A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) (32 page)

I got pretty good at the work. It got so that I could walk into a place, hang around a little while, and instinctively I would know how we were making out. I learned what the margin was for us, what we had to do to break even. It didn’t take long for Sam to catch on that I knew the business. He began to give me appraising assignments. He would send me into a joint before he took it on and I would case it for him. I spent as much time there as I needed, then I went back to the office and gave Sam the nut. I was generally within a few bucks.

I got a couple of raises and then he began to use me exclusively on appraising. I felt good about that for many reasons, mainly because we both knew I was carrying my weight. There were no favours granted on either side. I was the only person outside of himself whose word he would accept about a concession. Until then he had always appraised the new places himself.

I never thought about doing anything other than my work until Sam sent me out on the vending-machine assignment. Something about that business caught me the minute I walked into Mr.
Christenson’s
place. It wasn’t the dough either. Sam had many deals I had recommended to him that involved much more money. It was just the idea in it. I could just see these machines scattered all over the city, in the best locations—restaurants, terminals, airports, every place where people stopped, congregated, went to in order to kill some time. Tremendous metal machines that stood there impersonally with their hands in everybody’s pockets, appealing to everybody’s tastes, to every body’s needs. Thirsty? Have a Coke. Chewing-gum, candy, cigarettes.

Maybe it was the way Mr. Christenson had put it. I could see from the way he acted that the man didn’t really want to sell. But what could the guy do when his doctor told him he had to blow the set-up or crack up?

How Sam had heard about it I never found out; but when I got out there and saw that it ran with only a five-man crew and that the take was three grand a week, it appealed to me. It appealed to me even more when I had gone through the complete business.

Christenson had one hundred and forty-one cigarette vendors working and ninety-two Coke squirters. There were fourteen machines in the shop for which he couldn’t get replacement parts, but if they were working they could bring in another three hundred bucks a week. On top of that, forty per cent, of the locations were bad, but Christenson was too sick to scout up new spots for them. Relocating these machines could bring the gross up to four grand a week easy.

Christenson figured his net at about ten per cent. of the gross, or about three hundred a week clear. I figured that if all the things I had thought of were done we could bring the net up to at least fifteen per cent. That would mean six hundred a week on a gross of four grand. That was nice pickings. That was why I recommended the deal to Sam.

He could work a set-up like that off the back of his hand, and with his connections he could probably get hold of more machines. That was the first time I had thought about it in personal terms. I had thought that if Sam didn’t want to bother with it, I could make a deal to run the outfit for him. Then I went down to the manufacturers of the machines to inquire about replacements and parts. Of course there was nothing available now, they were all too busy with war work; but one of them had rolled out a booklet showing their post-war models.

My eyes had opened wide. This was a field we couldn’t afford to miss. There were more real pickpockets in this booklet than at Coney Island on a crowded day. Machines that roasted a hot dog and delivered it in a toasted roll with a napkin rolled around it; machines that sold hot coffee in a disposable cardboard cup; sandwiches—anything you could think of. There was even a machine that sold you an insurance policy at the airport before you made your trip. They had figured out everything but where the locations for them would be.

Opportunity was lying around in the gutter. It wasn’t that
Christenson
’s outfit was such a great money-maker now; it was its possibilities in the post-war market that held the promise. An outfit like that could sneak around on the q.t. now while everybody was busy with other things and lock up every choice location in the country. Then it would really be big business.

But Sam was just like everybody else. He was doing good; he didn’t want to strain his milk. Why go spec when the dough was pouring in like the Johnstown flood?

I looked at the cheque in my hand. I still hadn’t answered my question. What made me want to do it? I knew now that it wasn’t the business alone, it was something else. But it wasn’t until I got home that night and saw Nellie that I found the answer.

I came into the apartment quietly, wondering how she would take the news. I hoped she wouldn’t be worried, but she was funny about things like that. She made a big thing about working and saving money; and a job was the only way she could see to do it.

Several times when I had wanted to move out of the apartment, she had refused. “Why spend the money for rent?” she had argued. “We’re comfortable here.”

“But, honey,” I had said, “for more dough we can be more
comfortable
somewhere else.”

“No,” she had said, “we might as well hold on to it while it’s coming in. Nobody can ever tell when it’s gonna stop. Then we’ll need every penny we ever could keep our hands on.”

