The Moth

by James M. Cain

  People with not enough sense to know you were doing them a favor by taking whatever they had seemed to be quite numerous whenever he was around.

  Denny lived in Frederick, but he spent his summer in town with an aunt, Miss Eunice Deets, who lived on Linden Avenue, while his father and mother went to Europe. The summer after we hooked the peaches he said we should have a job, to make some money. That was all right with me, but what job I had no idea. One night, though, he was over after dinner, and got to talking with my father about the garage, and how he’d been noticing things there, specially the time the men took going for wrenches, jacks, and stuff, so why couldn’t he and I be hired on to do that running, and save a lot of time? What he was doing at the garage, which was half a mile from his house, he didn’t bother to say. But he made my father laugh. When he was asked how much we wanted, he said ten cents an hour apiece. So my father said a buck a week, for five hours’ work on Saturday, wouldn’t break him, and we could consider ourselves hired. It was still only eight o’clock, so he drove us to an Army-Navy store near Richmond Market, and got us a jumper suit apiece, visor hats, brogan shoes, lunch buckets, and cotton gloves. I don’t say we didn’t earn our money, because the men ran us ragged, though if it was for the time it saved or the fun of seeing us trot I wouldn’t like to say. But one day, around twelve thirty, when everybody was out back sitting against the fence eating lunch, a guy came in with his car boiling. We took him back to Ed Kratzer, the foreman, who said leave it and he’d see what he could do. The guy got loud about how he had to get to Germantown, Pa., by six o’clock that night. “Then in that case take it somewhere else. If you want us to fix it, leave it and we’ll see what we can do. Just now we’re eating, and if you ask me that’s what you could be doing, and you’ll get there just as quick.”

  “... Where do I eat?”

  “There’s a drugstore across the street.”

  So after he swallowed three times that’s where he went. But of course, when he was gone I had to look big, so I lifted the hood of the car, which was standing in the middle of the garage floor, with nobody around it but us. But when I opened the door I noticed the hand brake was on, hard. It should have been, of course, but it came to me I hadn’t noticed him set it, and you generally did notice it in those days because the ratchet sounded like somebody winding an alarm clock. Then something else came to me. It was a Ford and I don’t know if you remember the old Model T. It had low and high gear on the left, reverse gear center, foot brake on the right, and hand brake straight up the middle. You set the hand brake when you stopped, but in low gear, the car could still go, and I had a hunch. As soon as I cranked it I got in and let off the brake. Sure enough, when I pushed in low gear the car went, and when I dropped the pedal back into high it still went. I stopped and tried reverse and it was all right. I cut my motor and got out. “Well, now, there’s a dumbbell for you.”

  “How do you mean, Jack?”

  “Driving with his brake on. You can’t do it.”

  “And that’s all that was wrong with it?”

  “That’s all.”

  I got a can, put some water in, and that helped with the temp. He kept studying me. “What we going to charge him, Jack?”

  “We got nothing to do with that.”

  “Why not?”

  “The men attend to charges.”

  “When they do the work, they do. But for crying out loud, we did the work. We made it run. We—”

  “I thought that was me.”

  “Oh, pardon me.”

  “We, my eye.”

  “Then it’s all yours—for whatever you get.”

  What I would get was nothing, as I very well knew. Pretty soon I said: “What do you think we ought to charge him?”

  “Who ought to charge him, Jack?”

  “We ought to.”

  “That’s better. That’s a whole lot better. Gee, that’s a pain in the neck for you, a guy too dumb even to see chances to make dough, and then when somebody else kicks in with a little brains—”

  “What do you think we ought to—”

  “Two dollars.”

  “For just taking off his brake?”

  “I thought you put in a new bearing.”

  “I don’t like to crook anybody.”

  “Who you crooking? Not your old man, that’s a cinch, because we haven’t even used a handful of his waste. And not Kratzer, because he was too lazy even to get in here and see what was wrong. And not the guy. He’ll thank you for getting him out of here on time. He’ll want to pay you. He’ll—”

  But my face must have told him, because he shut up and slid over to the back door to check on the situation out back. Then he had me roll the car out front. Then he raced across to the drugstore.

