Pride

by William Wharton

  I start going up to meet Dad where he gets out of the car he rides in to work with the other men. It’s at the corner of Radbourne Road; Hershafts’ Little Store is right there.

  I meet Dad outside the Little Store and walk home with him. Lots of times he stops in and buys me some candy or bubble gum or sometimes Tastykake cupcakes. He always says the same thing.

  “Share this with Laurel and don’t eat any of it until after dinner. You know what Mother would say.”

  When he comes home, even when he isn’t beaten up, he’s always white-faced, tired, and dirty. He told me there are showers and a place to change clothes at work but he wants to get home early and he likes to start with clean work clothes every morning.

  We have an old washing machine and hand wringer in the cellar. Dad found that old washing machine in the dump and fixed it up. He rewired the motor. Dad can fix almost anything. Mom fills that washer with his clothes every Saturday and washes them separately; they’re too dirty to put in with other clothes.

  Dad always comes home through the alley and in the cellar door. He takes off his shoes down there and scrapes the black grease off them, leaving them by the furnace to dry. Whatever he does at work I don’t know, but it makes his shoes oily and wet. I know he’s working on big circuit breakers but that doesn’t mean anything to me. They’re being built for a giant dam in Russia somewhere. Dad told me that. It makes him proud to work on something that’s going all the way to Russia.

  Then Dad goes upstairs and takes a bath. I’ve watched him scrub his hands with a brush and 23 Skiddoo hand cleaner till he almost wore the skin off. When he comes down to dinner he’s always fresh in a white shirt with his sleeves turned up two turns to hide the frayed cuffs, but he looks clean and you’d never know he does such dirty work. The only thing that shows is he always has broken fingernails and bandages or a finger or thumb that’s been hurt. He usually has at least one finger black and the nail working its way off, too.

  About that same time is also when I found Mr. Harding. Mr. Harding lived at 7048 Clover Lane, the same side of the street we live on, next to the areaway. Mr. Harding used to have a good job selling Four Roses whiskey. He was a salesman and sold Four Roses to bars and restaurants, but he lost his job when the Depression came.

  My mother said he lost it because he drank too much. Every bar or restaurant would give him a drink when he came in, and then he’d get drunk and couldn’t sell anything. Four Roses wanted him to sell whiskey but not drink it, I guess.

  Anyway, Mr. Harding was on relief like about half the people in our neighborhood but he never looked for work. His wife got a job as a waitress at a bar up on Westchester Pike called the Sail Inn. Dad said you sailed in and staggered out. She ran away with the bartender there, at least that’s what the kids in the neighborhood say.

  One Saturday morning, early, I was meandering down the alley looking for things on trash day. Even with everybody so poor, there is always something worthwhile in the trash. If you wait until it gets to the dump, most of the best stuff’s already been picked over by the guys on the truck, so you need to go out before seven and look before they come.

  It was the beginning of that summer when we were building those last porches, but we didn’t work early Saturday mornings because that’s the day when Dad and Mom sleep late.

  One morning I found a perfectly good Sunbeam toaster worth twelve dollars new. My dad fixed it in about an hour. It’s the kind that makes a ticking sound like a clock while it’s toasting the bread, then pops up the toast when it’s finished.

  I also found an old portable Victrola in a black leather case like a suitcase. It’s one of those ones you wind up. Dad fixed that, too, and I keep it in the cellar to play sometimes in the evenings when I’ve finished homework or in summer when it’s too hot outside. I play old records Aunt Sophia gave me. They have great titles like “Just Like Washington Crossed the Delaware, General Pershing Will Cross the Rhine,” and “It’s the Japanese Sandman.”

  So I’m going down the alley rummaging through trashcans and sometimes peeking into a garage when I look into Mr. Harding’s garage and see him sitting all alone in his car in the garage. He looks blue and fat but I just think he’s drunk, maybe drove home, then fell asleep in his car before he could get out and go upstairs.

