The Winter of Our Discontent (38 page)

“Funny time to ask. I only know what I heard. I was too little even to remember. Those old ships got oil-soaked. I suppose some sailor dropped a match. Your grandfather was master. I think he was ashore. Just came in.”

“Bad voyage.”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Any trouble collecting the insurance?”

“Well, they always send investigators. No, as I remember, it took some time but we collected, Hawleys and Bakers.”

“My grandfather thought she was set afire.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“To get the money. The whaling industry was gone.”

“I never heard that he said that.”

“You never heard it?”

“Ethan—what are you getting at? Why are you bringing up something that happened so long ago?”

“It’s a horrible thing to burn a ship. It’s a murder. I’m going to bring up her keel someday.”

“Her keel?”

“I know just where she lies. Half a cable offshore.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I’d like to see if the oak is sound. It was Shelter Island virgin oak. She’s not all dead if her keel’s alive. You’d better go, if you’re going to bless the opening of the safe. And I’ve got to open up.”

Then his balance wheel started and he ticked off to the bank.

I think now I had expected Biggers too. Poor fellow must spend most of his time watching doorways. And he must have been waiting somewhere in peeking range for Mr. Baker to leave.

“I hope you’re not going to jump down my throat.”

“Why should I?”

“I can understand why you were huffy. I guess I wasn’t very—diplomatic.”

“Maybe that was it.”

“Have you chewed on my proposition?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“I think six per cent would be better.”

“I don’t know whether B.B. will go for it.”

“It’s up to them.”

“They might go five and a half.”

“And you might go the other half.”

“Jesus, man. I thought you were being a country boy. You cut deep.”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Well, what kind of volume would it be?”

“There’s a partial list over by the cash register.”

He studied the strip of wrapping paper. “Looks like I’m hooked. And, brother, I’m bleeding. Can I get the full order today?”

“Tomorrow would be better and bigger.”

“You mean you’ll switch the whole account?”

“If you play nice.”

“Brother, you must have your boss by the throat. Can you get away with it?”

“Just have to see.”

“Well, maybe I could get a crack at the drummer’s friend. Brother, you must be cold as a herring. I tell you that dame’s a dish.”

“Friend of my wife.”

“Oh! Yeah! I see how it could be. Too close to home is bad news. You’re smart. If I didn’t know it before, I know it now. Six per cent. Jesus! Tomorrow in the morning.”

“Maybe late this afternoon if I get time.”

“Make it tomorrow morning.”

On Saturday business came in bursts. This Tuesday the whole tempo had changed. People took time. They wanted to talk about the scandal, saying it was bad, awful, sad, disgraceful, but enjoying it too. We haven’t had a scandal for a long time. Nobody mentioned the Democratic National Convention coming up in Los Angeles—not even once. Of course New Baytown is a Republican town, but I think mostly they were interested in what was close to home. We knew the men whose graves we danced on.

Chief Stonewall Jackson came in during the noon hour and he looked tired and sad.

I put the can of oil on the counter and fished out the old pistol with a piece of wire.

“Here’s the evidence, Chief. Take it away, will you? It makes me nervous.”

“Well, wipe it off, will you? Look at that! That’s what they used to call a two-dollar pistol—top-latch Iver Johnson. You got anybody that can mind the store?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Where’s Marullo?”

“He’s out of town.”

“Guess maybe you might have to close up for a while.”

“What is this, Chief?”

“Well, Charley Pryor’s boy ran away from home this morning. Got a cold drink there somewhere?”

“Sure. Orange, cream, lemon, Coke?”

“Give me a Seven-Up. Charley’s a funny kind of guy. His boy Tom is eight. He figures the world’s against him and he’s going to run away to be a pirate. Anybody else would of give him a crack acrost the behind, but not Charley. Aren’t you going to open this?”

“Sorry. There you are. What’s Charley got to do with me? I like him, of course.”

