by Clark Howard
Richie let himself look again at the old man in the bed. As Lester had told the story, a thin line of green sputum had run slowly out of one corner of his mouth and dried grossly on his chin. His voice had become so rasping that his words were now little more than grunts. But Richie understood him.
“Way I knew . . . he was back,” Lester strained to tell, “was . . . a friend of mine . . . got off. . . that same train. He called me . . . from the depot. . . . ”
Richie’s mind was still racing. He had known all along that Lester had got him fired from the drugstore job, and had tried to get Sam Levy to fire him too. Lester’s kid got drunk on bootleg whiskey and was killed in a car wreck, and the bootlegger’s kid was still alive. Richie wondered if his grandmother had known all that, if she suspected that Lester might have also been responsible for Slim’s disappearance. And not told him to prevent trouble.
Richie found himself wishing Miss Ethel was still alive too, so he could tell her that he knew at last. Everybody that he wanted to share this new revelation with was dead. The last piece of the tormenting jigsaw puzzle was now in place—and he was the only one left to look at it.
“Why are you telling me this after all these years?” he asked the old man. “Because you’re dying?”
“I want. . . forgiveness,” Lester whispered. “Don’t want to . . . go to my maker . . . with this on . . . my soul. . . .”
Forgiveness? Staring coldly at Lester, Richie felt his jaw clench. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the door to the room was still closed. Stepping closer to the bed, he slowly moved his right hand toward Lester’s emaciated neck. Dread fear surfaced in Lester’s eyes. Richie stopped his hand just before it touched the old farmer’s throat.
No, he thought, that was too easy. That would be a favor.
Drawing his hand back, he sighed quietly. “Jesus, the thousands of times I looked for my father on the streets of Chicago,” he said aloud, but to himself, remembering the endless questions he had asked Mack and Estelle, thinking of all the time and effort, the young hopes, the dreams—all for a man already dead. “You want forgiveness?” he said to Lester. “All right, I forgive you. I forgive you—for what you did to me.” Lester tried to smile. “But how do you get forgiveness for what you did to him?” Richie asked. “And to my mother?” The old man’s attempt at a smile faded.
“You . . . ,” he said weakly. “Forgive me . . . for them . . . .”
“No,” Richie said, shaking his head emphatically. “Only they can forgive you for themselves. And they can’t because you killed them. You killed both of them.”
“No . . . no, only him . . . .”
“Both of them,” Richie repeated firmly. “Because when you killed him, you took away her last hope—and that’s what finally killed her too. You’re going to your grave with two murders on your soul. You’re going to burn in hell, old man.”
“No, please . . . no . . . . ”
Ignoring the pleas, Richie left the hospital room. Brother Cecil was in the hall with the women who had been praying around Lester’s bed. He stepped up to Richie at once.
“Did you forgive him, son?”
“Yes, I forgave him.”
“Praise Jesus!” Brother Cecil and the women said in chorus. Clutching the Bible to his seersucker-clad chest again, the preacher asked, “Will you come back in and pray with us, son?”
“I can’t,” Richie said. “I have to catch a train. I was just passing through.”
Leaving the hospital, Richie walked back through town and down to the depot again. The platform was deserted, the northbound train not due for two hours. Sitting on one of the wooden benches, Richie lighted a cigarette and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, smoking.
The dying old man’s story still swirled in his head. Lester told him that Slim had asked him to stop that day down by the river. Slim had wanted to get out, “to walk a little and do some thinking . . . .”
All that talk about cotton bolls and bib overalls, Richie thought. Was Slim about to back out? Had he figured that he couldn’t do it, after all? Had Chloe been right?
And did it make any difference?
In spite of himself, Richie felt his eyes well up with tears. In his mind was the memory of a ragged kid prowling a hard city looking for a man he thought had abandoned him, feeling deep inside himself that somehow he must have deserved to be abandoned. When all the time he might not have been abandoned at all. If Slim had lived, whether he had gone straight or not, Richie was certain his father would have taken care of him.
But that really didn’t matter either, he realized. What had happened, happened.
Tossing the half unsmoked cigarette on the tracks, Richie let himself cry over those days one last time.
53
In the Veteran’s Administration office in Chicago, Richie sat next to a desk where a man in a necktie and cardigan sweater looked over a variety of forms Richie had given him.
“Everything seems to be in order,” he said. “I should be able to get your first tuition check and your first living allowance processed by the end of the week. You can stop in Friday afternoon and pick them up. Have you registered at Northwestern yet?”
“I’m doing that this afternoon,” Richie said.
“Okay, bring me a copy of your class schedule when you come in on Friday.” He smiled at Richie. “How’s it feel to be home?”
“Real good,” Richie replied. “A little odd once in a while. I mean, here I am a discharged Marine, a veteran of Korea, with three combat decorations, and I can’t legally order a glass of beer in a bar because I’m not twenty-one yet.”
“Hey, just because you’re old enough to die for your country doesn’t mean you have any rights,” the V.A. man joked. “Next thing you know, you’ll be wanting to vote.”
