The Winter of Our Discontent (12 page)

Wee Willie, parked in front of the hotel, stirred out of his nap and rolled down the window of his Chevrolet. “Morning, Ethan,” he said. “You up early or out late?”

“Both.”

“Must have found yourself a fancy piece.”

“Sure did, Willie, an houri.”

“Now, Eth, don’t tell me you’d take up with no streetwalker.”

“I swear it.”

“Can’t believe nothing no more. I bet you was fishing. How’s Missus?”

“Asleep.”

“That’s where I’ll be, come shift.”

I went on without reminding him that’s where he’d been.

I walked quietly up my back steps and switched on the kitchen light. My note was on the table a little left of center. I’d swear I left it right in the middle.

I put the coffee on and sat waiting for it to perk, and it had just begun to bounce when Mary came down. My darling looks like a little girl when she awakens. You couldn’t think she is the mother of two big brats. And her skin has a lovely smell, like new-cut grass, the most cozy and comforting odor I know.

“What are you doing up so early?”

“Well may you ask. Please to know I have been up most of the night. Regard my galoshes there by the door. Feel them for wetness.”

“Where did you go?”

“Down by the sea there is a little cave, my rumpled duck. I crawled inside and I studied the night.”

“Now wait.”

“And I saw a star come out of the sea, and since it had no owner I took it for our star. I tamed it and turned it back to fatten.”

“You’re being silly. I think you just got up and that woke me.”

“If you don’t believe me, ask Wee Willie. I spoke to him. Ask Danny Taylor. I gave him a dollar.”

“You shouldn’t. He’ll just get drunk.”

“I know. That was his wish. Where can our star sleep, sweet fern?”

“Doesn’t coffee smell good? I’m glad you’re silly again. It’s awful when you’re gloomy. I’m sorry about that fortune thing. I don’t want you to think I’m not happy.”

“Don’t give it a worry, it’s in the cards.”

“What?”

“No joke. I’m going to make our fortune.”

“I never know what you’re thinking.”

“That’s the greatest difficulty with telling the truth. Can I beat the children a little to celebrate the day before Resurrection? I promise to break no bones.”

“I haven’t washed my face,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine who was rattling around in the kitchen.”

When she had gone up to the bathroom, I put my note to her in my pocket. And I still didn’t know. Does anyone ever know even the outer fringe of another? What are you like in there? Mary—do you hear? Who are you in there?

CHAPTER FOUR

That Saturday morning seemed to have a pattern. I wonder whether all days have. It was a withdrawn day. The little gray whisper of my Aunt Deborah came to me, “Of course, Jesus is dead. This is the only day in the world’s days when He is dead. And all men and women are dead too. Jesus is in Hell. But tomorrow. Just wait until tomorrow. Then you’ll see something.”

I don’t remember her very clearly, the way you don’t remember someone too close to look at. But she read the Scripture to me like a daily newspaper and I suppose that’s the way she thought of it, as something going on happening eternally but always exciting and new. Every Easter, Jesus really rose from the dead, an explosion, expected but nonetheless new. It wasn’t two thousand years ago to her; it was now. And she planted something of that in me.

I can’t remember wanting to open the store before. I think I hated every sluggish sloven of a morning. But this day I wanted to go. I love my Mary with all my heart, in some ways much better than myself, but it is also true that I do not always listen to her with complete attention. When she tells the chronicle of clothes and health and conversations which please and enlighten her, I do not listen at all, so that sometimes she exclaims, “But you should have known. I told you. I remember very clearly telling you on Thursday morning.” And there’s no doubt at all about that. She did tell me. She tells me everything in certain areas.

This morning I not only didn’t listen, I wanted to get away from it. Maybe I wanted to talk myself and I didn’t have anything to say—because, to give her fair due, she doesn’t listen to me either,and a good thing sometimes. She listens to tones and intonations and from them gathers her facts about health and how my mood is and am I tired or gay. And that’s as good a way as any. Now that I think of it, she doesn’t listen to me because I am not talking to her, but to some dark listener within myself. And she doesn’t really talk to me either. Of course when the children or some other hell-raising crises are concerned, all that changes.

