All The Bells on Earth (40 page)

Use it against him
. The sentence drifted unbidden into his thoughts, but he pushed it away, thinking about Sidney Vest despite himself, about being cavalier with the damned bluebird, making ignorant wishes on it….

And immediately that thought was replaced by another sort of knowledge—that he was rich, incalculably, infinitely rich. Once again he pictured the paper sack with a million dollars in it, but the million dollars was nothing now; it was like finding an old tuna sandwich. A billion was more like it, if they made sacks that large. His spirits soared and he nearly laughed out loud.

Toni handed him three twenties, and he nodded at her, then wandered away toward the liquor racks again, clutching his money. He stared at nothing, not daring to look at the bills in his hand just in case they wouldn’t be bills at all, but would be slips of newspaper or something, and this whole thing was nothing but a dream.

He shut his eyes hard, opened them again, and looked. It was three twenties, all right. He wasn’t asleep.

It dawned on him then that he was already wasting time. He could as easily already have won the sixty million as the sixty. What would he have to do to accumulate sixty million in Lotto jackpots now? The usual return was a measly three million a week, so that meant twenty weeks of winning. But of course they’d arrest him after he won the third time. He’d get away with winning twice—twice was a fluke. But the third time they’d smell a rat, and they’d round him up. What then? Would he be doomed? Why, no. He’d call in the bluebird. The thought was exhilarating and terrifying both. The world was suddenly his oyster. What would it be? Television appearances? Public speeches? Limousines? A house the size of the state of Maine? He laughed, giddy with the idea of limitless wealth.

He had no idea how to spend money! That was the truth of it. He was a piker, a lightweight, a hayseed. Could he learn fast enough? Of course the first thing was to buy Argyle out, lock, stock, and barrel, and then have him publicly humiliated in the Plaza, dressed up like an organ grinder’s monkey. The bluebird would make it seem right and natural to people. They’d throw rotten fruit, eggs…. Hell, it
was
right and natural.

Suddenly there came into his mind a picture of Nora bringing the shackled Argyle a cup of water, a look of profound sadness on her face. Instantly he was ashamed of himself. He unclutched his hand and dropped the twenties onto the floor.

For a moment there he’d gone nearly crazy! That’s what Henry had been talking about! He took a deep breath. Well, to hell with that. He would leave the bills right there on the floor, like lucky pennies, for somebody else to find. He would walk away from them, from the whole shebang. From now on he’d despise wealth like a Hindu.

And this time he wouldn’t just throw the damned jar in the bin either; he’d break it to pieces, dump the gin out onto the ground, put the bluebird in a paint can and pound the lid down and haul it out to the dump where he’d pitch it under the wheels of an earth-moving vehicle.

Yes, his mind was made up for good and all, and he felt suddenly better. A minute ago he’d been drunk with anticipation, with the love of money, but now he saw the futility in it. He looked at the twenties scattered at his feet….

What the hell, there was no reason not to take them after all, a pitiful little sum like that. But thank God he hadn’t asked for the sixty million! Sixty dollars was different. It was simply the money he was owed from yesterday. How could there be any sin in breaking even? He didn’t look for an answer.

“Well, for the love of Mike,” someone said just then, “it’s starting to look like the whole damn gang!”

The voice belonged unmistakably to Mrs. Biggs. Walt bent over now and picked up the twenties, then turned slowly around. It was her, all right. She stood grinning at him, holding onto the Reverend Bentley through the crook of his arm. Bentley looked like hell, unshaven, his hair a wreck, eyes bloodshot, and wearing the same clothes he’d worn yesterday. He scowled and shook his head hard at Walt, as if to deny whatever Walt was thinking.

“Look who I found in the lot,” Mrs. Biggs said. “I said to myself, ‘Maggie, there’s the Reverend, stopping in for a fifth, and it’s just coming on to eight o’clock, too.’ But now I see
you’ve
beat him to it. Early bird gets the snort, eh? You starting a fresh bender, or finishing one up?”

“Neither,” Walt said. “I stopped in to run a Lotto ticket.”

She looked at the money in his hand. “Well then, hand it over,” she said, “since it turns out you’ve pretty much wrecked my stove.”

