Sneaky People: A Novel (7 page)

“A dime.”

“The stingiest man in town,” said Hauser, rolling his eyes. He counted the four bills in his hand. “All right, I’ll loan you two bucks.”

“For what? All I got is a Coke and chips.”

Hauser leaned over and whispered: “For the whore, stupid.”

Ralph’s head-skin tightened from nape to eyebrows, but his face remained bland.

“That’s what they get: two bucks,” said Hauser. “Everybody knows that.”

“I got to get home,” said Ralph. He put his dime on the table and drank the remaining swallow of his Coke.

“You were all ready to walk around town for a couple hours, following girls. You’re yellow, Sandifer. That’s what ails you.”

“I don’t feel too good. I think I got a touch of sunstroke cutting grass today.”

“You got a yellow streak a mile wide running down your back.”

Ralph said levelly: “You wanna come outside and repeat that?”

“I’ll holler it from the housetops. You’re just going to pull your pud all your life. Look, I’m offering you the money.” He thrust two bills across the table.

Ralph realized that Hauser was not challenging him in a personal way. He pulled in his jaw and became realistic. “You mean, go over there now? You don’t really know she’s a whore. Second, it’s against the law. Third, what about getting a disease?”

Hauser replied: “She’s one all right!” He pushed out of the booth, saying: “If you’re a man, you’ll follow me.”

Ralph felt as though he might hemorrhage through ears, nose, and mouth if he were forced to make an irrevocable decision. He was a deliberative sort. For something like this he had to study days, weeks, years; until he was about twenty would be more like it.

Passing Imogene Clevenger’s oblivious back, he thought: If you had ever looked at me, I wouldn’t be in this hideous situation. He ignored Margie’s obsequious smile and did not reply to her “Bye, Ralph. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Hauser was waiting inexorably on the sidewalk.

Ralph said: “For Christ’s sake, it’s still light.”

“Damn right it is. So we go down to the drugstore and get us some port wine, have a few drinks till it gets dark, see?”

This was getting crazier and crazier. “Are you nuts, Hauser? Doc won’t sell us any wine at our age.”

Horse was somber. Then he brightened. “I got it. I’ll tell him it’s for my old man.”

“You’d need a note for that,” said Ralph. “Like for cigarettes.”

“We’ll forge one. Go inside and get a piece of paper and a pencil from Elmira.”

“You go.”

Horse squinted for a moment and then decided not to make a point of it. “Naw. She’ll know something’s fishy. How about going to your house and you steal some of your father’s booze? He won’t miss it.”

“My dad doesn’t keep any around. I don’t think he drinks.”

“At my house, the liquor’s kept in the kitchen and my old man sits in there guzzling it all night.”

“Let’s forget this whole thing until some other night when the time is ripe,” said Ralph.

“No,” Hauser said emphatically. “A quitter never wins and a winner never quits. I’ll figure out something, goddammit. It’s got to be tonight.”

He got the bright idea to hang around in front of the drugstore in hopes some older guy they knew would come along and they could persuade him to make the purchase for them. But after waiting about five minutes without success, Horse got restless and began to goose Ralph and to hoot stupidly. When he started this, Ralph walked away and looked in the window of the hardware store. A Colt Woodsman .22 pistol was displayed there on a card showing pictures of a crow, a woodchuck, a squirrel, and a rabbit, a bull’s-eye target superimposed on each.

After a bit Hauser stopped shouting and, joining Ralph at the show window, turned serious. “Boy, point that at a coon and he’d go white.”

“You know Clarence, that colored guy who works for my dad?” asked Ralph. “He’s got biceps the size of sugar melons.”

Hauser rolled his short sleeve to the shoulder and made a muscle. “Let’s see yours,” he said.

Ralph ignored the invitation. “He used to be a terrific boxer till he lost an eye. You should see him with his shirt off. His stomach muscles look like a lot of little squares, kind of a checkerboard. I never saw a build like that on anybody.”

Horse was jealous. “Yaa,” he sneered. “Boogies are all yellow.” He looked lovingly at the distended biceps alongside his ear and made it jump.

“What about Joe Louis?”

“Who’d he ever beat? Primo Carnera, that stupid Dago. And Maxie Baer’s a Jewboy. Somebody white would kill him, like Jack Dempsey or Gene Tunney.” Hauser lowered his arm and said: “Sandifer, you’re just a nigger lover.” He stared over Ralph’s shoulder. “Hey, here comes my brother.”

