Beggarman, Thief

by Irwin Shaw

  “My hair’s okay, Ma,” Wesley said. “I’m not going to cut it.”

  “At a time like this,” his mother said, still whispering. “You might just this once—to show respect for the dead.”

  “I can show as much respect for the dead with my hair the way it is.”

  “You won’t even do a little thing like this to please your mother?” She began to cry, too.

  “I like the way my hair is,” Wesley said. “Nobody but you and him …” he gestured toward the living room, “ever bothers me about it.”

  “You’re a stubborn, hard boy,” she said, letting the tears course down her cheeks. “You never give an inch, do you?”

  “I do when it makes sense,” he said.

  “Mr. Kraler won’t let me buy you a new suit with that hair.”

  “So I’ll go to the funeral in my old suit,” Wesley said. “Max won’t care.”

  “That’s a sick joke,” she wept.

  “I didn’t mean it as a joke.”

  “That old suit and that wild-Indian hair will make us all ashamed in church.”

  “Okay. I won’t go to church. And I won’t go to the cemetery. I never even met Max. What difference does it make?”

  “Mother,” Mr. Kraler called from the living room, “can you come in here for a minute?”

  “Coming, dear,” Teresa called. She glared harshly at Wesley, then slapped him, hard.

  Wesley didn’t react, but merely stood there in the hallway. His mother went into the living room and he went upstairs to his room.

  They left it at that. When Max Kraler was buried, Wesley was delivering groceries.

  Corporal Healey, who had also served in Vietnam but had not known Mr. Kraler’s son, accompanied the body of the boy to Indianapolis. Mr. Kraler, who was a veteran of the Korean War, invited the corporal as a comrade in arms to stay in the house instead of going to a hotel. The night after the funeral Wesley had to share his bed with Healey, because Mr. Kraler’s married daughter, Doris, who lived in Chicago, was using the guest room across the hall. Doris was a small, mousy young woman who looked, Wesley thought, like Mr. Kraler.

  Healey was a short, likable man, about twenty-three, who had a Purple Heart with two clusters on his blouse. Mr. Kraler, who had been a clerk in the quartermaster’s in Tokyo during the Korean War, had talked Healey’s ear off all day about his experiences as a soldier, and Healey had been polite, but had signaled to Wesley that he would like to break away. In a pause in Mr. Kraler’s conversation Healey had stood up and said he’d like to take a little walk and asked if they’d mind letting Wesley go with him so he wouldn’t get lost. Mr. Kraler, one soldier to another, said, “Of course, Corporal,” and Teresa had nodded. She hadn’t said a word to Wesley since the scene in the hallway and Wesley was grateful to Healey for getting him out of the house.

  “Phew!” Healey said as they walked down the street, “that’s heavy duty in there. What’s that sister like, that Doris?”

  “I don’t know,” Wesley said. “I met her for the first time yesterday.”

  “She keeps giving me the eye,” Healey said. “Do you think she means it?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Sometimes those plain-looking little dolls are powerhouses when it comes to putting out,” Healey said. “You wouldn’t object if I gave it a try, would you?”

  “Why should I?” Wesley asked. “Just be careful. My mother patrols the house like a watchdog.”

  “We’ll see how the situation develops,” Healey said. He was from Virginia and his speech was soft and drawled. “That Mr. Kraler is something. The way he talks it was hand-to-hand combat every day in Tokyo. And he kept eating up all the gory details about how I was wounded. One thing for sure, I’m not joining the American Legion. I had my war and I don’t want to hear word one about that war or anybody else’s war. Where can we get a couple of beers?”

  “It’s not far from here,” Wesley said. “I guessed you could use a drink.”

  “You’d think that if a fella came along with the body,” Healey complained, “there’d be a little nip of something to cheer everybody up a bit. Not even a cup of coffee, for Christ’s sake.”

  “They’re Mormons.”

