by W. L. Heath
“Yeah, I’m afraid it was.”
He got up and tiptoed to the bedroom door, listening.
“Was it him?”
“I think so. I hear him flopping around in his crib.”
“Damn. It was the thunder that woke him. I was afraid of that.”
She threw the sheet back and started to get up.
“I’ll take him,” Shelley said. “You just stay in bed. I’m wide awake, and, besides, I can sleep in the morning.”
“I imagine he’ll doze off again if you rock him. Don’t you want me to take him?”
“No, I’ll go in. You stay in bed.”
Shelley took a last drag on his cigarette and mashed it out in the ashtray on the bedside table. As he went down the hall he heard the child begin to cry loudly.
“Hurry, Shelley,” Helen said. “Before he wakes up the girls.”
Shelley switched on the hall light as he went by, and coming into the room saw the little boy standing up on his knees in the crib. His eyes were shut tight and he was not completely awake yet, but he was distressed and frightened. Shelley picked him up and began to walk back and forth, talking to him soothingly.
“All right, Jimmy. All right, boy. Daddy’s got him. Don’t be afraid. Daddy’s got this boy.”
The little boy sniffled and buried his face against Shelley’s neck. Shelley rocked him slowly from side to side as he walked up and down the room. After a few minutes the child relaxed again, going limp in his arms, and Shelley knew he was asleep. But since the storm was still howling at the windows, he continued to walk, waiting until the noise had subsided before putting him down. He felt the child’s soft cheek against his, the little back no wider than your hand. Lord, they are helpless little things, he thought. I guess that’s why you feel this way about them. He walked back and forth. When they grow up it’s not the same, I guess. I don’t see how it could be. I don’t know though. Maybe it is the same, just on a different scale or something.
He patted the child gently, rocking him as he walked. You feel so damn protective, he thought. Don’t be afraid, you tell them. Daddy’s here and everything is all right. Daddy will even stop the thunder and the rain for you. He smiled to himself and shook his head. I don’t know, he thought. Sometimes it scares you, don’t it? Think of all that’s ahead of them. Makes a man wish he really could protect them, all the way. But you can’t do that though. It’s the wrong attitude to take. You just tell them don’t be afraid, and then you go right on being a little afraid yourself. I wonder if other people feel that way. Like in the morning, for instance – always, just when you wake up and think well here’s another day, and you have a queer sort of scared little feeling for a minute or two. And like what Helen said about being in bed when there’s a storm. I wonder what it is that makes a man want to be in bed sometimes, asleep, and don’t want to wake up. I got nothing to be afraid of. No more than the average fellow anyway. There’s something though you never are quite sure of. Like you’d forgot something important and can’t remember what it was. What’s the word I want? Vulnerable, I guess it is. A kind of vulnerable feeling, especially at night, and when you first wake up. You pick up the paper and there’s a riot in Syria, or somebody has shot at the ambassador or the Reds are acting up again. All that kind of stuff for breakfast. And yet most of the time that don’t really worry you much. If they blew up the whole goddam world with an atom bomb it couldn’t kill you but once. It’s something else. Something a lot closer to home, but still you can’t put your finger on it. Like you had forgot something important before you went to bed. I don’t know. Maybe I’ve still got a touch of war nerves or something. It’s not that though, because I remember it even when I was a kid. I guess it’s just human nature. A little feeling that somewhere, somehow, something is wrong. You don’t know what it is yourself, so all you can tell the kids is just don’t be afraid. That’s all. But we’re all afraid, I guess. Scared of the dark.
The storm had subsided now and a gentle rain was falling from the vast sudden stillness of the night. Shelley put the child down gently in the crib and patted his back.
“There, boy,” he whispered when the child stirred. “Go to sleep, Jimmy. Daddy’s right here with you, boy. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all.”
PART TWO
Chapter Six
If anybody in the world ever needed a drink, it was Sugarfoot. Here it was just about dawn of day, raining, and him lying there wide awake and tight as a banjo string from the calves of his legs to the back of his neck. There was a wild, empty feeling in his stomach too.
