The Fabulous Clipjoint

by Fredric Brown

  Then I sat down again and put my head in my hands.

  After awhile I heard the door of our flat open. I didn’t move or look around through the banister, but I could tell by voices and footsteps that all four of them were leaving.

  After all the sound had died away downstairs, I let myself in with my key. I turned on the fire under the kettle again. This time I put coffee in the dripolator and got everything ready. Then I went over to the window and stood looking out across the cement courtyard.

  I thought about Pop, and I wished I’d known him better.

  Oh, we’d got along all right, we’d got along swell, but it came to me now that it was too late, how little I really knew him.

  But it was as though I was standing a long way off looking at him, the little I really knew of him, and it seemed now that I’d been wrong about a lot of things.

  His drinking, mostly. I could see now that that didn’t matter. I didn’t know why he drank, but there must have been a reason. Maybe I was beginning to see the reason, looking out the window there. And he was a quiet drinker and a quiet man. I’d seen him angry only a few times, and every one of those times he’d been sober.

  I thought, you sit at a linotype all day and set type for A & P handbills and a magazine on asphalt road surfacing and tabular matter for a church council report on finances, and then you come home to a wife who’s a bitch and who’s been drinking most of the afternoon and wants to quarrel, and a stepdaughter who’s an apprentice bitch.

  And a son who thinks he’s a little bit better than you are because he’s a smart-aleck young punk who got honor grades in school and thinks he knows more than you do, and that he’s better.

  And you’re too decent to walk out on a mess like that, and so what do you do? You go down for a few beers and you don’t intend to get drunk, but you do. Or maybe you did intend to, and so what?

  I remembered that there was a picture of Pop in their bedroom, and I went in and stood looking at it. It was taken about ten years ago, about the time they were married.

  I stood looking at it. I didn’t know him. He was a stranger to me. And now he was dead and I’d never really know him at all.

  When it was half-past ten and Mom and Gardie hadn’t come back yet, I left. The flat had been an oven by then, and the streets, with the sun coming almost straight down, were baking hot too. It was a scorcher all right.

  I walked west on Grand Avenue, under the el.

  I passed a drugstore and I thought, I ought to go in and phone the Elwood Press and tell them I wasn’t going to be in today. And that Pop wouldn’t be there either. And then I thought the hell with it; I should have phoned at eight o’clock and they know by now we’re not coming.

  And I didn’t know yet what to tell them about when I’d be back. But mostly I just didn’t want to talk to anybody yet. It wasn’t completely real, like it would begin to be when I’d have to start telling people, “Pop’s dead.”

  It was the same with the police and thinking and talking about the funeral there’d have to be, and everything. I’d waited for Mom and Gardie to come back, but I was glad they hadn’t. I didn’t want to see them, either.

  I’d left a note for Mom telling her I was going to Janesville to tell Uncle Ambrose. Now that Pop was dead, she couldn’t say anything about my telling his only brother.

  It wasn’t so much that I wanted Uncle Ambrose; going to Janesville was mostly an excuse for getting away, I guess.

  On Orleans Street I cut down to Kinzie and across the bridge, and down Canal to the C&NW Madison Street Station. The next St. Paul train that went through Janesville was at eleven-twenty. I bought a ticket and sat down in the station and waited.

  I bought early afternoon editions of a couple of papers and looked through them. There wasn’t any mention of Pop, not even a few lines on an inside page.

  Things like that must happen a dozen times a day in Chicago, I thought. They don’t rate ink unless it’s a big-shot gangster or somebody important. A drunk rolled in an alley, and the guy who slugged him was muggled up and hit too hard or didn’t care how hard the hit.

  It didn’t rate ink. No gang angle. No love nest.

