by James Jones
After he had gone nodding happily, Frank lit a Lucky and leaned back in the Mission oak swivel chair. Well, that little crisis was taken care of. He did not doubt that Tom Alexander’s wife would disbelieve every word Al told her and go away and talk about the store, but he didn’t care. If he had wanted Tom Alexander’s wife to believe it, he would have talked to Tom Alexander’s wife himself (she would probably have gone away and talked about the store anyway), it was good training for Al, that was what was important. Frank suddenly felt a great fatherliness for Al whom he had taken out of the local Sternutol Chemical plant as a laborer. It was hard to believe sometimes the kid was thirty-two years old; or that he had just spent four years as a Combat Infantryman.
Well, he owed it to Al Lowe to train him. Simply because of Al’s wife, if for no other reason. He remembered suddenly that Geneve had not called him for quite a while now, then shrugged it off. But—curiously—he was getting to think a lot of Al himself. He was a good boy. His main trouble was he was too goddamned open-hearted—and open-faced. Of course, this whole thing might not have been Al’s fault.
“You know anything about that misplaced order, Edith?” he asked the girl, still studying the ceiling.
“No, sir, Mr Hirsh,” the girl said.
She was a young local girl of twenty-three or -four, just out of the business college at Terre Haute, with bright lipstick and fingernails and competent eyes in an attractively uneven face, laconic, trenchant, and efficient, and with a lithe independent swing to her shoulders when she walked that she must have practiced a long time, Frank thought, before it became so natural and attractive.
“Well, maybe we can get on with those letters then,” Frank said, swinging back up level.
“Yes, sir,” Edith said, and left the adding machine to get her notebook. Frank did not doubt she had told him the truth, as he started to dictate. He was her first boss, and she had been with him almost a year, and her professional loyalty was unquestionably his. That was what came of taking your help from the laboring class and raising them a step into the white collar. Edith’s father, John Barclay, worked for the Sternutol, too, like Al had.
Feeling a little smug over his cleverness, and looking forward to an afternoon of easy work, Frank settled down into dictating the letters, which didn’t actually need to be dictated because Edith knew the form as well as he did, but which he nevertheless always liked to do himself because it made him feel educated.
That was when the first phone call came.
“Just a minute, there’s the phone,” Edith Barclay had said, and swung around to answer it. “For you, Mr Hirsh.”
Frank had taken it nodding, being careful not to let his hand touch hers as he took the phone. He always did that with his female help. He took no chances, he was too big a man anymore to fool with the help, like it had used to be.
And she was a good-looking girl. “Hello?” he said, and immediately the afternoon changed.
This was the first of the friendly calls he would be getting that afternoon. The caller did not try to conceal his malice. At first, Frank could not think who it was about. He had not thought about Dave, except vaguely, since Francine had written him Dave was being shipped overseas. Dave who. Your brother Dave. Oh, Dave. He selected quickly the least embarrassing lie he could tell and stick by. He let on he knew all about it and had invited Dave himself. Everyone in Parkman would know this was not true, but the only way they could prove it would be ask Dave point-blank and none of them would venture that.
Nevertheless, it did not put him at ease or free him from a sudden vague feeling of fear and embarrassment. It was as if he were suddenly all at once endangered with the public exposure of secret shameful acts. The effect upon Frank, as he put the phone back on its cradle and leaned back to consider, was the same as if a band of vigilantes or Kluxers had stripped him naked and tied him to a lamppost for all to come and look at titteringly.
Edith, who evidently hadn’t even been listening, was waiting with her head down and pencil poised for him to go on. She had a very pretty neck, he thought, bent as it was under the soft, dark hair. When he didn’t go on dictating, she looked up.
“You can handle the rest of those yourself, can’t you, Edith?” he said.
“Sure; of course,” she said. “Is something wrong, Mr Hirsh?”
“No,” Frank said.
“You aren’t sick, are you?”
“It’s my liver,” Frank said absently.
