“Who cares,” said the bartender.
“Not me. Not me. Fifty a week and I worked my head off. Seventy-five per. That’s top! Out in the field, a leg man, and all them lousy desk men hog the credit. Who does the work?” he bellowed. “Who takes the chances? But that louse of a desk man with his wads of dough’s top dog. Always, they get places the easy way. Screw them all, the millionaire son-of-a-bitch! Pick up their dough like a bum picks up a stogie. Use your own judgment. God damn them. I wasted my life. I didn’t get the breaks,” he whined.
Said the bartender. “How did you waste your life but don’t yell. My hearing’s good.”
“Paid me good money but I haven’t saved a dime.”
“You lost your job?”
“Who said I lost my job? Not me. I’m a brain guy. Too smart, me.”
“You lost something. Your girl?”
“I lost nothing.”
“I thought you lost your job. You gonna kill that bottle all by your lil self?”
“S’good bottle.”
“Yep, the best. But whyn’t you take a nice walk.”
“Give me a shot.”
“Later. Get some air, Mac.”
“Give me a shot.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll get the breaks some day.”
“Sure thing. Why don’t you take a nice lil walk?”
“Mind your damn business.” He rested his head in the cup of his hand, leaning heavily on the bar. A boozy fantasy rose in his brain. He saw a trial, a secret trial. There were old men in black robes, the Supreme court. There were Army generals. And the President had come into the trial room as he, Bill, took the witness stand. He, Bill, was about to testify. “Mr. President,” he began. “I’m here not to save my own skin. I’m here because the organization is losing its principles! The organization isn’t fit to bring in a New America!” How well he spoke, how eloquently he held up to ridicule the organization’s mistakes. How defiantly he denounced the President and the herd ideas of democracy. Lofty and superior, he compelled the respect of the Army generals and the President himself. Yes, he was a master, above all their rules and laws. How scornfully he advised the President and the Supreme Court that if they wanted complete lists of the prominent men, the Senators, the Government officials, the publishers who were supporting the organization, all that was necessary was to third degree Hayden. Hayden was yellow, he explained; and a blackjacking would do the trick. How he thundered at the President that he, Bill Trent, hadn’t lost faith in the coming American fascism. Never, never! He had only lost faith in a fascism dominated by men like Hayden; for Hayden’s fascism was musty as Mussolini’s, rotten and traditional, relying too much on old rich men and the sons of old rich men. What was needed, he thundered, was a new fascism for a new world!!!
“Aren’t you going home, Mac?” the bartender said.
The fantasy whirled away at the bartender’s voice. The voice like the magician’s word in the fairy tale dissolved all the might-have-beens. He saw himself as he was. A drunk at a bar. A drunk afraid of what might happen at ten that night.
“Mac, you better go home. You’ll get another job or another girl. You’ll get the breaks.”
“Isabelle,” he muttered, needing her, needing somebody he could trust.
“Tell Isabelle you got prospects.”
“She’s my wife. She loves me.”
“That’s fine. You tell her you love her. Everything’ll be fine.”
“But — ”
“Tell her you got prospects.”
“Your rye must be watered. I don’t even feel drunk.”
The bartender shrugged. “I sell it. I don’t manufacture.”
“I’m married three years. We’ve been drifting.”
“A lot of people do it so why worry.”
“It’s wrong.”
“You take a nice walk, Mac — ”
“No more for me! I’m going to stop her! I’m the boss! She’s going to see things my way.” He felt better. There would be nothing to worry about at ten that night. He was sticking with the organization. The day was coming when the organization was taking over the country and he was going to be around when that happened. Wasn’t he in on the ground floor? Wouldn’t every op have a chance when the day came to get places and be a big-shot? Why, he wouldn’t take a hundred a week with a bank even if it was offered on a silver platter. Money wasn’t every damn thing! Being on the in was bigger than dough. So what if he was only an order-taker. The day was coming, the day, the big day. He would take orders now and give them when his turn came. And no more worrying, no more thinking. He felt better than he had in days, lighter, free-er as if he had torn something heavy out of himself. He had. He had castrated himself with his decision to tear out the fluid flow of brain.
