The Winter of Our Discontent (17 page)

Sometimes I wish I knew the nature of night thoughts. They’re close kin to dreams. Sometimes I can direct them, and other times they take their head and come rushing over me like strong, unmanaged horses.

Danny Taylor came in. I didn’t want to think about him and be sad but he came anyway. I had to use a trick a tough old sergeant taught me once, and it works. There was a day and a night and a day in the war that was all one piece, one unit of which the parts were just about all the dirty dreadfulness that can happen in that sick business. While it was going on I’m not sure I knew its agony because I was busy and unutterably tired, but afterward that unit of a day and a night and a day came back to me over and over again in my night thoughts until it was like that insanity they call battle fatigue and once named shell-shock. I used every trick I could not to think of it, but it crept back in spite of me. It waited through the day to get at me in the dark. Once mawkish with whisky I told it to my top sergeant, an old pro who had been in wars we have forgotten ever happened. If he had worn his ribbons, there’d have been no room for buttons—Mike Pulaski, a polack from Chicago, no relation to the hero. By good fortune, he was decently drunk or he might have clammed up out of a conditioned conviction about fraternizing with an officer.

Mike heard me out, staring at a spot between my eyes. “Yeah!” he said. “I know about that. Trouble is, a guy tries to shove it out of his head. That don’t work. What you got to do is kind of welcome it.”

“How do you mean, Mike?”

“Take it’s something kind of long—you start at the beginning and remember everything you can, right to the end. Every time it comes back you do that, from the first right through the finish. Pretty soon it’ll get tired and pieces of it will go, and before long the whole thing will go.”

I tried it and it worked. I don’t know whether the headshrinkers know this but they should.

When Danny Taylor came into my night I gave him Sergeant Mike’s treatment.

When we were kids together, same age, same size, same weight, we used to go to the grain and feed store on High Street and get on the scales. One week I’d be half a pound heavier and the next Danny would catch up with me. We used to fish and hunt and swim together and go out with the same girls. Danny’s family was well fixed like most of the old families of New Baytown. The Taylor house is that white one with the tall fluted columns on Porlock Street. Once the Taylors had a country house too—about three miles from town.

The country all around us is rolling hills covered with trees, some scrub pine and some with second-growth oak, and hickory and some cedars. Once, long before I was born, the oaks were monsters, so big that the local-built ships had cut their keels and ribs and planking within a short distance of the shipyards until it was all gone. In this roly-poly country the Taylors once had a house set in the middle of a big meadow, the only level place for miles around. It must once have been a lake bottombecause it was flat as a table and surrounded by low hills. Maybe sixty years ago, the Taylor house burned down and was never rebuilt. As kids Danny and I used to ride out there on bicycles. We played in the stone cellar and built a hunting lodge of bricks from the old foundation. The gardens must have been wonderful. We could see avenues of trees and a suggestion of formal hedges and borders among the scrabble of the returned forest. Here and there would be a stretch of stone balustrade, and once we found a bust of Pan on a tapering stand. It had fallen on its face and buried its horns and beard in the sandy loam. We stood it up and cleaned it and celebrated it for a time, but greed and girls got the better of us. We finally carted it into Floodhampton and sold it to a junk man for five dollars. It must have been a good piece, maybe an old one.

Danny and I were friends as all boys must have friends. Then his appointment to the Naval Academy came through. I saw him once in uniform and not again for years. New Baytown was and is a tight, close-made town. Everyone knew Danny was expelled and no one discussed it. Taylors died out, well, just as Hawleys died out. I’m the only one left, and, of course, Allen, my son. Danny didn’t come back until they were all dead, and he came back a drunk. At first I tried to help but he didn’t want me. He didn’t want anybody. But, in spite of it, we were close— very close.

I went over everything I could remember right up to that very morning when I gave him the dollar to let him find his local oblivion.