  I go on down the alley and then back up the other side. When I get to Mr. Harding’s garage, I peek in and he’s still there. It doesn’t look as if he’s even moved. I’m still thinking he’s only drunk when I go into the garage. But then I see his eyes are open, staring through the windshield, and his tongue is purple and swollen, sticking out of his mouth. His thick hands are wrapped tight on the steering wheel.

  I’m sure he’s dead when I see the vacuum-cleaner hose attached to the tail pipe and going in the back window. It’s the first dead person I’ve ever seen except for my grandmother, my mother’s mother, and Aunt Emmaline. But they were different, in white coffins, and with flowers all around.

  I run out of the garage, leaving the two comic books and a torn-in-half Little Orphan Annie Big Little Book I’d found on the Greenwood side at the end of the alley. I run home trying not to cry and trying at the same time to get my breath. I’ve never fainted but I think I’m almost doing it.

  As I go in the cellar door, I first begin thinking how I’m going to tell Mom; and how I can keep from telling Laurel. I stand there and think of waiting till Dad comes home and telling him, I also think of going across the street, at the corner, on the other side of Clover Lane, and telling Mr. Fitzgerald. He’s a policeman. But then I think how it might be a murder and they might think I did it. So by the time I get to the top of the cellar stairs I’m already yelling for Mom and crying.

  She’s washing dishes in her dressing gown and comes running, thinking I’m hurt or something. She drops to her knees the way she always does when she wants to really look at me and see if something’s wrong, although now, when she does that, my head’s higher than hers.

  “Mr. Harding’s in his car in his garage and he’s dead.”

  “What do you mean he’s dead?”

  She’s still not believing me. She doesn’t look scared.

  “He’s sitting in his car and he’s blue and his eyes are open. He’s not drunk. He has the tube of his vacuum cleaner going from the back window to the tail pipe where the poison gas comes out. I think he’s dead, Mom.”

  I’m shaking now and can hardly talk. Dead people look so alive and at the same time so dead. Mom stands up. She’s not looking at me now. She grabs her dark reddish hair by both sides over her ears and stares at me with her wide green-gray eyes. Sometimes her eyes look like the green stuff that grows on the creek in summer, they’re that green; now they’re more white green.

  “Oh my God! Are you sure?”

  She knows I’m sure. She grabs hold of me, gives me a short hug, then dashes out from the kitchen, through the dining room, the living room and out our front door over to the Guinans’ to telephone the police.

  It turned out he was dead all right. They drove an ambulance and police cars right up our alley. My mom made me stay home through it all, but Doug Zigenfus saw it and said Mr. Harding was so stiff they couldn’t straighten him out to put him on the stretcher, so he was on his back with his knees and hands out in front of him as if he was still sitting in his car, driving up a steep hill or a wall; driving straight up to heaven, maybe.

  The police came and asked me a lot of questions. They wanted to know what exact time I found him but I didn’t know; I don’t have a watch. They made me guess and I said about seven o’clock. They wanted to know why I went into the garage and I told them about seeing Mr. Harding sitting in there alone and about thinking he might be drunk.

  They even wanted to know what I was doing walking around the alley that early in the morning. I didn’t want to tell them I was taking things from trashcans because that might be stealing so I said I was looking at some of the porches my dad and I had built. That wasn’t a lie beca
use I was doing that, too. I like looking at those porches; it makes me think I’m doing something like a grown person, even though Dad does most of the work.

  Then they left us alone.

  There was just a tiny bit in the Bulletin and the Ledger. The Inquirer didn’t even mention it. But the little paper, our Upper Darby paper, had a whole column on the first page, with a picture of Mr. Harding dressed up in a suit, looking younger. They even mentioned my name as finding him. I was a kind of hero for several weeks there. Then Elizabeth Zane from down the street got run over by an automobile at the corner of Clover Lane and Copely. She was almost killed so she spent more than a month in the hospital. After that, everybody pretty much forgot about Mr. Harding; but I didn’t.

