Wake Up to Murder (2 page)

Kendall shook his head at me. “You don’t have a job any more, Charters. Not with me.” He slipped his wallet from his coat pocket and counted out some bills. He laid the bills on Judge White’s railing and put a fifty-cent piece on top of them. “There’s the week you have coming and two weeks in lieu of notice. Don’t bother to show up in the morning.”

My slight whiskey glow faded. I began to sweat as I thought of the payments on the house, the range, the refrigerator. “Now, wait. Just a minute, Mr. Kendall. Please. What’s this all about? So I took a couple of drinks. The bottle was a birthday present. I — ”

“It’s after five,” Kendall said. As if I didn’t exist. He tucked Lou’s hand under his arm. “We’d better get started I guess.”

I started to catch at his arm and couldn’t. I would be damned if I’d beg. “Okay. If that’s the way you feel,” I said.

Kendall walked Lou into the hall and down it to the door, the click of her high heels fading.

“I’m sorry, Jim,” Benner said, and left.

I picked the bills from the railing. The amount was right to the penny. One hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. What was I going to tell May?

It was a hell of a thing to happen on a birthday.

IT was cooler than it had been. The tourists holding down the green benches had shifted over to the north side of Center Avenue to soak up the last of the heat. I started to get into my car. There was a parking violation ticket on the wheel. I ripped it off and put it in my pocket. Another day, another dollar. Everything happened to me.
James A. Charters, alias Joe Doakes. Push him around, boys. He likes it.

I shot away from the curb too fast and almost rammed an Ohio car. I had to brake, but fast.

“Why don’t you learn how to drive?” I asked the superannuated farmer at the wheel of the other car.

“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” He knew the script, all right.

I caught a red light at the next block. I mulled that answer as I waited for the light to change. It was a good question. I wished I knew where I was going. I wished I was going anywhere but home. Telling May that Mr. Kendall had fired me was going to be tough. The one hundred and eighty dollars would last for three weeks, but if I didn’t find another job during those three weeks — what then?

I’d put the bottle in my side coat pocket. The neck of it was digging into my ribs. I uncorked it and took a drink. It
could
have been such a nice birthday. I thought of Lou. She was cute. But thinking about Lou wasn’t going to solve my problem. I had May to think of. There was no reason for both of us to worry. Maybe it would be best if I didn’t say anything about losing my job. I could give May the sixty-two-fifty to make the payments and run the house. Just as if nothing had happened. I could do that for three weeks. Then what?

I kicked it around for two lights, both lights turning red in my face. I decided it wouldn’t be fair not to tell her. But I wouldn’t tell her as soon as I got home. I wouldn’t spoil my birthday dinner for May. She’d worked over a hot stove all day fixing a nice supper for me. The least I could do was to pretend to enjoy it. Then, later, when we were in bed, I’d tell her. That way I could take her in my arms and comfort her when she cried.

I slowed the car as I turned down our street. As usual, there were a million kids on it. Playing ball. Jumping rope. Riding tricycles and bicycles and kiddie cars. Dragging wagons. Just jumping up and down and yelling. Having a hell of a time for themselves.

I started to grin and couldn’t stop. It made me feel a lot better, just looking at the street. So it was a GI deal, it was still nice. It was like a picture postal card. A vividly colored card. With the accent on green and red and yellow. The kids were fat and healthy-looking. All the houses were similar but different enough to make each one stand out. The lawns and palms and shrubs were coming fine. And our lawn was the nicest of all. God knew that May and I had worked on it. The house looked swell, too. It was ours. I’d keep up the payments somehow.

As I swung in the drive, Marty Fine, one of the frecklefaced Little Leaguers I’d been coaching on Saturday afternoons, rode by on his bicycle with a first baseman’s mitt dangling from the handlebars.

“Hi, there, Mr. Charters,” he grinned.

“Hi, yourself,” I yelled back at him.

It was a little thing, but it made me feel better. Anyway, the kids liked me. And May. And the boys and girls in the County Building. Including Lou.

I parked the car in the porte. May was in the yard, talking to Mrs. Shelly next door. She looked good, even from the back. Her crisp wash dress fitted her like skin. Her corn silk hair looked vital and alive. Her back was slim and straight. Her tanned legs were bare.

