Short Stories: Five Decades

by Irwin Shaw

  “You would come out of that fight with seven hundred and fifty dollars.” Arline’s voice was soft and inviting. “I could go to Kansas …”

  “Joe Principe will knock my ears off.”

  Arline sighed. “I am so anxious to see my mother. She is an old woman and soon she will die.”

  “At this stage,” Eddie said slowly, “I am not ready for Joe Principe. He is too strong and too smart for me.”

  “Jake Blucher told me he thought you had a wonderful chance.”

  “I have a wonderful chance to land in the hospital,” Eddie said. “That Joe Principe is made out of springs and cement. If you gave him a pair of horns it would be legal to kill him with a sword.”

  “He is only a man with two fists just like you,” Arline said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re always telling me how good you are.”

  “In two years,” Eddie said, “taking it very easy and careful, making sure I don’t get knocked apart …”

  “You could make the money easy!” Arline pointed her finger dramatically at him. “You just don’t want to. You don’t want me to be happy. I see through you, Eddie Megaffin!”

  “I just don’t want to get beaten up,” Eddie said, shaking his head.

  “A fine fighter!” Arline laughed. “What kind of fighter are you, anyhow? A fighter is supposed to get beaten up, isn’t he? That’s his business, isn’t it? You don’t care for me. All you wanted was somebody to give you a kid and cook your goddamn steaks and lamb chops. In Brooklyn! I got to stay in a lousy little house day in and …”

  “I’ll take you to the movies tonight,” Eddie promised.

  “I don’t want to go to the movies. I want to go to Kansas City.” Arline threw herself face down on the bed and sobbed. “I’m caught. I’m caught! You don’t love me! You won’t let me go to people who love me! Mama! Mama!”

  Eddie closed his eyes in pain. “I love you,” he said, meaning it. “I swear to God.”

  “You say it.” Her voice was smothered in the pillow. “But you don’t prove it! Prove it! I never knew a young man could be so stingy. Prove it …” The words trailed off in sorrow.

  Eddie went over an bent down to kiss her. She shook her shoulders to send him away and cried like a heartbroken child. From the next room, where the baby had been sleeping, came the sound of his wailing.

  Eddie walked over to the window and looked out at the peaceful Brooklyn Street, at the trees and the little boys and girls skating.

  “O.K.,” he said, “I’ll call Blucher.”

  Arline stopped crying. The baby still wailed in the next room.

  “I’ll try to raise him to twelve hundred,” Eddie said. “You can go to Kansas City. You happy?”

  Arline sat up and nodded. “I’ll write Mama right away,” she said.

  “Take the kid out for a walk, will you?” Eddie said, as Arline started repairing her face before the mirror. “I want to take a little nap.”

  “Sure,” Arline said, “sure, Eddie.”

  Eddie took off his shoes and lay down on the bed to start storing up his energy.

  Triumph of Justice

  Mike Pilato purposefully threw open the door of Victor’s shack. Above him the sign that said, “Lunch, Truckmen Welcome,” shook a little, and the pale shadows its red bulbs threw in the twilight waved over the State Road.

  “Victor,” Mike said, in Italian.

  Victor was leaning on the counter, reading Walter Winchell in a spread-out newspaper. He smiled amiably. “Mike,” he said, “I am so glad to see you.”

  Mike slammed the door. “Three hundred dollars, Victor,” he said, standing five feet tall, round and solid as a pumpkin against the door. “You owe me three hundred dollars, Victor, and I am here tonight to collect.”

  Victor shrugged slightly and closed the paper on Walter Winchell.

  “As I’ve been telling you for the past six months,” he said, “business is bad. Business is terrible. I work and I work and at the end …” He shrugged again. “Barely enough to feed myself.”

  Mike’s cheeks, farmer-brown, and wrinkled deeply by wind and sun, grew dark with blood. “Victor, you are lying in my face,” he said slowly, his voice desperately even. “For six months, each time it comes time to collect the rent you tell me, ‘Business is bad.’ What do I say? I say ‘All right, Victor, don’t worry, I know how it is.’”

  “Frankly, Mike,” Victor said sadly, “there has been no improvement this month.”