I got to have me one sure enough this morning, he told himself. I made the biggest mistake of my life not going on last night and buying me another bottle before bed. I ought to known better than try that. Now look at me.
He got up shakily and looked out on the wet street behind the hotel. Sugar’s room was on the ground floor of the hotel – a converted supply closet, actually, no more than seven feet wide and with only the one window that had been cut out of the wall after Sugar moved in and had never even been painted. The facing and sash were still unpainted after twelve years. Sugar looked out the window and tried to estimate what time it was. About five, he thought. Between four-thirty and five. He knew there’d be no one in the kitchen yet, so he dressed hurriedly, sighing and shaking his head, and stepped out into the back hall. No one in sight. Walking on his tiptoes and trembling a little in the legs, he made his way to the kitchen and from there to the door of the pantry that was in an alcove to the right of the dining-room entrance. The pantry door was locked, and that was the one key Sugar didn’t have on his ring, but he didn’t let that stop him. Taking out his pocket knife, he opened the blade and slipped it between the edge of the door and the jamb. When he felt the point against the tongue of the lock he pressed it back and the door opened nicely. The vanilla extract was on the third shelf of the right wall, stacked alongside the nutmeg, bayleaf and paprika. There were eight bottles standing in two rows of four, one behind the other, and Sugar was careful to take a bottle from the back row so that the shortage would not be immediately detected. He might even replace the bottle before it was missed. This was the sort of thing he hated to have to do, because even Mister Neff objected to this. But in an emergency a man had to make use of whatever resources were available to him.
Sugar put the bottle in the pocket of his white jacket and closed the door, hearing the lock click into place again. He was already feeling better, because the bottle was in his pocket. To need a drink and have one ready is not so bad. It’s when you need one and haven’t got it anywhere in sight that’s hard on the nerves. He didn’t waste any time though. He stopped at the water cooler, made sure no one was around, and drained the little bottle in two swallows. It went down his throat and into his stomach sweet and hot – so hot, in fact, that he could trace the course of it all the way down and into his intestines. His eyes watered, his throat constricted, and for a minute he thought he was going to lose it, but he bent over the fountain and drank some water and pretty soon everything was all right. The heat of it warmed him to the bone, a tingling warm pleasantness spreading all over inside him; and then came the fine feeling of assurance. Everything was all right now, hunky-dory. At least till he could get over to the poolroom and buy him another bottle of popskull.
It was still early and he debated going back to bed, but decided against it. I might sleep off my buzz, he thought, and I sure don’t want to do that. For one thing, that poolroom don’t open till eight o’clock, and I’ll be pushing it some to stay limber till then. I cain’t go in that pantry no more, not today I cain’t. I got to make that little extrack last till way up in the day. Man, I sure ought to went over there and got me another one before bed last night. But I’m all right now, long as I don’t eat too much breakfast and bury this buzz I got on.
He went up the hall to the lobby, walking steady and sure of himself now, and suppressing a little chuckle. Always after a good swig took hold of him he felt like laughing, though he
didn’t know why. It was like a funny secret when you had a good stiff one under you, and sometimes it was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud. It made everything so fine, nothing to worry you. He could feel it creep up on him now, fuzzing him up and making the soles of his feet tingle. Gret God, he thought, that small bottle done hit me like a ton of bricks. Must be my stomach was empty. I declare I believe a man could just go on and on. You cain’t do that though. It don’t pay to abuse your drinks.
Standing at the lobby windows, looking at the rain falling on the early morning streets and the wide deserted courthouse lawn, he thought of the men up in 201 again. Well, I let that gun throw a scare in me, he thought, but I musta been right all along. They some kinda Law. Bound to be now, because if they had any mischief in mind I imagine we’d of heard about it by now. They been here ever since yesterday evening and ain’t nothing happened yet. I guess I was right, all right. Of course, they don’t look like the Law, but then the Law don’t always look like itself. Sometime they got to act strangely to nab these crim’nals. I imagine what they down here for is on account of this bootlegging. They liable to be after Mister Ace Kelley, for all I know. Wouldn’t that be a shame though if they was to arrest Mister Ace? I sure hope they don’t. That could put us in a strain sure enough, if a man had nowhere to go to get him a bottle. We might have to go back to making homebrew. Mercy.
