Sons (45 page)

When I got back to the conveyer belt, he was rolling a log off toward the woodpecker. He squinted down at me from where he stood on the platform, sunlight slabbing his eyes, and said, “What’d Moreland want?”

“I’ve been canned,” I said.

“Why?” Allen asked, looking genuinely shocked.

I did not think it would be difficult to find another job.

We were in the midst of what seemed like lasting prosperity, and even though some gloomy forecasters were predicting a full-scale depression before the end of the year (based, I supposed, upon the recent collapse of farm prices) I could not imagine unemployment walking hand-in-hand with inflation. So in that second week of a Chicago May that quickened my step and elevated my spirits, I put on my best suit each morning, with a clean white shirt and collar, tic held in place by a stickpin made from a pearl my mother had given me as a wedding present, and went off to seek work. I left the house early every day, trying to get to as many mills as possible, but I was usually home by two or three o’clock, and it was Nancy who suggested that the Grzyimeks downstairs must have thought I was a gangster selling illegal whiskey or something, since I kept such elegant hours. I encouraged this idea all during my second week of job-hunting, tipping my hat to Mrs. Grzymek whenever I met her in the hallway, affecting the air of a very successful if somewhat shady businessman off to a strategy meeting, after which I would have lunch at the Commercial Club and then come home in time for an afternoon nap. But at the end of the second futile week of hunting, Mrs. Grzymek ran into Nancy at the butcher’s, and asked, “Has your husband found work yet?” puncturing even that balloon. We had fifty-six dollars in the bank when I lost the job, and by the last week in May, we were down to thirty-two. I was getting just a trifle nervous. Moreover, Nancy was beginning to nag me about not having seen the Garretts in all this time. Sounding like a phonograph record of my own arguments, and probably ticking off the points on her fingers one by one (we were in bed when she treated me to this particular sermon, and I could not see her in the dark) she explained that (1) I was reacting quite hysterically to a climate of suspicion and fear, (2) I was behaving as abominably as Mr. Moreland had, and (3) I was condemning and hanging poor Allen without even giving him the opportunity to defend himself. I politely said, “Pardon?” and rolled over and went to sleep. I had more pressing things on my mind than Allen Garrett’s supposedly injured feelings.

It was raining when I woke up the next morning. The bedroom was chilly and damp. I did not want to get out of bed. I did not want to travel in the rain to Ogden Avenue, where I had a job interview with a Mr. McInerny of Dill-Holderness International. But I thought of those thirty-two dwindling dollars in the bank, and I thought of how tempted I had recently been by a recurring classified advertisement in the
Tribune
for a washroom attendant at the Blackstone Theater. So I pulled on a pair of trousers over my cotton nightshirt, and went into the hall to perform my morning
toilette,
even as Bertram A. Tyler might have done in Paris, France, before leaving for his highly profitable automobile agency on the Avenue Neuilly. Then I shaved and dressed myself in the clothes that had so successfully fooled Mrs. Grzymek, kissed Nancy on the cheek, and went out into the rain. I was drenched before I reached the streetcar depot.

Mr. McInerny was a tolerable old bore who apprised me of the fact that forest products ranked seventh in the United States industry in this year of our Lord 1920, and would no doubt rise even higher on the scale in years to come. There are unlimited opportunities in paper for a young man who’s not afraid of hard work, he said. I assured him that I was not afraid of hard work, and then told him of my not inconsiderable experience in lumbering — the font, so to speak, of the paper industry (Ah, yes, the font indeed, Mr. McInerny said, nodding) — and of my apprenticeship at Ramsey-Warner, all of which seemed to impress him favorably. But at last he got around to the part of the interview I was dreading, “Why did you leave your last place of employment, Mr. Tyler?”

“I was let go,” I said.

“Why were you let go?” Mr. McInerny asked.

I had coped with this question on every interview I’d had during the past three weeks, debating whether I should lie in answer to it, knowing it would take nothing more than a telephone call to ascertain the truth of whatever I said, and finally developing a sort of compromise answer, a lie that wasn’t quite a lie, a truth that wasn’t quite that either.

