by Orrie Hitt
“We’re going to sell it, Danny. We’ll sell it for them. It’ll be a two-dollar book and it’ll be sold for the benefit of — get this!”
“I’m waiting,” I said.
“The churches,” Al told me.
I got the bottle and poured drinks all around. Madeline smiled at me across her glass and I could see the between-the-sheets look in her blue eyes.
“Well, it’s certainly a different pitch,” I admitted finally. “It’s a funny thing, we’ve put these things on for firemen and policemen and almost everybody else — remember the street-marking fund in Walton? — but I’ve never given the churches a thought.”
Al got up, moving around the room.
“It’s powerful, Danny. It’s the most powerful gimmick I’ve ever come up against.”
“He’s right,” Madeline agreed. “We’ve always done well, even with just an organization behind it, but what couldn’t we do if we had all of the churches behind it?”
Al turned at the window, gesturing with his hands.
“Look, Danny, here’s how it shapes up. There are thirty-one churches in the Jessup area and every one of these is represented in the Minisink Church Council. The Council is behind this thing one hundred percent and that brings in all of the churches.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now, tell me — who benefits from the sale of this book?”
“Each church.”
“How?”
“Well, each church will sell the books to its members. In that way — ”
“It’s no good,” I said. I got up. “You just told me that we were going to sell them, Al. Let’s stick to that.”
“But I think the churches would,” he protested. “I really do. I mean, I think they’d push the book for us.”
“Forget it.”
The color rose into Al’s face again and he came toward me.
“What do you mean, Danny?”
“I said, forget it.”
“But — it’s big!”
“So’s the Atlantic Ocean. Yet I wouldn’t give you a nickel for it.” I opened the rye and had a drink of it from the bottle. “The church angle is okay,” I admitted. “But you’re way off on the sales point of view. So you say the church members will get out and sell them. I say they won’t. I say that the people who belong to other organizations also belong to a church and if they won’t get out and hustle for one cause they won’t do it for another. No, Al, it’s no good. You either control these books all the way, from the writing to the sales, or you’ll wind up in the poorhouse with about ten thousand copies of somebody’s history for security.”
“All right,” Al said. “We’ll sell the books.”
“How?”
Madeline sighed and got up. It was hot in the apartment and her yellow dress clung to her like a cellophane wrapper to a candy bar.
“I told you the only question you have to answer for Danny,” she said to Al. “How? Danny always wants to know how. Don’t you, Danny?”
“And one other thing,” I said. “How much?”
We all laughed and the atmosphere got close and friendly. Al passed cigarettes around and the blue smoke drifted through the sunlight.
“Let’s kick it around,” he suggested. “Let’s go over what I found.”
“I’m listening.”
“There’s six hundred and forty business places in Jessup. That’s an actual count.”
I nodded. It’s one of the first things you look for in a spot, how many business firms you have to draw upon for advertising money. If you don’t have enough firms you don’t have enough money. It’s a matter of simple arithmetic.
“Only twenty percent of the women are employed.”
“I’d have thought it higher,” I told him. “If you’d have asked me, I’d have said two out of three women in Jessup hustled off to work every day.”
“They got in a couple of new factories,” Madeline explained. “Johnny’s mother wrote to me about it once. They hire only men.”
I hadn’t known that she corresponded with the Jacksons but, of course, there wasn’t any reason why I should.
“And the foreign count is low,” Al continued. You take that, coupled with the fact that the women are home during the day, not working, and you’ve got as nice a telephone set-up as you could find.”
I tried to remember all of the things I had known about Port Jessup, but I couldn’t. It was too long ago and too much had happened since I’d been there.
“There was a girl there,” I said. “A Gloria Maddison. You run into her, Al?”
Madeline turned and walked into the kitchen.
“Who the hell is she?” Al wanted to know.
“Never mind.”
“Just a dame?”
“Yeah. Just a dame.”
Madeline brought in some more ice and we had a few drinks. Al kept talking about Jessup and the reception he’d gotten from the Minisink Church Council and how we could really do a big job on this one. After a while he stopped talking and we just sat around and stared at each other.
“Tell me something, Danny?”
I looked at him, seeing something in his eyes.
“Sure, Al.”
“You don’t seem hot on this.”
“Maybe I’m thinking.”
Al loosened his tie and sprawled back in the chair.
“Or quitting,” he said quietly. “You know something, Danny? You haven’t asked me once, not in a month, where we were going next, or what I had lined up, or anything.”
“I’ve never bothered you, have I, Al?”
He sat up.
“No. But it isn’t that. You’ve always been curious about what I’m doing. Like you cared, Danny. I mean — oh, hell, what’s the use of trying to put it into words? It’s just that this last month or so you’ve been acting like some guy who’s getting ready to check out of a room with his rent past due.”
I don’t know why Al surprised me, putting his finger on it that way, but he did. Hell, I thought, I hired the guy because he was a good salesman, a good psychologist, and now I’m finding out just how good he is.
