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Authors: Bernard Malamud

Tags: #Fiction, #Jewish, #Short Stories (Single Author)

The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction (16 page)

BOOK: The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction
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He felt weak, his legs unsteady. Thinking it was because his stomach was empty, he decided to get some pretzels and beer with the dimes. Later, he could get some spoiled fruit from the fruit store and would ask Mr. Davido for some bread. Wally walked
along under the El to McCafferty’s tavern, near the railroad cut.
Opening the screen door, he glanced along the bar and was almost paralyzed with fright. His brother Jimmy, in uniform, was standing at the rear of the bar drinking a beer. Wally’s heart banged hard as he stepped back and closed the screen door. It slipped from his hand and slammed shut. The men at the bar looked up, and Jimmy saw Wally through the door.
“Jesus Christ!”
Wally was already running. He heard the door slam and knew Jimmy was coming after him. Though he strained every muscle in his heavy, jouncing body, he could hear Jimmy’s footsteps coming nearer. Wally sped down the block, across the tracks of the railroad siding, and into the coal yard. He ran past some men loading a coal truck and crossed the cobblestoned yard, with his brother coming after him. Wally’s lungs hurt. He wanted to run inside the coal loft and hide, but he knew he would be cornered there. He looked around wildly, then made for the hill of coal near the fence. He scrambled up. Jimmy came up after him, but Wally kicked down the coal and it hit Jimmy on the face and chest. He slipped and cursed, but gripped his club and came up again. At the top of the coal pile, Wally boosted himself up on the fence and dropped heavily to the other side. As he hit the earth his legs shook, but fear would not let him stop. He ran across a back yard and thumped up the inclined wooden cellar door, jumping clumsily over a picket fence. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jimmy hoisting himself over the coal-yard fence. Wally wanted to get into the delicatessen man’s back yard so he could go down to the cellar and come out on the avenue. Mr. Davido would let him hide in the toilet of the barbershop.
Wally ran across the flower bed in the next back yard and lifted himself over the picket fence. His sweaty palms slipped and he pitched forward, his pants cuff caught on one of the pointed boards. His hands were in the soft earth of an iris bed, and he dangled from the picket fence by one leg. He wriggled his leg and pulled frantically. The cuff tore away and he fell into the flower bed. He pushed himself up, but before he could move, Jimmy had hurdled
the fence and tackled him. Wally fell on the ground, the breath knocked out of him. He lay there whimpering.
“You dirty bastard,” Jimmy said. “I’ll break your goddamn back.”
He swung his club down on Wally’s legs. Wally shrieked and tried to pull in his legs, but Jimmy held him down and whacked him across the thighs and buttocks. Wally tried to shield his legs with his arms, but Jimmy beat him harder.
“Oh, please, please, please,” cried Wally, wriggling under his brother’s blows, “please, Jimmy, my legs, my legs. Don’t hit my legs!”
“You scum.”
“My legs,” screamed Wally, “my legs, I’ll get gangrene, my legs, my legs!”
The pain burned through his body. He felt nauseated. “My legs,” he moaned.
Jimmy let up. He wiped his wet face and said, “I told you to stay the hell outta this neighborhood. If I see you here again, I’ll murder you.”
Looking up, Wally saw two frightened women gazing at them out of their windows. Jimmy brushed off his uniform and went over to the cellar door. He pulled it open and walked downstairs.
Wally lay still among the trampled flowers.
“Why didn’t the policeman arrest him?” asked Mrs. Werner, the delicatessen man’s wife.
“It’s the policeman’s brother,” explained Mrs. Margolies.
He lay on his stomach, arms outstretched, and his cheek pressed against the ground. His nose was bleeding, but he was too exhausted to move. The sweat ran down his arms and the back of his coat was stained dark with it. For a long while he had no thoughts; then the nausea subsided a little, and bits of things floated through his mind. He recalled how he used to play in the coal yard with Jimmy when they were kids. He thought of the Fourth Street boys coasting down the snow-covered sides of the railroad cut in the winter. Then he thought of standing in front of the candy store on quiet summer evenings, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, smoking and fooling around with Vincent and the guys, talking about
women, good times, and ball players, while they all waited for the late papers to come in. He thought about Vincent, and he remembered the day Vincent went away. It was during the Depression, and the unemployed guys stood on the corner, smoking and chewing gum and making remarks to the girls who passed by. Like Wally, Vincent had quit going to the agencies, and he stayed on the corner with the rest of them, smoking and spitting around. A girl passed by and Vincent said something to her which made the guys laugh. Mr. Davido was looking out the window of the barbershop across the street. He slammed down the scissors and left the customer sitting in the chair. His face was red as he crossed the street. He grabbed Vincent by the arm and struck him hard across the face, shouting, “You bum, why don’t you go look for a job?” Vincent’s face turned gray. He didn’t say anything, but walked away, and they never saw him again. That’s how it was.
Mrs. Margolies said, “He’s laying there for a long time. Do you think he’s dead?”
“No,” said Mrs. Werner, “I just saw him move.”
Wally pushed himself up and stumbled down the stone steps of the cellar. Groping his way along the wall, he came up the stairs in front of the delicatessen. He searched through his pockets for the twenty cents his mother had given him but couldn’t find them. The nausea came back and he wanted a place to sit down and rest. He crossed the street, walking unsteadily toward the barbershop.
Mr. Davido was standing near the window, sharpening a straight razor on a piece of sandstone. The sight of Wally that morning had brought up old memories, and he was thinking about Vincent. As he rubbed the razor round and round on the lathered sandstone, he glanced up and saw Wally staggering across the street. His pants were torn and covered with dirt, and his face was bloody. Wally opened the screen door, but Mr. Davido said sharply, “Stay outta here now, you’re drunk.”
“Honest I ain’t,” said Wally. “I didn’t have a drop.”
“Why you look like that?”
“Jimmy caught me and almost killed me. My legs must be black and blue.” Wally lowered himself into a chair.
“I’m sorry, Wally.” Mr. Davido got him some water, and Wally swallowed a little.
“Come on, Wally, on the chair,” the barber said heartily. “I shave you an you rest an feel cooler.”
He helped Wally onto the barber’s chair; then he lowered the back and raised the front so that Wally lay stretched out as if he were on a bed. The barber swung a towel around his neck and began to rub a blob of hot lather into his beard. It was a tough beard and hadn’t been shaved for a week. Mr. Davido rubbed the lather in deeply with his gentle, stubby fingers.
As he was rubbing Wally’s beard, the barber looked at him in the mirror and thought how he had changed. The barber’s eyes grew sad as he recalled how things used to be, and he turned away to look out the window. He thought about his son Vincent. How wonderful it would be if Vincent came home someday, he would put his arms around his boy and kiss him on the cheek …
Wally was also thinking how it used to be. He remembered how it was when he looked in the mirror before going out on Saturday night. He had a yellow mustache and wore a green hat. He remembered his expensive suits and the white carnation in his buttonhole and a good cigar to smoke.
He opened his eyes.
“You know,” he said, “the place is different now.”
“Yes,” said the barber, looking out the window.
Wally closed his eyes.
Mr. Davido looked down at him. Wally was breathing quietly. His lips were pulled together tightly, and the tears were rolling down his cheeks. The barber slowly raised the lather until it mixed with the tears.
 