Thinking of Mister Ace had put him in mind of Miss Benson again, and he remembered a strange thing that had happened in the night. It was one o’clock when Miss Benson came in from her date, just a minute or two before the storm broke. Sugar had already given up and gone to bed, but when he heard her come in and go up the stairs, he had gone out to the lobby in his stocking feet to latch the door. When he returned to his room and started to get back in bed, there was a brilliant flash of lightning and he was surprised and alarmed to see Mister Harry Reeves standing at the other side of the road, almost directly opposite his own window, standing there in the pouring-down rain all dressed out in old clothes and a ball cap, looking wild as he could be. It frightened Sugar at first, but then he realized that Mister Harry must be drunk, and he raised the window and said: “Mister Harry, you go on in home outta this rain!”
Mister Harry had jumped about a foot off the ground and run like a rabbit. Some Mister Harry, Sugar thought, remembering the incident. That man musta been drunk as Cootie Brown. First time I ever knew Mister Harry would get a load on like that and go wandering around in the rain. You cain’t tell about these white folks, though. They sure can fool you sometimes.
Looking out across the square toward the courthouse, Sugar thought about Mister Harry and how high he had jumped, and he began to laugh. He shook with laughter, thinking about it. Some Mister Harry, all right. You cain’t tell about these white folks, I declare you cain’t.
When Elsie Cotter awoke she didn’t feel well at all. She felt like she might be going to have another one of her headaches. It was only six o’clock, half an hour earlier than she ordinarily got up, and her father was not awake yet, so she stayed where she was in bed, trying to go back to sleep. She knew she couldn’t though, and then she realized it was raining. A pleasant, cool steady rain was falling on the roof and water was running from the eaves, splashing into more water on the ground. The whole world outside her window had a watery sound, even the cars passing in the wet street. It came back to her then about the storm during the night, and she got up and raised the shade to look out.
But then she remembered about the money and the morning was spoiled for her again. A heaviness developed suddenly at the back of her eyes. She got back into bed. Well, she thought, of all the people in the world for it to belong to, it had to be that woman. She wants the key back, does she? I wonder what she’d say if the key was all I returned. Nothing probably. Just look down her nose at me for a thief, and that would be the one thing I couldn’t endure.
She prodded the pillow and rolled over, looking out the window. She could see the branches of the squat, dead mulberry tree that stood by the back porch, and beyond that the roof of the Jenkins’ garage. There were several fist-sized rocks, a bicycle tire and a tin can on the garage roof, thrown up there by the little Jenkins boy. He was always throwing things. Mill class of people. Above the garage roof the sky was low and gray and lumpy looking. It would probably rain all day, maybe for several days. Miss Cotter yawned and stretched her heavy legs. I’d like to throw it in her face, she thought. I’d like to walk up to that fine house of hers and throw it right in her common face. She raised herself in bed to see if it was possible to see the Walker house from her bedroom window, but it wasn’t. The hill on Baird Drive was in the way.
I wonder what they’re doing over there now, she thought. At six o’clock they won’t even be up yet. They probably get up around eight-thirty and go down and have breakfast all ready and waiting for them. For all I know, she may have breakfast in bed. She’s the type. She’d do it that way to show off. Two cars and a station wagon, and just the four of them there to drive all those cars. And that daughter of hers that married the Whittaker boy, running off to Birmingham last fall to enter a dog in a dog show. Can you beat that? My God, they slept with dogs three generations ago. Hound dogs. They get all that from the movies. They go to these trashy movies and try to imitate them – breakfast in bed, dog shows, colored maids, cocktails. They’re a fine bunch, now aren’t they? Looking down their nose at people who can trace their family practically back to the seventeenth century. Money. If you’ve got money you’re somebody. If you don’t have it you’re nobody. That’s how they all look at it today. It’s all money now, and they’ve got it. Well, I’ve got some of it too, and I’m just half a mind to keep it, out of spite. No, I can’t do a thing like that. What am I saying? My grandfather would turn over in his grave.
