CHUMS

I was ten years old when the recession began. Like the doomed Pompeiians, my family still led a sybaritic lifestyle, oblivious to the financial magma shifting ominously beneath our feet. That year, Katy Lynn Johnson was my best friend, and we often visited each other after school. Like many Minneapolitans, she was Swedish, her hair an effortless blonde, her eyes as coolly blue as a glacial lake. Her quick, impetuous grin contrasted with my persistent pout, shadowed brown eyes and straight, dark hair bobbed short by my father’s barber.

My mother doted on my younger sister, Patty, and grew her hair into long curls bedecked with braids, ribbons and barrettes. Lacking my academic head start, Patty carved out her own domain as the family charmer—all fluttery lashes and dimples that I knew camouflaged the steely will of a Viking.

On that last afternoon, Katy had called, giggling, and begged me to hurry over; she had a secret to share. I dropped my untouched homework and sprinted away, my mother observing with the head shake I provoked in her like a Tourette tic.

Out of breath, I arrived at the scuffed front door of Katy’s stucco bungalow. She yanked it open with a gleeful hop, drew me in, and put a finger to her lips. I nodded, shivering with anticipation.

At the opposite end of the living room sat Katy’s mother, Inger, perched on a maroon sofa with fat, threadbare arms, watching “Queen for a Day.” She was a thin, drained woman whose silvering brown hair wrapped around her head in a braid. A patch of wan afternoon sun fell on the faded rug; everything looked old, tired and worn.

On the black-and-white screen, an agitated female audience was roiling like a fish baitball. Contestants had been weeded down to the semifinalists, each competing for the title with her wrenching tale of misfortune.

Inger crossed and recrossed her legs, leaning in toward the screen at an angle so acute that she sometimes lost her balance and barely caught herself. She craned her neck and puffed deeply on her cigarette, rolling it in a cracked ashtray between stained thumb and forefinger. Her other hand blotted her reddened eyes with a wad of linty tissue.

The contestants’ requests were modest: a wheelchair for a polio-paralyzed child; money to pay the gas bill for a freezing family; a bed for twins who had to sleep on the floor. After each plea, the arrow of a massive “applause meter” would bounce and bound with a life of its own, measuring the volume of clapping that determined the winner. Luxury appliances and furniture awaited to heal, empower, and transform a humble housewife into American royalty.

As the scorching competition narrowed, an endless train of advertisements tormented the television audience, glued helplessly to their screens: cleaning liquids, cooking utensils, insurance plans. Slender models coiled and contorted like serpents in their Maidenform girdles.

A plush throne awaited the Queen, and a velvet cape with a monstrous gold and ruby clasp. On a dainty table towered a diamond tiara. The studio audience squirmed, twisting handkerchiefs. Some sat frozen, tears rolling down their cheeks. Deep furrows etched the forehead of the tuxedoed host whose elevated eyebrows quivered with empathy. His black, brilliantined pompadour was slicked to his skull, and he sported a mischievous little mustache. Beautiful models bracketed him, their bright satin dresses and matching high heels contrasting cruelly with the dowdy, hangdog contestants.

“My mom wants to go on the show,” Katy whispered.

“How come?”

“They make people rich,” Katy said. “Like you.”

I looked away, forbidden to mention my father’s remodeling business, wobbling now in the unstable economy. “What’s your secret then?” I asked.

Katy drew close and whispered, “The neighbors have two red foxes.” My eyes widened. I had never seen a living fox up close. “They bought them this morning. I heard my father talking about it. They’re in a cage. I’m not supposed to wander into people’s yards, so we’ll have to sneak over.”

My heart leaped and thudded. “Okay!”

“Mr. Travers wants to breed them and sell their skins. He says fox fur is really valuable and he’ll get rich.”

“He’s going to skin them?”

“No. Because we’re going to open the cage and let them go. The neighbors get home at six. I know how to get into their backyard from the alley.

“Your dad will kill you.” Fear shortened my breath; a flush rose up my neck to my face.

“Come upstairs. We have to make our plan.”

Katy’s mother lit a new cigarette from the burning stub of the last one. A woman was weeping that her husband had fallen from the roof and broken his back. He needed a special hospital bed so he could come home.