Walt gaped at her.

“That’s right. I had my friend Mr. Peet in last night and he says it’ll cost sixty dollars to fix it. He tells me the gas company won’t touch it because it’s buggered up. You apparently done something to it, which Mr. Peet explained. I misremember what, except that it was sixty dollars’ worth.”

“I didn’t do
any
thing to it,” Walt said, “except clean out the pipes. Sixty dollars!” Of course this was probably a lie. Mr. Pete was a pipe dream, a figment, pure downtown hosery. She’d seen that he was holding three twenties, so that’s how much the whole thing was going to cost, to the penny. Good thing Walt
hadn’t
won the sixty million; he’d be handing that over.

She nodded slowly, fixing him with a sad look, but he held out against her. And when she spoke again her voice was small, as if she had finally given up, thrown in the towel. “It’s that way, is it?” she said.

“What way?” Walt asked. “What are you talking about?”

“I kind of figured you were made of stronger stuff. I thought you had some backbone. I guess I’m a bad judge of character, although I never would have thought so….” She dropped Bentley’s arm. “Go on Reverend, buy your hootch and skedaddle. Both of you. I’m through with the whole bunch of you.”

“I suggest we take her at her word,” Bentley said, gesturing toward the door. “I just stopped in after some coffee filters, actually, and then I’m on my way.”

“Yessir,” Mrs. Biggs said, wiping at her eyes now and turning to Toni, who was working over the bottles with a feather duster. “Do you have a tissue, dearie?”

“Oh, for … !” Bentley said. “A public display! This is a dis
grace
!”

Toni hauled out a tissue box from under the counter, and Mrs. Biggs took one and dabbed her eyes. “Yesterday these two went to work on my old O’Keefe and Merritt,” she said to Toni, “and I said to myself, ‘Now there’s a couple of samaritans!’ That’s just what I said. And what came of it? You’d never guess.” Toni shook her head.
“Rubbage.”
Mrs. Biggs said, and she nodded hard, making her point. “
I
didn’t mind lighting that old stove with a match, did I? I’d been lighting it that way for years. And now they’ve
fixed
it, as they say, and I can’t light it at all, or it’ll blow up. This tribe comes in for a cup of tea, and now my stove’s broke, my cow pitcher’s broke, my car’s broke. Another hour and I suppose they’d have finished me off. Maybe it’d be better if they had.” She put her face in her hands and started to cry “Sixty dollars worth of grief!” she said.

Toni handed her another tissue.

“And the old man!” Mrs. Biggs said, looking up sharply and shaking the tissue at Walt. “That sweet-talking old devil. I guess everyone might as well know about
him
. Lord knows I
trusted
that man!” She glanced unmistakably at the money in Walt’s hand again. Then she turned her head sideways so that Toni couldn’t see her and winked at him—a shameless, greedy wink.

“Here,” Walt said, instantly handing over the money. Clearly this was simply a matter of payola. She wasn’t going to shut up otherwise. She meant to drag Henry’s name through the mud right then and there.

“And what about my automobile?” she asked Walt, suddenly forgetting about Henry.

“I’ve got the hoses in the car. Let’s get to work. We’re burning daylight standing around here.” He headed toward the door. “Thanks,” he said to Toni.

Outside, he saw right off that something was wrong with the Suburban, which sat at an angle in its parking space, as if the back end had been slammed sideways a couple of feet. Walt strode across to the far side. The rear fender was caved in, and the end of the bumper, the last four inches or so, was bent all to hell. Someone had clobbered the truck and taken off. “Hell,” Walt said.

“You’ll just have to be a little soldier about it,” Mrs. Biggs said to him. “There’s worse things that can happen to a person.”

“
That’s
the truth,” Bentley said.

“Well,” Mrs. Biggs said, “another country heard from. I’ve got a couple of items on my list for you, too, Reverend.”

“Not this morning,” Bentley said.

“Why?” she asked. “What have you got to do that’s so all-fired important?”

“Sleep,” Bentley said. “You’ll have to count me out.”

