Let's go For Broke

by Mary Lasswell

  “Excellent!” Miss Tinkham cried. “We’ll give it a coat of gold paint! We must get organized at once. Those people at Fairy Oaks want six more squabs. They are coming to pick them up, and they want the vases.”

  She clapped her hand to her forehead: “I forgot the wind chimes!”

  “We can git ’em in town,” Mrs. Feeley said. “The boys is going to take us in to help load the stuff.”

  “I ain’t goin’,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “I’m gonna stay an’ have a nice supper all ready when you get back.”

  “We won’t hear of it,” Miss Tinkham said. “We’re all going. But what about those customers? Suppose they come?”

  “We’ll have to wait for ’em,” Jesse said. “Anyway, James is going to run over to the V.F.W. to borrow the dolly.”

  “The dolly?” Miss Tinkham blinked.

  “To move the icebox and the piano. If we take two big planks and have the dolly and the straps, it won’t be hard at all.”

  “Leave it to the experts.” Miss Tinkham smiled. “In the meantime, let us get the squabs.”

  Old-Timer, Mrs. Rasmussen, and Bim went out with her to the stable where the pigeon houses were.

  “They was seven big fat ones yesterday,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “I seen ’em when I put out some crumbs.”

  “Look!” Miss Tinkham emitted a Wagnerian shriek and pointed a long arm upward to the nests.

  In each nest, one of the alley cats sat blissfully licking its chops. One old tom still had feathers sticking to his whiskers.

  “There goes six dollars,” Miss Tinkham sighed. “I should add it onto the price of the vases.”

  Back at the house they gathered around the kitchen table to wait for the customers and for James to return with the dolly.

  “There’s no point in you taking your red truck to a body shop way off in National City,” Bim said. “A veteran friend of ours has a good one right near here. You could kinda keep an eye on him and we could, too. Let us know when you’re ready to fix it.”

  Jesse was talking to N. Carnation and helping her make something new. She had a paring knife and was whittling away on a snowball.

  “It looks like a pear,” Miss Tinkham said.

  Jesse nodded: “She says she is going to make peaches, mangoes, and apples. You ought to get a plastic bottle of that good white cement that don’t leave marks of any kind. It holds good, too. They’ve got glass glue now. You can even wash mended glass pieces in hot water. That oughta come in handy. Sure beautiful what she made. She said to tell you she’s very content and grateful, and to tell ‘Mrs. Rasmosa’ thank-you for the pretty dress.”

  “We are fond of her.” Miss Tinkham smiled. “And Jesse, you and I have to go into a serious session sometime this weekend. Things look awfully good for our friend.”

  “I’ll do anything I can,” Jesse said. “My mother died when I was in the Pacific and this little old vieja reminds me of her. You know, if we like somebody, we call ’em vieja. It doesn’t just mean ‘old one’ with us, it’s kind of like ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie.’”

  “She needs somebody to love her…who doesn’t?” Miss Tinkham smiled.

  “You can start in on me.” Bim put his arm around Miss Tinkham.

  “I believe the whole world is suffering from emotional malnutrition,” she said.

  “Starvation,” Bim said.

  Miss Tinkham shook her head gently: “Starvation means having nothing to eat, malnutrition means not having the right things to eat. But any one of us has more than little N. Carnation. We must help her.”

  “We got lotsa influence at the V.F.W. Our president knows the head of the Veterans’ Administration here, and I was thinking that if she was married to an American soldier, no matter when…” Jesse said.

  “You are on the right track,” Miss Tinkham said. “I am writing out all the facts, and this weekend, if you can spare the time, we must go over what we know. I need you to interpret, and we must only tell her the things we are absolutely certain of.”

  “Are you certain of any of it?” Jesse asked.

  “If we believe N. Carnation is telling the truth, I am certain of one very fine thing. And I believe her utterly.”

  “I do too, and we can ask her more questions tomorrow. More private here than it was at the Club.” Jesse and Miss Tinkham turned as all the company did when the violet-colored station wagon drove up.

  “It reminds me of the color of Jordan almonds,” Miss Tinkham murmured.

