The Moviegoer

do him like Akim.
    The ride is a flying trip over the boardwalk and full tilt down the swamp road. Lonnie perches on the edge of his chair and splits the wind until tears run out of his eyes. When the clouds come booming up over the savannah, the creatures of the marsh hush for a second then set up a din of croaking and pumping.
    Back on the porch he asks me to do him like Akim. I come for him in his chair. It has to be a real beating up or he won’t be satisfied. During my last year in college I discovered that I was picking up the mannerisms of Akim Tamiroff, the only useful thing, in fact, that I learned in the entire four years.
    â€œI must get those plans.”
    â€œCome on now Jack don’t.” Lonnie shrinks back fearfully-joyfully. His hand curls like a burning leaf.
    My mother sticks her head out of the kitchen.
    â€œNow aren’t those two a case?” She turns back to Sharon. “I tell you, that Lonnie and Jack are one more case.”
    After I kiss him good-by, Lonnie calls me back. But he doesn’t really have anything to say.
    â€œWait.”
    â€œWhat?”
    He searches the swamp, smiling.
    â€œDo you think that Eucharist—”
    â€œYes?”
    He forgets and is obliged to say straight out: “I am still offering my communion for you.”
    â€œI know you are.”
    â€œWait.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDo you love me?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow much?”
    â€œQuite a bit.”
    â€œI love you too.” But already he has the transistor in the crook of his wrist and is working at it furiously.
    7
    ON ITS WAY HOME the MG becomes infested with malaise. It is not unexpected, since Sunday afternoon is always the worst time for malaise. Thousands of cars are strung out along the Gulf Coast, whole families, and all with the same vacant headachy look. There is an exhaust fume in the air and the sun strikes the water with a malignant glint. A fine Sunday afternoon, though. A beautiful boulevard, ten thousand handsome cars, fifty thousand handsome, well-fed and kind-hearted people, and the malaise settles on us like a fall-out.
    Sorrowing, hoping against hope, I put my hand on the thickest and innerest part of Sharon’s thigh.
    She bats me away with a new vigor.
    â€œSon, don’t you mess with me.”
    â€œVery well, I won’t,” I say gloomily, as willing not to mess with her as mess with her, to tell the truth.
    â€œThat’s all right. You come here.”
    â€œI’m here.”
    She gives me a kiss. “I got your number, son. But that’s all right. You’re a good old boy. You really tickle me.” She’s been talking to my mother. “Now you tend to your business and get me on home.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI have to meet someone.”

Four
    1
    SAM YERGER IS WAITING for me on the sidewalk, bigger than life. Really his legs are as big and round as an elephant’s in their heavy cylindrical linens and great flaring brogues. Seeing him strikes a pang to the marrow; he has the urgent gentle manner of an emissary of bad news. Someone has died.
    Beyond a doubt he is waiting for me. At the sight of my MG, he makes an occult sign and comes quickly to the curb.
    â€œMeet me in the basement,” he actually whispers and turns and goes immediately up the wooden steps, his footsteps echoing like pistol shots.
    Sam looks very good. Though he is rumpled and red-eyed, he is, as always, of a piece, from his bearish-big head and shoulders and his soft collar riding up like a ruff into the spade of hair at the back of his neck to his elephant legs and black brogues. It would be a pleasure to be red-eyed and rumpled if one could do it with Sam’s style. His hair makes two waves over his forehead in the Nelson Eddy style of a generation ago.
    Sam Yerger’s mother, Aunt Mady, was married to Judge Anse’s law partner, old man Ben Yerger. After college in the East, Sam left Feliciana Parish for good and worked on the old New Orleans Item. In the nineteen thirties he wrote a humorous book about the French-speaking Negroes called Yambilaya Ya-Ya which was made into a stage show and later a movie. During the war Sam was chief of the Paris bureau of a wire service. I remember hearing a CBS news analyst call him “an able and well-informed reporter.” For a while he was married to Joel Craig, a New Orleans beauty (Joel’s voice, a throaty society voice richened, it always seemed