The Dream Merchants (18 page)

Peter stood up wearily. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay you boys back your money.”

Johnny found his voice. “You don’t owe me nothing.”

Joe followed right along. “Me neither,” he growled.

Peter looked at them steadily for a few seconds. There was a suspicious moisture in his eyes. He stepped toward Joe and held out his hand. He gripped Joe’s hand silently, then he turned to Johnny.

Johnny held out his hand. For some strange reason he couldn’t keep it steady. It kept shaking.

Peter took it and held it tightly. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. Then Peter clasped Johnny to him. Tears were running freely from his eyes now.

“You Americans!” Peter said. “What can you say with a handshake?”

Johnny couldn’t speak.

“Johnny, Johnny, my boy, don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault. You tried harder than any of us.”

“I’m sorry, Peter, I’m sorry.”

Peter held him at arm’s length and looked at him. “Don’t give up, Johnny. This is your business. You were meant for it. It’s not for old men like me. You’ll do great things with it.”

“We’ll do great things, Peter.”

Peter shook his head. “Not me. I’m through.” His hands fell to his sides. “Well, I guess I’ll be going home.” He walked slowly to the door. At the door he turned back and looked at them. He took a half look around the office and tried to smile. He couldn’t. He made a helpless little gesture with his hand and shut the door behind him.

For a few seconds there was silence in the room. Joe was the first to speak. His voice was strained and cracked. “I think I’ll go out and get drunk.”

Johnny looked at him strangely. “That’s the first good idea we had all summer!”

9

The bartender looked at them threateningly. He held the two drinks in his hand close to him on the bar. “That will be seventy cents, gentlemen.” His pleasant voice belied his appearance, but his grasp on the glasses indicated the firmness with which he was prepared to deal with the situation.

Johnny looked over at Joe. He didn’t know whether he was weaving or Joe. He wished that Joe would weave in the same way he did. Maybe he wouldn’t be so dizzy that way.

“The man inshists on cash,” he said.

Joe nodded his head solemnly. “I heard him. Pay him.”

“Shure.” Johnny stuck his hand in his pockets and came up with some coins. Laboriously he laid them on the bar and counted them. “Shixty five, sheventy,” he crowed happily. “Give ush our drinksh.”

The bartender looked at the change and pushed the drinks toward them. He picked up the change and rung it up on the register.

Before the sound of the bell had faded away, Joe was pounding on the bar. “Shet up two more,” he said.

The bartender looked at him. “Cash in advance.”

Joe drew himself up indignantly. “Shee here, my good man,” he said solemnly, “I was polite enough when you spoke to my frien’ like that. But when you talk to me, thash something differn’. I am a shteady cushtomer. He ish not ash mush a drinker ash me, therefore when I order drinksh, I egshpect drinksh.”

The bartender nodded to a man standing down at the end of the bar. The man came up to them and took them each by the arm. “Come along now, boys,” he said quietly.

Joe shook himself loose. “Take your hands off me.”

The man ignored him. Instead he put both hands on Johnny’s back and pushed him out the door, then he turned back to Joe and rolled up a sleeve. “Are yuh leavin’?”

Joe looked at him disdainfully. “Of coursh I’m leavin’. Did you think I would care to shtay after sush a dishplay of inhoshpitably?” He weaved his way to the door.

At the door he turned and held his fingers up to his mouth and made a vulgar sound at the man. The man made a gesture toward him. Joe ducked quickly out of the door, missed the step down, and fell sprawling.

Johnny helped him to his feet. “Did they throw you out, Joe?”

Joe leaned on him. “Of coursh not. They know better than to try and throw Joe Turner out. I jusht mished the shtep, thash all.”

They leaned against the corner of the building. “Where’ll we go now?” Johnny asked.

Joe looked at him, trying to clear his head. “What time ish it?”

Johnny took his watch out of his pocket and tried to focus his eyes upon it. “Twelve o’clock,” he said. He turned and tried to put his arm around Joe. “Joe, it’sh midnight!”

Joe pushed him away. “Don’t kish me. You shtink from whishky.”

Johnny drew back, hurt. “All ri’, Joe, but I like you anyway.”

“Yuh got any money?” Joe asked.

Johnny went through his pockets one by one. At last he came up with a crumpled dollar bill.