  The morgue gets them by the hundred. Not all murders, of course. Bums who go to sleep on a bench in Bughouse Square and don’t wake up. Guys who take ten-cent beds or two-bit partitioned rooms in flophouses and in the morning somebody shakes them to wake them up, and the guy’s stiff, and the clerk quickly goes through his pockets to see if he’s got two bits or four bits or a dollar left, and then he phones for the city to come and get him out. That’s Chicago.

  And there’s the jig found carved with a shiv in an areaway on South Halsted Street and the girl who took laudanum in a cheap hotel room. And the printer who had too much to drink and had probably been followed out of the tavern because there’d been green in his wallet and yesterday was payday.

  If they put things like that in the paper, people would get a bad impression of Chicago, but that wasn’t the reason they didn’t put them in. They left them out because there were too many of them. Unless it was somebody important or somebody died in a spectacular way or there was a sex angle.

  Like the percentage girl who probably took the laudanum somewhere last night — or maybe it was iodine or an overdose of morphine or, if she was desperate enough, even rat poison — she could have had a day of glory in the press. She could have jumped out of a high window into a busy street, waiting on a ledge until she got an audience gathered, and the cops trying to get her back in, and until the newspapers had time to get cameramen there. Then she could have jumped and landed in a bloody mess but with her skirts up around her waist as she lay dead on the sidewalk for a good pic for the photographers.

  I left the newspapers on the bench and walked out the front door and stood there watching the people walk by on Madison Street.

  It isn’t the fault of the newspapers, I thought. The papers just give these people what they want. It’s the whole goddam town, I thought; I hate it.

  I watched the people go by, and I hated them. When they looked smug or cheerful, like some of them did, I hated them worse. They don’t give a damn, I thought, what happens to anybody else, and that’s why this is a town in which a man can’t walk home with a few drinks under his belt without getting killed for a few lousy bucks.

  Maybe it isn’t the town, even, I thought. Maybe most people are like that, everywhere. Maybe this town is worse just because it’s bigger.

  I was watching a jeweler’s clock across the street and when it got to be seven minutes after eleven, I went back through the station. The St. Paul train was loading, and I got on and got a seat.

  It was as hot as hell in the train. The car filled quickly and a fat woman sat beside me and crowded me against the window. People were standing in the aisles. It wasn’t going to be a good trip. Funny, no matter how far down you are mentally, physical discomforts can make you feel worse.

  I wondered, what am I doing this for anyway? I should get off, go home, and face the music. I’m just running away. I can send Uncle Ambrose a telegram.

  I started to get up, but the train began to move.

  | Go to Contents |

  Chapter 2

  The carnival lot was mechanized noise. The merry-go-round’s calliope fought with the loudspeakers on the freak show platform, with the thunder of an amplified bass drum booming out a call to bally for the jig show. Under the bingo top a voice called numbers into a microphone and could be heard all over the lot.

  I stood in the middle of it all, still stalling, wondering if I could find Uncle Ambrose without having to ask for him. I remembered only vaguely what he looked like. And all I knew about what he did with the carney was that he was a concessionaire. Pop had never talked about
him much.

  I’d better ask, I decided. I looked around for somebody who wasn’t busy or wasn’t yelling, and saw that the man at the floss-candy pitch was leaning against an upright, staring at nothing. I walked over and asked where I could find Ambrose Hunter.

  He jerked a thumb down the midway. “Ball game. Milk bottle one.”

  I looked that way. I could see a fat little man with a moustache reaching over the counter, holding out three baseballs at some people who were walking by. It wasn’t Uncle Ambrose.

  But I walked over anyway. Maybe my uncle hired him, and he could tell me where my uncle was. I got closer.

  My God, I thought, it is Uncle Ambrose. His face was familiar now. But he’d been so much taller and — well, to a kid of eight, all grownups seem tall, I suppose. And he’d put on weight, although I could see now that he wasn’t really fat, like I’d thought at a first look. His eyes, though, were the same; that was how I knew him. I remembered his eyes. They sort of twinkled at you, like he knew something about you that was a secret, and was funny as hell.

