by Ben Benson
“Oh, come on in,” she said. A simpering smile broke the lines in her face. “You’ll have to excuse the looks of the place. I ain’t had time yet to clean today.”
We went through a dark entrance hall that smelled of rancid lard. There were bolls of dust in the corners. We went up a rickety stairway to a dirty, littered hallway. She opened a door.
“Lovely room,” she said. “It only needs to be tidied a little.”
I went inside. There was a white iron bed, the paint half flaked off. The mattress, covered with a pallid rose bedspread, was lumpy, concave. The bureau had one leg missing and the veneer was peeled off on one side. The windows were opaque with dust. There was an unpleasant smell of mice and dead vermin.
She went over quickly, opened the windows and drew a pair of cracked green shades halfway down. She removed soot from the sill with a swipe of her palm, then gave the bedspread a tug. I looked at the badly scarred, dark, carpetless floor, the one straight chair with two rungs missing on the back, the cracked walls, the scabrous wallpaper, the cobwebs hanging from the gray ceiling.
“How much?” I asked.
“Only ten a week,” she said, rubbing the dirt from her hands. “And no cooking. Don’t go sneaking in an electric plate. I can tell when you use one by watching the meter.”
“I wouldn’t pay ten a week for this,” I said. I didn’t know why I was arguing with her. Perhaps because I was mad at myself, at the State Police, at the world, for being forced to work out of such a horrible place. Anyway, Newpole had said to act like a tough young punk, to push it. So I said, “I’ll give you six.”
“You couldn’t get any place in town for six,” she said, offended.
“Six is all it’s worth,” I said. “It’s a crummy room. I’ll bet every time the train pulls into the station the joint shakes like an Egyptian belly dancer.”
“It’s handy,” she said. “Folks like a place that’s handy. You’re lucky I have a vacancy.”
“This has been my lucky day all around,” I said. “I’ll give you six.”
“How long you planning to stay? I can do better on a monthly basis.”
“I’ll pay for one week,” I said. “Here’s six bucks.”
She took the money. “Add two more,” she said, whiningly. “A body’s got to make a living.”
She was too pathetic to argue with. I gave her two more dollars. She clutched the money and said, “The bathroom is down the hall. You share it. What’s your name, dearie?”
“Ralph Lincoln. I’m from Boston.”
She smirked, showing broken, dingy teeth. “It’s a pleasure having a handsome young man around the house for a change. You sign in at the register downstairs.” She fished into one of her pockets, coming up with wads of paper, bits of string, and finally a key. “Here’s the key to your room.”
I looked at it in the palm of my hand. It was a joke of a key, an ordinary skeleton key that would fit any door in the house and could be bought in any hardware store for a dime.
“Where’s a good place to eat?” I asked.
“There’s the Railroad Spa at the corner. Sandwiches, soup and stuff. The diner on Main is better. But if you want the best, there’s Lil’s Café on Main, too. She serves home-cooked meals, but it’ll cost you more.” She started for the door. “I’ll bring you up a towel. Clean linen once a week.”
She left. I went downstairs and got my suitcase from the car. When I came upstairs again I opened the bureau drawers. There were dead moths and flies in them. I didn’t unpack. I sat down on the creaking bed, looked around at the grimy room and thought of my own neat room at home in Cambridge. Then suddenly the sordidness and depression hit me hard. Maybe it was because I hadn’t been a cop very long and there wasn’t enough cop-hardness in me yet. But, cop or no cop, I felt lonely and miserable. It was bad enough to be all alone with a false name and false identification. But what was worse was that Ellen was back in Cambridge, in the midst of wedding preparations. She had been expecting me home tomorrow. By now she had received Sergeant Hearn’s call. I could picture her standing in the middle of her living room with a million things to do and not knowing whether to continue with the wedding preparations or to cancel them. Maybe she was thinking it was better to chuck the whole business and marry a man who had good steady hours, a machinist, an insurance clerk or an engineer. Not that I would blame her, either.
I walked out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom. It had an old porcelain tub with claw legs, a dark ring running along the inside, brownish stains along the bottom, and verdigris around the drain. There was an attached shower with a ring curtain of dirty, wrinkled plastic.