I’ve thought so often how telling changes with the nature of the listener. Much of my talk is addressed to people who are dead, like my little Plymouth Rock Aunt Deborah or old Cap’n. I find myself arguing with them. I remember once in weary, dusty combat I called out to old Cap’n, “Do I have to?” And he replied very clearly, “Course you do. And don’t whisper.” He didn’t argue—never did. Just said I must, and so I did. Nothing mysterious or mystic about that. It’s asking for advice or an excuse from the inner part of you that is formed and certain.

For pure telling, which is another way of saying asking, my mute and articulate canned and bottled goods in the grocery serve very well. So does any passing animal or bird. They don’t argue and they don’t repeat.

Mary said, “You’re not going already? Why you have half an hour. That’s what comes of getting up so early.”

“Whole flock of crates to open,” I said. “Things to put on the shelves before I open. Great decisions. Should pickles and tomatoes go on the same shelf? Do canned apricots quarrel with peaches? You know how important color relations are on a dress.”

“You’d make a joke about anything,” Mary said. “But I’m glad. It’s better than grumping. So many men grump.”

And I was early. Red Baker wasn’t out yet. You can set your watch by that dog, or any dog. He’d start his stately tour in exactly half an hour. And Joey Morphy wouldn’t, didn’t show. The bank wouldn’t be open for business but that didn’t mean Joey wouldn’t be there working on the books. The town was very quiet but of course a lot of people had gone away for the Easter weekend. That and the Fourth of July and Labor Day are the biggest holidays. People go away even when they don’t want to. I believe even the sparrows on Elm Street were away.

I did see Stonewall Jackson Smith on duty. He was just coming from a cup of coffee in the Foremaster Coffee Shop. He was so lean and brittle that his pistols and handcuffs seemed outsize. He wears his officer’s cap at an angle, jaunty, and picks his teeth with a sharpened goose quill.

“Big business, Stoney. Long hard day making money.”

“Huh?” he said. “Nobody’s in town.” What he meant was that he wished he weren’t.

“Any murders, Stoney, or other grisly delights?”

“It’s pretty quiet,” he said. “Some kids wrecked a car at the bridge. But, hell, it was their own car. Judge’ll make ’em pay for repairing the bridge. You heard about the bank job at Floodhampton?”

“No.”

“Not even on television?”

“We don’t have one, yet. Did they get much?”

“Thirteen thousand, they say. Yesterday just before closing. Three fellas. Four-state alarm. Willie’s out on the highway now, bitching his head off.”

“He gets plenty of sleep.”

“I know, but I don’t. I was out all night.”

“Think they’ll catch them?”

“Oh! I guess so. If it’s money they usually do. Insurance companies keep nagging. Never let up.”

“It would be nice work if they didn’t catch you.”

“Sure would,” he said.

“Stoney, I wish you’d look in on Danny Taylor. He looks awful sick.”

“Just a question of time,” Stoney said. “But I’ll go by. It’s a shame. Nice fella. Nice family.”

“It kills me. I like him.”

“Well you can’t do nothing with him. It’s going to rain, Eth. Willie hates to get wet.”

For the first time in my memory, I went into the alley with pleasure and opened the back door with excitement. The cat was by the door, waiting. I can’t remember a morning when that lean and efficient cat hasn’t been waiting to try to get in the back door and I have never failed to throw a stick at him or run him off. To the best of my knowledge, he has never got in. I call the cat “he” because his ears are torn up from fighting. Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys? Perhaps six or eight hundred times that cat has tried to get in and he has never made it.

“You’re due for a cruel surprise,” I told the cat. He was sitting in a circle of his tail, and the tip flicked up between his front feet. I went into the dark store, took a can of milk from the shelf, punched it open, and squirted it into a cup. Then I carried the cup to the storeroom and set it just inside and left the door open. He watched me gravely, looked at the milk, and then walked away and slid over the fence in back of the bank.

I was watching him go when Joey Morphy came into the alley with the key to the bank’s back door ready in his hand. He looked seedy—grainy—as though he hadn’t been to bed.

“Hi, Mr. Hawley.”

“I thought you were closed today.”

“Looks like I never close. Thirty-six-dollar mistake in the books. I worked till midnight last night.”

“Short?”

“No—over.”

“That should be good.”

“Well, it ain’t. I got to find it.”

“Are banks that honest?”

“Banks are. It’s only some men that aren’t. If I’m going to get any holiday, I’ve got to find it.”

“Wish I knew something about business.”

“I can tell you all I know in one sentence. Money gets money.”

