It

room. Then he went back into Bill’s room.
‘W-What an a-hole you are, Juh-Georgie,’ Bill said, amiably enough, and pushed back some of the sick-stuff on his nighttable: an empty glass, a pitcher of water, Kleenex, books, a bottle of Vicks VapoRub — the smell of which Bill would associate all his life with thick, phlegmy chests and snotty noses. The old Philco radio was there, ot o, playing not Chopin or Bach but a Little Richard tune . . . very softly, however, so softly that Little Richard was robbed of all his raw and elemental power. Their mother, who had studied classical piano at Juilliard, hated rock and roll. She did not merely dislike it; she abominated it.
‘I’m no a-hole,’ George said, sitting on the edge of Bill’s bed and putting the things he had gathered on the nighttable.
‘Yes you are,’ Bill said. ‘Nothing but a great big brown a-hole, that’s you.’
George tried to imagine a kid who was nothing but a great big a-hole on legs and began to giggle.
‘Your a-hole is bigger than Augusta,’ Bill said, beginning to giggle, too.
‘Four a-hole is bigger than the whole state,’ George replied. This broke both boys up for nearly two minutes.
There followed a whispered conversation of the sort which means very little to anyone save small boys: accusations of who was the biggest a-hole, who had the biggest a-hole, which a-hole was the brownest, and so on. Finally Bill said one of the forbidden words — he accused George of being a big brown shitty a-hole — and they both got laughing hard. Bill’s laughter turned into a coughing fit. As it finally began to taper off (by then Bill’s face had gone a plummy shade which George regarded with some alarm), the piano stopped again. They both looked in the direction of the parlor, listening for the piano-bench to scrape back, listening for their mother’s impatient footsteps. Bill buried his mouth in the crook of his elbow, stifling the last of the coughs, pointing at the pitcher at the same time. George poured him a glass of water, which he drank off.
The piano began once more — Für Elise again. Stuttering Bill never forgot that piece, and even many years later it never failed to bring gooseflesh to his arms and back; his heart would drop and he would remember: My mother was playing that the day Georgie died.
‘You gonna cough anymore, Bill?’
‘No.’
Bill pulled a Kleenex from the box, made a rumbling sound in his chest, spat phlegm into the tissue, screwed it up, and tossed it into the wastebasket by his bed, which was filled with similar twists of tissue. Then he opened the box of paraffin and dropped a waxy cube of the stuff into his palm. George watched him closely, but without speaking or questioning. Bill didn’t like George talking to him while he did stuff, but George had learned that if he just kept his mouth shut, Bill would usually explain what he was doing.
Bill used the knife to cut off a small piece of the paraffin cube. He put the piece in the bowl, then struck a match and put it on top of the paraffin. The two boys watched the small yellow flame as the dying wind drove rain against the window in occasional spatters.
‘Got to waterproof the boat or it’ll just get wet and sink,’ Bill said. When he was with George, his stutter was light — sometimes he didn’t stutter at all. In school, however, it could become so bad that talking became impossible for him. Communication would cease and Bill’s schoolmates would look some where else while Bill clutched the sides of his desk, his face growing almost as red as his hair, his eyes squeezed into slits as he tried to winch some word out of his stubborn throat. Sometimes — most times — the word would come. Other times it simply refused. He had been hit by a car when he was three and knocked into the side of a building; he had remained unconscious for seven hours. Mom said it was that accident which had caused the stutter. George sometimes got the feeling that his dad — a n d B i l l himself — was not so sure.
The piece of paraffin in the bowl was almost entirely melted.
The match-flame guttered lower, growing blue as it hugged the cardboard stick, and then it went out. Bill dipped his finger into the liquid, je rked it out with a faint hiss. He smiled apologetically at George. ‘Hot,’ he said. After a few seconds he dipped his finger in again and began to smear the wax along the sides of the boat, where it quickly dried to a milky haze.
‘Can I do some?’ George asked.
‘Okay. Just don’t get any on the blankets or Mom’ll kill you.’
George dipped his finger into the paraffin, which was now very warm but no longer hot, and began to spread it along the other side of the boat.
‘Don’t