  “Or a commode in a fancy-house,” Jesse laughed.

  “Come into our bosky dingle.” Miss Tinkham steered the decorators away from the kitchen towards the conservatory.

  “OOOOH!” Their reaction was just what she had known it would be. “How simply fantabulous! Where on earth do they come from? How much?”

  “They are Aztec patio ornaments,” Miss Tinkham said. “Made by a secret Indian feather process handed down through the centuries. Entirely hand made, petal by petal. One artist and one only, makes these today. They are the most exclusive items available. Nobody, simply nobody has them.”

  She decided that they would never miss the glass chimes since they hadn’t seen them. The tinkling bits of glass could go on the next batch. The two decorators were talking to each other in low voices. “I’ll be in the antique shop if you need me.” Miss Tinkham walked off and left them to their discussion.

  She knew they were figuring and she had some figuring to do herself. The feathers had cost nothing. The snowballs next to nothing. The dye, maybe a dollar and a half at the outside. The ingenuity and technique were N. Carnation’s. The others had quickly picked up the method and the mass production was a community project. The tassels and cords were hard to evaluate. She knew they were costly, but they also came within the fifty-dollar purchase price of the job lot of antiques. Those tassels were worth a dollar and a half anytime…ninety-six of them. But, of course, she hadn’t paid that for them. And the time of all concerned was certainly not worth a fortune at the moment. She had better get Jesse to find out how much N. Carnation got paid per hour at the packing plant. That might give some basis to go on. She peeped in and saw the decorators still oohing and ahing, caressing the feather flowers.

  “We’re going to have to make up our minds to sell the flowers,” Miss Tinkham said. “Ask N. Carnation how much they pay her at the packing plant, Jesse.”

  “She says forty cents an hour.”

  “The law says a dollar and a quarter an hour,” Miss Tinkham frowned, “but I don’t suppose it applies too much of the time.”

  “Not to these people. They’re glad to get the forty. Boss Lady hides her from the Border patrol too, she says.”

  “Thank God that nightmare will soon be over,” Miss Tinkham muttered and went back to the customers.

  “You’ve just got to let us have them,” the older decorator said. “Our clientele goes for original, exotic-type things.”

  “I was planning to take them over to the picture location where Old-Timer and I are working on a motion picture Monday,” she said airily.

  “Oh, don’t do THAT!” the crew-cut partner said, looking at her with new respect.

  “We’d want an exclusive,” the older said. “A guarantee that people could only buy them at Fairy Oaks. We would want all, but all, you can import. Now keeping that big order in mind, what is the best deal you can give us on an exclusive?”

  Miss Tinkham shrugged: “You know how temperamental Mexican artists are! Making a hundred flower balls is fun to them. Five hundred is a chore! A man we know charged four dollars each for two chairs. When he was asked to produce a dozen, he wanted twenty dollars each because he said it wasn’t fun any more, it was work.”

  “Can you imagine that!”

  “That’s how it is. I could not guarantee you any fixed number, or any certain time of delivery. If I agreed, it would only be to let you have those available, and to sell none at all to anyone else.”

  “There are ninety-six. I counted them,�
� the younger one said. “How much?”

  “Someone is calling me,” Miss Tinkham said. “Please excuse me. Wouldn’t you care to look around in the living room where the vases are?” She gestured towards the door.

  In the kitchen, N. Carnation handed her a pear, but such a pear as never was on land or sea. The form was perfect. It was satin-smooth, made of brilliant indigo-blue feathers with a cheek of canary yellow. Two emerald-green feather leaves stood up from a stem of natural wood cut from a shrub.

  “She says, do you like it?” Jesse asked.

  “Like it! It’s absolutely smashing! Like some fabled fruit out of a fairytale…that reminds me, I hope they don’t pocket anything while I’m gone.”

  “Here’s the mango.” Jesse handed her a fruit shaped something like a large peach, brilliant orange on one side and deep purple on the other.

  “It’s fantastic, incredible.” Miss Tinkham was overcome. “Tell her she’ll never have to work in the laundry again or get her nice little hands all smelly from plucking turkeys. Tell her!”

