End of the Tiger

by John D. MacDonald

  And the woman was gone. Ginny got tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes. In all the ways of pride she pulled herself together. And she went on with Christmas. She could tell herself over and over that it was too like a petulant child to whine about being unable to afford big glossy presents. But the wound had been inflicted, deep enough so that it could not ever heal perfectly.

  In the last moments of shopping she found a walnut pipe rack and humidor thing for Ben for which she paid $4.98. In the shop she had been pleased by the way it looked, but when she unwrapped it to gift-wrap it herself, the finish had that shiny look of cheapness. After she had worked on it a long time, cutting the gloss by carefully rubbing it with steel wool, it was much more handsome.

  Ben’s present to her was a small antique vase he found in a shop on Second Avenue. She could only guess the amount of stolen time used in finding something so lovely that was within the limit they had set.

  The kids had prepared long and discouragingly expensive lists. Ben and Ginny had budgeted $100 for them, and due to the increased pressure of work because of the end of the year, Ben had been unable to help her but, as he told her later, she had performed a vast miracle of judgment and selection.

  The bonus came through on January tenth. It was for $1500. Ben managed, for Ginny’s sake, to conceal his disappointment. He knew it was a bit churlish of him to feel disappointment. There could easily have been no bonus at all. But he had so carefully worked out just how he would disburse the anticipated $3500, and had dwelt upon how much that amount would ease the endless tension——

  Ginny, thinking it came as a surprise to him, too, was delighted. And it seemed to dilute some of her growing resentment toward National. He said nothing to decrease her pleasure. He did not tell her that, because it was considered 1965 income, a tiny additional tax nip would be taken out of each monthly check for the rest of the year.

  He paid $600 on his $2200 note at the Lawton National Bank, reduced the insurance loan by $400, and left $500 in the checking account for emergencies.

  And then began the time of waiting. The winter was exceptionally severe again, the fuel bills high. The reserve shrank to $300. The house thermostat stopped working and had to be replaced. Ladybug had flu for a week and, in spite of Ginny’s precautions, she gave it to Chris, and the prescribed antibiotics were $14 a patient. Ben, returning late from a stormy meeting of the Civic Betterment Committee (men who work for National take an active interest in the affairs of their home communities), took to the deep snowy ditch to avoid a skidding drunk, and the tow-truck fee was $15. The water company, with the approval of all agencies concerned, slapped a special $20 assessment on all users.

  These were the small things. A very special guest, a member of the board of directors of National, drops a handsome Danish cocktail glass on the hearth. Once there were a dozen. Now there are seven. So for any special entertaining for more than seven in the future, a new set must be purchased. Little things. Like being pecked to death by sparrows.

  So the little things make you irritable with each other. But it is not only the little things that corrode dispositions. It is the unspoken awareness, always just around a dark corner of the mind, that big things can happen, and do happen, and the process of life is in part the knowledge that they will happen and in being prepared for them. They lived with the knowledge of their defenselessness. In a primitive culture, they would have worn charms to ward off evil, and had they been able to believe in the efficiency of the charms, they would have felt secure.

  But in suburbia there are no magic things you can wear suspended from a string hung around your neck. You pray for breathing space, for time to plant your feet.

  Love was there, in abundance. But an endless worry about money is an astringent that sucks the juice from love, renders it wan and slow-moving. And penury is, perhaps, more endurable in matching surroundings. It becomes grotesque in a $40,000 house.

  The stress of enduring an unfair situation makes people seek outlets for their irritability. Ben and Ginny were handy targets for each other. The apologies, in time, became more a matter of protocol than of guilt. And each of them built up a distorted picture of what the other one thought. Ben taught himself to believe Ginny thought him a spineless conformist who dared not complain for fear of upsetting plans so far in the golden future they were meaningless. Ginny grew to believe that Ben considered her spoiled and petulant, unwilling to endure all this for his sake, thinking only of pleasures she was missing. And, in the perversity of all mortals, they made more effort to fit the mistaken conception than to correct it. Some of the warmth went out of the house, and a lot of the closeness went out of the marriage during the cold months, and the children felt it and were troubled by it, and acted in ways unlike themselves without knowing why—knowing only that they more frequently deserved punishment, and taking a curious satisfaction in receiving it.