1943
EARLY ONE MORNING, during a wearying hot spell in the city, a police car that happened to be cruising along Canal Street drew over to the curb and one of the two policemen in the car leaned out of the window and fingered a come-here to an old man wearing a black derby hat, who carried a large carton on his back, held by clothesline rope to his shoulder, and dragged a smaller carton with his other hand.
“Hey, Mac.”
But the peddler, either not hearing or paying no attention, went on. At that, the policeman, the younger of the two, pushed open the door and sprang out. He strode over to the peddler and, shoving the large carton on his back, swung him around as if he were straw. The peddler stared at him in frightened astonishment. He was a gaunt, shriveled man with very large eyes which at the moment gave the effect of turning lights, so that the policeman was a little surprised, though not for long.
“Are you deaf?” he said.
The peddler’s lips moved in a way that suggested he might be, but at last he cried out, “Why do you push me?” and again surprised the policeman with the amount of wail that rang in his voice.
“Why didn’t you stop when I called you?”
“So who knows you called me? Did you say my name?”
“What is your name?”
The peddler clamped his sparse yellow teeth rigidly together.
“And where’s your license?”
“What license?—who license?”
“None of your wisecracks—your license to peddle. We saw you peddle.”
The peddler did not deny it.
“What’s in the big box?”
“Hundred watt.”
“Hundred what?”
“Lights.”
“What’s in the other?”
“Sixty watt.”
“Don’t you know it’s against the law to peddle without a license?”
Without answering, the peddler looked around, but there was no one in sight except the other policeman in the car and his eyes were shut as if he was catching a little lost sleep.
The policeman on the sidewalk opened his black summons book. “Spill it, Pop, where do you live?”
The peddler stared down at the cracked sidewalk.
“Hurry up, Lou,” called the policeman from the car. He was an older man, though not so old as the peddler.
“Just a second, Walter, this old guy here is balky.”
With his pencil he prodded the peddler, who was still staring at the sidewalk but who then spoke, saying he had no money to buy a license.
“But you have the money to buy bulbs. Don’t you know you’re cheating the city when you don’t pay the legitimate fees?”
“ …”
“Talk, will you?”
“Come on, Lou.”
“Come on yourself, this nanny goat won’t talk.”
The other policeman slowly got out of the car, a heavy man with gray hair and a red face shiny with perspiration.
“You better give him the information he wants, mister.”
The peddler, holding himself stiff, stared between them. By this time some people had gathered and were looking on, but Lou scattered them with a wave of his arm.
“All right, Walter, give me a hand. This bird goes to the station house.”
Walter looked at him with some doubt, but Lou said, “Resisting an officer in the performance of his duty.”
He took the peddler’s arm and urged him forward. The carton of bulbs slipped off his shoulder, pulling him to his knees.
“Veh is mir,”
Walter helped him up and they lifted him into the car. The young cop hauled the large carton to the rear of the car, opened the trunk, and shoved it in sideways. As they drove off, a man in front of one of the stores held up a box and shouted, “Hey, you forgot this one,” but neither of them turned to look back, and the peddler didn’t seem to be listening.
 