I went back to my room. There was now a dingy, stringy towel lying across the bed. I picked it up and threw it down again. Then I left the room, locked the door and went downstairs. I got into my car and drove over to Main Street.
First, I went into a dry goods store and bought four washcloths and four white turkish towels. Then to the hardware store for a sponge rubber mat for the shower. Then to a combination shoe and notions store where I bought a pair of wooden clog sandals, a cake of soap and a roll of shiny white paper. I couldn’t charge them to the Commonwealth, but, at least, they made me feel a little better.
I walked out of the store. As I stepped off the curb to cross Main Street, I stopped short. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. There was a pale-blue State Police cruiser parked in front of the town police building. I moved back and went quickly into a drugstore. Through the window I saw a young trooper on the sidewalk talking to the Chief. I recognized him as George Kilroy, who had been in my training class and was now attached to the Wrentham Barracks.
I stepped into a paybooth and closed the door tight. I dialed a number.
“Hello.” It was Newpole’s voice on the other end. It sounded good. It was a link with the outside world.
“I’m all set up,” I said. “I’ve got a room at Mrs. Kincaid’s on Depot Street across from the train station. It’s an awful crummy place, Lieutenant.”
“Good,” Newpole said. “The crummier the better. It has to fit you.”
“This place will never fit me,” I said. I’m the loneliest man in the world, I wanted to say. I’m like a fish out of water. A boat on a desert. I don’t belong here. Instead, I said, “Sir, I just spotted a state cruiser in town. I know the trooper. Kilroy, out of Wrentham. And he knows me.”
“Probably a routine patrol,” Newpole said. “We’ll give him a signal and see he doesn’t come back. We’ll keep all patrols out of there.”
“What about the Chief?” I asked. “What does he know about this?”
“Nothing. He’s a peaceable old man. You don’t bother him and he won’t bother you. His name is Clemmisson and he’s no ball of fire.”
“I wanted to know if I had any friends in town, sir.”
“You’ve got no friends. You’re a fresh young punk with a record. You’re looking for a chance to make a fast buck. The only way you can get in with the gang is to attract attention. Make some noise, throw your weight around, show some muscle. You have to push it. Understand?”
“I’ll try my best, Lieutenant.”
“Contact me tomorrow,” he said.
I hung up. I went over to the fountain and had a coke, sipping on it slowly. Five minutes later I looked out the plate-glass window. The state cruiser was gone. I took up my bundles, went outside, got into my car and drove back to the rooming house.
CHAPTER THREE
IN MY ROOM, I WASHED OUT THE BUREAU DRAWERS and lined them with the white paper. Then I put my things away, hiding the flannel-wrapped Browning Fabrique Nationale in the bottom drawer. I put my shirts very carefully over it.
I took a tepid shower, dressed and went downstairs. I drove over to Lil’s Café. It was five-thirty and there were only a half-dozen people sitting at the checkered cloth tables. They looked at me curiously. One middle-aged man nodded and smiled in friendly fashion. I nodded back. I sat down at a table in
a corner. A white-haired, motherly woman, in starched green uniform, took my order for creamed chicken and biscuits.
The dinner was good. When I finished I went to the cash register. The motherly-looking woman moved behind it.
“A fine dinner, Mom,” I said.
She smiled. “Thank you, young man. Come in again real soon.”
“I will. I expect to be in town for a while. By the way, what’s doing around Carlton at night?”
“Well, there’s the Elite Theater if you like the movies. The Dairy Bar across the street has a juke box and they serve sandwiches, ice cream and cokes. Those youngsters who have cars, though, go out to the Peppermint Stick. It’s a new ice-cream place about a half-mile out on Route 111.”
“Thanks,” I said. There was a wall telephone. Beside it, a telephone book hung on a chain. I went over and flipped the pages of the book. One Cluett was listed. The maiden aunt. Madelaine Cluett, 40 Maple Avenue.
I left Lil’s Café and drove over to Elm Street. There was an open-air used-car lot with a big sign over it that said: Craird Waldock—Used Cars. If We Can’t Undersell Our Competitors, We Give ’Em Away.
There was a small garage in back. In front there was a little hut of an office. A small, sharp, dapper, narrowfaced man was leaning against the open door. He didn’t look as if he gave anything away. The lot had about twenty cars, mixed stuff, mostly dogs and oil burners. In the rear, beside the little repair shop, was a junkpile of broken, twisted scrap, bodies, wheels and other parts.
