The Long November

by James Benson Nablo

  “Betty had nothing to do with it...”

  Mother snorted, “Hah...she was there, wasn’t she? She’s older than you and she should try to make you behave...though dear God Himself would have trouble...”

  “I’m sorry, Ma...”

  “You’re sorry...what about that Franks boy? You’ll march yourself to the hospital right after breakfast and tell him you’re sorry...”

  “Now Ma, I can’t do that...”

  “Don’t tell me what you can or can’t do, young man. I’ll do the deciding around here for a while yet...” And we knew she would.

  During breakfast the high-school principal phoned and asked if he might stop in to talk to me. It was quite a scene and the upshot was that I was suspended from school until both Franks and I could be heard. I never returned and my formal education terminated as of that day. Bill Franks graduated eventually and became a doctor, even though it took him a little longer to become a bad doctor than it takes most lads to become good ones.

  I had worked in the summer in Bert Hamilton’s garage and was fairly handy around cars. During the suspension I went back to the garage. I saw a lot of Steffie. Paul would take her out for the evening, which was a good arrangement with Granny Gibson, and we would meet Paul tagged along but it was better than not seeing each other. We went to shows, dances, and com-roasts. We necked on side roads for hours with Paul sitting quietly in the back seat. These terrific clinches might have amounted to something, even then, if Paul hadn’t been there, but Paul always was. Then one night my world fell apart...Steffie announced she had been enrolled in a boarding school in Toronto and was leaving after the Christmas holidays. She cried that night. Paul took a walk up the road for a while, and we held each other very tightly.

  “Oh Joe...I don’t want to go...”

  “Go just until summer, Steffie, and then we’ll get married...”

  “We can’t do that, Joe...we’re too young.”

  “I’m earning thirty-five a week and I could sell cars at night to make more...”

  But Steffie went away after Christmas. It was as though my life stopped and hung there for a while. I went to work each day and went home each night, and they must have sensed it around the house because everyone was very kind. Dad spoke once about going back to school and I just growled “No!” That was that. Vince McConnell and Betty had our sofa tied up nearly every night and there wasn’t anything to do at home except spoil their petting, so I took to hanging around the garage in the evenings, dressed up, and one night I sold a car. It wasn’t a tough sale, but I was pretty proud because I’d done it all myself. Sold a 1930 Buick right off the sales floor! My commission was $150; and I guess that marked the point where I stopped being a half-interested mechanic and started being a salesman. I’d saved a little of my wages for I still wanted that Cadillac roadster of Bert Hamilton’s. “What d’yuh want that gas-eating heap for?”

  “Never mind, Bert, I want it...”

  “You can’t afford it, Joe, I want fifteen hundred bucks for it. Where will you get that kind of dough?”

  “I’ll go on selling in the evenings, Bert, and I’ll apply all my commissions on it.”

  Bert argued a long time but finally the Caddy was mine. He warned me, though, that he wouldn’t hesitate to take it back if I fell behind in my payments. I didn’t. I became very scientific about car selling. I took an extension course in salesmanship and studied like hell, but the thing that really put it over was a tip from Bert.

  “Get the guys in service stations as bird dogs...they know who’s ready for a new car.”

  And they did. For a thousand dollar difference, I paid the tip-off lad in the service station ten bucks, and twenty-five if the customer bought a big job where the difference ran over two thousand. All this was the first winter Steffie was away.

  Nothing mattered except having something to show you, Steffie. I wanted you to see that I was a grown man and that we could be married. Silly, wasn’t it? Kid stuff, just as kids always talk big about marriage. But I wanted you so badly, Steffie, and it would have worked, even if you were only sixteen and I only seventeen. It would have worked, Steffie, because we loved each other and that’s all that counts. God, how I tried! I’d be “someone” when you came home for the summer. People would be saying things about how smart and how ambitious that Mack boy is. Every kid we knew in high school would say it, too. But you came home, Steffie, and we had just one date.

  Paul arranged it and we went to the Country Club to a dance. Betty and Vince came along in the rumble seat and Betty promised to keep Paul off my neck. Steffie didn’t have much to say, but the car would have impressed anyone.

