Norwood (9 page)

“She don't know that many.”

“She does too.”

“I don't know but one myself. It's about a squirrel. He lived out in the woods and every time he would get something good his friends would be hungry and they would come around and want some. They'd say, ‘Hey, squirrel, let me have a bite of that Clark bar.' And the squirrel, he would say, real mean, ‘Naw! I'm on eat it all myself! It's good too!' And pretty soon out there in the woods they were all calling him the stingy squirrel and he didn't have any more friends to play with.”

The boys looked at Norwood.

“Well, it's more what you would call a story than a song,” he said. “There's a good lesson in it.”

He examined a row of mailboxes in the foyer and Joe William's name was there all right, although it had been penciled over # 2. The hall was dark and there were dust balls that the broom had missed. They rolled along like miniature tumbleweeds. Norwood struck a match and found # 2 the first shot. He stood outside the door for a moment. There was movement inside. He unzipped the guitar and without tuning up he hit one loud nylon chord and sang:

A dog started barking upstairs, a little scrappy one, and some woman took it up and started yelling down. The stairwell echoed with female Spanish abuse. The door opened a foot or so and Norwood gave his guitar a little trick spin and dropped into a boxing stance. “Whuddaya say, tush hog,” he said. But it wasn't Joe William at all. It was a short, bushy-headed young man in a green sweater. He was eating a sandwich. He said, “What is all this?”

Norwood said, “Oh. I thought Joe William Reese lived here.”

“Well, he did, but he's gone now. You just missed him.”

“Where did he go?”

“Back home. Some place in Arkansas. He left a couple of days ago. You a friend of his?”

“We was in the service together. How Company, Third Batt, Fifth Marines. He owes me some money.”

“I take it you're from Arkansas too.”

“Naw, I'm from Ralph, Texas. We used to live in Arkansas but when I was in the seventh grade we moved over to Ralph. It's just the other side of Texarkana. Bowie County.”

“I see. Well, how is everything in Bowie County?”

“Just fine. What did he go back home for?”

“Well, as I get it, he was following this girl.”

“What girl?”

“Some girl from his home town. I forget her name. She was up at Columbia more or less killing time and she wanted to go to Paris or Italy or someplace but her father said she'd have to put in some time at home first. Reese is trying to marry her. It was all very complicated. I can't remember the details. I gather her family has some money.”

“Yeah, I know about her. He's been sweet on her for a long time.”

“So. That's the story. He left.”

“What was he doing here?”

“Working at the post office.”

“He could of done that at home.”

“That's true enough. But then the girl was up here. Look, you want some coffee or something? You look pretty beat. I was just having lunch.”

“I don't care if I do.”

“Come on in.”

“I wouldn't mind having a sandwich either.”

“Sure thing. I'm afraid all I have is potted meat.”

“That'll be fine.”

“It'll have to be on hamburger buns too, I'm out of bread.”

“That'll be fine.”

“This stuff is cheap but it's very nutritious.” He picked up the can and read from it. “Listen to this: ‘beef tripe, beef hearts, beef, pork, salt, vinegar, flavoring, sugar and sodium nitrite.' Do you know what tripe is?”

“It's the gut part.”

“That's what I thought. I suspected it was something like that.”

“It's all meat. Meat is meat. Have you ever eat any squirrel brains?”

“No, how are they?”

“About like calf brains. They're not bad if you don't think about it. The bad part is cracking them little skulls open. One thing I won't eat is hog's head cheese. My sister Vernell, you can turn her loose with a spoon and she'll eat a pound of it before she gets up. Some people call it souse.”

“Why do they call it that?”

“I don't know. You got to have a name for everything.”

“Yes, I hadn't thought of that. Well, they're both good names.
Tripe. Souse.
”

It was a railroad apartment with peeling pink walls and a bathtub in the kitchen. There were two open suitcases on the living room couch and a big pasteboard Tide carton in the center of the room which was overflowing with books and wads of newspaper. A middling big roach was trying to climb out of the bathtub on the lower slope. He seemed addled and he kept slipping back. Norwood sat at the kitchen table and cleared away ashtrays and magazines to make an eating space on the tablecloth. He picked up an aerosol insect bomb and gave a couple of test sprays from it.

“This was where Joe William lived?”

“Yes.”

“I figured he'd have a nicer place than this.”

The bushy-headed young man was putting a pan of water on the stove. “It's not much, is it?” he said. “But it's not as nasty as the one just overhead, if you can believe that. That was mine. I moved down here yesterday afternoon. The rent's the same. This one is a little more convenient too.”

“How much is the rent?”

“Sixty a month.”

“Damn. You could make payments on a right nice house for that. Everything is high in New York, ain't it?” He made himself a sandwich and started in on it.

“Yes, I suppose it is. By the way, my name is Dave Heineman.”

Norwood shook his hand. “Glad to meet you, Dave. Mine is Norwood Pratt. What are you, an Italian?”

“No, I'm a New York Jew.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know any Jews?”

“I don't know. I don't think so. Well, there's Mr. Haddad at Haddad's store in Ralph.
We Clothe the Entire Family
. That's what he has on his window.”

“He sounds Syrian to me.”

“He might be. I wouldn't know the difference. I was in boot camp with a Jew from Chicago name Silver. I didn't know he was one till somebody told me. Instead of saying ‘Turn out the light' he would say ‘Lock the light.' You couldn't break him from it.”

“Why did you think ‘Heineman' was Italian?”

“You just look kind of Italian.”

“This Silver, was he a pretty good soldier?”

“Well, he wasn't a soldier, he was a Marine. Yeah, he was all right. Except for saying lock the light. What do you do, Dave, do you work at the post office too? Everybody I've met so far works there.”