Joe took it. “Letsh get a cab,” he said. “I know a saloon where we can get shome credit.”

***

Johnny’s head lay on the table. The cool marble top felt good against his face. Someone was trying to pull him up, but he didn’t want to get up. He pushed the hands away. “Ish my fault, Peter, ish my fault.”

Joe looked down at him, then turned to the man standing with him. “He’sh drunk, Al.”

Al Santos spoke tersely. “You’ra the fin-a one to talk.”

“He’sh drunker than I am,” Joe insisted.

“That’sa only because he hasn’t the experience with drinking that you have,” Al replied. “He’sa not as old as you are. He’s still a kid.”

“He’sh twenty-two.”

“I wouldn’t care if he was fifty,” Al shot back. “He’d still be a kid to me.” He turned back to Johnny and shook him. “Come on, Johnny boy, get up. It’s Al, I been looking for you all night.”

Johnny just turned his head and mumbled: “I’m sorry, Peter. ’Sall my fault.”

Al turned to Joe. “What’s this he always keeps saying he’s sorry for?”

Joe was beginning to sober up, his eyes were beginning to clear. “Poor kid,” he said. “He wanted to make a picture that busted up the works. We all lost our dough and Johnny keeps saying it’s his fault.”

“Is it?” Al asked.

Joe looked at him. “No, it isn’t. True enough, it was his idea, but it was a good one and nobody made us go into it. We were old enough to know what we were doing.”

“Come over here and tell me about it,” Al said, leading the way to another table. The waiter came up and he ordered a bottle of wine.

He listened silently to Joe’s story. Every now and then he would look over at the table where Johnny was sleeping and smile to himself fondly.

Johnny Edge. He remembered the first time he had heard the name. A wagon had pulled into the carnival he had been running, late one night in 1898. That was thirteen years ago. A long time, but now it didn’t seem so long ago. The years had flown by.

That was the year he and his brother, Luigi, had bought that farm in California. Luigi wanted to see things grow, raise grapes for wine, and see oranges hanging from the trees like in the old country, and he wanted to have some place to go when he retired. And here he was, fifty-four years old and retired, and going out to the farm in California.

It had been early morning and he had come out of his wagon. The purple gray mists of the dawn still hung closely to the ground as he walked around to the back of his wagon and relieved himself. He had felt someone watching him and he turned around.

It was a small boy, about nine years old. Al looked at him closely; there weren’t any boys that age around the carnival. “Who are you?” he had asked.

“Johnny Edge,” the boy had answered, looking at him levelly out of candid blue eyes.

Al’s face looked blank and the boy hastened to explain. “I’m with my mother and father. They just joined your show last night.”

“Oh,” Al said as he understood suddenly. “You’re with Doc Psalter?”

“That’s my father,” Johnny had answered gravely, “but that’s not his real name. He’s really Walter Edge and my mother is Jane Edge.” He turned and pointed. “That’s their wagon over there.”

“Well then,” Al had said, “let’s go over and say hello.”

The boy turned and looked up at him gravely. “You’re Al Santos, aren’t you?”

Al nodded his head and started for the Edge wagon. Suddenly he stopped and looked down. The small boy had taken his hand as they walked toward the wagon together.

He remembered the night Johnny’s parents had been killed in the fire that burned down the big tent. Jane had been caught by the tent just as the center pole came down, and Johnny’s father had gone in after her. When they got to him, he was burned badly. The hair was gone from his head and face, pieces of raw flesh shone redly through the cracked skin.

They took him out and stretched him on the ground. Al knelt on one side of him, Johnny on the other.

Johnny’s father looked up at them. “Jane?” he asked. His voice was so faint they could hardly hear him.

Al shook his head and looked pityingly over at Johnny. Johnny was only ten years old then and his face was dull with shock. He could not understand what had happened so quickly.

Walter Edge reached up and took his son’s hand. With his other hand he brought Al’s hand over to the boy’s. “Look after him for me, Al,” he whispered. “He’s just a tyke an’ he’s got a long way to go.” He gasped for breath and then turned an agonized face to Al. “If the time comes that he ever wants to get out of this business, Al, help him. Don’t let what happened to me ever happen to him.”

That was why Al didn’t try to stop Johnny when he left the carny. He remembered the way Johnny had followed him around the carny until he learned to do everything that Al could do.

