Table Money

by Jimmy Breslin

  Owney had a shot and a beer and listened to the mumbling, which mixed in with the sound of water dripping in a tub under the bar. He wondered why he was alone. Then he began to think of Dolores. He saw her standing in a golden light that picked her out of the darkness. She held their baby and he stepped up to her and kissed her on the neck. She raised her chin and nuzzled flesh that was as soft as sky. He kissed the baby on the soft hair atop her head. He held the image as he drank cold beer. Sitting at the bar, he imagined the smell of Dolores’s neck and the baby’s hair. He now felt enormously satisfied with himself because he had shown great love for his wife and baby and so, of course, this made him a good father.

  “You give us one, will you?” he said to the bartender. With the flick of a finger, Owney indicated he wanted to buy the mumbling man a drink, too.

  Now there were a few more people, much younger, in the place and a band came in and the first sounds of an electric guitar came over the loudspeaker system. A drum rolled and the first people were dancing. As Owney looked to see if there were girls at the bar, his foot slipped from the railing and he decided to go home rather than try dancing. Then he decided to have another drink. He had the drink and it made him sleepy. He put his head down on the bar for a moment, and the saloon manager came over and tapped him. “I wish it was the men’s shelter because I’m tired, too, but it isn’t,” the manager said. “Here, come with me. I’ll show you something.”

  He took Owney into an office where there was a high-backed red leather chair. Owney sat in it and closed his eyes. When he woke up, the manager was at a desk, adding up checks, and four men smoked and played cards at a table along the wall.

  The manager spoke to Owney without looking up. “Feeling better?”

  “I don’t know how I feel. I better go home.”

  “Home? You’d better go for coffee and get to work.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Quarter after five.”

  He went to a diner on Queens Boulevard where whipped-cream cakes spun on a turntable inside a glass case. The Greek behind the counter did not move.

  “Coffee,” Owney said.

  The Greek kept staring out at the last of the night traffic on the boulevard. Reluctantly, he turned to the coffee urn. The whine of truck tires outside told Owney that the morning had started. He thought about calling Dolores. Too early.

  At six o’clock, he found himself on Katonah Avenue, nearly asleep at a red light, and when he stirred he saw a telephone booth next to the light stanchion. He decided that the baby was up by now, and it was all right to call. He parked the car and began dialing. Something told him to stop, to get his story put together, but his finger kept going and Dolores answered on the first ring. She must be in the kitchen, he thought.

  “I got hit on the head by a piece of rock and this kid doctor got afraid and made me stay in overnight. I wouldn’t let anybody call you because I didn’t want you worried.”

  She hung up without saying a word to him, which was fine with him because if she had asked the name of the hospital, he would have had considerable trouble.

  In front of Brendan’s, a man appeared with a broom. He had the suggestion of gray hair covering an old red scalp. He began sweeping the sidewalk. Now he changed. He became younger, and uglier, and he was standing on the sidewalk in boxing trunks, with his bare chest heaving with effort. His face was smeared with Vaseline and his eight-ounce gloves were dark and old from sweat over many rounds. Now the gloves came up and they beckoned to Owney. He looked clearly at the opponent, alcohol, and he parked the car and got out to mix it up.

  “Oh, we’re not open yet,” the old man said.

  “You can be open for me,” Owney said.

  “I’m only the porter.”

  “Then I’ll serve myself.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I sure can.”

  He walked past the man and into the dimness of the place, where two men older than the porter, wearing rain jackets and coughs, sat with shot glasses.

  The porter, following Owney in, said, “Friends of mine.”

  “So am I. Shot of Fleischmann’s and a beer.”

  Owney put up three dollars, which the porter first pocketed and then poured the drink. Owney swallowed the shot and drank half the beer.

  “Change?” he said to the porter.

  “Oh, I can’t give you change. I’m only the porter. I can’t go near the cash register.”

  “Then you can give me another drink,” Owney said.

  “Not without money I can’t,” the porter said.

  “Use the change from the money I gave you,” Owney said.

  “I said I’ve no change,” the porter said.

  “Then just pour me a drink. Who’ll know what you’re doing.”

  “I’ll know.”

  The porter was motionless until Owney put three more dollars on the bar, which caused the old man’s hand to move as swiftly as a fox’s foot. The money was gone and the drink appeared. The price was a bit high, Owney thought, but he also was paying for privacy: no one in the hog house could see him taking whiskey before going into the hole. He had a third drink and when he finished that, he felt like another.

  He woke up at dusk. His eyes ran over the wall of his bedroom in the cemetery house. When he picked up his head, he saw the rows of tombstones in the shadows.

  Then dusk turned to dawn—or had it been dawn all along?—and he went to work.

  When Danny Murphy noticed Dolores walking toward the hog house, he regarded her as the first plane over Diamond Head. He assumed that she was there to collect Owney’s paycheck, and this was intolerable, for a man only has one liver and one paycheck. “They’re not even here yet,” he said.

  “My husband isn’t here?” Her mouth was open in alarm.

