Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar

by Richard Ford

  ‘Where’s the car?’

  ‘Mom took it.’

  ‘This early?’

  He flicked the cigarette toward the road and kneeled on the porch and started rolling.

  ‘Where’d she go so early?’

  ‘Late. Let’s go.’

  He trotted around the lawn and pushed up the garage door and went around the pickup; he did not look at Chris until he had unlocked the chain and pulled it from around the post, coiled it under his bicycle seat, and locked it there. His hands were ink-stained.

  ‘You can leave your chain. We’ll use mine at the beach.’

  He took the canvas sack from its nail on the post and hung it from his right side, its strap over his left shoulder, and walked his bicycle past the truck and out into the sun. At the front porch he stuffed the papers into the sack. Then he looked at Chris.

  ‘We’re not late,’ Chris said.

  ‘She left late. Late last night.’ He pushed down his kickstand. ‘Hold on. Let’s get these papers out.’

  ‘She left?’

  ‘Don’t you start crying on me. Goddamnit, don’t.’

  Chris looked down at his handlebar.

  ‘They had a fight,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Then she’ll be back.’

  ‘Not this time. She’s fucking somebody.’

  Chris looked up, shaking his head. Shaking it, he said: ‘No.’

  ‘You want to hear about it or you just going to stand there and tell me I didn’t hear what I heard.’

  ‘Okay, tell me.’

  ‘Shit. I was going to tell you at the beach. Wait, okay?’

  ‘Sixty-two papers?’

  ‘You know she’s gone. Isn’t that enough for a while?’ He kicked up his stand. ‘Look. We’ve hardly ever lived with both of them. It’ll be like Pop’s aboard ship. Only it’ll be her.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘What’s not.’

  ‘About hardly ever living with both of them.’

  ‘It almost is. Let’s go.’

  Slowly across the grass, then onto the road, pumping hard, shifting gears, heading into the breeze and sun, listening for cars to their rear, sometimes looking over his shoulder at the road and Chris’s face, the sack bumping his right thigh and sliding forward but he kept shoving it back, keeping the rhythm of his pedalling and his throws: the easy ones to the left, a smooth motion across his chest like second to first, snapping the paper hard and watching it drop on the lawn; except for the people who didn’t always pay on time or who bitched at him, and he hit their porches or front doors, a good hard sound in the morning quiet. He liked throwing to his right better. The first week or so he had cheated, had angled his bicycle toward the houses and thrown overhand; but then he stopped that, and rode straight, leaning back and throwing to his right, sometimes having to stop and leave his bicycle and get a paper from under a bush or a parked car in the driveway, but soon he was hitting the grass just before the porch, unless it was a house that had a door or wall shot coming, and he could do that with velocity too. Second to short. He finished his road by scaring himself, hitting Reilly’s big front window instead of the wall beside it, and it shook but didn’t break and when he turned his bicycle and headed back he grinned at Chris, who still looked like someone had just punched him in the mouth.

  He went left up a climbing road past a pine grove, out of its shade into the warmth on his face: a long road short on customers, twelve of them scattered, and he rode faster, thinking of Chris behind him, pink-cheeked, breathing hard. Ahead on the right he saw Thompson’s collie waiting on the lawn, and he pulled out a paper and pushed the sack behind his leg, then rose from the seat pumping toward the house, sitting as he left the road and bounced on earth and grass: he threw the paper thumping against the open jaws, his front tire grazing the yelping dog as it scrambled away, and he lightly hand-braked for his turn then sped out to the road again. He threw two more to his left and started up a long steep hill for the last of the route: the road cut through woods, in shade now, standing, the bicycle slowing as the hill steepened near the hardest house of all: the Claytons’ at the top of the hill, a pale green house with a deep front lawn: riding on the shoulder, holding a paper against the handlebar, standing, his legs hot and tight, then at the top he sat to throw, the bicycle slowing, leaning, and with his left hand he moved the front wheel from side to side while he twisted to his right and cocked his arm and threw; he stood on the pedals and gained balance and speed before the paper landed sliding on the walk. The road wound past trees and fifteen customers and twice that many houses. He finished quickly. Then he got off his bicycle, sweating, and folded the sack and put it in his orange nylon saddlebag, and they started back, Chris riding beside him.