  Mike’s face grew darker than ever. He pulled harshly at the ends of his iron-gray mustache, his great hands tense and swollen with anger, repressed but terrible. “For six months, Victor,” Mike said, “I believed you. Now I no longer believe you.”

  “Mike,” Victor said reproachfully.

  “My friends, my relatives,” Mike said, “they prove it to me. Your business is wonderful, ten cars an hour stop at your door; you sell cigarettes to every farmer between here and Chicago; on your slot machine alone …” Mike waved a short thick arm at the machine standing invitingly against a wall, its wheels stopped at two cherries and a lemon. Mike swallowed hard, stood breathing heavily, his deep chest rising and falling sharply against his sheepskin coat. “Three hundred dollars!” he shouted. “Six months at fifty dollars! I built this shack with my own hands for you, Victor. I didn’t know what kind of a man you were. You were an Italian, I trusted you! Three hundred dollars or get out tomorrow! Finish! That’s my last word.”

  Victor smoothed his newspaper down delicately on the counter, his hands making a dry brushing sound in the empty lunchroom. “You misunderstand,” he said gently.

  “I misunderstand nothing!” Mike yelled. “You are on my land in my shack and you owe me three hundred dollars …”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” Victor said, looking coldly at Mike. “That is what you misunderstand. I have paid you every month, the first day of the month, fifty dollars.”

  “Victor!” Mike whispered, his hands dropping to his sides. “Victor, what are you saying …?”

  “I have paid the rent. Please do not bother me any more.” Calmly Victor turned his back on Mike and turned two handles on the coffee urn. Steam, in a thin little plume, hissed up for a moment.

  Mike looked at Victor’s narrow back, with the shoulder blades jutting far out, making limp wings in the white shirt. There was finality in Victor’s pose, boredom, easy certainty. Mike shook his head slowly, pulling hard at his mustache. “My wife,” Mike said, to the disdainful back, “she told me not to trust you. My wife knew what she was talking about, Victor.” Then, with a last flare of hope, “Victor, do you really mean it when you said you paid me?”

  Victor didn’t turn around. He flipped another knob on the coffee urn. “I mean it.”

  Mike lifted his arm, as though to say something, pronounce warning. Then he let it drop and walked out of the shack, leaving the door open. Victor came out from behind the counter, looked at Mike moving off with his little rolling limp down the road and across the cornfield. Victor smiled and closed the door and went back and opened the paper to Walter Winchell.

  Mike walked slowly among the cornstalks, his feet crunching unevenly in the October earth. Absently he pulled at his mustache. Dolores, his wife, would have a thing or two to say. “No,” she had warned him, “do not build a shack for him. Do not permit him onto your land. He travels with bad men; it will turn out badly. I warn you!” Mike was sure she would not forget this conversation and would repeat it to him word for word when he got home. He limped along unhappily. Farming was better than being a landlord. You put seed into the earth and you knew what was coming out. Corn grew from corn, and the duplicity of Nature was expected and natural. Also no documents were signed in the compact with Nature, no leases and agreements necessary, a man was not at a disadvantage if he couldn’t read or write. Mike opened the door to his house and sat down heavily in the parlor, without taking his hat off. Rosa came and jumped on his lap, yelling, “Poppa, Poppa, tonig
ht I want to go to the movies, Poppa, take me to the movies!”

  Mike pushed her off. “No movies,” he said harshly. Rosa stood in a corner and watched him reproachfully.

  The door from the kitchen opened and Mike sighed as he saw his wife coming in, wiping her hands on her apron. She stood in front of Mike, round, short, solid as a plow horse, canny, difficult to deceive.

  “Why’re you sitting in the parlor?” she asked.

  “I feel like sitting in the parlor,” Mike said.

  “Every night you sit in the kitchen,” Dolores said. “Suddenly you change.”

  “I’ve decided,” Mike said loudly, “that it’s about time I made some use of this furniture. After all, I paid for it, I might as well sit in it before I die.”

  “I know why you’re sitting in the parlor,” Dolores said.

  “Good! You know!”

  “You didn’t get the money from Victor,” Dolores wiped the last bit of batter from her hands. “It’s as plain as the shoes on your feet.”

  “I smell something burning,” Mike said.

