66
PARTISAN REVIEW
some of the men in overcoats or with scarfs around their necks.
Mr. Verne heard the singing stop and turned around on the bench.
I was standing below, in the half dark, and my voice sounded funny
and embarrassed as I spoke. I said, "Mr. Verne, may I speak to
you a minute"-and he left the organ and came down the steps to
me, away from the others. Everybody looked at me in silence as
though they didn't know me or had never seen me before, though I
knew them, all right, and they knew me, and one of them, even,
was my girl's mother. Well, I said what I had to say, quietly, so as
not to interrupt the choir rehearsal too much, and Mr. Verne said
yes, he'd come down to the theatre as soon as he was finished. I
said thanks and started to leave, and then Mr. Verne, on his way
up to the choir again, called back, "I'll be there in half an holl!,"
and then I kind of nodded to the others but none of them nodded or
spoke at all, not even Marion's mother. And though I knew they
didn't hear the reason for my errand, it never dawned on me what
they were thinking till, a few nights later, when Marion and I were
walking around the band-stand, Marion said she had something
funny to tell me. I said what, and then she said that her mother
told her she didn't want Marion to go around with me anymore
if
I was a friend of, or had anything to do with, Ray Verne.
"Okay, Snitch, I guess we're all properly impressed-aren't
we, fellows? Let's go out now and get some fresh air." Overhead,
~ we
turned away from Ted's shining boat, the song had ended,
that simple melody that I would no longer need to think of as
"Les
Rameaux"; and as we emerged from the cellar into the bright sun–
light of midmorning, I was a little surprised, at first, that the day
looked no different from when we had left it. We stood on the damp
soft earth and said our goodbyes and see-you-laters to Ted and his
father, and promised of course to be present at the big "launching"
of "Snitch the First" next weekend. Then my brother and I and
our friend walked back along the lake toward our friend's house
and dinner.
We passed the tennis court and started down the lake path
single-file, our friend first and then my brother and I, ducking now
and again to avoid being swiped by the occasional low-hanging
branches of the willows. And then my brother turned and said,
while our friend walked on ahead, "You were thinking of the time
you sang the solo in church, weren't you?" He was smiling, and I