Ralph turned. Sure enough, there was Lester Hauser in his sailor suit, coming along the sidewalk, white bellbottoms flapping at the end of his bowlegs.

“Hi, Lester,” said Horse.

“Hi, kid,” Lester replied in his superior manner. He ignored Ralph as always.

“Would you do me a big favor, Lester?”

Lester stared down at Horse. His sailor hat was on the back of his head, allowing a bunch of greasy curls to protrude in front.

“I ain’t got no extra moolah, Horace, if that’s what you got in mind.”

Horse produced a quarter. “Would you go in Doc’s and get me a pint of wine?”

Lester frowned. “Can you handle that, buster? ’Cause if you can’t and the old man takes a ball bat to you, I ain’t gonna be no part of it.”

“Sure. I know what I’m doing.”

“If you got another one of them quarters, I’ll get a pint for myself.”

“Sure, Lester,” Horse said. “That’s swell.” He gave the coins to his brother.

“Was that port or sherry?” Lester asked.

“Port.”

Lester swaggered into the drugstore.

Hauser said: “The old man used to kick the shit out of Lester until he went in the Navy. He’s scared of him now. Lester’s as rough as a cob: he’d kick him in the nuts.”

Before long Lester emerged with two flat pints in separate paper bags.

He gave one to Horse. “Just keep out of my part of the park,” he said. “Over back of the war monument, you know? That bunch of bushes? Soon’s it’s dark I’m going to take that Imogene Clevenger over there, get her loaded, and screw her little ass off.”

“I’ll be damned,” Horse said admiringly.

“I done it more than once,” said Lester, and he walked up the street towards Elmira’s.

“Gimme some of that booze,” Ralph cried madly, snatching the paper bag from Hauser’s hand. “Then let’s go find that fucking whore.”

H
ORSE SHOWED THE EFFECTS
of the wine before Ralph did, though Ralph was scarcely a veteran of the bottle. They had gone down to the railroad station for their drinking. The station was closed at this hour, but trains would whistle through from time to time throughout the evening. The boys found a place of concealment beneath a baggage truck, sat on the cold concrete of the platform, and passed the pint back and forth, Ralph wiping its mouth at every one of his own turns. He also worried about getting piles, sitting there on the cement, which was supposed to happen according to folk wisdom. He felt injured and reckless, yet was prudent even in his distress.

Hauser on the other hand began to speak in a slurred voice after his second drink.

“How old’s your brother?” asked Ralph.

“Twenty,” said Hauser. “He had the clap last year. Old Lester drinks whiskey like it was Coke. He’s done just about everything. When he was in high school, him and some other guys smoked weed in the toilet, and he got expelled. Once a bunch of nigger kids come in Elmira’s and Lester jumped up and says, ‘I think you got the wrong place,’ and they backed down and left nice as pie.”

Ralph was getting sick of Lester. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Horse, “they would have stunk up the place.”

Ralph had but lately noticed that he himself stank under the arms when he sweated. He sniffed at Hauser. “You could use some Mum yourself.”

Hauser laughed, took another swig, and said: “‘Hi, girls,’ said the blind man as he passed the fish store.”

In this fashion they passed the time till twilight. At one point an express train hurtled through with a whistle and a blur of windows, too fast to wave at anybody on board, and Hauser began to sing the well-known parody to the tune of “Humoresque.”

“Please refrain from flushing toilets while the train is in the station…”

The bottle was half empty now, but Ralph still did not have a sense of drunkenness, though it seemed to take longer than usual to move the feet at the end of his outstretched legs. The high emotion he had felt earlier had also receded.

“How do you feel?” he asked Horse.

Hauser’s eyes were hooded in the fading light. He licked his lips ever so slowly and said: “Goddam,” He crawled out from under the baggage wagon on all fours and took forever to get upright. At last he stood, swaying. “We better get going. That’s a mile or so of a walk.”

It took Ralph even longer to emerge. He shook his head.

“You’re drunk,” said Hauser, but Ralph denied it and demonstrated by treading along the very edge of the platform, above the rails. About a hundred yards from the station, a halfwitted kid had two years before fastened a spike to the track with electrician’s tape. Coming through at sixty, the Flyer’s locomotive and three cars were derailed, with several killed and many injured. It made a big splash in the city papers.

“Is Wilmer Wilson still in the asylum?” Ralph asked.

Horse said: “I sure hope so. They should of put him away when he used to shit his pants in school. That whole family is crazy. You know his sister Clara? They caught her screwing herself with a Nehi bottle.”