  “Nothing is burning. Am I right or wrong?” Dolores sat in the upright chair opposite Mike. She sat straight, her hands neatly in her lap, her head forward and cocked a little to one side, her eyes staring directly and accusingly into his. “Yes or no?”

  “Please attend to your own department,” Mike said miserably. “I do the farming and attend to the business details.”

  “Huh!” Dolores said disdainfully.

  “Are you starving?” Mike shouted. “Answer me, are you starving?”

  Rosa started to cry because her father was shouting.

  “Please, for the love of Jesus,” Mike screamed at her, “don’t cry!”

  Dolores enfolded Rosa in her arms.… “Baby, baby,” she crooned, “I will not let him harm you.”

  “Who offered to harm her?” Mike screamed, banging on a table with his fist like a mallet. “Don’t lie to her!”

  Dolores kissed the top of Rosa’s head soothingly. “There, there,” she crooned. “There.” She looked coldly at Mike. “Well. So he didn’t pay.”

  “He …” Mike started loudly. Then he stopped, spoke in a low, reasonable voice. “So. To be frank with you, he didn’t pay. That’s the truth.”

  “What did I tell you?” Dolores said as Mike winced. “I repeat the words. ‘Do not permit him onto your land. He travels with bad men; it will turn out badly. I warn you!’ Did I tell you?”

  “You told me,” Mike said wearily.

  “We will never see that money again,” Dolores said, smoothing Rosa’s hair. “I have kissed it good-bye.”

  “Please,” said Mike. “Return to the kitchen. I am hungry for dinner. I have made plans already to recover the money.”

  Dolores eyed him suspiciously. “Be careful, Mike,” she said. “His friends are gangsters and he plays poker every Saturday night with men who carry guns in their pockets.”

  “I am going to the law,” Mike said. “I’m going to sue Victor for the three hundred dollars.”

  Dolores started to laugh. She pushed Rosa away and stood up and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Mike asked angrily. “I tell you I’m going to sue a man for money he owes me, you find it funny! Tell me the joke.”

  Dolores stopped laughing. “Have you got any papers? No! You trust him, he trusts you, no papers. Without papers you’re lost in a court. You’ll make a fool of yourself. They’ll charge you for the lawyers. Please, Mike, go back to your farming.”

  Mike’s face set sternly, his wrinkles harsh in his face with the gray stubble he never managed completely to shave. “I want my dinner, Dolores,” he said coldly, and Dolores discreetly moved into the kitchen, saying, “It is not my business, my love; truly, I merely offer advice.”

  Mike walked back and forth in the parlor, limping, rolling a little from side to side, his eyes on the floor, his hands plunged into the pockets of his denims like holstered weapons, his mouth pursed with thought and determination. After a while he stopped and looked at Rosa, who prepared to weep once more.

  “Rosa, baby,” he said, sitting down and taking her gently on his lap. “Forgive me.”

  Rosa snuggled to him. They sat that way in the dimly lit parlor.

  “Poppa,” Rosa said finally.

  “Yes,” Mike said.

  “Will you take me to the movies tonight, Poppa?”

  “All right,” Mike said. “I’ll take you to the movies.”

  The next day Mike went into town, dressed in his neat black broadcloth suit and his black soft hat and his high brown shoes. He came back to the farm like a businessman in the movies, busily, preoccupied, sober, but satisfied.

  “Well?” Dolores asked him, in the kitchen.

  He kissed her briskly, kissed Rosa, sat down, took his shoes off, rubbed his feet luxuriously, said paternally to his son who was reading Esquire near the window, “That’s right, Anthony, study.”

  “Well?” asked Dolores.

  “I saw Dominic in town,” Mike said, watching his toes wiggling. “They’re having another baby.”

  “Well,” asked Dolores. “The case? The action?”

  “All right,” Mike said. “What is there for dinner?”

  “Veal,” Dolores said. “What do you mean ‘all right’?”

  “I’ve spoken to Judge Collins. He is filling out the necessary papers for me and he will write me a letter when I am to appear in court. Rosa, have you been a good girl?”

  Dolores threw up her hands. “Lawyers. We’ll throw away a fortune on lawyers. Good money after bad. We could put in an electric pump with the money.”