I drove by and turned onto River Street. I stopped at a wide cement drive that had three gas pumps on it. In back was a concrete-block, one-story building with steel-framed casement windows. The sign said Osanger’s Garage. General Repairs. There was nobody around. The garage door was of steel and fastened with a heavy chain and padlock.
I drove out to Maple Avenue. It was a quiet, tree-lined street. The setting sun was tinting the tops of the maple trees in a soft glow of color. Number forty was a small white Cape Cod cottage with rose trellises in front. There was a detached, one-car garage. A shiny new yellow Mercury with a black top was parked on the gravel driveway. I continued on and drove back to the rooming house.
*
At eight o’clock I put on slacks and a sport shirt. I drove out in the darkness to Maple Avenue again. The Mercury was gone from the driveway. I headed back to Main Street and walked into the Dairy Bar.
There was a warm buttery smell of popcorn from the big glass machine in front. The floor was inlaid linoleum. Six waxed pine booths were ranged along one side and a long soda bar along the other. At the bar, three high school girls were sipping sodas through long straws. Two sixteen-year-old boys hovered over them. The booths were packed with teen-agers, talking in eager, muted voices, eating sundaes. I looked at them. They all had scrubbed, happy, shiny faces. I bought a package of cigarettes and walked out. Not the Dairy Bar, I thought. It wasn’t the hangout for the Scotty Cluett type.
I drove out Route 111 until I came to a neon sign in green and yellow with script writing that said Peppermint Stick. It was a long, white building, low-slung, with overhanging eaves and small windows in front. In the large parking lot were a few old jalopies that must have been barely able to get under the wire of the state registry inspectors and the compulsory insurance laws. There were two hot rods. One was painted a glaring white and had a fireman-red hood and wheels. The other had black and white stripes and imitation leopard-skin upholstery. I didn’t see the yellow Mercury. There were other cars, newer cars, family cars wheedled from father for the night.
I parked my Ford and turned off the lights. Near me, in some of the cars, I could hear the whispers and squeals of necking couples.
I walked across the parking lot. A beer can was thrown from a car and bounced off my shoe. I turned around, seeing nothing, hearing only a soft snicker and a suppressed giggle.
I knew the Peppermint Stick was the right place as soon as I opened the door. A bedlam of noise hit me. I saw twenty or thirty boys ranging from sixteen to nineteen years. A chrome-stripped juke box, blinking colored lights, was playing hot bop, but you could barely hear it over the screaming and snarling. The movement was constant, fluid, a steady passing to and fro, from the fountain to the side booths, to the tables in the middle of the floor. I saw contorted and convulsive faces, open red mouths. I saw sixteen-year-olds taking cans of beer out of paper bags and pouring the liquid into paper cups.
There was a sameness about the kids, a kind of uniformity. The girls were in vari-colored fitted woolen sweaters, the contour of their breasts jutting and pointed and obviously padded. They wore costume jewelry. They wore rump-tight skirts that flared slightly at the bottom. Some wore flat ballet shoes, with or without cross-straps. Others wore crepe-soled oxfords. All were barelegged. All had their hair cut short; half of them had it dyed in various shades of blond, from tawny wheat to platinum. They smoked cigarettes with short, furious puffs. Their faces were avid and excitable.
The boys wore denim pants of every color, denim sport shirts, denim zipper jackets. Each had closely cropped hair, each had a wide belt strapped around his pants. Some wore Army garrison belts with sharp, shiny buckles. Others had belts with heavy silver ornamentations and medallions. There was a hardness, a spoiled, petulant, dangerous boredom about them.
An argument was going on near the door when I stepped in. A short, stocky, middle-aged man, wearing a harried look and a white coat, was talking heatedly to a big flabby lout of a boy. The boy was an overgrown seventeen. He stood out from the others because he had cultivated a scrawny little goatee on his chin.
The man was saying, “—went and broke the pinball machine, Arkie.”
“I didn’t break your damn pinball machine, Delmar,” the boy said. He said it loudly so that the audience around him would appreciate it. “Don’t accuse me, Delmar, because I don’t like it.”
