Sally

by Howard Fast

  “I think so,” she said.

  “You thought about it? We only met today.”

  “Yes, I thought about it,” she said.

  “When did you think about it?”

  “When we were in the gym. I mean, that’s the first time I really thought about it. But I didn’t think you’d ask me whether my mother was a Unitarian. That’s the last thing in the world I thought about with a person like you. I thought I knew something about you, but evidently—”

  At that moment Rothschild entered. He came in with long, swinging steps and roared, “Gonzalez! Gonzalez! Where the hell are you?”

  Gonzalez turned around in his chair and stood up. Rothschild saw him and bore down on him with purpose and anger.

  “Just what the hell happened here tonight?” Rothschild yelled.

  “Ask them,” Gonzalez said, pointing to the plain-clothes men at the front of the room. “They’re from Homicide South, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know where they’re from, and when I ask you a question, I want an answer. Now what happened here tonight?”

  “Ask them,” Gonzalez said tiredly. “I had my night. I did my overtime. I’m through with today. I’m going to take Miss Dillman here back to her hotel, and then I’m going home. You want to fire me, fire me. You want to suspend me, suspend me. You want to send me out to the sticks, send me out to the sticks. You want to put me back in uniform, put me back in uniform. The hell with it! I don’t care! I’ve had it! Up to here!” Gonzalez motioned violently with his finger. “That’s all. I’m going home—with Miss Dillman. You got anything to say about that, Rothschild?”

  “Lieutenant Rothschild.”

  “Lieutenant Rothschild.”

  “No, I got nothing to say about that,” Rothschild said. “It’s time you went home anyway. You’re groggy. You can’t talk straight. You can’t see straight. You shot him—right?”

  Gonzalez sighed and nodded. “Yes, I shot him.”

  “He’s the contract man?”

  “That’s right. Same one. We been tagging each other all day.”

  Rothschild’s attitude and his voice changed. “We’re all tired, kid,” he said with surprising gentleness. “We all had a rough day. Can you give it five minutes more? Then you can take Miss Dillman home.”

  “I can give it five minutes more,” Gonzalez agreed.

  “Come up here with me for a minute,” Rothschild said and led the way to the front of the room.

  Gonzalez followed him. The plain-clothes men had emptied the boy’s pockets and laid out his possessions in a row on the edge of the makeshift stage. There was his gun—a .32-caliber automatic pistol. There were sixteen unused cartridges. There was a blood-soaked handkerchief, some keys on a ring, and some car keys. About forty cents in silver, and in a metal bill holder five hundred and twenty-two dollars in cash. A billfold out of which a detective had taken a driver’s license and a Diner’s Card. The driver’s license said James Fennington. It gave a San Francisco address. The Diner’s Card had another name and was evidently stolen.

  Rothschild looked at the stuff and then turned to Gonzalez. “That’s him,” Rothschild said.

  “What do you mean by him?”

  “We got a make on him—out of San Francisco. His name is James Fennington. He’s just a lousy punk kid gone bad and wild. He comes of a good family. Or what they call a good family in the newspapers and in the books. I don’t know what kind of a family he comes from. Whatever it is, they got nothing to be proud of.”

  “This isn’t a proud night,” Gonzalez said. “It’s a lousy night. Who’s got what to be proud of? I killed a man.”

  “It happens,” Rothschild said.

  “What do you mean, it happens? It doesn’t happen, Lieutenant. We plan it. We connive at it, because inside of us, sitting deep down somewhere, there’s a killer, and we were nursed on killing and we sucked the milk of a place that breeds killers. So the killer is inside of you as well as inside of everything else, and it was inside of me, and I planned to kill him and I prodded it and I pushed it every step of the way. I killed that poor, crazy kid. There could have been some other way. He could have been taken. No, I had to kill him.”

  “Get that kind of rot out of your system,” Rothschild said, with just an edge of disgust. “Get rid of it. The hell with that kind of thinking! You knew the score today. I knew the score today. Compatra dead, Mendoza dead. Look, get out of here, will you, Gonzalez? Get the girl and take her home, and then go home yourself and get a night’s sleep. Tomorrow you’ll feel better.”

  “Tomorrow maybe I won’t be a cop.”

  “Tomorrow you’ll feel better and you’ll still be a cop. Now get out of here.”

  “O.K., Lieutenant.” Gonzalez held out his hand. Rothschild took it.

