The Winter of Our Discontent Read online

  Danny and I were friends as all boys must have friends. Then his appointment to the Naval Academy came through. I saw him once in uniform and not again for years. New Baytown was and is a tight, close-made town. Everyone knew Danny was expelled and no one discussed it. Taylors died out, well, just as Hawleys died out. I'm the only one left, and, of course, Allen, my son. Danny didn't come back until they were all dead, and he came back a drunk. At first I tried to help but he didn't want me. He didn't want anybody. But, in spite of it, we were close-- very close.

  I went over everything I could remember right up to that very morning when I gave him the dollar to let him find his local oblivion.

  The structure of my change was feeling, pressures from without, Mary's wish, Allen's desires, Ellen's anger, Mr. Baker's help. Only at the last when the move is mounted and prepared does thought place a roof on the building and bring in words to explain and to justify. Suppose my humble and interminable clerkship was not virtue at all but a moral laziness? For any success, boldness is required. Perhaps I was simply timid, fearful of consequences--in a word, lazy. Successful business in our town is not complicated or obscure and it is not widely successful either, because its practicers have set artificial limits for their activities. Their crimes are little crimes and so their success is small success. If the town government and the business complex of New Baytown were ever deeply investigated it would be found that a hundred legal and a thousand moral rules were broken, but they were small violations--petty larceny. They abolished part of the Decalogue and kept the rest. And when one of our successful men had what he needed or wanted, he re-assumed his virtue as easily as changing his shirt, and for all one could see, he took no hurt from his derelictions, always assuming that he didn't get caught. Did any of them think about this? I don't know. And if small crimes could be condoned by self, why not a quick, harsh, brave one? Is murder by slow, steady pressure any less murder than a quick and merciful knife-thrust? I don't feel guilt for the German lives I took. Suppose for a limited time I abolished all the rules, not just some of them. Once the objective was reached, could they not all be re-assumed? There is no doubt that business is a kind of war. Why not, then, make it all-out war in pursuit of peace? Mr. Baker and his friends did not shoot my father, but they advised him and when his structure collapsed they inherited. And isn't that a kind of murder? Have any of the great fortunes we admire been put together without ruthlessness? I can't think of any.

  And if I should put the rules aside for a time, I knew I would wear scars but would they be worse than the scars of failure I was wearing? To be alive at all is to have scars.

  All this wondering was the weather vane on top of the building of unrest and of discontent. It could be done because it had been done. But if I opened up that door, could I ever get it closed again? I did not know. I could not know until I had opened it. . . . Did Mr. Baker know? Had Mr. Baker even thought of it? . . . Old Cap'n thought the Bakers burned the Belle-Adair for the insurance. Could that and my father's misfortune be the reason Mr. Baker wanted to help me? Were these his scars?

  What was happening could be described as a great ship being turned and bunted and shoved about and pulled around by many small tugs. Once turned by tide and tugs, it must set a new course and start its engines turning. On the bridge which is the planning center, the question must be asked: All right, I know now where I want to go. How do I get there, and where are lurking rocks and what will the weather be?

  One fatal reef I knew was talk. So many betray themselves before they are betrayed, with a kind of wistful hunger for glory, even the glory of punishment. Andersen's Well is the only confidant to trust--Andersen's Well.

  I called out to old Cap'n. "Shall I set the course, sir? Is it a good course? Will it get me there?"

  And for the first time he denied me his command. "You'll have to work it out yourself. What's good for one is bad for another, and you won't know till after."

  The old bastard might have helped me then, but perhaps it wouldn't have made any difference. No one wants advice-- only corroboration.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When I awakened, old sleepy Mary was up and gone and coffee and bacon were afoot. I could smell them. And you'd have to search for a better day for a resurrection, a green and blue and yellow day. From the bedroom window I could see that everything was resurrecting, grass, trees. They chose a proper season for it. I put on my Christmas dressing gown and my birthday slippers. In the bathroom I found some of Allen's hair goo and slicked it on, so that my combed and brushed scalp felt tight like a cap.

  Easter Sunday breakfast is an orgy of eggs and pancakes, and bacon curling about everything. I crept up on Mary and patted her silk-covered fanny and said, "Kyrie eleison!"

  "Oh!" she said. "I didn't hear you coming." She regarded my dressing gown, paisley pattern. "Nice," she said. "You don't wear it enough."

  "I haven't time. I haven't had time."

  "Well, it's nice," she said.

  "Ought to be. You picked it. Are the kids sleeping through these wonderful smells?"

  "Oh, no. They're out back, hiding eggs. I wonder what Mr. Baker wants."

  The quick jump never fails to startle me. "Mr. Baker, Mr. Baker. Oh! He probably wants to help me start my fortune."

  "Did you tell him? About the cards?"

  "Course not, darling. But maybe he guessed." Then I said seriously, "Look, cheesecake, you do think I have a great business brain, don't you?"

  "What do you mean?" She had a pancake up for turning, and it stayed up.

  "Mr. Baker thinks I should invest your brother's legacy."

  "Well, if Mr. Baker--"

  "Now wait. I don't want to do it. That's your money and your safety."

