“Is his nose bleeding again? Does it still bleed when he gets excited? Does he still carry two handkerchiefs everywhere?”
“For your information, Edmund works for the Midwestern National Bank. They’re training him. They’re training him for an important position in the credit department. And he goes to business school at night. He’s ambitious.”
“So am I.”
“Are you?”
“Of course I am. I’d like to kiss your lower lip. On both sides of that line. It looks like it was kissed up into two ripe little portions. And both delicious. It’s a beautiful mouth, Peggy. Now about this job. I think it’s a good job for the summer.”
“And what will you do this winter?”
“Save my strength for next summer. The melons might be heavier.”
“You just don’t understand. You’re getting off on the wrong foot. You’ll never live this down, Paul. Everyone is laughing at you.”
“Is that true?”
“Every word of it. Believe me.”
“Don’t you know Sam Ross has been doing this for years and years? He makes so much money in the summer he doesn’t lift a finger all winter. He’s got this big open fireplace at home. He burns these logs and warms his feet and looks for faces in that fire. While the wind blows and the snow piles up.”
“Is that all he does?”
“Now he’s got something else to do. He can laugh. He can laugh at all the people who laugh at him in the summer. I’m going to tell him to look for their faces in the fire. You’ll be on the list.”
“It’s a job for little boys and old men! You’re just starting out in life. What’ll happen when you go looking for a job and tell them you’ve been selling watermelons? From a wagon in the street? Well? What’s your ambition in life?”
“I want a wagon of my own.”
“Stop it, Paul.”
“And a white horse. With plumes as black as your hair.”
“I don’t even know why I’m talking to you.”
“I know why. You came to hear the secret.”
“Secret?” she said, alerted. “What secret?”
“Come closer. I’ll whisper it. Look at this. Do you know your ear is like a little hidden wing? So pretty and still with your hair waving and curving around it. Now there’s another secret. Do you know what the first one is? I’d like to whisper secrets in your ear.”
“And the second one?”
“I love you.”
“Oh, Paul,” she said, blushing.
“I wish I had a plum.”
“A plum?”
“I’m teasing. Really, Peggy, I love you with all my heart. I used to spend whole days in school watching your hair. And your ear. And the curve of your neck. It was enough for me. Why, I thought there was nothing more in the world. And then guess what? Remember that day a long time ago when I fell out of my desk and cut my head? Miss Goldberg thought I fainted.”
“I think I remember. Yes, Paul, I do remember.”
“I was watching you that day. I guess your leg was itching. You reached down to scratch it and your dress came up. I saw your leg above the knee. It was so soft and white and beautiful that tears came in my eyes. What more could I ask? I was just getting over it and you started scratching again. You were squirming and scratching and your dress was coming up higher and higher and I was leaning forward there and my heart popped in my mouth! All at once I saw the curve of your bottom! I couldn’t catch my breath! It looked like a honeydew melon at first! And then the breast of a swan! And then like a big pearl! And I could only see the beginning of it! And it looked like there was no end to it! I was leaning and leaning and I fell forward on my head!”
“Paul!” she was saying, blushing hotly. “Paul!”
“What a reward for all my watching! I spent the rest of the year in that ancient history class waiting for you to scratch your leg again. I mean it. I missed two thousand years of history. And I’m still waiting. Do it before you go home.”
“You must be crazy, Paul. I never heard such things.”
“I want to marry you as soon as possible. I can’t stand it much longer. And then I’ll be in a position to scratch your leg. Really, Peggy, I love everything about you. I always did. I always will.”
“You shouldn’t be saying these things. You really shouldn’t.”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s how I feel about you. Don’t you hear me playing the harmonica at night? Sometimes I’m playing it just for you. And I make up songs for you, too. It’s the truth. How about it if I come over and sit on your porch later? We’ll make some plans. I’ll bring a surprise for you.”
“A surprise? What is it?”
“A watermelon.”
“A watermelon?”
“As red as your lips. And maybe as sweet. I doubt it. But I’ll find out later.”
“Keep your old watermelon!”
“Don’t you like watermelon?”
“You’re hopeless, Paul. You really and truly are.”
She left me there on the porch.
In the following days I found out that she was right about the neighbors. They whispered and laughed at me when I walked through the alley. I used to whistle or play the harmonica and everyone would wave and say hello. Now it was different.
“It’s the watermelon boy,” one would say.
“Say, Paul, does that horse eat watermelon?”
“Do you ever look that horse in the eye, Paul?”
“Tell me something,” said the barber Regas. “Just one thing. How can I tell if a melon is sweet?”
“Tap it,” I said. “Tap it on the left side.”
“The left side? Which is the left side?”
“It’s the side in your left hand. Tap it and listen close.”
“And then?”
“Cut it open and taste it.”
