University of Northern Iowa

HPAuthor(s): Harold BondSource: The North American Review, Vol. 252, No. 4 (Jul., 1967), p. 13Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25116631 .

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had gone out for the evening and an hour later a po liceman and the minister came to tell him: accident, the car, his parents, a skid, dead. He cried, a tele

gram to his only living adult relative, his mother's sis

ter, the funeral, and now he was in this slum. What ever he was feeling, it wasn't fear: he was beyond that.

"You hear the language they're using?" Mrs. Kale said.

Mr. Kale looked at her. "You think your son talks

any better? I only wish he could talk as well. Leon's almost seventeen, it's time he learned something be sides dada." Mr. Kale came around the counter, went outside and down the cellar, he was going for two gal lon bottles of chocolate syrup.

Mrs. Kale wiped her hands on her apron; lead

weights seemed sewn into the skin on either side of her mouth, pockets of flesh hung down. She heard

footsteps overhead, her son moving around upstairs; she sighed and passed her hand over her forehead and

eyes. "So, anybody ordering?" she called. Michael had the beginnings of a pot belly. His pants

were held up with a yellow plastic belt, and there was a three inch rise at the waist on the electric blue pants.

William had never seen that style. There had been a

few girls almost like Betty at his high school?the

tough girls?but he'd never gotten to know them per

sonally. A twenty-hour bus ride had taken him to New

York, to his aunt, a woman who'd been left with two children years ago when her husband had run off. That

was all William knew. Except for one other thing: He realized he had no other choice, he was too old to be an orphan but he was too young to live alone, he'd have to live with his aunt.

"Yes sir Willie," Herbie said, "home is where the heart is. Right Ida?" he shouted at his aunt. Herbie let his eyes rest on his aunt's for a moment. Then he turned away and picked up the bottle. "I'd offer you some Mike but there's hardly any left." He sloshed the liquid around and laughed. "Hey Willie, how's this:

My mother died in a fiery wreck/ I should be sorry but what the heck. That any consolation?"

"Cut it out, will you Herbie?" Betty said "Leave him alone."

"Religious poems, they're my specialty," Herbie said. "Like to hear one? I tried on my Christmas

stocking and got athlete's foot/ My Easter Bunny laid a rotten egg/ Last year for Lent I gave up rent/."

Michael no longer seemed interested in baiting William.

"The bible lied/ I know how Jesus really died/ He

grew a beard to look weird/ Shaved the insides of his

cheek to stay neat/ Then passed away from bleeding gums/"

"For Christ's sake Herbie, can't you knock this

crap off?" Betty said.

"When will my erection be resurrected/" Herbie con

tinued.

"You're an idiot you know that, a fool," Betty said.

"It surely has been crucified/"

"C'mon Mike, let's go," Betty said. "You've shown him to Herbie, you've done your duty."

Michael looked over at his sister as if he were going to smack her.

"Till the resurrection I won't believe in second

comings," Herbie said. He smiled. "There. All done." He looked from Michael to Betty and said, "Maybe you two better get going, I'd hate to see brother fight ing sister in a public place like this. That's the sort of thing that ought to happen in the home, behind locked doors, just for the family to know about."

Michael, tight faced, slid from the booth and start ed for the door.

"C'mon William," Betty said loudly, "we've been

dismissed, we can go now."

Mr Kale walked back into the store and as he start ed down the aisle Herbie stuck his foot out, as if to

trip him. Mr. Kale stopped short and stared at Herbie; Herbie broke up.

Leon Kale felt no love for his cousin Herbie, who he knew right this moment was in a booth in the back of the store. The Barrons had just left the store with some kid who looked like a fag. Leon knew what

HP

You were always a one to

call a spade a petunia. Your forbidding tongue lashed at our vernacular, that the

iron lungs we tenanted

were not sardine cans : they were

"respirators." You saddled the wrack of our bodies with

exercises, heat treatments.

Behind your back we called you

amazon. You envied us.

You told us the afflicted are assured a place in the hereafter. It was vaguely

Biblical, like clear water

over stone. Would you have thought my laundryman years later would label my shirts with an "HP"? Or that the state of

Massachusetts, year after

year, would issue my license

plates with an HP also? It was right somehow, neither a euphemism nor a

fish can: handicapped person.

You would envy me my glib identification, my clear waters flowing to the hereafter. For you I would sell my car and go shirtless.

Harold Bond

July, 1967 13

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