  “Good night, Lieutenant.”

  “Good night.”

  Gonzalez walked over to Sally Dillman and said to her, “How about it, kid, do you think you can walk? Do you think you can make it outside? I’ll get a prowl car to run us over to the hotel.”

  “I think I can walk,” she said.

  She stood up and he took her by the arm. Rothschild had thought of the same thing evidently, because one of the cops in uniform came over to them and said, “Suppose I run you downtown, Detective Gonzalez.”

  “We’d appreciate that, Officer.”

  The three of them went out to where a prowl car was parked with its motor running. As they left, an ambulance gang entered and behind them more cops from Homicide. Outside in the street there were about two hundred people standing and waiting. As Gonzalez and Sally got into the prowl car, a TV truck pulled up.

  “Get us out of here quickly, Officer,” Gonzalez told the driver.

  He was a good driver and he didn’t waste time. A few minutes later they were at the St. Regis. Gonzalez got out of the car and helped Sally out. They entered the lobby and Clare Kennedy was waiting for them, and he fell on Gonzalez with a stream of questions. Gonzalez shook his head and said, “Later, Kennedy. I can’t talk about it now. I’ll take the kid up to her apartment and then I’ll come down. You can hit me on the way out.”

  “All’s well that ends well?” Kennedy asked.

  “I suppose so,” Gonzalez agreed.

  He took Sally into the elevator. Neither of them spoke as they went up to the eleventh floor, and then at the door of her room Sally said to him, “Do you want to come in?”

  “For a few minutes, if you don’t mind,” Gonzalez said. “I want to call my mother.”

  “Of course,” she said, “of course. Please use my phone. Do you want me to send down for a drink?”

  Gonzalez shook his head. “When you feel the way I do, a drink is no good at all.”

  “That’s the way I feel,” Sally said. “The thought of a drink is no good—not that I ever drink too much, but there are times when I like a drink—not now.”

  “Not now,” Gonzalez agreed.

  He walked over to the telephone and sat down. Sally kicked off her shoes and sprawled on the couch. Then she got up and went to her purse and took out cigarettes.

  “These are the cigarettes I went downstairs for.”

  She took a cigarette and asked Gonzalez if he wanted one. He nodded and she gave it to him. She lit his cigarette and then her own and sprawled on the couch again, asking him, “Do you want me to go into the next room? Do you want privacy?”

  “To speak to my mother?” he asked in astonishment.

  “Well, you just might,” she said.

  He shook his head and gave the operator the number. Sally puffed lazily and watched him. She saw him physically now. She had not truly looked at him before in plain terms of his physical appearance. He was a strong, tall, well-set man. He was educated, and he talked decently. Sally put herself in her dead mother’s place and then had a mental argument with her own mother.

  Her mother would disapprove. Her mother would have a dozen sober and convincing arguments, but in the end she could have beaten
her mother down. Her father would have presented more of a problem. He came from the kind of Presbyterian background that looks upon all Catholics with suspicion. Add to that the fact that the man she intended to marry was a Puerto Rican. That would have done it.

  But underneath all her father had been a tolerant man. He had been tolerant in his own way. Not the way a college professor is tolerant, but the way a locomotive engineer is tolerant.

  Her thoughts dissolved and she was listening to Gonzalez as he said to his mother, “But, Mama, the man who telephoned you was a fool. I tell you he was a fool. He was also not telling you the truth. I was not in danger today. I was not out on any special assignment. No, no, I was not running after murderers. I was not shooting and being shot at. Mama, look, you will hear all kinds of stories, and please don’t listen to the stories and just listen to what I tell you. I know better than anyone else what the truth is.”

  Then he listened. He listened for at least a minute, spreading his free arm and staring helplessly at Sally. He nodded wordlessly several times and then he said:

  “All right, Mama, you want me to tell you exactly what I did today? I will. I spent today with a girl whom I’m going to marry. That’s right, Mama, I am going to get married. I know, Mama, it was wrong for me to make a decision like this with a girl whom you never met, but that’s only because it was a sudden thing. It came quickly. It was a decision I came to only today. As a matter of fact, Mama, the truth is I met the girl today.”