“Well, Charley don’t do things like other people. He figures the best way to cure Tom is to help him. So after breakfast they get a bedroll together and a big lunch. Tom wants to take a Jap sword for self-protection, but it drags so he settles for a bayonet. Charley loads him in the car and drives him out of town to give him a good start. He let him out over near Taylor Meadow—you know, the old Taylor place. That’s about nine o’clock this morning. Charley watched the kid a while. First thing he did was sit down and eat six sandwiches and two hard-boiled eggs. And then he went on acrost the meadow with his brave little bindle and his bayonet and Charley drove home.”

Here it came. I knew it, I knew it. It was almost a relief to get it over.

“ ’Bout eleven he come slobbering out on the road and hooked a ride home.”

“I think I can guess, Stoney—is it Danny?”

“’Fraid so. Down in the cellar hole of the old house. Case of whisky, only two empties, and a bottle of sleeping pills. Sorry I got to ask you this, Eth. Been there a long time and something got at him, at his face. Cats, maybe. You remember any scars or marks on him?”

“I don’t want to look at him, Chief.”

“Well, who does? How about scars?”

“I remember a barb-wire cut above the knee on his left leg, and—and”—I rolled up my sleeve—“a heart just like this tattooed. We did it together when we were kids. Cut in with a razor blade and rubbed ink in. It’s still pretty clear, see?”

“Well—that may do it. Anything else?”

“Yes—big scar under his left arm, piece of the rib cut out. He had pleural pneumonia before the new drugs and they put in a drain.”

“Well, of course if there was a rib cut, that’ll do it. I won’t even have to go back myself. Let the coroner get off his ass. You’ll have to swear to those marks if it’s him.”

“Okay. But don’t make me look at him, Stoney. He was—you know—he was my friend.”

“Sure, Eth. Say is there anything in what I hear about you running for Town Manager?”

“It’s news to me. Chief—could you stay here two minutes—”

“I got to go.”

“Just two minutes while I run across the street and get a drink?”

“Oh! Sure! I get it. Sure—go ahead. I got to get along with the new Town Manager.”

I got the drink and a pint too to bring back with me. When Stoney had gone, I printed BACK AT TWO on a card, closed the doors, and drew the shades.

I sat on the leather hatbox behind the counter in my store, sat in the dim green darkness of my store.

CHAPTER TWENTY

At ten minutes to three I went out the back door and around the corner to the front of the bank. Morph in his bronze cage drew in the sheaf of money and checks, the brown envelope, and the deposit slips. He spread the little bank books with a Y of fingers and wrote small angled numbers with a steel pen that whispered on the paper. As he pushed the books out to me he looked up with veiled and cautious eyes.

“I’m not going to talk about it, Ethan. I know he was your friend.”

“Thanks.”

“If you slip out quick you might avoid the Brain.”

But I didn’t. For all I know Morph may have buzzed him. The frosted-glass door of the office swung open and Mr. Baker, neat and spare and gray, said quietly, “Can you spare a moment, Ethan?”

No use to put it off. I walked into his frosty den and he closed the door so softly that I did not hear the latch click. His desk was topped with plate glass, under which were lists of typed numbers. Two customers’ chairs in echelon stood by his tall chair like twin suckling calves. They were comfortable but lower than the desk chair. When I sat down I had to look up at Mr. Baker and that put me in the position of supplication.

“Sad thing.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think you ought to take all the blame. Probably would have happened anyway.”

“Probably.”

“I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing.”

“I thought he had a chance.”

“Of course you did.”

My hatred was rising in my throat like a yellow taste, more sickening than furious.

“Apart from the human tragedy and waste, it raises a difficulty. Do you know whether he had relatives?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Anybody with money has relatives.”

“He had no money.”

“He had Taylor Meadow, free and clear.”

“Did he? Well, a meadow and a cellar hole—”

“Ethan, I told you we planned an airfield to service the whole district. The meadow is level. If we can’t use it, it will cost millions to bulldoze runways in the hills. And now, even if he has no heirs, it will have to go through the courts. Take months.”