I stopped talking about it after a while. I could understand what she was afraid of and she had good reason for it. All we have ever known was poverty. What right did we have to expect things would ever change? It was a depression philosophy that left its roots in so deep that nothing could ever tear it out.

I closed the door quietly behind me. “Nellie,” I called softly.
Sometimes
she was napping when I came home. She worked all day on big hot plastic moulding presses, and it drained her energy.

There was no answer, so I tiptoed toward the bedroom. Halfway through the parlour I saw her, curled up in a corner of the couch, all dressed to go out for dinner and fast asleep. I moved silently to her.

An outstretched hand hung alongside the couch, dangling toward the floor; her other hand was hugged tightly against her bosom. There was something clutched in it. I looked closely. It was a picture of Vickie, the one we had taken up on the roof during the short summer of her life. Nellie had held her while I snapped the shutter on the borrowed camera. I remembered how anxiously we waited for the pictures to come back to the corner drugstore where we had left them for developing, how carefully we clung to the few pennies necessary to pay the cost of printing them. Nellie had been holding the baby up in the air. The baby had been gurgling down at her and she had been smiling happily up at Vickie. I could feel a lump in my throat. Nellie looked so much like a kid herself in that picture.

I looked down at Nellie’s face. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing lightly and evenly. Her long black lashes curled over the soft
white of her skin. Faint lines in her make-up ran down from her eyes. She had been crying. She had been looking at the picture and crying. Suddenly I knew the answer I had been seeking. All at once I knew the answer to a lot of things.

I knew why we’d never had another child, why Nellie was so afraid to spend an extra penny, why she wouldn’t let us move from here. She was afraid. She blamed herself for what had happened to Vickie and she didn’t want it to happen again—neither the fear nor the poverty nor the heartbreak.

And I knew why I wanted the big buck, why I had to take the chance. It was either live in the shadow of the fear all our lives or, once and for all, break free of it and have all the things we wanted. That was the whole of it. We had to be free of the fear so that we could think of tomorrow, a tomorrow we had been afraid to look into because it looked so much like yesterday.

Now we would be able to think of ourselves again. Like other people, we could want things again, feel things again, hope things again. That was it.

You just don’t die, no matter what happens; you don’t quit. You go on living. That’s what it is: you go on living. It’s not a thing you can turn on and off like the water in a faucet, not as long as inside you the blood is running, the heart is beating, the mind is hoping.

Lightly I took the photograph from her relaxed fingers, put it in my pocket, and sat down in the chair opposite to wait for her to wake up so that I could tell her what I had just learned.

I
SAT
there awkwardly in Mimi’s living-room and looked at my father. I wished that she had left well enough alone. It was one of the big things in her life to reconcile us some day, but there was no use in it. Too many things had happened between us, we had drifted too far apart. Now we sat in the same room like strangers and made small talk, each of us extremely aware that the other was near and yet never addressing ourselves to each other.

Nellie and Mamma had gone with Mimi to the children’s room to watch them going to bed, and Sam, Papa, and I were left in the
living-room
before dinner. The only talk was when Sam spoke to either of us.
Then we would answer monosyllabically, stiffly, as if we were afraid our words would lead to further conversation.

At last Sam ran out of things to say that might interest both of us and retired into the awkward silence himself. He picked up the paper and turned to the sports section. For a few seconds the only sound in the room was the rustle of the newspaper.

I had been looking out the window across the Park. It was almost dusk and the lights in the buildings were just going on, flashing like yellow topazes on purple velvet.

“Danny, you remember that kid you fought in the Gloves finals—Joey Passo?”

I turned to Sam. I remembered very well. “That was the
semi-finals
, Sam,” I corrected him. “He was the kid that almost took me. He was good.”

Sam nodded his head. “That’s right. I knew you had fought him, though. It says here he’s just signed for a crack at the Light-Heavy Championship in the fall.”

I was aware of my father’s eyes on me. “I hope the kid makes it,” I said.

“You could have made it,” Sam said without looking up from the paper. “You were good. You were the best prospect I ever seen.”

I shook my head. “Uh-uh. It was too tough a racket for me.”

Sam looked up from the paper. “The only thing wrong with you was that you didn’t have the killer instinct. A few more fights and you might have got the idea.”

My father spoke before I could answer. “A business where a man must be a killer is not a business I should want for my son.”