  There was no snow in Columbus, Indiana, on the morning of the third day of March, and the temperature was in the low twenties, and dropping steadily. It had been above freezing during the night, and there had been a hard driving rain, which had frozen in a cellophane skim over everything the rain had touched.

  Martha Weldon had got up early, as was her habit, and had the coffee on before Geraldine Davis came down, smiling, yawning, to the kitchen. Martha was a tall, heavy woman with an air of pious thoughtfulness, an authoritative, rather ponderous presence. Geraldine was also a widow, and she was four years younger than Martha. Geraldine had begun to “help out” at Martha’s house seven years ago. She was a small, lean, tireless woman of good spirits but with a talent for malice. Her life income from her husband’s insurance was too tiny to support her. She made ends meet by helping Martha and two other elderly women. She had the knack of keeping it on the basis of a friendship between equals, so that the necessary matter of slipping money to her had to be done with greatest delicacy.

  Martha also had a small income. It had been larger quite a few years ago, and it was fortunate that, as it dwindled, her only living son, Ben, had been able to contribute to her support.

  Three years ago one of the women Geraldine helped had died, and the other had gone to Oklahoma to live with a daughter. Geraldine told her problems to Martha. As a result, Martha suggested she give up her miniature apartment and move in with her. There was more than enough room. They would be good company for each other. It seemed an excellent arrangement.

  After breakfast on that cool, bright morning Martha sat at the desk in the living room and wrote to Ben and Ginny. She knew that Geraldine knew what she was doing, and she also knew that it would give Geraldine her usual opportunity to make overly casual comments about how long it had been since Martha had seen her grandchildren, and how young people these days lacked consideration, and how you’d think a boy doing as well as Martha kept telling her he was doing, making all that money and all, could afford to send more. Maybe he just never thought of it. Young people were certainly thoughtless.

  It was a few minutes after nine when Martha stepped out the front door to put the letter in the mailbox attached to the post at the head of the porch steps. The board floor of the porch was painted a dark green. She took two heavy steps on the dry wood, and a third step onto the slick, transparent, invisible ice. She struck the edge of the top step with a terrible force, felt her thigh snap, and tumbled in a white roaring spin of pain to the cement sidewalk, down the four shallow steps of the porch, and lay there moaning, rolling her head from side to side. She was half aware that Geraldine had come to her, that Geraldine was in great panic. And when Geraldine made a stupid futile effort to pull at her, as though to drag her into the house, Martha screamed once, with the strength of a young woman, and fainted.

  Ginny phoned the office at 12:40 and caught Ben just as he was leaving for lunch. Geraldine had not been very coherent. Martha had had a bad fall, and was in the hospital, and Ben should come at once. He told Ginny he would leave right away. He kept a small travel case with the essentia
ls at the office for emergency business trips. His secretary had not left yet. He had her check flights for him and make a reservation. He could use his air-travel card and reimburse the company. The other men were out to lunch. He left it to her to tell them the situation, and he dictated a hasty memo that made staff assignments of the work he was handling, and told her to reshuffle his appointments as best she could.

  When he saw his mother in the hospital that evening, he was deeply shocked at the way she looked, and at the uncontrolled trembling of her hands. He stayed in the house. Mrs. Geraldine Davis made up a bed there for him with what he thought was an unwarranted surliness.

  He had a long talk with the doctor the next day. Due to the nature of the fracture, they had had to set it immediately. Splintered bones had had to be pinned. Her heart had stood up well under the general anesthetic, but they had had to give her plasma for shock. The doctor would not commit himself on whether she would be able to walk again, but he was ready to admit that she would be bedridden for quite a long time. Ben signed a hospital form accepting financial responsibility. He stayed that day and the next, spending as much time with her as he could, but he was never alone with her. Geraldine Davis was there the entire time. The women were obviously close.