“You mean Henry’ll have to count you out, don’t you?
There’s
friendship for you. If it involves work, the Reverend’s got to sleep. I saw that yesterday, the way you handled that mop.”

“What I mean is that I was up all night long and nearly burned alive in a fire.”

“Well, get used to it,” she said. “That’s pretty much the whole program down in perdition.”

I
T WAS PAST NOON
when Walt loaded his tools into the Suburban and fired up the engine, sitting there for a moment to let it warm up. At least he had gotten the radiator fixed before the rain started up—although he hadn’t gotten a chance to help Bentley scrub out the trash cans with bleach and a broom; Bentley had cleaned the cans by himself after coming back from the beauty supply store up on Main Street. The rain had nearly drowned him before he was done.

Walt’s sixty dollars was more than gone. He had gone down to the automated teller around eleven and pulled out sixty more. Right now Mrs. Biggs had groceries enough for a month, a couple of rented movies for the VCR, and a new cow pitcher that Bentley had found down at Stiffworthy’s Antiques. Tomorrow Wait was supposed to come around and look over the garbage disposal, which had shut down and wouldn’t reset. The plumber had apparently said it was just a loose wire….

Along with that, one of the garage door hinges was sprung, the crawl space screens under the house had to be replaced because possums were getting in, and in the bedroom there was a leaky window that “wanted putty.” And as soon as the rain let up, according to Mrs. Biggs, someone could get on with the work of scraping the eaves so the house could be repainted. She had hired a Mexican to do the work nearly a month ago, but the man had quit after half a day because he wasn’t satisfied with three dollars an hour and all the doughnuts he could eat. And, she’d told Walt, that was “under the table,” by which, Walt supposed, she meant the money.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then turned on the defrost and pulled away from the curb, heading up Olive and then left on Palmyra, passing a house with a life-size Santa Claus and reindeer in the yard, the whole display vandalized—knocked down and defaced with graffiti. No doubt it was more of Argyle’s high jinks. He swung a left onto Glassell, back toward home. By his calculations he was down something like two hundred dollars total. Bentley was down another thirty for the cow pitcher, and it didn’t make him happy. Henry was going to pay them back with the lingerie money, except that the lingerie had never materialized, and, as of this morning anyway, Sidney Vest hadn’t returned any of Henry’s calls.

“Henry’s going to have to work out his own problems,” Bentley had told Walt after scouring out the last of the trash cans. “I
can’t
. I’ve done what I could, but trying to pay this woman off is like pouring water through sand. It was a mistake that we ever took her on.”

And of course Bentley was right. He’d been right yesterday. Walt had been the fool. What they’d done so far was the tip of the iceberg. There were worse things waiting. All morning long she’d been full of the Islands again—going back to Waikiki, maybe look up her old friend Velma Krane. Plane tickets were reasonable right now, during the fare war. You could fly round trip for about three hundred dollars. And who could say?—maybe once she was in Honolulu, by golly, she’d stay put.
Maybe all she needed was a one-way ticket and first month’s rent on a little bungalow downtown
. Fifteen hundred would about do it, give or take. As for the house in Orange, hell, she could lease that out and make an income.

Walt hashed it over. What with Ivy’s commission, it was almost easier to give Mrs. Biggs what she wanted. Except that of course she wouldn’t go to Honolulu even so. She’d hang around Orange and weasel more money out of them until Walt cut her off. Then she’d rat all of them out to Jinx.

Something had to be done right now. There was no more putting it off.

Already he knew the answer. It had been circulating through his mind all morning long. Sending Vest back to North Carolina had been the work of an instant. He was probably counting his many blessings right now, along with his money, which he was spending on cheap Carolina real estate. Vest, after all, had
wanted
to go. Walt’s calling on the bluebird hadn’t been a matter of greed; it had been a matter of doing a man a favor, if you wanted to look at it that way.

And if that was the way you were looking at it, then why not do the same favor for Maggie Biggs, who was pining away for the Islands? And there was Uncle Henry to think of too. Calling in the bluebird would be a blessing all the way around—everyone a winner. By golly, he’d kill two stones with one bird, he thought, laughing out loud, and he wished that he had someone to tell the joke to. Probably he’d never be able to tell it to anyone.