The Frightened Ones

by Melba Marlett

  He said, with what dignity he could muster, “I’m putting by for the future. You’ll be glad of it someday.”

  “I won’t be glad of it. How much do we need for a future? We have enough right now for the rest of our lives. You’ll keep right on scrimping to the edge of your grave, and what for?”

  “There might come a time when we’ll need it. Waste not, want not, my mother always said.”

  “Your mother was a poor girl from the Old Country. It’s natural that, when she finally got a house and a nest egg, she’d hang onto them. But you’ve no excuse. You think you’re saving for something, but you’re not. You’re saving because you enjoy it, because you think more of houses and furniture and money than you do of people!”

  “Just because I won’t let you be wasteful—”

  She leaned toward him, her hands crushing the gaudy birthday trimmings on the table. “Answer me one thing, Walter. Will you send George to college when he’s ready to go?”

  “That’s a long time off, May. Time to think about that when—”

  “Right now. I want your promise. In writing. I want a legal contract with you that you’ll send George to college.”

  “Maybe he won’t want to go. After he finishes high school, perhaps he’ll go into business or—”

  “Would you help him get started in a business, then? Business or college, do you have any intention of doing something for him?”

  He looked judicious. “Well now, that depends. Too much help makes a young fellow soft. I don’t want him spoiled. He’ll be all the better for coming up the hard way. You’re being unreasonable, May.”

  She studied his face for a minute. Then, without another word, she began clearing the table. When she picked up the boy’s new jacket to carry it upstairs, he said magnanimously, “He can keep that, since you’ve bought it. If he only wears it for good, it’ll last a long time.”

  “Yes, he’ll keep it,” she said, and walked out of the room.

  By the time he came home the next afternoon she had gone, taking the boy and every stitch that belonged to the two of them. He was too proud, too outraged, to go after them. And, with the first shock over, he had been glad to be alone again in the spotless, unlittered rooms, with no outward drains on his patience or his purse.

  There had never been a divorce. May and George settled in Wentworth, and once in a while he saw her on Main Street there, hurrying to work. His lawyer advised him that the courts might allow her something for the child’s maintenance, but she did not ask for anything and he did not offer it. She died when George was in medical school, and he allowed her to be buried in his family plot, though he did not attend the funeral. After all, they had not spoken to each other in thirteen years.

  It was early in their separation, however, that he had made his will, to punish her. He had a second cousin, Agatha Munn, a sensible woman about his own age, widowed, making her living in Flint by running a very clean boardinghouse, where she set a plain but nourishing table. In Agatha’s eyes Walt was a great man. On his rare visits she treated him with flattering deference, not only asking his advice on business matters but taking it. The two of them agreed on everything: that free milk for impoverished school children was a waste of taxpayers’ money, since it further encouraged their parents in shiftless ways; that no one appreciated anything he got for nothing; that the amount of money a man acquired was an absolute measure of his intelligence.

  It was to Agatha that he willed his fortune and his house. She would handle his affairs well, and she had a son as careful as herself to carry on after her. To May and George he put down a grudging thousand dollars apiece; and even after May’s death he kept the will sturdily intact. He would teach the son the lesson that the mother hadn’t had a chance to learn.

  He swerved from this severity just once. On the occasion of George’s graduation from medical school old Walt sent his son a check for fifty dollars. He regretted the impulse almost immediately, told himself that he had started something, that the boy would be expecting future handouts. And he was dumfounded when, on the very day that George moved into his combined house and office in Wentworth, he brought the check, still uncashed, out to the house.

  “I don’t need this, Dad. Thanks a lot, anyway.”

  Old Walt covered his relief by being gruff. “Didn’t know you’d gotten so rich. Working your way through school must be more profitable than I thought.”

  “No, it isn’t profitable. But you need this worse than I do.”

  Indignation made him reckless. “That’s foolish! Do you have any idea how much I’m worth?”

  “What you’re worth to whom?” George said, smiling.