  He flew back the morning of the third day, told Ginny the details he had not told her over the phone, and that evening they phoned Martha at the hospital. Ben had arranged for a phone to be put by her bed. Ginny and the three children talked to her. Ben dived back into a brute load of work, work so heavy and demanding that he had no time to think of the extra financial burden her fall had entailed.

  Six days later, at midnight, the doctor in Columbus phoned and woke him from a sound sleep to tell him that his mother had contracted pneumonia and she was not responding to medication. She was in an oxygen tent, and it was perhaps best that he come as soon as possible. Ginny packed his things and drove him to the airport.

  Air connections were bad. He did not arrive at the small hospital until quarter after ten the next morning. She had been dead for not quite an hour. He made arrangements for the funeral service and the burial with the same firm that had buried his father so long ago. He phoned Ginny, and she said she would make arrangements about the children and arrive the next day. He said he saw no reason for it. It was just an added expense, and it could not possibly do any good. She seemed hurt at his attitude.

  But he was delighted to see her when she arrived. He had seldom felt as lonely, and the town where he had been brought up had never looked so strange to him.

  And he was glad to hold his wife in his arms for a long reassuring moment because he was ashamed of himself. It had happened the night of the day she had died. He had awakened in the night and he had been unable to go back to sleep. Suddenly, in the darkness, there had come to him a sudden tingle of excitement and pleasure and relief as he realized he could now sell the house, and even in a hasty sale it would bring far more than the hospital and the burial expenses. It was a sound house, and the location was convenient to the downtown area. He would come out of it with a profit, and it would no longer be necessary for him to send the $2400 a year to her. It was a despicable and degraded rejoicing that made him feel soiled, but he could not help himself. He mourned her. But mourning was stained by his awareness of being freed by her death from the nagging trap he was in.

  Ginny had met Geraldine Davis on previous visits, and it seemed to Ben that Geraldine seemed more friendly toward Ginny than toward him. But when Ben and Ginny were alone later, Ginny said, “I don’t think we’re the most popular people who ever stayed here, darling.”

  “I was born in this house and I swear she makes me feel like an interloper.”

  “The poor thing is probably worried sick about what she’ll do now. You can’t blame her, you know.”

  “That must be it,” he said.

  The service at the church was well attended. The Weldons were an old family. The great majority of the people at the church were elderly. There was the traditional ceremony at the grave, and then Ben and Ginny rode back into town in the limousine provided by the funeral director. There were no words with which Ben could tell Ginny how necessary it was to have her beside him.

  They were back in town at two o’clock, and Ben had the driver let them out in front of the old office building that housed the offices of Gebbert and Malone. Old Willis Gebbert had been a friend of his father, and had handled what small legal business the family had had for sixty years. He had made the appointment earlier. Judge Gebbert had been at the church, and Ben had pointed him out to Ginny. “Must be ninety and still practicing,” he whispered.

  The old-fashioned office was full of dark, heavy furniture and it smelled like dust and medicine.

  Ben introduced Ginny to the judge, and he was courtly with her. His hair was wispy white, his blue eyes watery, his head in a constant visible tremor, brown spots on the backs of his large white hands. But his voice had not lost its deepness and resonance.

  “A sad thing,” Judge Gebbert said. “She was a wonderful woman. She made Sam Weldon a wonderful wife, Benjamin.”

  “I appreciate your saying that, sir. We’re going to have to leave today and get back to the children and the job. I was wondering if you’d take on a last chore for the Weldon clan. I’d like to give you a power of attorney to sell that house for me and pay off the medical and funeral expenses—I can have the bills sent directly here—and remit the balance to me.”

