Page 24

"Look," said Jenny. "I bought some beer. Go ahead and get drunk, if you want to."

"Jesus, Mom," Garp said, but he drank a few with her. They sat by themselves on his graduation night, the infirmary empty beside them, and every bed in the annex was empty and stripped of linen, too--except for the beds they would sleep in. Garp drank the beer and wondered if everything was an anticlimax; he reassured himself by thinking of the few good stories he had read, but though he had a Steering education, he was no reader--no match for Helen, or Jenny, for example. Garp's way with a story was to find one he liked and read it again and again; it would spoil him for reading any other story for a long while. When he was at Steering he read Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" thirty-four times. He also read D. H. Lawrence's "The Man Who Loved Islands" twenty-one times; he felt ready to read it again, now.

Outside the windows of the tiny apartment in the infirmary annex, the Steering campus lay dark and wet and deserted.

"Well, look at it this way," Jenny said; she could see he was feeling let down. "It took you only four years to graduate from Steering, but I've been going to this damn school for eighteen." She was not much of a drinker, Jenny: half the way through her second beer, she fell asleep. Garp carried her into her bedroom; she had already taken off her shoes, and Garp removed only her nurse's pin--so that she wouldn't roll over and stick herself with it. It was a warm night, so he didn't cover her.

He drank another beer and then took a walk.

Of course he knew where he was going.

The Percy family house--originally the Steering family house--sat on its damp lawn not far from the infirmary annex. Only one light was on in Stewart Percy's house, and Garp knew whose light it was: little Pooh Percy, now fourteen, could not sleep with her light out. Cushie had also told Garp that Bainbridge was still inclined to wear a diaper--perhaps, Garp thought, because her family still insisted on calling her Pooh.

"Well," Cushie said, "I don't see what's wrong with it. She doesn't use the diapers, you know; I mean, she's housebroken, and all that. Pooh just likes to wear diapers--occasionally."

Garp stood on the misty grass beneath Pooh Percy's window and tried to remember which room was Cushie's. Since he couldn't remember, he decided to wake up Pooh; she was sure to recognize him, and she was sure to tell Cushie. But Pooh came to her window like a ghost; she did not immediately appear to recognize Garp, who clung tenaciously to the ivy outside her window. Bainbridge Percy had eyes like a deer paralyzed in a car's headlights, about to be hit.

"For Christ's sake, Pooh, it's me," Garp whispered to her.

"You want Cushie, don't you?" Pooh asked him, sullenly.

"Yes!" Garp grunted. Then the ivy tore and he fell into the hedges below. Cushie, who slept in her bathing suit, helped extricate him.

"Wow, you're going to wake up the whole house," she said. "Have you been drinking?"

"I've been falling," Garp said, irritably. "Your sister is really weird."

"It's wet outside, all over," Cushie said to him. "Where can we go?"

Garp had thought of that. In the infirmary, he knew, were sixty empty beds.

But Garp and Cushie were not even past the Percy porch when Bonkers confronted them. The black beast was already out of breath, from descending the porch stairs, and his iron-gray muzzle was flecked with froth; his breath reached Garp like old sod flung in his face. Bonkers was growling, but even his growl had slowed down.

"Tell him to beat it," Garp whispered to Cushie.

"He's deaf," Cushie said. "He's very old."

"I know how old he is," Garp said.

Bonkers barked, a creaky and sharp sound, like the hinge of an unused door being forced open. He was thinner, but he easily weighed one hundred and forty pounds. A victim of ear mites and mange, old dog bite and barbed wire, Bonkers sniffed his enemy and held Garp cornered against the porch.

"Go away, Bonkie!" Cushie hissed.

Garp tried to sidestep the dog and noticed how slowly Bonkers reacted.

"He's half-blind," Garp whispered.

"And his nose doesn't smell much anymore," Cushie said.

"He ought to be dead," Garp whispered to himself, but he tried to step around the dog. Dimly, Bonkers followed. His mouth still reminded Garp of a steam shovel's power, and the loose flap of muscle on his black and shaggy chest indicated to Garp how hard the dog could lunge--but long ago.

"Just ignore him," Cushie suggested, just as Bonkers lunged.

The dog was slow enough so that Garp could spin behind him; he pulled the dog's forepaws from under him and dropped his own weight, from his chest, on the dog's back. Bonkers buckled forward, he slid into the ground nose first--his hind legs still clawing. Garp now controlled the crumpled forepaws but the great dog's head was held down only by the weight of Garp's chest. A terrifying snarling developed as Garp bore down on the animal's spine and drove his chin into the dog's dense neck. In the scuffle, an ear appeared--in Garp's mouth--and Garp bit it. He bit as hard as he could, and Bonkers howled. He bit Bonkers' ear in memory of his own missing flesh, he bit him for the four years he'd spent at Steering--and for his mother's eighteen years.

It was only when lights came on in the Percy house that Garp let old Bonkers go.

"Run!" Cushie suggested. Garp grabbed her hand and she came with him. A vile taste was in his mouth. "Wow, did you have to bite him?" Cushie asked.