by John Sanford
“We had part of it, didn’t we?”
“I’m going to tell you something now, and when I finish, you won’t have to peep through keyholes any more: you’ll know all there is to know about the stinker you married. When I went over to my father’s this evening, I had our whole roll with me—eight ten-dollar bills—only, Jesus, it wasn’t all in one pocket! I tried to tell myself that I’d split it to save something in case a dip had me staked out, but it wouldn’t go down, and neither would any other reason but the truth—that I meant to hold back half of the money if my father made a touch. Well, he made it, all right, and I held back. When he saw only forty bucks on the table, he said, ‘I didn’t know you were as strapped as that, son, or I wouldn’t’ve asked you.’ I let a couple of seconds go by, and then I caved in, saying, ‘Strapped, hell; I’m loaded,’ and out came the other forty. ‘Money in every pocket,’ I said, ‘and more in my shoes.’ What a man you picked, Mary!”
“I’m no angel,” she said. “I’ve been lying here, thinking ‘There goes my spring coat chasing your new suit.’”
“You’ve still got the coat,” he said.
After a pause, she said, “I hate to ask you what you mean.”
“He wouldn’t take the second forty.”
“Oh, God, Danny, did you really let him give it back?”
“I wish I had an armful of sweet new c-notes, and I wish one side of them had stickum, like stamps: I’d go back there and paste up the joint till hell wouldn’t have it. On Pop’s bald spot, that’s where I’d slap the first one, and then on Mom’s ears, like earrings, and on the doors and the windows and the map and the toilet-seat; I’d paper the walls, I’d line the drawers, I’d hang hundred-dollar-bills from the chandelier.”
“If you’d do all that,” Mary said, “then it ought to be easy to do less. Take those four tens for my spring coat and mail them to your father in the morning.”
“Don’t you want the coat?” he said. “Don’t you want to look beautiful for me?”
“There used to be another way that I could look beautiful.” He turned to her, saying, “You have many ways, Mary.”
PAPER ANNIE
When Dan left his office, he joined the southbound flow of pedestrians on Sixth Avenue. Below 42nd Street, he eddied out for a moment to peer through a wire grille at a jewelry-store display—gold and silver, pearls and amber, a color-chart of stones, and price-tags—and then once more he was in the current, and this time he let it carry him to one of the Herald Square exits of the Hudson Tubes. There, a little distance from the steps, he stopped to wait for Mary.
He waved when he saw her and smiled as she lowered her head to come toward him. “Still embarrassed by me?” he said.
“I’ll always be, if you stare,” she said.
“How is it you only get flustered beyond a certain distance? You’re good for about five yards; anything over that, and you try to hide.”
“I feel exposed.”
“Well, you’ve been exposed.”
“You can see me from head to foot—all my bad points.”
“They’re a lot clearer when you’re close.”
“Today of all days.”
“Let’s walk,” he said, “and I’ll tell you about the presents I didn’t buy you. After that, we’ll dine—anyway, eat.”
They went up Broadway toward Times Square, and the sky over the empty side-streets was bright in the west and evening-blue in the east.
“I had a present on the train,” Mary said. “A man tried to make me.”
“Tried to make you what?” Dan said.
“He tried to make me. You know.”
“What approach did he use?”
“He offered me his seat.”
“He must’ve been approaching backward. I hope you rejected the offer, though, because you’d’ve looked ridiculous with a man’s seat.”
“Next, he tried to engage me in conversation.”
“I suppose he offered you his seat again.”
“No, I had that. He said it was a lovely afternoon, wasn’t it? I said indeed it was. He said he liked the ride from Newark to New York at that time of day, because the Meadows took on such wonderful color, didn’t they? I said I’d often noticed the color myself. He said oh, did I commute? I said yes, I commuted every day. He said how was it he’d never seen me before?”
“You should’ve said because you’d always seen him first. That would’ve curled him into the next car.”
“I said I didn’t know how it was, because I’d seen him many times.”
“At this point, I’m supposed to go up with a loud report.”
“He said then why hadn’t I spoken to him? I said it simply hadn’t occurred to me.”