  “That must be some sorrowful religion,” Healey said. “I go to Mass every Sunday I can, but I don’t spit in the face of Creation. After all, God made whiskey, beer, wine—Christ, He even made coffee and tea. What do they think He made them for?”

  “Ask Mr. Kraler.”

  “Yeah,” Healey said mournfully.

  They sat in a booth at the restaurant where Wesley had eaten dinner with Jimmy and drank beer. Wesley had explained to Healey that was the one place he was sure he wouldn’t be called on being under eighteen.

  “You’re a big kid,” Healey said. “It must be a nice feeling, being big, nobody picks on you much. I tell you something, a guy my size sure gets his share of shit.”

  “There’re a lot of ways of getting picked on,” Wesley said, “that got nothing to do with size.”

  “Yeah,” Healey said. “I noticed Mr. Kraler and your mother aren’t all warm loving-kindness with you.”

  Wesley shrugged. “I grin and bear it.”

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You could pass for twenty-one.”

  “If necessary,” Wesley said.

  “What’re you going to do about the draft when you’re eighteen?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Wesley said.

  “You want some advice from someone who’s been there and almost didn’t make it back?” Healey said. “No matter what you do, don’t give ’em your name and let them give you a number. It ain’t fun, Wesley, it ain’t fun at all.”

  “What can you do?”

  “Anything. You just don’t want to let them get you in the army. You never saw such a lot of hopeless, disgusted men in your life, getting shot at, getting blown up on mines, coming down with every kind of disease and jungle rot you can think of, and nobody knowing what he’s doing there.… Believe it or not, Wesley, I enlisted. Enlisted, for God’s sake!”

  “My father told me once,” Wesley said, “don’t ever volunteer for any wars.”

  “Your father knew what he was talking about,” Healey said. “The army sure knows how to take the patriotism out of a man and it wasn’t enemy action that did it for me, either, boy. The final cherry on the whipped cream was when a pal of mine and myself got off the plane in San Francisco, all gussied up in parade dress, with our ribbons and all. There were two pretty chicks walking in front of us at the airport and we hurried a little and caught up with them and I said, ‘What’re you girls doing tonight?’ They stopped and looked at me as though I was a snake. They didn’t say nary a word, but the girl nearest me spit at me, right in the face, just as calm as could be. Imagine that. Spit! Then they turned around and walked away from us.” Healey shook his head. “We were home from the wars just ten minutes, with our Purple Hearts, and that was the welcome we got. Hail the conquering hero!” He laughed sourly. “You don’t want to put your ass on the line for people like that, Wesley. Just keep on the move, float around, so they can’t put their hands on you. The best place to get lost, the guys say, is Europe. Paris is the number one spot. Even if you have to register at the embassy, they don’t take the trouble to smoke you out.”

  Talk around the campfire, Wesley thought. Old battles and loving thoughts of home. “I’ve been in Europe,” he said. “I can speak French pretty good.”

  “I wouldn’t wait too long if I was you, Wesley. You just make sure you’re in gay Paree on your eighteenth birthday, pal,” Healey said and waved for two more beers. The coffin he had accompanied to Indianapolis had been draped with the flag at the church and at the graveside. Mr. Kraler had the flag and had said at dinner that he was going to hang it in Max’s room, which was Wesley’s now.

  The house was dark when they reached it, so there was something to be thankful for. If his
mother had been up and smelled the beer on them, there would have been tears and a scene.

  They went upstairs quietly and were just starting to get undressed when there was a little knock on the door and the door opened and Doris came in. She was barefooted and was wearing a nightgown that you could see through. She smiled at them and put her finger to her lips as she carefully closed the door behind her. “I heard you boys come in and I thought it might be nice to have a little gabfest. To get better acquainted, so to speak,” she said. “Do either of you have a cigarette by any chance?” She talked in a mincing, self-conscious way, as though she had used baby talk until she was through with high school. She had droopy breasts, Wesley saw, though he tried not to keep looking, and a fat, low-slung ass. If I looked like that, he thought, I wouldn’t go around dressed like that, except in total darkness. But Healey was smiling widely and there was a new gleam in his eye. He had already taken his shirt off and was naked from the waist up. He didn’t have much of a build, either, Wesley noted.

