Bagombo Snuff Box (14 page)

He had been talking for twenty minutes now, and his audience
had finished coffee and dessert, and two cigarettes apiece, and the waitress
was getting restive about the check. Durant, florid and irritated with himself,
was trying to manage a cast of thousands spread over the forty thousand square
miles of South Korea. His audience was listening with glazed eyes, brightening
at any sign that the parts were about to be brought together into a whole and
thence to an end. But the signs were always false, and at last, when Marion
swallowed her third yawn, Durant blew himself in his story through the wall of
his tent and fell silent.

“Well,” said Teddy, “it’s hard for us who haven’t seen it to
imagine.”

“Words can hardly convey it,” said Marion. She patted Durant’s
hand again. “You’ve been through so much, and you’re so modest about it.”

“Nothing, really,” said Durant.

After a moment of silence, Marion stood. “It’s certainly
been pleasant and interesting, Major,” she said, “and we all wish you bon
voyage on The Jolly Roger.”

And there it ended.

Back aboard The Jolly Roger, Durant finished the stale quart
of beer and told himself he was ready to give up—to sell the boat, return to
the hospital, put on a bathrobe, and play cards and thumb through magazines
until doomsday.

Moodily he studied his charts for a course back to New London.
It was then he realized that he was only a few miles from the home village of a
friend who had been killed in the Second World War. It struck him as wryly
fitting that he should call on this ghost on his way back.

He arrived at the village through an early-morning mist, the
day before Memorial Day, feeling ghostlike himself. He made a bad landing that
shook the village dock, and tied up The Jolly Roger with a clumsy knot.

When he reached the main street, he found it quiet but lined
with flags. Only two other people were abroad to glance at the dour stranger.

He stepped into the post office and spoke to the brisk old
woman who was sorting mail in a rickety cage.

“Pardon me,” said Durant, “I’m looking for the Pefko family.”

“Pefko? Pefko?” said the postmistress. “That doesn’t sound
like any name around here. Pefko? They summer people?”

“No—I don’t think so. I’m sure they’re not. They may have
moved away a while ago.”

“Well, if they lived here, you’d think I’d know. They’d come
here for their mail. There’s only four hundred of us year around, and I never
heard of any Pefko.”

The secretary from the law office across the street came in
and knelt by Durant, and worked the combination lock of her mailbox.

“Annie,” said the postmistress, “you know about anybody
named Pefko around here?”

“No,” said Annie, “unless they had one of the summer
cottages out on the dunes. It’s hard to keep track of who is in those. They’re
changing hands all the time.”

She stood, and Durant saw that she was attractive in a determinedly
practical way, without wiles or ornamentation. But Durant was now so convinced
of his own dullness that his manner toward her was perfunctory.

“Look,” he said, “my name is Durant, Major Nathan Durant,
and one of my best friends in the Army was from here. George Pefko—I know he
was from here. He said so, and so did all his records. I’m sure of it.”

“Ohhhhhh,” said Annie. “Now wait, wait, wait. That’s right—certainly.
Now I remember.”

“You knew him?” said Durant.

“I knew of him,” said Annie. “I know now who you’re talking
about: the one that got killed in the war.”

“I was with him,” said Durant.

“Still can’t say as I remember him,” said the postmistress.

“You don’t remember him, probably, but you remember the
family,” said Annie. “And they did live out on the dunes, too. Goodness, that
was a long time ago—ten or fifteen years. Remember that big family that talked
Paul Eldredge into letting them live in one of his summer cottages all winter?
About six kids or more. That was the Pefkos. A wonder they didn’t freeze to
death, with nothing but a fireplace for heat. The old man came out here to pick
cranberries, and stayed on through the winter.”

“Wouldn’t exactly call this their hometown,” said the postmistress.

“George did,” said Durant.

“Well,” said Annie, “I suppose one hometown was as good as
another for young George. Those Pefkos were wanderers.”