  It was then I really started thinking about being dead and what it was to die. It didn’t look as if Mr. Harding had gone to hell even though he had committed suicide and was condemned. He just looked as if he’d swollen up and turned blue.

  When school started this year I was still thinking about Mr. Harding a lot. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I even dreamed about him and I hardly even knew Mr. Harding. I cut his lawn a couple times for a dime but that’s all.

  Sister Anastasia is our fifth-grade teacher. As I said, I hate school and one of the ways I get through some days is daydreaming. I don’t do it on purpose. My mind just goes off on its own, dreaming, thinking about things. One morning, I’m thinking about Mr. Harding during religion class. We have religion first thing and it’s the most boring of all because all we do is memorize parts of the Catechism. We don’t really talk about religion at all, like, What’s being alive all about? What’s it like to be dead? We’re only memorizing and I hate that.

  We’re studying the seven capital sins, Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth. I’m still not sure what covetousness and sloth are. Coveting is also part of two of the Ten Commandments. It has something to do with wanting something you can’t have, but how’s that different from Envy?

  We’re all taking turns standing up and saying the answer to the Catechism question Sister Anastasia asks each of us. She asks each person the same question each time, although we all know what the question’s going to be. We have to stand up and wait while she asks that same dumb question. I sit in the first row and I’ve already answered, so I know I have time for myself; that’s when my mind takes off.

  The desks we sit in have slanted tops and the seats are hooked to them with curved metal tubes. The slanted part opens and there’s a place inside where you can put your books. At the very top of the desk is a narrow, flat part with a little dent for holding a pencil or a pen and there’s a hole with a bottle of ink sunk in it with a black Bakelite top and a black Bakelite cover that slides back and forth to open a hole into the bottle part where the ink is.

  These inkwells are for when we write with ink. We’re never allowed to use fountain pens; we have to use these awful pens they sold us. There’s a pen holder and little pen points which fit into them. Mostly we only do Palmer Method. Once in a while we have to write a composition with those pens, but mostly it’s Palmer Method.

  I can never write a composition without making big spraying blots. The points of these pens are very pointy and are split into two thin parts tight together with a hole for holding ink between them. My pen always gets stuck in the paper and then sprays over everything; or sometimes all the ink just rolls out of the pen and makes a big solid blot.

  The Palmer Method is where you go across the page making up and down lines between the lines on the paper, or round and round things, where if you do it right it looks like a tunnel you could see through. But I can never do it. You’re supposed to roll on the ball of your palm, holding the pen lightly in your fingers, gliding your little finger on the paper, and that way you get a nice smooth movement.

  But it’s not the way I write. I hold a pen hard in my fingers, then move my fingers to write with. The way I do Palmer Method when nobody’s watching is turn the paper sideways and make those up and down lines and circles from top to bottom. That way I can do it, almost. But it isn’t Palmer Method; I don’t even use my palm.

  The worst part is dipping that pointy pen in the glass inkwell. It scrapes against the bottom; hairs rise on the back of my neck, and my ears feel empty. Everybody in the class jams those pens in the inkwells hard, on purpose, but they can all do Palmer Method.

  We aren’t allowed to open our slanted desks unless we’re told to. Usually the nun will say, “Now let’s open our desks and take out our reading books” or our civics books, or something. That’s one of the most interesting things that happens all day. At least there’s something new to see: the inside of the desk. One of the ways my mind wanders is trying to remember everything inside the desk and where it is. I want just one time to put this picture in my mind and then look in the desk and find everything the way it is in my head.

  This morning, during religion class, the first thing I know an eraser has hit me smack on the forehead. It’s a blackboard eraser and isn’t hard. It doesn’t hurt but it’s filled with chalk dust; so, chalk dust, like smoke, flies around my head. The whole class is giggling and laughing. Sister Anastasia, who’s a fat nun, is standing up behind her desk in her dark blue habit with the white bib. She has some other stiff white stuff wrapped close around her face holding in the fat sides. There’s a dark blue veil over that too. She’s wearing the most shiny glasses I’ve ever seen, no metal around them, just thick glass. You can hardly see her eyes.

