The Winter After This Summer

by Stanley Ellin

  When I got to the clamming shed at the cove I saw men there on O. P. Smith’s dock looking seaward and talking amongst themselves, and when they spied me they came around me. Calvin Duane was one of them, and he pulled at my arm which was a way of his that I hated.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. “Was that your boat, hey? What happened out there?”

  I didn’t say anything. I pushed his arm away and kept going up the road to Fred Duane’s place. And when the others followed along talking to me I didn’t listen.

  Inside the place they left me alone because they saw by now that I didn’t want any part of them. They stood around and talked to each other and to Fred Duane, keeping their voices down too low for me to hear and looking at me now and again out of the corners of their eyes. It didn’t matter to me, the way I felt. I bought a pint of whisky and drank down half of it as soon as I got it opened. Then I took what was left to a table in the corner and sat down there. I was lifting the bottle again when Fred Duane sat down across from me. He put his hand on the bottle and pushed it back on the table.

  “That’s enough of that,” he said. “You’ve got a long life ahead. No need to do all your drinking in one night.”

  He waited for me to speak up, and when I didn’t he said, “You’re taking something mighty hard, boy. Was that your boat went down off Dog’s Head?”

  I heard him, but from so far away that the words didn’t seem to have anything to do with the way his lips were moving. He waited some more and then he said, “What’s it all about, boy? This is old Fred Duane talking, and when he talks he likes an answer. Was that your boat got sunk out there?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Ah, that’s too bad. Too bad. She was a beauty, wasn’t she? Yes, sir,” he said, and shook his head over it, “the finest little boat ever put in around here. She looked like a speedboat when she took off from the dock that morning. What kind of engine was that in her anyhow?”

  “Rolls-Royce,” I said.

  “You mean that?”

  “It was a Rolls-Royce. Out of England.”

  “Ah,” said Fred Duane, “I thought she looked like something special, but I couldn’t figure out what. I guess she was hand-tooled from top to bottom. That’s what I hear tell about those Rolls-Royces.”

  “Maybe so,” I said.

  “And down in twenty fathoms now, no use to anybody. Well, that’s the way it happens. And your boss along with her, I take it. That fellow you were here with last week—he’s gone too, ain’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Too bad, too bad. He was a likable one, all right. Full of the devil and ready to go. Well, maybe the way it worked out for him was the best way. That’s something to consider, boy. Look at it that way and it might do you more good than a bottle of booze. There’s some people the good Lord never meant to get old and broken-down. They’re like a mettlesome race horse that wants to run any time he’s on his legs. That kind only suffers when he gets old and has to be put out to pasture to save the little strength left him. Quick and sudden’s the right way for them to go, and the best time for it is when they’ve still got their wind and foot. I bet if you ask the preacher about it he’ll tell you the same thing. Look at it that way, boy, and ease up. No use sitting there like you saw the end of the world. Ease up, and tomorrow you can go back on the job for me and be yourself. I told you a long time ago you were best off on the truck.”

  “No,” I said, “I’m done with the liquor business. I don’t want any part of it.”

  “Thirty a week to start,” said Fred Duane. “And there’s a man goes along with a gun and knows how to use it. Nobody bothers O. P. Smith’s trucks any more, that’s for sure.”

  “I don’t want any part of it,” I said.

  “Well, maybe you’ll see it different tomorrow. Best thing for you now is to see your troubles the right way and forget them. Get yourself cleaned up—damn, you must have been rolling in the sand, the way you look.”

  He reached out and started to brush down the front of my jacket and then he stopped short and looked at his hand. “Well now,” he said.

  He got up and came around to me and put his hand on my shoulder and my knee. “Bone dry,” he said. “You didn’t have a dinghy on the back of that boat, did you?”

  “No.”

  He stood there sucking his lips in and out. “Well, how did you come ashore?” he said. “You didn’t walk on the water, did you? Your pa used to figure he could do that, but I didn’t know you learned the trick. Or did you flap your wings and fly?”

  And then I talked to him like I never did in my whole life, knowing him my whole life, too. “Leave my pa out of this,” I told him “You say one more thing against him and I’ll bust your face in.”

  He got red. “Never mind that,” he said. “What the hell happened out there in that boat, that’s what I want to know.”

  “Then go down twenty fathoms and see,” I told him. “You old fool, go down and see!” and I got to my feet and pushed him aside and walked out with the bottle in my hand which was something nobody coming out of there was supposed to do.

  But I didn’t care. I stood outside wondering where to go and what to do with myself. And looked up at the stars, the same stars as ever were—Orion’s Belt with the knife in it, and the Seven Sisters, and the Dipper pointing at the North Star—but there was no sign in them for me. Nothing to tell me what my curse was and what mark would be made on me for it. Only the same stars and no one else around me so that I felt like the only thing alive in the world.

  Then I saw a light at the end of the lane that ran back of Fred Duane’s place, and I remembered the women that were set up there. There were two of them, Ida and Pearl, and they stayed in the shanty Fred Duane had fixed up for them. They were past being young, and they were plain-looking women with gold all over their teeth and the blue veins puffed up on their legs, but they were good natured and friendly without asking a lot of questions. So I went there.