  I drove the car up the street, took a U-turn, and had hardly run back before there the guy was, so excited he could hardly talk. I played it just like Denny said, with a whole lot of stuff about how I didn’t want to see him wait while the men finished their lunch, and some more about how he should be careful to let the brake off, “as that’s generally the answer when you burn out a bearing.” He hardly heard me. It turned out he had had the car two days, and probably didn’t know what the hand brake was until somebody set it for him the night before in the garage where he stored it in Washington. He paid the two dollars without a whimper, and even gave me a half dollar extra for helping him out. Soon as he drove off that was divided, in the drug store. Denny saw to that. “All you need is a little brains, Jack. In the garage business it’s like everything else. It’s initiative that counts, every time.”

  It was Denny, that summer or maybe the next, that got me started on my singing career, though all it amounted to, at first, was some more of the Deets initiative. They had had a mixed choir at St. Anne’s with four paid soloists and I guess maybe fifteen to twenty volunteers like Nancy. But when Dr. Grant came in, after Dr. Struthers died, he was very High-Church, and pretty soon there was a fight, but he had his way. The soloists were out and the mixed choir was out. The men stayed, to sing the tenor and bass parts, but the sopranos and altos were to be boys. I’d hate to tell you what Denny and I did to them. We chased them up alleys and yelled at them and beat them up. One night a couple called, the man with a buggy whip. He wanted to dust me off for something that had happened, and my father had to get tough.

  But then one day Denny found out that the cutie pies got eighty cents a Sunday for doing it. He almost set Nancy, Sheila, my father, and his aunt, Miss Eunice, crazy, that he and I should get a shot at the sugar. Finally it turned out two places had become vacant, and we would be given a trial after rehearsal one afternoon. We waited quite a while, sitting in the rear of the church, while they went through Te Deums and anthems and Gregorian chants, or plain songs as they’re called. They seemed to be the main reason Dr. Grant wanted boys, as it was dry, gray music, some of it sung without accompaniment, and women would have ruined it. But the director was a woman, Miss Eleanor Grant, Dr. Grant’s cousin. She had sung with the Century Opera, but after we got in the war married a French officer, and when he got killed she didn’t go back on the stage right away, but stayed on in Baltimore and taught. She was small and dark and pretty, and even watching her from the back of the church, where I was sitting with Nancy and Sheila and Denny and Miss Eunice, I fell for her hard.

  We had been told, when our turn came, not to sing anything religious, but whatever we happened to know and like, so Denny sang A Perfect Day, with Anderson playing for him, and I sang The Rosary, with Sheila. Denny got as far as “when you sit alone with your thoughts,” when Miss Eleanor stopped him and said it was very nice of him to sing for her, but he needn’t bother to finish it, and later, maybe when he was older, she hoped he’d come back. The cutie pies, who were hanging around, all began to laugh, and for once I didn’t blame them. Because Denny sang it in the same gashouse bark he used on Over There, which was his favorite tune at the time, and maybe it sounded funny but it didn’t sound good. Me, I o
nly got as far as “The hours I spend with thee, dear heart.” Because Sheila, as soon as she got spread out on the organ bench, and got the stops pulled open, and got a heel-and-toe grip on the pedals, unfortunately let her music go sliding to the floor. However, she started anyhow, and that was how I came to be thrown out at first base. Because of course her fingers would start it in the key she knew it in, which was two flats, but when Anderson put the music back, her eyes would read it in the key they saw it in, which was six flats. That was how it happened that the first chord and I were in one key, and the second chord and Sheila were in another key, and it sounded like a lunatic asylum.

  Next thing I knew, there was Sheila, as usual, giving out with the gushy alibi, like she was a real virtuoso or something, and small chores like this were quite beneath her, and Miss Eleanor was smiling and nodding and patting me. By that time I had somehow swallowed that string of pearls and maybe a couple of tonsils, but I got the surprise of my life. Miss Eleanor put her arm around me, and said there wouldn’t really be any need to go on, as she thought I was a boy they wanted, and would I report next Wednesday to rehearse?