“When did he get to the part where he said how’s about you and me having a little ole drink?”
“At Manhattan Transfer. Only it wasn’t a drink; it was dinner.”
“You should’ve snapped him up.”
“I said I had a date. He said couldn’t I break it? I said I could, but I didn’t think it’d be right.”
Dan laughed, saying, “And he said ah, when two wayfarers meet by chance in a loveless world, why should they waste the summer night asking those questions which, of old, man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told? Oscar Wilde.”
“Wrong. He said ah, why didn’t I call the guy up and stall him off? I said I couldn’t reach the guy, and besides, even if I could, it wouldn’t be fair to stand him up, today of all days. He said well, today was just another day, wasn’t it? I said no, it was my paper anniversary.”
“What did he say to that?”
“Nothing. He just stared.”
“I hope you didn’t stare back. The Romeo had no seat.”
“And that was my present on the train.”
“I love you,” Dan said, “and this would be a fine moment to whip out a little plush box and spring the catch.”
“What would be in it?” Mary said.
“Pst!” From a small delivery-truck parked on 38th Street, a man was beckoning to them.
Dan laughed, saying, “By God, I’ll bet he wants to give you his seat,” and taking Mary’s arm, he walked her away.
“What does he want, I wonder?” Mary said. “Maybe we missed something.”
“Only this,” Dan said. “We’d’ve gone over to him, and I’d’ve said, ‘What’ve you got that isn’t hot?’ and he’d’ve put on a hurt look and said, ‘Do I look like a thief? I’m asking a flat question.’ I’d’ve said, ‘Nobody looks like a thief, not even Rock D. Johnefeller,’ and he’d’ve said, ‘Some guys ain’t so special about their merchandice—hot, cold, what’s the odds?—but me, I sell an article, it’s strickly cold.’ I’d’ve said, ‘Show the article,’ and he’d’ve reached down under the dash and come up with a little white dog, saying, ‘A pedigree animal, and ten fish takes her away.’ I’d’ve said, ‘It’d take a better dog than I am to tell her breed,’ and he’d’ve said, ‘Spitz, and she’s got a pedigree as long as your arm.’ I’d’ve said, ‘So have I, but I can’t prove it,’ and he’d’ve said, ‘If I was bred as good as this dog, so help me God, I’d change places with her.’ I’d’ve said, ‘A couple of terriers are walking up the street, and a Spitz leans out of a car and says, “Pst! I got a pedigree man in here, and ten frogs takes him home.” The terriers say, “What breed?” and the Spitz says, “He’s an Aryan, a thoroughbred human being, and his name is Adolf.” ’ Realizing I was a tough customer, he’d’ve said, ‘Make it five skins, and the pooch is yours.’ I’d’ve said, ‘She’s cute, but if I bought her, I wouldn’t be able to feed my wife to-night,’ and he’d’ve said, ‘Give her belly a rest. It’ll do her a world of good.’ I’d’ve said, ‘But this happens to be our paper anniversary,’ and he’d’ve said, ‘Buy her a paper, then, but don’t pass up this bargain. You’ll regret it.’ My parting shot would’ve been, ‘What’s one more regret?’”
“We should’ve bought that pooch,” Mary said. “We could�
�ve called her Paper Annie.”
I CAN’T GIVE YOU ANYTHING BUT LOVE, BA-BEE!
The flat was darker than the evening: there was no ceiling over the sky. From the street came the sounds of the street (the voices of children and auto-horns, the voices of tires on pavement and an organ playing a tinkle-tankle tune for pennies), and with the sound came the street-perfumes (the compound scent of food, the wet-down dust, the Hudson-flavored western air). Near the open window of the converted parlor, the coal of a cigarette went on and off, and then suddenly it shot away end-over-end and fell.
“Don’t feel bad, Dan,” Mary said.
“I wish I knew what else to feel,” he said. “What does a guy do when he feels like feeling bad—feel good? laugh it off? take up Christian Science? or what?”
“Is that all a guy can do?”
“A guy like me, yes.”
“I love a guy like you.”