Regas laughed and laughed. Along with everyone he was laughing when that joke was forgotten. I started to slip out of the house like a thief and walk over to Scranton Avenue to meet Sam Ross. Laughter in the alley went a little hard with mockery and seemed to follow me everywhere. It followed my father closer. He was brooding until he turned completely against that job. Just about then I surprised him by going downtown to pay the semi-annual tax on the house. It came to ninety dollars. He thought it over and held it against me as though I had moved to undermine his remaining power and authority. He sat on the porch and blew up a cloud of pipe smoke when he saw me coming from work with a watermelon lifted like a prize in the palm of my hand.
Day after day I brought watermelon home. I brought quarters and halves and then for Sunday I brought a whole one. The refrigerator was loaded. I tried to eat as much as I was bringing. I would have a big smiling cut of it for supper. After cleaning the kitchen I played the harmonica. Music gave me a taste for more melon. I ate another piece and it washed me so fresh and clean inside that I played the harmonica again. Before going to bed I ate another piece of melon. Around three in the morning I woke to eat again. It was like a spell on me. My shirts and trousers and underclothes were stained with juice. I found seeds in my pockets and shoes. It seemed that whenever I turned around my father was watching me spit seeds idly into the garbage pail in front of my chair. There were times in the evening when the only sound was the tick of seeds against the sides of that metal pail. Toward the end I think my father was coming awake at three in the morning to stare in the dark and listen to the dry tick of seeds.
My talk failed to help the situation.
“This piece isn’t bad,” I would say. “It’s better than the one I had yesterday. Still, the one I had Monday was best of all. I wish I could find another melon like that. I was eating and wondering what was missing. I was eating and wondering and eating and wondering. And then it was gone and I knew what was missing. The piece was perfect and it was the rest of the melon that was missing. … Have we got time for some music before supper? It’ll do you good.”
My father turned sullen. He didn’t talk much a
nd to spite me he wouldn’t eat any watermelon. He would open the refrigerator and stand there with eyes blazing and that pipe aiming straight from his mouth. One afternoon I came into the yard with half a melon held high in my hand. He was sitting in the rocker on the porch. He was holding the sides of that chair as though to keep it from falling apart. His knuckles bulged into white marbles.
“What’s that?” he said, though he could see it plain.
“Half a melon. It’s a beauty, Pa.”
“We don’t have enough yet?”
The next afternoon I came home with another half. He was waiting for me in the kitchen. I started talking to cheer him after his lonely day. I wanted to tease him just to hear his quick sour laughter.
“Sam says I’m doing fine,” I said. “He may raise my salary. One thing sure, he’ll be giving me a whole watermelon every night. He says he’ll stay ahead of us if it’s the last thing he ever does. Not a half or a quarter, Pa. It’ll be a whole one every day. But I don’t want you to worry. I’ve got it all figured out. I’ll take a day off work every week to eat and catch up with him.”
I opened the refrigerator. Watermelon bulged from every shelf.
“We should buy another refrigerator,” I said. “Now let’s eat a piece of melon before putting this piece in. I’ll take a half out to make room for this half. But I see you didn’t eat any today. What a naughty boy you are. Do you know a strange thing is happening to me? It seems like all I think about is watermelon.”
“And it’s all I think about,” he said, softly.
“Do you know what happened about three this morning?”
“And it’s all I think about,” he was saying, even more softly.
“I was eating this piece of melon and when I finished it the bottom of the pail was black with seeds. Now listen to this. A watermelon grows from one seed. Isn’t that right? But there’ll be a hundred seeds in the watermelon that grew from one seed. This means each watermelon has enough seeds to give a hundred watermelons. And these watermelons have enough seeds for thousands and thousands. And then millions and millions. What does this mean? I was thinking about it. I was thinking maybe God wanted to make sure there’d be enough watermelons so that everyone everywhere would have them until the end of the world. Plant all those wasted seeds and in a few years we’d have watermelons piled up into whole ranges of mountains. Why, it’s just like God was planning a big feast where everyone sits and eats watermelon. Sam says there’s no end to it.”
“Sam is wrong!” cried my father. “Sam is wrong! There’ll be an end to it! I’m making an end right now!”
He tore open the refrigerator. He pounced on those melons and started throwing them out the window and door. Melons went flying through the air to split open on the porch and in the yard. Neighbors gathered. Peggy was there. My father threw out every piece but the one on the table. I picked it up. I was so excited that I threw it out the window to join him in the uproar.
“So much for Sam!” he cried. “And so much for God’s plans again! It’s the end of the watermelons! Do you understand? And I’m sick of this job! Everyone’s laughing at you! You’re making a jackass out of yourself! And me, too!”
“Maybe we should talk this over.”
“Why did I work all these years? So you could sell watermelons from a wagon? Is that it? Wake up! You live in a country where you can be anything you want and look what the hell you’re doing! You’re going backward full speed! The next thing I know you’ll be sailing back to the old country to herd sheep! Get out! And clean up that mess out there!”
