Melov's Legacy

by Sam Ross

  “After all, I know what it is to get started. I know what it is to get a good break out of life. And after all, what’s a couple hundred iron men compared to five hundred or seven-fifty.…”

  “Get out.” His father’s extended arm and pointing finger shook. “Get out of here.”

  “Okay. That’s your business. I’ll give you till the end of the day to change your mind. If you do, call me at the city inspector’s office. Ask for Mr. Mahoney.”

  “You grafter,” his father called after him. “You swine. You nogood bloodsucker. Two hundred dollars today: how much next week? A simple, honest man tries to get along; he kills himself. Day by day the life is sapped from his body. For what: to fill your pockets with two hundred dollars every Monday and Thursday?”

  He sat down on a bundle, choking and trembling. Then he clutched the bundle and, in looking about the plant for something steady and secure to brace himself, it seemed that he was becoming engulfed in the steaming heat and the grating gears and the swirling belts and the sloshing washers and the whirring ringers, and a look of terror came into his eyes. He closed them quickly, reached for Hershy, and clutched him to his chest. Hershy gradually felt him calm down. When he was released, his father sat, almost helpless. Then with great effort, he rose and began to tend the machines.

  3.

  Uncle Irving, hearing of this when he came off his route later with a load of bundles, was rocked to his toes. He flared up beyond the sound of the machinery and followed Hershy’s father down the wet aisle between the washers.

  “Fool. Lamebrain. Idiot. A man tries to do you a favor and you spit in his face. Idiot, idiot, you. Have you forgotten the heavy thousands we have invested here? Have you forgotten that our lives are sunk in here? Have you forgotten our whole future? And for two hundred dollars you want to throw all of it away. What happened to you? What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What kind of an answer is that? What are you, a baby? Couldn’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. Suddenly I felt trapped. One thing after another. One thing after another.”

  “Trapped? The man tries to let you squirm out, he tries to do you a favor: you call that trapped?”

  “Suddenly he looked so corrupt I could see the maggots crawling out of him.”

  “So you saw the maggots crawl out of him. For that, you want to throw away fifteen thousand dollars? For that, you want to spend another seven hundred and fifty dollars to fix the plant? Where can we possibly get so much money, you fool, you?”

  Hershy’s father didn’t answer. A washer overflowed and got Hershy and Uncle Irving wet. Sweat streamed down their faces and their clothes stuck to their bodies. Uncle Irving jammed a lever down and stopped the revolving motion of the flooded washer.

  “We can afford two hundred,” he said, “but not seven-fifty. The man takes pity on you. He sees we’re just starting in business. He takes one look at you, he sees you’re worn out, his heart turns over. He thinks: all right, he’ll do us a favor and let us go until a time comes when we can do things right. And you, with your false sense of honesty, your fear of corruption, throw him out. Oh, why did I ever go into business with you? Why?”

  “I can ask the same question. Why?”

  “You came begging me to go in with you.”

  “I? Begging? Who had the money?”

  “What’s the difference? Without me you couldn’t get along.”

  “No? What did I need you for? What did you put into the business: fifteen hundred dollars? But me, I put in thirteen thousand five hundred dollars, and then I put in another fifteen hundred for one thing after another. I don’t have a penny left in the bank. If the business fails I’m ruined. And you stand there and tell me that without you I couldn’t get along?”

  “Wait a minute, don’t talk so fast. We’re partners. Half the money in the business is mine.”

  “Sure, half of it is yours. But out of whose pocket did you get it? Mine, mine. Outside of your fifteen hundred dollars, not a penny in the business is yours.”

  “What, are you crazy? I put in seventy-five hundred dollars, half the investment. Don’t forget I borrowed six thousand dollars.”

  “And who’s paying on the loan?”

  “The business.”

  “Certainly, the business. But out of whose pocket is that money coming from? From mine. I’m paying your debt, don’t forget. That’s the kind of partnership we have. Do you pay the loan out of the wages you draw? Tell me. Tell me.”

  “But I have to live. My children and my wife can’t go without a piece of bread, can they?”