  “All right, Kettleson. Are you deaf?”

  “No, Sister.”

  “Then answer the question.”

  Of course I figure she’s asking about those seven capital sins again. I start out.

  “The seven capital sins are Pride…”

  I stop. The whole class is giggling. Sister Anastasia comes out from behind the desk. She has her “signal” in her hand. I’ve already been hit on the hands with that thing for not paying attention, and it’s only the second week of school. It’s wooden and has a hard knob at the end. There’s a rubber band or something in the handle, and Sister can make a clicking noise with it when she wants things quiet; but mostly I think it’s for hitting kids with, at least that’s the way Sister Anastasia uses it. I’m ready for another knock on the knuckles.

  “Pick up that eraser and put it on the chalk rail here, young man.”

  She points at the chalk rail behind her. I lean down and find the eraser under Mary Jane Donahue’s desk. It bounced against her, too, and there’s a white mark on the side of her uniform, but she’s keeping her hands crossed on the desk with her thumbs overlapped the way we’re supposed to do when we’re not writing. The thumbs crossed over each other like that are supposed to make a real cross and be a way of praying to God.

  I carry that eraser to the front of the room and put it on the chalk rail.

  “Now put your hand out.”

  I put it out and she gives me three good raps with her “signal.” She’s strong for a fat woman. The tears are coming into my eyes and I’m so mad I almost just run out the door, only I start back to my desk. The whole class is trying not to look at me, but I can hear them laughing inside. I don’t blame them; there isn’t much to laugh about in school. But I’m mad.

  I go back to my desk and Sister Anastasia tells me to stand up again. “Kettleson, just what was it you were thinking about when you should’ve been listening to your Catechism?”

  Before I can say anything, she starts up again.

  “Children, this is a perfect example of the sin of Pride. Kettleson thinks he knows more than God’s word. Catechism is God’s word made easy for young people. If you don’t pay attention to God’s word then you’re guilty of the first capital sin, Pride. Now, what were you thinking about instead of listening to God?”

  I don’t want to lie. I especially don’t want to lie to a nun, even if it is Sister Anastasia.

  “I was thinking about what it is to be dead, Sister.”

/>   She stares at me, shining circles in her glasses. Nobody moves in the class.

  “Just what do you mean by that, young man?”

  “I don’t know, Sister. That’s what I was thinking: how it must feel being dead.”

  “If you’d pay attention to your Catechism you’d know. You’d either be in Heaven with God, in Purgatory working out your salvation or in Hell burning for all eternity.”

  She pauses, turning her head to take in all the class.

  “And I don’t have much doubt as to where you’re headed, Kettleson.”

  I stand there. What’s there to say? I’m wondering if there’s much difference between what she’s just said and saying “Damn you” to somebody.

  “Kettleson, I think for the good of your soul you should come up here, kiss this crucifix and pray for God’s forgiveness.”

  She motions me to the front of the room again. The rooms have scrubbed wooden floors and they’re laid so they lead up and down the room. I walk up toward her with my head down, trying to walk on a single board and trying not to cry. When I get close to her, I smell the smell of a nun, the smell of baby powder and ironed clothes. She pushes me down onto my knees and holds out her large crucifix at the end of the giant-sized rosary wrapped around her waist. All the nuns in this school have rosaries like this around their waists. On the thin ones, it hangs practically to the ground, but with Sister Anastasia it comes to just below her belly, just about where my face is when she’s pushed me onto my knees. I kiss the crucifix and wipe my mouth. Then, I spit on the floor.

  It’s something I do automatically; it isn’t meant as an insult or anything. The taste of metal in my mouth always makes me want to spit. When I’m working with Dad he keeps nails in his mouth so they’re handy, but when ‘I’ve tried it, I drool around them and have to keep taking them out of my mouth to spit. It’s the same way with toy whistles, anything metal in my mouth makes spit spring up. Also, I’m nervous and not thinking.