So Little Time (22 page)

“But, gosh, Alf,” Jeffrey said, “if I go there smelling like that, some of the guys—”

“Some of the guys will what?” Alf asked.

“Some of the guys will start kidding,” Jeffrey said.

“Say,” Alf said, “look at me, does anybody kid me? Gentlemen use violet talcum powder, and you're a gentleman, aren't you?”

“The Old Man doesn't use it,” Jeffrey said.

“The Old Man doesn't use it,” Alf told him, “because he doesn't go around. Put it on your face, and now hold still and let me brush you off.”

Alf dusted a handkerchief across Jeffrey's face and looked at him critically but kindly.

“You've got to be careful about little things like that,” Alf said. “That's the way you get on. Where's your tie? I'll tie it for you.”

Jeffrey showed him a blue tie with large white dots.

“No, no,” Alf said, “you've got to have something with class to it. I'll lend you one of mine.”

“Gee, Alf,” Jeffrey said, “thanks a lot.”

The tie was Paris green with diagonal white stripes. As Alf stood in front of him, knotting it, Alf began murmuring.

“‘Who are you with tonight, tonight—Who is that peachy, dreamy, creamy vision of sweet delight?'”

“Gee, Alf,” Jeffrey said, “where did you get that one?”

“Down at the picture house last Wednesday,” Alf said. “A new vaudeville team … ‘Two little chickens, chick, chick, chicken, you're the kind of a chicken for me …'”

“Gee, Alf,” Jeffrey said, “you certainly know all the songs.”

“I make a point of it,” Alf said, “that's how I get along. There's always a glad hand in the crowd for someone who can sing.”

Alf put on his coat, which was so tight at the waist that it made his shoulders as massive as a football player's. He pulled a box of Sweet Caporal cigarettes from his pocket.

“Well,” he said, “just time for a drag at a butt before breakfast.” He opened the box carefully. “Smoke up, kid!”

“Gee, Alf,” Jeffrey said. “Thanks, but Aunt Martha would smell it on me.”

“You can eat a clove,” Alf said. “You've got to fix it so you don't act small-town.”

“Thanks, Alf,” Jeffrey said, “but I've got to read my speech today. Maybe I'd better not start smoking until I've read it.”

But Alf's mind had moved forward already.

“Say,” Alf said, “have you ever heard this one?…

“Don't look at me that way, Sonny, I'm not one of those small town hicks,

But I love a little girlie who lives way out in the sticks.

Her dress, it is pure gingham, but her heart is tried and true,

She's a stylish stout and she won't walk out—with anybody else—and, Sonny, this means
you
!”

Alf's voice grew more prosaic. “Say, kid, you can learn a lot from me.”

“Gee, Alf,” Jeffrey said, “I guess I can.”

Alf was standing there, casual, magnificent, a man of the world.

“Anything you want to know about girls,” Alf said, “or anything, just come around and ask me, man to man, kid. And I'll tell you my problems. I've got a problem now.”

Alf had never been so kind.

“What?” Jeffrey asked. “What is it, Alf?”

“Hell,” Alf said, “I don't mind telling you, Jeff, as man to man. I'm just a little short of berries.”

“Berries?” Jeff repeated. Alf always had new words.

“Spondoolix,” Alf said. “Dough; money, kid.” He made a gesture with his thumb and forefinger, as though he were counting bills. “I've got to go out tonight, kid. Chicken feed for chickens—do you get the point? Do you get the point?—as Willie said when he put the tack in Teacher's chair. I've got a book all full of ones like that. I'll lend it to you, kid.”

Jeffrey got the point.

“Gosh, Alf,” he said, “I had to spend all of my Christmas money on these pants. Now maybe Ethel—”

“Listen, kid,” Alf said, “you're graduating from High School today, aren't you? Well, you'll get a graduation present, won't you? The Old Man will give you five. And then there's Gramps. He'll slip you something. All I want is ten, see? ‘I'll just telegraph my baby, she'll send ten or twenty, maybe, and I won't have to walk back home.'”

“Why, sure,” Jeffrey said, “all right, Alf.”

It was worth ten or twenty, maybe, to do Alf the slightest service. Alf patted his shoulder affectionately.

“That's the ticket, kid,” he said. “The Wilson brothers stick together, don't they? Wilsons, that's all. Well, we've got to put on the old nosebag now. I've got to be going to the bank.”