  "Doesn't Mr. Baker know more about that than you do, dear?"

  "I'm not sure. All I know is my father thought he knew. That's why I'm working for Marullo."

  "Still, I think Mr. Baker--"

  "Will you be guided by me, sweetheart?"

  "Well, of course--"

  "In everything?"

  "Are you being silly?"

  "I'm dead serious--dead!"

  "I believe you are. But you can't go around doubting Mr. Baker. Why, he's--he's--"

  "He's Mr. Baker. We'll listen to what he has to say and then--I still will want that money right in the bank where it is."

  Allen shot through the back door as though fired by a sling-shot. "Marullo," he said. "Mr. Marullo's outside. He wants to see you."

  "Now what?" Mary demanded.

  "Well, ask him in."

  "I did. He wants to see you outside."

  "Ethan, what is it? You can't go out in your robe. It's Easter Sunday."

  "Allen," I said, "you tell Mr. Marullo I'm not dressed. Tell him he can come back later. But if he's in a hurry, he can come in the front door if he wants to see me alone." He dashed.

  "I don't know what he wants. Maybe the store's been robbed."

  Allen shot back. "He's going around front."

  "Now, dear, don't you let him spoil your breakfast, you hear me?"

  I went through the house and opened the front door. Marullo was on the porch, dressed in his best for Easter mass, and his best was black broadcloth and big gold watch chain. He held his black hat in his hand and he smiled at me nervously like a dog out of bounds.

  "Come in."

  "No," he said. "I just got one word to say. I heard how that fella offered you a kickback."

  "Yes?"

  "I heard how you threw him out."

  "Who told you?"

  "I can't tell." He smiled again.

  "Well, what about it? You trying to say I should have taken it?"

  He stepped forward and shook my hand, pumped it up and down twice very formally. "You're a good fella," he said.

  "Maybe he didn't offer enough."

  "You kidding? You're a good fella. That's all. You're a good fella." He reached in his bulging side pocket and brought out a bag. "You take this." He patted my sh
oulder and then in a welter of embarrassment turned and fled; his short legs pumped him away and his fat neck flamed where it bulged over his stiff white collar.

  "What was it?"

  I looked in the bag--colored candy Easter eggs. We had a big square glass jar of them at the store. "He brought a present for the kids," I said.

  "Marullo? Brought a present. I can't believe it."

  "Well, he did."

  "Why? He never did anything like that."

  "I guess he just plain loves me."

  "Is there something I don't know?"

  "Duck blossom, there are eight million things none of us know." The children were staring in from the open back door. I held out the bag to them. "A present from an admirer. Don't get into them until after breakfast."

  As we were getting dressed for church, Mary said, "I wish I knew what that was all about."

  "Marullo? I'll have to admit, darling, I wish I knew what it was all about too."

  "But a bag of cheap candy--"

  "Do you suppose it might be a grave simplicity?"

  "I don't understand."

  "His wife is dead. He has neither chick nor child. He's getting old. Maybe--well, maybe he's lonely."

  "He never has been here before. While he's lonesome, you should ask him for a raise. He doesn't drop in on Mr. Baker. It makes me nervous."

  I gauded myself like the flowers of the field, decent dark suit, my burying black, shirt and collar so starchly white they threw the sun's light back in the sun's face, cerulean tie with cautious polka dots.

  Was Mrs. Margie Young-Hunt whomping up ancestral storms? Where did Marullo get his information? It could only be Mr. Bugger to Mrs. Young-Hunt to Mr. Marullo. I do not trust thee Margie Young, the reason why I cannot tongue. But this I know and know right spung, I do not trust thee Mrs. Young. And with that singing in my head I delved in the garden for a white flower for my Easter buttonhole. In the angle made by the foundation and the sloping cellar door there is a protected place, the earth warmed by the furnace and exposed to every scrap of winter sunlight. There white violets grow, brought from the cemetery where they grow wild over the graves of my ancestors. I picked three tiny lion-faced blossoms for my buttonhole and gathered a round dozen for my darling, set their own pale leaves about them for a nosegay, and bound them tight with a bit of aluminum foil from the kitchen.

  "Why, they're lovely," Mary said. "Wait till I get a pin, I'll wear them."

  "They're the first--the very first, my creamy fowl. I am your slave. Christ is risen. All's right with the world."

  "Please don't be silly about sacred things, dear."

  "What in the world have you done with your hair?"

  "Do you like it?"

  "I love it. Always wear it that way."

  "I wasn't sure you'd like it. Margie said you'd never notice. Wait till I tell her you did." She set a bowl of flowers on her head, the yearly vernal offering to Eostre. "Like it?"

  "I love it."

  Now the young got their inspection, ears, nostrils, shoe-shines, every detail, and they resisted every moment of it. Allen's hair was so plastered that he could hardly blink. The heels of his shoes were unpolished but with infinite care he had trained a line of hair to roll on his crested brow like a summer wave.

  Ellen was girl of a girlness. All in sight was in order. I tried my luck again. "Ellen," I said, "you're doing something different with your hair. It becomes you. Mary, darling, don't you like it?"

  "Oh! She's beginning to take pride," Mary said.