Al never had time to get married and raise a family like his brother, Luigi, and after a while it seemed to him just as if Johnny had become his own son. When Johnny decided to go back to Peter, Al said nothing. If that was what the kid wanted, that was what Al wanted for him.

Now that he had retired, he wanted to see Johnny before he went out west. He had gone up to the studio, but found no one there. He called Peter on the phone, but Peter didn’t know where Johnny had gone. He then called Johnny’s home, but there was no answer.

And now, only through accident, he had found him. It was in the saloon on Fourteenth Street where all the carny men hung out that he had come looking for Joe. He hadn’t expected to find Johnny there, but he figured that Joe would know where he was.

Joe finished his story. Al was silent for a second, then he took out a thin black stogie and lit it.

“What’s this-a combine you’re talking about?” he asked.

“They control all the picture patents among them. Without their say-so you can’t make motion pictures.” Joe looked at him curiously. He wondered what Al was getting at.

“You gotta the stuff to make-a this pitch’ with?”

“It’s all layin’ there, up in the studio,” Joe nodded.

Al turned the stogie reflectively in his hand for a moment. “Wake Johnny up,” he said, “I wanna talk to him.”

Joe got up and walked over to the bar. Tiny prickles were jumping around in his skin as they always did when he was excited. “Gimme a pitcher of ice water,” he said to the bartender.

Silently the bartender filled a pitcher under the counter and handed it to him.

Joe walked back to Johnny and held the pitcher over his head and emptied it.

The water splashed over the back of Johnny’s head and dripped down on his clothes. Johnny only stirred.

Joe went back to the bar. “Fill it up again.”

The bartender refilled the pitcher and Joe went back to Johnny and repeated the treatment.

This time Johnny came up with a start. He sat up and shook his head and stared at Joe through blurred eyes. “It’s raining,” he said.

Joe looked at him and then turned back to the bartender. “One more ought to do the trick,” he said.

Johnny tried to focus his eyes on Joe as he came back to him, but his eyes kept blurring. What was that thing Joe was carrying in his hand?

The water hit him like a flood. It was icy cold and bit through to his marrow. Suddenly his head cleared. He stood up. He was still a bit wobbly on his feet. “What the hell are you doing?” he managed to ask Joe through chattering teeth.

Joe grinned at him. “I’m trying to sober you up. We got company,” he said, pointing to Al.

10

Peter couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned on his bed all night, and the sheets were damp with sweat. Quietly Esther lay beside him. She lay awake watching him, a curious hurt within her for his suffering.

“If there were only something I could do for him,” she thought, “something I could say to make him really feel that it doesn’t matter what happens—that the only important thing is that he tried. But there’s nothing.”

Peter looked up through the dark at the ceiling. He knew Esther was awake and he wanted her to sleep. The kids kept her running around all day. It was too much that she should have to spend the night up with him. He lay quiet and tried to simulate the slow breathing of sleep.

“If I had only taken Segale’s offer things would be all right now,” he thought, his mind going over the same ground for the thousandth time. “Johnny wouldn’t have said anything then. He knew there wasn’t anything else I could have done.” He reproached himself silently. “Johnny didn’t have anything to do with it. I wanted to make the picture, he didn’t force me. It was my own fault, I was too stubborn in Segale’s office.” He stirred restlessly. He wanted a cigar, then he remembered he wanted Esther to think he was sleeping, so he lay quiet.

The night wore on and neither of them slept. Each lay as quietly as possible, wanting the other to get some rest, but neither of them succeeded in fooling the other.

At last Peter couldn’t lie still any more. Slowly, carefully, he sat up in bed, listening for a change in Esther’s breathing. She was quiet. He slipped his feet softly into the slippers at the foot of the bed and stood up. He stood there for a second and then silently tiptoed into the kitchen. He shut the door softly behind him so that the light would not shine into the bedroom and waken her.

The bright light hurt his eyes for a moment. As soon as his eyes cleared, he went to the table and picked up a cigar and lit it. He heard the door open behind him. He turned around.

Esther stood there. “Maybe you’d like a cup of coffee?”

He nodded his head silently and watched her as she went over to the stove and lit the flame under the coffee pot. She came over to the table and sat down opposite him.