," he said, raising his voice to be heard. "Only athletes are paid for their process. Otherwise it is always the final product that earns attention, whether it be a painting, a book, a movie, or a harvest of wheat. As far as renown is concerned, if you're talking in terms of current or recent celebrities, you're probably correct, and that is exactly the reason for my objection, but if you look over time, even the last fifty years, then you remember the thinkers, who are also the creators. I doubt that you could name more performers from over one-hundred years ago than you could name thinkers. So in a grander scheme, you will lose your bet, and the area in which you might win would only prove me right in my original suggestion."

"Well I don't care either way. Long as I get my kicks, the rest of the world be damned." At first D. thought that Alex had finally spoken from the shadows of the corner in which he lingered, but then she noticed that it had really been a stranger standing over him in the southern balcony. She couldn't see much of this new face in the darkness, but what she could see looked scraggly. He continued, "You can sit here groaning about society all you want, but it'll all go on without you. Better to just slip through it and dig it all while you can."

Steinbeck said something about indifferent complicity, but the newcomer wasn't interested. He just slipped into the second room from John's and shut the door.

"Well Sal's here," said Steinbeck. "Bang the drums."

Brrooaahh!

D. woke up late at night to a screech from somewhere out in the woods. Jim was standing on his hind legs with his paws against the sill of the half-open window. He barked.

Brrooahh-dee!

It sounded like some kind of horn not far off to the north.

Brrooahh-dee-didilee-op!

It was a saxophone in the night, and Jim barked again. D. got out of bed and looked out the window.

Brrooahh-dee-didilee-op, doodoo-ahh, doodoo-ahh-dee-didilee-op!

From somewhere out between the trees, D. heard a voice call out, "Dig the American night! I'm back in the soft cooing eastern mountains!"

She listened for another blurt of the sax, but the chirping of crickets rose up and silenced the horn. An owl seemed to take up the tune in a softly fading refrain. After a while D. went back to bed and fell asleep.