by Ellery Queen
“Wait,” she croaked. She rummaged in her shopping cart and came up with a bright yellow bundle. “Take it.”
“No,” I said. Even though it was a summer morning and already hot and sticky, I felt a chill.
“Take it,” she growled, and shoved it into my hands.
I shook it out. It was one of her sweaters, a yellow orlon cardigan, wrinkled and raveling, with buttons missing.
“Put it on.”
She looked so fierce that I didn’t want to risk making her angry with me. I put it on. The surprising thing was that my flesh didn’t crawl from contact with the filthy thing. Instead, I felt a kind of warmth spreading all through my shaking body.
“Nice,” she said. “You keep it.”
I said, “Thank you. I have to go now.” And I went on to the subway.
The guard wouldn’t let me go in the employees’ entrance. I had to go around to the front and wait for the store to open. That was the first thing. The second thing was that after I’d been in the store for about an hour I noticed one of the store detectives following me. I knew her, a nice girl who’d helped me out several times when ladies would try to put on two or three girdles and walk out.
I stopped and said, “Why are you following me?”
“I’m not following you,” she said.
“Yes, you are. Do you think I’m going to steal something?”
“No,” she said. “Look, Mrs. Curry, why don’t you go home. They’re afraid you might do something crazy. They saw you walking around yesterday and we all have orders to watch out for you.”
“Do I look crazy?” I asked her.
“No,” she said, but her voice wavered and I could see her taking in the yellow sweater. Then I realized that I’d forgotten to put on any makeup that morning and maybe I hadn’t even combed my hair.
“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t going to wait around for a third thing to happen, and I could see Miss Kramer sailing across the floor with a hard look on her face. I got on the down escalator.
It was strange getting on the subway in the middle of the day. No crowds, I even got a seat. I noticed that people avoided sitting next to me. The yellow sweater was like some kind of magical cloak that made a little wall of privacy between me and everyone else. I thought that over all the way home, that and the fact that the store really wasn’t my place any more and I would have to find some place that was mine.
When I got to the corner near the bank there she was. Some kids were teasing her, bouncing a ball off the wall and making it go as close to her as they could without actually hitting her. She crouched in her corner with her eyes closed, trying to ignore them, but her lips were moving a mile a minute and she sure wasn’t saying her prayers. I felt sorry for her and at the same time glad, because for some reason when I stopped at Waldbaum’s I had picked up double what I needed for my dinner. Two little steaks instead of one, not sirloin or anything like that. Just minute steaks, but they taste okay if you put some steak sauce on them. Two nice potatoes to bake in the oven and some frozen peas.
I guess I was thinking that I could eat one steak today and one tomorrow, but now I thought, “Why not have some company? Mrs. Finney is gone and there’s nobody to talk to, and maybe this one could do with a decent meal. It would be my good deed for the day.”
I shooed the kids away. They went, but not before they called me some names I’d never heard before and I thought I had heard everything. When I turned back to look at her, she was looking at me. And smiling. At least, I think it was a smile, but it was hard to tell because one side of her mouth went up and the other side went down and there were a couple of teeth missing in the middle. But she seemed friendly enough.
I said, “Hi. Was the chicken okay?”
She growled something and started rummaging in one of her boxes. What she pulled out was a plastic bag, the kind that hot-dog buns come in, and she handed it to me still growling and smiling and getting very excited. I looked in the plastic bag. It was full of chicken bones, big ones and little ones, all the meat chewed off clean as a whistle. I guess she was saying thank you and wanted me to know that she had really polished off that chicken.
“Well,” I said, “that’s nice.”
I didn’t know what to do with the chicken bones. I didn’t want to put them in the trash barrel on the corner right in front of her eyes, just in case she meant them as a present for me and I would hurt her feelings. So I put them in my Waldbaum’s shopping bag. Her smile got even bigger, and she started nodding and making gobbling noises and pointing at my shopping bag. I got the idea.
