Sweet Thursday Page 10

  "Next dough we get we'll go up to Woolworth's and get some glasses," said Mack.

  "Hell," said Whitey No. 2, "they'll just get broke. But I see what you mean."

  Somehow they felt they were living in a moment when history pauses and takes stock and changes course. They knew they would look back on this night as a beginning. At such times men feel the nudge toward oratory.

  Mack steadied himself against the stove and begged their attention by rapping on the stovepipe. "Gentlemen," he said, "let us here highly resolve to get Doc's ass out of the sling of despond."

  Eddie said, "Remember we done something like that once and damn near ruined him."

  Mack's golden mood held. "We were younger then," he said. "This time we're going to think her out and she's going to be foolproof."

  Hazel was so far won back into comradeship that he had relaxed into happy incoherence. "To Lefty Grove!" he said.

  Mack opened the oven door and sat on it. "I've give it a lot of thought," he said. "Lately I done hardly nothing else."

  "You never do hardly nothing else," said Whitey No. 2.

  Mack ignored him. "I got a theory--"

  "Aw, shut up!" said Eddie.

  "Who you talking to?" said Whitey No. 2.

  "I don't know," said Eddie innocently, "but if the shoe fits--"

  "I got a theory, if you ain't too pie-eyed to listen," said Mack. When he had them quiet he went on, "When you hear my theory you might get kind of violent. I want you to sleep on it before you talk. I think Doc needs a wife."

  "What!"

  "Well, hell, he don't have to marry her," said Mack. "You know what I mean..." If the absinthe had not given them tolerance he might have had a series of fights right then. "Kindly do not interrupt," he said. "I will now review the dame situation in the U.S. You take a look at divorces and the reasons for them and you can only think one thing: the only guy that shouldn't have nothing to do with picking out a wife is the guy that's going to marry her. That's a fact. It's a fact that if he's left alone a guy practically always marries the wrong kind of dame."

  "Play it safe and don't marry nobody," said Whitey No. 2.

  "There's some guys can't operate that way," said Mack.

  "Are you suggesting we turn Doc, our true friend, in?"

  "I asked you not to shoot off your face until you slept on it," said Mack with dignity.

  Hazel tugged at his sleeve. "Ain't you joking, Mack?"

  "No," said Mack, "I ain't joking."

  "If anything bad come to Doc, you know what I'd do to you?" Hazel asked.

  "Yes," said Mack. "I think I do--and I think I'd have it coming."

  Hazel's bed was a four-poster on which the bedposts were two-by-fours topped by a quilt. He had built it from memory of a moving picture. When the Palace Flop house was quiet at last, Hazel lay in his bed and looked up at the log-cabin pattern of his canopy. His mind was whirling. He wished there were some simpler way to help Doc than by the major operation Mack had suggested. Once he got up and looked out the door and saw that the green shaded light was on in the laboratory.

  "The poor bastard," he whispered.

  He didn't sleep well and his dreams were shaped liked mushrooms.

  12

  Flower in a Crannied Wall

  Joe Elegant was a pale young man with bangs. He smoked foreign cigarettes in a long ebony holder and he cooked for the Bear Flag. The girls said he made the best popovers in the world, and he could give a massage that would shake the kinks out of a Saturday night when the fleet was in. He sneered most of the time, and except at mealtime kept to himself in his little lean-to behind the Bear Flag, from which the rattle of his typewriter could be heard late at night.

  One morning soon after she had come Suzy was having her coffee while Joe Elegant cleared the table of crumbs from earlier breakfasts.

  "You make good coffee," Suzy said.

  "Thank you."

  "You don't look like a guy who would work here."

  "It's temporary, I assure you."

  "I got a wonderful recipe for gumbo. Want me to give it to you?"

  "Fauna designs the meals."

  "You ain't very friendly."

  "Why should I be?"

  He was passing behind her. Suzy reached up, hooked her fingers in his shirt collar, twisted and yanked his face down level with her own. "Listen you," she began, and she scowled into his popping eyes. "Oh, the hell with it," said Suzy and released him.

  Joe Elegant stepped back and massaged his throat and smoothed his shirt.

  "Sorry," said Suzy.