I swept up those broken melons and threw several pails of water to keep flies away. Afterward I sat on the porch step. My father stormed around the house until dark and then he came out to rock his fury away in the chair at the other end of the porch. There was the red glow of steel mill fire in the sky. Smokestacks seemed to be bobbing like black masts out of a midnight harbor. Sudden white smoke billowed from a distant stack and for an instant froze in a kind of fairyland tower in the dark. Now I heard the rhythmic creak of the rocking chair. I played the harmonica with it. My father rocked a little faster to free the creak of the chair from my song. I played faster. Suddenly he was rocking so fast that I stopped playing. I burst into laughter. His hair was white as the smoke and he was bowing and rearing in that chair as though astride some runaway horse in the night.
6
Time and again my father warned me that men lost power when they talked too much. I told him he was losing power in telling me about it and he said he started to lose power the day I spoke my first word.
“It’s in the family,” I said. “You must be losing it to me.”
“And you lose it to everyone,” he said.
He was right. I told everyone in Lincoln Court about my next job even before I started to work. I had this interview with the personnel director of the Big Deal grocery store chain. His name was John Whipple and he offered to put me on a training course that would qualify me in four weeks to work as an assistant butcher in any Big Deal store in the country. He took such a fancy to me that he spent an hour telling me the story of his rise to success. He traced that success to perseverance and loyalty.
“An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now I see you’ve been selling watermelons.”
“It was a sort of a temporary job.”
“It means you’ve been dealing with the public. It’s the hardest thing in the world. What do you make of the American people?”
“Well, they like watermelon.”
“I like you, Paul,” he said. “You’ve been watching me like a hawk. You’re alert and you’ve had experience that might be helpful. We want young men like you. We want men with potential for growth. We want you to grow with the company. We’re building new stores all the time. All over the world. And it isn’t just to sell food for a profit. That’s the obvious reason. Our president, G. W. Whitcomb, sees it in another light. Mr. Whitcomb says the American people may not be thinking straight or even thinking at all. But they have energy and they need food. We’ll be everywhere to supply good clean food to keep this energy at a high level. Until the wonderful things happen.”
“The wonderful things?”
“The wonderful things this energy will create.”
“When do I start work, Mr. Whipple?”
“Good boy. Then you want to be part of this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I know I can count on you. I knew it the minute I saw you. Now don’t let me down. We’re on the wing here. Learn how to fly.”
“I’ll learn, sir.”
“Think you’ll be happy in this organization?”
“I know I will.”
“You’re hired, Paul Christopher.”
I would train for one month in the main cooler and then work as an assistant butcher in the Big Deal store on the South Side. Promotions would follow fast. I thanked John Whipple and left him. I hurried over to that store on the South Side and told the manager Horace P. Willis that I would soon be working in his meat department.
“Welcome aboard,” he said, smiling.
Horace took me on a tour of that supermarket. It was almost as large as Lincoln Park. Above there was light enough to turn midnight into noon. Nothing was hidden. Rows and rows of stainless-steel shelves were loaded with fruit and vegetables and canned goods. It was a feast of color. All the employees wore white uniforms and white hats. They were smiling and smiling until it seemed there would be a sudden tremendous wave of laughter sweeping through that store. I talked for a while with the chief butcher Herman Bauer. He kept squeezing my hand like a sponge. He was eager to have me with him. I was so delighted that I went out and told everyone in the alley about the new job.
It was too soon to start work the very next day. I had put it off until the following week just to enjoy thinking and talking about it. Sam Ross wished me luck and reminded me that I could go out with him w
henever I wanted. My father seemed pleased by the news.
“I’ll learn how to cut meat in one month,” I told him. “But it’s only the first step on the ladder.”
“Look out the first step isn’t loose.”
“I’ll be an assistant butcher for a while and then pretty soon I’ll be in charge of that meat department.”
“Pretty soon? It’s in the same sentence.”
“I’ll be waiting for you, Pa. Come and find me. I’ll be wearing a white uniform and a white hat like a big marsh-mallow. And I’ll have a badge with my picture and name on it. Guess what?”
“There’s more? Besides the badge?”
“I was talking to the butcher Herman Bauer. He told me to smile when they take my picture for that badge. Everybody remembers a smiling face. And he told me to be polite to customers. Sometimes a customer praises you to the manager. When it happens the manager puts a gold star by your name. And when you get a lot of stars he calls you in.”
“What happens?”
“What happens? He showers you with stars and gives you a kiss. What do you think happens? He promotes you. Why, I’ll smile myself into a store of my own in no time. And then I can laugh a little. Come and find me, Pa. I’ll be the one counting stars. Now there’s something else. This Herman Bauer must be well over sixty years old. You’d think he was a wreck.”
“You mean I’d know it.”
“I wish you’d go over and see him. What a picture of health. He put his hand on me like a clamp. What strength. And why not? He eats the best of everything. Every night he takes home a pound of the choice cuts of meat. It’s not allowed but everybody looks the other way.”
“Everybody steals and so nobody’s a thief.”
“Herman told me he planned to work until he was eighty years old and then he’ll play for twenty years.”
“At what? Living?”
“I was looking at the picture on his badge. I couldn’t believe it was the same man. I looked at Herman and at the picture and at Herman. What a change since he started work in that store. From a lamb to a lion. I couldn’t believe it was the same man.”
A Lost King: A Novel Page 6