“You’re smart, Al,” I said, not walking away from it. “I guess I did have it set that way.”
He stood up, shaking his head.
“But why?”
“I don’t know.” It sounded idiotic. “Sometimes you get enough of something.”
“Money?”
“Hell, no!”
Al picked up his coat and hung it over his arm.
“There’s no use talking,” he said wearily. “Not if it’s that way.”
I’m not sure whether it was Al himself or the thought of his wife and kids that made me feel sort of sick inside. Or maybe it was Madeline and the way she looked at me, as though I had just slapped her in the face. But it wasn’t because of them that I suddenly made up my mind to do the Port Jessup job. It was simply because it was big, just as hot as Al said it was, and I could smell all that money better than a cat could smell a herring. This time I wouldn’t have to work my back off to make a buck; this time I knew what I was doing. It would be a whole lot like a high school graduate going back to class for a day.
“Relax,” I told Al. “We’ll do it. You think I’d pass up a deal that’s a natural?”
He blinked at me, his eyes bright.
“Thanks, Danny.”
I knew, without asking, how hard he had worked on it, how much the money would mean to him. I got out my checkbook and wrote out a check.
“Five hundred!” he breathed when I handed it to him. “Jesus, Danny! Thanks!”
“Buy your kids an ice cream cone,” I told him. “Big ones.”
We both laughed and I walked with him to the door. I told him to have a good week-end, to stay out of the alleys in Scranton and that we’d see him in Port Jessup the following week.
“Good guy,” I said to Madeline, pouring a couple of drinks. “And smart.”
“You don’t have to sell me that.”
She
was lying on the davenport, both of those beautiful legs of hers stretched out. She looked up at me, not smiling, when I handed her the drink.
“Danny. Tell me something.”
“What?”
“Was Al right about you wanting to quit?”
I sat down beside her, thinking about it. I didn’t want to lie to her.
“Partly,” I told her. “But only partly. Al couldn’t know what I didn’t know myself.”
She lifted herself on one elbow, holding herself that way. She smelled clean and fresh, the way a flower smells after an all-night-rain.
“You were going to tell me, Danny?”
I nodded.
“When?”
“Hell,” I said. “I don’t know.” I pushed the ice around in the glass with my forefinger. “It’s just a thought, just a yen. You know how a person gets once in a while, sort of dissatisfied because everything’s going so good?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Madeline replied. “Nothing ever went that well for me and you know it.”
“I’m talking about money. Having the things you want, getting so many of them whenever you want them that they cease to be important.”
She sighed and leaned back.
“You’re getting drunk,” she said.
“No. I’m not drunk. I’m just trying to figure out why I had made up my mind to chuck this, to quit the whole thing today. And I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have quit. I know that now. I wouldn’t have quit because it’s the only thing I ever made any money at.”
She stirred beside me.
“I’m glad, Danny. I don’t want you to quit.”
“I won’t.”
“Never?”
“Never!”
The afternoon sun spilled through the overhanging branches of the trees outside, weaving crazy shadows on the floor. I looked down at her, at her closed eyes, her full red lips, the swollen lines of her high breasts under the dress.
“It’ll seem funny,” I said. “Going back to Port Jessup.”
“Yes.”
I bent and kissed her on the mouth. She responded briefly, her lips parting and then she lay very quiet.
“I’ve got your bonus for you,” I told her.
A faint smile pulled at her mouth and drifted away.
“I’ve always wondered who got the bonus,” she said. “You or me.”
I laughed, trying to feel good even though I knew that something was bothering her.
After a while I kissed her again, real light, and fixed myself another drink.
“Johnny’s coming home,” she said suddenly.
I almost dropped the drink.
“When?”
“Next week. He’s got a leave. He wants me to go back with him.”
I’d thought of it before, a lot of times, what I would do if she decided to leave the job. I hadn’t known then and I didn’t know now.
“You should have told me this,” I said. “I wouldn’t have gone along with Al on that thing.”
She got up slowly and came over to me.
“I didn’t say I was going with him, Danny.” She was close, very close, and I could feel the warmth of her body. “I just said that he asked me.”
“Say, now, that’s better!”
She lifted her face and this time she kissed me back.
“I’m not going, Danny.”
I kissed her again, letting my hand wander across the front of her dress, cupping one breast until she let out a little sigh.
“I know what he thinks.” Her face was against my chest and I could feel her breath through my shirt. “He’s got a leave and he thinks he’ll get me to play house with him and then go off and leave me like he did before.”
“Maybe not.”
Her arms went around to my back, holding onto me. She was quiet for a long time.
“I’m going to tell him, Danny. I’m going to tell him as soon as he gets home. I want a divorce.”
She’d never told me very much about her husband, one way or the other, but this didn’t surprise me any.
“We all make mistakes,” I said.
She held her head back, staring up at me. All of the moments we had ever spent together were there in her eyes.
“Is this a mistake, Danny?” she wondered. “Tell me if it is.”
