Pushover

by Orrie Hitt

  “I’d like to do it, Danny,” he assured me. “Honest. But I can’t. You can see how it is.”

  I saw how it was. He wanted his dough.

  “Okay,” I promised. “I’ll work something out.”

  It was even hotter outside and I stopped in at a bar for a drink. I had three. And it didn’t make things any easier. Everywhere I looked somebody was busy slamming a door on me.

  I returned to the library.

  “Key,” I told the girl at the desk.

  “The room’s open.”

  “Thanks.”

  The Historical Society held a meeting up there once in a while and I wondered if I was going to get caught in one of those things. It was all I needed to make my life complete.

  I heard the rattle of the typewriter long before I got up there. I reached the top of the stairs, entered the room and stopped suddenly.

  “Madeline!”

  The air conditioner hummed on the windowsill and the noise of the typewriter ceased.

  She smiled.

  “Surprise!” she said.

  I took in a deep breath.

  “You know it,” I said.

  We both started to talk at once and then stopped. We tried it again and the same thing happened. Then we laughed.

  “Speak your piece first,” I told her. “You’re the most important thing in my life right now.”

  She fiddled with the keys on the typewriter.

  “I thought it all over,” she said. “I couldn’t let you down, Danny.”

  “I didn’t think you would,” I said.

  “It would have been a dirty trick.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Al quitting you was bad enough.”

  “I can’t write the book,” I admitted. “But I can sell the ads.”

  She laughed and glanced at the wastebasket.

  “I’ll give you credit, though. You tried.”

  “And that’s all I did. Try.”

  “You could have done it,” she insisted. “If you’d known how to use these cards.”

  I’d seen the cards, little three-by-five things with dates on them. Now, as she explained it to me, I saw that each card had a date and that the dates were in numerical order; that is, earliest date on top of the pile. In addition to this, each card bore short references, such as, “Page 16, Filbert’s History,” or, “See Evening Clarion, 6/12/94.”

  “The biggest job is cataloging the material,” Madeline told me. “You never paid much attention to this but I guess you know, now, that it’s a good thing to understand.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “You just can’t start writing the history and then jump from one place to the other looking for things to use. What you do is read it all, or glance through most of it, and note the important incidents on these cards. After you’ve gone through all that, you put the cards in order — see how they run? — and the job becomes simple after that.”

  “Maybe for you,” I agreed.

  But it wasn’t as hard as it looked. All she did was catalog the junk and hop from place to place writing it down. In other words, about all she did was copy something somebody else had written. I thought of all those other books she’d done and I wondered if we could ever get sued. I asked her about that.

  “The material is in the public domain,” she said. “Anybody can use it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  She was a cutie all right. She’d been getting good dough and she didn’t have to know very much about writing at all. But I wasn’t arguing with her about it. I’d gotten my money’s worth, in one form or another.

  “I hope you’ll forgive me for last night, Danny. I was a poor sport.”

  I felt big-hearted toward the world.

  “Well, I should have told you.”

  “It couldn’t be helped.”

  “No.”

  We left it that way and she went back to work.

  “I’ll finish this book for you in ten days,” she promised. “You see if I don’t.”

  “Both copies?”

  “The whole thing.”

  “Swell!”

  I hung around a while longer, wondering if she’d ask me about what we were going to do next. But she didn’t. I guess she knew, as well as I did, that this was the end of it for us. I was grateful to her, though, for climbing aboard a ship that had almost gone down.

  “See you,” I said.

  “Bye, Danny.”

  I was hot that afternoon and I knocked those advertisers silly. I closed four out of five and ended the day with nineteen sales. But that’s the way it is with a salesman — you’re hot and you blow hot, you’re cold and you can’t get a thing to move. Even the bank president bought an ad and that had been after I’d asked him how much cash I could borrow on the Caddy. Three grand, he’d said. Just say the word and three grand comes out of the wire cage and into your hands. But he hadn’t paid me for the ad. He’d said he’d do that after the book came out.

  Around five I drove over to the motel, showered, changed and had dinner in a quiet little place down the road.

  “You were hungry,” the waitress said, hauling my empty plate off to the kitchen.

  I had been. And I felt good, as high as you can get on the jagged ends of your nerves. Madeline would wind up the book and I could get all the money I needed right off the car. Hell, I didn’t have to sell another ad if I didn’t feel like it. From here on out it was a downhill coast all the way and I could make my nut just lying in bed.

  I drove slowly toward Summer Road, considering my good luck, savoring every bit of it. I had come a long distance since those dollar-an-hour jobs in Port Jervis, a long, long way for the son of a man who’d specialized in hanging wallpaper upside down. I laughed, remembering it. Jesus, the old man had been funny. And good, too. Good, despite his drinking and his helling around. He’d taken me fishing in the Delaware and he’d taught me how to swim. When I’d been ten he’d given me a twenty-two rifle, a Remington pump action, and I’d almost shot my mother with it, accidentally, a couple of days later. That had been the end of the gun and the old man and we hadn’t done much together after that. He’d stepped up his drinking, shortened his life and not too long after that he dropped dead.