“You want something else to eat?”
Oh, boy! Talk about hitting the jackpot! Her eyes got bright and nearly bugged out of her head, and spit started drooling down the corners of her mouth.
“Well, okay,” I said, “but you’ll have to come home with me so I can cook it.”
That stopped her. She closed her eyes, sank back into her corner, and pulled her coat collar up around her ears.
“Suit yourself,” I said. She was acting like a little kid, so I’d just have to treat her like one. “Come or don’t come. It’s up to you. I’m going now.”
I crossed the street, but I hadn’t got more than half a block away before I heard the shopping cart rattling and bumping along behind me. And that’s the way we went home, me walking along in front pretending I didn’t know she was following, and her pushing her shopping card loaded up with everything she owned, which was junk.
When we got inside the lobby of my building, I kept on pretending she wasn’t there, and when the elevator came I got on it and so did she without saying a word. But when we finally got inside my apartment I couldn’t keep it up any more.
“Well, here we are,” I said.
She didn’t say anything, but she started looking around and picking things up and putting them down. I didn’t mind because it was all going to have to go anyway, and if she broke something what did it matter because it was all just as much junk as what she had in her shopping cart. Which was parked just inside the door.
“I’m going to cook now,” I said. “The bathroom’s over there if you want to wash up.”
So I went in the kitchen and did what I had to do. Potatoes in the oven, set the table, get out the frying pan. I had some sherry left over from Christmas. I’m not much of a drinking person, but every once in a while I liked to have a glass or two with Mrs. Finney. Might as well get rid of it, I thought. So I went into the living room to ask if she’d like some. She wasn’t there. I thought maybe she got nervous and left. Nothing to be nervous about. But then I saw the shopping cart still there, and not only that, but she had put my pair of china robins that I’d won at the bingo at church years ago right on top of the heap of stuff in the cart.
“Well, that’s okay,” I said to myself, “if it makes her happy. It all has to go and it might as well go that way.”
She came out of the bathroom and her face was about ten degrees cleaner, although the rest of her still didn’t smell too good.
“Want some sherry?” I asked her.
She smiled that crazy crooked smile and croaked out a word that sounded like “Yes.”
So back in the kitchen I went and got out some glasses and the bottle, and while I was doing that I got so angry because a couple of roaches crawled out of the breadbox.
“Dammit!” I said, although I hardly ever swear, and I quick got the roach powder out from under the sink. Boy, did I let them have it! I buried them in it. And I watched them curl up and tip over on their backs with their legs waving in the air. And then I poured the sherry. I had to stir hers around a lot because the way it is with oil and vinegar, it’s the same with sherry and roach powder.
It wasn’t that I thought she was a roach or something horrible.
She was really kind of nice to have around. She didn’t talk too much, and she had a sense of obligation which she showed by giving me her yellow sweater. The only thing was, there wouldn’t be room for the two of us i
n the corner by the bank, and I didn’t want to leave the old neighborhood, not even to go to Queens where Grace Finney was.
Well, she drank her sherry up right away, in one gulp, and held out her glass for more. So I went back in the kitchen to get her some more. And then some more. Pretty soon the bottle was empty. So was the roach-powder box.
I threw them both in the garbage and checked on the potatoes baking in the oven. They weren’t done yet. I went back in the living room and she was sort of toppled over on the couch kind of snoring and blowing bubbles out of the side of her mouth.
I said, “If you’re tired, why don’t you come and lie down?”
I pulled her up and made her get off the couch. It wasn’t easy, what with her being almost a dead weight and the smell and all. But I took her in my bedroom and let her flop down on my bed. She looked at me once, and I think she looked kind of happy. She gave a little growl and closed her eyes and that was that.