  Walking home I never heard three women have so much to say about another woman in all my life. Miss Eunice was burned up at the way Denny had been cut off, though how much he had sounded like a crow with the croup she didn’t mention. Sheila said no wonder I was flustered, the highhanded way things were done around there, and as for that draft, that practically blew the hair off your head, to say nothing of the music in front of you, well! Nancy, who was still sore about being fired, criticized Miss Eleanor’s “method.” Denny had nothing to say, until he and I were alone together, out in his front yard. Then he hauled off and hit me. Then he hit me again. By that time I had got to know him fairly well, so I just waited. Pretty soon he began to blow and backed off, and I stepped up and let him have it, but with the flat of my hand, a slap on the cheeks that sounded like a seal clapping for himself in the circus. “Now do I beat you up or do you cut this out?”

  He burst out crying and plumped down on the bench beside the front walk. I sat down beside him and let him bawl. Until then he’d been the smart guy, but when I got the job and he didn’t, he hated me for it. Not that he let it interfere with our beautiful friendship, or kept him from figuring what we would do with the money, once I began collecting my eighty cents. Or, as we could truthfully say, our eighty cents.

  3

  BUT THE ONE REALLY to blame for my singing career was Miss Eleanor, and she got interested in me, as you might expect, on account of my trying to get away with something, though up to then she hadn’t tried to hide it that she liked me. She rehearsed us, as I said, on Te Deums and anthems and chants, but on hymns there was no rehearsal, only home work. It was her test for character. Because if a boy, once he got his book to take home, and was given next Sunday’s numbers, wouldn’t go to his mother’s piano and beat out his part and learn it, there wasn’t much to do about him. If he would, maybe he had something and she would work on him. If he wouldn’t, he was out. Well, she gave me a hymn book, and also another book, that explained how to tell one key from another, major from minor, treble from bass, and 3/4 from 4/4. So I wanted the eighty cents, and made Sheila play the stuff for me, so I could learn it, which wasn’t hard, as my voice was high, and I always got the soprano part, which was melody.

  But pretty soon I thought: Why all that work? The notes, once I got straight how they worked, seemed to tell all you had to know, like when to go up and when to go down, how much, and how long to hang on. So of course, by my system then, I used initiative instead of work. Sheila would be all ready to brief me, and I’d say I’d already got the parts up. She wouldn’t believe me, and would shove the book at me and I’d read the part off and there’d be nothing she could say. It cut her out of a chance to act important, but if I knew it I knew it. Quantum quantum, as the Old Man would put it. But one Sunday something happened. By that time I was already a bit of a feature, but more on account of my angelic looks, I imagine, than my heaven-sent golden voice, which hadn’t developed a lot yet. I was put on the end, with a lectern in front of me, and a big leather-bound hymn book on it, that Dr. Grant found in his library, with a ribbon marker that had a golden fringe, so I made kind of a picture. And this morning we were singing a thing called Parting Hymn, with me on the melody, the cutie pies and the men on the parts, and the congregation doing whatever it felt like, mostly nothing. The organ wasn’t in it, except to play it through once before we started, because with just the voices and nothing instrumental there was that ethereal angelic effect Dr. Grant seemed to be so stuck on. And we were going fine until all of a sudden it sounded like eight cats in a barrel and everybody stopped, except that after a split second Miss Eleanor motioned at me and I went on. Then the rest came in, and we were moving again. To pull things together, Anderson brought the organ in. But on every verse, even with the organ, there was the same mess, and on every verse Miss Eleanor motioned me on. At last, though, it came to an end, and pretty soon after that we filed out singing our chant, and when she came down to the basement everything was straightened out, or so she said anyway, when she showed Anderson the misprint in the books, which of course had made things a little sour.

  Next thing I remember, I was at her house on Eutaw Place for Sunday lunch, and she fixed it herself. It was a little house in a yard with lilacs all around it, mainly studio, two stories high, with a grand piano in it, but not much else except a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen with a sunporch at one side, where we ate. After lunch we went in the studio and sat on the couch, and she read the Sunday paper and let me play with her Airedale dog Muggsy. Then all of a sudden she put up the paper and said: “Now Jack, what happened?”