“No, I don't really work anywhere. Here at home. I'm a freelance travel writer. Just from handouts though, I don't travel anywhere, yet. Sunny and gracious old Lima, city of contrasts, where the old meets the new. Old guys making pots and plying similar ancient trades in the shadow of modern skyscrapers. That's what I write.”

“Is there any money in it?”

“Not the way I do it. There is if you can grind it out. What I'm after is trips, freebies, some of that big time freeloading. Once you get on that circuit you're in. My problem is I'm lazy. I've got a Provence piece due at the
Trib
this afternoon and I haven't written a word. I've been sitting here all morning drinking coffee and smoking and reading match covers. Hunt's fabulous tomato sauce recipes.
Draw Me. Finish High School at Home
. Did you finish high school, Tex?”

“Naw.”

“I didn't think so. Here, take these, look into that course.”

“Thanks. The water's boiling.”

Heineman made the instant coffee in two big red striped Woolworth mugs. “How was the trip up?” he said. “Maybe I can do a piece about it. ‘See America First.'”

“It was all right,” said Norwood. “Some hobo got my boots on the train. He was one more slick customer. He took 'em right off my feet and I didn't see him or hear him. Yeah, and I wisht I could get aholt of that sapsucker. He'd
think
boots. I wouldn't care if it was the hobo king. It may of been the hobo king. He was plenty slick. Well, I'm not being serious there.”

“About what, the king?”

“They have got a king. That's right, this is no lie, I read this. They have got them a king just like England and France and he rules over every tramp in America just like a . . .
king.
”

“I noticed your shoes. Your Congress gaiters.”

Norwood shifted gears from the hobo realm and looked at his shoes with a puzzled frown, as though he wasn't sure how they got on his feet. “I just picked these things up,” he said. “A man give 'em to me. They're not too much really.”

“I don't see anything wrong with them. What's wrong with them?”

Norwood twisted one around on his foot. “I do have to say this: They're comfortable dudes.”

“Let me get this straight. You're saying that
comfort
and not
style
is the most important feature of that shoe, is that it?”

Norwood was spreading some more meat paste on a bun. He stopped and held the knife upright on the table in his fist and looked around. He looked like an overgrown nursery rhyme character with expectations of a pudding. “Where's the mannaze?” he said.

“There's not any,” said Heineman. “You'll have to use that mustard, what's left of it.”

“Mannaze is better with potted meat.” He scraped the mustard jar with his knife and got the stuff out in little dobs. “How about pickles?”

“No, it seems I'm out of everything, Tex. I didn't know you were coming or I would have laid in some things. Some pearl onions. A relish tray. Perhaps a salad.”

“You know, I feel like a fool coming up here all this way and then Joe William is gone back home. I could of stopped off by his house on the way up. I come within just a few miles of it. I didn't even think about that. His folks said he was up here.”

“How much does he owe you? If that's not too personal.”

“Seventy dollars.”

“Yeah, well, I'd call that a fool's errand all right. Even if you had caught him here you probably wouldn't have gotten the money. He's a bigger sponge than I am. He fooled me with that country boy act and got out of here owing me twenty-five.”

“How did he go home, with that girl?”

“I don't know if he went
bodily
home with her or not. I think he flew.”

“Flew? And here I am riding freight trains and he's the one that owes me money.”

“Well, it's not enough to get upset about it, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean seventy dollars is not really worth all the trouble, is it? Traveling what? Two thousand miles? And losing your boots? Figure it out.”

“I was coming up here anyway. He owes me the money. It's not a gambling debt, it's out of my pocket.”

“Yeah, but it's only seventy dollars. And what are your chances of getting it back with a guy like Reese? Didn't you ever lose any money before? Hell, forget it. Go on back to—where do you work, Tex?”

“I did work at the Nipper station in Ralph.”

“Then forget it and go on back to the Nipper station in Ralph, I think you've got too much anxiety invested in that debt.”

“I said I
did
work there. I don't work there any more. I'm a Country and Western singer now.”

“All right, the point is, the money's gone.”

“I'll get it.”

“Okay, have it your way.”

“Besides, I'd like to see him.”

“Okay.”

“It's not just the money.”

“Okay, all right. It's none of my business anyway.”

Heineman got up and went to the refrigerator and brought back a little carton of cottage cheese. “You want some of this?”

Norwood said, “I don't eat that stuff.”

“Good. There's not enough to split anyway.” He put salt and pepper on it and ate it from the carton.

“Do you know any beatnik girls?” said Norwood.

Heineman ate and thought about it for a minute. “I know some who
look
like beatniks. I guess it's the same thing. There's one on the third floor. Yes, Marie's a beatnik by any definition. Would you like to meet her?”

“Well, yeah.”

“She sings, you know. I think you'll like Marie.” He stopped eating and sniffed. He made a face and went to the living room window and leaned out. “Okay, Raimundo, knock off the grabass,” he said. “I told you not to burn any more of those stink bombs out there.”

Raimundo was the one with the big sunglasses. He and the others kicked up sparks. “It's a campfire!” he said.

“No, it's not a campfire, it's a mattress fire on East Eleventh Street and it stinks. Now put some water on it.”

Raimundo went into another defiant spark dance. “We don't want to.”

“I said put it out.”

“We're having fun.”

“That may be, but I don't want you to have any fun. Fire Commissioner Cavanagh doesn't want you to have any fun either. He was on the radio about this very thing. I think I'll call him.”

“You don't have a phone.”

“Come on now, don't be a pest. It's a neighborhood disgrace. The
Post
will be down here taking squalor pictures.”