Both Sam and I stared at him in surprise. It was the first time we could recall that he had injected himself into a conversation between us.

Papa’s face flushed. “It’s a dirty business where a man has to be a killer to be successful.”

Sam and I exchanged knowing looks and Sam turned to him. “That’s only an expression that fighters use, Dad,” he explained. “It means that when you have a man in trouble, you know enough to finish him off quickly.”

“An excuse in words is just an excuse,” Papa insisted stubbornly. “If it’s just words, why is it all the time I read in the papers about fighters getting killed?”

“They’re accidents, Dad,” Sam said. “You read about people getting killed every day in automobile accidents. That doesn’t make everybody who drives a car a killer.”

Papa shook his head. “A different thing.”

It was Sam’s turn to be stubborn. “It’s not a different thing, Dad,” he continued. “Prize-fighting is a highly skilled sport. There are very few people who have all the skills necessary for it. The mental and physical co-ordination, plus the will to win. All these things basically are God-given talents, and when you see someone who has them all, you’re seeing a very unusual person. Your son, Danny, was one of those people.”

He turned and looked at me a moment before he spoke again. There was a respectful affection deep in his eyes. “Danny was one of those people, Dad, who come along once in a lifetime.” He was speaking softly, almost as if to himself. “When I first saw him he was a tall, gangling kid, big for his age, who got into a fight in school. Before that he was just one of the kids I had in the class, but after that he was something special. He had the God-given talents.”

Papa grunted. “The Devil’s talents, I say.”

Sam’s eyes flashed. “You’re wrong about that, Dad, like you’ve been wrong about many things. Just as everybody is wrong sometimes.”

Papa got to his feet. “I don’t want to hear about it,” he said with finality. “I’m not interested. To me, fighting is a murderer’s business.”

Sam was getting angry. “If that was the way you felt,” he snapped sarcastically, “why was it all right for Mimi to marry me? I was a fighter.”

Papa looked down at him. “You weren’t a fighter when you married her,” he answered.

“But I would have been if I hadn’t broken my kneecap.”

Papa shrugged his shoulders. “Mimi wanted you. It wasn’t my business to tell her what to do. She could marry who she liked; it wasn’t my place to interfere.”

Sam’s face was flushed. By now he was thoroughly angry. “When was it your place to interfere, Dad? When it suited you? That wasn’t the way you acted when Danny——”

“Knock it off, Sam,” I said quickly, interrupting him. This was between my father and me; there was no point in his getting into the quarrel too.

Sam turned toward me. “Why should I knock it off?” he demanded. “I got a part in this too. I went for a barrel of dough in that fiasco.” He looked stubbornly at Papa. “Everything was okay as long as the kid did what you said, but it was no good when he wouldn’t listen to you. Still, you never turned down the dough he brought home for the fights. That five hundred he left for you the night you locked him out cost me five grand and almost cost the kid his life. You didn’t know that, did you?”

Papa’s face was pale. He looked at me almost shamefacedly. “A son ought to listen to what his father tells him,” he maintained.

“Listen, yes,” Sam said, “but he’s not obliged to do what he says. I won’t ever feel like that about my kids, no matter what they do, right or wrong. They didn’t ask me to bring them into the world. And if I wanted them, I have to help them whether I agree or not.”

Papa waved his hand excitedly. “I don’t want to hear about it,” he said. “We’ll see what you do.”

“You’ll never see me close the door on my sons,” Sam snapped.

Papa stared at him for a moment, his face turning very white. Then he walked silently out of the room.

I looked at Sam. His face was still flushed. “What did you do that for?” I asked. “You’re only wasting your breath.”

Sam made a gesture of disgust. “I was gettin’ tired of listening to the old man. He’s so right about everything. I was getting tired of his cracks about you and what he expected from you and the
disappointment
you were to him.”

“So what’re you gettin’ sore about?” I asked. “It’s got nothin’ to do with you. It’s me he’s talkin’ about.”

“He knows I wanted you to be a fighter,” Sam said, “an’ it’s his way of gettin’ even with me because you listened to me instead of him. Some day I’m gonna make him realize that he’s been wrong about a lot of things.”

I stared at Sam, then turned away and lit a cigarette. “You’ll never do that, Sam,” I said to him over my shoulder. “You’ll never get him to change his mind about anything. Take my word for it. I ought to know. After all, he’s my father.”