  He couldn’t figure out why he had felt insulted, nor why George, before he left, had seemed sorry about the whole thing. “Get this straight, Dad. I don’t want your money. I’ll never touch a cent of it. Let’s forget all about how rich or poor we are and see if we can’t build up some kind of relationship on that basis.”

  Crazy talk. Unbelievable. Yet, as the years hurried by and George faithfully kept up his visits, old Walt was forced to believe it. Test and probe as he might, he could not find a flaw in George’s indifference to his wealth. The nearest he came was when George mentioned how badly Wentworth needed a hospital.

  “Even a clinic would do. Three or four beds for emergency cases. Operating facilities. Every year we lose some patients who can’t last out the trip to Meyersville. The town says they can’t afford it. My opinion is they can’t afford not to afford it.”

  Old Walt watched him from beneath his brows. “Might be a good thing for an old codger like me to sink my money into. Do some good before I go.”

  He saw the quick fight on George’s face, but it lasted only an instant. Then George laughed a little. “No, Dad. I wasn’t hinting. You mustn’t think of such a thing.”

  “Why mustn’t I?” he said petulantly. “I didn’t say I would, but what’s so funny in my thinking about it?”

  “Believe me, I was laughing at myself,” George said apologetically.

  He ignored this. “You treat me as if I were a kid, still wet behind the ears. Got a swelled head, that’s what’s wrong with you. I’ll think and do as I please!”

  “What I meant was—well, if something I said made you decide to give Wentworth a clinic, look what would happen. You’d be unhappy the minute you’d done it. You’d feel bamboozled, and you’d be sorry, and you’d hold it all against me. That’s the way you are and you can’t help it. I don’t want that kind of thing to happen. I want us to be—friends.”

  There was a pressure in the old man’s chest and the faint, alarming pain he had noticed lately, but he managed to snarl, “Why should we be friends? What have I ever done for you? You come tramping in here without a bit of encouragement, and you belittle me to my face and probably laugh at me behind my back—”

  “That’s not so,” said George reasonably. “I’ve never belittled or laughed either. And if you’ve never done anything for me, at least you’ve not done anything against me. According to your lights, you’re honest and fair and, God knows, you’re self-sufficient. I can admire you for those things, and I do. As to why I come here, isn’t blood supposed to be thicker than water? I even think that you’d miss me a little if I didn’t come, though I don’t expect you to give me the satisfaction of saying so.”

  “Wouldn’t miss you at all,” muttered old Walt perversely.

  To himself, he had to admit that George’s visits made life more interesting. They talked about George’s cases and the best spray for fruit trees and the proper kind of power mower to buy. He even enjoyed George’s attempts at bossing him, though he opposed them stubbornly. He refused to have a telephone installed, he continued to change his own tires, shovel snow, prune the orchard, and paint the house. He snickered at any mention of balanced diet or vitamins. It so amused him to defy George on these matters that he arranged, each Friday evening, some remark that would outrage his son afresh.

  “W
ent up on the roof and cleaned the gutters today,” he would announce innocently. And George was off, talking warmly about the avoidance of strain on seventy-year-old hearts and the months in bed a broken hipbone would entail, while old Walt smiled wickedly to himself, the center of attention.

  On this particular Friday evening, he came in at dusk from raking ancient leaves, knowing that George would see the great piles as he drove up and be ready with a lecture by the time he set foot inside the door. He puttered around the kitchen, frying ham and potatoes, making coffee; and after the last pan had been scoured he went to his desk by the fireplace in the living room, threw more hickory logs into the blaze, sighed heavily as he sat down. He was tired tonight, and there was no telling how late George would be. It depended on the number of calls the boy had to make. Once it had been eleven o’clock before he arrived, and old Walt had been asleep in a chair.

  “This is too late for an early-rising gent like you to be up,” George had said, “but I need a cup of coffee. I’m glad you waited.”

  “Wasn’t waiting,” he had answered gruffly. “Just happened to fall asleep down here, that’s all.”