“We keep the lights off to hide what you get in return.”
I get more than you dream, Dan.”
“A sixty-cent blue-plate special—that’s what you get, and you eat it with love. Why? I ate the same garbage with hate.”
“I won’t ask you what you were hating. You’ll only say you were hating yourself, and I don’t like to hear that—not for a blue-plate special.”
“For other things. For this hole-in-the-wall.”
“Not for that, either. Not for anything.”
“For not being able to get you out of that God damn department-store. How about that? For not being able to pay my wife’s way. For being my father all over again. Whenever I look at you, I think, ‘My sad and beautiful Mary, what’ve I done to you?’”
“You’ve made me rich.”
“Is that why I feel so poor—or was I always poor?” he said, and then for a space he was silent. “Along about the middle of the afternoon, there was a knock on my door, a light knock but a precise one, and I said, ‘Come in,’ and in came a precise man. Medium height; blond hair; glasses, the pinch-nose kind; thirty-odd, I thought; and probably a druggist. You know what he turned out to be? Guess.”
“I can’t,” Mary said.
A DOCTOR OF DIVINITY
“LAST name?”
“Conroy.”
“First name?”
“Gideon.”
[Gideon Conroy was born at Utica, New York, in the year 1900; in 1915, he informed his parents of his belief that he had a vocation, and in 1919, after a year in the army, he entered a theological seminary; in 1921, his father bequeathed him the sum of nine hundred dollars, which made it unnecessary for him to stoke furnaces for tuition during his junior and senior years; in 1923, he was graduated, and in 1924, his mother died, leaving him her wedding picture, the family Bible, and a volume of poems by Jones Very; in 1925, following a mission to Africa, he was ordained and given a pulpit in a village along the St. Lawrence River; in 1926, he married Miss Emily Edwards, of Ogdensburg; in 1928, his wife suffered an attack of pneumonia and, on the advice of a specialist, spent a year at Saranac; in 1929, because he was unable to maintain two establishments any longer, he accepted a call from a congregation in Wyoming, where his wife would find the high altitude that her health required; in 1932, as a result of devoted efforts among the poor of the community during a severe winter, Mrs. Conroy suffered a second attack of pneumonia, and now she was left with a lesion in each lung; in 1933, on a spring Sunday morning, the Rev. Dr. Gideon Conroy delivered the following sermon to his flock:
“[We occupy the House of the Lord, brethren, but we are godless, and we pray with language in our mouths, but Christ its meaning is a faint and growing-fainter memory of the mind, and therefore looking toward Heaven, we sink the more toward hell. Thus said the Lord (Amos 2.6): for three transgressions, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment of Judah—for selling the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes; for panting after the dust of the earth on the heads of the poor and for turning aside the way of the meek; for going in unto the same maid, father and son alike, to profane the holy name; and for lying down to prayer on pawned clothes and drinking the wine of the condemned in the temple. For those three sins, and for those four, said the Lord, would Judah be destroyed, and we in Christ, being armed with the arms and the wrath of the Lord, sought for two thousand years to wreak His vengeance. Yet who among us will say that the fire of anger did not die down to the ashes of hatred? who will say that the purifiers did not themselves become impure? and who will say that the virtuous did not acquire the sins they loosed from the sinful? Many will claim it in their faces, but none will own it in his heart, for, one and all, we know that Christians too have sold the poor for a mortgage and put the dust of roads on the weak; that Christians too, father and son alike, have gone in unto the daughters of the hungry in a whorehouse; and that Christians too, the elect in life and death, have rejoiced themselves in the unredeemed raiment of the naked. The reward for evil shall nowise be love, and we are evil that eat our bread in the sweat of the wretched and defile the feet of Christ with the abomination of prayer when our bellies are swollen with the blood of the dispossessed. The time has come for the altar to be cleansed, brethren; the time has come for the six-day sinner to be rebuked for posing as a seventh-day saint; aye, the time has come for Christ to be merciless with them that have no mercy, to deny grace to them that deny credit, to damn such bankers as balance their books on the backs of mortgagors. Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Look to it, brethren, that you sell the heavy-laden not at all.”