  From one house near the road he smelled bacon. At another he saw a woman at the kitchen window, her head down, and he looked away. Some of the papers were inside now. At Clayton’s house he let the hill take him down into the shade to flat land and, Chris behind him now, he rode past the wide green and brown salt marsh, its grass leaning with the breeze that was cool and sea-tanged on his face, moving the hair at his ears. There were no houses. A fruit and vegetable stand, then the bridge over the tidal stream: a quick blue flow, the tide coming in from the channel and cove beyond a bend to the north, so he could not see them, but he knew how the cove looked this early, with green and orange charter boats tied at the wharves. An hour from now, the people would come. He and Chris and his father went a few afternoons each summer, with sandwiches and soft drinks and beer in the ice chest, and his father drank steadily but only a six-pack the whole afternoon, and they stood abreast at the rail, always near the bow, the boat anchored a mile or two out, and on lucky days filled a plastic bag with mackerel slapping tails till they died, and on unlucky ones he still loved the gentle rocking of the boat and the blue sea and the sun warmly and slowly burning him. Twice in late summer they had bottom-fished and pulled up cusks from three hundred feet, tired arm turning the reel, cusk breaking the surface with eyes pushed outward and guts in its mouth. His mother had gone once. She had not complained, had pretended to like it, but next time she told them it was too much sun, too smelly, too long. Had she been with that son of a bitch when they went fishing again? The boats headed in at five and his father inserted a cleaning board into a slot in the gunwale and handed them slick cool mackerel and he and Chris cleaned them and threw their guts and heads to the sea gulls that hovered and cried and dived until the boat reached the wharf. Sometimes they could make a gull come down and take a head from their fingers.

  They rode past beach cottages and up a one-block street to the long dune that hid the sea, chained their bicycles to a telephone pole, and sprinted over loose sand and up the dune; then walking, looking at the empty beach and sea and breakers, stopping to take off sneakers and shirts. Jimmy stuffing his three bills into a sneaker, then running onto wet hard sand, into the surf cold on his feet and ankles. Chris beside him, and they both shouted at once, at the cold but to the sea as well, and ran until the water pushed at their hips and they walked out toward the sea and low sun, his feet hurting in the cold. A wave came and they turned their backs to it and he watched over his shoulder as it rose; when it broke they dived and he was riding it fast, swallowing water, and in that instant of old sea-panic he saw his father crying; he opened his eyes to the sting, his arms stretched before him, hands joined, then he was lying on the sand and the wave was gone and he stood shouting: ‘All right.’ They ran back into the sea and body-surfed until they were too cold, then walked stiffly up to higher sand. He lay on his back beside his clothes, looked at the sky; soon people would come with blankets and ice chests. Chris lay beside him. He shut his eyes.

