The Sunnier Side and Other Stories by Charles Jackson

Author:Charles Jackson [Jackson, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-94874-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

The Benighted Savage

The stage was set, the shades were drawn, there were two pillows under his head, the bright afternoon sun penetrated the bedroom just enough at the sills to let him appreciate things, he was a million miles away, shuddering in transports of familiar ecstasy, familiar but always thrillingly new as if it had never happened before (Japan it was, this time, and he lay on a great satin-covered hassock in the exact center of a paper room, surrounded by twittering geishas who ducked behind their painted fans with little birdlike sounds and drew aside the folds of their bright kimonos to reveal the gleaming legs and thighs and oh the wonderful little bellies that were his dream to play with), when suddenly, silently, the door dreadfully opened and in walked his father.

“Georgie, I’ve been meaning to ask you—”

He got no further. His face tightened with shock, his mouth fell open speechless. Grey with rage, he stared down at the frightened figure on the bed, now suddenly still. When the thundering words came, they shook not only father and son but the room itself.

“George! A boy of your age—But any boy!” He struck the back of his hand to his forehead as if warding off some unseen blow. “Don’t you know what you’re doing to yourself! You’ll be stunted, finished, an idiot in the crazy house, with ruined health, dead! Feeble-minded, with tuberculosis of the spine or paresis or something! Oh, I’m ashamed! Such kid-stuff, idiot-stuff—and you want to be a man! You’re not a child any longer, you’re entering high school this fall, you don’t want to be a raving idiot do you? Don’t you know what’ll happen to you if you go on like this? If you do that twenty times you’ll go crazy, you’ll lose your mind, you’ll die!”

And now it was the boy who recovered his voice. He pulled his clothes together and said, “I—I’m sorry, Dad, I don’t know what to say, I—I couldn’t help it, I won’t do it again, I—I promise.…”

“Who taught you this filthy trick!”

“Nobody.”

“Nobody?” The father stared down at the boy as if he had never seen him before. “You mean you learned it by yourself? Oh,” he groaned, “then you are depraved!”

Feebly the boy murmured, “I won’t do it again.…”

“That’s not good enough! You’ve got to do something about it! Your mother and I will not have a degenerate in the house, do you hear? Take up an interest, go out for sports! Hasn’t Reverend Brittain ever told you about What Every Young Boy Should Know—or your Scoutmaster? I’m surprised they haven’t made you read it! I tell you if you do that filthy thing twenty times more you’ll die, you’ll go out of your mind!” He turned, slammed the door behind him, and was gone.

Minutes after his father had left, the boy on the bed began to breathe normally again. But he did not forget it and he knew he never would forget it. He got up, straightened

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