  “Lawyers will cost us nothing.” Mike stuffed his pipe elaborately. “I have different plans. Myself. I will take care of the case myself.” He lit up, puffed deliberately.

  Dolores sat down across the table from him, spoke slowly, carefully. “Remember, Mike,” she said. “This is in English. They conduct the court in English.”

  “I know,” said Mike. “I am right. Justice is on my side. Why should I pay a lawyer fifty, seventy-five dollars to collect my own money? There is one time you need lawyers—when you are wrong. I am not wrong. I will be my own lawyer.”

  “What do you know about the law?” Dolores challenged him.

  “I know Victor owes me three hundred dollars.” Mike puffed three times, quickly, on his pipe. “That’s all I need to know.”

  “You can hardly speak English, you can’t even read or write, nobody will be able to understand you. They’ll all laugh at you, Mike.”

  “Nobody will laugh at me. I can speak English fine.”

  “When did you learn?” Dolores asked. “Today?”

  “Dolores!” Mike shouted. “I tell you my English is all right.”

  “Say Thursday,” Dolores said.

  “I don’t want to say it,” Mike said, banging the table. “I have no interest in saying it.”

  “Aha,” Dolores crowed. “See? He wants to be a lawyer in an American court, he can’t even say Thursday.”

  “I can,” Mike said. “Keep quiet, Dolores.”

  “Say Thursday.” Dolores put her head to one side, spoke coquettishly, slyly, like a girl asking her lover to say he loved her.

  “Stirday,” Mike said, as he always said. “There!”

  Dolores laughed, waving her hand. “And he wants to conduct a law case! Holy Mother! They will laugh at you!”

  “Let them laugh!” Mike shouted. “I will conduct the case! Now I want to eat dinner! Anthony!” he yelled. “Throw away that trash and come to the table.”

  On the day of the trial, Mike shaved closely, dressed carefully in his black suit, put his black hat squarely on his head, and with Dolores seated grimly beside him drove early into town in the 1933 family Dodge.

  Dolores said nothing all the way into town. Only after the car was parked and they were entering the courthouse, Mike’s shoes clattering bravely on the legal marble, did Dolores speak. “Behave yourself,” she
said. Then she pinched his arm. Mike smiled at her, braced his yoke-like shoulders, took off his hat. His rough gray hair sprang up like steel wool when his hat was off, and Mike ran his hand through it as he opened the door to the courtroom. There was a proud, important smile on his face as he sat down next to his wife in the first row and patiently waited for his case to be called.

  When Victor came, Mike glared at him, but Victor, after a quick look, riveted his attention on the American flag behind the Judge’s head.

  “See,” Mike whispered to Dolores. “I have him frightened. He doesn’t dare look at me. Here he will have to tell the truth.”

  “Sssh!” hissed Dolores. “This is a court of law.”

  “Michael Pilato,” the clerk called, “versus Victor Fraschi.”

  “Me!” Mike said loudly, standing up.

  “Sssh,” said Dolores.

  Mike put his hat in Dolores’ lap, moved lightly to the little gate that separated the spectators from the principals in the proceedings. Politely, with a deep ironic smile, he held the gate open for Victor and his lawyer. Victor passed through without looking up.

  “Who’s representing you, Mr. Pilato?” the Judge asked when they were all seated. “Where’s your lawyer?”

  Mike stood up and spoke in a clear voice. “I represent myself. I am my lawyer.”

  “You ought to have a lawyer,” the Judge said.

  “I do not need a lawyer,” Mike said loudly. “I am not trying to cheat anybody.” There were about forty people in the courtroom and they all laughed. Mike turned and looked at them, puzzled. “What did I say?”

  The Judge rapped with his gavel and the case was opened. Victor took the stand, while Mike stared, coldly accusing, at him. Victor’s lawyer, a young man in a blue pinstripe suit and a starched tan shirt, questioned him. Yes, Victor said, he had paid each month. No, there were no receipts, Mr. Pilato could neither read nor write and they had dispensed with all formalities of that kind. No, he did not understand on what Mr. Pilato based his claim. Mike looked incredulously at Victor, lying under solemn oath, risking Hell for three hundred dollars.

  Victor’s lawyer stepped down and waved to Mike gracefully. “Your witness.”