  ‘I was listening to the ball game when they came home. With the ear plug. They won, three to two. Lee went all the way. Rice drove in two with a double—’ Bright field and uniforms under the lights in Oakland, him there too while he lay on his bunk, watching Lee working fast, Remy going to his left a
nd diving to knock it down, on his knees for the throw in time when they came in talking past the door and down the hall to the kitchen— ‘They talked low for a long time; that’s when they were drinking whiskey and mostly I just heard Pop getting ice, then I don’t know why but after a while I knew it was trouble, all that ice and quiet talk and when they popped cans I figured they’d finished the whiskey and they were still talking that way so I started listening. She had already told him. That’s what they were talking about. Maybe she told him at the Chief’s Club. She was talking nice to him—’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said—shit—’ He opened his eyes to the blue sky, closed them again, pressed his legs into the warm sand, listened to the surf. ‘She said I’ve tried to stop seeing him. She said Don’t you believe I’ve tried? You think I want to hurt you? You know what it’s like. I can’t stop. I’ve tried and I can’t. I wish I’d never met him. But I can’t keep lying and sneaking around. And Pop said Bullshit: you mean you can’t keep living here when you want to be fucking him. They didn’t say anything for a minute and they popped two more cans, then she said You’re right. But maybe I don’t have to leave. Maybe if you’d just let me go to him when I wanted to. That’s when he started yelling at her. They went at it for a long time, and I thought you’d wake up. I turned the game up loud as I could take it but it was already the ninth, then it was over, and I couldn’t stop hearing them anyway. She said Jason would never say those things to her, that’s all I know about that son of a bitch, his name is Jason and he’s a civilian somewhere and she started yelling about all the times Pop was aboard ship he must have had a lot of women and who did he think he was anyway and she’d miss you and me and it broke her heart how much she’d miss you and me but she had to get out from under his shit, and he was yelling about she was probably fucking every day he was at sea for the whole twenty years and she said You’ll never know you bastard you can just think about it for another twenty. That’s when he slapped her.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Then she cried a little, not much, then they drank some more beer and talked quiet again. He was trying to make up to her, saying he was sorry he hit her and she said it was her fault, she shouldn’t have said that, and she hadn’t fucked anybody till Jason—’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘What.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yes. She was talking nice to him again, like he was a little kid, then she went to their room and packed a suitcase and he went to the front door with her, and I couldn’t hear what they said. She went outside and he did too and after she drove off he came back to the kitchen and drank beer.’ He raised his head and looked past his feet at a sea gull bobbing on the water beyond the breakers. ‘Then he cried for a while. Then he went to bed.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve never heard him cry.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish you had.’

  ‘I did. This morning.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘I guess she’ll visit us or something.’

  ‘What if they send Pop to sea again and we have to go live with her and that guy?’

  ‘Don’t be an asshole. He’s retiring and he’s going to buy that boat and we’ll fish like bastards. I’m going to catch a big fucking tuna and sell it to the Japanese and buy you some weights.’

  He squeezed Chris’s bicep and rose, pulling him up. Chris turned his face, looking up the beach. Jimmy stepped in front of him, still holding his arm.

  ‘Look: I heard Pop cry last night. For a long time. Loud. That’s all the fucking crying I want to hear. Now let’s take another wave and get some doughnuts.’

  They ran into the surf, wading coldly to the wave that rose until there was no horizon, no sea, only the sky beyond it.

  Dottie from tenth grade was working the counter, small and summer-brown.

  ‘Wakefield boys are here,’ Jimmy said. ‘Six honey dip to go.’

  He only knew her from math and talking in the halls, but the way she smiled at him, if it were any other morning, he would stay and talk, and any other day he would ask her to meet him in town tonight and go on some of the rides, squeeze her on the roller coaster, eat pizza and egg rolls at the stands, get somebody to buy them a six-pack, take it to the beach. He told her she was foxy, and got a Kool from her. Cars were on the roads now, but so many that they were slow and safe, and he and Chris rode side by side on the shoulder; Chris held the doughnut bag against the handlebar and ate while Jimmy smoked, then he reached over for the bag and ate his three. When they got near the house it looked quiet. They chained their bicycles in the garage and crept into the kitchen and past the closed door, to the bathroom. In the shower he pinched Chris’s gut and said: ‘No shit, we got to work on that.’

  They put on gym shorts and sneakers and took their gloves and ball to the backyard.

  ‘When we get warmed up I’m going to throw at your face, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You’re still scared of it there and you’re ducking and you’ll get hurt that way.’

  The new baseball smooth in his hand and bright in the sun, smacking in Chris’s glove, coming back at him, squeezed high in the pocket and webbing, then he heard the back door and held the ball and watched his father walking out of the shade into the light. He squinted at his father’s stocky body and sunburned face and arms, his rumpled hair, and motioned to Chris and heard him trotting on the grass. He was nearly as tall as his father, barely had to tilt his head to look into his eyes. He breathed the smell of last night’s booze, this morning’s sleep.