“George enlisted from here,” said Durant. “I suppose that’s
how he settled on it.” By the same line of reasoning, Durant had chosen
Pittsburgh as his hometown, though a dozen other places had as strong a claim.
V—

“One of those people who found a home in the Army,” said the
postmistress. “Scrawny, tough boy. I remember now. His family never got any
mail. That was it, and they weren’t church people. That’s why I forgot.
Drifters. He must have been about your brother’s age, Annie.”

“I know. But I tagged after my brother all the time in those
days, and George Pefko never had anything to do with his gang. They kept to
themselves, the Pefkos did.”

“There must be somebody who remembers him well,” said Durant.
“Somebody who—” He let the sentence die on a note of urgency. It was unbearable
that every vestige of George had disappeared, unmissed.

“Now that I think about it,” said Annie, “I’m almost sure
there’s a square named after him.”

‘A square?” said Durant.

“Not really a square,” said Annie. “They just call it a square.
When a man from around here gets killed in a war, the town names some little
plot of town property after him—a traffic circle or something like that. They
put up a plaque with his name on it. That triangle down by the village dock—I’m
almost sure that was named for your friend.”

“It’s hard to keep track of them all, these days,” said the
postmistress.

“Would you like to go down and see it?” said Annie. ‘Til be
glad to show you.”

‘A plaque?” said Durant. “Never mind.” He dusted his hands. “Well,
which way is the restaurant—the one with a bar?”

“After June fifteenth, any way you want to go,” said the postmistress.
“But right now everything is closed and shuttered. You can get a sandwich at
the drugstore.”

“I might as well move on,” said Durant.

“As long as you’ve come, you ought to stay for the parade,”
said Annie.

“After seventeen years in the Army, that would be a real
treat,” said Durant. “What parade?”

“Memorial Day,” said Annie.

“That’s tomorrow, I thought,” said Durant.

“The children march today. School is closed tomorrow,” said
Annie. She smiled. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to endure one more parade,
Major, because here it comes.”

Durant followed her apathetically out onto the sidewalk. He
could hear the sound of a band, but the marchers weren’t yet in sight. There
were no more than a dozen people waiting for the parade to pass.

“They go from square to square,” said Annie. “We really
ought to wait for them down by George’s.”

“Whatever you say,” said Durant. “I’ll be closer to the
boat.”

They walked down the slope toward the village dock and The
Jolly Roger.

“They keep up the squares very nicely,” said Annie.

“They always do, they always do,” said Durant.

“Are you in a hurry to get somewhere else today?”

“Me?” said Durant bitterly. “Me? Nothing’s waiting for me
anywhere.”

“I see,” said Annie, startled. “Sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m an Army bum like George. They should have handed me a
plaque and shot me. I’m not worth a dime to anybody.”

“Here’s the square,” said Annie gently.

“Where? Oh—that.” The square was a triangle of grass, ten
feet on a side, an accident of intersecting lanes and a footpath. In its center
was a low boulder on which was fixed a small metal plaque, easily overlooked.

“George Pefko Memorial Square,” said Durant. “By golly, I
wonder what George would make of that?”

“He’d like it, wouldn’t he?” said Annie.

“He’d probably laugh.”

“I don’t see that there’s anything to laugh about.”

“Nothing, nothing at all—except that it doesn’t have much to
do with anything, does it? Who cares about George? Why should anyone care about
George? It’s just what people are expected to do, put up plaques.”

The bandsmen were in sight now, all eight of them,
teenagers, out of step, rounding a corner with confident, proud, sour, and incoherent
noise intended to be music.

Before them rode the town policeman, fat with leisure, authority,
leather, bullets, pistol, handcuffs, club, and a badge. He was splendidly
oblivious to the smoking, backfiring motorcycle beneath him as he swept slowly
back and forth before the parade.

Behind the band came a cloud of purple, seeming to float a
few feet above the street. It was lilacs carried by children. Along the curb,
teachers looking as austere as New England churches called orders to the children.

“The lilacs came in time this year,” said Annie. “Sometimes
they don’t. It’s touch-and-go.”

“That so?” said Durant.

A teacher blew a whistle. The parade halted, and Durant
found a dozen children bearing down on him, their eyes large, their arms filled
with flowers, their knees lifted high.

Durant stepped aside.