  "It's quite all right."

  "What makes you so mean?"

  "You said it. I don't belong here."

  "Where do you belong?"

  "I don't think you'd understand."

  "You too good for the place?"

  "Let's say I'm different."

  "No kidding!" said Suzy.

  "I'm writing a novel."

  "You are? What about? I love novels."

  "You wouldn't like this one."

  "Why not?"

  "You wouldn't understand it."

  "Then what good is it?"

  "It isn't intended for the mass."

  "I'm the mass, huh? I guess you got something there. I bet you could write a pretty nice hunk of stuff."

  Joe Elegant swallowed and his face twitched convulsively. "Sometime I'll read you some of it."

  "Say, that would be nice. But you said I couldn't understand it."

  "I'll explain it as I go along."

  "I'd like that. There's one whole hell of a lot I don't understand."

  "Do you like brownies?" he asked.

  "I love them."

  "I'll make you some. Maybe you'll come to my apartment some afternoon. I could give you a cup of tea."

  "Say, you're a nice fella! Got any more coffee?"

  "I'll make a fresh pot."

  13

  Parallels Must Be Related

  Doc spent a restless night. His head was full of yellow pads and seers and octopi. Ordinarily he would have worked or read since he couldn't sleep, but now if he turned on a light he would see the yellow pad and the marshaled pencils.

  As the dawn crept over the bay he decided to go for a very long walk, perhaps to follow the shoreline all the way around to Carmel. He arose, and since it was still dusky in the laboratory he turned on the lights to make his coffee.

  Wide Ida, from the entrance of La Ida, saw his lights come on. She put an unlabeled pint bottle of brown liquor in a paper bag and crossed the street to Western Biological.

  "Doc," she said, "would you work this stuff over?"

  "What is it?"

  "They say it's whisky. I just want to know if it'll kill anybody. I got a pretty good buy. They make it up in Pine Canyon."

  "That's against the law," said Doc.

  "Killing people is against the law too," said Wide Ida.

  Doc was torn between bootlegging and murder. He thought sadly that he was always involved in something like this--not good or bad but bad and less bad. He made a fairly quick analysis. "It's not poison," he said, "but it won't build good healthy stomachs. There's some fusel oil in it. But I guess it's no worse than Old Tennis Shoes."

  "Thanks, Doc. What do I owe you?"

  "Oh, maybe a quart--but not this stuff."

  "I'll send over some Old Taylor."

  "You don't have to go off the deep end," said Doc.

  "Doc, I hear you got trouble."

  "Me? What kind of trouble?"

  "I just heard," said Wide Ida.

  Doc said angrily, "I've got no trouble. What's all the talk! God Almighty, everybody treats me as though I had a disease. What kind of trouble?"

  "If there's anything I can do," she said and went out quickly, leaving the pint behind.

  Doc took a sip of it, made a face, and took a swig. His heart was pounding angrily. He could not admit that the pity of his friends only confirmed his frustration. He knew that pity and contempt are broth
ers. He set his chin. "I will get the spring tides at La Jolla," he said to himself. "I will get a new microscope." And the very lowest voice whispered, "Somewhere there's warmth."

  He sat down at his desk and wrote viciously: "Parallels must be related." He took another drink from the pint and opened yesterday's mail. There was an order for six sets of slides--starfish, embryonic series, for the Oakland Polytechnic High School. He was almost glad to do the old and practiced work. He got his collecting buckets together, threw rubber boots in his old car, and drove out to the Great Tide Pool.

  14

  Lousy Wednesday

  Some days are born ugly. From the very first light they are no damn good what ever the weather, and everybody knows it. No one knows what causes this, but on such a day people resist getting out of bed and set their heels against the day. When they are finally forced out by hunger or job they find that the day is just as lousy as they knew it would be.

  On such a day it is impossible to make a good cup of coffee, shoestrings break, cups leap from the shelf by themselves and shatter on the floor, children ordinarily honest tell lies, and children ordinarily good unscrew the tap handles of the gas range and lose the screws and have to be spanked. This is the day the cat chooses to have kittens and house broken dogs wet on the parlor rug.

