Free Bullet Park by John Cheever Page B

sorry.”
    Tony ran to his mother and she took him in her arms. They were both crying.
    “I’m not doing this because I want to,” Nailles shouted. “After all I like watching football and baseball when I’m home and I paid for the damned thing. I’m not doing this because I want to. I’m doing this because I have to.”
    “Don’t look, don’t look,” Nellie said to Tony and she pressed his face into her skirts.
    The back door was shut and Nailles had to put the box on the floor to open this. The rain sounded loudly in the yard. Then, straining, he picked up the box again, kicked open the screen door and fired the television out into the dark. It landed on a cement paving and broke with the rich, glassy music of an automobile collision. Nellie led Tony up the stairs to her bedroom, where she threw herself onto the bed, sobbing. Tony joined her. Nailles closed the kitchen door on the noise of the rain and poured another drink. Fifth, he said.
    All of this was eight years ago.

VI
    T ony had gone out for football and had made the second squad in his junior year. He had never been a good student—he got mostly C’s—but in French his marks were so low they were scarcely worth recording. One afternoon when he was about to join the squad for practice it was announced over the squawk box that he should report to the principal. He was not afraid of the principal but he was disturbed at the thought of missing any of the routines of football practice. When he stepped into the outer office a secretary asked him to sit down.
    “But I’m late,” Tony said, “I’m late for practice already.”
    “He’s busy,” the secretary said.
    “Couldn’t I come back some other time? Couldn’t I do it tomorrow?”
    “You’d be late for practice tomorrow.”
    “Couldn’t I see him during class time?”
    “No.”
    Tony glanced at the office. In spite of the stubborn and obdurate facts of learning, the place had for him a galling sense of unreality. A case of athletic trophies stood against one wall but this seemed to be the only note of permanence. Presently he was let into the principal’s office and given a chair.
    “You’ve failed first-year French twice, Tony,” the principal said, “and it looks as if you’re going to fail it again. Your parents expect you to go on to college and you know you have to have a modern-language credit. Your intelligence quotient is very high and neither Miss Hoe nor I can understand why you fail.”
    “It’s just that I can’t say French, sir,” Tony said. “I just can’t say any French. My father can’t either. I just can’t say French. It sounds phony.”
    The principal switched on the squawk box and said into it: “Could you see Tony now, Miss Hoe?” Her affirmative came through loud and clear. “Certainly.” “You go down and see Miss Hoe now,” said the principal.
    “Couldn’t I see her after class tomorrow, sir? I’m missing football practice.”
    “I think Miss Hoe will have something to say about that. She’s waiting.”
    Miss Hoe was waiting in a room whose bright lights and pure colors did nothing to cheer him. It would soon be getting dark on the playing field and he had already missed passing and tackle. Miss Hoe sat before a large poster showing the walls of Carcassonne. It was the onlytraditional surface in the room. The brilliant, fluorescent lights in the ceiling made the place seem to be a cavern of incandescence, authoritative in its independence from the gathering dark of an autumn afternoon; and the power to light the room came from another county, well to the north, where snow had already fallen. The chairs and desks were made of brightly colored plastic. The floor was waxed Vinylite.
    “Sit down, Tony,” she said. “Please sit down. It’s time that we had a little talk.”
    She might have been a pretty woman—small-featured and slender—but her skin was sallow and in the brightness of the light one saw that she had a few chinwhiskers. Her