The Moth

by James M. Cain

  It didn’t help any, the Old Man’s idea of how to get me interested in the serious side of life, on the basis of what we were going to do with the music money. I hadn’t paid much attention to it, that I remember now, except to do what Miss Eleanor had said do, which was to put most of it, around $4,500, in a savings account, and try to spend as little of the rest as possible. But when the end of the summer came around, and all the stores advertised sales on suits, it seemed a good idea I should buy one. There was nothing very new about it, as I’d already bought one, the one I wore to Margaret’s german, my first with long pants, back in the spring, so it wasn’t as though I was starting a one-guy revolution. But when I found a number I liked pretty well, a pin-striped, double-breasted blue in the window at the Hub, with fedora hat, malacca stick, and two-toned, suede-topped shoes to go with it, all exactly like the signed picture of Antonio Scotti that Miss Eleanor had had on the piano, you’d have thought I had set the garage on fire or something. Sheila wept and tore her hair and said I looked like “lower Broadway,” whatever that was. Nancy said I certainly had fallen under “peculiar influences.” And it was all the worse, from the standpoint of crossing me up, because the suit had had one effect of a most desirable kind, before they even saw it. I wore it home, of course, but took the car that ran near Miss Deets’s house to check with Denny on what we were doing that night, or anyhow that’s what I made out I was stopping by for. Mainly it was to let him get a load of the dazzola-dizzola, and it certainly worked. Since the flop at Camden he had been getting familiar again, marching right beside me, catching in step. But the suit did it. I didn’t advertise it, didn’t even remember it. I just asked if he could make it the late show that night, instead of the first, as there were things I had to do after dinner. He nodded and didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I could tell by the look in his eye.

  So when I ran into this bawling out on Mt. Royal Terrace I felt like a typographical error. But so far as my father was concerned, nothing came of it that night, or the next, or for a month or two. It wasn’t till the cold weather hit, and Miss Eleanor had left for New York, and Denny for Frederick, that I was invited in the den one Saturday afternoon, just after lunch, and just before I was due to shove off for a football game. “Jack, I think you need a new coat.”

  “I’m going to get one.”

  “I’ll get it. I—had intended to.”

  “I can get it. I’ve got money.”

  “I think it my duty to clothe you yet, whether you’ve been fortunate about money or not. And, as to attire, you might be guided by older persons’ advice. On taste, suitability, such things. I—can’t say the latest acquisition impresses me a great deal.”

  “You mean my suit?”

  “Aye—and accessories.”

  “What’s the matter with them?”

  “A bit romantic, I would say.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “‘Romantic’ means associated with the Mediterranean Sea.”

  “I got it at the Hub.”

  “I talked with Mr. Spicer down there, and he was good enough to inquire of the salesman who served you, and learn the circumstances. It seems you mentioned certain singers.”

  “Mr. Scotti’s a dresser.”

  “Perhaps that’s why I take exception.”

  He started talking about clothes, and why a dresser’s not generally a guide on how to dress, all pretty good stuff, as I know now. He said taste is always acquired, and invariably relative, and that the main thing to be remembered was that appropriateness was its basic element. Wine fit for fish, he said, is not necessarily fit for beef, and clothes fit for the Metropolitan Opera weren’t necessarily the right things for Mt. Royal Terrace, Baltimore, Md. But I was still pining for Miss Eleanor, and all I could make out of it was some kind of a crack at her. “If there was something wrong with singers it’s funny Dr. Grant would put one in charge of us.”

  “Did I say something against singers?”

  “Sounded like it.”

  “Why, I’ve been a singer. Mr. McCormack and I—”

  “Yeah, I know about that.”

  “As for Miss Grant, I’ve nothing but admiration for her. I was perfectly content, you may remember, that you study with her. I may say that the first suit you got yourself, at a time when you were seeing so much of her, and as I suppose accepting her guidance, did you credit—so much so that I refrained from raising the issue of parental authority, and forbade my sisters to do so.”

  “I had no guidance.”

  “Then you did very well. However, we’ll do better, for the next few years anyway, if you accept some sort of supervision. Tomorrow we’ll both go over to the Hub, I’ll resume my duties as a father, and I imagine come out of it with something creditable in the way of a coat.”

  But who went to the Hub was all four of us, Nancy, Sheila, he, and I. And for some reason I don’t understand, even now as I write about it, I just wouldn’t try anything on. I just sat there, and when we came home it was pretty thick and each of them went upstairs.

