Understudy for Death

by Charles Willeford

  “Marion wasn’t a mean or petty woman, Hudson. You didn’t know her the way I did or you wouldn’t make a stupid remark like that. She was really a sweet girl, a religious girl; a daily communicant, for Christ’s sake! In her mixed-up way, and that’s all it was, she truly believed that she was taking her children to a better place. She read too much; she always had her nose in a magazine or a book. She even worried about atom bombs. She came to me one day all excited about the atom tests, afraid the kids would get fallout dust in their bones from drinking milk. She said if they kept on testing those bombs our grandchildren would be born with two heads, and maybe twelve fingers. And do you know where she got all that stuff? Out of magazines.”

  “There’s a lot of truth in it, Huneker.”

  “What if there is? There isn’t anything you or me can do about it, is there? If some of my employees had twelve fingers, maybe I could get a decent day’s work out of ’em. Life goes on, Hudson, and the world has a way of getting rid of the ones who can’t take it. Sitting here today, and all last night, drinking along slow to keep a nice edge on, I figured I had two choices open. I could either stay here in Lake Springs, brooding about Marion and the kids for the rest of my life, or I could start all over again. I’m only thirty-six, a young man, and I’m starting over. Why shouldn’t I? And the next time, by God, I’m not going to marry some good-looking young girl right out of a convent! What I want is a down-to-earth, hard-working widow who’s been left with two or three kids, a woman who’s washing clothes or something to support ’em, and laughing about it. That’s the kind of a wife a man like me needs.

  “And if I get sore and sock her one because dinner isn’t ready or something when I get home from work, she’ll sock me right back. Then we can make it all up in bed, the way a man and his wife are supposed to do. If I ever so much as raised my voice to Marion she sulked for a week. She’d go off into the bedroom and lock the door and cry. I got so I was afraid to open my mouth around here, and I couldn’t put so much as a finger on the kids, no matter what they did!”

  “You’re whistling in the dark, Huneker.”

  “Maybe I am. But I’m doing something. What would you do?”

  “I’ll take another drink, and then I’d better go.”

  “Guess we’d better have another short one, at that. I had me a nice mellow edge when you got here, but now I’ve talked it all away.”

  I crossed to the bar, poured a one-ounce shot, and tossed it off. Then I brought the bottle of Jack Daniel to the coffee table, and put it down in front of Huneker. He shook his head, put the cap back on my bottle of Old Indian, and handed it to me. “No, I’d better not have another one, Hudson. The smart thing for me to do now is hit the sack.”

  Huneker walked to the front door with me, and followed me out onto the porch. We shook hands solemnly.

  “Good luck, Huneker,” I said gravely.

  “Just how well did you know my wife?” he asked, frowning.

  “To tell you the truth, my friend, I never even met her,” I admitted.

  “Then you had some kind of motive in coming around and pumping me. You planning some kind of interview story for the lousy newspaper?”

  “Perhaps. Something like that.”

  “Print anything you like. I’m leaving Lake Springs and the whole damned state of Florida!”

  “I always write what I please.” I turned away, looking down for the first step.

  “Here’s some punctuation for you—!” As I snapped my head around I was just in time to catch a looping roundhouse right flush on my jaw. I tumbled backwards off the steps and landed on the lawn. The back of my head grazed a lawn sprinkler, and this gash hurt me more than the square, flat blow. Although I was a trifle dazed, I was a long way from being out. Rubbing my jaw, I sat up on the damp lawn. A trickle of warm blood ran down the back of my neck from the cut under my hair.

  “I had that coming, Huneker,” I said, grinning, watching him warily as I got to my feet. “Do you feel like going a few rounds out here on the lawn? Maybe you’ll feel better if you get some of it out of your system? I can beat the living hell out of you, you know—and I’ll be glad to oblige you.”

  Huneker laughed, a short, barking explosion, and I was willing to bet it was the first time he had laughed since Monday night. “No,” he said, “not tonight. Some other time, maybe. I just gave you one for the road.”

  “Don’t leave town without looking me up. Don’t even try, because I’m going to keep tabs on you.”