She saw me drive in and waved. “Ah ha. The old man. I’ll tell you later, Gwen.”

Gwen Shelly smiled, “Hi, Jim.”

I waited for her to add, ‘Happy birthday.’ She didn’t. And Gwen knew what day it was, too. Because Bob’s birthday was the same day. Only in February.

By the time I got out of the car May was standing in the porte with her face lifted to be kissed. “Hello, honey, I’m glad you’re home. Tough day?”

Her lips tasted cool and fresh and sweet. “Not too bad,” I told her. I walked her up on the breezeway with my arm around her waist. “I spent most of it on the road. I had to tell the Mantinover girl that her appeal had been denied.”

The corners of May’s mouth turned down. “Matt Kendall would pin a dirty job like that on you, the bum. How did she take it, Jim?”

I shrugged. “How could she take it? The kid’s in the death house. She’s hooked.”

“The poor kid,” May said. “It makes me sick to even think about it.” She patted the hand around her waist. “Supper will be ready by the time you’re washed, sweetheart.”

May was ladling out gray-looking liver and boiled potatoes when I walked back to the kitchen. The liver even looked tough. May confirmed it.

“I’m afraid the liver is tough,” she said. “It’s beef liver, not calf’s. With prices as high as they are, we simply can’t afford calf’s liver.”

I could feel bile beginning to form again.
That’s right, rub it in
, I thought.
Prove to me I’m a failure, that I can’t even buy a decent meal for my family.

I had been right, in the bathroom. May had forgotten it was my birthday. I was damned if I’d remind her.

“I’ll put the sprinklers on,” I said, “while you’re setting the stuff on the table.”

“You do that, Jim,” May smiled.

It was almost dark outside by now. I snaked the bottle from the car and bought myself a big drink before I turned on the sprinklers. There was a big brown patch on the front lawn that hadn’t been there that morning. Even chinch bugs happened to me.

It was not a pleasant meal. The liver was tougher than it looked. May talked a lot about nothing. The Carters had bought a new sectional sofa. On time. Gwen Shelly’s washline had broken with a half-dozen sheets on it. Gwen was going to have Bob put up the steel wire lines on his half-Saturday off. The Benson kid had the measles. Did I know there were chinch bugs, or maybe it was army worms, in the front lawn?

I ate in a slow burn. Maybe if I had been able to afford to take May to the Chatterbox or Mirror Bar, she might have remembered that it was my birthday. Kendall ate at both places as a matter of course. But not the Charters. We had to save our money for a month before we could afford such an extravagance. Then, usually, we had to use the dough to pay my insurance or the light bill.

I excused myself to change the sprinklers and belted the bottle again. Pearl had said that May was a very lucky woman to have a husband like me. Brother, was that a laugh.

May knew I had a bottle in the car. I could tell, the way she looked at me. She opened her mouth to say something about it, then changed her mind.

I ate what I could of the liver. There was no dessert. I read the paper while May washed the dishes. Not even seeing what I was looking at, listening to the clatter of dishes in the kitchen, hearing the whirr of the sprinklers and the drone of the mosquitoes trying to find openings in the screens.

The whiskey was working on me now. Not relaxing or making me happy like it usually did; only manufacturing more bile. I thought of Kendall and Lou sitting out under the stars at Steve’s Rustic Lodge, eating a steak three inches thick. I’d never been able to take May to Steve’s. Not on sixty-two-fifty a week and a thousand places to put every dollar.

May finished doing the dishes and tidied up the dining room. One thing was for sure. We might be poor, but if cleanliness was next to godliness, May had a right-hand seat reserved. Finished, she sat on the arm of my chair.

“What you so quiet about tonight, honey?”

What was I so quiet about?

The bile in me spilled over. I had to tell someone. I told her.

“Kendall fired me today.”

Her body stiffened. “Why?”

“He didn’t say. He just paid me off and told me not to bother to show up in the morning.”

I waited for her to bawl. She didn’t. Instead, she just squeezed my arm, hard. “Well, don’t feel too bad about it, sweetheart. We’ll get by, somehow.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” May admitted. “You’ll get another job. I know you will. Anyway, we still have each other.”

I leaned over to kiss her.

May pushed my head away. “No. Not now, Jim. Please. You know what it will lead to.”