The potatoes still weren’t done, so I decided the least I could do was make her look halfway decent. I took her shoes off. She was wearing an old pair of sneakers with holes at the toes, tied with string. No socks. Her ankles were crusty with dirt. I got a basin of hot water and soap and towels and a scrub brush. It was hard work, getting all those clothes off her and cleaning her up. And it was sad how thin she was underneath everything. I washed her like a baby and when I got finished she was as clean and fresh as a baby. I even washed her hair. And then I dressed her in one of my own flannel nightgowns and straightened her out on the bed and covered her up. She looked like she was sleeping, so I tiptoed out of the room.
Boy, was I hungry! By then the potatoes were done, so I put both steaks in the frying pan and boiled up the water for the peas. And believe it or not I ate everything. Every bite. Then I cleaned up the kitchen, because you never can tell. I wouldn’t want to go off and leave a mess behind for someone else to see. I’d been thinking about it all, you see, and what I thought was this. She had a place in the world and now she didn’t need it any more. I had no place in the world and I needed one. Now I would take her place, and she could have my old place, which was no place.
And what would happen when they find her? Who can tell the difference between one old lady and another? Who cares? They’ll write to Ellen and tell her, “We found your mother.” Maybe she’d come, maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d cry a little, and have the body shipped out there to be buried. I don’t want to be buried out there, dead or alive. If she comes here and says, “That’s not my mother,” they’ll say, “Then who is she? We found her in your mother’s apartment.” But she won’t come. Anyway, maybe they’ll never find her. If I know them, they’ll just tear the building down and cart the rubble off to New Jersey, her included.
And all the time I’ll be laughing. I’ll be there in my corner. She’ll be there. We’ll be there. I never knew her name. That’s all right, though. We’ll have a new name. Or no name. Who needs a name? I have this nice shopping cart and a place to go to.
She’s always there, crouching down in the little covered-over space next to the bank on the corner. Rain or shine, winter or summer, she’s there watching the people go by. It’s not a bad life, and you learn a lot about human nature. It’s amazing, the good stuff that people throw away. If it gets cold, there are places to go to keep warm, but after a while you get so you don’t feel the cold. One thing, though. I always keep my shoes polished.
Borden Deal
You Understand?
Join two Americans in the cantina of the Inn of the Two Roosters (or maybe it was the Twin Roosters), in the little Mexican fishing village of Venta Prieta, and hear the story of a fugitive from the law. . .
I left the yacht in Venta Prieta because things were getting pretty sticky aboard, and bound to get worse. The owner’s wife had extended the invitation for the entire three-month cruise, but I hadn’t realized at the time just how fervent she would feel about the prospects of those days and nights in romantic waters. As a result, the owner, drinking more every day, was beginning to talk to himself.
Venta Prieta was only a fishing village, high above a white-sand beach that, closer to Acapulco, would have been a national fortune. I thought philosophically, Any port in a sexual storm, and leaving a diplomatic note prominently displayed in my stateroom, I had the mate take me ashore before daybreak. I walked up the single dusty street and stepped into the cool of the inn, where a smiling, mustachioed bandito welcomed an American customer.
I had got a good look at the local prospects and found them bleak. Yet, in the mood for a span of foreign solitude after shipboard intimacy, I decided to remain at least a week to knit up “the ravell’d sleave” of my cares before I even inquired whether it was possible to return to civilization from Venta Prieta.
The one street was lined with fishermen’s shanties; their boats were pulled up on the beach. There were only two metropolitan-type buildings—the police station and jail, the inn and its accompanying cantina. The Inn of the Two Roosters, it was called. Or maybe Twin Roosters.
I watched with satisfaction as the motor yacht upped anchor at midmorning and put out to sea. I was so pleased with myself that I pulled out the old portable, which hadn’t been out of its case since we’d left San Francisco, and worked with great accomplishment until the middle of the afternoon. At which time, along with every man and dog of Venta Prieta, I took a siesta under the droning sound of a ceiling fan and a lonely fly on the window.