A bugler played taps badly. .

The children laid their flowers before the plaque on George
Pefko Memorial Square.

“Lovely?” whispered Annie.

“Yes,” said Durant. “It would make a statue want to cry. But
what does it mean?”

“Tom,” called Annie to a small boy who had just laid down
his flowers, “why did you do that?”

The boy looked around guiltily. “Do what?”

“Put the flowers down there,” said Annie.

“Tell them you’re paying homage to one of the fallen valiant
who selflessly gave his life,” prompted a teacher.

Tom looked at her blankly, and then back at the flowers.

“Don’t you know?” said Annie.

“Sure,” said Tom at last. “He died fighting so we could be
safe and free. And we’re thanking him with-flowers, because it was a nice thing
to do.”

He looked up at Annie, amazed that she should ask. “Everybody
knows that.”

The policeman raced his motorcycle engine. The teacher shepherded
the children back into line. The parade moved on.

“Well,” said Annie, “are you sorry you had to endure one
more parade, Major?”

“It’s true, isn’t it,” murmured Durant. “It’s so damn
simple, and so easy to forget.” Watching the innocent marchers under the
flowers, he was aware of life, the beauty and importance of a village at peace.
“Maybe I never knew—never had any way of knowing. This is what war is about,
isn’t it. This.”

Durant laughed. “George, you homeless, horny, wild old
rummy,” he said to George Pefko Memorial Square, “damned if you didn’t turn out
to be a saint.”

The old spark was back. Major Durant, home from the wars,
was somebody.

“I wonder,” he said to Annie, “if you’d have lunch with me,
and then, maybe, we could go for a ride in my boat.”

Iain a customer’s man for an investment counseling firm. I’m
starting to build a clientele and to see my way clear to take, in a modest way,
the good advice I sell. My uniform—gray suit, Homburg hat, and navy blue
overcoat—is paid for, and after I get a half-dozen more white shirts, I’m going
to buy some stock.

We in the investment counseling business have a standard
question, which goes, “Mr. X, sir, before we can make our analyses and
recommendations, we’d like to know just what it is you want from your
portfolio: income or growth?” A portfolio is a nest egg in the form of stocks
and bonds. What the question tries to get at is, does the client want to put
his nest egg where it will grow, not’ paying much in dividends at first, or
does he want the nest egg to stay about the same size but pay nice dividends?

The usual answer is that the client wants his nest egg to
grow and pay a lot of dividends. He wants to get richer fast. But I’ve had
plenty of unusual answers, particularly from clients who, because of some kind
of mental block, can’t take money in the abstract seriously. When asked what
they want from their portfolio, they’re likely to name something they’re
itching to blow money on—a car, a trip, a boat, a house.

When I put the question to a client named Otto Krummbein, he
said he wanted to make two women happy: Kitty and Falloleen.

Otto Krummbein is a genius, designer of the Krummbein Chair,
the Krummbein Di-Modular Bed, the body of the Marittima-Frascati Sports Racer,
and the entire line of Mercury Kitchen Appliances.

He is so engrossed in beauty that his mental development in
money matters is that of a chickadee. When I showed him the first stock certificate
I bought for his portfolio, he wanted to sell it again because he didn’t like
the artwork.

“What difference do the looks of the certificate make, Otto?”
I said, bewildered. “The point is that the company behind it is well managed,
growing, and has a big cash reserve.”

“Any company,” said Otto, “that would choose as its symbol
this monstrosity at the top of the certificate, this fat Medusa astride a
length of sewer pipe and wrapped in cable, is certainly insensitive, vulgar,
and stupid.”

When I got Otto as a client, he was in no condition to start
building a portfolio. I got him through his lawyer, Hal Murphy, a friend of
mine.

“I laid eyes on him for the first time two days ago,” said
Hal. “He came wandering in here, and said in a casual, fogbound way that he
thought he might need a little help.” Hal chuckled. “They tell me this
Krummbein is a genius, but I say he belongs on Skid Row or in a laughing
academy. He’s made over two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars in the
past seven years, and—”

“Then he is a genius,” I said.