The Fires of Spring by James A. Michener
“How did you like Florida?” David asked, still talking with her on a man-to-man basis.
The thin girl, who grew prettier as she grew older, laughed merrily. “What a trip!” she said. “His wife went along. She said a man deserved one last fling when he was past fifty. Well, I gave him a good one. One day his wife saw me in a bathing suit and said, ‘You’re skinny!’ Her! She must of weighed a ton. Her husband laughed at her and said, right to her face, ‘My wife is the best woman on this earth, and one of the biggest.’ We had a fine time, I can tell you.”
And as she talked she became a woman. Later on David could remember exactly when this occurred. She was telling about Florida, laughing at the man’s jovial wife, when she moved her position and her dress caught above her left knee. David saw that this knee was rounded. It bore no protruding bones as his did, and it looked quite unlike the knees of basketball players when they scrimmaged. The dress fluttered and the knee was gone, but David wanted Nora very much.
She sensed this, perhaps from his breathing, and said, “Remember what we said on closing night last year? Summer’s almost gone, David.”
Wildly he told his secret. “I followed you to the Coal Mine one night, Nora. I wanted to talk with you and even make love with you. But I looked through a crack and you had a man. And the new girl wasn’t wearing anything …”
“You were afraid,” Nora said softly.
“Yes! And I swore I’d never go there again. And I never shall.”
Nora drew back and looked at the young cashier. He was freckled and snub-nosed, throbbing with fire and vast dreams; and in her own lung there was a persistent cough. Not even Florida had warmed that away. “David,” she said quietly. “When you looked at the new girl undressed and saw her breasts …” she paused. “I’m twice that pretty,” she said.
“I swore I’d never go back there,” David repeated, burning to touch this frail girl.
“We don’t have to go there,” she said quietly. He swallowed very hard and nervously cried out to a passing man.
“What’s the time, mister?”
“It’s six-twenty,” the man said.
“Gee, thanks! Time to go!” He rose and hurried back to Venice. Nora trailed a few steps behind him, so he waited for her, and then she walked with tiny steps, smiling at him, and beneath her new dress he could sense her knees. “Maybe we’ll find a place,” he muttered huskily.
And that very night the Sheik came to thank David for being a friend. “You the bes’ frien’ I ever got,” the lowering hulk blubbered. His eyes were not close-set like those of idiots but wide and expressive. “Because you my frien’ I like to show you somethin’.” He insisted that David follow him along the canal paths and into the caverns of Venice. There he showed David the interior of the palace from which the mechanical princess threw kisses. It was a small room walled in by canvas. A single light showed so as to reflect upon the clicking princess. Outside the canal ran, and even as David stood in the strange palace he could hear a gondola drift by with boys making jokes about the princess. Voices echoed along the canal and then deep silence followed until the next gondola drifted by.
“You can peek,” the Sheik said, ducking low behind the princess and peering into the darkness. A gondola passed with a single couple. Thinking themselves alone, they embraced passionately and David looked away. “Mos’ nights I s’eep here,” the ape-man drooled. “But if you …”
“I don’t want it,” David snapped. “What made you think …”
“I saw ’at priiy gi’l,” the moron said. He looked right at David and his lips were slightly parted. “If you an’ ’at gi’l …”
“Let me out of here!” David cried. That night he made change very fast, his arms tight to his sides and his full attention on the sliding coins. At midnight he checked in his accounts and hurried directly to the trolley. He breathed easily when he felt the clanging wheels turn on their noisy way to the poorhouse. Safe behind Door 8 he thought of Nora. “She said she was prettier than the other girl,” he mused, thinking of the delicate curves of the first breasts he had seen. “How could she be?” Then the flashing memory of Max Volo’s post card hung above his bed. Now he did not deceive himself. He said, “I want to be with her. Tomorrow I’ll see her and we’ll arrange it.” With that admission he forced himself to go to sleep.
But in the morning he said, “I won’t go to the Park today! Mr. Stone was right. Why, Nora …” Reassuring himself that he did not want to see the girl, he fooled around the poorhouse until the last possible trolley had gone. “Well,” he breathed easily, “that’s that!” Then he dashed down to the highway and flagged a truck which took him to Paradise.
The head cashier said, “You were eight dollars over last night.” The other cashiers laughed and the head continued, “What were you dreaming about?”
At work David avoided the Sheik. When the hulking man came to his booth David ordered him back to work. Then, although the day was still cool, he began to perspire. He wiped his face and muttered, “I know just what’ll happen! Mr. Stone’ll come along and say, ‘How about dinner with Capt. Sousa?’ and we’ll have a fine time!” He chuckled and felt good, reasoning, “I’ll talk with Sousa and tell him what to play! Won’t that be something!” But his pleasure was short lived, for he stopped daydreaming and saw a man who looked like the Baptist minister when he preached at the poorhouse: “Sin is upon you, and only the blood of the Lord can wash it away, not the waters of the Neshaminy nor of the Mississippi nor even of Jordan. For sin is upon you!”