That was another laugh. I couldn’t even kiss her. On my birthday. After we’d been married ten years.

May brushed my lips with hers. “Later.”

“Yeah. Sure. Later,” I said, and went out to change the sprinklers again.

Night was full now. The kids on the street were gone. The cicadas and the tree frogs had begun their nightly symphonic discord. I killed what was left in the bottle. I’d never felt so sorry for myself. I stood in the car port, watching May move around the living room.

I’d lost my job. We might lose the house. And how did she react when I told her? She didn’t. All she said was, “We still have each other,” and pushed me away when I tried to nuzzle her a little. And now she was emptying ashtrays. As if nothing at all had happened. As if we had five thousand dollars in the bank, instead of being into a personal loan company for two hundred and twenty-four dollars on account of having to get a paint and valve grind job on our nineteen thirty-nine Ford.

I sucked the bottle, wishing it was full. Suddenly I wanted a beer. I debated taking the car and decided against it. May would hear me and raise hell. She’d say we couldn’t afford beer. Not with me having lost my job.

I walked across the grass weaving slightly, belching liver. May came out on the breezeway. Her voice, worried now, reached after me.

“Jim. Where are you? What are you doing out there in the dark? Come in, Jim. Please.”

I walked on without answering. To hell with May. She hadn’t even remembered that it was my birthday. To hell with everything.

I was drunk enough to be cunning. When I didn’t come back, May would probably walk up to the Sandbar on the corner. We did what little drinking we did in the Sandbar. To watch the television. All the neighbors did. Because we couldn’t afford TV sets of our own.

I walked on past the Sandbar to the drive-in on Country Club Road and drank three bottles of beer, one right after another. All they did was make me thirsty. What I wanted was another bottle of Bourbon. I wanted a lot of Bourbon; enough to drown James A. Charters.

A Sunshine cab stopped for the light on Country Club. I made certain its flag was up. Then I opened the door and got in.

“Yes, sir?” the driver asked.

“Take me out to the beach,” I told him. Putting distance between me and May.

He wasn’t expecting a fare this far out. He was pleased to get one. “Sure thing, mister,” he said. “Where ’bouts on the beach you want to go?”

I named the first bar I thought of. “Let’s try the Ole Swimming Hole first.”

He swung in a wide U turn. He had to pass the Sandbar to get to the beach causeway. Bob Shelly’s Chevy was parked in front. Just parked. As we passed it on the far side of the street, May got out and walked into the Sandbar. She looked like she was crying.

It made me very sad. I didn’t want May to cry. I loved her. On the other hand, the least she could have done was to remember it was my birthday. If she had just said, “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” and kissed me like she meant it, I would have been satisfied. I couldn’t help it if I was a dub. I couldn’t help that I was a failure. God knew I had tried. I’d worked like a dog. For her. For ten long years. When the alarm clock rang I got up and went to work. At whatever job I had. Without a beef. Because I was doing it for May. Now I couldn’t even nuzzle her on my birthday.

“Kinda pitching one, eh?” the driver asked.

“Yeah. Kinda,” I said, sourly.

One of the barmen at the Ole Swimming Hole turned out to be Shad Collins, a lad I’d soldiered with, but whom I didn’t recognize at first because he’d gotten so fat.

“By God, it’s good to see you, Jim,” he said. He insisted on shaking hands. Then he set up a drink on the house. At eight bits a copy. “How’s it going, fellow?”

He seemed genuinely interested.

“Fine, Shad,” I lied. “Just fine.” To prove it, I laid a twenty on the bar and started to drink my way through it.

Things got slightly spotty after that. I listened to a swing band in some other bar. In still another bar, I danced with a cute little redhead who insisted I go to her beach cabana but whom I lost somewhere in the shuffle. There was a long ride in a private car, smelling the sweet-sour smell of the tide flats. With, of all things, roosters crowing on the other end and me cheering like mad about something. I talked to a lot of people. I ate a platter of broiled lobsters. I had more to drink. Then the night became even more kaleidoscopic, places and people and sounds following each other in jerky sequence with the rapidity of a piece of broken film racing through an old-fashioned movie projector.

In the white glare that followed the last of the film, a girl who sounded like Lou Tarrent said, “Jim. Jim Charters. Of all people.”