[In the afternoon of that same spring Sunday, a group acting for the congregation called at the parsonage, and their spokesman said these words to the Rev. Dr. Gideon Conroy:
[“You got done with that sermon this morning at a quarter of twelve, but there was something else you got done with at the same time, and we come here to tell you what it was: at a quarter of twelve this morning, you got done with this town, and except we miss our guess by many a mile, you also got done with the whole state of Wyoming. We want you should know why. It ain’t that we can’t take our hell-fire or leave it alone: we was raised up on that kind of gospel, and our Sabbath pork wouldn’t taste half so good without some preacher didn’t warn us it might be our last square meal on earth. What grinds us all to smack is you sticking your bill in our business. We didn’t bring you out here for that (we wouldn’t’ve brang Christ for it), and the minute you horned in—well, you had to be dehorned. You might as well know it first as last: there ain’t no sonabitching minister can tell us our six days ain’t good enough for his seventh, and when you get to where you’re going, don’t ever forget what you learned right here. I think that about covers what we had to say.”
[The Rev. Dr. Conroy said, “I preached the truth in that sermon. I preached what Christ died for: humanity”
[The spokesman said, “Save your wind for your next stop.”
[The Rev. Dr. Conroy said, “My words were only the words of Jesus. If you would be perfect, He said, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven.”
[The spokesman said, “We know our Matthew as good as you do—better, maybe, because if we give what we have to the poor, then they’ll be rich, and they won’t get into the Kingdom of Heaven. We don’t want to work such a hardship on ’em, so we’re going to take the punishment on ourselves. If that ain’t true Christian charity, tell us what is.”
[The Rev. Dr. Conroy said, “You twist the Word.”
[The spokesman said, “Contrariwise: we’re only kinking out the kinks. You’re the twister, and that’s why we’re, so to speak, foreclosing you.”
[The Rev. Dr. Conroy said, “I ask you not to be hasty. For my wife’s sake, I ask you to reconsider. Not for myself, but for my wife.”
[The spokesman said, “For a space, there, it looked like you was singing small.”
[The Rev. Dr. Conroy said, “Her lungs are bad, as you well know. It would mean her death to leave this climate.”
[The spo
kesman said, “That’s your lookout. You should’ve thunk of your wife when you was up there blatting your brains out.”
[The Rev. Dr. Conroy said, “How small do I have to sing? Do you want me to stand up next Sunday and say that I’ve seen the light? that God came to me during the week and told me religion and business don’t mix?”
[The spokesman said, “That’d be small enough.”
[Mrs. Emily Conroy said, “It was a good sermon today, Gideon. It was what you called it, the truth, and I’d sooner die than beg for leave to take it back as a lie”
[The Rev. Dr. Conroy said, “Don’t listen to her ! I’ll do anything you say! I’ll be a good preacher!”
[The spokesman said, “Just see that you’re a good runner. The east-bound leaves in an hour.”
[Early in 1934, while the Rev. Dr. Conroy was in New York City to shorn cause to his Church Council why he should not be unfrocked, his beloved Emily died of tuberculosis at an upstate County Hospital. He did not attend the funeral. Instead, he went out into the street and dropped his mother’s Bible into a server at the nearest corner, and then he dusted his hands and entered the nearest saloon.]
A DANIEL COME to JUDGMENT
Late in a winter afternoon, they met at the Maine Monument and walked uptown along a path at the edge of the park. The sun had gone down behind the west-side buildings, but blades of light cut through each cross-street and felled far-reaching shadows from the barren trees.
“You know,” Mary said, “there’s a thing we’ve never talked about.”
“That’s true,” Dan said, “but we’ve thought about it.”
“I wonder whether we mean the same thing.”
“We’ve never spoken of having a child.”
“How did you know that was it, Dan?”
The wind spun up a spiral of snow and sent it at his eyes. “You forget what I told Ed one morning not too long ago,” he said. “I told him I wanted to watch your face.”
“You’re a good watcher, Dan. You’re getting to know me.”