The wall beside the staircase was covered with photos and paintings, dominated by a large framed oil portrait of Katy’s paternal grandparents, who had left Sweden for Minnesota in their teens. They had taken jobs on a farm and finally saved enough to buy land in the unforgiving north near the Canadian border.

The couple in the portrait scrutinized me, as if they knew I did not belong here. The woman’s pale blonde hair circled her head in a halo of braids thick as ropes. She was very pretty and seemed to be battling to keep her full lips from smiling, but the man beside her had no such problem. His mouth was a tight, straight line, and his eyes were hard. There was no reason for him to smile, ever.

Katy’s grandmother, Greta, had rebelled against farm life with its arduous, unrelenting chores and six-month winters. One day, after her husband had beaten her, Greta ran away to Minneapolis to become a flapper. A flapper, Katy explained, was a girl who cut her hair, smoked and flirted, danced the Charleston, wore short skirts and drank gin.

All that suited me fine. We studied the mischievous Greta, willing her to spin tales of speakeasies and cigar-chomping gangsters in pinstripe suits. “I would like to be a flapper,” I said.

“Me too,” said Katy. We swung our legs out at the knees and snapped our fingers. But Greta’s husband had followed her to Minneapolis and brought her home, beating her harder than ever. “She had my dad,” said Katy, “but then she ran away again, so my grandpa locked her in the barn.

“Is she still alive?”

“Yes, but she’s in an insane asylum. My mom told me.” I studied the daring young woman with the teasing eyes, who had no premonition of the hell awaiting her. “Grandpa went to Canada then to drive trucks full of booze,” Katy finished. “It was prohibition.”

“What’s prohibition?”

“It was when drinking was against the law.” Katy giggled. “You don’t know anything, Ariel.”

“My parents only have wine on Jewish holidays.”

“My dad drinks,” said Katy. “When he gets drunk…”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Katy’s father, Olaf, the child of this ill-starred couple, had grown into a handsome, taciturn man whose dark hair hung in a forelock over his eyes. He was shockingly strong; we had watched him carry an oaken chest of drawers upstairs on his back, arm muscles bulging and T-shirt blotched with sweat.

Olaf had worked hard to learn Swedish cabinet making. His boss charged high prices for the exquisite furniture but paid Olaf barely enough to support his family. To be treated so meanly must have provoked the bottomless rage I sensed in him.

“What happened to your dad while his father drove the booze truck?”

“He worked on another farm. There was nobody to take care of him.”

“Your poor dad.”

“Don’t feel sorry for him.” Katy leaned in close, eyes flashing. “I hate him,” she hissed.

“You shouldn’t,” I started to respond, but then I thought of my mother’s red talons buried in my arm at the slightest provocation and said nothing.

My own father was a kind man who flew kites, fed squirrels, and sang cowboy songs, accompanying himself on a harmonica. In one song, an honest cowpuncher fell in with evil companions and filled his rival full of lead. All through the long night the relentless marshals had trailed him, until he fell in a hail of bullets out on the prairie amid thick chaparral, whatever that was. Gazing into my dark bedroom as the harmonica mourned, I imagined the doomed young cowpoke, his blood flowing red into the ageless earth. He would lie there alone, forever, and his bones would turn to dust. Tears ran from the sides of my eyes onto my pillow.

Katy’s mother, Inger, had come from a nearby farm, and they married when Olaf returned from the war with several medals. Inger worked ceaselessly cooking and cleaning. She made clothes on a black sewing machine with a treadle.

Aside from dispensing discipline, Olaf ignored Katy. He was teaching her younger brother James how to build things, and the girls were not allowed in his workshop. At dinner, Inger sat straight-backed and unsmiling, as if eating were another kitchen chore. She spoke infrequenty, raising her eyes to Olaf, who granted permission with a upward nod or lift of his eyebrows.

By contrast, mealtimes at my house were noisy, bickering events, dominated by my mother, redheaded and officious, proud of her cooking skills and kitchen hegemony. Faye was an alpha hen who pecked me constantly. Even mild backtalk would launch a smack of the wing or a grab with her talons. I sometimes imagined hitting her and wondered if god, that white-bearded sovereign reclining on his golden throne in sandals and robe, would forgive the sin.