“There was a personality conflict with another employee,” I said.

Mr. McInerny looked at me very closely. “What
kind
of personality conflict?” he asked, surprising me. On my last several interviews, the clever answer I’d evolved had not been challenged. I sat now in silence, wondering what to say next. “What
kind
of personality conflict?” Mr. McInerny asked again in his gentle boring voice.

“A man I worked with was making false accusations about me,” I said, and realized I would now have to define the accusations and do a dissertation besides on innocence defiled, realized in short that I’d already lost the job.

“What
kind
of accusations?” Mr. McInerny predictably asked.

“Well,” I said, figuring honesty was the best policy, “they thought I was a radical.”

“Who thought so?”

“Mr. Moreland who fired me.”

“Are
you a radical?”

“No, sir.”

“How do I know you’re not?”

Throwing caution entirely to the winds, I said, “How do I know
you’re
not, Mr. McInerny?”

“I‘m
not looking for work,” he answered.

We stared at each other in polite silence, Mr. McInerny smiling in his bored and gentle way, I knowing for certain that the smoke had gone all the way up the flue. Mr. McInerny shook hands with me, and promised to let me know his decision by the end of the week, but I knew I had not got the job. My suit, which had begun to dry out a little in his office, got soaked all over again the moment I stepped outside. With my luck, I was sure it would shrink to half its size before I got home. It had cost me thirty-five dollars and ninety-five cents less than a year ago.

It was still raining when I got off the streetcar. A tall slender girl wearing a white raincape was standing on the front stoop of my building, her dark head bent, studying the falling raindrops in the sidewalk puddles. She looked up as I approached, seemingly on the verge of glancing away again immediately, as though she had wrongly greeted too many strangers during her wait and was now ready to reject even the person she expected.

“Hello, Bert,” she said.

“Hello, Rosie,” I said, surprised. “What’re you doing out here in the rain?”

“Nancy asked me to stop by, but she doesn’t seem to be home.”

“Well, come on up,” I said. “No sense getting wet.”

“I
would
welcome a hot cup of tea,” Rosie said.

“Sure, come on up.”

We climbed the steps to the second floor in silence. There was the aroma of mustiness in the hallway, the steady sound of rain drumming on the roof, the angrier splash of the waterspout in the areaway. From the flat downstairs, I could hear the eldest of the Grzymek children practicing scales on the parlor piano, a dreary accompaniment to the rain. There was no light on our landing, save for the natural illumination from the airshaft window at the top of the stairs. I moved closer to the window, searching through my keys for the one to the front door, and then turned and felt for the keyhole. Rosie stood silently beside me. When I opened the door, she went into the kitchen and walked directly to the stove.

“Damn rain,” she said.

“I’ll bank the fire and put up a kettle.”

“I’d prefer a drink if you’ve got anything.”

“I think so.”

She did not take off her cape. She stood huddled near the stove while I shoveled coal into it, and then she reached into her bag for a package of Sweet Caps, shook one loose, lighted it, and blew out a long stream of smoke, almost as if it were a visible sigh.

“You should get a telephone,” she said. “For situations like this.”

“Can’t afford one. Especially now.”

“How’s it going, Bert?”

“Nothing so far.”

“You’ll find something.”

“Unless everybody already knows I’m a Communist.”

“You shouldn’t say that. Not even in jest.”

“Who’s jesting?” I said.

“Bert,” Rosie said, and then stopped. I turned from the cabinet near the stove, where I was rummaging through the bottles, but she only shook her head and puffed again on the cigarette.

“Looks like all I’ve got is some Rock and Rye a fellow at the mill made.”

“Fine,” she said.

“It’s sort of sweet.”

“I only need it to take off the chill.”

“Wait, here’s some scotch.”

The bottle was almost empty, the last of the wedding reception whiskey Nancy and I had brought from Eau Fraiche. I poured a little into the glasses and carried them to where Rosie was standing near the stove.