“Do you want me to call Doc Cost?”
Frank smothered an intense desire to swing on her angry-eyed and cuss the hell out of her. He said instead:
“No. Edith, you go ahead with the letters. I got some other things to do,” and got up and went out into the storeroom to get away from her solicitude. He had to think. The first thing was to figure out why Dave hadn’t called him. He evidently must have something up his sleeve.
As if in answer, the phone rang again.
“Mr Hirsh? It’s for you?” Edith sounded faintly disapproving, as if she thought in his condition he ought not to answer.
Frank went back into the office. His mind was going so hard he hadn’t even had time to think of getting mad.
“It’s the judge, Mr Hirsh,” Edith whispered, her hand over the mouthpiece. Frank felt another surge of anger, which he also smothered, that she should have tried to imply by her tone of voice that he ought not to answer. The judge was Steve Deacon. But in Parkman no one called him that, it was always the judge. He had served a term on the county bench in his youth. The judge was chairman of the board of the Cray County Bank, of which Frank was the most recent member. The judge was also principal stockholder in the Parkman Building & Loan, into which Frank had at his suggestion recently bought himself with a substantial number of voting shares. Did she think he should refuse to answer a call from the judge? he thought angrily, wondering what the judge wanted.
Sitting up in the dim dirty Deacon & Deacon law offices across the square over the Kroger store, breathing hard through his deep fat and wheezing into the phone, Judge Deacon did not let him wonder long.
“You know your worthless brother’s back in town?”
“So I just been told,” Frank said. “Twice.”
The judge did not laugh. He had a one-track mind and humor rarely affected him unless it was dirty. “You know he just deposited fifty-five hundred dollars in the Second National Bank?”
“No,” Frank said in a small voice. “I sure didn’t know that.”
“Well, you know it now,” the judge said.
Frank felt the dart prick open a small wound of vanity. He tried to ignore it. He was getting valuable information. The judge had never been one, even before he retired from practice to take over the Cray County Bank, and other interests, to be especially careful of others’ feelings. But he needn’t get snotty with me, he thought angrily.
“I guess that makes us look kind of foolish,” he said.
“It won’t kill us,” the judge wheezed, “I don’t reckon. It don’t make us look good. You never seen any my relatives doin something like that.” This was, Frank reflected, quite true; the judge, as the eldest and only brother of eight sisters and numerous cousins throughout the county, directed all of their estates. That was part, a substantial part, of his other interests.
“Your relatives live here,” Frank said. “Where you can keep a tab on them. Also, they are more or less sane.”
“Not so sane,” the judge snorted. “Like to see you try to handle them.”
“Well, I appreciate you callin and tellin me, anyway. I didn’t even know he was here till just now. He hasn’t called me.”
“I didn’t call you for you to appreciate it,” the judge said scathingly. “I called you to put you wise. Somebody better get ahold of that boy and teach him some common sense.”
“You got any suggestions who?” Frank said.
“Well, you’re his brother. And head of the famly.”
“I been tryin to teach him
common sense for thirty-five years,” Frank said.
“Try, hell,” the judge said; “well, try harder. And also, Ned Roberts’ll probly be callin you up before long, I would reckon. So be prepared. It’s a good thing for us I got to you first, ain’t it?” and hung up before Frank could answer. The judge was never much of a one for amenities, either.
Frank replaced his own phone, feeling more angry at the judge’s blunt incivility than grateful for the information he’d given him. Irately, he wondered where in hell Dave had ever managed to get fifty-five hundred dollars. That was not the Dave he remembered.
The judge was a mighty good man to have on your side in a business deal, but you sure couldn’t say it was exactly pleasant to work with him.
Edith Barclay had her head down working at her desk. But it was plain that she’d been listening.
“Well,” he said, “did you learn all about it?”
“No, sir,” Edith said, and went on working. “I hope it isn’t any bad trouble.”