  “Here you are, dear lady,” Healey said, courtly Virginia gentleman, “I have a pack right here in the pocket.” He crossed the room to where his shirt was hanging over the back of a chair. He took out the cigarettes and matches, then started to take the shirt off the chair.

  “You don’t need to get dressed for Doris,” Doris said. She wiggled her thin shoulders and smiled girlishly at Healey. “I’m a married woman. I know what men look like.”

  She did mean it, Wesley thought, when she gave Healey the signal during the day.

  Healey gallantly lit Doris’s cigarette. He offered one to Wesley. Wesley didn’t like cigarettes but he took one because he was in Mr. Kraler’s house.

  “God,” Doris said as she puffed at her cigarette and blew smoke rings, “I’m back in the land of the living. Poor Max. He wasn’t much when he was alive, and he turned up dead for his one moment of glory. Boy, the bishop had a hard time making poor Max sound like something in his speech.” She shook her head commiseratingly, then looked hard at Wesley. “Are you as bad as they say you are?”

  “Evil,” Wesley said.

  “I bet,” Doris said. “With your looks. They say you’re a terror with married women.”

  “What?” Wesley asked, surprised.

  “Just for your information,” Doris said, “and because I think you’re a nice boy, you better tell a certain Mrs. W. that she’d better get to the mailbox every morning before her husband.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Wesley asked, although he could guess. Some neighborhood gossip must have noticed the U.M. bike parked in front of Mrs. Wertham’s house more than once and blabbed to his mother.

  “While you were out you were the subject of discussion,” Doris said. “First of all that you were so different from Max and not different better, I can tell you that.”

  “I can guess,” Wesley said.

  “Your mother did not have many kind words for your father, either,” Doris said. “He must have been something, if half of what she said was true. And you’re following in his footsteps, she said, arrested and all in France for nearly killing a man in a drunken brawl.”

  “Hey,” Healey said, “good for you, pal.”

  “And,” Doris went on, “a virtual sex maniac like the old man. What with that disgusting Mrs. W., who’s old enough to be your mother, and God knows how many other houses you go to and deliver more than the groceries.” She giggled, her droopy breasts quivering under the transparent nightgown.

  “Hey, I have a good idea,” Wesley said. He felt he was being choked in the small room, with the loops of cigarette smoke and the coquetting, almost-naked malicious girl and the leering soldier. “You two obviously have a lot to talk to each other about …”

  “You can say that again, Wesley,” said Healey.

  “I’m not sleepy,” Wesley said, “and I could use another breath of air. I’ll probably be an hour or so,” he said warningly. He didn’t want to come back to the room and find the two of them in his bed.

  “I may just stay for another cigarette,” Doris said. “I’m not sleepy yet either.”

  “That makes three of us,” said Healey.

  Wesley started to stub out his cigarette, when the door was flung open. His mother was standing there, her eyes stony. Nobody said anything for a moment as Teresa stared first at him, then at Healey, then, for what seemed minutes, at Doris. Doris giggled.

  “Wesley,” his mother said, “I’m not responsible for the conduct of Mr. Healey or Mr. Kraler’s daughter, who is a married woman. But I am responsible for your conduct.” She spoke in a harsh whisper. “I don’t want to wake up Mr. Kraler, so I’d appreciate it if whatever you do or say you do it quietly. And, Wesley, would you be good enough to come downstairs with me?”

  When she was formal, as she was now, she was worse than when she was hysterical. He followed her downstairs through the darkened house to the living room. The flag from the coffin was folded on a table.

  She turned on him, her face working. “Let me tell you something, Wesley,” she said in that harsh whisper, “I’ve just seen the worst thing in my whole life. That little whore. Who got her in there—you? Who was going to lay her first, you or the soldier?” In her passion her vocabulary lost is pious euphemisms. “To do that on the very night that a son of the family was laid to rest after giving his life for his country.… If I told Mr. Kraler what’s been going on in his house, he’d take a baseball bat to you.”