An economic gulf lay between Katy’s neighborhood and mine. Hers had fallen into disrepair during the Depression. Patchy yards separated houses of grim, splintery wood. Each spring, thin blades of sparse grass struggled up out of winter’s freezing mud.

But Katy’s house had a radically pitched attic that contained a trove of old Swedish toys, some dating back to Napoleon’s time. We spent hours among them, exploring insatiably. In fairy tales, cannibal trolls in peaked red caps lurked under bridges, their outsized hands reaching up to capture heedless children crossing above.

We cuddled a velvet rabbit leaking ancient gray straw; its agate eyes gazed back at us wonderingly. A century ago, some child had whispered her secrets into its ragged ears. A rosimaled box was neatly packed with tiny, fierce wooden soldiers in painted uniforms, their brows beetling above blue eyes and stern scarlet mouths. The infantry clutched needle-bladed bayonets, while officers sported handlebar moustaches, tall black hats and silver wooden sabers. The Swedish army, Katy said, was once feared throughout Europe.

My own neighborhood epitomized the postwar boom. Beside a lakeshore, the air vibrated with hammering, mechanical buzz-saws and the thud of pilings driven deep. With business good, my father had built us a multi-bedroom, ranch-style home that curved around a corner facing the street. The huge backyard contained a garden and a playground.

Behind the house swayed lilac bushes, heavy with fragrant lavender and purple blooms. At their feet were bleeding hearts. Why did the hearts bleed, I wondered, caressing the puffy red-and-white flowers. Morning glory vines covered the fence with their sapphire trumpets, while lilies of the valley dizzied me with their perfume. Carnelian geraniums burst from window boxes and evergreen hedges were sculpted with geometric precision.

Inside were thick, cocoa-colored carpets, and blonde oak furniture with chairs upholstered in raw silk. Curtains of duchess satin framed a giant picture window; roses lolled on them amid a tangle of leaves. On the walls of our rooms cavorted wooden Disney characters, carved and painted to order.

The lawn had sprung to life one afternoon, as thick rolls of sod unfurled into a brilliant green carpet. The garden burst forth with giant tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, melons, lettuces and plump ears of corn until the autumn frost finally braked its plenty. I brought bags of vegetables to Katy’s family. “We grew too much,” I told Inger, who smiled with stained teeth.

“Nobody’s starving here,” Katy’s father growled, but he hefted the vegetables admiringly. “Back on the farm we grew tomatoes bigger’n this,” he said.

Now, Katy and I stole from the rear door of her house and wove down a dusty, pebbled alleyway. The neglected yards were choked with weeds on thick, woody stalks. They extended into the stony path, clutching at us, entangling themselves in our sweaters and hair.

The grass in the neighbor’s back yard was long dead and yellow as straw. Scratched by burrs and thorns, we pushed through the last close of bushes and looked around warily. A rusty swing set hung silent and still. A peeling playhouse leaned askew, rotting and empty.

“Their kids all grew up,” whispered Katy. At one end of the yard, we

spotted a rectangular, elevated wire cage and approached, feverishly alert. As we got closer, we heard an uninterrupted, ferocious buzzing that turned out to be a massive swarm of flies. Something had driven them into a frenzy of euphoria. We brushed them from our hair, peeking into the cage.

The trapped foxes had attacked each oher and fought to the death. Too shocked even to scream, we stood paralyzed, unable to look away. Both of their throats had been torn out, and the flies were gorging at the banquet with hysterical glee.

The narrow fox muzzles, nearly identical in life, had assumed differing expressions in death: one still bore a defiant snarl, while the other gaped in surprise, its narrow tongue lolling daintily, black-edged paws imploring the sky.

Katy and I breathed shallowly, silently in the presence of such overwhelming horror. My mind hurled images at me like spears. I thought of the war, of people with their throats ripped out; of the bullet-riddled cowboy and Katy’s grandmother beaten till her blood ran. My father’s plane had dropped bombs on people’s houses.

“Oh the poor foxes,” Katy finally began to sob. I couldn’t make a sound and looked away, but Katy could not move her eyes, as if she had to memorize every detail.

Consoling her was as impossible as comforting the foxes. They were trapped in death and beyond anything we could do. I was most horrified by the desecration of the flies.