  “What about me? Because of the loan I have to draw less wages. Week after week I draw less money because the business has to pay the loan. So who’s paying, if not me?”

  “All right. You don’t want to pay, don’t pay.”

  “Smart one, you. All we have to do is miss a payment, then what have we got: the street, a job to beg for? Is it any wonder I feel so trapped, so helpless. Oh, why did I ever meet you? Why did I ever listen to you?”

  “Don’t be so upset. I’ll call the man and we’ll pay him his two hundred dollars and he’ll let us alone. Just attend to your work and we’ll be all right.”

  “I’m attending to my work. It’s you who’s not attending to it. Two hundred bundles a day, you said. Profits we’ll make, swollen profits. We’ll expand, you said, move to another building, hire more inside workers and drivers. If Hymie can do it, why can’t we? Dreams. Idle dreams. And you tell me to attend to my work. I’ll attend to all the work you can bring. I know what I do with my time. But you, outside, on the street, what do you do with your time while I slave: play cards, chase after women?”

  “Never mind what I do. Look after yourself. Do you get the bundles out on time? And why do you let clothes get torn and lost, and make me the victim of complaints? Because you don’t pay attention to your work. Every time I see you, you have a hammer or a saw or a chisel in your hand. What are you, a baby, still playing with pieces of wood?”

  “I build things because the plant needs them.”

  “They don’t have to be so fancy.”

  “When I build something it has to be good. You’re not talking to an ordinary laborer. You’re talking to a man who was once a skilled carpenter.”

  “And you don’t have to waste your time building desks and fixing things for the help.”

  “What do you want me to do: buy desks, hire a carpenter to make things we need?”

  “Ah, shut up already. I’ll call the man up and tell him to tear up his report and come in for his two hundred dollars. But shut up already.”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up.”

  Uncle Irving poked his finger in Hershy’s father’s chest.

  “I’ll tell you to shut up and you’ll like it,” he said.

  Hershy cringed under their blazing eyes and tense bodies. Suddenly, his father slapped Uncle Irving’s face.

  “Nobody can tell me to shut up.”

  Uncle Irving stumbled backward and then struck back at Hershy’s father. It was the strangest fight Hershy had ever seen. They stood toe to toe, slapping each other’s faces with the front and back of their open hands. Saliva ran out of their mouths and tears out of their eyes. Then they began to grapple. They slipped on the wet walk and rolled over and over each other on the soapy floor. Spouts of dirty water from the pocket-holes of an open washer gushed over them as they tore at each other’s mouths and eyes and hair. Hershy rushed in and locked his arm around Uncle Irving’s throat. He held on with all his might. Then all his air was sucked out of him as Uncle Irving smashed his elbow into his stomach, and, flung off, he blacked out just as his head struck a protruding pipe.

  They were on their knees, breathing heavily over him, their faces scratched and bloody and running with sweat, when he opened his eyes.

  “See, he’s all right,” said Uncle Irving. “He’s all right, he’s all right. I told you he’s all right.”

  “Are yo
u all right?” his father asked.

  Hershy swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Thank God.”

  He cried out in pain as his father touched the swollen part of his head that had hit the pipe. He touched it himself and winced; the wetness, thinking it was blood, sickened him; but when he looked at his fingers he saw that there wasn’t any blood, only the moisture of his own body.

  “… I didn’t mean it, Hershele,” Uncle Irving was saying; he began to cry. “It should have happened to me.”

  He felt peculiar at the sight of Uncle Irving crying. Then he wondered if he could get up. He sat up and blinked his eyes. His strength was coming back.

  “Here,” said Uncle Irving, fumbling for his hand. “Here’s a quarter. Spend it. Be a king. Buy candy. Buy anything. Here.”

  Hershy closed his fist around the quarter.

  “Can you walk now?” his father asked.

  Hershy nodded. He got up. His head throbbed as he walked. But he wanted to get out. He wanted to get away.

  “I’m going home,” he said.

  “Good, good,” said Uncle Irving. “Go home. Go in a candy store. Spend the quarter. Have a good time.”