  “Oh, he’s here. I mean the mahosker isn’t here. It don’t come until later.”

  “The what?”

  “The checks. The company don’t bring them here until after two.”

  “I’m looking for my husband, not his check.”

  “He’s inside.”

  “Would you get him, please?”

  Murphy hurried inside and then as quickly, embarrassed, Owney came out. He walked past Dolores and made her follow him until they couldn’t be seen from the hog house.

  “I’m up two straight nights,” she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “I called the police to see if anyone was killed.”

  He looked at the ground. “How did you get here?”

  “I took a cab. For twenty-five dollars. Wasn’t that nice?”

  He ran a hand over his face.

  “I want to ask one question,” she said.

  “So ask.”

  “Do you think something is the matter with you?”

  “Me?”

  “Let me rephrase it. Is there anything the matter with me?”

  “You?”

  “Can’t you please look at me and just say something?”

  “What?”

  “All I want is for you to hug me and tell me you love me. Everything would be so easy after that.”

  “I do that.”

  “In the morning with a hangover. Then all you want to do is screw me and go to work.”

  “I work. You see me here.”

  “When you’re at a bar, do you ever think of me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then why do you stay there? How could you still stay there?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Did you ever think that I could get lonely? I am lonely. Do you realize that I’m a young woman and I’m sitting alone all night? That I can’t even go to bed? I’m terrified that you’re dead someplace. I certainly didn’t have a child so I could live like this.”

  “I know.”

  “What did you think of when you married me? What did you think it would be like?”

  “I thought I’d get ahead in a hurry and we’d go live someplace nice and be in lo
ve with each other.”

  “Fine. So what’s happening?”

  “I’m going to get there.”

  “Like this? Do you ever ask yourself what you’re doing?”

  “I just keep going.”

  “Do you think something is the matter with you?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you come home last night?”

  “I got stewed.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “Everybody on this job drinks. What am I going to do at the end of the day, walk out on them?”

  “Everybody drinks? Every young guy is a drunk? Should I go inside and ask them?”

  “They go for a drink.”

  “They do?”

  “Sure.”

  “I can’t believe that. I can’t believe all these people here are drunk. Let me go in there and ask them.”

  “Come on.”

  “Or is it that you only know the drunks?”

  “I go with my family.”

  “Well?”

  “What did you say about them?”

  “That they drink too much. I think your father wants you drunk. He feels like a hero with you next to him. Why aren’t you looking at me?”

  “I am.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re looking at the ground. Are you afraid to talk to me?”

  Now his eyes came up and looked right at her. “I’m not afraid of anything on earth.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I think you are.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you’re afraid.”

  “Of who?”

  “You’re afraid to face yourself.”

  He made a face and turned and walked away. After a few steps he spun around and said, “From now on, stay away from this job. This is where I work.”

  “If they have a mirror inside, why don’t you take a look?” she said.

  He walked away, and she did not cry until she was outside the gate and back in the cab.

  Back in the hog house on the bench next to Owney’s locker was a sleeping man who had a face covered with hair and a mouth with no teeth.

  The man’s eyes opened slightly. “What have you got?” he muttered.

  “Hot coffee,” Owney said.

  The eyes under the hair closed. The derelict’s name was Eddie Meagher, and he was there purportedly to shape, but he hadn’t worked in weeks and was using the place as a bedroom. But when Owney was dressed, Meagher got up and followed him outside.

  “Where are you going?” Owney asked him.

  “To work.”

  Owney walked fast to get away from him. Delaney stood up at the top of the hill, talking to Owney’s father.

  Meagher, walking with the loosest feet, called out, “You go down one short.”

  “Be off with you,” Delaney said. “The only thing we’re short of here is people who can work.”

  “Hey, Jimmy Morrison. What do you say? The gang’s one short. I fuckin’ know it,” Meagher said.

  Owney’s father threw a hand at him in the air and walked off toward the equipment shed.

  “Bullshit,” Meagher said as he approached Delaney. “I counted two gangs going down one short.”

  “Counted what? What you drank?”

  “I counted heads. I’m claimin’ one of these fucking jobs.”

  Owney and Delaney walked slowly and Meagher brushed past them and went up the hill, and as he got closer to the shaft his stride improved and he walked up to the low gate and unhooked a length of wire holding the gates together and the click of this caused the gateman’s head to pop out of the shaft. “The lift’s not up,” he called.

  Meagher pushed the gate open and strode in for the lift, which was not there. He was about to step off into the air when he noticed this. He paused on the lip of the elevator shaft, standing on wood that looked like a floor but was actually jutting out over the shaft. He had no balance and he held his hands out to steady himself. The wood under his feet shifted. Meagher’s head was turning in alarm when now the wood tilted. Owney, walking up with Delaney, walking quickly now, could see Meagher paw the air as he dropped into the black hole that went deep into the ground.

  When they brought the lift up, Meagher’s body was covered with a blanket, the indentations of which showed that he was in wet pieces. The lift sat in the shadows and the men stood in the sun and waited for the ambulance to arrive and remove the body.