“That doesn’t do me much good.”

“Me either. But I can sure give advice.”

“Like what?”

“Like never take the first offer, and like, if somebody wants to sell, he’s got a reason, and like, a thing is only as valuable as who wants it.”

“That the quick course?”

“That’s it, but it don’t mean nothing without the first.”

“Money gets money?”

“That cuts a lot of us out.”

“Don’t some people borrow?”

“Yeah, but you have to have credit and that’s a kind of money.”

“Guess I better stick to groceries.”

“Looks like. Hear about the Floodhampton bank?”

“Stoney told me. Funny, we were just talking about it yesterday, remember?”

“I’ve got a friend there. Three guys—one talked with an accent, one with a limp. Three guys. Sure they’ll get them. Maybe a week. Maybe two.”

“Tough!”

“Oh, I don’t know. They aren’t smart. There’s a law against not being smart.”

“I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“Forget it. I talk too much. That’s another rule—don’t talk. I’ll never learn that. Say, you look good.”

“I shouldn’t. Didn’t get much sleep.”

“Somebody sick?”

“No. Just one of those nights.”

“Don’t I know. . . .”

I swept out the store and raised the shades and didn’t know I was doing it or hating it. Joey’s rules popped around and around in my head. And I discussed matters with my friends on the shelves, perhaps aloud, perhaps not. I don’t know.

“Dear associates,” I said, “if it’s that simple, why don’t more people do it? Why does nearly everyone make the same mistakes over and over? Is there always something forgotten? Maybe the real basic weakness might be some form of kindness. Marullo said money has no heart. Wouldn’t it be true then that any kindness in a money man would be a weakness? How do you get nice ordinary Joes to slaughter people in a war? Well, it helps if the enemy looks different or talks different. But then how about civil war? Well the Yankees ate babies and the Rebs starved prisoners. That helps. I’ll get around to you, sliced beets and tinned button mushrooms, in a moment. I know you want me to talk about you. Everyone does. But I’m on the verge of it—point of reference, that’s it. If the laws of thinking are the laws of things, then morals are relative too, and manner and sin—that’s relative too in a relative universe. Has to be. No getting away from it. Point of reference.

“You dry cereal with the Mickey Mouse mask on the box and a ventriloquism gadget for the label and ten cents. I’ll have to take you home, but right now you sit up and listen. What I told dear Mary as a joke is true. My ancestors, those highly revered ship-owners and captains, surely had commissions to raid commerce in the Revolution and again in 1812. Very patriotic and virtuous. But to the British they were pirates, and what they took they kept. That’s how the family fortune started that was lost by my father. That’s where the money that makes money came from. We can be proud of it.”

I brought in a carton of tomato paste, slashed it open, and stacked the charming slender little cans on their depleted shelf. “Maybe you don’t know, because you’re kind of foreigners. Money not only has no heart but no honor nor any memory. Money is respectable automatically if you keep it a while. You must not think I am denouncing money. I admire it very much. Gentlemen, may I introduce some newcomers to our community. Let’s see, I’ll put them here beside you catsups. Make these bread-and-butter pickles welcome in their new home. New Yorkers, born and sliced and bottled. I was discussing money with my friends here. One of your finest families—oh, you’d know the name! Everybody in the world does, I guess. Well, they got their big start selling beef to the British when our country was at war with the British, and their money is as admired as any and so is the family. And another dynasty, probably the greatest bankers of them all. The founder bought three hundred rifles from the Army. The Army had rejected them as dangerously defective and so he got them very cheap, maybe fifty cents apiece. Pretty soon General Frémont was ready to start his heroic trek to the West, and he bought the rifles, sight unseen, for twenty dollars apiece. No one ever heard whether they blew up in the troopers’ hands. And that was the money that makes money. It doesn’t matter how you get it just as long as you get it and use it to make more. I’m not being cynical. Our lord and master, Marullo of the ancient Roman name, is quite right. Where money is concerned, the ordinary rules of conduct take a holiday. Why do I talk to groceries? Perhaps because you are discreet. You do not repeat my words, or gossip. Money is a crass and ungracious subject only when you have it. The poor find it fascinating. But don’t you agree that if one becomes actively interested in money, he should know something of its nature and character and tendencies? I’m afraid that very few men, and they great artists or misers, are interested in money for itself. And you can kick out those misers who are conditioned by fear.”