The Water-Method Man

'Aerial Bombardment?' I said, the shock of it settling upon me. 'Or something simpler? Like Megaton? Or Shrapnel?' But Biggie frowned. 'Flak?' I said.

But after my father disinherited me, I thought of another name, a family name. My father's brother, Uncle Colm, had been the only Trumper to take pride in being a Scot; he put the 'Mac' back in front of his name. If he came for Thanksgiving, he wore a kilt. Wild Colm MacTrumper. He farted proudly after dinner and suggested that grave psychological insecurities had compelled my father to specialize in urology. He always asked my mother if there were any advantages in sleeping with such a specialist, and then always answered his own question: No.

My father's first name was Edmund, but Uncle Colm called him Mac. My father hated Uncle Colm. By the time my son was born, I couldn't think of a better name.

Biggie liked the name too. 'It's like a sound you'd want to make in bed,' she said.

'Colm?' I said, smiling.

'Mmmmmm,' she said.

At that time I was assuming that someday we would be seeing a lot more of Merrill Overturf. If I'd known otherwise, I'd have called our baby Merrill.

16

Fathers & Sons (Two Kinds), Unwanted Daughters-in-Law & Fatherless Friends 918 Iowa Ave.

Iowa City, Iowa

Nov. 1, 1969

Dr Edmund Trumper

2 Beach Lane

Great Boar's Head, New Hampshire

Dearest Dad & Doctor:

I have noticed in myself lately all the forbidding symptoms of terminal Weltschmerz, and I wonder would you send me some penicillin? I still have some of the old penicillin you gave me, although I understand that it increases its strength with age and requires refrigeration, and would by now be unsafe to use.

Do you remember when you gave it to me?

When Couth and Fred were fifteen, Elsbeth Malkas went to Europe and brought back the world in her crotch. Their older, former playmate had outgrown them; it was their first notion that summers at Great Boar's Head were changing. They looked forward to starting prep school in the fall, while Elsbeth prepared for college.

Couth and Fred were not prepared for the way Elsbeth's crinkly black hair affected their toes; it made them curl. Occasionally, they'd notice too that the pads of their fingertips tapped on their palms. It was enough to convince them of evolution, this surely being a primate sort of instinct - derived, they guessed, from the stage when monkeys curled their parts to grip the boughs of trees. It was an instinct concerning balance, and whenever they saw Elsbeth Malkas, they felt they were going to fall out of a tree.

Elsbeth brought new and strange habits home from Europe. No tanning on the beach during the day, no dates at the casino by night. She spent the day in the hot garret of her parents' beach cottage, writing. Poems about Europe, she said. And painting. Couth and Fred could see her garret window from the waterfront; usually, they were throwing a football in the surf. In her window, Elsbeth stood motionless, a long brush in one hand.

'I'll bet she just paints the walls of that dumb room,' Fred said.

Couth heaved the football out to sea and plunged through the waves after it, calling back, 'I bet not!' Fred saw Elsbeth at her window, looking out. Is she watching Couth or me?

At night, they watched her. They lay in the sand, halfway between her house and the waterfront, to be ready when she'd come out all white and heated from the garret, wearing a paint-blobbed blue denim workshirt that hung to mid-thigh; until she bent over to snatch up a stone to throw, you didn't know there was nothing underneath. At the water's edge she'd throw the shirt off and plunge in; her great black hair floating behind her had as much of a life of its own as the tangled kelp abob in the surf. When she slipped the workshirt back on it would cling to her; she never bothered to button it as she walked back to the house.

'You still can't really see it very good,' Couth would complain.

'A flashlight!' said Fred. 'We could shine it on her up close.'

'She'd just cover herself with the shirt,' Couth said.

'Yeah, the damn shirt,' Fred said. 'Shit.'

So one night they took the shirt. They ran down to the wet sand and snatched it up while she was out in the surf, but they were back-lit by the cottage lights and she saw that they'd run behind the hedges near the porch, so she just walked right up to them. Rather than look at her, they attempted to conceal themselves under the shirt.

'Freddy Trumper and Cuthbert Bennett,' she said. 'You horny little bastards.' She walked right past them on to her porch, and they heard the screen door slam. Then she called out to them, 'You're going to be in a lot of trouble if you don't bring my shirt in here quick!' Imagining her naked in the living room, where her parents sat reading, Couth and Fred clumped up the porch and peered in the screen door. She was naked, but alone, and when they gave her the shirt back, she didn't even put it on. They didn't dare look at her.

'It was just a joke, Elsbeth,' Fred said.