  “I don’t intend to.”

  “Good. For the kind of woman you’re looking for, you won’t have to be pretty. And I’ll see that you aren’t.”

  He didn’t reply, but entered the house and slammed the screen door. There was a five-cent package of Kleenex in the glove compartment of my car, and I dabbed at the small cut on the back of my head. The cut wasn’t serious; it didn’t even burn when I moistened a fresh Kleenex tissue with whiskey and held it there till the bleeding stopped. Across the street, all of the lights began to come on in Huneker’s house as he walked from room to room flipping switches. He even flooded his backyard with light. I waited a couple of minutes longer, and then the sound of the hi-fi blasted the quiet neighborhood as he turned it up. Now, I thought, maybe the poor bastard can get some sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was no reason whatsoever for me to return to the frowsty office, but I did. I had nothing to do there, and neither did any of the others—not really. That is, except for Dibs Allen, perhaps, who toiled away at his typewriter stringing cliches together about the football game played earlier that evening between the Lake Springs (High School) Rattlers and the Pebble Beach (High School) Bearcats.

  Harris of the greenish face, his eyeshade pulled well down, was engrossed in a paperback novel at the slot, while he awaited the page-proofs to come up from downstairs. Mrs. Mosby, three long yellow pencils growing out of the blued coil of gray at the back of her head, was working on an inoperative adding machine with a screwdriver and a can of oil. And through the glass door of the M.E.’s private office, I could see the scowling little man at his desk, a soft pencil attached to his fingers, reading something or other. Only Blake, the Negro office boy, was doing anything worthwhile, and he was desultorily sweeping the floor with a well-worn pushbroom. So here we were, all of us, and on a Saturday night, sitting around in a dreary office trying to make work for ourselves.

  Of course, Harris, Dibs Allen and Blake were bachelors; J.C. Curtis was a widower, and Mrs. Mosby was a widow—but why in the hell was I hanging around the crummy office? I was a married man with a wife and a child and a home…

  Beryl, though, was at the theater (acting?). And if I went home I would be stuck with the babysitter, old Mrs. Fredericks, a lonesome widow, who would want to discuss the Civic Theater play in minute detail. So I sat alone at my littered desk, waiting, my thoughts as ragged as the dusty muslin curtains humping in from the window as they were caught by the breeze from the lake.

  Jack Huneker. I thought about this simple widower who had to turn on every light in his home before he dared to go to sleep. In his simple way he had tried to reason out his wife’s death, and had rationalized himself out of accepting the responsibility. And why not? As he said, he had a long time to live with himself, and life goes on and on and on. In time, Huneker would get married again and, in all probability, beget more children. But the statistics were against his finding the kind of woman he said he wanted. A widower almost always married the same kind of woman he had the first time, whether his first marriage had been a happy one or not.

  Despite the fiction so beloved by American women, the male always chooses his own wife. And if he allows her to believe otherwise, it is only to keep from arguing. Jack Huneker would never be satisfied with any earthy widow, no matter what he thought. He was painfully romantic—and any well-brought-up American girl would cheerfully overlook his crudeness because he was a good “provider.”

  The riddle of Marion Hune
ker’s murder-suicide job remained unsolved, and I didn’t give a damn anymore. Something, and she didn’t know what it was, had been missing from her existence, despite the fulfillment of her material needs. She had tried to find out what that missing element was, and failing, killed herself. What was it? Love?

  Love. The overused word had lost its meaning, and yet, love meant something different to women than it did to men. And if I had learned nothing else during my halfhearted investigation, Marion Huneker had definitely been a feminine-type woman. Jack Huneker should have told her that he loved her every now and then whether he did or not. This was basic male knowledge; I had learned as far back as the tenth grade that if I told a girl I loved her the chances were that her pants would come down. Who was it, Dorothy Parker or Dorothy Thompson (Jesus! It couldn’t possibly have been Dorothy Thompson!) who said a man could get anything he wanted from a woman by calling her Baby?