 
On their way to the station house they passed the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Just a second, Lou,” said Walter. “Could you drive across the bridge now and stop at my house? My feet are perspiring and I’d like to change my shirt.”
“After we get this character booked.”
But Walter querulously insisted it would take too long, and though Lou didn’t want to drive him home he finally gave in. Neither of them spoke on the way to Walter’s house, which was not far from the bridge, on a nice quiet street of three-story brownstone houses with young trees in front of them, newly planted not far from the curb.
When Walter got out, he said to the peddler, “If you were in Germany they would have killed you. All we were trying to do was give you a summons that would maybe cost you a buck fine.” Then he went up the stone steps.
After a while Lou became impatient waiting for him and honked the horn. A window shade on the second floor slid up and Walter in his underwear called down, “Just five minutes, Lou—I’m just drying my feet.”
He came down all spry and they drove back several blocks and onto the bridge. Midway across, they had to slow down in a long traffic line, and to their astonishment the peddler pushed open the door and reeled out upon the bridge, miraculously ducking out of
the way of the trailers and trucks coming from the other direction. He scooted across the pedestrians’ walk and clambered with ferocious strength up on the railing of the bridge.
But Lou, who was very quick, immediately pursued him and managed to get his hand on the peddler’s coattails as he stood poised on the railing for the jump.
With a yank Lou pulled him to the ground. The back of his head struck against the sidewalk and his derby hat bounced up, twirled, and landed at his feet. However, he did not lose consciousness. He lay on the ground moaning and tearing with clawlike fingers at his chest and arms.
Both the policemen stood there looking down at him, not sure what to do since there was absolutely no bleeding. As they were talking it over, a fat woman with moist eyes who, despite the heat, was wearing a white shawl over her head and carrying, with the handle over her pudgy arm, a large basket of salted five-cent pretzels passed by and stopped out of curiosity to see what had happened.
Seeing the man on the ground she called out, “Bloostein!” but he did not look at her and continued tearing at his arms.
“Do you know him?” Lou asked her.
“It’s Bloostein. I know him from the neighborhood.”
“Where does he live?”
She thought for a minute but didn’t know. “My father said he used to own a store on Second Avenue but he lost it. Then his missus died and also his daughter was killed in a fire. Now he’s got the seven years’ itch and they can’t cure it in the clinic. They say he peddles with light bulbs.”
“Don’t you know his address?”
“Not me. What did he do?”
“It doesn’t matter what he tried to do,” said Walter.
“Goodbye, Bloostein, I have to go to the schoolyard,” the fat lady apologized. She picked up the basket and went with her pretzels down the bridge.
By now Bloostein had stopped his frantic scratching and lay quietly on the sidewalk. The sun shone straight into his eyes but he did nothing to shield them.
Lou, who was quite pale, looked at Walter and Walter said, “Let him go.”
They got him up on his feet, dusted his coat, and placed his dented hat on his head. Lou said he would get the bulbs out of the car, but Walter said, “Not here, down at the foot of the bridge.”
They helped Bloostein back to the car and in a few minutes let him go with his carton of bulbs at the foot of the bridge, not far from the place where they had first chanced to see him.
 