There was an explosion of coughing in the next room, and Elsie could hear the old man floundering around in his bed, making the springs creak with his weight. She lay very still, listening and hoping he would go back to sleep. She wasn’t ready to get up yet. She had some more thinking to do. After a while he was quiet again.
She turned her pillow over to find a cool spot, and scissored her legs around to a new position in the bed. The rain drummed steadily on the roof, the water dribbled from the eaves, and now and then a damp cool draft of air would bulge the white curtains delicately. She wished there was someone to bring her in a cup of coffee.
The nice thing about the old days, she thought, was that everybody knew everybody else, and the town was small and quiet and shady – a pleasant place to live. People played croquet. Of course it wasn’t a big place now, but there was a great difference. A great difference. For instance, in those days fine old families were looked up to, whether they had money or not. Money didn’t mean so much then. Look at the Proctors, what fine people they were then. And the Byjohns, and the Pontiffs. She could remember playing hopscotch under the big leafy beech trees with Jane and Zelma Pontiff, all of them wearing little white pinafores, and they must have looked like figures in a painting, under those big friendly trees. Now where were they? Jane and Zelma living all alone in that horrible old Gothic house, penniless and pathetic. Even the beech trees were gone; cut down so they could widen the street. Their father had been shot to death by old man Dave Fairchild and his half brother. There was violence in those days, too. They shot him as he came down the courthouse steps, and then when Will Pontiff was down, lying there on the ground, Dave Fairchild had got down from his horse and shot him again. It was the only stain against the Fairchild name. But even the Fairchilds were not the people they once were. Money. Too much of it.
I don’t know, though, she thought. It’s a blessing and a curse, I guess. You can’t live right with it, and you can’t live without it. It’s terrible to be poor. It’s humiliating, even when you know there are more important things in life. Look at us, for example. I have to quibble about groceries, I have to buy the old lettuce and that terrible cheap coffee. Me, a Morgan
on my mother’s side. I don’t know what it’s eventually coming to, either, because I won’t be able to work forever. I guess we’ll end up on public welfare. Think of it. And really the worst part of it all is that nobody will even care. The old people are all gone, or else they’re poor too, or have forgotten who you are. My God, we are pathetic, Papa and me. And there’s nothing so bad as to be poor and humiliated and humble. Especially if you once were somebody. I don’t care for a lot of money, I honestly don’t, but I do wish I could walk in a store just once and ask for the best instead of the cheapest. I wish I could wear just one new, nice dress, and shoes that didn’t look like they came from a bargain basement. Is that asking too much? I have to actually pay the bills on installments. I have to accept charity. It’s the truth, I won’t deny it. Papa and me, we’re just pathetic old people with nowhere to turn. No family and not even friends any more, living with riffraff because it’s cheap. Cheap. My God, money is everything.
She buried her face in the pillow to cry, but no tears would come. She just lay there feeling smothered. Finally she got up and crossed the room to her vanity and opened the drawer. She brushed the handkerchiefs aside and picked up the small kidney-shaped leather purse. It was Mexican made, tooled leather. She took out the fat wad of bills and transferred them to her own shabby black pocketbook and snapped it shut.
There, she said to herself. It’s wrong, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’ll throw that smelly little purse in the furnace and nobody will ever be the wiser. I know it’s wrong, and I don’t care. This afternoon I’ll take the money to the bank and then maybe we’ll at least be able to pay Dr. Clemmons a part of what we owe him. I’m stealing now and I’m not sorry, not even ashamed to admit it. I honestly don’t care anymore. That’s what it’s come to.
She went back to bed again, and this time she was able to cry, a little.