  Tonight he decided to occupy himself with checking the rent receipts and making up the cash on hand into tidy parcels to be locked away in his strongbox until his next visit to town. From one drawer he took his old leather money pouch, dropping it on the desk top with a solid, jingling thud. From another he brought out his account book.

  As he lifted this, his eye was caught by the long white envelope that lay beneath. His last will and testament. A hundred times he had seen it there without disturbing it, but this time he picked it up and sat turning the envelope in his hands.

  Were he to destroy this piece of paper, George would be a wealthy man. The foolish feeling he had come to have for the boy tempted him. He reminded himself, shudderingly, of what George would do with the money: the building of the clinic, and a fund set up for treating the worthless, free of charge; and, one way or another, it’d be give, give, give, until the work of old Walt’s entire lifetime had been frittered away. Impossible to contemplate. The prospect offended all his instincts. Provoked, he shoved the envelope to one side and turned to his accounting.

  How long he worked he did not know. He heard only the sighing of the fire and the punctual calling of the cuckoo clock from the kitchen. So, when he looked up and saw the man in the red sweater standing there, he was completely taken aback. Not afraid, exactly, but surprised and angry.

  “What the hell do you want?” he blurted out, getting to his feet.

  “The keys to the car in the garage out there,” said the man outrageously.

  Such unholy disregard for privacy and property floored the old man. “Why—what—you mean, you want a lift to someplace?”

  “That’s right, Pop. Only I’ll do my own driving. Where are the keys?”

  Old Walt became intensely conscious of the emptiness of the house, of the money littering the desk, of the gun rack not three feet behind the intruder’s shoulder. “I don’t hand out the keys to my car, mister,” he said firmly. “Now you go along about your business, if you know what’s good for you.”

  His fingers, creeping toward his pocket, had betrayed him. Quick as a striking snake, the man lunged for the coat pocket and came up with the keys. “Like taking candy from a baby, Pop.”

  “I’ll call my son!” old Walt said loudly. “I’ll call my son and he’ll—”

  “Quit bluffing. I been watching. There ain’t nobody else here. Do you think I’m a fool?” His black eyes glittered as he looked down at the desk. “Say, this is nice, real nice. Got any more of it in the house?” He began scooping the money up, stuffing it into his pockets.

  Old Walt saw his chance and took it. He ran past the man to the gun rack, pulling down an army revolver, pointed it at the scoundrel’s impudent back. “Now then,” he said, panting. “Now then. Put that back where you found it. You—you thief!”

  The man turned quickly and his eyes shone. “Guns!” he said softly. “What d’ya know! Guns.” He actually took a step forward.

  So unnerving was it to see pleasure where fear should have been that the old man hesitated. “Stay where you are! This is loaded. I warn you!” he called out desperately to the advancing enemy.

  Then, terrifyingly, the room began to whirl. An excruciating pain shot through his left arm and gripped his chest. He felt himself toppling to the floor amidst a great roaring in his ears. Consciousness departed and returned intermittently, so that, lying there motionless, he saw his surroundings only in occasional flashes, as if a light switch were being flicked on and off. He knew that the strange man was taking an overcoat and a hat from the closet and putting them on. He saw the gun lifted from his impotent hand, to be jammed into the overcoat pocket. But when or how the man left he did not know.

  There was a long gap, and then George was bending over him, his face distressed, his hands busy with a hypodermic needle. He wanted to ask George if the thief had been caught but he found it impossible to speak, and George, seeing his effort, forbade it.

  “You mustn’t move, Dad. Not a finger. Not an eyelash. I’ve put you on the couch here by the fire, and I’m wrapping you in a blanket. You have to stay warm and quiet while I run down to Yorks’ and phone for an ambulance. Understand? I’ll be gone just ten minutes. You must listen to me this time. Please.”

  Lying there alone, his mind began to collect itself. He had had a heart attack and he was going to die. The idea of death was so foreign to him that he nearly smiled at the absurdity of it. Well, not a bad way to leave the world, lying lazily here in this familiar room, watching the firelight dance on tire walls. His eyes lingered on it all, like a child bidding his favorite toys good night. The old pictures. The big armchair. The desk.

