Orrie's Story by Thomas Berger Page B

mounted on a standard at the far end. Paul was a college guy and more than six feet in height: he’d be readily accepted.
    Orrie returned to his sister. She might be personally unkempt, but her looseleaf notebook and the two texts she carried, bound together by a somewhat old-fashioned strap and buckle, were in perfect condition. Of course, school had been in session now only since Labor Day, but already most other kids’ stuff would be showing wear and tear: Ellie’s would be good as new next June. Her handwriting resembled those penmanship examples hung over the blackboards in grade school, whereas his own was awful, sometimes undecipherable even by himself.
    â€œOkay, so I’m a boy. Does that mean I’m stupid?”
    â€œNo, of course not.” She turned her head for an instant. Her spectacles had slid forward again.
    â€œYou mean I don’t have feminine intuition?” This nonce-phrase was known to him from radio and the movies.
    Ellie brought her éyes up to his. “Forget it.”
    â€œCome on, Ellie. What are you trying to pull?” Though the kids had gone by, in the habitual rapid exit of the homeward-bound, Orrie now lowered his voice as much in good taste as prudence. “You’re outspoken enough to accuse Mother and Erie of coldblooded murder, but you can’t tell me this thing?”
    â€œErie raped Gena,” Ellie said flatly, as if with no emotion. “In the car.”
    â€œUh-huh,” Orrie said. He could feel the blood rushing into his cheeks. Nothing pertaining however slightly to sex had ever been mentioned by either of them to the other. He found the subject impossibly repellent when it came to relatives, but it was even worse with female ones.
    Except for the burning face, Orrie kept himself in order. “I’m sure the first time he tried something like that, Gena went right to Mother and told her what kind of man he was.”
    â€œShe did.”
    â€œBecause,” Orrie went on, using pomposity as a moral support, “she was a minor at the time, and that sort of thing is against the law. He could be sent to the penitentiary for that, no question about it.”
    â€œMother didn’t believe her.”
    â€œWell, there you are,” said Orrie.
    â€œShe just called Gena a little whore.”
    Ellie wasn’t letting up. He was outraged by her use of the word, though he had some familiarity with the charge. He had suffered a bloody nose once after he heard a larger boy make a like reference to Gena. Orrie got the worst of the fight, but won his point: with a victor’s generosity, the other apologized. “You ought to have your mouth washed out with soap,” he now told Ellie.
    â€œYou’re not listening , are you?” Ellie asked disdainfully. “That’s what I mean about being a boy. He got Gena pregnant finally, and Mother still wouldn’t believe anything against him. That’s when Gena ran away.”
    â€œCome on,” Orrie said, but his voice seemed to be operated mechanically now, by someone else. “I was living right here myself. I would have known if it was happening, wouldn’t I? Gena wanted to go to Hollywood and become a movie star.”
    â€œAfter she was gone,” Ellie said relentlessly, “Erie turned his attentions to me. But I was prepared. I stole that hunting knife of yours. I told him I’d cut him if he didn’t let me alone.”
    â€œI wondered what became of that knife,” said Orrie. “I couldn’t find it anywhere.” He continued to mumble about the knife. He was scared of his sister now: either she knew too much about things too horrible for anybody but mature men, cops, physicians, soldiers, certainly for any female—or she was raving mad. A young girl like that, pulling a knife on someone: that was certainly crazy. He had to do something about her. He was now head of the family.
    â€œYou can’t go around