He felt sick, for now he knew what sin was. In the poorhouse it had been stealing cheese, and Toothless Tom had always done that, but he had helped eat it. That was sinful. But now sin was Nora and the Sheik’s room, and he knew that was really sinful. “I feel awful!” he said to the assistant manager. “I’m going home.” He hurried from the booth and ran toward the main office, but as he did so, he heard a voice calling to him.
“Where’s the fire, Dave?” Nora cried. He stopped and looked toward the rootbeer stand. In a simple gingham dress, peasant style, buttoning in back and drawn tight against her bosom, the thin girl stood with a glass of loganberry in her hand. “Taste it!” she said. “It’s cool.” Her hair cascaded down in the sunlight.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” David said, sipping her drink, and the fizzing water tasted brackish, for he knew that his resolves—and the pleading voice of the Baptist minister—were lost. He added, “When I was in bed, I could see you in my room.”
“I would like to be in bed with you,” she said simply. And then she slipped her arm through his, and they walked back to the Canals of Venice.
The assistant manager saw them and joked, “You feelin’ a lot better, I see.”
“Were you sick?” Nora asked, her breath catching.
“I didn’t feel so good,” David explained, and then she understood. She gripped his arm and whispered. “It’s all right to be afraid, the first time. Everybody is! You should be a girl! I can tell you! But you’ll remember today as long …” She jumped back and cried, “God Almighty! What’s that thing?”
David was glad of a chance to laugh. “That’s the Sheik,” he said.
“What a monster!” Nora cried.
“He’s lending us his place,” David explained. As if the monstrous thing had touched her, Nora shivered.
“It’s all right?” she asked, and that afternoon, during his relief, David led her into the Venetian castle. The room had nothing but a wooden bed with a rope spring and a single unshaded bulb that lighted the princess. “Can we turn that out?” Nora asked.
“No,” David said. “That’s part of the scenery.” Nora clasped her arms across her waist.
“I don’t mind if you don’t mind,” she said.
“I’m sorry it’s such a place,” David said, kissing her awkwardly and fumbling at her tight buttons.
Nora sat upon the bed and smiled up at her agitated lover. “Dave,” she said softly, “when you lov
David continued to work upon the tight buttons and Nora teased him again. Then quickly she exhausted her lungs and the buttons slipped easily through the cloth. “Why couldn’t you sleep last night?” she whispered.
Her dress had now worked loose and the silver cascade of her body tumbled forth. David stared for a moment at the miracle he had accomplished and then buried his lips against her bosom. She clasped his head and after a long moment asked again why he had not slept. “Because you haunted me,” he said, “and because I was saying a poem over and over to myself.”
“A poem?” Nora asked nervously.
“Yes!” he replied, and for a moment the urgency left him. “That first night you joined our party I wrote a poem. I didn’t think then that you were mixed up in it. It was all about dog-tooth violets …”
“What are they?” Nora asked.
“Haven’t you ever seen one?” he asked, and quickly he told her of the imperial flower of spring and of how from his earliest days …
“What was the poem?” she asked.
He recited the verses: “By the dark moss a dog-tooth violet …” and as he said the words he realized that this poem like all poems was dedicated to his love, not his mystic love of the vast world, but his slim, pretty, warm Nora. “I was thinking of you when I wrote it,” he said, and his hands went to her soft, rounded knees.
The effect of this poem upon Nora was even greater than upon David. She had not learned in school that men have traditionally, when young and foolish or when old and very wise, dedicated their finest thoughts to the full love of some woman, so she was unprepared for the idea; but even without instruction she sensed that it was sweet and proper for David to have thought of her. “Imagine!” she whimpered. “Before, I never even got so much as a letter. Not from no one.” She buried her head upon his shoulder and rested thus while David pulled away her clothes. Then she pressed his face to hers and kissed him a hundred times. “I knew this was right,” she whispered. “You got nothing to fear, Dave. You’ll never forget this night. I’ll make your old poem look sick.”
On the other side of the canvas wall soft waters of the canal kept drifting past in metal troughs. In the darkness the Sheik stood guard, sacrificing his evening hour to the young lovers. In drifting gondolas boys and girls and pregnant women and old men swept by. They stared at the mechanical Venetian princess, and the Sheik, who peered at them with one eye through a slit he had made years ago in the palace wall, sneered at the travelers, wondering what they would think if they could see the real princess behind the canvas: for he could see her! He had cut a peephole into the room, and he swore in his dumb way that no girl had ever been so beautiful.
Like a summer storm exploding through long prepared grasslands, David’s desire for Nora rapidly exceeded the bounds of both reason and propriety. At first he fooled himself with resolutions like: “Well, that’s that! Never again, Mr. Stone was right.” Then he tried the usual manly chatter: “Well, there’s got to be a first time for everything. A guy’s got to grow up. If you never try, you’ll never know.” But there was always a residue of experience not covered by any phrases. Nora was a powerful girl, adept in the ways of love and hovering upon the brink of intensity. She had a rare gift of sharing, and she wrapped David very closely to her, as much by the tentacles of her mind as by her hungry arms and legs.
On three successive afternoons David led her to the Venetian palace, and they were days of explosive sharing. The Sheik, unknown to the lovers, stood guard and panted heavily as he watched Nora. He was prepared, therefore, when David approached him and said, “If I pay your room rent, will you sleep in town?”