  Judge Gebbert coughed in a slightly artificial way and stared out the window for a few moments, then sighed and said, “Nobody can say Martha wasn’t in her right mind, and nobody can say her mind wasn’t made up. She came in here almost two years ago, son, and I made up a will for her. Geraldine Davis gets the house and furniture and the money in her savings account, and you get the right to go over the house and take any personal stuff you might want to keep. Want to look at my copy of it, Benjamin? I can get it in no time at all.”

  “No. Don’t bother. I’m sure it’s just as you describe it, judge.” His mouth felt dry and he felt far away, as though he were dreaming all this.

  “She said to me you were doing so good you wouldn’t need it, and if anything happened to her, Geraldine’d have no place to lay her head, no kin and no money, and by making out the will that way, she could stop fretting about it. It was going to be a secret, but she told Geraldine about it all later on so Geraldine wouldn’t worry either—you know the way your mother was, son.”

  “Judge, how about the … bills?”

  Judge Gebbert looked at him with a slight frown. “I guess you can do that much, can’t you? I don’t know who else would be responsible.”

  “Thank you for your time, judge,” he said, getting up.

  “Geraldine talked to me on the phone just before you came here. Seemed to know you were coming. Asked me about occupancy. I told her she’s in her legal rights to stay right here, and it’ll go through Probate Court with no trouble at all.” He gave an astonishingly vital baritone laugh. “If after all these years I can’t draw a will, I better get out of the law business.”

  They walked the six blocks to the house. There was a faint rumor of spring in the air. Ginny held his arm.

  “Darling,” she said gently, “we’re jinxed. If molten gold was coming down, we’d be out there with sieves, wouldn’t we?”

  “Don’t make with the gallant little jokes. Not now, please.”

  And at the tone of his voice she took her hand away and walked beside him, half looking away, tears standing bright on her lower lids.

  They were on the porch of the house before Ben noticed the new sign in the window. Room for Rent. The door was locked. As he got out the spare key the door swung open and Geraldine stuck her hand out, palm up, and said, “I’ll take that key!”

  He put it on the narrow wrinkled palm and stared at her. She stared back with a satisfied malevolence. “You don’t have to come in further than this front hall either. This place is mine, all legal,
and you aren’t welcome here, you nor your blond wife either, Ben Weldon.”

  “What’s the matter with you, Mrs. Davis?” Ginny demanded.

  “Right here is your suitcases, all packed neat. And here’s this big wood crate with everything personal packed right in it, so you don’t have to go through my house poking around. I saved you the trouble, I did.”

  “Why are you acting like this?” Ben demanded.

  “Martha—God rest her soul—loved you, but I certainly got no call to. You’d go flying all over the country like a king, and you wouldn’t come near her. She wouldn’t see her grandchildren from one year to the next. Oh, I know how lonely she was. But you didn’t care, neither one of you. Send a little money, that’s all you had to do. So little you didn’t miss it at all, and you thought you were doing something big. I’ve been waiting years to tell you off, Ben Weldon. And right now you can get out of this hall and off my land. What do you want done with the box of stuff?”

  “You don’t understand——” Ginny said.

  But Ben said, “Never mind, honey. Send the box railway express.”

  “Collect,” Geraldine said firmly.

  “Collect,” Ben said and picked up the suitcases. They walked out onto the porch, and she slammed the door.

  As they walked down the street Ginny looked back and saw her peering at them from the living-room window. She seemed to be grinning, but she was behind the curtains, and Ginny could not be certain.

  When all the bills were in, Ben totaled them. They came to $3212.50. There was no hospitalization. The expenses of death are not deductible items for tax purposes. He would be able to claim her as a dependent for the year, and that was all.

  This was the final rock that stove the hull of the small boat. He phoned the Lawton National Bank from his office and got Mr. Lathrop Hyde on the line. After he had identified himself, he said he could arrange to come in Monday morning at ten when the bank opened and discuss his note. Hyde had him hold the line while the folder was brought to him.