I found the food at the inn quite good—though thoroughly Mexican, of course—and the bartender smiled when I entered the cantina for an after-dinner Dos Equis. He put the beer before me, inquired after my health and the length of my stay, and told me I was the first American tourist of the season. I was surprised to find that they had a season, but I thought better of remarking on the phenomenon. Maybe my arrival made it the season.
I contented myself with the thought that, if I did comprise the tourist season, I wouldn’t have to put up with any Americans. Maybe I’d stay a month and get some real work done; surprise the hell out of my agent with a couple of stories, and maybe the beginning of a good novel, for a change. It had been a long time since I’d done a novel. To hear him tell it, my public was holding its collective breath, waiting.
It was a disagreeable surprise, therefore, to see an American enter the cantina. He stopped in the doorway, gazing directly toward me. Somebody must have told him a stranger had hit town. Maybe it was the beginning of his tourist season, too.
From his appearance, he could use one. He was very tall, very thin, and he shambled when he walked. His stained white pants wrinkled in folds about his buttocks, and his shirt was ripped in two or three revealing places. He hadn’t shaved yet this week, and his hat looked as if the dogs had played with it in the road before it had got to him.
He took a sight on me, so to speak, and lurched in my direction.
“Thank God, an American,” he blurted. “Buy me a drink, good man. For God’s sake, buy me a drink.”
He was nothing if not direct.
I surveyed him with considerable revulsion. Close up, his hair was red, turning dirty gray. His stubble of beard was redder still. He had muscular hands and through the torn shirt I could see the string ropes of half-starved muscle.
He had been a man once. Not much left now. A beachcomber, for heaven’s sake, I thought. Right out of Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham. Except this wasn’t a South Sea island. It was a crummy little Mexican fishing village.
“Sure, fellow, if you need it that bad,” I said, motioning to the bartender.
The bartender knew what was wanted. He brought a bottle of cheap sotol and held it behind the beachcomber’s head, asking my consent.
“Might as well,” I said, motioning him to put it down with the single dirty glass. “Otherwise we’ll be running your feet off, bringing it shot by shot.”
The bartender set down the bottle, deposited the glass beside it. He spoke to the beachcomber with familiar contempt
. The beachcomber, avid eye on full bottle, paid no attention to the insults.
His hands trembled as he filled the thick-walled water glass. He held it with both hands, bringing his mouth down to meet the rim even as he lifted—the classic shaky-drunk gesture. He took a hearty gulp, shuddered to his toenails, took another.
“Good, huh?” I said encouragingly.
He stared at me across the glass of salvation. He set it down, added a few drops of sotol with a finicky touch, as though concocting a very precise and necessary drink.
“My name is Harry Munn,” he said in a formal voice. “I welcome you to Venta Prieta.”
“Thank you,” I said, marveling at the transformation, and wondering how he managed to get over the hump when the tourist season didn’t arrive.
He drank again, practically rolling the sotol in his mouth to savor the bouquet. I almost expected him to call for a better year.
“I make it my custom to greet all arriving Americans,” he said with dignity. “After all, two countrymen in a strange land—”
“—should look out after each other,” I finished for him. “Yes. You’re quite right.”
He was younger than you’d think at first glance, not over 45 at most.
He peered at me intently. “Say, don’t I know you?”
I didn’t let my dismay show. “I don’t know,” I said. “A lot of people seem to.”
“Aren’t you—?”
I sighed. “Yes,” I said. “Just don’t spread it around.” I leaned forward to impress him. “I’m here to get some work done. A new book. If people start flocking around—”
“You don’t have to worry,” he said with a magnanimous wave of the hand. He was leaning back now, an arm slung over a chair post. I expected him to put his foot on the table, next. “There’s only one other American in town, and we don’t speak to each other. In fact, here he comes now. Right on time.”
We watched a plump, stubby little man enter the cantina. He had obviously just come from a shave and a haircut, his cheeks glowing with talcum powder and his shoes freshly shined. He wore a white suit, a discreet tie, and looked altogether prosperous and preposterous.