“A lot of nuts live in this town,” said Ralph. They had come to the end of the platform, from which it was a three-foot drop to the ground. “You know Leo Kirsch, who works for my dad? His mother’s a loony.”

“Warren Small’s brother,” Horse said. “He’s thirty years old, with the mind of a little kid. They got to feed him by hand.” He leaped off the platform and fell sprawling on the gravel.

They began to walk through a quiet neighborhood where people sat on swings or gliders in the shadows of front porches. As they approached the iron bridge over the creek, streetlights came on behind and ahead of them, and they went into the darkness under a large elm and hit the bottle again. When Ralph got his turn, there was only about an inch of wine left. He carried it until they reached the bridge.

“Christ,” said Horse, “don’t that water stink!”

Ralph drained the bottle into his throat and threw it off the bridge. The expected splash was a breaking noise instead. Apparently it hit a rock.

A heavy, angry question issued from beneath the bridge: “Who done that?”

Hauser answered in a false, hoarse voice: “Who wants to know?”

“By God, I’ll come up there and you’ll be sorry to find out.”

“Kiss my royal red American ass, you shitheel,” Hauser cried, and he and Ralph ran across the bridge and continued for three blocks.

When they finally stopped, panting, Ralph said: “Who do you think that was?”

“Could of been a Hunky who went under there to take a dump, or a tramp.” Hauser peered up the street. “Hey, we’re right around the corner from the store.”

“Already?” Ralph’s sense of elapsed time had been deranged by the wine. He had expected a longer journey. Still, he did not return to the dread of yore. Nor for that matter had he been frightened by the voice from beneath the bridge; he would have held his ground had Hauser not fled.

Hauser said: “I could use a beer.” He hunched his thick shoulders and lowered his head as a car turned the corner and approached them. “Act normal.” Although he wasn’t doing so. In fact, he went into a funny, mincing walk.

Ralph, in the assurance of alcohol, stared boldly at the automobile as it passed them.

“Wasn’t that the police cruiser?” asked Hauser.

“No,” said Ralph. “Certainly not.”

“Is it stopping?” As Ralph, to satisfy him, turned and looked, Hauser whispered desperately: “Don’t let them see you looking!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Hauser left the sidewalk to put his head against a curbside tree. “I did a dumb thing,” he said, his voice breaking. “I took—” He began to sob. “Oh, dear God…” He wept into his crossed arms.

Ralph was losing his patience at this horseplay. “Come on, Hauser, for Christ sake. I’m leaving.”

Horse wiped his face on his two short sleeves. “All that money I
got
—I took it from the cash register. The drawer was open, and Bigelow was down cellar and the butcher was in the icebox. I didn’t even think about it. I saw my chance and grabbed a handful, and then some woman come in and I couldn’t put it back, and then Bigelow come up from the cellar with a case of pop and then it was closing time and he gave me my pay—” He broke down again.

Ralph breathed deeply four or five times. “Uh-huh,” he said. He patted Hauser’s beefy shoulder. “I’m thinking…. I’m thinking.”

“I’m sick,” said Hauser and bent over to vomit in the gutter.

Ralph was indeed searching his mind as the retching went on. The alcohol had honed his faculties as well as making him immune to panic.

“You haven’t spent any of it yet,” he said. “Or anyway, not much. There was the dollar at Elmira’s and the fifty cents for the port wine. I guess you had that much from your pay?”

He waited while Horse wiped his mouth on a wrist, and the wrist on his behind as usual. Hauser then made an affirmative mumble, but returned to his misery.

“I must have been nuts. How could I—” He rubbed his head with his clean hand. Suddenly he took refuge in anger. “That lousy bastard Bigelow, leaving the register open. He did it to trap me, is what he did. I see it all now. You know I don’t get no discounts? I got to pay full price for Pepsis and Nabisco wafers and stuff? I want to make a sandwich or eat a pickle, I got to pay? He hates my guts, that prick.”

“We’ve got to stick to your problem,” said Ralph. “At this moment you’re a crook, Horse. Your pockets are full of money you stole.”

Hauser burst into tears again.

“But,” Ralph continued, “there’s a perfect answer, so you can stop bawling right now.” Hauser persisted, however, and Ralph spoke sharply. “Get hold of yourself, man!”

All at once Horse straightened up like a soldier. “I guess I’ll have to take my medicine,” said he, blubbering only a little.

