OCEAN
15
casually tossed his towel over his shoulder
a~d
strolled ' around
the barrier. Inside there was an old, old, fat man, standing in front
of the long green bench, taking off his bathing suit.
As
Stephen
approached, the old, old, fat man said hello. Stephen said hello
in return and sat down in the sunshine to watch the man disrobe.
As
always with grown-ups, under his bathing suit, the old, old
man wore one of those silvery pouches that looked like a horse's
feed-bag over his peepee-er. Stephen had not yet figured out the
purpose of those pouches ... did they keep the grown-ups warm? Or
were they more like Mommy's hairnet-that awful brown web she
wove around her head at night before she went to bed. Was that
the reason little boys didn't have to wear them, because they didn't
have any hair to keep in place? ... Stephen watched the old man roll
down over
his
enormous belly the elastic, supporting the silvery pouch,
until the whole thing-elastic and pouch together-turned into a
figure 8 around his bloodless ankles and he stepped out of it
clumsily. When he bent over to pick up both his bathing suit and
the figure 8, the old man's belly sagged like the underside of the
hammock when Daddy was lying in it. Also, the old man's peepee-er
looked like the neck of a dead chicken, and Stephen had to chuckle.
"What's the matter with you, sonny?" the old man asked.
"Ain't you ever seen your father? What are you doing anyway,
sitting there like that? This ain't a peep-show." Stephen could tell
from the harshness of his voice that the old man was angry and
he turned away guiltily. A moment later he heard the old man
exclaim, "Oooisch!" and Stephen turned around again, only to be
confronted by the chicken neck bobbing up and down as the old
man cowered and cavorted under the icy shower. "Look here,
sonny," he grumbled, releasing the rusty chain and stopping the
flow of water, "ain't you got anything better to do than sit there
staring at me?"
.
"Can I run your bathing suit through the wringer for you?"
Stephen asked.
"No, you can't," the old man answered curtly, donning his
terry-cloth robe to protect his modesty. "You're Sol Wolfe's son,
ain't you?" he asked, collecting his belongings. "The younger," he
added sardonically, as he moved towards the exit-his clogs clattering
over the floor boards--and disappeared.