  Jesse translated as N. Carnation listened with shining eyes. She didn’t need to answer.

  “Ask her why she didn’t make these when she lived by herself, instead of trying to grow flowers from seed to sell them.” Miss Tinkham said.

  “She says she didn’t have any materials or pots or room to spread them out. She didn’t have any scissors. She used to work with an old woman who made crepe-paper flowers for the wreaths Mexican people buy for the cemetery, but the old lady died. And besides, now they all buy plastic wreaths in the dime stores.”

  “Tell her that she would have to work five hours, standing on wet concrete, to earn what one of these is going to sell for wholesale.”

  Jesse translated rapidly.

  “She says the flowers alone weren’t worth anything until you put them onto the flower balls and trimmed them so pretty. She says you can do anything with this white snow stuff and she’ll work for you just for a place to live.”

  “You tell her she’s our partner, and will share and share alike, whatever we turn out. Tell her we are going to take her to a store tonight that has all kinds of wonderful materials that will save her fingers for the fine feather work.”

  “She says she’ll wake up any minute now from a sueño dorado, a golden dream,” Jesse laughed, “but I told her you were serious.”

  “Thank you, dear Jesse. I must go back now to our visitors and give them an exclusive. I hope they brought their wallets. Wait till they see the fruits!”

  “That kind don’t rely much on checkbooks,” Bim said.

  “If you give Picasso an extra eye, I’ll call off the deal.” Miss Tinkham laughed as she handed over the fruit. “I know what you’re going to say, and they do look like something he would think up. Aren’t they spectacular?”

  “They must be smuggled in,” the older one said. “I’ve never seen them anywhere, but anywhere. Not even at Carapan in Monterrey.”

  “They are certainly not commonplace, and since you agree to take all we can acquire, we will let you have the flower balls and the fruits for two dollars each.” She saw the relieved look they tried to conceal. She knew they would get anywhere from ten to fifteen dollars each for them, making a huge profit. She decided Five Points Associates were better off with the relatively “sure thing” as wholesalers rather than going out to beat the bushes for chancy customers. That was what was the matter with the United States today: people spending money for baubles and doo-dads when money was needed for research in mental health, for care of neglected children, and investigation into old people’s homes and nursing homes.

  “When can we get the next delivery?” The younger decorator had started taking down the flower balls off the brackets.

  “I couldn’t promise anything sooner than two weeks,” Miss Tinkham said. The older one was peeling off bills from a fat roll.

  “You dented two yards,” he said. “Not much left of two hundred dollars.”

  “The squabs,” the younger one said.

  “The cats ate them,” Miss Tinkham said. “Sorry.”

  The customers carried the flower balls carefully to the station wagon and the younger one spread a white canvas cloth over the floor of it before placing his treasures in it.

  “I’ve just had a marvelous idea,” he said, “we could spray them with perfume.”

  Miss Tinkham handed him a receipt.

  “I’ll just get you to sign this,” she said. “It’s your agreement to take all the feather work we can pro—procure. I agreed in the receipt to sell the fruits and flower balls exclusively to you.”

  He signed and then his partner signed.

  “And as a token of good will,” Miss Tinkham said, “I intend to take one of these over to the motion picture set as a sample. I will tell those interested that they can buy them at Fairy Oaks only.”

  “That’s swell of you.” The older one pumped her hand. “And you will let us know when the rest come, won’t you?”

  “Never fear!” Miss Tinkham was happy to be able to say at least one thing to them wholeheartedly.

  She went back to the kitchen and sat down with a thud: “I just don’t believe it. See if it’s real!” She spread the money out on the table. James and Mrs. Rasmussen looked at it, smelled it.

  “It’s real. Lot of it, too. One hundred and ninety-six dollars.”

  “You need a quick beer.” Bim handed her one. “What you going to do with all that root-of-all-evil?”

  “Teach N. Carnation how to write her name and take her to the bank Monday morning. Tell her.”

  “She says it’s nothing. It doesn’t belong to her. She says she has no expense. You gave her food and clothes and paid for the stuff.”

