Free Loon Lake by E. L. Doctorow Page A

enjoyed meeting them.
They watched her go.
And after the old man retired
and all the gangsters and their women stood around
in their black ties and tuxes and long gowns
the best gangster’s girl saw a large Victrola in the corner
of the big living room with its leather couches and
grand fireplace
the servants spirited away the coffee service
and the gangster’s girl put on a record and commanded
everyone to dance.
And they danced to the Victrola music
they felt better they did the fox trot
and went to the liquor cabinet and broke open some Scotch
and gin and they danced and smoked
the old man’s cigarettes from the boxes on the tables
and the only light came from the big fire
and the women danced with one arm dangling holding empty glasses
and the gangsters nuzzled their shoulders
and their new shoes made slow sibilant rhythms
on the polished floors
as they danced in their tuxes and gowns of satin at Loon Lake
at Loon Lake
in the rich man’s camp
in the mountains of the Adirondacks.

 
    H e was a whistling wonder with his face and arms and legs in bandages and bandages crisscrossed like bandoliers across his chest. Every now and then they looked in on him with the same separation of themselves from the sight as rubes looking at the freaks. They all wore green.
    They told him the dog packs were well known in the region, several of them told him that, as if it were a consolation. He had difficulty speaking through his pain and swollen tissue, so that they could not be exactly sure what he thought of them and their fucking dogs.
    The elderly country doctor was eager to see what complication might set in to try him beyond the resources of his medicine.
    There were pills for the pain but I took as few as I could. It seemed important to me to stay awake, to know what was going on. Maybe I would come back. The room was damp. There was a small window high on the wall. I was in the basement of one of the log buildings I’d seen and it seemed to me not a very safe place to be. Also it was as bad as the original event to dream of it again drugged in a kind of dream prison and struggling for consciousness. Pain was better. It camein spasms and with the sharp point of imprinted teeth, it tore along in clawing sweeps down my chest and seemed sometimes to raise the bandages from the skin. I tried to consider it objectively, like a scientist sitting in a white coat looking through a microscope. Ahh, peering at each little cellpoint of pain. Remarkable!
    And since I was in pain, I thought of my mother and father. I thought of myself bedridden in Paterson. They look at me lying there flushed and wheezing, a boy impossibly exercised just by the act of living, and go off to work at their machines.
    A man looked in on me each morning and made a grunt of disgust or scorn just like my father had although heavyset not at all like my thin and gaunt father but in the same role, with the same wordless eloquence. He wore a kind of uniform of dark green shirt and matching pants.
    And for my mother a woman in pale green uniform and white shoes and opaque brown hose with a thick seam down the back. An impassive porky being with hands that worked at high speed setting down trays pounding pillows carrying off urinals while she thought her own thoughts.
    I could tell that each of them felt badly used to be taking care of some tramp who had wandered onto the grounds. It was an affront to the natural order which made service to people bearable because they were higher than you, not lower.
    I responded with a pride of my own which asked for nothing and gave as little indication of need as possible. And I never thanked them for anything. As I felt better I grew contemptuous as if, coming into this province of wealth, I had adopted its customs. Or perhaps it was more serious, perhaps it had been injected in the saliva of the dogs.
    On the other hand I had only the word of these people that the dogs didn’t belong to the owner of this place. And even if they