  “Don’t tell Mama we fought,” his father said.

  “No, Pa.”

  “He’s a good boy,” said Uncle Irving. “A Samson.”

  “I’ll tell Ma, if she sees the bump, I fell down.”

  His father patted his back and kissed his forehead, then Hershy left. Outside, shimmery waves of heat rose from the street, but he felt cool coming out of the laundry. A rock seemed to swell in his heart as he walked to the streetcar. It felt like it was going to burst through his chest—right up to the time his father came home; then, for a while, he felt it begin to crumble and patter down through his insides.

  His father told his mother about the fight and that they had decided to pay the inspector. He was talking, he said, so that he might try to recognize himself once again; for a change, he felt, had come over him. It seemed that a new force had come to dominate his life. He had never known himself to become so violent before. Twice in one day, everything in him had suddenly turned black, as though a terrible disease had ravaged him, and all at once he was shaken with a crazy desire to kill. Not only did he want to kill but he also felt that he wanted himself destroyed at the same time. What was happening to him? … He looked up and shook his head in bewilderment. And then, as Hershy’s mother moved toward him, he buried his head above her swollen stomach and let himself, like a child, be patted and soothed.

  The rock in Hershy formed hard again. He gritted his teeth and prayed: Kill the laundry, God. Make my pa like he used to be. Make my pa strong again. Make us all like we used to be, and make us all happy and good on each other all the time. Kill the laundry, O God.

  4.

  Summer …

  A time of quick growth and quicker decay; of hot winds blowing off the prairies and shaking the ragweed and sunflowers; of heat blasts melting the asphalt and choking the air out of a room; of prayer for rain and a cool off-shore breeze and an apartment on the lake front; of damp faces and sticky flesh and fly-pocked stores and limp bodies and asthmatic breathing and sharp garbage smells; of bedding down on the back porch at night and waking up in the cool fly-buzzing dawn and dragging your sleep-heavy body back into the house.

  A time for ball games and swimming, crickets and birds, hotdog and popcorn stands. A time for diving into new-cut grass and climbing trees, for slingshots and bows and arrows, for boatrides in the park and gulping fishes making rain circles in the lagoon, for riding bronze buffaloes and fire-pumps and swings, for banging down the chute-the-chutes and hurtling through space on the Cyclone, for lightning and thunder and ever-changing skies, for exploration and discovery, for shadows in the night and mysteries, for talk and talk and horseplay.

  O kid, whirling on the high-flyer, wandering on a path, chasing a ball in flight, hooking a worm, studying the agitated lips and squirming bodies in lover’s lane, thrashing in water, lying in a leafy shade—what’s it like, what’s it like?

  I don’t know, he says. It ain’t like it used to be.

  … A time to hear from Rachel. A picture of her lying on a beach in a bathing suit. Look at me, I’m laughing, she writes.

  We die of the heat, says Hershy’s mother, and she laughs. It’s her America.

  Another picture. One of a stranger, puzzling everybody. Isn’t he cute, she writes.

  Rachel must be going crazy, says Hershy’s mother.

  It was a picture of a clown, with a duncecap on his head, a face dipped in flour, balls of paint on his cheeks and the tip of his nose, little sad eyes, and the widest mouth anybody had ever seen.

  Another picture. The same clown and Rachel in her spangled dancing costume. Look at us, we’re hysterical, she writes.

  What could possibly be happening to her, the wild Indian? says Hershy’s mother.

  And another picture. Another stranger, with a soft face, a straight nose, a nice mouth, curly hair, but the same sad eyes. Meet my hubby, she writes.

  The news comes with a shock. Hershy’s mother cries. His father’s shoulders sag, he looks helpless, he feels guilty. Rachel is really gone.

  … A time for pity and worry and responsibility.

  A different kind of summer.