  Oh, it's awful on such a day! The postman brings overdue bills. If it's a sunny day it is too damn sunny, and if it is dark who can stand it?

  Mack knew it was going to be that kind of a day. He couldn't find his pants. He fell over a box that had crept out in his path. He cursed each brother in the Palace Flop house, and on his way across the vacant lot he went out of his way to kick a dandelion flower. He was sitting gloomily on a pipe when Eddie came by, and so naturally he walked with Eddie to Wide Ida's to try to do something about it. He hung around waiting for Wide Ida to go so that Eddie could slip him a drink. But Wide Ida was bending over the bar, cursing a letter.

  "Taxes," she said. "Every time you get going there's more taxes. You're lucky, Mack. You don't own nothing and you don't make nothing. Until they start taxing skin, you're safe."

  "What's the beef?" he asked.

  "City and county taxes," said Wide Ida.

  "On what?"

  "On this place. It ain't much, but I was fixed to put a down payment on a new Pontiac."

  It was a statement that ordinarily would have aroused a detached compassion in Mack, together with mild self-congratulation that he was not burdened with taxable assets. But now a nagging worry fell on him, and he went back to the Palace Flop house to worry in greater comfort. He went over the history of the Palace in his mind.

  It had belonged to Lee Chong. Long before the war Mack and the boys had rented it from him for five dollars a month, and, naturally enough, they had never paid any rent. Lee Chong would have been shocked if they had. Then Lee Chong sold out to Joseph and Mary. Did the Palace go with the rest? Mack didn't know, but if it did, the Patron didn't know it. He was no Lee Chong. He would have demanded the rent. But if the Patron did own the place, he would get a tax bill. If he got a tax bill, he was sure to be on the necks of Mack and the boys. The Patron was not a man to pay out money without getting more money back, that was certain.

  It seemed very unjust. Their home, their security, even their social standing, were cast in the balance. Mack lay on his bed and considered what could be done. Suppose the Patron demanded back rent--clear back for years. You couldn't trust a man like that. What a lousy day it was! Mack didn't know what to do, so he called a meeting of the boys, even sent Hazel to bring Eddie back from Wide Ida's bar.

  It was a grim and shaken assembly. Mack explained all the angles until even Hazel seemed to understand the danger. The boys studied their fingers, looked at the ceiling, blew on their knuckles. Eddie got up and walked around his chair to change his thinking luck.

  At last Whitey No. 2 said, "We could steal his mail so he won't get no tax bill."

  "It ain't practical," said Mack. "Even if it wasn't a crime."

  Hazel offered, "We could kill him."

  "You ain't heard that's against the law too?" Mack asked.

  "I mean, make it like an accident," said Hazel. "He could fall off Point Lobos."

  "Then somebody else inherits the joint and we don't even know who."

  The injustice in the theory of private ownership of real estate was descending on them.

  "Maybe we could get Doc to talk to him. He likes Doc." This was Whitey No. 1's offering.

  "That would only draw it to his attention," said Mack. "Hell, he might even raise the rent."

  "He might even try to collect it," said Eddie.

  Hazel was going into a slow but luminous burn. He gazed about the whitewashed walls of the Palace Flop house, at the Coca-Cola calendar girls, at the great and ancient woodstove, at the grandfather clock, at the framed portrait of Romie Jacks. There were honest, unabashed tears in Hazel's eyes. "The son-of-a-bitch," he said. "After all our work he takes away our home--the only place where I ever been happy. How can a guy be so goddam mean?"

  "He ain't done it yet," said Mack. "He don't even know about it maybe."

  "I wish Doc owned the place," said Eddie. "We wouldn't have no trouble with Doc."

  Mack looked at him quickly. "What put that in your head?" he demanded.

  "Hell, Doc don't open his mail for weeks on end. Doc would forget to collect the rent and he'd forget to open a tax bill."

  Excitement shone in Mack's eyes. "Eddie," he said, "maybe you put your finger in it."

  "In what?"

  "I got to think it over," said Mack, "but just maybe our darling Eddie here is a genius."

  Eddie blushed with plea sure. "What'd I do, Mack?"

  "I can't tell you now."

  "Hell, Mack, I want to know what I done."