“Nosebag?” Jeffrey said.

Alf laughed.

“Well, well,” he said. “What do horses eat out of? Wise up, kid.”

He paused and they could hear Tilly shouting up the stairs.

“Boys,” they could hear Tilly shouting, “breakfast, boys, is on the table.”

Alf was looking at himself in the mirror.

“‘Is she your little sister, mister?'” Alf was singing. “‘Answer me, honor bright—'”

“Alf?” Jeff asked.

Alf turned away from the mirror. “Yeh?” he said.

“Alf, who are you going with, tonight?”

“None of your God-damn business, kid,” Alf said.

When you were seventeen you still took most of the things around you for granted, and that was the way Jeffrey always felt about the house on Lime Street. He remembered as he ran downstairs, turning sharply into the front hall landing, that the house seemed to have a new luster that morning. It did not mean that the white paint in the second floor hall was not shabby, or that the steel engraving of General Washington's reception was not dusty, or that the tall clock on the landing was any more reliable; but everything seemed fresher. Afterwards he would think of things in that house and would wonder what had become of them—of the engraving and the tall clock, and of the horsehair sofa and the what-not in the parlor, and of the carving on the bannisters. Ethel had taken some of the furniture and Alf had sold what he could. Jeffrey had often tried to tell Madge and the children about the house but he could never make it as interesting to them as it was to him.

The front door was open that morning and a draft eddied through the hall from Lime Street out to the back garden, and the orioles and the robins were singing and all the leaves were out on the trumpet vine. The yellow and purple iris were blooming in the bed out back, but you only thought of those things later.

The round walnut table in the dining room had a checked cloth over it and there was a cage over the butter dish to keep out the flies, though it was too early for them. Tilly was bringing the oatmeal and Ethel was filling the pressed-glass water goblets. Aunt Martha was pouring the coffee. Aunt Martha had on her black silk dress with the high collar held up by strips of whalebone. Jeffrey's father was dressed in a blue serge suit that looked too tight for him. Ethel's hair was done in a pompadour with rats in it and was tied in back by a large bow, and she had on an embroidered waist with little holes in it. When Alf came into the dining room, he whistled at Ethel's shirtwaist.

“Peek-a-boo,” he said.

“Oh, you shut up, Alf,” Ethel said.

Alf made his fingers into imitation binoculars, and stared through them at Ethel's waist.

“Pa,” Ethel said, “won't you make Alf stop it?”

Their father set down his coffee cup. When he looked up, everyone waited for what he was going to say. His forehead became creased with wrinkles and he wiped his heavy brown mustache slowly with his napkin.

“Martha,” he asked, “what's the matter with her shirtwaist?”

“There's nothing the matter with it, Howland,” Aunt Martha said, and she gave a little giggle, and then she sat up very straight.

The Old Man drank his coffee. He pulled a large silver watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it. “Time to be going to the bank, Alf,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Alf said. “Are you coming to the office, Pa?”

“No,” the Old Man answered, “I won't be going until after Jeffrey graduates.”

“How about my seeing Jeff graduate?” Alf asked. “Ethel's going, isn't she?”

“You go to the bank, Alf,” the Old Man said. Alf stood up.

“All right,” he said, “all right. ‘Everybody works but Father.'”

“What?” the Old Man asked.

“‘He sits around all day—'” Alf began to sing it—“‘Feet in front of the fire, passing the time away. Mother takes in washing, so does Sister Ann. Everybody works in our house but my Old Man'—and he drinks Peruna.”

“Alf!” Ethel said, but she could not help laughing.

“Don't,” the Old Man said. “It doesn't help to laugh at him.” He was folding his napkin. “Jeff, stand up and let's see you.”

Jeffrey stood up and pulled at his blue coat to straighten it. Aunt Martha's hair was stretched back so tightly from her forehead that her eyes were always unnaturally wide open, and now, as she watched him, she had that worried look which she always wore when she was looking to see if he had really washed his face. He could hear the pots and pans clattering in the kitchen sink.

“Tilly,” the Old Man called. “Come in and look at him.” And Tilly came in all hot and steamy, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“God bless us, Mr. Wilson,” said Tilly, “the white pants on him, and all.”