“That nice walk?” the bartender reminded him.
“I’ll fix her! I’ll show her who the boss is!”
Banging his fist against the hotel door Bill yelled. “Open up! Open up, damn you!”
She flung the door open. He said. “I’m not drunk! Don’t give me no line I’m drunk.” She was tall in the doorway, wearing a red housecoat, dotted with white moons. She had just washed her hair. Her hair and lips and cheeks and eyes all seemed fresh. He thought of her body under the housecoat also washed and fresh and soap-scented. “I’m not drunk!” He pushed into the room, flopped onto the bed. “Come here,” he laughed. “I’ll give you the brat you want. It’s time. Now’s the time. You smell like the fields in the morning. Poetic husband you got.”
Isabelle shut the door. “Do you want the people next door to hear you, Bill?”
“What do I care about that Jew cloak-and-suiter.”
“You’re drunk.” She frowned. “I’ll ring for some black coffee.”
“And drink it yourself. I’m a patriot. No coffee for me.”
“Will you take a shower?”
“Old faithful, I don’t want a shower.”
“Why — ”
“Why did you get so drunk in the morning,” he hooted at her. “What’s so wrong with the morning, Carreau? How about that brat or want to wait for the stars so the saints won’t see us at it.”
She stared at him.
“Old faithful, get me a butt.”
She walked to the dresser and brought him a pack of cigarettes, a booklet of matches. His head was spinning but he inhaled deep drafts of smoke. “You’re tall,” he said. “And beautiful. Quite beautiful. Some of these dark types get fatty after awhile. The wops, thin as breadsticks, beautiful when they’re young. But not you, Carreau. You’ll stay beautiful. Got the blood, the breeding. Pregnant, you’ll spoil your figure. But that’s the blessed shape the Lord okays.” He was excited by what he was saying. It was if he were feeling his way to a door ahead of him, and the door was lettered: BILL, PRIVATE — and he felt that he was going to drag her to that door and lock her in; she would be his forever inside that door. In his reddened eyes, she was a whiskey shape, a dream woman out of some bottle, her hair blacker, her housecoat redder, her eyes bigger, her curves more sensual. He remembered Darton’s story about the Jewish girl, “Listen to me, you holy saint. I’ve been thinking all morning about us two. And I’m not drunk. Dead sober, your hear? I’ve made mistakes in our marriage.” His heart quickened; this was the way to take her. “Couple days ago you said I was keeping you like a hotel woman, a mistress. There’s truth in that. Some truth. Marriage isn’t only love. It’s not only drifting in love. I’ve made mistakes. You, too.”
“Haven’t I been loyal to you?”
Now give it to her! he thought triumphantly. “Loyal to me and to your family. That’s been your mistake.”
“I’ve been a good wife — ”
“Can’t be a good wife until you go all the way.”
“I don’t understand?”
“You’re married to me and to your family. And the priests.” He hadn’t meant to make this last remark but it had catapulted off his tongue like a stone from a sl
ing-shot. He pushed himself up to a sitting position in the bed. “Isabelle, you want a kid?”
“Oh, Bill. Did you come back to torture me?”
“I’m serious. That’s been my mistake — Not having a child. Marriage isn’t only love. It’s having your own family.” He spoke very slowly, an excitement hotter than the rye whirling within him. It was as if he were about to plunge into her deepest part, to utterly possess her, to abduct her into himself forever.
“Bill — ”
“Let’s have a child.”
She rushed to the bed, sitting down next to him, kissing him on the cheek and on his whiskey-smelling mouth.
He slanted his arm around her waist. “Isabelle, remember? Before we got married? I promised that any children would be baptized Catholic? I’m sticking to that promise.” She pressed her face against his chest and he stroked her black hair, grinning just a little to himself as Hayden had grinned at him in parting this morning. “The kid’ll be reared Catholic. But when he’s born, I want a favor, Isabelle. I don’t want him baptized Catholic right away.”
Her face jerked up.
“Not right away. You see, I want to break from your family. Not a serious break. But some coolness. And if the kid isn’t baptized Catholic — ”
“Bill — ”
“The main thing is to get a divorce from the family,” he said. “I’ll keep my promise about the kid.”