  We formed a procession down our path to Elm Street, then left to Porlock, where our church is, our old white-steepled church, stolen intact from Christopher Wren. And we were part of a growing stream, and every woman in passing had delight of other women's hats.

  "I have designed an Easter hat," I said. "A simple, off-the-face crown of thorns in gold with real ruby droplets on the forehead."

  "Ethan!" said Mary sternly. "Suppose someone should hear you."

  "No, I guess it couldn't be popular."

  "I think you're horrid," Mary said, and so did I, worse than horrid. But I did wonder how Mr. Baker would respond to comment on his hair.

  Our family rivulet joined other streams and passed stately greetings and the stream was a river pouring into St. Thomas's Episcopal Church, a medium-high church, maybe a little higher than center.

  When the time comes that I must impart the mysteries of life to my son, which I have no doubt he knows, I must remember to inform him about hair. Armed with a kindly word for hair, he will go as far as his concupiscent little heart desires. I must warn him, however. He may kick, beat, drop, tousle, or bump them, but he must never--never--mess their hair. With this knowledge he can be king.

  The Bakers were just ahead of us going up the steps, and we passed decorous greetings. "I believe we're seeing you at tea."

  "Yes, indeed. A very happy Easter to you."

  "Can that be Allen? How he's grown. And Mary Ellen. Well, I can't keep track--they shoot up so."

  There's something very dear about a church you grew in. I know every secret corner, secret odor of St. Thomas's. In that font I was christened, at that rail confirmed, in that pew Hawleys have sat for God knows how long, and that is no figure of speech. I must have been deeply printed with the sacredness because I remember every desecration, and there were plenty of them. I think I can go to every place where my initials are scratched with a nail. When Danny Taylor and I punched the letters of a singularly dirty word with a pin in the Book of Common Prayer, Mr. Wheeler caught us and we were punished, but they had to go through all the prayerbooks and the hymnals to make sure there weren't more.

  Once, in that chair stall under the lectern, a dreadful thing happened. I wore the lace and carried the cross and sang a beefy soprano. Once the bishop was officiating, a nice old man, hairless as a boiled onion, but to me glowing with rays of holiness. So it was that, stunned with inspiration, I set the cross in its socket at the end of processional and forgot to throw the brass latch that held it in. At the reading of the second lesson I saw with horror the heavy brass cross sway and crash on that holy hairless head. The bishop went down like a pole-axed cow and I lost the lace to a boy who couldn't sing as well, a boy named Skunkfoot Hill. He's an anthropologist now, somewhere in the West. The incident seemed to prove to me that intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over accidents.

  We sat the service through and heard the news announced that Christ was risen indeed. It ran shivers up my spine as always. I took communion with a good heart. Allen and Mary Ellen weren't yet confirmed and they got pretty restless and had to be given the iron eye to stop their jittering. When Mary's eyes are hostile, they can pierce even the armor plate of adolescence.

  Then in the drenching sunshine we shook hands and greeted and shook hands and wished the season's best to the communityof our neighbors. All those we had spoken to coming in, we regreeted going out--a continuation of the litany, of a continuous litany in the form of decorous good manners, a quiet supplication to be noticed and to be respected.

  "Good morning. And how are you this fine day?"

  "Very well, thank you. How is your mother?"

  "She's getting old--getting old--the aches and daggers of getting old. I'll tell her you asked for her."

  The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it? Ahead of our small parade in the sun went Mr. Baker, avoiding stepping on cracks; his mother, dead these twenty years, was safe from a broken back. And Mrs. Baker, Amelia, tripping along beside him, trying to match his uneven stride with her fluttering feet, a small, bright-eyed bird of a woman, but a seed-eating bird.

  Allen, my son, walked beside his sister, but each of them tried to give the impression that they were total strangers. I think she despises him and he detests her. This may last all their lives while they learn to conceal it in a rose
cloud of loving words. Give them their lunches, my sister, my wife--their hard-boiled eggs and pickles, their jelly-and-peanut-butter sandwiches, their red barrel-smelling apples, and turn them free in the world to spawn.

  And that's just what she did. They walked away, carrying their paper bags, each one to a separate private world.

  "Did you enjoy the service, my darling?"

  "Oh, yes! I always do. But you--sometimes I wonder if you believe--no, I mean it. Well, your jokes--sometimes--"

  "Pull up your chair, my dimpsy darling."

  "I have to get lunch on."

  "Bugger lunch."

  "That's what I mean. Your jokes."

  "Lunch is not sacred. If it were warmer, I could carry you to a rowboat and we would go out past the breakwater and fish for porgies."

  "We're going to the Bakers'. Do you know whether you believe in the church or not, Ethan? Why do you call me silly names? You hardly ever use my name."

  "To avoid being repetitious and tiresome, but in my heart your name rings like a bell. Do I believe? What a question! Do I lift out each shining phrase from the Nicene creed, loaded like a shotgun shell, and inspect it? No. It isn't necessary. It's a singular thing, Mary. If my mind and soul and body were as dry of faith as a navy bean, the words, 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,' would still make my stomach turn over and put a flutter in my chest and light a fire in my brain."