  Summer Road. Class. On top of the hill, overlooking the city. On top of the world.

  I parked the car in back of the house and walked around to the front. The grass was green and fresh and it smelled the way new money smells. Maybe it was the next thing to money. It cost enough; it was watered twice a day. And flowers, bevys of them. All colors. Red, green, white, yellow — name it and you could find it. I hadn’t seen so many flowers since I’d worked, as a kid, in a hothouse.

  There was a man parked on the porch. He got to his feet as I came up the steps.

  “Mr. Fulton?”

  I nodded.

  “My name is Andy Boyd,” he said, extending his hand. “Glad to know you.”

  He was a short man, in his late forties, and he had a healthy, suntanned face. I’d seen him once before, the night of the dance at the country club.

  “Hi,” I said. “Where’s Sandy?”

  “They called her from the hospital a little while ago. There’d been an accident on Route 17 and they needed some extra help. She’s a nurse’s aid.”

  “I know,” I said.

  He offered me a cigar but I told him I didn’t smoke them. I lit my cigarette off his match and we kept standing around, getting no place fast.

  “I’m Sandy’s lawyer,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “And advisor.”

  With half a million bucks she had to have one of those guys kicking around.

  Boyd laughed and sat down in one of the canvas chairs.

  “You don’t have to look uncomfortable,” he said. “I’m not the kind of an advisor you see on television or in the movies. I’m just a lawyer who used to work in her father’s office and who was given the job of looking a
fter the estate. If you know what I mean.”

  “I guess I do.” I sat down opposite him.

  “We’ve done pretty well at it,” he said. “And Sandy is a good manager. It hasn’t shrunk. It’s grown.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Somehow, meeting this guy here had given me a jolt. I didn’t know what to think.

  “Sandy’s a fine girl, Mr. Fulton.”

  “Indeed she is.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but she was going to get married once before. Quite a while ago. He was killed.”

  “I heard about that. Tough.”

  He smiled and puffed on his cigar.

  “I’m not trying to put you in the second-best spot, mind you.”

  “No.”

  “Sandy loves you, Mr. Fulton. She loves you a lot.”

  “I love her.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Boyd glanced at his wristwatch and frowned. “This hospital thing was unexpected and it sort of disrupts our plans. We intended to talk something over with you, Mr. Fulton. However, I guess it will be all right if we talk without Sandy being present. She’s well aware of what I’m going to suggest, anyway.”

  I sat perfectly still, not saying a word. It was like hiding under a tree in a thunder shower. You couldn’t ever be sure that you’d picked the right tree until after the storm had blown over.

  “Sandy tells me you’re a writer.”

  “Of sorts.”

  “Well, there’s no reason to give that up. But, married to Sandy, I think you should have something more substantial.”

  “I’ve thought about that, too.”

  How much more substantial can you get than half a million? And it had grown!

  “Ever been in business, Mr. Fulton?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re young. You’re smart. You could learn a business if you had to.”

  “I guess I could.”

  He gave it to me then, right off the top. While Sandy had been single there had been no need to look around for additional investments. Five percent of half a million was twenty-five thousand a year and she never used nearly that much. But Sandy married would be a different story. Boyd said he didn’t think money was the main problem. Self-respect, he said, seemed to be the meat of the thing.

  “I think you know what I’m talking about,” he went on to explain. “Once you’re married to Sandy you’ll be meeting the people she knows, doing business with her friends. It would be much better for both of you, I think, if you had some means of coming close to earning an income that would pretty near do the job. Don’t you?”

  “I’m just a working guy,” I protested. “She knows that.”

  “Oh, of course, and so do I. You misunderstand what I’m suggesting. I believe that a business should be purchased for you to run.”

  He was right. He was no movie version of an advisor. He was my boy.

  “Running around selling ads in books doesn’t seem to fit,” he said.

  “No.”

  “A good solid business.”

  “I get you.”

  He tossed his cigar out onto the lawn and stood up.

  “There’s a Cadillac agency downtown,” he said. “It can be very profitable and it’s — distinguished. They want seventy-five thousand for it. I told Sandy I thought she ought to get it and turn it over to you to run. But she wanted us to talk to you about it first.”

  Not only was I riding around in a new Caddy but, with luck, I’d be able to get the next one wholesale.

  “It makes sense,” I told him.

  He smiled and shook my hand.

  “Fine! You talk it over with Sandy and she can let me know.”

  I didn’t want him to think that it couldn’t be a better plan if I’d worked it up myself so I gave him a tight little smile and a nod.

  “I’ll do that,” I said. “In the meantime, I’ll go over some of the other things that I’ve been considering.”

  “Fine, Mr. Fulton.” He went down the steps. “And let me know.”

  “Sure.”

  I guess he lived nearby because he didn’t have any car. I watched him walk out of sight.