  But the weather kept getting colder, and I kept thinking of a coat I had seen a guy try on that day, a blue, with a belt, and long loose lines that would just go with the double-breasted suit. So one day I went down there, and it was still unsold, and I tried it on. It fit like it had been poured on me. I paraded up and down in front of all the mirrors, and tried it with the stick and without the stick, and the more I tried it the better I liked it. So I took it and sat down and wrote a check. I wanted to wear it out of there, but they said something about pressing it and lengthening the sleeves a bit, which of course I know now had to do with the check, which wasn’t something a fourteen-year-old boy came in there with every day. But then I paid no attention, and went home, and began watching for delivery trucks. But instead of a truck, one day came a letter from them. They said no doubt there had been some mistake; but would I kindly straighten the matter out so they could send me my coat? And enclosed was my check. On it was a stamp that said payment had been refused, but the reason it had been refused was written in ink, and I couldn’t make it out. So at lunch hour that day I went around to the bank and talked to Mr. Parrot. “Yes, Jack, it was the only thing we could do, and in fact I handled it myself. But there’s the court order, and it’s binding on us.”

  “Court order?”

  “... The one obtained by your father.”

  He rummaged in his desk and came up with a paper with brass staples and a blue cover and handed it over to me. It had my father’s name on it and the bank officers’ names on it and the bank itself, and said something about John Dillon, a minor. “You see, Jack, sometimes a situation arises, as a rule in connection with some child actor or athlete or in your case a singer, where considerable money has been earned and the parent is right smack up against it to know what he should do. Because if he lets the child keep it, the chances are it’ll be dissipated, where if he takes over himself he’s assuming a responsibility, but at least the money’s safe. So that’s what your father has done with you. All very friendly, and for your own good. He went to court, had himself appointed guardian, took possession of your accounts, and got an injunction, this thing I just showed you, that prohibits us from honoring your checks or paying out money to any order but his own. Now my suggestion would be you go home and talk it over with him, because it so happens I’m pretty familiar with the plans he’s made for you, and I think you’re going to be pretty happy about it, and on his part, he’ll be relieved.”

  But I didn’t go home, anyway right away. But at last, if I was going to get anything to eat, I had to meander around to Mt. Royal. And it was in front of my aunts, at the dinner table, that my father opened up: “Mr. Parrot rang me to say you’d been in.”

  “Yeah, I saw him.”

  “I—took over your funds.”

  “So he told me.”

  “Purely as a precautionary measure.”

  “Precautionary against what?”

  “Further indu
lgences in extravagance.”

  “Which indulgences are you talking about?”

  “That suit you have on.”

  “I like it.”

  “I regard it as a waste of money.”

  “I didn’t ask you how you regarded it.”

  “If I’m responsible I’ll not wait to be asked.”

  “And how did you get responsibility, is what I—”

  But I never finished it, whatever bright remark I was about to make. Because Nancy jumped up and slammed out, saying she wouldn’t listen to such insolence, and Sheila burst out at me, wanting to know how I could dare talk like that. To her I said nothing. I didn’t regard her as bright anyhow, or think it was any of her business, so what I would be saying to her I didn’t quite know. But there was another reason too. My head was pounding by then, with a steady stab that’s always been a warning to me I’m going to blow my top. So when she stopped, for fear I might say something mean, I sat there a few seconds just looking at my plate. Then the Old Man rasped at me: “Answer her!”

  “You answer her.”

  “You ungrateful whelp, here I’ve embarrassed myself, gone against my inclination, all to save you from your own silly weaknesses, and—”

  On the end of the table, where Nancy had been sitting, was the silver tray with the coffee service. I got up, hauled off with the foot that was to score so many football points later, and whammed that tray against the kitchen door with a crash you could hear a mile. My father jumped up and came at me. But I hadn’t forgotten what I did to Anderson. When he grabbed me by the coat collar I knocked his hand away. He ran out of the room, and when he came back he had my stick that I had parked in the umbrella stand in the hall. He began cutting at me with it, trying to beat me across the rump, while Sheila began to scream. I took a couple of whacks, to catch his cadence, and on the third I grabbed it and wheeled so I had both hands on it and twisted. He was pretty strong, a medium-size guy, but heavy-chested, with a ruddy, sunburned face. To me, even at that time, he seemed weak as a child. The stick came away in my hands. I handed it back. “Will you put it where you got it, please? I don’t like things to get mislaid.”

  He set it in the corner, his face the color of firebrick, and sat down to the table again. Sheila got up sobbing and left the room. Arabella, the colored cook, came in the room and began to clean up the mess. I sat down and told her: “Arabella, would you make a little more coffee, please? I think I’d like some hot.”

  That settled it, whether anyone around there could lick me or not, but it didn’t get me my money back, and it didn’t help much with the feeling I was having all the time, that I was on my own, with everyone pretty much against me. It was a long time before I came to the table. I ate in the kitchen, and used the back door to go in and out. I had no trouble, by that time, getting work. I’ve got kleptomaniac fingers, that can untie jammed shoelaces in the dark without turning on the light, and can pretty well tell, from the feel of the motor, whether it’s the distributor, pump, plugs, or what, and by that time there was hardly a garage that wouldn’t take me on whenever I wanted a job. So for a while that’s how I got my money, because my father wasn’t the kind to go soft and arbitrate.

