Read Online The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jonathan Lethem
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Male friendship, Social Science, Bildungsromans, Race relations, Teenage boys, Brooklyn (New York; N.Y.), Discrimination & Race Relations
Ads: Link
apple completely out of their heads.
There were days when no kid came out of his house without looking around. The week after Halloween had a quality both hungover and ominous, the light pitched, the sky smashed against the rooftops.
No Vember.
“Go deep,” Henry commanded. Now he wagged a football, the latest enticement. Four kids were like yo-yos strung to his hand, running to jump in a cluster when he finally spiraled the football half the length of the block. No matter what happened, whichever hands the ball came down in or eluded, Henry’s expression was sour. There was something inelegant or compromised in the ball’s descent from the air where he’d placed it.
Dylan Ebdus waited on Henry’s stoop in a bubble of silence, seeing he made six , wondering if they’d call him into the street to even the sides for a game. He’d detected in himself a certain translucency today, a talent for being ignored. Rachel had flushed him from a four-day hide in his room, from a retrenchment into the secret power of his books and pencils, into the mysteries of eavesdropping on Abraham’s footfalls and Rachel’s clangor on the telephone, into the dreary conundrums of the Etch A Sketch and the Spirograph, and something in his conjured solitude had followed him out onto the street, then reversed itself to drape all over him anywhere he sat still.
Gaze long enough into Dean Street and Dean Street will gaze into you.
Hands in pockets, Dylan went into the street and leaned against a car. Then, as if tide-swept from a beach, he began to sway with the others toward the place the ball descended, making no show of trying to catch it, just drawn to the site, taking air through his mouth, silently emulating play.
“You seen Robert Woolfolk?” said Alberto casually.
Dylan wasn’t surprised. He felt the irresistible relevance of Robert’s name. He shook his head.
They stopped playing. Henry tried to dribble the football. Two or three times it actually came back to him instead of twisting away across their shoe tops. The ball was scarred with grease where it had lodged under a car and been scraped down the block.
“He got beat up,” said Alberto reverently.
Lonnie nodded his head, Alberto nodded, Earl and Carlton nodded. They gathered wide-eyed as though warming at a campfire of their own awe. Dylan waited. Henry slapped the football against the ground and Alberto and the others stared as though it was Dylan who should explain Robert Woolfolk’s beating to them. Then Henry flicked them away, as easily as flicking a drop of water from his hand, by muttering “End zone,” and dropping back, the ball hidden behind his knee, to roll his eyes at the sky. The four scuttled to the place where Henry’s glance promised to deliver the ball, each yearning to be the kid made pure by the perfect catch. Henry turned away the instant the ball was aloft, uninterested. He gestured to Dylan and the two of them crossed to the abandoned house. The bus thumped past, giving cover.
“Your mother kicked his ass, right out on Bergen Street,” Henry said. “He was crying and everything.”
Dylan was silent.
“I guess nobody told you,” said Henry.
Could there be a distant island or hidden room where your life took place without your knowing? Dylan tried to picture the incident on Bergen Street, the lunatic collision between Rachel Ebdus and Robert Woolfolk, but the spotlight of his wondering slipped to the invisible floating room in the dark of the house at night where through the walls as he lay awake in bed he heard his mother’s rhythmic whimpering or his father’s urgent, angry whisper. I guess nobody told you , Henry said, and Dylan began to drown in the stuff he dammed with silence at the brink of sleep.
Did Abraham beat Rachel, to bring those moans?
Who was kicking whose ass?
Of course that fury would slip out of the house to hammer some kid on the street. At least it was Robert Woolfolk who’d taken it.
It suddenly seemed
There were days when no kid came out of his house without looking around. The week after Halloween had a quality both hungover and ominous, the light pitched, the sky smashed against the rooftops.
No Vember.
“Go deep,” Henry commanded. Now he wagged a football, the latest enticement. Four kids were like yo-yos strung to his hand, running to jump in a cluster when he finally spiraled the football half the length of the block. No matter what happened, whichever hands the ball came down in or eluded, Henry’s expression was sour. There was something inelegant or compromised in the ball’s descent from the air where he’d placed it.
Dylan Ebdus waited on Henry’s stoop in a bubble of silence, seeing he made six , wondering if they’d call him into the street to even the sides for a game. He’d detected in himself a certain translucency today, a talent for being ignored. Rachel had flushed him from a four-day hide in his room, from a retrenchment into the secret power of his books and pencils, into the mysteries of eavesdropping on Abraham’s footfalls and Rachel’s clangor on the telephone, into the dreary conundrums of the Etch A Sketch and the Spirograph, and something in his conjured solitude had followed him out onto the street, then reversed itself to drape all over him anywhere he sat still.
Gaze long enough into Dean Street and Dean Street will gaze into you.
Hands in pockets, Dylan went into the street and leaned against a car. Then, as if tide-swept from a beach, he began to sway with the others toward the place the ball descended, making no show of trying to catch it, just drawn to the site, taking air through his mouth, silently emulating play.
“You seen Robert Woolfolk?” said Alberto casually.
Dylan wasn’t surprised. He felt the irresistible relevance of Robert’s name. He shook his head.
They stopped playing. Henry tried to dribble the football. Two or three times it actually came back to him instead of twisting away across their shoe tops. The ball was scarred with grease where it had lodged under a car and been scraped down the block.
“He got beat up,” said Alberto reverently.
Lonnie nodded his head, Alberto nodded, Earl and Carlton nodded. They gathered wide-eyed as though warming at a campfire of their own awe. Dylan waited. Henry slapped the football against the ground and Alberto and the others stared as though it was Dylan who should explain Robert Woolfolk’s beating to them. Then Henry flicked them away, as easily as flicking a drop of water from his hand, by muttering “End zone,” and dropping back, the ball hidden behind his knee, to roll his eyes at the sky. The four scuttled to the place where Henry’s glance promised to deliver the ball, each yearning to be the kid made pure by the perfect catch. Henry turned away the instant the ball was aloft, uninterested. He gestured to Dylan and the two of them crossed to the abandoned house. The bus thumped past, giving cover.
“Your mother kicked his ass, right out on Bergen Street,” Henry said. “He was crying and everything.”
Dylan was silent.
“I guess nobody told you,” said Henry.
Could there be a distant island or hidden room where your life took place without your knowing? Dylan tried to picture the incident on Bergen Street, the lunatic collision between Rachel Ebdus and Robert Woolfolk, but the spotlight of his wondering slipped to the invisible floating room in the dark of the house at night where through the walls as he lay awake in bed he heard his mother’s rhythmic whimpering or his father’s urgent, angry whisper. I guess nobody told you , Henry said, and Dylan began to drown in the stuff he dammed with silence at the brink of sleep.
Did Abraham beat Rachel, to bring those moans?
Who was kicking whose ass?
Of course that fury would slip out of the house to hammer some kid on the street. At least it was Robert Woolfolk who’d taken it.
It suddenly seemed
Similar Books