There was something serious about it. Jeffrey could not have stood it if he had thought they were making fun of him. His father wiped his mustache and Ethel looked at him as though he were not her brother but more as though he were one of her girl friends' boy friends. A breath of warm air came in through the open window, and he could hear the birds singing.

“Jeff,” Ethel said, “don't stick your stomach out. You look like Arthur Howard.”

“Anyway,” Jeffrey said, and he felt his color rising, “anyway, I don't look like Martin Howard. My ears don't stick out.”

Ethel's face also grew flushed.

“You mind your own business,” Ethel said. “You would be lucky if you looked as nice as Martin Howard.”

“Ethel's sweet on Martin Howard,” Jeffrey called. “She's sweet on Martin Howard.”

“I am not,” said Ethel. “You tell Jeff to stop it, Pa.”

Ethel was fingering the small washed-gold watch which was pinned to her shirtwaist. “When we come to that,” Ethel said, “a little bird told me—” and she gave her head a toss—“a little bird told me something about someone named Louella.”

Jeffrey felt himself growing beet-red.

“Who kissed you last night?” he said. “Martin Howard, Martin Howard. ‘It's half-past kissing time and time to kiss again.'”

“That's enough,” the Old Man said. “Never mind it now.”

“Well, he's blushing,” Ethel said, “look at Jeffie blush.”

Aunt Martha stood up and her black silk dress rustled.

“Before you go, you'd better put some soap on your hairbrush, Jeffrey,” she said. “Give your hair a good soaping, and maybe it won't stick up.”

The Old Man's face was turned towards Jeffrey, but he did not seem to be looking at him.

“Have you got your speech with you, Jeff?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Jeffrey said.

“All written out so you can read it and not stumble?”

“Yes, sir,” Jeffrey said.

“Well, you'd better read it now, to be sure. We've never had a class salutatorian in the family.”

“Pa,” Jeffrey said, “don't make me read it in front of everybody.”

The Old Man pushed back his chair and stood up.

“All right,” he said. “You and I'll go into the back room and read it there. And Martha, tell me when Father comes and then we'll all walk over to the Hall. Come on, Jeff.”

His father always sat in the back room in the evening. The table was littered with old magazines and lighted by a green-shaded gas lamp connected with a green rubber tube curving like a snake to the jet on the wall. There was a bookshelf along one wall with a fishing rod standing beside it, and over it hung a photograph of some men in their shirt sleeves beneath which was written, “
N. E. Insurance Agents' Clam Bake, 1905
.” Beside the picture was a framed diploma that certified that John Howland Wilson was a member in good standing of the Eagle Brigade of Pumper #2, Volunteer Fire Department. Above the fireplace was a large tinted photograph of Jeffrey's mother, who sat stiffly with her right hand resting on a pedestal table. On another wall there hung a large colored calendar, depicting a lusty man with snow on his head and shoulders entering the kitchen with an armful of wood for the stove. Beneath it was written, “
With the compliments of the season
. H
OWLAND
W
ILSON
. R
EAL
E
STATE
—I
NSURANCE
.”

Jeffrey's father sat down on a golden-oak easy chair and pulled out his silver watch.

“We had better time it,” he said, “but don't hurry, and remember what I told you. ‘Mr. Oakley, members of the School Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen.' You don't have to read that off the paper. Stand and bow, and then just take the paper out of your pocket. You've got lots of time. Now, go ahead. Mr. Oakley and the School Committee are over by the fireplace, and I am the Ladies and Gentlemen.”

Jeffrey cleared his throat.

“Mr. Oakley, members of the School Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen.” Jeffrey drew the paper from his pocket, just as he had practised before the mirror. “We, the graduating class of the Bragg High School, greet you. We have learned much. I hope we have learned more than we have forgotten.”

“Wait there,” his father said. “Give them time to laugh.”

“When we step from this hall—” Jeffrey was remembering to speak slowly—“we will enter into a larger sphere of activity. We will assume new responsibilities. We wish to promise that we will remember what you have taught us. We wish to greet all those who are here today, and to thank our parents and our teachers and our School Committee and the taxpayers of this town for having made our education possible. I cannot express our gratitude more fittingly than by quoting the words of one of New England's most famous sons. Speaking of Dartmouth College, Daniel Webster said, ‘It is a small college, yet there are those who love it.' That is the way we feel about Bragg High. But the smallness of a school does not concern its greatness. Abraham Lincoln learned his letters before a log fire …”