  The desk! A terrible urgency seized him. That white envelope lying there contained a foolish paper, drawn up in the days when he had been blind and ignorant. He loved George, there was no harm in admitting it now; and he wanted George to know it too. But suppose he should die before George got back? He must obviate that possibility. He was not going to deny himself this final pleasure of giving his son a present.

  He rolled himself off the couch. Walking was beyond him, but he could creep. Painfully, stubbornly, he inched his way to the desk, pulled himself up the side of it, grasped the will in his hand. He had to get close to the fireplace to make sure of his aim, but it was very near, and the paper was obedient. It fluttered into the flames, and he lay on the hearth, contented, watching it burn.

  He would have liked so much to tell George about everything: the intruder, the gun, the stolen car, and the present he had just given him. But time had run out. When he felt arms lifting him, he looked into his son’s face and tried to say, “Good boy.” The words were inarticulate. His head fell back against George’s shoulder, and his pulse ceased.

  * * * *

  Wentworth, a city of a hundred and fifty thousand souls, lies on the northwestern edge of Lake Michigan, in the state of Wisconsin. Summers, when the tourist season is under way, its population doubles. The little expensive shops reopen, the hotels import college students to augment their staffs, cabins and cottages are jammed, and hundreds of boats come to dance in the harbor. Winters, the town relapses into sedateness, like a conservative household that has survived the stay of a rich, hysterically gay relative. Snow fences go up along the roads and the town turns its back to the cutting wind off the lake and goes about its usual business at the dairy farm and boat factory.

  Asked to name Wentworth’s most prominent citizen, a native resident would reply unhesitatingly, “Mike Cassidy. You’ve heard of him? The big lawyer, goes all over the United States? Mike’s a local boy, one of the smartest we ever had. Big shots from Cleveland and Chicago come looking for Mike when they need a good lawyer. No, I don’t know him myself, except on sight. He doesn’t mix much. Not like his brother Paul.” A new enthusiasm would creep into the native’s voice. “Have you met Paul Cassi
dy? Cap, we call him. Well, you will. He knows everybody and everybody knows him. Big friendly guy, honest as the day is long, takes a real personal interest in people. One of the finest athletes in the state, in his time. He’s been our chief of police for the last ten years, and you won’t find a better-run department anywhere!”

  The average taxpayer in Wentworth had no idea that Cap Cassidy was about to lose his job. The people who knew it—a real estate man or two, the president of the bank, a big building contractor, two members of the City Council, Mayor Haynes, and Mike Cassidy—were keeping quiet about it, biding their time.

  But Cap Cassidy was finding out. He had felt the first premonition on a day, months ago, when Mike dropped in at City Hall. Usually the brothers saw each other only on Cap’s instigation. It was a bad sign when Mike came around on his own.

  “Nothing special on my mind,” Mike said, innocent-faced. “Have a few minutes to spare before I take the train to Chicago, thought I’d see how you were.”

  Cap admitted cautiously that he was fine, and Mike strolled about the office and talked about inconsequential matters. “Saw Laura downtown about a week ago. She tells me the youngsters have had the flu.”

  “A lot of it around.” He knew there was something Mike wanted to say, and since he didn’t come right out with it, he must be waiting for a cue. Carefully Cap introduced several likely subjects that fell flat. Then he said, “What’s taking you to Chicago?” By the slight straightening of Mike’s small wiry body, he knew immediately that he had given the proper line.

  “Have a client there I’m handling some business for. Named Frescatti. Ever hear of him?”

  “Angelo Frescatti? Sure, I’ve heard of him. Just like I’ve heard about the Capones and Bugsy Moran and—”

  “Come now. Come now. He isn’t quite that bad. You sound so virtuous, Paul.”

  He’d had a lifetime of Mike’s little jeers and he took the tiny stings as a matter of course. “I’ve even seen him. On television, when the Kefauver Committee was getting evidence about gambling in Chicago. My private opinion is that he ought to be hanged. How did you happen to get mixed up with a crook like him?”