  Hershy worried about his mother. The heat wore her out, making her groan and catch her breath; with her energy sapped, the house began to look dirtier and less orderly, and she seldom washed the floors to cool the house, and she dreaded her duties over the stove. She could never get comfortable and all of her seemed to stick together. The heat, it seemed, contracted her face and at the same time puffed up her whole body. The sight of her, and a sense that she was very far away from him, gripped Hershy’s heart. Sometimes he looked up at the sky and said: “God, don’t let nothing happen to my ma.” That was when he felt that the baby had taken her over completely and a fear rose in him that it might transform her into something else that he couldn’t name or wouldn’t be able to recognize.

  His father, struggling against his inevitable fate, not daring to admit failure, for in it was a kind of death, was crushed between the simple life he had always wanted and the complicated life that was demanded of him. Sunk in everyday worries, wallowing in dampness, eroded by the biting salt of his sweat, exhausted by the daily demands of the business, his body began to rebel but his mind held it in check and would not let it defeat him. The rebellion took form in a cold that lasted all summer; with it came a hacking cough, splintering him to pieces. He had never been sick a day in his life and, not understanding illness, refused to submit to it. But sometimes he felt his mind would snap. When this feeling came over him he did the only thing that gave him a sense of order and accomplishment and pleasure; he would begin to make something out of wood, whether it was necessary or not. The surface of the wood and the sight of the grain and the feel of a tool over which he had full control was like water to his dehydrated body. It revived him and gave him a sense of being.

  Hershy, however, heard only the cough. He saw only the eyes blurred with fatigue, the sagging shoulders, the skin drawn thinner over bone and muscle. Sometimes, when his father had, his teeth out, his face looked so shrunken that Hershy thought he was staring at a skull. Once, on a Sunday, he saw him asleep in the rocking chair. The gentle face he had known was sunk in the hollow of his cheeks and seemed to spew out in the trickle of saliva on his chin; suddenly he looked very old and wasted away, and for a moment he thought he detected an odor of death rising from him. A lump came to his throat, but the shocking thought made him wake up his father. He watched his father stare at him without recognition and then go back to sleep again.

  “I hope,” he prayed, “the laundry burns. I hope the boiler explodes and the machines break. I hope.”

  Yet once there, after bringing his father’s lunch or supper, he tried to help and he tried to pull his father back to himself.

  “Today I swam twenty strokes, Pa.”<
br />
  “That’s good.”

  “Yesterday we beat the Wyandottes, a great team, a real great team. Eight to seven, Pa. Some game, Pa.”

  His father dragged a bundle of clothes across the wet walk and dumped it into the ringer. Hershy helped him fill up the machine with other bundles.

  “You know who’s the new world’s champion, Pa?”

  He wasn’t interested.

  “Jack Dempsey, Pa. He beat Jess Willard. What a fighter. What a socker. The Manassa Mauler, that’s who he is.”

  The ringer was full. Hershy started it up. It began to hum, then whine, higher higher.

  “Maybe someday I’ll be a fighter, Pa. I ought to start taking boxing lessons. They make lots of money. Lots and lots.”

  His father didn’t protest. He hated the thought of fighting but he didn’t say a word against it.

  “Or maybe a ballplayer, Pa. They make lots of money, too. And it’s healthy. All day long they’re outside in the fresh air.”

  “All right, be a ballplayer. Be a fighter. Be anything.”

  Something was wrong. His father didn’t care; he didn’t care what happened to him.

  “What’s the matter, Pa?”

  “Nothing. Don’t talk so much.”

  “Who’s talking? I’m only saying things.”

  “Go home and say them to your friends.”

  “But I want to help.”

  “Then help, but keep quiet.”

  All right, he thought. But he couldn’t help himself; his need for his father to forget himself and reach out for him was too great.

  “Hey, Pa, the Sox are in first place in the American League. Boy, what a ball team. They’re going to win the pennant and then the World Series will be here in Chicago. Boy, will that be something to see.”

  His father looked beyond him.

  “Hey, Pa.” He drew his father’s eyes to himself, then wondered what to say. Finally: “When’s Ma going to the hospital?”

  “Soon, soon.”

  “But when?”

  “When the time comes.”

  “Then will she get skinny again and be like before?”