She flung away from him. “You’re drunk, terrible!” she sobbed, staggering to the dresser. He watched her swaying from side to side and he thought: She’s the one drunk and I’m the one sober. Let her cry! Let her cry! What was he, a damn shoeclerk to worry about her tears, a woman’s easy tears. He hardened himself against her. Somebody had to be the boss. This God damn equality business was a failure in life and in marriage. Somebody had to be the boss! The brain guy! Craftily, he began to repeat what he wanted, over and over again. Finally she pressed her hands against her temples. “No more, Bill.”
“Okay, I’ll take a shower.”
When he came out of the shower stall, he said. “That booze slowed my body down.”
“I thought you weren’t drunk,” she said.
He tapped his forehead. “Sober as a judge up here. It’s the carcass that won’t take it. You get dressed and we’ll go for a walk. I promised a certain bartender I’d go for a walk.”
She changed into a white linen dress and smeared her lips carnation red, and he kept thinking of how lovely and fresh she had seemed after her bath, her hair damp and smelling of water. She belonged to him. He wanted her to be his alone but wanting was never enough. You had to connive at making a woman private property and no damn trespassing; the world wasn’t a bird cage any more and women were getting all sorts of notions. In his mind, a strange identification took place; the Buckles girl merged with Isabelle; both of them had their God damn principles and what was the difference between Red principles and Isabelle’s aristocratic Catholic principles if they spoiled a woman? You had to make real women out of them for their own good. He smiled at Isabelle, a feeling of rapine in him as if he had kidnapped his own wife.
When they walked out into the street, he was surprised to see that it was broad daylight. They strolled down Clark Street and at the end of the street, across the Harbor, the skyscrapers in Manhattan rose through the hot sky, permanent and gigantic. Maybe Hayden was consulting with ex-Governor Heney? What good was there telling himself he had nothing to worry about?
They passed the boarded-up mansion on Pierrepont Street and Columbia Heights, and at Montague Street, they cut down to the iron railing and the rows of park chairs behind the railing. Isabelle pointed out the babies in the carriages to him, the babies with their mothers and nurses, the small boys and girls on tricycles, but he wasn’t listening to her. The Harbor view poured into his vision, the pinnacled glittering mass of lower Manhattan, the docks, piers, ships, bridges, the Statue of Liberty in the far reach of water — all this was a screen to him and behind the screen was ten o’clock and the cold eyes of ex-Governor Heney.
“Darling,” Isabelle said as they seated themselves, the Harbor in front of them. “Look at that cute monkey. The one in the red beret. How quickly they behave like grownups.”
“I suppose.” He stared out on the Jersey shore with the wartime factories bannering smoke against a blue sky that seemed the tallest blue sky in the world for close at hand were the stone measuring sticks of the Wall Street skyscrapers. In the furthest distance, the skyscrapers of the city of Newark seemed a mirage on the horizon. He breathed of the salty air. “Hell.”
“Don’t you feel better, Bill?”
“I feel fine.”
“Women smoke much more than back home. Have you noticed?”
“Will you stop being so polite?” He turned sideways to her. “I’m sorry for being nasty.”
“I’ve made my allowances.” A small smile, a smile he loved because it had always seemed to him a special smile she had for him and no one else, was on her carnation lips.
“I meant it about a kid.”
“But you said — ”
“I wasn’t kidding about that either.”
“This is no place to discuss it.”
“Why not? Do you think anyone cares about us? Listen to them chattering. Clothes and sons in the Army. And when will the Good Humor man come with the ice cream? Nobody cares about us except me for you and you for me.”
“I cannot alienate my family, Bill.”
“It’s all right to alienate me.”
“You’re exaggerating. They are all fond of you, Bill. Even from the beginning — ”
“You’re the doctor.”
“You talk as if you should have had black coffee.”
“Whiskey.”
“Bill — ”
“If I can admit mistakes, why can’t you? I’m not a thick-glassed Jew spouting theories. You’ve known your family two hundred years. Me, four years in all.”