  “When?”

  “This morning. On the hymn.”

  “Why—it was a misprint. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Yes, but why did you sing it correctly?”

  “Well, I had a different book.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Dr. Grant’s big book, that you gave me.”

  “Is that the book you have home?”

  “No, Miss Eleanor, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Did you study the parts?”

  “Of course, Miss Eleanor.”

  “Jack!”

  “I study them, always.”

  “Come here, Jack.”

  I went to her, and she motioned me to sit there beside her, and I did, and she put her arm around me and pulled my head on her shoulder. Neither Nancy nor Sheila ever did anything like that, so I guess it was the first time any woman had touched me, and I can remember now how soft she was and how much I liked her arm around me with her face close and her eyes looking down into mine. At that time I was ten and she must have been a little under thirty. To most kids, from what I’ve heard them say, that would be a great-great-grandmother, but not to me. I never notice much how old a woman is. She seemed like a pretty girl I knew, and we were having a little talk. “Now Jack, if you studied the part on that hymn, how does it happen you sang it in the right key, and didn’t make the misprint mistake, the way the others did?”

  “Too much for me, Miss Eleanor.”

  We sat there, and her arm was around me, but she wasn’t looking at me, and all of a sudden she wasn’t friendly any more. Then she winked away a tear and gave me a little shake. “Jack, why do you lie to me?”

  “Why, Miss Eleanor, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “You have lied to me. Now there’s no use your trying to deceive me about what you’ve been doing. I’ve been suspecting it all along. You don’t study these parts up at all. You stand there with a cheeky look on your face and read them off at sight and only pretend you got them up. And this morning, when you sang it right and everybody else sang it wrong, it was because you were reading it off Dr. Grant’s book, which is a very beautifully printed collection of celebrated hymns with no misprints in it at all,
where all the others had the cheap edition that belongs to the church, and that you have at home to study from. So I know, of course. Now why do you still look me in the eye and say you don’t know how it happened?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” She stared at the piano a few minutes, then got up and went out. When she came back she had a bunch of lilacs she said I was to take to my aunts. I knew I was to go.

  I don’t know why, but when I got halfway home I turned around and marched right back again. I wish I could say I woke up to the wrong of lying, but I can’t. All I can remember is that I kept thinking how soft she felt, and it was like when you touch a baby and you feel like Christmas Eve and never want to do wrong any more. I knew I had to go back and do something about it. She looked surprised when she saw me again, but I started right in: “Miss Eleanor, I did what you said.”

  “... Come in.”

  She took me over to the couch again, sat me back on the cushion, and ran her fingers through my hair. “Did Miss Sheila teach you how?”

  “How to what?”

  “Read at sight.”

  “... What’s reading at sight?”

  “Well, most people, unless they’re professionals, have to read on some instrument, usually piano, for pitch and to make sure they’re getting it right. But—Jack, do you mean you just stumbled on it by accident? That you looked at the notes, and after a little practice there in the choir you knew how they went? That nobody had to tell you?”

  “Is it supposed to be hard or something?”

  “Jack, I just love it.”

  She took me in her arms, and hugged me, and gave me little pats, and then went to the icebox and got out some sherbet she had stashed there. She explained to me about sight reading, and how unusual it was for somebody to be able to do it without particularly knowing how they did it. What excited her was that she thought she had some kind of a musical genius wrapped up in the same package as a pretty good boy soprano. In that she was wrong. But we didn’t know anything for sure then, except that I was a kid that wasn’t getting anywhere at a rapid rate of speed, and that she was a pretty girl widowed by the war and somehow out of step with her trade. It seemed exciting that we should cook up a secret between us, that I was to say nothing to anyone about it, that she would give me lessons and make a famous singer out of me, and I would make her laugh. “The way you’ve been standing up there, with a pious look on your face, and pretending to have your parts down pat, and not doing a thing but reading it off stone cold—that’s what enchants me.”