  “Does this mean we take the day off?” one of the blacks asked Delaney.

  “Out of respect for him—the man died,” Delaney said.

  “He never worked here. He just an old drunken mon.”

  Delaney used a cigarette to disguise his fury. “Eddie Meagher worked here for years.”

  “I here five years, I never see him do anything but get all drunk up.”

  “He worked. I say we take the day off just like we would if one of us went down,” Delaney said.

  “I never walk up to the shaft drunk,” another voice said.

  Delaney concentrated on his cigarette. Owney, looking around, saw that a few whites, while shaken by the body in pieces in front of them, were thinking through the emotion of the moment and reaching the point on the other side where they could see themselves receiving checks with one day taken out for their honoring of Eddie Meagher, who died a drunk. Then, this instant passed and they all accepted gloom.

  Now the crowd parted and an ambulance rocked its way up to the shaft. Three uniforms jumped out and then became motionless as they saw the blanket over the pieces of body, the blanket, green, now black from the blood beneath it. They brought out black rubber body bags and a wire cage to carry them. The driver got back in behind the wheel, leaving the two medics to pick up the body.

  “Let’s go, lads, we’ll give him a hand. One, two, three.”

  “They’ll do it,” the driver said through the window.

  “We’re just giving them a hand,” Delaney said.

  “It’s their job. Are you trying to take their job from them?”

  “I’d never do that. I’m for the workingman.”

  “Then let them do their job and you do yours.”

  Delaney called out, “Nobody touch their work. We got our job, they got theirs.”

  They stood still and waited while the medics shoveled the parts of Meagher’s body into the bags and then carried them to the ambulance. When the ambulance backed away, the men stood hesitantly in front of the shaft.

  “Do we go down or not?” somebody said.

  Delaney seemed confused. “Where the hell is your father?” he said to Owney.

  “I’ll go down and see what the guys in the hole think,” Owney said. “Why doesn’t everybody stay here until I find out.”

  Delaney nodded and Owney stepped onto the lift alone, standing clear of the blood slick atop the mud in the middle of the floor. Owney stared at the sky and then the elevator started down and the sky disappeared and he rode down through the darkness. He wondered if any parts of Meagher’s body were still stuck to the sides of the shaft. He tucked his chin inside his slicker, to make the target all the smaller in case one of Meagher’s old feet came flying off the side of the shaft.

  There was no noise at the bottom of the shaft, as no one was working. A gang was standing along the sullen rock. Before Owney could ask them what they wanted to do they began walking onto the elevator. At the edge of a puddle, glistening in the light, was a piece of rock that seemed to be a crystal. It was a small piece, and the only one that Owney could name on sight: muscovite. The geologist in the contractor’s trailer once had told Owney that the rock was as old as the earth but was named muscovite because in some centuries in the past, the churches in Russia had used this rock for windowpanes.

  Owney’s thumbnail peeled a wafer off the rock. He held it up so he could see the light coming through. It was stained glass made by the earth a billion years ago. As he looked through it, standing deep under the streets of the city of Ne
w York, the glass was first green and then almost pale yellow. He thought about an old woman in Russia someplace staring at the light coming through the window of her church. Russian praying to God. He started to say the Our Father for Eddie Meagher, but then somebody on the elevator called and Owney went over and stepped on and put the rock into his shirt pocket. He forgot to resume the prayer and when the lift brought him back up to the ground, he merely indicated the men around him and Delaney called out, “No work today, lads. We’ve a man dead.”

  Passing the picnic table to leave the place, the men took up the bottle of Jim Beam as if they were receiving bus transfers. Some drank from the bottle and left with a hand wiping the mouth; others poured the whiskey into paper cups and walked out gulping. All had a mixture of anguish and excitement and need of a forum in which to stand and make their grief public and at the same time share in the shock and glory, for they, too, work in the place of death.

  Now his father was in the hog house, reaching for the bottle. Without looking at Owney, he poured Jim Beam into a paper cup and held it out. Owney took it.

  “What was he saying about short gangs?” Owney said.

  “Who could listen to the poor bastard?”

  “Maybe I could.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I been down here short twice when I nearly got hurt,” Owney said.

  His father walked away.

  Owney was about to follow him, to begin bringing up everything that he had noticed lately, but then he thought of Dolores and he decided that he had to call her first, to use the excitement of Meagher’s death as a reason to talk to her. Of course he couldn’t use Meagher as an excuse, and indeed shouldn’t even mention his name. There are rules against frightening somebody out of their anger. But he would allow the energy of the moment to recommend something as he talked; he would come up with something good, he knew that.

  When she answered, he did not say hello and thus give her the chance to shoot anger at him. He said: “A guy just went right out of my hands into the shaft. I don’t know what to do. It brought back the whole freaking Nam to me.”

  “Oh, Owney. Who?”

  “Eddie Meagher. The nicest guy in the world. He just stood in the shaft and the boards fell out from under his feet. I just got my hand on him. Then, poof, he’s gone.”