The structure of my change was feeling, pressures from without, Mary’s wish, Allen’s desires, Ellen’s anger, Mr. Baker’s help. Only at the last when the move is mounted and prepared does thought place a roof on the building and bring in words to explain and to justify. Suppose my humble and interminable clerkship was not virtue at all but a moral laziness? For any success, boldness is required. Perhaps I was simply timid, fearful of consequences—in a word, lazy. Successful business in our town is not complicated or obscure and it is not widely successful either, because its practicers have set artificial limits for their activities. Their crimes are little crimes and so their success is small success. If the town government and the business complex of New Baytown were ever deeply investigated it would be found that a hundred legal and a thousand moral rules were broken, but they were small violations—petty larceny. They abolished part of the Decalogue and kept the rest. And when one of our successful men had what he needed or wanted, he re-assumed his virtue as easily as changing his shirt, and for all one could see, he took no hurt from his derelictions, always assuming that he didn’t get caught. Did any of them think about this? I don’t know. And if small crimes could be condoned by self, why not a quick, harsh, brave one? Is murder by slow, steady pressure any less murder than a quick and merciful knife-thrust? I don’t feel guilt for the German lives I took. Suppose for a limited time I abolished all the rules, not just some of them. Once the objective was reached, could they not all be re-assumed? There is no doubt that business is a kind of war. Why not, then, make it all-out war in pursuit of peace? Mr. Baker and his friends did not shoot my father, but they advised him and when his structure collapsed they inherited. And isn’t that a kind of murder? Have any of the great fortunes we admire been put together without ruthlessness? I can’t think of any.

And if I should put the rules aside for a time, I knew I would wear scars but would they be worse than the scars of failure I was wearing? To be alive at all is to have scars.

All this wondering was the weather vane on top of the building of unrest and of discontent. It could be done because it had been done. But if I opened up that door, could I ever get it closed again? I did not know. I could not know until I had opened it. . . . Did Mr. Baker know? Had Mr. Baker even thought of it? . . . Old Cap’n thought the Bakers burned the
Belle-Adair
for the insurance. Could that and my father’s misfortune be the reason Mr. Baker wanted to help me? Were these his scars?

What was happening could be described as a great ship being turned and bunted and shoved about and pulled around by many small tugs. Once turned by tide and tugs, it must set a new course and start its engines turning. On the bridge which is the planning center, the question must be asked: All right, I know now where I want to go. How do I get there, and where are lurking rocks and what will the weather be?

One fatal reef I knew was talk. So many betray themselves before they are betrayed, with a kind of wistful hunger for glory, even the glory of punishment. Andersen’s Well is the only confidant to trust—Andersen’s Well.

I called out to old Cap’n. “Shall I set the course, sir? Is it a good course? Will it get me there?”

And for the first time he denied me his command. “You’ll have to work it out yourself. What’s good for one is bad for another, and you won’t know till after.”

The old bastard might have helped me then, but perhaps it wouldn’t have made any difference. No one wants advice— only corroboration.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When I awakened, old sleepy Mary was up and gone and coffee and bacon were afoot. I could smell them. And you’d have to search for a better day for a resurrection, a green and blue and yellow day. From the bedroom window I could see that everything was resurrecting, grass, trees. They chose a proper season for it. I put on my Christmas dressing gown and my birthday slippers. In the bathroom I found some of Allen’s hair goo and slicked it on, so that my combed and brushed scalp felt tight like a cap.

Easter Sunday breakfast is an orgy of eggs and pancakes, and bacon curling about everything. I crept up on Mary and patted her silk-covered fanny and said,
“Kyrie eleison!”

“Oh!” she said. “I didn’t hear you coming.” She regarded my dressing gown, paisley pattern. “Nice,” she said. “You don’t wear it enough.”

“I haven’t time. I haven’t had time.”

“Well, it’s nice,” she said.

“Ought to be. You picked it. Are the kids sleeping through these wonderful smells?”

“Oh, no. They’re out back, hiding eggs. I wonder what Mr. Baker wants.”

The quick jump never fails to startle me. “Mr. Baker, Mr. Baker. Oh! He probably wants to help me start my fortune.”

“Did you tell him? About the cards?”

“Course not, darling. But maybe he guessed.” Then I said seriously, “Look, cheesecake, you do think I have a great business brain, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” She had a pancake up for turning, and it stayed up.

“Mr. Baker thinks I should invest your brother’s legacy.”

“Well, if Mr. Baker—”

“Now wait. I don’t want to do it. That’s your money and your safety.”