  “What about her brains? Her work? And showing us how to make the flowers?”

  “She says that’s nothing like what she owes you. Says you kept her out of jail and wouldn’t let the policeman take her away. And you believed her even when you knew she took the seeds.”

  “It’s her idea,” Mrs. Rasmussen said, “an’ seems like she’d oughta have the biggest part o’ the profit.”

  “That’s the best,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Tell her.”

  “She says you took her in the truck and gave Boss Lady beer and everything. She doesn’t want anything.” Jesse insisted.

  “Make her understand,” Miss Tinkham said. “We simply can’t do things that way.”

  N. Carnation looked as if she was going to cry.

  Jesse explained to her that the biggest part of the idea was hers, the ladies thought.

  “You are very straight people, she says,” Jesse translated. “She says she would like to work for you and if you must pay her, make it small.”

  “Tell her she’s our partner, Jesse, and after the flower supplies are paid for, if she wants to, we can split the profits five ways. That’s how we always do and then we all contribute to the kitty, because Mrs. Rasmussen is a good manager. Sometimes we don’t even keep pocket money, because we don’t miss it. That’s only when there’s an emergency or a big debt to be cleared up. She’ll feel like a different person when she has a little something in the bank. We’ve never saved anything much, but we feel that she should not make our mistakes.”

  “You was all savin’,” Mrs. Feeley said, “when you paid mosta them improvements on my place an’ helped me pay the taxes an’ all. You know you could have a place to live rest o’ your lives. Seems to me that’s kind of a savin’s-like. An’ we bought them bonds in the war.”

  “And we must begin again,” Miss Tinkham said. “If the government goes broke, nothing anyone has is any good anyway. I’d rather be dead.”

  Chapter 12

  “IF WE ALL GO, where will we put the appliances?” Miss Tinkham laughed.

  “We’ll take the two trucks,” Mrs. Feeley said. “The boys can foller us. Lotsa stuff we forgot when we left. Out here, they ain’t hardly nothin’ we can’t use.”

  The Noah’s Ark Parki
ng Lot and Bus Town was brilliantly lighted and hundreds of little colored plastic streamers snapped in the breeze as the battered red truck and the dark green utilities company truck drove in.

  Mrs. Feeley and the young men went up to the door of the proprietor’s house and rang. They could see his wife lying propped up in a hospital bed. He was at the back of the bus-house cooking supper.

  “Sure lookin’ fine,” Mrs. Feeley said. “You doin’ all the good?”

  “Better than I expected,” he said. “This is my wife.”

  “Look a little peaked. You musta been awful sick.”

  “I was, but I’m fine now. I don’t fret because I’m right here where I can keep my eye on things for Tommy.”

  “We came after the pie-anna an’ the Refrigidaire,” Mrs. Feeley said. It would have done Mrs. Rasmussen’s heart good, and Miss Tinkham’s too, to see how they had her beautiful white icebox wrapped in a canvas dropcloth. Miss Tinkham’s piano was covered with an old quilt.

  “That feller we bought the truck off’n, he been back lookin’ for us?” Mrs. Feeley asked. The young man pulled a note out of the edge of the mirror.

  “He left his address and said send him yours.”

  James, Bim, and Jesse slid the dolly under the icebox and Tommy helped them push it up the planks into the truck. Then they loaded the piano. Mrs. Feeley went after the garden hose, all of it. She also took the rest of the tools and a small wheelbarrow.

  She went back to say goodbye when she saw Miss Tinkham, Mrs. Rasmussen, and N. Carnation coming up the driveway loaded down with paper sacks and cardboard boxes.

  “We spent twenty dollars,” Miss Tinkham said, “but we will get it back many times over. They had some marvelous things and N. Carnation was in heaven.”

  “Tell that by lookin’ at her face,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Get on in the truck, cause we’re ready to go soon as I say goodbye to the feller an’ his wife.”

  She looked carefully to see that they were taking care of Mrs. Rasmussen’s beautiful electric range. It was disconnected and set to one side, also carefully covered. Anybody could tell this was a good boy, the parking lot so clean and tidy, and full of cars even at seven o’clock at night.