  There were drinks inside, in the butler’s pantry, so I went in and fixed one. I carried the drink around the house with me, looking at things.

  It was a big house. Fourteen rooms. And thick rugs, up to the tops of your shoes. The furniture was modern and expensive and you could have built a cottage for two for what the fireplaces had cost. The bump for the layout was more than most people make in an entire lifetime.

  Funny, I thought, but I hadn’t paid any particular attention to all of this stuff before. Maybe it was because I hadn’t been able to get it solid in my mind that one day, and soon, I’d be a co-owner.

  Sure, I loved her. I guess I would have loved her if she didn’t have a dime. But I had no way of knowing that, of measuring it, because she was loaded and that’s all there was to it. Strip the money from her and she was still Sandy Adams. But Sandy Adams happened to have the dough. Nobody could change that.

  I called the hospital around nine-thirty and was told that she had just left. I entered the living room, whistling, and turned on a couple of fifty-dollar lamps. Then I made three drinks, one extra, and sat down to wait for her.

  It was a pleasure.

  12

  WE KICKED out the idea of getting any more ads for the book. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t my suggestion; it came from Sandy.

  “Why should you kill yourself running around in the heat?” she demanded.

  I grinned at her.

  “I’m still a working stiff,” I reminded her. “Try to remember that.”

  “Oh, you idiot!”

  All of this started on Sunday afternoon when we were out at Long Beach swimming in the lake. We’d gone to church together and the maid had packed a picnic basket for us.

  “Just think,” she said dreamily, lying on her back on the sand. “In another month you’ll be my husband.”

  We’d set the date, the last Sunday in July, and she’d made arrangements for the ceremony to be performed in the Presbyterian Church. This was to be followed by a reception at one of the hotels.

  “It’s a good life,” I said, relaxing beside her. “It really is.”

  “I hope you’ll like the car business.”

  We’d decided on buying the garage and the lawyer had made a binding payment on the deal. Formal papers wouldn’t be signed, however, until after we got back from our honeymoon, around Labor Day.

  “About the ads,” I said. “It doesn’t seem right to bring out the book with just a few people in it. You may not believe it, but a lot of business folk are offended if you leave them out.”

  There were a bunch of kids down by the edge of the lake, horsing in the water. The biggest of the lot started heaving sand and the rest of them ran across the beach, screaming. Four or five went past us, yelling and splashing us with water. Sandy sat up and I dried her shoulders with a towel.

  “You can kiss me,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

  I kissed her, letting it linger.

  “I know what you could do,” she said after a while. “You can cancel out all the ads and print the book without them.”

  I told her I could but, if I did, where would the money come from to pay the printer?

  “Me,” she said quite simply.

  “You!”

  “Why not?” she wanted to know. She lay back, closing her eyes to the sun. “It would be the same thing as a donation, wouldn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And how much could it cost?”

  “Fifteen hundred.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake!” I might just as well have quoted her the price on a pack of Winstons. “That isn’t anything at all.”

  We talked about it some more and I told her that we’d have to give people a reason if we did it that way. You couldn’t just return their money without any explanation.


  “Well, send them a letter with the refund,” she said. “I’ll sign the letter if you want me to. I’ll just say I thought it was such a worthy cause and I felt the merchants had done so much for the city already, that I’d underwrite the cost. I’ve given money away before. Nobody will give it a second thought.”

  The next morning I went to the bank and got a great big checkbook. And, since I had already spent a lot of the money that we’d collected, I borrowed two grand on my car.

  “You’ll have to get collision insurance on it,” the man told me.

  “Tell me a good place.”

  “Well, there’s a man in the agency where you bought the car who handles insurance. One of the salesmen.”

  I went up there.

  It was the same guy who’d sold me the car. I guess he hadn’t heard the news about me being the new owner because he just copied down the information from my registration card and held out his hand for the insurance payment. Well, to hell with him. He wouldn’t be selling insurance on the company’s time much longer.

  I got the receipt books out of the Caddy and walked to the library. I didn’t have any place else to write out the checks, except in the motel room, and if Sandy came looking for me she’d come to the library. I’d told her, when she’d suggested that I could do my writing at her house, that all of the material I needed was in the historical rooms and that I’d run into difficulties if I took any of it out.

  Madeline was pounding away on the typewriter when I came in.

  “I’m almost finished with the first draft,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “I’ll have the final one done even before I expected.”

  “Double good.”

  I opened my wallet and spread three hundreds out before her.

  “Bonus,” I said.

  “Oh, Danny!”

  It was good to see her smiling that way again, her face alive and her eyes shining.

  “Put it in your pocket,” I said.

  “You didn’t have to!”

  I sat down next to her. I took the bills and folded them and dropped them down inside her white blouse.

  “Look,” I said. I had to make this smooth, had to make it stick. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  I thought she was going to pull the money up out of her blouse. She didn’t. She just shoved it down there where it would be nice and warm.