“You were smashing glasses against it, Arkie,” said Delmar stubbornly. “I seen you do it. And you burnt your initials in the woodwork with a cigarette. You’re all like a pack of wild animals and I ain’t going to have any more of it.”
“Screw you,” Arkie said.
“I’ll get the Chief down here. I’m sick of you kids busting up my place.”
“You couldn’t get Clemmisson to move off his prat if the Town Hall was burning down. Delmar, don’t flap your lip so much. I might get mad and walk out of this fleabag. If I go, the whole gang goes with me, and you go on welfare.” Arkie looked around with belligerent satisfaction and strode to the bar. Delmar took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.
I walked over to the fountain. Behind the counter a small, undersized lad was making up a banana royal. He had drab brown hair and tired brown eyes. His face was moist and drawn with fatigue. He wore a white cap and a white jacket. The jacket was stained with syrups. A sweet smell of milk came from him like from an infant after feeding.
He pushed the banana royal along the counter to another boy in a white jacket. The boy picked it up, put it on a tray that held two other sundaes, and threaded his way to a table. The fountain boy looked up at me wearily.
He said, “What’s yours?”
“Make it a hamburg and a chocolate malt,” I said.
“Burg and choc-malt,” he said. “Onion?”
“No onion.”
He spoke into a microphone in front of him. “Brown one, without.” Then with a swift motion he put a napkin and a long spoon in front of me. The noise around us was almost unbearable.
“Is it like this all the time?” I shouted to him.
“All the time,” he said briefly.
I don’t know what it was, but suddenly I took a liking to him. He wasn’t much for conversation but he was quiet, steady and efficient.
Behind me a girl almost screamed in my ear. “My Gawd, did Arkie really say that about me? I’ll just die!”
I turned around and got a glimpse of the girl as she wigwagged her round bottom by me. She was clutching another g
irl by the arm and both of them were laughing hysterically, both showing desperately what a perfectly hilarious time they were having.
“The kids have a lot of fun here,” I said to the counterman.
He put down a glass coffee-maker. “Yes,” he said shortly. “Lovely kids, all of them. When we opened here two months ago, we had waitresses. They used to get their clothes almost torn off. Now we’ve got boy waiters. So the girls bother them. Either way—we can’t win.”
I heard catcalls and jeers and I turned around. Two couples were jitterbugging between the tables. Someone blew water at them through a straw. Soon, like so many sheep, everyone in that small area was doing the same thing.
I turned back to the counter. The counterman set my hamburger before me. I reached for the salt shaker. I said, “It’s my first time here.”
“Oh,” the counterman said, without interest. Then, mechanically, “Where you from?”
“Dedham. Funny thing happened to me when I walked inside. A guy pokes me in the back and says, ‘Hey, Scotty.’ I turned around and the guys says, ‘Hell, I thought you were Scotty Cluett.’”
The counterman looked me over dubiously. “You don’t look nothing like Scotty. For one thing, you’re taller and leaner than Scotty.”
“Funny a guy’ll make a mistake like that,” I said, laying a dollar bill on the counter. “This Cluett must be a steady customer around here, huh?”
“Yeah. Comes here a lot. Later, though. Usually around ten.”
He moved away. I munched on my hamburger and drank my malted. The counterman came back with my change.
I finished eating and went outside. I walked over to my Ford. I sat in it and smoked a cigarette. A car swerved into the lot, narrowly missing mine, stopping fast, burning off two months’ wear of rubber from the tires. A young girl stepped out, turned and shouted something back into the car. A boy came out the other side and said something obscene and ugly to her in a flat monotone. They went into the Peppermint Stick.
I sat there and smoked and thought of the town of Carlton. Maybe you would call it quaint because it was over three hundred years old and it had old, narrow streets, white Colonial houses with black shutters, old white churches, a green grassy common surrounded by a white rail fence and overhanging trees. But it was a town you could almost duplicate anywhere in Massachusetts. I thought of the kids of Carlton, the well-scrubbed ones in the Dairy Bar. Or the kids who would be sitting now in the Elite Theater, holding hands and eating popcorn. Then I thought of these wild young hoodlums at the Peppermint Stick who were from the very same environment, and I couldn’t understand it.