“I see.”

His ire fissured. “I wonder if you do see! With your good intentions you’ve thrown the thing sky high. Sometimes I think a do-gooder is the most dangerous thing in the world.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I ought to get back to the store.”

“It’s your store.”

“It is, isn’t it? I can’t get used to it. I forget.”

“Yes, you forget. The money you gave him was Mary’s money. She’ll never see it now. You threw it away.”

“Danny was fond of my Mary. He knew it was her money.”

“Fat lot of good that will do her.”

“I thought he was making a joke. He gave me these.” I pulled the two pieces of ruled paper from my inside pocket, where I had put them, knowing I would have to draw them out like this.

Mr. Baker straightened them on his glass-topped desk. As he read them a muscle beside his right ear twitched so that his ear bobbed. His eyes went back over them, this time looking for a hole.

When the son of a bitch looked at me there was fear in him. He saw someone he hadn’t known existed. It took him a moment to adjust to the stranger, but he was good. He adjusted.

“What is your asking price?”

“Fifty-one per cent.”

“Of what?”

“Of the corporation or partnership or whatever.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You want an airfield. I have the only one available.”

He wiped his glasses carefully on a piece of pocket Kleenex, then put them on. But he didn’t look at me. He looked a circle all around me and left me out. Finally he asked, “Did you know what you were doing, Ethan?”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel good about it?”

“I guess I feel as the man felt who took him a bottle of whisky and tried to get him to sign a paper.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“He was a liar.”

“He told me he was. He warned me he was. Maybe there’s some trick in these papers.” I swept them gently from in front of him and folded the two soiled pencil-written sheets.

“There’s a trick all right, Ethan. Those documents are without a flaw, dated, witnessed, clear. Maybe he hated you. Maybe his trick was the disintegration of a man.”

“Mr. Baker, no one in my family ever burned a ship.”

“We’ll talk, Ethan, we’ll do business. We’ll make money. A little town will spring up on the hills around the meadow. I guess you’ll have to be Town Manager now.”

“I can’t, sir. That would constitute a conflict of interest. Some pretty sad men are finding that out right now.”

He sighed—a cautious sigh as though he feared to awaken something in his throat.

I stood up and rested my hand on the curved and padded leather back of the supplicant’s chair. “You’ll feel better, sir, when you have got used to the fact that I am not a pleasant fool.”

“Why couldn’t you have taken me into your confidence?”

“An accomplice is dangerous.”

“Then you do feel you have committed a crime.”

“No. A crime is something someone else commits. I’ve got to open the store, even if it is my own store.”

My hand was on the doorknob when he asked quietly, “Who turned Marullo in?”

“I think you did, sir.” He leaped to his feet, but I closed the door after me and went back to my store.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

No one in the world can rise to a party or a plateau of celebration like my Mary. It isn’t what she contributes but what she receives that makes her glow like a jewel. Her eyes shine, her smiling mouth underlines, her quick laughter builds strength into a sickly joke. With Mary in the doorway of a party everyone feels more attractive and clever than he was, and so he actually becomes. Beyond this Mary does not and need not contribute.

The whole Hawley house glowed with celebration when I came home. Bright-colored plastic flags were strung in canopies from center light to picture molding, and lines of colored plastic bannerets hung from the banisters.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Mary cried. “Ellen got them from the Esso Service Station. George Sandow loaned them.”

“What’s it about?”

“About everything. It’s a glory thing.”

I don’t know whether she had heard of Danny Taylor or had heard and retired him. Certainly I didn’t invite him to the feast, but he paced about outside. I knew I would have to go out to meet him later but I did not ask him in.

“You’d think it was Ellen had won honorable mention,” Mary said. “She’s even prouder than if
she
was the celebrity. Look at the cake she baked.” It was a tall white cake with HERO written on its top in red, green, yellow, and blue letters. “We’re having roast chicken
and
dressing
and
giblet gravy
and
mashed potatoes, even if it is summer.”