 
But that night, after their tour of duty, when Lou drove him home, Walter got out of the car and saw, after a moment of disbelief, that Bloostein himself was waiting for him in front of his house.
“Hey, Lou,” he called, but Lou had already driven off so he had to face the peddler alone. Bloostein looked, with his carton of bulbs, much as he had that morning, except for the smudge where the dent on his derby hat had been, and his eyes were fleshy with fatigue.
“What do you want here?” Walter said to him.
The peddler parted his lips, then pointed to his carton. “My little box lights.”
“What about it?”
“What did you do with them?”
Walter thought a few seconds and remembered the other box of bulbs.
“You sure you haven’t gone back and hid them somewhere?” he asked sternly.
Bloostein wouldn’t look at him.
The policeman felt very hot. “All right, we’ll try and locate them, but first I have to have my supper. I’m hungry.”
He went up the steps and turned to say something more, but a woman came out of the house and he raised his hat to her and went in.
After supper he would have liked very much to relax in front of the radio, but instead he changed out of his uniform, said he was going to the corner, and walked, conscious of his heavy disappointment, down the stairs.
Bloostein was planted where he had left him.
“My car’s in the garage.” Walter went slowly up the street, Bloostein following with his carton of bulbs on his back.
At the garage Walter motioned him into the car. Bloostein lifted the carton into the back seat and got in with it. Walter drove out and over the bridge to Canal Street, to the place where they had taken the peddler into the car.
He parked and went into three of the stores there, flashing his badge and asking if anyone knew who had got the bulbs they had forgotten. No one knew for sure, but the clerk in the third store thought it might be someone next door whose name and address he gave to Walter.
Before returning to the car Walter went into a tavern and had a few beers. Over the fourth he had a hunch and called the police property clerk, who said he had taken in no electric bulbs that day. Walter walked out and asked Bloostein how many bulbs he had had in the carton.
“Five dozen.”
“At how much—wholesale?”
“Eight cents.”
“That’s four-eighty,” he figured. Taking a five-dollar bill from his wallet, he handed it to Bloostein, who wouldn’t accept it.
“What do you want, the purple heart?”
“My little box lights.”
Walter then kidded, “Now you’re gonna take a little ride.”
They then rode to the address he had been given but no one knew where the one who had the bulbs was. Finally a bald-headed, stocky man in an undershirt came down from the top floor and said he was the man’s uncle and what did Walter want.
Walter convinced him it wasn’t serious. “It’s just that he happens to know where these bulbs are that we left behind by mistake after an arrest.”
The uncle said if it wasn’t really serious he would give him the address of the social club where he could find his nephew. The address was a lot farther uptown and on the East Side.
“This is foolish,” Walter said to himself as he came out of the house. He thought maybe he could take his time and Bloostein
might go away, so he stopped at another beer parlor and had several more as he watched a ten-round fight on television.
He came out sweaty from the beers.
But Bloostein was there.
Walter scratched under his arm. “What’s good for an itch?” he said. When he got into the car he thought he was a little bit drunk but it didn’t bother him and he drove to the social club on the East Side where a dance was going on. He asked the ticket taker in a tuxedo if this nephew was around.
The ticket taker, whose right eye was very crossed, assured him that nobody by the name mentioned was there.
“It’s really not very important,” Walter said. “Just about a small carton of bulbs he happens to be holding for this old geezer outside.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about it.”
“It’s nothing to worry about.”
Walter stood by the door a few minutes and watched the dancers, but there was no one whose face he could recognize.
“He’s really not there.”
“I don’t doubt your word.”
Afterward he said it was a nice dance but he had to leave.
“Stay awhile,” said the ticket taker.
“I have to go,” said Walter. “I have a date with a backseat driver.” The ticket taker winked with his good eye, which had a comical effect, but Walter didn’t smile and soon he left.
“Still here, kid?” he asked Bloostein.
 
 
He started the car and drove back to Sixth Avenue, where he stopped at a liquor store and bought himself a fifth of whiskey. In the car he tore the wrapper off the bottle and took a long pull.
BOOK: The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction
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