  “You seem to be doing pretty well in your work, Joe.”

  “Yes, Steffie, and I’ll do better. Why didn’t you write?”

  “I promised Grandmother I wouldn’t.”

  “Oh.”

  It was a lot later before we had another chance to talk. We sat a few dances out in the car. I couldn’t think of any way to start the conversation and finally Steffie did. “It’s nice seeing you again, Joe...

  “It’s damned nice seeing you, Steffie...Steffie, you aren’t going back, are you? Please don’t, Steffie...I’m earning plenty of money and I can give you everything you’ll ever need and more, Steffie. Please marry me...please, Steffie!” ~t came tumbling out as though someone had put an air hose behind it. That and lots more, and when I finished Steffie was crying. She asked me to kiss her. After a while she spoke. “Joe, people our age shouldn’t fall this much in love. We can’t marry for a long time. It hasn’t changed, Joe. I don’t think it ever will...but Granny says you are just a car salesman and...”

  “Your Granny is still worried about me, eh?”

  “She says I’m simple-minded like my mother but that I’m pretty enough to marry someone who really matters...Joe, I’m so sorry, because I know you’ve tried hard and...and I love you so much.”

  You needn’t have worried, Granny Gibson, and you should have saved the money you spent on sending Steffie away. She needed it far more later. But you knew best, didn’t you, Granny? Just as countless older generations have imposed their corny opinions on countless younger generations, so did you. Just as the mistakes of your generation were inherited by mine; just as a battered world was passed along; just as the whole mess has gone since the beginning of time. Take the young things, Granny, and encase them in the dried and shriveled flesh of a dead or dying thing, and soon they, too, will be dead and dying. Pass them along, Granny...keep the Truths intact...the seven per cent First Mortgages, the “people who really matter,” the “rightness of your Presbyterian God.” But Granny...you should have seen these Truths in 1933. How worn they looked then.

  I had my first woman that year. She was a thirty-year-old widow who had just buried a sixty-year-old husband and was busy blowing in his dough. I sold her a Buick coupe and had to teach her to drive. It was dirty and commonplace, and afterward I sat alone for hours where Steffie and I used to park. The widow was a sullen, heavy-featured bitch and her peasant face can still haunt me; but I couldn’t stay away from her, and for months I’d meet her somewhere and go out on a back road for a “quickie.” She taught me a lot and wanted me to marry her. Jesus! I must have been a pretty green kid, but it had to happen sometime, I guess. Thanks for that, too, Granny Gibson.

  CHAPTER 3

  It hurt, Granny, it hurt and bewildered me. Of course, I was pretty young. Why wasn’t I someone who really mattered? What was wrong with being just a car salesman? I didn’t have any money; that must be it! Money must be the answer, and with it I might reach my goddess. I’d show you. I’d make money. I’d be a great man. Those were the days when only the rich men were the great men. I’d reach the top...the top your generation sold us so well...the top that shone like a great neon beacon and showed a dollar sign to the world. I was young, Granny, and it hurts more when you’re young. It hurts with the hell that only the young can know, for no pain scalds like the pain of first
love. Get money, Joe, get lots of it...do anything, Joe...but get it. And, Granny, there weren’t many things I wouldn’t have done. It doesn’t matter now...everything has leveled out, and all that’s left of those years is mixed in a smell of burning leaves.

  The hurts fell so easily from your lips...like the truisms of your generation, Granny. That solid seven per cent generation that led us through two hellish wars and a ten-year nightmare of depression. You KNEW what was RIGHT and what was WRONG...there was none of our modern doubt about where that line should be drawn in your solid soul. Men with money had to be right...for they always had been, eh, Granny? Well, I’d be a man with money...somehow, and maybe I’d be someone who really mattered. But how? How to get it fast enough?

  How to get it before you talked my Steffie into your idea of a marriage? Car sales kept dropping off because of something they called a depression. I worked like a madman, and still I wasn’t making those piles of gold. The gold that would stand against the sky like the spray from the Cataract. And I wasn’t breaking even.