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” said Ralph. “We’re going to the store. We’re going to pick the lock or break a window, and we’re going to put the money back.”

It took Hauser a while to understand that this suggestion was sober and not a cruel mockery of him in his vulnerability.

Ralph also explained: “See, not in the register, which he probably empties at night like most businessmen. We put the dough someplace where it could have fallen by accident—under the counter, you know, or in the potato bin.”

“What would money be doing in a potato bin?”

“Then you name a place,” Ralph said sharply. “The fact is, you took it.”

“You’ll never let me live that down!” Horse cried. “But if you think you can blackmail me, Sandifer, forget it.” With his face still glistening from the tears—and Ralph also could see, by the nearest streetlamp, that Hauser’s nose exuded snot—he had turned truculent.

“Christ, use your handkerchief,” said Ralph, walking away.

At length the chastened Horse caught up, saying when they gained the corner, “This way.” They turned left and soon reached the grocery, which occupied the ground floor of a two-story frame building; upstairs the windows were lighted.

“Who lives up there?” asked Ralph.

Hauser whispered: “Bigelow.”

“C’mon.” Ralph continued to walk along the pavement. “We can’t afford to be seen loitering in the vicinity.” Hauser plodded heavily at his elbow. “Did you ever pick a lock?”

“No.”

“Neither did I. I guess that’s out.” He was also out of plans. With the owner living upstairs they could hardly break a window. The truth was, it was hopeless. But it was also truly none of his affair. Ralph himself had never swiped a penny from anyone. He was so scrupulous in regard to other people’s money that if the paper boy or milkman came to collect and his mother called to him from the basement: “Get it from my purse,” he would not delve within that intimate container but rather took it down to her. This though he was aware that a lot of people believed that swiping money from close relatives was not a crime.

He had been ignoring his own drunken condition since this matter had come up, but he was about to take advantage of it now and throw Hauser to the dogs. But Horse suddenly linked arms with him and said: “You won’t desert me, will you, Ralphie?” The wheedling note was unprecedented in their long relationship. “You’ll keep thinking, won’t you? You got to save me.”

There was something structurally wrong with this appeal—Hauser with his superior size, age, and initiative having always been the leader—but also something enormously gratifying.

Ralph, who hated to be touched, got out of his grasp, and brutally, shoving the beefy Hauser away. But at the same time he said: “You can count on me.” The project really had a perfect morality about it: the restoration of stolen funds by thievish methods; better than the Robin Hood sort of thing, which he had always recognized as, underneath all the charitable motives, still robbery.

They had reached the end of the block, where the lamp was out. Hauser had become a quiet, stolid presence in the dark. Like an obedient hound he followed Ralph across the street, and they started down the opposite sidewalk, going back in the direction of the grocery.

When the moment approached for Buddy’s leave-taking, Laverne as usual had turned sullen and fled into the bathroom to wash her undies. Formerly he would hang about and cajole her, but he had given up this practice after it had consistently resulted only in tearful demonstrations. Also he admired her for hating goodbyes, tending himself to oversentimentality on such occasions, swan songs, debilitating regrets. She had trained him to square his shoulders and march crisply out the door.

He did not sneak down the steps, but neither did he turn on the outside light at the top landing. The windows of the first-floor flat were to the rear of the diagonal staircase; he was farther from them at each phase of the descent. It was his practice coolly to ignore the fat couple on the ground floor if they were sitting on their porch. He worked on the principle that an obvious slyness called attention to itself. As a used-car merchant he enjoyed a great latitude in his social connections. He might be demonstrating, delivering, or collecting an automobile, wherever or with whomever he was seen.

Beyond this, boldness created its own immunity. In the early days of their association, it had happened more than once that while downtown in the city with Laverne he had recognized local persons, but always from the side or back, and a magical force restrained them from turning towards him. For some time now, the rewards of the domestic experience had kept the lovers at home. So much the worse for any observers who might be counting his visits.

Most people were too yellow to go beyond clandestine gossip and, say, write Naomi a poison-pen letter; and if they did and she read and understood it, he was still her meal ticket, and she was not noted for her pride. Anyway, he planned to have her killed soon. But then would not his association with Laverne, which it stood to reason had been noticed by someone, be incriminating? Not if he had an ironclad alibi. He was indifferent to suspicions that could not be legally implemented. In the time to come a strained reputation might even bring him more business: he knew that much about the human race. A divorce would hurt him worse, being negative. Buddy had thought about this for a long time, but in fits and starts, not continuously. He was impulsive, no plodder.