When Richie left the V.A., he caught a bus over to the Far North Side, where Northwestern University was located, to keep an appointment with a counselor to register. As a veteran, all he had to show was his high school diploma; there was no minimum grade-level requirement. When Richie had read that in the G. I. Bill information packet given to him in San Diego, where he received his discharge, he had decided at once to take Mrs. Reinhart’s advice and go to college. He had three full years of tuition coming and was sure he could work his way through the fourth year. When he had to decide where to go, he had without hesitation chosen a school in Chicago instead of one in the south. With his luck, if he had elected to go to the University of Tennessee, Billy Pastor would have been there. No, he belonged up north. And it did not bother him, going back to the hard city. After what he had been through, no city could break him now.
Richie felt good about life. The terrible knowledge of what had happened to his father had not, as he had briefly feared, upset his plans for the future or dampened his spirits in any way. On the contrary, it had seemed to make him, at last, a whole person. There were now no gaps in his past, no loose ends dangling. It was as if he had finally been paid in full for managing to get through all those bad times. His father had wanted to come back to him; that fact had not helped him then, but it made him feel very good now.
The terrible knowledge would, he was certain, help and not hinder him in making something of his life.
The freshman counselor at Northwestern was a pleasant woman of forty who welcomed him back from the Korean War and helped him organize classes that would accommodate his interests and also fulfill requirements for certain degrees.
“If we keep you in English, journalism, and creative writing classes,” she said, “you’ll be within the parameters necessary to decide later whether you want your degree in journalism or English lit. You’ll have until the beginning of your junior year to make your final choice.” When she completed processing his registration, she asked, “Do you have lodgings yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Here’s a form that you can take to the housing office to get a dorm room. They’re reasonably priced and meals are included.
”
As he was leaving the administration building, Richie saw a girl who looked familiar crossing a hall in front of him. She was carrying several books along with her purse. Frowning, he followed her. As he watched the way she walked, he realized that it was Linda. Surprised, he hurried to catch up with her.
“Can I carry your books?” he asked.
“Thanks, but I’m okay,” she said with a brief smile. Then she stopped and stared. “Oh, my God.”
“You say that every time,” he reminded her. “Who writes your material?”
“Richie, how are you?” she said, smiling in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“Registering.”
“You mean you go here?”
“I’m just starting. On the G. I. Bill. I just got out of the service.”
“How marvelous! What are you taking?”
“Writing, journalism, English.”
“Me too! Maybe we’ll have some classes together.”
“You’re probably a couple years ahead of me, aren’t you?”
“No,” Linda said, coloring a little. “I’m just starting too.”
“Oh.” Richie glanced at a gold wedding band on her finger. “You married that guy you were going with, huh?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.” She blushed a deeper red. “You sure look different from the last time I saw you,” she said, changing the subject.
“I guess I dress a little better now,” he said, looking down at himself.
“You know, I thought about you when I read that John Garfield had died. I wondered where you were.”
“I was in a rest camp in Korea. I read about it in Stars and Stripes.”
Looking at her watch, Linda said, “Listen, I have to run; I have an appointment about a campus job. We’ll be seeing each other again, I’m sure.”
“Maybe we can have a cup of coffee or something,” Richie suggested eagerly. He hated to let her go so quickly. “We could talk about the old days.”
She did not say yes or no, just, “ ‘Bye now.”
He watched her all the way down the hall, her model-perfect posture seeming to make her taller than girls who passed her. Inside him was an old familiar feathery feeling. Christ, is it happening again with her? he wondered.
On his way to the housing office, Richie gave a hand to two other freshmen who were moving a bulky television set into one of the dorms. When Richie saw the room—the dearth of personal space, the lack of privacy because rooms were shared—and when he heard the noise up and down the halls, he decided to see if he could find someplace else to live. He had spent too many years in communal living—foster homes, the Charleytown cottage, Marine Corps barracks; the only place he’d had any peace and quiet was in the tiny room in his grandmother’s poor little house. But he remembered being happy there, and he wanted someplace like that to live now.
Leaving the campus, Richie started walking, away from the university and its older but solidly upper-middle-class neighborhood. He walked toward the inner city, observing block by block as the houses and buildings became less impressive, less cared for, and their apartments more attainable. Then he began inquiring wherever he saw a FOR RENT sign. The first few places he checked, he was asked for identification because he looked too young to be renting a place himself; some buildings would not rent to anyone under twenty-one. Just like buying beer, Richie thought, irked. Finally he went back to the Y.M.C.A. in the Loop, where he was staying, and put on his uniform with the corporal stripes and his ribbons, and started looking again. He found a place he liked and was allowed to rent it at once. The uniform makes the man, he thought wryly. He moved in that night.
Richie’s new home was a second-floor housekeeping apartment: a large room with a small Pullman kitchen, a bed that folded into the wall, and a tiny bath with a shower stall. It rented for less than a dorm room, but he had to cook his own meals. He did not mind. When he set down his seabag and stood, doorkey in hand, he looked around with a sense of wonder. This was his. There was a pretty good chest of drawers with a mirror over it, a little table with two chairs—that matched—and an overstuffed armchair with a reading lamp next to it. It was perfect, he thought, as he went around touching everything, opening drawers, trying light switches and faucets. Perfect. And his. Humming happily, he set about unpacking his clothes.