  "It was smart," said Mack. "It was a stroke of just pure wonderful. Now let's give the Patron a going-over. How much guts you think he's got?"

  "Plenty," said Hazel. "And he's plenty wise."

  Mack spoke slowly, thinking aloud. "Let's see. Joseph and Mary, you might say, is a con man in a general kind of way--"

  "He's a nice dresser," said Hazel.

  "A con man can't make enemies unless, of course, he wants to get out of town. He got to keep everybody happy and friendly."

  "Come on, Mack," Whitey No. 1 demanded. "Tell us!"

  "Fellas," said Mack, "if I blowed it now and it wasn't no good, why, you'd kind of lose face in me. I want to think this one out and see if I can't kind of surround him. But if we do her, you'll all have to help."

  "Do what?"

  "Let me alone now, boys," said Mack, and he went back to his bed and put his head on his crossed hands and studied the rafters of the Palace Flop house.

  Hazel came quietly to his bedside. "You won't let nobody take our home away, will you, Mack?"

  "I promise!" said Mack fervently. "Where's Eddie?"

  "Went back to Wide Ida's."

  "Will you do something for me, Hazel?"

  "Sure, Mack."

  "Take that lard can over there and see can Eddie fill it full of beer without too much fuss. It'll help me to think better."

  "You'll get your beer," said Hazel. "You just keep thinking, Mack. Say, Mack, how do you think Eddie always got a stroke of genius even when he don't know it and I don't never have none?"

  "Come again?" said Mack.

  "How come--oh, the hell with it!" said Hazel.

  15

  The Playing Fields of Harrow

  Fauna had made a success of three improbable enterprises. More than likely she could have held her own in steel or chemicals, maybe even in General Electric, for Fauna had the proper ingredients for modern business. She was benevolent and at the same time solvent, public-spirited and privately an individualist, open-handed but with a delicate sense of doubly-entry bookkeeping, sentimental but not soft. She could easily have been chairman of the board of a large corporation. And Fauna took a deep personal interest in her girls
.

  Shortly after she took over the Bear Flag, Fauna set aside and decorated the Ready Room. It was a large and pleasant apartment with three windows overlooking the vacant lot. Fauna put in deep chairs and couches covered with bright, flower-littered glazed chintz. The drapes matched the furniture, and the pictures were designed to soothe without arousing interest--engravings of cows in ponds, deer in streams, dogs in lakes. Wet animals seem to serve some human need.

  For recreation Fauna provided a table-tennis set, a card table, and a Parcheesi board. The Ready Room was a place to relax, to read, to gossip, to study, and some of these things were actually done by the girls of the Bear Flag.

  One wall was dominated by a large framed board on which were pasted enormous gold stars, and this was Fauna's personal pride. The Ready Room was gay and feminine. It had an exotic, Oriental odor from the incense which burned in the blackened lap of a crouching plaster Buddha.

  At about a quarter to three Agnes and Mabel and Becky were relaxing in the Ready Room. It was a time of languor. The vacant lot was washed in clear pale sunshine, which made even the rusty pipes and the old boiler look beautiful. The tall mallow weeds were as sweetly green as a garden. A sleek, gray, lazy Persian cat hunted gophers in the grass and didn't care whether she caught one or not.

  Mabel stood at the window. She said, "I heard some people used to live in that old boiler."

  Agnes was painting her toenails and waving her feet to dry the enamel. "That's before your time," she said. "Mr. and Mrs. Malloy, they had it fixed up nice--awning out front, Oriental rug. Once you got inside, through the fire-door, it was real nice. She was a homemaker."

  "Why'd they leave?" Becky asked.

  "They got to arguing. She kept wanting curtains. He wouldn't let her because there wasn't no windows. When they argued it kind of echoed in there and got on their nerves. He said there wasn't room inside to take a swing at her. He's in the county jail now--trusty. Mrs. Malloy's slinging hash in a grease joint over at Salinas, waiting for him to get out. They was real nice people. He's a high Elk."

  Mabel moved away from the window. "You heard the Rattlesnake Club is coming from Salinas to night? Took the whole house over."

  "Yeah," said Becky. "They're having a memorial meeting for dead members. Fauna give them a rate."