“I be glad to,” the giant replied.
David told Nora, “I don’t want you ever to go back to the Coal Mine,” he said.
“I can’t live here,” she said simply.
“Why can’t you get a room somewhere?” David insisted.
“With what?” she asked, holding up her empty hands.
“With this,” David replied, handing her a roll of bills.
“I can’t take your money, Dave,” she said. “You and me’s different.”
He flushed and said quickly, “Yes! We are different! That’s why I don’t want you to go back to Max’s.” She was about to explain to him that winter was coming and that she had to depend on Max, but caution told her not to speak.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll stay here tonight. It’ll be fun.” Then, while David returned to his booth, she slipped out and talked with Max. “He’s a good clean kid, you know that, Max. I’m dropping out of the Coal Mine, but I’ll see you in Philly.”
So Max was the first to know—after the Sheik—and before the Park closed the quick little man stopped by Venice and said, “Somebody tells me you’re stealing one of my girls.” David colored and grew furious, but Max ignored this. “It’s a good idea, kid, but I got a better one. Why leave her when winter comes? Why don’t you move into Philly and work in the theatre I’m buyin’ into? What a time we could have!”
Not realizing the extreme inappropriateness of his reply, David said, “I can’t quit school. I’m only fifteen.”
Max leaned against the booth and laughed outright. “You’re too young to quit school but you’re runnin’ off with one of my girls. This is gettin’ to be a screwy world. What’s Mr. Stone goin’ to say?”
“It’s none of his business,” David replied bravely. “Now why don’t you beat it. You see that gorilla over there?” He pointed to the dripping Sheik. “First thing you know, I’ll sic him on you.” He was surprised at his words and quickly laughed at his own joke.
“This whole thing is costing me money,” Max said, not joking.
“Beat it!” David replied, and he was no longer joking, either.
That night, when Paradise closed, he hurried along the canals and found Nora waiting in the palace. “We can turn off the light now,” he said. Outside, the Sheik frowned and then grew happy as Nora said, “Let’s leave it on, at least till I pile my clothes in the corner. I don’t want to look like a ragamuffin in the morning.” David was glad she said this, for he had never seen a girl undress, and the soft ripple of her clothes was a delight. He watched her fold each piece neatly and then turn to face him as she had faced the camera for Max Volo.
“You’re like a cat we had in the barn,” he said.
“If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a cat,” she objected. Then, reaching high above her head so that she looked more than ever like a stretching cat, she turned out the light. The Sheik hung about the palace for some hours until all talking died, and then he crept away and went to the bed David had arranged for him in the village.
David found that actually sleeping with a girl was much different from being with her for a passionate hour. “It’s like being married,” Nora said snugly, making herself into a capital C inside the curve of his body. But to David it was more than being married. He had never before, in his memory, slept with another human being. The sudden warmth of this body next to his, the smell of hair, and the noise of breathing were strange to him. Nor could he decide what to do with his arms. “Nora!” he finally had to cry, “roll over. My arm’s about to drop off.”
“It’s asleep,” she said drowsily. “Shake it.”
Only fitfully could David doze that night. He tried to stay awake to savor the feel of that rare warmth. Impulsively at times he drew the sleeping body closer to him, as if to make her compensate for all the nights he had slept in his cold poorhouse bed. When she rolled over, her sharp hipbones dug into him and he laughed with pleasure. He felt them and compared them to his own. Nora’s were like needles. Then he felt her knees and could not understand why they were so rounded. He was much an
If Nora had meant to David only the newness of sex, her fascination for him would soon have worn away; but she became also the symbol of human warmth, something he had not known before, so that when Mr. Stone and his friends lectured him about Nora they always met a wall of stubbornness, for they did not see Nora as David saw her. “She’s a wretched thing,” Mr. Stone said on his last visit to David’s booth. “The whole Park is talking about this and you’re going to ruin yourself.”
“It’s nobody’s business!” David insisted.
“It’s everybody’s business when a good kid makes a damn fool of himself,” Mr. Stone argued. “Remember when you started taking second fares? I told you how you should always watch which way a man was headed and then ease him along. Well, right now, kid, you’re headed for the junk heap.” The gray man looked at David with open disgust and asked for the last time, “You won’t change your mind?”
“Nora is all right,” David countered.
“Of course she is!” Mr. Stone snapped. “She’s a clean, sweet Sunday-school girl. You know that and I know. But does the Park know? Kid, did you ever hear about the dog and the railroad tracks? This dog was hopping across the tracks when a locomotive snipped off the end of its tail. The dog yelped and turned around to see what had happened. Another train came along, whoosh! And cut off the dog’s head. And the moral of this story is: Never lose your head for a little piece of tail!” He stamped away from the booth, and that afternoon the relief cashier said, “I hear you’re all mixed up with Max Volo’s girls. That’s bad, kid.”
David’s only support came from an unexpected source. During the second week of his shameless attachment to Nora, Klementi Kol stopped by to see him. “Mr. Stone asked me to talk with you,” the tall conductor said. “He thinks you’re ruining your life.”