  “I’m not going to explain anything, Ma,” Wesley said. “But you can tell Mr. Kraler that if he as much as tries to lift a finger to me, I’ll kill him.”

  She fell back as though he had bit her. “I heard what you said. You said kill, didn’t you?”

  “I sure did,” Wesley said.

  “You’ve got the soul of a murderer. I should have let you rot in that French jail. That’s where you belong.”

  “Get your facts straight,” Wesley said roughly. “You had nothing to do with getting me out of jail. My uncle did it.”

  “Let your uncle take the consequences.” She leaned forward, her face contorted. “I’ve done my best and I’ve failed.” Suddenly she bent over and grabbed his penis through his trousers and pulled savagely at it. “I’d like to cut it off,” she said.

  He seized her wrist and roughly pulled her arm away. “You’re crazy, Ma,” he said. “You know that?”

  “From this moment on,” she said, “I want you to get out of this house. For good.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he said. “It’s about time.”

  “And I warn you,” she said, “my lawyer will do everything possible to make sure you don’t get a penny of your father’s dirty money. With your record it won’t be too hard to convince a judge that it doesn’t make any sense to put a fortune into the hands of a desperate murderer. Go, get out of here, go to your whores and hoodlums. Your father will be proud of you.”

  “Stuff the money,” Wesley said.

  “Is that your final word to your mother?” she said melodramatically.

  “Yeah. My final word.” He left her in the middle of the living room, breathing raucously, as though she were on the verge of a heart attack. He went into his room without knocking. Doris was gone, but Healey was lying propped up on the bed, smoking, still bare from the waist up, but with his pants on.

  “Holy shit,” Healey said, “that lady sure barged in at the wrong moment, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah.” Wesley began throwing things into a small bag.

  Healey watched him curiously. “Where you going, pal?”

  “Out of here. Somewhere,” Wesley said. He looked into his wallet to make sure he had the list of names he had been adding to ever since he got out of jail. He never left his wallet anywhere that his mother could find it.

  “In the middle of the night?” Healey said.

  “This minute.”

  “I guess I don’t blame you,” Healey said. “Breakfast is going to be a happy meal here.” He laugh
ed. “The next time the army sends me out with a coffin I’m going to tell them they got to give me a complete rundown on the family. If you ever get to Alexandria, look me up.”

  “Yeah,” Wesley said. He looked around him to see if he had forgotten anything important in the room. Nothing. “So long, Healey,” he said.

  “So long, pal.” Healey flicked ashes on the floor. “Remember what I said about Paris.”

  “I’ll remember.” Silently, his old windbreaker zipped up against the night’s cold, he went out of the room, down the dark stairs and out of the house.

  He remembered, too, as he walked along the windy dark street, carrying the small bag, that his father had told him that it had been one of the best days in his life when he realized he didn’t hate his mother anymore. It had taken time, his father had said.

  It would take time for the son, too, Wesley thought.

  A day later he was in Chicago. He had gone into an all-night diner on the outskirts of Indianapolis when a truck driver came in who told the girl behind the counter that he was on the way to Chicago. Chicago, Wesley thought, was just as good a place to start whatever he was going to do as anyplace else and he asked the driver if he could come along. The driver said he’d be glad for the company and the trip had been comfortable and friendly and aside from having to listen to the driver talk about the troubles he was having with his seventeen-year-old daughter back in New Jersey, he had enjoyed it.

  The driver had dropped him off near Wrigley Field and he’d looked at his list of addresses and seen William Abbott’s address. Might as well start somewhere, he’d thought, and had gone to the address. It was about noon, but Abbott was still in pajamas and a rumpled bathrobe, in a beat-up, one-room studio littered with bottles, newspapers and coffee containers and crumpled pieces of paper near the typewriter.