Burning the Days Read Online Free Page A
Author: James Salter
beginning to appear but childhood had not ended.
The bell rang for the second round. Armed with expert advice I circled slowly to the right, poked out my left hand once or twice, and then swung a great looping blow with it. It landed with unexpected force squarely on his jaw. I saw him stagger, bewildered. “Again! Again!” I could hear them cry. I jabbed a few times and then hooked, hitting him solidly once more. He hid behind his gloves. Blood, forgetful of friendship, rushed to my head. I felt triumph but also betrayal. Royal kept away from me until the end of the round.
In the third round, coached himself, more cunning, he held his right hand higher and threw some hooks of his own which I danced away from. The judges, aware of the verdict’s significance, called the fight a draw. We each had our pride and he, his temper.
There were secret societies—honor societies, they were called—their proceedings unrevealed. Selection came at night, after taps. We lay in bed and watched the shielded flashlights move in an eccentric way around the bunk until, our hearts all beating, they stopped and someone was tapped, told to rise. There were no requisites to being chosen; it was according to some form of popularity, incalculable, really. That was a distinction beyond all others, even the medals and awards given out at the end of the summer. Certain boys were popular. They were the true avatars.
It was at camp that one held in one’s palm the dainty red newts found in beds of thick moss, learned filthy songs pure from young mouths, heard strange viewpoints, and discovered the stars. Therewas the feel of rough wool blankets in the chill mountain night, the comfort of the simple unifying prayer Now I lay me down to sleep …, the bugle calls, competition, and raising and lowering of the flag on a tall wooden pole painted white. We took hikes of ten or twelve miles, arranged to end at a general store where there were cold bottles of a bitter New England drink called Moxie, and penny candy.
There were abandoned farmhouses with fifty-year-old newspapers yellow on the floor, three-day canoe trips on vast northern lakes, and color week with its stirring songs taken from operas, Parsifal and Aïda, “Ten thousand strong, we sing a song, men of Orange …,” and concluding campfires with huge, crackling pyres of wood sending sparks swirling upwards, the camp having been divided from top to bottom into two groups that competed fiercely for the championship.
There were phonographs and records, cameras shaped like a shoebox, sacred peeled sticks, and one weekend when cars came up the stoney road carrying parents for a visit. My father’s bathing suit had a striped top and he seemed a lone figure on the wooden dock when we went swimming together. He asked me nothing about baseball, where, one of the worst players, I stood in exile in right field, occasionally seeing tremendous fly balls soar up from the distant batter, reach their zenith and then, increasing their arc and speed, small, white, and deadly, begin to descend as I ran desperately back over the clumpy ground. He and my mother both urged me to learn to play tennis, though without great conviction since they did not play themselves. They sometimes, in later years, went out together onto the golf course.
Names from childhood—they were from camp and grammar school—were Dickie Davega, George Overholt, Neil Wald, Jamie Falk, and Larry Sloan, whom I recognized later in the pages of Marjorie Morningstar and whose sister was a showgirl, leggy and superior, moving haughtily past us.
We had moved to the East Side, to a large building, the Croydon, cleft by two deep courts along Madison Avenue. Here we occupied first one, then another apartment, remaining for years.
We had moved out of simple necessity, that of finding someplace less expensive, pausing for temporary stops in Atlantic City and a hotel on Central Park South owned by some acquaintances of my father.
My new
The bell rang for the second round. Armed with expert advice I circled slowly to the right, poked out my left hand once or twice, and then swung a great looping blow with it. It landed with unexpected force squarely on his jaw. I saw him stagger, bewildered. “Again! Again!” I could hear them cry. I jabbed a few times and then hooked, hitting him solidly once more. He hid behind his gloves. Blood, forgetful of friendship, rushed to my head. I felt triumph but also betrayal. Royal kept away from me until the end of the round.
In the third round, coached himself, more cunning, he held his right hand higher and threw some hooks of his own which I danced away from. The judges, aware of the verdict’s significance, called the fight a draw. We each had our pride and he, his temper.
There were secret societies—honor societies, they were called—their proceedings unrevealed. Selection came at night, after taps. We lay in bed and watched the shielded flashlights move in an eccentric way around the bunk until, our hearts all beating, they stopped and someone was tapped, told to rise. There were no requisites to being chosen; it was according to some form of popularity, incalculable, really. That was a distinction beyond all others, even the medals and awards given out at the end of the summer. Certain boys were popular. They were the true avatars.
It was at camp that one held in one’s palm the dainty red newts found in beds of thick moss, learned filthy songs pure from young mouths, heard strange viewpoints, and discovered the stars. Therewas the feel of rough wool blankets in the chill mountain night, the comfort of the simple unifying prayer Now I lay me down to sleep …, the bugle calls, competition, and raising and lowering of the flag on a tall wooden pole painted white. We took hikes of ten or twelve miles, arranged to end at a general store where there were cold bottles of a bitter New England drink called Moxie, and penny candy.
There were abandoned farmhouses with fifty-year-old newspapers yellow on the floor, three-day canoe trips on vast northern lakes, and color week with its stirring songs taken from operas, Parsifal and Aïda, “Ten thousand strong, we sing a song, men of Orange …,” and concluding campfires with huge, crackling pyres of wood sending sparks swirling upwards, the camp having been divided from top to bottom into two groups that competed fiercely for the championship.
There were phonographs and records, cameras shaped like a shoebox, sacred peeled sticks, and one weekend when cars came up the stoney road carrying parents for a visit. My father’s bathing suit had a striped top and he seemed a lone figure on the wooden dock when we went swimming together. He asked me nothing about baseball, where, one of the worst players, I stood in exile in right field, occasionally seeing tremendous fly balls soar up from the distant batter, reach their zenith and then, increasing their arc and speed, small, white, and deadly, begin to descend as I ran desperately back over the clumpy ground. He and my mother both urged me to learn to play tennis, though without great conviction since they did not play themselves. They sometimes, in later years, went out together onto the golf course.
Names from childhood—they were from camp and grammar school—were Dickie Davega, George Overholt, Neil Wald, Jamie Falk, and Larry Sloan, whom I recognized later in the pages of Marjorie Morningstar and whose sister was a showgirl, leggy and superior, moving haughtily past us.
We had moved to the East Side, to a large building, the Croydon, cleft by two deep courts along Madison Avenue. Here we occupied first one, then another apartment, remaining for years.
We had moved out of simple necessity, that of finding someplace less expensive, pausing for temporary stops in Atlantic City and a hotel on Central Park South owned by some acquaintances of my father.
My new