  Steffie had gone back to school and I was determined to have something to show her. Weren’t men judged by the length and make of their cars? I’d get a better car...I’d get a lean, gray Pierce-Arrow roadster, with deep green leather upholstery...and my goddess would lean back in its corner and look like something that had filtered down on a sunbeam...down to where the sunbeams meet the treetops. But how, Joe? A Pierce like that would set you back at least four grand. How? How? Pete Rocco blew garlic in my face and told me how. I guess it was November because everything happens to me in November...Yes, Joe, November of ‘31. Remember...there were leaves...sure, of course, there are always leaves in November.

  Pete had a beef. He was tired of being “screwed without being kissed,” as he put it.

  “I run the booze over okay, Joe...see. But them bastards in Cataract City, New York, make all the dough...see. If you’d take the orders I could supply the customers, an’ I’d pay you a buck a bottle...see.”

  I “saw” all right; Pete could get the liquor across the border on the upper river, but selling it was another thing. One look at Pete’s villainous face and no customer in his right mind would drink anything Pete supplied. He’d handle the booze so I’d be taking no chances...it looked like a foolproof scheme. We made the deal, and a few weeks later when it really got rolling, I was starting to pile my gold.

  I tipped off my new wealth at home when I laid out six hundred bucks for a raccoon coat for Betty’s Christmas present, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. You can’t hide anything in a small town. Mother’s father died of drink back in Scotland, and she wanted no part of it or the profits from it. Dad said something foggy about “crime not paying,” and Betty, as usual, stuck with me. But I couldn’t let their opinion interfere; I was on my way to my goddess...even if the way wound itself through vast quantities of Scotch whiskey. I’d learned the secret, Granny, I knew what made people really matter...I knew how the rules were laid down and I’d play the game that way. Money, money, and more money. But...even in ‘32 there were still a few people who objected to how it was made. They were pretty well gone in ‘33 and there were none at all in ‘34. All that was important in ‘34 was did you have it and how much?

  You were one of the first to notice it, weren’t you, Granny? How you loved to report it to Steffie. To tell her how right you’d been in judging that Mack boy...he’s nothing but another river-runner...Liquor money! Blood money! It sounds so much worse to make a 200 per cent profit selling liquor to people who can well afford it than to charge little people seven per cent so they might have a roof over their heads. A mean roof, too, and a roof you snatched away the moment they could no longer pay. You snatched house after house, Granny, until all you had were houses...streets of them. But they weren’t just houses to those people, Granny...they were homes. What does that matter when there’s seven per cent involved. And then you did the only charitable thing of your life, Granny...you died. And Steffie’s father, alone for the first time in his life, tried to finance a hotel because he couldn’t stomach rubbing little people into the dirt any more. The hotel flopped and the Gibson bank roll flopped with it. Your money would have been safer invested in fast boats for that young river-runner, Joe Mack...and maybe your son wouldn’t have had to pull his Packard into the garage and sit with the doors closed and the motor running until he joined you. How did he explain that half-finished pile of marble in Toronto where all your dough is buried? But it levels out...the little people are back in their homes, because the big people found they could neither rent nor sell to anyone else. It took them a long time to learn this, Granny, and it hit them where they feel it most...in the bank roll.

  Pete howled as though I were taking a finger off his right hand, every time he paid off. I could see the end of our arrangement not too far ahead...and the dollar-a-bottle wasn’t piling the gold fast enough for me. God, the crust I had in those days...a cocky kid with more dough than any kid in town, and a burning desire to get more, because in so doing I was somehow showing Granny Gibson a thing or two. All the while I was making the money, relief lines were growing longer and longer in front of the City Hall. What the hell...that word depression is only to frighten people. Anybody can make money if he’s smart.

  I’m smart...I’m Joe Mack. I’m going to make a million bucks...I’m going to be someone who really matters. And I decided to start running the river myself, and take over supplying the customers in Cataract City, New York. Pete ran across the upper river just as near the crest of the Cataract as he dared. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter wouldn’t come down that far, and Pete wasn’t as afraid of the Cataract as he was of those twin machine guns on the foredeck of the cutter. What the hell, I thought, I’ll run the lower river and do my own delivering in Cataract City, New York.