  My SUICIDE SERIES envelope was full; notes, clippings, wire copy, and the carbon of my general article on suicide. I found Marion’s manuscript in the bottom drawer, intending to reread it, but I couldn’t get past the title. Little Mrs. Little!

  This poignant title brought a couple of forced tears from my cynical eyes. Hell, I thought, as I brushed the rusty teardrops away impatiently, this little woman could easily be any housewife.

  Even Beryl, my misguided Florida Cracker, was little Mrs. Little, in her attempt to act a difficult part in a meaty play— without any experience or training! And for what? For attention. To be noticed. To be loved.

  Marion Huneker had written an unconvincing short story, and Beryl had played an unconvincing role on the stage, and both of them had attempted to do something in the creative line as a substitute for love.

  This was as far as I got in my thinking when I heard J.C. Curtis call out my name as he approached my desk. His thirty-dollar Panama hat was pushed back on his bald head, and he was shaking a sheaf of copy paper at me. He glared down through his glasses, tossed the manuscript on my desk.

  “This isn’t what I wanted, Hudson,” he began. “I didn’t want any high-school treatise on suicide! I want a specific story—the facts behind Marion Huneker’s murder-suicide. This is pap, pap, pap!” He slammed a small doubled fist into his open palm to make a slight slapping sound.

  “I see,” I said, standing up slowly and nodding. “Then you’d better write it yourself.”

  I dumped the contents of the suicide envelope into the metal wastebasket beside my desk. I flipped on my lighter, ignited the contents, and stepped back three feet to watch the cheery little fire. The basket had already been half-full of paper, and the fire blazed merrily away. Harris and Dibs Allen remained at their desks, but sweet little Mrs. Mosby came hurrying over, carrying a tiny paper cup of water she had filled at the cooler. Blake, for some inexplicable reason, took the red fire ax down from the wall and hesitantly advanced upon my desk.

  “Let it burn, Mrs. Mosby,” J.C. said curtly, waving his secretary and Blake away. “This is the first spark of incendiary action Hudson has shown around here in five years, and I want to enjoy it.”

  “Am I fired?” I asked, and I truly didn’t care.

  “No,” J.C. said soberly. “I’d say you were fired up.”

  I pretended to warm my hands over the dying blaze. “In that case then, I want a transfer to the day shift. I’m a married man and I’ve been working nights too long.”

  “You start Monday. Report to Mr. Gladden at seven-thirty A.M. Sharp.”

  “Do you really mean it? Just like that?”

  “Of course I mean it. Now I can get your persistent wife off my back. In the past month, your charming wife has phoned me at least a dozen times and visited me twice at my hotel with the same request.”

  The shaft of sudden anger that hit my stomach cooled before I had a chance to make angry retort. I grinned. “I’m sorry my wife bothered you, Mr. Curtis, but we thought you’d be more inclined to go along with the change if Beryl softened you up first.”

  “Uh huh,” he commented, “you know it and I know it but I wonder if Beryl knows it.” He turned away, adjusted his Panama squarely on his head, and disappeared down the stairwell.

  After telling Blake to dump the charred contents of my basket I sat down at my desk again. I was bewildered by the swift turn of events. Why had I said that? I didn’t want to work days—I detested Mr. Gladden, the City Editor—how would I ever finish my play?

  But I knew in my heart that I didn’t really care whether I ever finished my play or not. The only thing in this world that mattered was the working relationship between Beryl and myself. Without Beryl I could easily end up in an ascetic cell like Mr. Paul Hershey, writing stories for fifty dollars apiece because I didn’t have any emotion…and I certainly didn’t want to be all alone like Huneker—with only blazing electric lights and ear-blasting hi-fi music for company.

  The time was eleven-nineteen, and I dialed the Civic Theater’s backstage number. If I could manage to catch Beryl at the theater before she left for home we could still go out and have a few drinks together while the babysitter was with Buddy. We could have a gala joint-celebration; her success in Lilliom and my transfer to the Evening News.

  Bob Leanard answered the telephone. “Hi, Bob,” I said cheerfully. “This is Richard Hudson. Is my wife still around?”

  “You aren’t funny, Richard,” he replied bitterly.