A deep sense pervaded me that I was in the presence of evil fully exposed. It wasn’t that the foxes had fought; I knew they were driven by their nature. But the neighbors had neglected to separate them. The cage was very small, with no water or food. I imagined the foxes fighting, with nowhere to hide or run or retreat. Nobody had cared for their lives or their agony, even god.

“We’d better go,” I said, but Katy was already dropping to her knees.

“We have to pray for the foxes,” she sobbed, batting away the numberless flies.

“Why? We can’t help them. They’re dead.”

“Oh you!” Katy cried. “We have to pray for their souls. We have to pray for… ourselves.” She tottered with hands tightly laced and arms extended, reminding me of the pleading fox.

I stumbled to my knees in the dust and pretended to pray, but it was an empty gesture that could have no effect whatsoever. The bleak reality was far too powerful, and prayers traveled only to an infinite, indifferent emptiness beyond the universe. Somehow, though, watching Katy comforted me. Perhaps in her goodness and trust lay my own escape. I scanned the yard for adults as Katy murmured.

“At least they’re not in pain anymore,” I tried.

“How do we know?” She retorted suddenly.

“If you’re dead you don’t feel pain.”

“That’s just what they tell us. Maybe your body is dead but you’re still hurting.” I could think of nothing to refute this, and her face crumpled.

The flies were the worst. I could not escape their gleeful buzzing as they siphoned up the foxes’ helpless lifeblood with their obscene, ghastly mouthparts.

“Let’s get some insect spray,” Katy said. But I couldn’t face drenching the foxes’ wounds with poison. And the flies too would die in agony. There was nothing to be done.

We began to walk back, no longer caring who saw us.

“Jamie and me are going to a meeting tonight,” Katy said suddenly. “So you can’t stay to dinner.”

“That’s okay,” I replied. But in truth, I could not bear the prospect of seeing my angry mother, with the memory of the foxes so vivid. I could tell my father, but he had too much worry on his shoulders already. This scar was mine alone, forever.

“What kind of meeting are you going to?” I asked, without interest.

“It’s a club for kids called Chums,” Katy said, perking up a little. “My dad wants us to join it. The grown-ups have a club too.”

“What’s it called?”

The Ku Klux Klan.” She spelled it for me.

“That’s a funny name. What does it mean?”

“It means white people,” Katy said, kicking up dust and rocks in the alley.

“White people?” It seemed strange. But I was glad that she was not crying anymore. “Are you going to tell your mother about the foxes?”

“No,” said Katy. “I’m never telling anybody. We would get in trouble. And I’m not supposed to see you anymore because you’re Jewish. Chums are not allowed to be friends with Jewish people.”

This hit me like a brick, and the air left my lungs. I was now to lose my best friend too; my life was quickly emptying out.

“I have another secret,” Katy said. “When my father gets drunk he hits my mother and drags her around by the hair. She says she’s going to kill him one of these days.”

I thought of the foxes and of gentle, obedient Inger watching her gaudy TV crucible with such intense, hopeless longing. The world grew blurred and unreal.

“She tries not to make him mad. But nothing works.” Something terrible was looming: Katy’s parents might attack each other like the foxes. Life itself was nothing but a cage, our families trapped within. Maybe someday, somebody would let us out. But as Katy and I stood facing each other, that day seemed very far off.

“Bye then,” I said.

“Bye,” Katy turned away. I never visited her house again. At some point while I was in junior high, rumors flew that her father beat her.

My own family’s façade of prosperity now calved away like an Antarctic iceberg. One morning we were served with eviction papers by two laconic sheriff’s deputies with coffee on their breath. Our home no more belonged to us than did the moon.

We entered the boundless continent of poverty and made our way to Los Angeles, where my mother found work as a store clerk. My father lay on a torn naugahyde sofa all day, drinking and devising irrational ways to recoup his finances. Relatives grudgingly sent money so that we could live in a motel until my father “got back on his feet,” a position he never again attained.

Linda Boroff graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English and currently lives and works in Silicon Valley. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. Linda was nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize for fiction and won first prize in the Writing Place fiction competition. She wrote the feature film, Murder in Fashion Review in New York Times. Her short story “Light Fingers” and its script adaptation are under option to director Brad Furman and Sony. Linda adapted the biography of film noir actress Barbara Payton, with producer Don Murphy.