  It was quite a thrill to load a small, fast boat, with twenty-five cases of Scotch, and head out to where it was worth more than twice its cost. My boat was low and painted the dullest, grayest blue I could find. The load had her down in the water and there wasn’t much of me to see. I was dressed, romantically, in black slacks and a black shirt. I’d kept the date of my first run to myself, since Pete wasn’t very happy about the competition; but there was a tip-off, or else the Coast Guard were awfully damned lucky at guessing. They gave Joe Mack the worst three hours of his life, and somewhere on that trip I lost an awful lot of cockiness. I had some respect for the U.S. Coast Guard afterward...God, what respect I developed in three hours.

  I began to feel afraid just as I cast off the Canadian shore. There was some moonlight and I kept the motor idling in case I needed it, letting the current carry me. It was a noiseless operation, but as I reached midstream, I heard the motor of the Coast Guard cutter cough into action, and I could see it start out with its searchlight fingering its way across the water. There was nothing to do but drift and hope the light wouldn’t find me. They knew I was there somewhere and they came slowly out until they were between me and Canada. There was no going back now...even if I’d wanted to. I was damned scared, but somehow my whole future with Steffie was tied up in that trip and I couldn’t quit. I drifted parallel with the American shore, and twice my heart nearly stopped when the searchlight swept near me. I finally drifted out into Lake Ontario.

  It was rough out there and I was afraid the low-riding boat would be swamped by the big waves. If I’d thought of it I’d probably have tossed the Scotch overboard, but it never crossed my mind. The load was going to pay off or else! I sat outside the river mouth and hoped the Coast Guard would go away. They didn’t. They just sat and waited for me to come back. I thought it over. If they heard my motor start and head out into the lake, they might figure I was making a big circle and heading back into the American lake shore, miles below the river mouth. I could do this, and then head back into the Canadian lake shore instead, then sneak along in the shadows of the shore until they left to go out to look for me. I had to do something fast because I was almost frozen.
Whatever romantic value my outfit might have had was more than lost in trying to keep out an early May wind mixed with spray. I decided to try my plan before the lake grew any rougher in the freshening wind.

  The farther out I went the rougher it became, but I had to go beyond range of their ears so they wouldn’t know which way I’d turned out there. Finally I turned and ran up the Canadian side and made my circle back into the beach. I ran very silently along it until I neared the river mouth again. They were still waiting. I lay quietly in the shadows until I saw them start down along the American lake shore to intercept me as I came in. I waited another half hour, and then headed the boat back up the river, and finally landed my load pretty nearly where I’d first intended. It was quite a night, and the next time I hauled my boat to the upper river, like any sensible river-runner. The Cataract was dangerous, but it stayed in one place...a guy could never tell where the Coast Guard might turn up.

  I cleared an even grand on the first trip and learned many things. I learned no smart guy ever takes unnecessary chances when punks can be hired for the risky jobs. I learned to use bigger, slower boats, and make larger hauls. I learned to wholesale the load rather than drag all over Cataract City, New York, with a car full of whiskey, and my neck stuck out a mile at every street corner. All I cared about was the profit, and I could get the big end of that without ever handling a bottle. In the months that followed I put these ideas into practice, and within a year I had six boats running.

  Yes, Joe, you were a very smart guy. You’d learned the first secret in making big money; let some dumb jerk do the dirty work at a profit to you, and your profits will multiply in direct ratio to the number of dumb jerks you use. What does it matter if the motor dies on a boat and it’s swept over the Cataract? The damned fool took that chance, didn’t he? He was over twenty-one, wasn’t he? Sure, his wife will cry for a couple of days, but a little dough can square that, and the next time you hear of her she’ll be laying half the town. Get boats, Joe, lots of boats, and get farm kids to run them. Farm kids who aren’t known in town and who won’t be bright enough to peddle your whiskey for themselves. Yes, I became a smart guy. I played the game by the golden rule of the jungle law. It hasn’t changed much. It’s the same here in ‘44 as it was then in ‘32. I’ll survive this mess only if I he here very quietly, and keep my neck pulled way in.