“Doesn’t Mr. Baker know more about that than you do, dear?”

“I’m not sure. All I know is my father thought he knew. That’s why I’m working for Marullo.”

“Still, I think Mr. Baker—”

“Will you be guided by me, sweetheart?”

“Well, of course—”

“In everything?”

“Are you being silly?”

“I’m dead serious—dead!”

“I believe you are. But you can’t go around doubting Mr. Baker. Why, he’s—he’s—”

“He’s Mr. Baker. We’ll listen to what he has to say and then—I still will want that money right in the bank where it is.”

Allen shot through the back door as though fired by a sling-shot. “Marullo,” he said. “Mr. Marullo’s outside. He wants to see you.”

“Now what?” Mary demanded.

“Well, ask him in.”

“I did. He wants to see you outside.”

“Ethan, what is it? You can’t go out in your robe. It’s Easter Sunday.”

“Allen,” I said, “you tell Mr. Marullo I’m not dressed. Tell him he can come back later. But if he’s in a hurry, he can come in the front door if he wants to see me alone.” He dashed.

“I don’t know what he wants. Maybe the store’s been robbed.”

Allen shot back. “He’s going around front.”

“Now, dear, don’t you let him spoil your breakfast, you hear me?”

I went through the house and opened the front door. Marullo was on the porch, dressed in his best for Easter mass, and his best was black broadcloth and big gold watch chain. He held his black hat in his hand and he smiled at me nervously like a dog out of bounds.

“Come in.”

“No,” he said. “I just got one word to say. I heard how that fella offered you a kickback.”

“Yes?”

“I heard how you threw him out.”

“Who told you?”

“I can’t tell.” He smiled again.

“Well, what about it? You trying to say I should have taken it?”

He stepped forward and shook my hand, pumped it up and down twice very formally. “You’re a good fella,” he said.

“Maybe he didn’t offer enough.”

“You kidding? You’re a good fella. That’s all. You’re a good fella.” He reached in his bulging side pocket and brought out a bag. “You take this.” He patted my shoulder and then in a welter of embarrassment turned and fled; his short legs pumped him away and his fat neck flamed where it bulged over his stiff white collar.

“What was it?”

I looked in the bag—colored candy Easter eggs. We had a big square glass jar of them at the store. “He brought a present for the kids,” I said.

“Marullo? Brought a present. I can’t believe it.”

“Well, he did.”

“Why? He never did anything like that.”

“I guess he just plain loves me.”

“Is there something I don’t know?”

“Duck blossom, there are eight million things none of us know.” The children were staring in from the open back door. I held out the bag to them. “A present from an admirer. Don’t get into them until after breakfast.”

As we were getting dressed for church, Mary said, “I wish I knew what that was all about.”

“Marullo? I’ll have to admit, darling, I wish I knew what it was all about too.”

“But a bag of cheap candy—”

“Do you suppose it might be a grave simplicity?”

“I don’t understand.”

“His wife is dead. He has neither chick nor child. He’s getting old. Maybe—well, maybe he’s lonely.”

“He never has been here before. While he’s lonesome, you should ask him for a raise. He doesn’t drop in on Mr. Baker. It makes me nervous.”

I gauded myself like the flowers of the field, decent dark suit, my burying black, shirt and collar so starchly white they threw the sun’s light back in the sun’s face, cerulean tie with cautious polka dots.

Was Mrs. Margie Young-Hunt whomping up ancestral storms? Where did Marullo get his information? It could only be Mr. Bugger to Mrs. Young-Hunt to Mr. Marullo. I do not trust thee Margie Young, the reason why I cannot tongue. But this I know and know right spung, I do not trust thee Mrs. Young. And with that singing in my head I delved in the garden for a white flower for my Easter buttonhole. In the angle made by the foundation and the sloping cellar door there is a protected place, the earth warmed by the furnace and exposed to every scrap of winter sunlight. There white violets grow, brought from the cemetery where they grow wild over the graves of my ancestors. I picked three tiny lion-faced blossoms for my buttonhole and gathered a round dozen for my darling, set their own pale leaves about them for a nosegay, and bound them tight with a bit of aluminum foil from the kitchen.