  Now I was taller than he was.

  He was holding the baseballs out to me now, saying, “Three throws for a dime, son. Knock ’em down and win a —”

  Of course he couldn’t know me; you change so much from eight to eighteen nobody could possibly know you. Just the same, I guess I was a little disappointed that he didn’t know me.

  I said, “You — you wouldn’t recognize me, Uncle Ambrose. I’m Ed. Ed Hunter. I just came from Chicago to tell you — Pop was killed last night.”

  His face had lighted up like he was really glad to see me when I’d started, but it sure changed when I finished. It went slack for a second, and then it tightened up again, but in a different shape, if you know what I mean. There wasn’t any twinkle in his eyes, and he looked like a different guy entirely. He looked, just then, even less like I’d remembered him to be.

  “Killed how, Ed? You mean —”

  I nodded. “They found him in an alley, dead. Rolled. Payday night and he went out for some drinks and —” I thought there wasn’t any use going on. It was obvious from there.

  He nodded slowly, and put down the three baseballs in one of the square frames on top of the low counter. He said, “Come on, step over. I’ll let down the front.”

  He did, and then said, “Come on, my quarters are back here.” He led the way back past the two boxes on which the dummy milk bottles which you were supposed to knock off with the baseballs were stacked, and lifted the sidewall at the back.

  I followed him to a tent pitched about a dozen yards back of his concession. He opened up the flap and I went in first. It was a tent about six by ten feet at the base, with walls that came up straight for three feet and then tapered to the ridge. In the middle you could stand up comfortably. There was a cot and a big trunk at one end, and a couple of canvas folding chairs.

  But the first thing I’d noticed was the girls asleep on the cot. She was small and slender and very blonde. She looked about twenty or twenty-five, and even asleep her face was pretty. She was dressed except that she’d kicked off her shoes and she didn’t seem to be wearing much if anything under the cotton print dress.

  My uncle put his hand on her shoulder and shock her awake. He said, when her eyes opened, “You got to beat it, Toots. This is Ed, my nephew. We got to talk here, and I got to pack. You go get Hoagy and tell him I got to see him right away and it’s important, huh?”

  She was pulling on her shoes already, wide awake. She’d waked up quickly and completely in a second, and she didn’t even look sleepy. She stood up and smoothed down her dress, looking at me.

  She said, “Hi, Ed. Your name Hunter, too?” I nodded.

  “Get going,” my uncle said. “Get Hoagy for me.”

  She made a face at him, and went out.

  “Gal with the posing show,” my uncle said. “They don’t work till evening, so she came in here for a nap. Last week I found a kangaroo in my bed. Yeah, no kidding. John L., the boxing kangaroo — in the pit show. With a carney, you can find anything in your bed.”

  I was sitting in one of the canvas chairs. He’d opened the trunk and was putting stuff from it into a battered suitcase he’d pulled out from under the cot.

  “Y’in there, Am?” a deep voice yelled from outside.

  “Come on in, Hoagy,” my uncle said.

  The flap lifted again, and a big man came in. He seemed to fill the front end of the tent as he stood there, his head almost touching the ridgepole. He had a flat, completely expressionless face.

  He said, “Yeah?”

  “Look, Hoagy,” my uncle said. He stopped packing and sat down beside the suitcase. “I got to go to Chicago. Don’t know when I’ll get back. You want to take over the ball game while I’m gone?”

  “Hell, yes. I’m sloughed here and ten to one I’ll be sloughed in Springfield. And if Jake gets a chance to use the blow after that, let him get a cooch. What cut you want?”

  “No cut,” said my uncle. “You’ll have to give Maury the same slice I give him, but the rest is yours. All I want is, you keep my stuff together till I get back. Keep track of my trunk. If I don’t get back before the season ends, store it.”

  “Sure, swell. How’ll I keep in touch with you?”