“Let’s not discuss it any more.”
“Let’s walk.”
“Bill,” she said after awhile. “You can’t be serious. It would kill all the joy in having a child. It’s unnatural. I would be unhappy for nine months and afterwards.”
“Your family’s got a strong hold on you.”
“But it’s all so petty. To hedge a child around with pettiness and deceit.”
“Don’t get moral on me. You don’t want to compromise. I give in that he’ll be reared a Catholic. All I want is for your family not to know it for a year or so — ”
“Why can’t we live without subterfuges, Bill?”
“Life isn’t perfect. That’s why.” He felt pity for himself. Life was a mess and it was eat or be eaten, top dog or under dog.
“Bill,” she said. “I’ve often wondered what you want out of life — ”
“What do you want?”
“You know quite well,” she said with dignity.
“The Carreaus.” He bowed his head. “It’s all a little dusty to me. Family and faith.”
“Yes,” she affirmed. “Family and faith. What do you hope for? You’re not happy, darling. You have these wild fits of yours. You’re always restless and since we’ve come to New York — Bill, this mysterious work of yours isn’t so mysterious. This Klan work isn’t making you happy, Bill.”
“My work’s important and I want to do it. It’s not easy. That’s true. It can’t be easy. It’s a fight to the finish between the masses, the Communists want to run the world and the people who won’t be run by the masses.”
“No, Bill. It’s a war between the Axis and the anti-Axis.”
“That’s what the slogans say. But underneath the slogans? Do you want the niggers to have the rights the Carreaus have? Do you want the four red freedoms to apply to niggers?”
“No, you’re right I suppose. My cousin Leon talks the way you do. So does Uncle Francis but we do want to win the war.”
“Who do you mean by we? The niggers and nigger spoilers or pe
ople like us? We’s too big a word. It includes thirteen million niggers, millions of Reds, Jews — ”
“But if you don’t want to win the war — Bill, that’s fascist talk!”
He laughed. “I’m not a fascist. The Jews have smeared everybody fascist if you disagree with them. I want the Japs licked. No colored race ought to have their power. I want Hitler taught a lesson. I’m an American and I want Americans to run this country and the whole world. But I want Americans at the wheel and no niggers, no Jews. I want real Americans at the wheel. I promised I would tell you why we came to New York. You know why? To keep the niggers in their place. You’ve been reading how uppity they are in Harlem? kidnapping white women?”
“Yes. Then the Klan’s in New York City, Bill.”
“We’re in every city in the country,” he boasted. And a damn good thing for America that we are.”
CHAPTER 12
SAM didn’t buy the Negro newspapers on Thursday until almost one o’clock. The morning had been exhausting. Detective Wajek, accompanied by a Detective McFessel, had called on Mrs. Buckles at nine-thirty. But the doorbell and telephone had been ringing since seven. Sam had finally removed the receiver from its hook. Reporters and sob sisters had hammered at the door. Psychopaths had bleated their sympathy and offered advice. Just before the two detectives arrived, Mrs. Buckles’ butcher who had read the papers, had held out his red hand for his bill; the butcher wanted his money right away before things got hotter, he had explained. Sam had told the two detectives that Mrs. Buckles couldn’t stay in her apartment. The old lady had a cousin in Queens and it was his intention to drive her out there after the detectives had finished. After the interrogation, he had phoned for a cab to be at the door, and followed by a crowd of demanding brassy voices, he had rushed the old lady downstairs and into the cab. Now it was over.
He walked from the corner newsstand, the two Negro newspapers in his hands. He thumbed through the pages that carried this Thursday’s month, day, year. Both crisp sheets seemed yellowed in his fingers. They had come out too early to carry the Suzy kidnapping. The main story dated to the mass meeting. He skimmed through: “I saw a Harlem cop commit murder. I saw a brutal cop kill a human being. When I came on the scene, Randolph was bleeding like a stuck pig. He was bleeding from wounds on the head and his blood was over his face, running into his eyes. He had a knife in his hand but he never tried to use it. I saw Officer Miller …” Sam hadn’t bought the papers for this eyewitness account. On an inside page, he found the item he was interested in.
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