  It wasn’t much of a place, the shanty. It was only one big room with a bed against each of two opposite walls where there weren’t windows, and with curtains to pull in front of the beds when business was being done. When I went in I saw that the iron stove in the middle of the room was so hot its belly was red, and Ida and Pearl were sitting in their robes in front of it warming their feet. I didn’t know how they could stand it that close to the stove. It was so bad in the room, what with the heat there and the smell of women and the perfume water they always sprinkled around that I had to take off my jacket to breathe again.

  Ida thought that was funny, and she started to laugh. “Oh, you are in a rush, you are. You don’t have to be in that much of a rush, big man. It’ll keep. What’s in the bottle? I hope you left something in it for an old friend.”

  She got up and took the bottle from the table where I put it. “Yes, you did,” she said. “Well, here’s to you and Jack Dempsey and may the best man win,” and she kept drinking until Pearl grabbed the bottle away from her.

  “You got a goddam hollow leg?” Pearl said to her, and drank down the rest and stood the empty bottle on the table. Then she said to me, “That takes care of the business, honey; now how about the pleasure? It’s Ida’s turn but if you want to change around it’s all right with me.”

  “All right with who?” Ida said. “Since when do we have elections around here?”

  She took a little pot of red lip color out of her robe and stuck her pinkie into it and smeared it around her lips and rubbed some on her cheeks. Then she held her hand out and said, “Ring the cash register, big man,” and I paid her. She pulled the curtain in front of one of the beds and we went in back of it and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Shoes off,” she said. “What do you think we’re running here?”

  I bent down and pulled off my shoes. The bottoms were rubbed clean but the rest of them up to the ankles were sandy, and under the sand was something like oil. I held up my hands to see what it was, and they were r
ed and wet. Bright red, the color of the stuff Ida smeared on her face, and sticky wet.

  “What’s that?” Ida said. “Look at that mess.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “It’s paint.”

  “Well, you don’t have to sit there shaking and shivering about it, you big baby. Here,” she said, and she gave me a piece of the newspaper that was all over the bed to lay on. “Go on, clean that mess up. And those shoes. And next time you kick over a bucket of paint do something about it before you come in here. You’re like all the rest of them around here. Always dirty and stinking from fish. You and the rest of them. Oh, give me that paper. You’re not doing any good with it.”

  She rubbed down my hands with it and then the shoes, and I let her. Then she lay down on the bed and pulled me on top of her. “All right,” she said, “you were in such a helluva rush. Now show me why.”

  That was when the Book was opened, and I saw what was written down in it for me. I lay between the woman’s thighs, and for all I had need of her and for all she tried to help my need, there was no strength in my loins. We struggled and sweated together, and the heat was everywhere in me except my loins. So I turned away from her and lay there apart, seeing what was written in the Book for me.

  At first Ida lay there the same way. Then she sat up and wiped the sweat from her face and belly with her hand, and put her robe on. She took out a cigarette, and when she looked at me, holding a match to it, I could see that her lips were like blood.

  “Well,” she said, “there’s a wilted geranium if I ever saw one.”

  Then she blew smoke at me and laughed when I turned my face away from it and from the sight of her. “What the hell,” she said. “Don’t let it bother you. It happens to the best of them, and next time they’re back bigger and better than ever.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No? What does that mean?”

  “I’m accursed,” I said.

  “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” she said, and she moved back from me quick and crossed herself. “You mean you got the evil eye on you or something? What kind of thing is that to come around here with? You want to get everybody in trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Then go on and get out of here. Go see the priest. He’s the only one can help. Ask him.”

  I said, “I’m accursed for my sins, and no one can help. God and Satan warred for me. They warred back and forth, and Satan won and he holds me in his hand. And there is no place to go, because when a man is accursed the whole world is Satan’s hand. God rules over Heaven and Satan rules over Hell, but Hell is closer and Satan is always loose.”

  “Quit talking like that,” Ida said. “You give me the willies when you talk like that, so quit it, you hear? You’re drunk, you big loony, that’s what. I should have known right off you were loaded up to the goddam eyeballs.”

  She went through the curtain and threw my jacket in at me. “Go on, get out of here,” she said. “You can sober up outside. And if you got any ideas about getting your money back, forget it. I worked plenty hard for that money.”

  Then she left me to myself, and while I was putting on my jacket and shoes I heard her talking to Pearl and Pearl laughing. So I knew that Pearl was making a fool of me and would tell everybody and turn them into mockers and scorners against me, and I went out and told her not to do that.

  “I’ll do what I want,” she said. “It ain’t my fault you’re only loaded with blanks, is it?”

  So I hit her in the face with my fist and she fell down, and Ida saw that and she started screaming. She picked up the empty pint bottle and broke it off against the stove and ran at me with it. I pushed her away, but I felt the glass cut my forehead, and then Ida ran out of the shanty still screaming, and I ran after her to stop her before there was trouble.