“To your finding work soon,” she said, raising her glass.

“Amen,” I said, and drank with her.

“Bert,” she said, and again shook her head, and puffed on her cigarette, and then lifted the stove lid and dropped the butt onto the coals. She walked to the table, put her glass down, turned to me, folded her arms across the cape, and said, “Bert, Nancy won’t be back until two o’clock.”

“What do you mean?”

“We arranged this between us.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to talk to you.”

“Is this going to be about Allen?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t Allen come himself?”

“Because he doesn’t know anything about your fancied grievance.”

“Oh, is it fancied?”

“Yes.”

“Rosie,” I said, “I’ve been out of work for close to three weeks. I’ve got thirty-two dollars in the bank, and the rent’s about due, and that isn’t fancied.”

“Your grievance is.”

“I lost my job.”

“Allen had nothing to do with that.”

“Didn’t he? Then why hasn’t he come around?”

“Because he’s... no, I won’t tell you. It’ll only convince you you’re right.”

“What is it?”

Rosie shook her head.

“Well,” I said, “my feet are wet, so if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to change my socks and put on some slippers.”

“No!” she said sharply. “I told Nancy we’d have this settled by two, and damn it, we
will!”
She reached into her bag for another cigarette, struck two matches before she managed to get it going, and then glared at me angrily, as if I’d been responsible for her inability to light it.

“As for Nancy,” I said, “I never thought she’d be a party...”

“That’s right, start imagining things against your own wife, too.”

“No one asked her to start meddling in...”

“
I
did. Allen had nothing to do with your getting fired.”

“Then why hasn’t he been around to inquire about the state of my health? You
still
haven’t answered
that
one, Rosie.”

“He’s been busy.”

“Ahhhh. Poor fellow. I’ve been busy, too.”

“He got a promotion. He’s been trying to learn...”

“Marvelous!” I said. “What was it? A reward for turning in the anarchist?”

“That isn’t fair, Bert!”

“No? What’s fair? I’ll be begging in the streets if I don’t find a job soon. What’s fair, Rosie, you tell
me!”

“Oh, give me another drink,” she said.

“The scotch’s gone.”

“Then give me some of that crappy Rock and Rye. You really get my goat, Bert, I’ve got to tell you.”

I walked back to the cabinet, found the bottle of homemade stuff, and carried it to the table. Rosie handed me her glass. I rinsed it out at the sink and then went back to where I’d left the bottle. The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the big clock on the shelf over the drainboard. The rock crystals banged against the side of the bottle as I poured.

“Thank you,” Rosie said. She raised her glass. “When shall I bring Allen?”

“Never,” I said.

“Bert...”

“Your husband is a liar and a rat. I don’t care if I never see him again as long as I live.”

“You stink,” she said, and drank. “Flffff,” she said, pulling a face.
“This
stinks, too.”

“Rosie,” I said, “why don’t you just go home?”

“I think I will,” she answered. She carried the glass to the sink and poured the Rock and Rye down the drain. Then she rinsed out the glass again, and put it on the drainboard. She checked her rouge in the mirror over the sink, touching one corner of her mouth with an extended forefinger, then turned and walked swiftly to the door. At the door, she said, “This isn’t the end, Bert,” and walked out.

Since I was not starring in a motion picture about virtue or courage rewarded, and since the age of miracles was otherwise dead, I did not hear from Mr. McInerny by the end of the week, nor did I get the job at Dill-Holderness. Instead, I drew twenty-six dollars from the bank to pay the landlord when he came around for the rent, and then I wired my brother-in-law Oscar in Arizona, asking him for a loan of a hundred dollars to tide me over until I could find a job. He sent the money by return wire. The telegraph operator asked me, “Are you Bertram A. Tyler?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Sender requires that you answer a question.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wants you to answer this question before I turn the money over to you.”

“Oh. Sure. What’s the question?”

“Name his tribe.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Name the sender’s tribe.”