It was good to have a place to live.
When Richie started school the following week, he was pleased to see that Linda was in his creative writing class. They did not sit together; Richie had been the first one to arrive in class and had taken the end chair in the first row, because he did not want to miss anything. By the time Linda got there the front chairs were filled and she had to find one in the rear. But she saw Richie and waved as she sat down.
The creative writing teacher was Mr. Crane, a tall, intellectual-looking man with a mop of prematurely gray hair who wore bright-colored vests—red, green, sometimes plaid—under his tweed sport coats. At the first meeting of the class, he went through each student’s class card to familiarize himself with his new group, and made a comment to each.
“I see you’re on the yearbook staff, Miss Phelps; you won’t expend much creative writing there. About all you’ll write is photo captions.”
And: “A political science major, I see, Mr. Jenkins. I hope you learn well in here; most political speeches are pure fiction, you know.” Laughter.
And, to Linda: “A graduate of Austin High, I see. Excellent school. I’ll expect good things from you.”
Then, when he got to Richie: “What’s this—a Korean War veteran? Well, well. Going on the G. I. Bill, are you?”
“Yes, sir,” Richie replied.
“How nice. I understand it pays your living expenses also, is that correct?”
“There’s a living allowance, yessir.”
“A free ride. Lucky you.”
Richie felt himself blush. What the hell was this guy’s problem? he wondered.
After class that day, Richie waited for Linda in the hall. It was mid-morning and they had twenty minutes between classes. “Want to have that cup of coffee?” he asked.
“Sure, okay.” She was wearing a tight, sleeveless dress, over which she slipped on a loose, belted jacket while Richie held her books. They went outside, where Richie got them containers of coffee from a catering wagon, and sat on the steps of the building to drink it.
“What brought on that crack Mr. Crane made about the G. I. Bill?” she asked.
“Beats me,” Richie said. “Maybe he’s one of those taxpayers who don’t think vets should get educational benefits.”
“I thought he was downright snide.”
Richie shrugged. “I’m not going to let it bother me. I’m in his class to learn how to improve my short story writing, and that’s what I intend to do.”
“What short story writing?” Linda asked, surprised.
“I’ve been kind of playing around writing short stories,” Richie admitted, a little sheepishly. “I started it while I was in a rest camp in Korea with nothing else to do. I found out I liked it.”
“Richie, that is marvelous!” she exclaimed. “Are you going to try and get them published?”
“Someday, I guess. If I ever get good enough.”
“Oh, you will! I know you will. I keep saying I’m going to do something like that, but so far I haven’t.”
They fell silent for a moment, both sipping their coffee. It was only mid-September, but the leaves on the many campus trees were already yellowing, and the air had lost its summer mugginess. Richie was sitting close enough to Linda to detect the fragrance of her.
“Does your husband go to school here too?” he asked.
“Richie, I don’t have a husband,” she admitted. “Glenn and I got a divorce a few months ago. We were married for about two years, right out of high school, but it just didn’t work out.”
“Why do you still wear that?” he asked, indicating her wedding band.
“Do you really want to know
?” Her tone was almost belligerent. “Because I got tired of every cheap Casanova I know making a pass at me. The minute word gets around that a girl is divorced, every guy she ever said hello to comes running to get the leftovers. They seem to think that if you’re divorced, you’re suddenly sex-starved and ready to jump into bed with anybody in pants. When I decided to start school, I put the ring back on. I thought that way I’d have an excuse not to date, and I wouldn’t be bothered. All I want to do is study.”
“Why are you telling me the truth, then?” Richie asked.
“Because we’ve known each other for so long. Besides,” she raised one eyebrow disarmingly, “I know I can handle you, Richie. You’ve never been as tough as you like to think.”
“In that case, can we start seeing each other? I’ve always wanted to date a divorced woman. I hear they’re sex-starved.”
“That’s cute, but the answer is no.” Linda’s voice was stoical. “It has nothing to do with you, Richie. I just don’t want to go out with anybody. I had a very unpleasant marriage; maybe it soured me on men in general, I don’t know. All I want is to be left alone. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” Richie said. “I won’t bother you.”
“Thanks.”
They finished their coffee and went back inside.
Richie began a solitary life of study. Not solitary during the day, for at school he made many acquaintances and was seldom without someone with whom to discuss a class, visit the library, eat lunch. Often even Linda was part of a group that got together informally. But when the school day ended, Richie, like many others who lived off campus, Linda included, went his own way and thus did not become a part of the non-academic, social life of the university. It did not bother him; he rather liked being alone. In his little apartment he began making improvements, adding touches to personalize the place. He bought an unfinished bookcase, painted it, and began to fill it with books as soon as it was dry. He bought a portable typewriter, a couple of old movie posters for the walls, and a little radio to listen to while he fixed meals.