It hit me hard, in the guts. We’d worked together and had fun together but we’d never asked each other any questions. It was almost like it was supposed to happen, that there wasn’t anything that we could do about it.
“This isn’t any mistake,” I said.
She pulled my head down, her mouth wet and open, her tongue driving fire all the way down to the end of my spine.
“I won’t say it,” she whispered. “I won’t spoil it, Danny. But you must know how it is with me.”
I didn’t tell her that I did or I didn’t. I just kissed her and let it go at that.
“If I was in love with him I wouldn’t let you, Danny. You know I wouldn’t let you.”
The way she had me worked up right then she didn’t have to let me. I was all set to take it from her anyhow. I got my hand down inside her dress and over that strapless brassiere. She cried a little as I pushed down, hurting her, and then her breasts plunged into the open, free and ripe. She stood on tiptoe, her eyes closed, and I kissed her.
“Danny! Danny!”
We’d done it before, a lot of times, but this time it was different. She couldn’t seem to wait until her clothes were out of the way. She kept moaning and clawing at me and I had to hit her once or she would have cut my face up in sections.
“Hurry, Danny!”
I pushed her down onto the davenport. My hand slid across the soft swell of her stomach and she rose to meet me, gasping.
Her body lifted, moved away, lifted again. I kissed her, tasting the tears, and lost myself in the violent caress of her flesh.
4
I GUESS the changes in Port Jessup compared favorably to the changes in almost any city of twenty-two thousand population. Some new homes had gone up, to accommodate workers in the rug and hat plants, and many of the residential dwellings had been remodeled.
“We are making progress,” one minister told me. “Industrially, I mean. Yet, it seems, the more money we have the more problems we create.”
That was a new switch for me. With Danny Fulton a problem meant no money at all.
“I guess you’re right,” I told him.
It was my second day in Port Jessup. I hadn’t seen Al and I didn’t know the names of the members of the Council with whom he had made the arrangements. So I’d stopped in at this church, the first one I’d come to that morning, and I’d told the minister who I was and what I was looking for.
“Those of us who follow the way of God feel that a history of our city will serve a dual purpose, Mr. Fulton. We believe it will serve to get people interested in the community again. And we trust it will not only bring a sense of pride to all of our young people who read it but that it will provide a substantial sum of money which can be used for their benefit. ”
“Sure,” I said.
I’d been there fifteen minutes already, listening to this old guy talk, and I was getting pretty bored with the whole thing. He had one idea about the book and I had another. There was no sense of us trying to get together on anything else.
“You can be sure that the Minisink Council of Churches will be everything in its power to make this venture a success.”
“That was what I stopped in about,” I told him. “Mr. Castle was here but I neglected to find out from him who was in charge of the project. I mean, I don’t know who I’m suppose to talk to about making the necessary legal arrangements with the Council.”
The minister smiled and clasped his hands.
“That would be Miss Adams,” he said, smiling. “Miss Sandy Adams.”
“I thought it would be one of the ministers.”
His smile widened.
“No,” he told me. “The Minisink Council is c
omposed of both the various members of the clergy and of representatives from the laymen’s groups of the individual churches. We have found this to be a most staisfactory way to consolidate the religious objectives of the Port Jessup area. Miss Adams was selected by the Council because she is a hard and untiring worker and, also, because she has adequate time to devote to the effort.”
Hell, I thought, they’re giving me some old bag who’ll have her nose print jammed in between every paragraph in the book.
“Where could I find this Miss Adams?” I inquired.
“She lives on Summer Road.”
That was even worse. I remembered Summer Road as being a real snob section.
“Wel, thanks,” I said, going to the door. “You’ve been a big help.”
“Don’t mention it.” He waved and returned to the work on his desk. “Call on me any time.”
I went out front and got into the Buick. It was a nice morning, not too hot and the sky was clear blue. I drove cross town to Center Street and stopped in front of the Center Hotel. A couple of minutes later Madeline emerged from the hotel, carrying a suitcase, and came over to the car.
“You’re early,” she said, getting in.
“I’m up every morning early,” I told her.
I’d been staying out at one of the motels on the edge of town, and I’d tried to sell her on the idea it was cheaper for two to sleep together than it was for them to do nothing alone. She’d turned me down, though, because she said we $$ in Port Jessup and a person never knew and she didn’t want any hitch to come up and interfere with her divorce plans.
“You get a place?” I asked her.
“On River Street. Near the bridge.”
“Get another one out there, if you can,” I said. “For me. That’s the coolest spot in the city on these hot nights. I remember how Gloria and I used to go down there, some nights, just to sit and watch the lights.”
We rode a short distance in silence.
“She’s married,” I said, answering the question before she could ask me. “She’s married to some guy who works in one of the factories and she’s got a kid. I saw her old man yesterday afternoon, down by the square.”
Clint Maddison had seemed older, fatter, less sure of himself. He’d even smiled when he’d seen me and had looked unhappy when I’d asked him about his daughter. It had been one of those meeting-old-friends things that you almost wished you’d missed.