Frank stared at her, wanting to say something cutting, but she was just too good a help to get her mad at you. “If any more calls come in for me,” he said, “I want to talk to all of them. No matter how many, or who it is.”
Well, he knew now what it was Dave had had up his sleeve.
“I’m going up front,” he lied. He was going back out into the storeroom. He wanted to think this thing out, and the dimness and quiet there ought to be reassuring.
“Yes, sir,” Edith said.
But the storeroom wasn’t helpful. The crusty old watch repairman in his cubicle workshop did not look up; and his nose, which he never raised for anything unless a woman went by, was stuck down in a watch; and yet he managed somehow to make himself strongly felt as a presence. He always did that. Frank went back into the office.
Edith did not even look up from her work, and he sat down at his desk to think it out.
Frank’s attitude toward the youngest of his brothers had always been one of indignant disbelief. You could not run over customs and usages the way that boy thought he could. Not if you wanted to live with people. The indignation was coupled with a contempt for the boy’s complete inability to do anything and a kind of awed pride because Dave had turned out to be an artist, a writer. Frank did not read a book a year and said it was because he was too busy making a living, but the truth was books frightened him. He would never learn to read them easily. It did not help any that his wife Agnes, who was literary minded, was able to read into books a spiritual and intellectual significance that he himself could never find there, and felt ignorant because of. So secretly he was proud to have an artist, a writer, in the family because he did not count Francine. But he also felt Dave ought to make a little money at it. Otherwise what was the point? A grown man had to support himself. Or else suffer the ridicule of his associates. He had written as much to Sister Francine, who all during Dave’s years in Hollywood had kept him posted on Dave’s development; Francine had immediately written back defending Dave with fire, and the statement that there was no place for the creative artist in America. Frank was willing to concede that this might be true, though he did not see why it should be true in America and not in other places. He had followed Dave’s career closely, a lot more closely than anyone knew, except possibly Francine, and he had carefully read all the stories and both books when she sent them, and he couldn’t see where there was much sense in any of them, no wonder people didn’t buy them. The only thing of it all that touched him any, was that second book about the ball player and its main effect was surprise that Dave knew that much about baseball. But then, back not long before the war, Francine had written with malicious triumph to say that Dave was working on some movie scripts and as proof listed the titles. Frank, who was no moviegoer and had only the vaguest ideas of Hollywood, went to see every one of them. He had never given up hope of bayoneting the inflated bladder of Dave’s scandal, for his own sake if Dave didn’t give a damn. Once more, he was disappointed. All of them were westerns but two, light comedies, all of them were bad movies, atrocious, even he could tell that, and in addition he did not find Dave’s name mentioned anywhere in any of them. Luckily, he had not told anybody else about the list, not even Agnes. He had no choice but to conclude Francine had been lying, and he wrote her so. He got no answer at all. Nevertheless, later on he had been glad when Francine, after her long and injured silence, had written to tell him Dave was being inducted and asked if he couldn’t do something about it. He felt the Army might be damned good for Dave. He sincerely doubted if it would and yet he still could not give up hope that something good might come of it.
Well, evidently it hadn’t.
Now obviously, Dave’s reason for not calling him was because Dave knew the news of the deposit would reach him. That could only mean he was out to make trouble.
It left two alternatives: Either Dave would call him later, or he wouldn’t call at all. With a sure swift instinct, sitting at his desk in his office, he felt out and reconstructed Dave’s plan. Dave intended to call him later. He knew it. Probably the idea was to let him sweat a while over the deposit. And if this was true, and Frank knew it was true (it’s what you would’ve done, ain’t it?), then his countermove was to call Dave first. Catch him off his guard. Dave would expect him to be angry. So he would not be angry. He would invite Dave out to the house for dinner.
Then we’ll see what happens.
Finding his eyes staring at the back of Edith Barclay’s prettily bent neck and feeling not much better over what he’d just worked out he reached his hand out for the phone when suddenly another aspect hit him, which he had not thought about. Oh, Jesus Christ, the Old Man, son of a bitch.