  “General Delivery, Chicago. But you don’t need to. Nobody’s sure of the route past Springfield, but I can follow you in Bill-board, and when I get back I get back. Okay?”

  “Hell, yes. Have a drink on it.” The big man slid a flat pint bottle out of his hip pocket and handed it to my uncle. He said, “This your nephew Ed? Toots is gonna be disappointed; she wanted to know if he was gonna be with us. Maybe he’s missing something, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Uncle Ambrose said.

  The big man laughed.

  My uncle said, “Look, Hoagy, will you run along? I got to talk to Ed. His dad — my brother Wally — died last night.”

  “Jeez,” said the big man. “I’m sorry, Am.”

  “That’s all right. Leave me this bottle, will you, Hoagy? Say, you can run up the front right now if you want. The crowd’s fair; I was getting a play.”

  “Sure, Am. Say, I’m goddam sorry about — Aw hell, you know what I mean.”

  The big man went out.

  My uncle sat looking at me. I didn’t say anything and neither did he for a minute or two. Then he said, “What’s wrong, kid? What’s eating you?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him.

  “Don’t give me that,” he said. “Look, Ed, I’m not as dumb as I look. I can tell you one thing. You haven’t let your hair down. You haven’t cried, have you? You’re stiff as a board, and you can’t take it that way; it’ll do things to you. You’re bitter.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “No. What’s eating you?”

  He was still holding the flat pint bottle Hoagy had given him. He hadn’t taken the cap off. I looked at it and said, “Give me a drink, Uncle Ambrose.”

  He shook his head slowly. “That isn’t the answer. If you drink, it ought to be because you want to. Not to run away from something. You’ve been running away ever since you found out, haven’t you? Wally tried — Hell, Ed, you don’t —”

  “Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to get drunk. I just want one drink. It’s something I got to do.”

  “Why?”

  It was hard to say. I said, “I didn’t know Pop. I found that out this morning. I thought I was too good for him. I thought he was a rumdum. He must have felt that. He must have felt I thought he was no good, and we never got to know each other, see?”

  My uncle didn’t say anything. He nodded slowly.

  I went on. “I still hate the stuff. The taste of it, I mean. I like bee
r a little, but I hate the taste of whiskey. But I want to take a drink — to him. To make up, just a little bit, somehow. I know he’ll never know, but I want to — to take a drink to him, like you do, sort of to — Oh, hell, I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  My uncle said, “I’ll be damned.” He put the bottle down on the cot and went over to the trunk. He said, “I got some tin cups in here somewhere. For a cups-and-balls routine. It’s almost illegal for a carney to drink out of anything but a bottle, but hell, kid, we got to drink that one together. I want to drink to Wally, too.”

  He came up with a set of three nested aluminum cups. He poured drinks — good generous ones, a third of a tumblerful — into two of them, and handed me one.

  He said, “To Wally.” I said, “To Pop,” and we touched the rims of the aluminum cups and downed it. It burned like the devil, but I managed not to choke on it.

  Neither of us said anything for a minute, and then my uncle said, “I got to see Maury, the carney owner. Let him know I’m going.”

  He went out quick.

  I sat there, with the awful taste of the raw whiskey in my mouth, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I thought about Pop, and that Pop was dead and I’d never see him again. And suddenly I was bawling like hell. It wasn’t the whiskey, because outside of the taste and the burn there isn’t any effect for a while after you take a first drink. It was just that something let go inside me. I suppose my uncle knew was coming, that way, and that’s why he left me alone. He knew a guy my age wouldn’t want to bawl in front of anyone.

  By the time I was over crying, though, I began to feel the liquor. My head felt light, and I began to feel sick at my stomach.

  Uncle Ambrose came back. He must have noticed my eyes were red, because he said, “You’ll feel better now, Ed. You had that coming. You were tight like a drumhead. Now you look human.”

  I managed a grin. I said, “I guess I’m a bush-leaguer on drinking, though. I’m going to be sick, I think. Where’s the can?”