  “I’m not trying to be funny. If Beryl’s still in the dressing room I want her to wait there for me so I can pick her up.”

  “You honestly mean to say that you didn’t know? I don’t think I believe you.”

  “What are you talking about?” The genuine concern in my voice must have convinced him.

  “She didn’t show up, that’s all. She phoned me a little after three this afternoon—too damned late for me to get anybody else up in her part—and said she didn’t intend to play tonight. Just like that. No explanation, nothing. I asked her if she was sick, and she said, ‘Oh, no, I’m just tired of acting, that’s all.’ And then she hung up on me. I tried to ring her back, but she wouldn’t answer the phone. And we had a full house tonight, too! I had the stage manager walk through her part and read the lines, and it was God-awful! I’m telling you right now, and you can relay it to your wife! She’ll never get another chance at a part here while I’m the director! And another thing—”

  “Good night, Bob.” I racked the phone, picked it up again, and dialed the first two digits of my home number before I hung up again. My hands were perspiring and there was an icy trickle down my back.

  Woodenly, I left the office and drove home. I stopped automatically at red lights and full stops, and drove slowly and carefully. I had to get home, and I couldn’t risk any delay because of a speeding ticket or any other traffic violation. I stubbornly refused my mind the privilege of any ordered thought.

  I parked at the curb, rolled up the windows, and got out. The front door, as usual, was unlocked. Buddy, wearing light cotton pajamas, sat on the leather ottoman three feet away from the lighted television screen. He looked at me incuriously as I entered, turned back immediately to the screen. My throat was dry, and I realized that I hadn’t talked to my son since last Monday—six full days ago!

  “What’re you doing up so late, son,” I said, ruffling his hair.

  “Watching Ghoul Theater,” he said impatiently.

  “Did your mother say you could stay up?”

  “She didn’t say I couldn’t,” he said defiantly, without looking at me.

  “Where is Mother, Buddy?”

  “In bed, I guess. She went to bed right after supper.”

  “Good night, Buddy.” I switched off the set and looked away from the bright dwindling diamond in the center.

  “Oh, Daddy…!” he started to whine. I jerked him to his feet and swatted him in the seat.

  “Bed!”

  “Yes, sir. Good night, Daddy.”

  Buddy went into the bathroom and I had a short drink o
f Old Indian. After I heard Buddy’s bedroom door close I opened the door to our room and switched on the overhead light. Beryl was lying face down in the center of the wide bed on top of the sheets. She was wearing a shorty white flannel gown and it was hiked up well above her hips. In contrast to her brown, beautifully tanned legs her buttocks looked like white satin. I apprehensively felt those great white mounds with the tips of my fingers—and the flesh was warm! Beryl stirred, shrugging her shoulders, and I flipped her over on her back, using both hands, with one swift movement. And then she was awake and sitting up and her arms were around my neck and I was telling her again and again as I mumbled against her soft neck that I loved her.

  “Say,” she said sleepily, “what’s got into you?” She grabbed a double handful of my hair and pushed me away, smiling in that dumb way she had.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said, fumbling in my shirt pocket for a cigarette. “Just thought I’d tell you I loved you, that’s all.”

  “Did you think I didn’t know it?” She kissed me, took the cigarette out of my fingers, and attempted to pull me down beside her.

  “Why,” I asked, a little hoarsely, “why didn’t you do the play tonight? You knew they didn’t have an understudy for you. Bob called me, and he was pretty well put in a spot.”

  “You aren’t mad at me are you?” she said anxiously.

  “Of course not. But I wondered about it. You know, the show must go on, and that sort of thing…”

  “Well, I really did try to call you about it. Twice. But both times your line was busy so I made my own decision. You think Bob Leanard is a special friend of yours—well, he isn’t! Last night, after the play, Les Wetzel, the stage manager, had a bottle in the green room. And he’s a pincher, by the way, and don’t let anybody tell you any different. Bob Leanard was there—we were all in the little green room—and three or four others. So we got Cokes out of the machine, and Les passed around the bottle. I didn’t think you’d mind if I had one with them. After the play, a little drink tastes pretty good—”