It was a very lovely neck, half of his mind was thinking, especially bent over low like that. The two cords or tendons or whatever they were that ran up to the base of the skull stood out in high relief, making very feminine very kissable hollows. For some young guy to enjoy, the half of his mind added quickly.
Yes, the Old Man. It was a subject he very rarely allowed. Even when they met on the street or in the poolroom, and spoke, the old man irascibly, as often happened. He had trained his mind to ignore it all completely the handicap to his reputation the perpetual drawback to surmount in the town the constant affront to himself. This old bastard who was too old to weld anymore, so now he lived on the old age pension, in one of those homes for pensioners that middle-aged widows without incomes were starting all over, thirty dollars a month! that got him his room and board, and his liquor he had to scrounge for. But he seemed to do pretty goddamned well, because he never seemed to be sober. What was this going to do to that situation?
Dave’s coming home would reawaken all that old stuff about him and Doc Cost’s first wife, as well as Dave’s own scandal. And himself had become one of Doc Cost’s best friends! All that old dirt stirred up from the bottom of the pool, and himself expecting to be elected secretary of the Country Club at the annual meeting next spring.
Frank had offered him four times as much as his pension, if he would move clear out of the county. But the old son of a bitch refused to leave Parkman, just out of sheer cussedness, just as he’d refused to drop the c and mid t off his name and change e to i all these years, just so he could continue to wander town a worthless poolroom drunken bum and listen to people say, There goes Old Man Herschmidt, Frank Hirsh’s father, and then cackle over it, the no-good bastard.
No wonder Mother’s life had been ruined, and she had nothing but sadness and had become practically a recluse except for her Holiness Church friends.
What he should have done, obviously, was offered him the $120 a month if he’d promise not to leave Parkman, then the old reprobate would have insisted on moving to Terre Haute.
Through the half-glassed wall of the office cubicle he saw Al Lowe bearing down on him across the storeroom. What now? he wondered with a muffled sigh.
Al was bright eyed in the doorway. “Frank, Mrs Stevens and her daughter, Virginia,
just came in. You know, the Stevens-Bookwright marriage.”
Frank spoke with slow stolid patience:
“And why should I care if Mrs Stevens and her daughter, Virginia, come in any more than other people?”
“Well, the marriage,” Al said. “They’re looking at silver. Big wedding. You know the story. I thought you’d want to know they came in?”
Frank did indeed know the story. More of it than Al knew. He was a friend of Arthur Bookwright’s father who was Harold Bookwright the sales manager for the Sternutol Chemical Company’s local marketing division. It was one of the biggest weddings Parkman would see in some years.
Frank was a secret partner in the Parkman Dodge Agency, which partially thanks to Harold had sold Sternutol Chemical some replacement pickups for their old ones. Now he said to Al with the same slow patience:
“Al, T L Stevens runs the Western Auto Store. His daughter is marryin up into the executive bracket of Sternutol Chemical. His wife ain’t goin to pick her daughter’s silver pattern, or her china pattern, here in Parkman. For the same reasons, she’s goin to have a big wedding—if it takes T L two years to pay for it.
“And if they did pick a pattern that I carried, there wouldn’t be enough money in it for us to even get excited because at least fifty percent of the guests will be Sternutol people and such, from out of town, and will buy their presents someplace else.”
“Well, it would be a big piece of prestige, not to mention advertising, if they did pick her patterns in our store, not to mention the extra money.”
With his infuriatingly slow German patience, Frank said:
“Sure it would. But they just won’t, Al. They’re just shoppin. Hell, they’ll go to Terre Haute, and Danville, maybe even to St Louis and Indianapolis, and probly wind up in Chicago, at Marshall Field’s; before they’re done.” He got up from the desk and steered Al out into the storeroom.
“But Virginia just might happen to see one of our patterns she liked?” Al said.