  Again Gonzalez listened. Sally watched him as he listened, and she said to herself, “He would make a good husband.” She realized that if her mother were watching him in the same way, her mother would have agreed. He had a certain docility toward women that Sally had always felt was necessary to the best type of husband. It was inbred in him. He might be very brave, and he might act very tough, and he might make all sorts of gestures, and he could even kill a man when the desperate necessity to kill a man arose. But underneath all that he was docile, and docility, she believed, was the first quality necessary to a good husband-and-wife relationship. That is, docility in the male.

  “Mama,” Gonzalez said, “what can I say to you? Can’t you trust me when it comes to a girl? Mama, whether she is a Catholic is not everything that I require in a girl. Whether she is a Puerto Ricano is also not everything that I require in a girl. No, Mama, she is not Jewish. She is a Protestant, and, Mama, look, don’t get hysterical. Don’t begin to scream at me. Please, please, she will love you and you will love her. She will love your cooking.”

  Again Gonzalez listened.

  “Mama, what kind of a statement is that, that she will hate your cooking and that she will not eat in your house? This is ridiculous. When you—how can you say that a Protestant will not eat in your house? I can bring you from today until two weeks from today a stream of Protestants who will be honored to eat in your house, believe me, and they will say that your cooking is the most superb, the most extraordinary Spanish cooking in New York City. And at the same time, Mama, believe me, I can bring you Catholics who will not like anything you cook. I’m not arguing. All right, Mama, all right.”

  Again he listened.

  “All right, Mama, I promise you, yes, I’ll be home in two hours—three hours—I don’t know, Mama, but not longer. I’ll be home. No, I’m not going back to the police station. Mama, I am coming straight home. This I promise you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Good night, Mama.”

  He replaced the telephone and turned to Sally.

  “Was she terribly upset?” Sally asked him.

  “No more than usual,” Gonzalez replied. “Do you like Spanish cooking?”

  “I majored in Spanish,” Sally said. “In fact, if I had gotten to teach the eighth grade, that would have been my specialty. You see, that was a new thing that we were doing up at Timmerville, starting language in the eighth grade, in what you in New York here call junior high. I think my Spanish is all right, but I never ate Spanish food.”

  “You’ll like it,” Gonzalez said.

  “I think I will. What else did your mother say?”

  “She said I should bring you home to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “You mean I won’t see you until tomorrow night?” Sally asked him.

  “I’ve got a job. I mean I think I have, unless I resign tomorrow, and even if I resign, it’s not something you do on the moment. You give your notice and you move out after a certain time. No, I got a job tomorrow. I can’t change that, Sally. I’m on duty.”

  “Tomorrow night,” she said with resignation.

  “It will come. Tomorrow and then many more tomorrows, Sally. Believe me, it will come.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said.

  “You know I’d like to stay here tonight,” Gonzalez said. “You know it’s not prudery. It’s not a sense of anything like that that’s sending me away. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know.” Sally nodded.

  “It’s just the kind of weariness we have tonight. We, each of us, must get it out of ourselves alone. You alone with yourself. Me alone with myself.”

  “I know.” Sally nodded.

  “But well see each other tomorrow night,” Gonzalez said.

  “Tomorrow night,” Sally repeated.

  He went over to her and kissed her lightly upon the lips. “Sleep well, kid,” he said to her.

  Then he went to the door. At the door he turned to look at her. She was sitting primly on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped in her lap, smiling. He smiled back and said, “Sleep well.”

  She nodded without speaking. Then he closed the door behind him.

  After Gonzalez left, Sally sat there for almost ten minutes, just that way, hands clasped in her lap. Her cigarette burned itself out in the ash tray. Then she got up and went into the bedroom and took her clothes off and put on a nightgown.

  She kneeled down next to the bed but said no prayers. She just stayed there a moment, her head bent with weariness. Then she crawled in under the covers and within seconds she was asleep.

  A Biography of Howard Fast

  Howard Fast (1914–2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast’s commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

  Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast’s mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London’s The Iron Heel, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.

  Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel, Two Valleys (1933). His next novels, including Conceived in Liberty (1939) and Citizen Tom Paine (1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in The American (1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.

  Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison
sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write Spartacus (1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast’s appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including Silas Timberman (1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin’s purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.

  Fast’s career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of Spartacus inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast’s books, and in 1961 he published April Morning, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography Being Red (1990) and the New York Times bestseller The Immigrants (1977).

  Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

  Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side’s Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. “They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage,” Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he “fell in love with the area” and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.