  ‘I heard you guys last night,’ he said. ‘I already told him.’

  His father’s eyes shifted to Chris, then back.

  ‘She’ll come by tomorrow, take you boys to lunch.’ He scratched his rump, looked over his shoulder at the house, then at Jimmy. ‘Maybe later we’ll go eat some lobsters. Have a talk.’

  ‘We could cook them here,’ Chris said.

  ‘Sure. Steamers too. Okay: I’ll be out in a minute.’

  They watched him walk back to the house, then Jimmy touched Chris, gently pushed him, and he trotted across the lawn. They threw fly balls and grounders and one-hop throws from the outfield and straight ones to their bare chests, calling to each other, Jimmy listening to the quiet house too, seeing it darker in there, cooler, his father’s closet where in a corner behind blue and khaki uniforms the shotgun leaned. He said, ‘Here we go,’ and threw at Chris’s throat, then face, and heard the back door, his breath quickened, and he threw hard: the ball grazed the top of Chris’s glove and struck his forehead and he bent over, his bare hand rubbing above his eye, then he was crying deeply and Jimmy turned to his running father, wearing his old glove, hair wet and combed, smelling of after-shave lotion, and said: ‘He’s all right, Pop. He’s all right.’

  Stuart Dybek

  SAUERKRAUT SOUP

  I couldn’t eat. Puking felt like crying. At first, I almost enjoyed it the way people do who say they had a good cry. I had a good puke or two. But I was getting tired of sleeping in a crouch.

  “It’s not cancer; it’s not even flu,” the doctor told me.

  “What is it?”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Puking makes me nervous.”

  “It’s not nerves. It’s lack of nerve,” Harry, my best friend, a psych major, told me.

  He’d come over to try exorcising it—whatever it was—with a gallon of Pisano. Like all its, it swam in the subconscious, that flooded sewer pipe phosphorescent with jellyfish. We believed in drink the way saints believed in angels.

  It took till four in the morning to kill the Pisano, listening to Harry’s current favorites, the “Moonlight Sonata” and “Ghost Trio,” over and over on the little Admiral stereo with speakers unfolded like wings. We were composing a letter to a gi
rl Harry had met at a parapsychology convention. All he’d say about her is that she lived in Ohio and had told him, “Ectoplasm is the come of the dead.”

  He opened the letter: “In your hair the midnight hovers. . . .”

  “Take ‘the’ out, at least,” I said.

  “Why? It sounds more poetic.”

  “It’s melodramatic.”

  “She’s from Ohio, man. She craves melodrama.”

  Working on that theory, we wrote he was alone, listening to the “Moonlight Sonata,” sipping wine, waiting for dawn, thinking of her far away across the prairie in Ohio, thinking of the moonlight entering her bedroom window and stealing across her body, her breasts, her thighs. We ended with the line “My dick is a moonbeam.”

  I watched him lick the envelope and suddenly my mouth seemed full of glue and the taste of stamps. My tongue was pasted to the roof of my mouth. I gagged. From dawn till noon I heaved up wine while Harry lay passed out on the floor, the needle clicking at the end of the record. It felt like weeping.

  After a week’s hunger strike against myself I still didn’t know what I was protesting. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I did remember my father telling me he’d had an ulcer in his twenties. It was during the war. He’d just been married and was trying to get his high-school diploma in night school, working at a factory all day. Once, climbing the stairs to the El, the pain hit him so hard he doubled up and couldn’t make it to the platform. He sat on the stairs groaning, listening to the trains roar overhead while rush-hour crowds shoved by him. Nobody tried to help.

  “Must have figured me for a drunk,” he said.

  It was one of his few good stories, the only one except for the time he’d ridden a freight to Montana during the Depression, when I could imagine him young.