  “Will you help trim the tree, Jack?”

  “... All right, Nancy, I don’t mind.”

  “Is Denny in town yet?”

  “Not yet he isn’t.”

  “Is he spending Christmas with Miss Deets?”

  “I think he is, yes.”

  “Then would you and he like to go out and get a tree from Mr. Olson’s place? For us and Miss Deets?”

  “I imagine that’s all right.”

  It was in the kitchen, on a cold morning in December, right after Arabella had finished giving me scrapple and buckwheat cakes. So when Denny got to town, which was a couple of days later, we drifted over to the garage and Kratzer gave me the light truck and we went on out to Olson’s place for trees. Olson had a chicken farm out toward Relay, but there was a woods on it, and in return for us taking eggs off him the year round we had a standing invitation to come over and help ourselves to Christmas stuff. So pretty soon we found trees, a bunch of scrub pine on a hillock. Denny was for chopping them down, but I hate sloppy work, so we sawed them, one for Miss Deets and one for us. Then we found some holly and sawed it out. Mistletoe took us quite a while, and as nothing had been said about getting any, I was for coming home with what we had. But Denny got to laughing so hard at the idea of anybody kissing Nancy or Sheila or Miss Eunice that we had to find some, just for the hell of it. So at last, on a black walnut, we found three or four bunches. The limb it was attached to took some sawing, but when we finally got it, it looked like something. That night I stayed at Miss Deets’s for supper, but as usual he went too far, and got to imagining just what it would be like if any one of the three got a chance at what mistletoe was for, and I had to shut him up.

  On Mt. Royal, when we lit the tree Christmas Eve, I had candy and handkerchiefs and stuff under it for Nancy and Sheila, and a scarf for the Old Man, so by the time the carolers got there, things were easier. Then I found a little box marked for me, with a key in it. Something inside me gave a jump, and I went to the door and looked. There at the curb was the snappiest little gray Chevvie you ever saw, and when I went out there and tried it, the key fitted and the car went. I drove it around the block and came back and went inside. Well, what do you do in a case like that? I took the Old Man’s hand and held it, and his eyes filmed over, and I had to run up to my room. I bawled until I thought the house must be shaking, and pretty soon I could feel it, he was there in the room with me. Then he wiped my eyes and we went down. I’d be a liar if I didn’t say I wasn’t so glad it hurt.

  Not long after that, two or three days I guess, anyway during the holidays, he brought me in the study again, and for the first time opened up, in a fair and square way so we could talk, on the subject of my money. “To begin with, I want to explain what I did, to tell you the reason I had for doing it, of going to court without telling you, and plastering papers all over your accounts.”

  “Well, what was the reason?”

  “I was afraid to tell you what I intended doing.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “You were under a certain influence.”

  “I hadn’t seen Miss Eleanor in weeks.”

  “Be that as it may, my risk, if I dallied with it, was that it would be out of my hands before a court could act at all. All you had to do was withdraw the cash, as you had a perfect right to do, and once you handed it over to somebody else, or hid it, or got it out of the state, that would end any chance I might have of taking it over for you.”

  “I never even thought of anything like that.”

  “So I now realize.”

  “But why have you got to take it over?”

  “It’s my responsibility.”

  “I made the money.”

  “... I’ve been over that, in my mind, a thousand times. However, the fact that by some freak chance you briefly had a singing voice, an overwhelming thing to me, I may say, if I never said it before, does not change the basic fact: It is my duty to see that you get the full benefit of this money, to make sure it is not dissipated by some youthful impulse, or extravagance, or at the suggestion of well-intending friends. I can’t evade that, and I’ll have you know, at the outset, I haven’t evaded it, regardless of how you feel about it, and I won’t. In a friendly, wholly affectionate way, it that clear?”

  “I get it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But you don’t accept it?”

  “It’s gone and done.”

  “I want you to understand the right of it.”

  “If you’re satisfied, then O.K.”

  “It’s for your sake, not my own, that I did what I did. Don’t you understand that at your age you face a temptation to squander this money?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m protecting you from that.”

  “But if it’s my mone
y?”

  “You nevertheless should have the benefit of my guardianship, to save you from something which is not for your own good.”

  “Everybody squanders money. You do.”

  “That is true.”

  “Why not me?”

  “You assume no responsibility... As you say, the whole world squanders money, and indeed whole industries rest on the assumption that mankind will indulge any luxury it can pay for. But mankind assumes its own responsibility. You, as a minor, are unable to assume such responsibility. Who sees that you eat is not you, but I. And so long as I have responsibility, I demand authority.”

  “Well, you’ve got it.”

  “I want you to think this thing over.”

  “Don’t worry, I have.”