  When she was halfway down the lane Fred Duane and Calvin Duane and the others came running up, and I waited there. And Ida told them a whole story against me, but I didn’t say anything.

  “All right,” Fred Duane said to her, “I’ll take care of this. You go on back and tend to Pearl,” and he pushed her away so that she went back to the shanty, cursing me all the way.

  Then he said to me, “Look at you, boy. Your forehead’s open to the bone. We better get you to the doctor right quick.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Come on,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about him knowing what happened. Everybody in town’ll know as soon as jaws get waggling tomorrow.”

  So I went with him and Calvin Duane to the doctor who I knew as long as I knew them. And the doctor put stitches into the cut and told me to come around in a few days and he would see how I was doing.

  “No,” said Fred Duane. “Somebody else’ll have to take care of that for him.”

  “Why?” said the doctor.

  “Because he’s leaving town,” said Fred Duane. “And he’s leaving for good this time. He’s getting as bad as his old man was, and if he hangs around here he’ll sure as hell wind up the same way. Let his brothers look after him. I’m too old and tired to worry about any more Averys.”

  “His brothers,” said the doctor. “Fine chance.”

  “Then let him look out for himself after what he done tonight. I’ll buy him the train ticket to New York and that’s all.”

  So I knew what the mark on my forehead meant, because the Book was opened to me.

  And it said, And the Lord set a mark upon Cain.

  And the Book was opened wide to me.

  And it said, A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

  NINE

  Because I was the seventh son of a seventh son, the number given to me was seven.

  From the time my father died to the time I was accursed was seven months.

  From the time I was accursed to the time I came to Samuel Fisher was seven months.

  From the time I came to him to the time I left him was seven years.

  From the time I left him to the time I came to the woman was four times seven years.

  And after that comes the time when I will be saved.

  TEN

  In the seven months before I came to Samuel Fisher I was drank, because when I was sober I could see myself in the mirror. I sold everything I had for drink, my good clothes and watch and signet ring and everything else except the Bible my father used to read to me from, a little one with his name in it that I kept in my pocket. It all went for drink, because what I needed to eat I could get at the mission on Chrystie Street, where you stood in line for it and afterward sat in a big room and sang church hymns to pay them back.

  And for the rest of it I lived in doorways along the Bowery, and under the bridge, and in Battery Park, but always coming back to the Bowery, because that was where I could get what I needed to drink and as long as I heard the trains running overhead I knew where I was.

  Once, near the beginning of that time, when there was no money to be had I worked with pick and shovel for three days. Then I took the money that was paid me, and I went to the public baths for a nickel and got clean. And then I went to the house on Catherine Street where I used to go. There was one woman there that always thought kindly of me, and she was the one I laid with. We laid together a long time, and like the whore of Babylon she did unnatural things to me but it was no use because I was still accursed. And never went back there again or wanted to.

  So there was no need to spend money on anything but drink. And lay where I fell until the cop came along and hit the bottoms of my feet with his stick and pulled me up standing and pushed me along my way, wherever that was. Until the day I lay there and felt myself being moved around and pulled at, but no stick across my feet so that I wondered what kind of cop this was. And opened my eyes to see it wasn’t a cop, but a man squatting there with his hand on my back trying to sit me up.

  “Get up,” he said. “Get up. You’re too big for me to pick up and carry. You’re still man enough to get on your own feet, aren’t you?”

  That was
Samuel Fisher, but I didn’t know him then. All I knew was that I needed to sleep and he wouldn’t let me. That was the time when I could sleep days and nights for so long that they got mixed up together and I lost count. And there is no torment like needing to sleep and not being let alone to do it. It is like swimming slow and easy and having someone try to pull you under and drown you. Like having your arms and legs twisted off and fingers digging into your eyes to pull them open. So I wanted to push him away but I couldn’t. And he got me sitting up in the doorway, and went away for a minute and came back with a wet rag. He sat down next to me and washed my face and slapped it back and forth with his hand until there was no use trying to get back to sleep.

  “That’s better,” he said. “At least you’re back among the living. As it is, you’re still half dead. Keep it up this way and you’ll be all dead in a little while. You’ve got no right to do that. Do you understand what I’m saying? You’ve got no right to do that. Now come along with me and I’ll do what I can for you.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You’ll be better off that way than in jail or the hospital,” he said. “I’m your friend, do you hear? I’m your friend, and I want you to do what I tell you to. Now get on your feet and I’ll help you along. It’s not far.”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t have friends. I’m accursed.”

  “Don’t glory in that. We’re all accursed one way or another.”

  “But the mark is on me,” I said, and I put my hand to my forehead to show him. “The mark is on me, the way it says in the Book. And it says, Behold, I am vile.”

  “And proud of it, friend. Oh, proud of it. For it says in the Book, We are all an unclean thing. What makes you think you’re the only soul on earth that can’t be redeemed? Redemption comes to all who want it. Only the proud don’t want it. They wear their vileness like a badge.”