Night for Day

by Patrick Flanery

  Dear Kay –

  will drop you a few lines to tell you must come home, we can get yours and the boy clothes here. and I don’t think he will need a over coat. you folks talk like we were liveing at the north poll. we have a better climate here than you have there. I think when we want to pay for yours & the boy’s trip it is a poor excuse. I guess Hank does not want me to see my grandson before I pass away. and I could not go to see you when you don’t have a place to keep me. I know it would make Vernon happy to have you come home, Ruth also. you don’t know how hard it is when you have not been home for 8 yrs. I will not stand for any excuses. must close. love to all.

  Your Mother

  Kay folded the stationery and put it back in the envelope. Why did one write ‘must close’, when there was nothing to hurry about? Better to write, ‘I have nothing more to say’ and leave it at that rather than pretending to be in a rush when a letter could be set aside until all had been said that needed saying. And this excuse about there being no place to keep her, as if Mother could not afford a room in a hotel, which would be cheaper than Kay and the boy going all the way back east.

  The shoebox in the top left drawer of the desk was nearly full with letters from Mother and Ruth and the odd one from Vernon. It was time to find somewhere else to keep them, only that was the one place she could lock and the boy not be able to get inside, or Hank for that matter, since the key she kept – well, no one would think to look where she hid it. She had not told Hank that Mother wanted them to visit because every time he came home he was gone before she could do anything more than ask him for money. No question but he wouldn’t care two bits whether they went to Oklahoma or not. He would rather be done with them, probably hope the train derail or they both be kidnapped on the way. If she suggested they go all three together he would grumble about being too busy to leave his work, whatever it now was, assuming it was. The problem was that she would not manage to make the trip alone with the boy, owing to not being able to handle him properly, not on a train with that so public as it was, and what would people think of them with their bags instead of cases? What would they eat anyway and the boy always hungry now? Mother did not realize she would have to wire money for the tickets in advance, not to mention extra for food, though she had tried to explain this as clear as she could in the last letter she sent but the words were sticky and she must not have said it right. Clear as taffy. As much as she might want to go home there was no way to do it. Communists traveled with packed food instead of eating in dining cars. Communists traveled with soft bags instead of hard cases. Communists traveled with everyone else, sitting upright like Bolshevist anarchists instead of taking a sleeper car or driving themselves, but Kay could not drive and even if she paid the tickets Mother would balk at a sleeper which is why driving would have been better, except then the motels. Mother had said someone like her did not need to know how to drive, but Mother drove and all her sisters drove and each had their own car. No one had ever even let her behind the wheel of a car. It was on account of her nerves said her father. Hank said, Better that way, so as you don’t think you can go off on your own. No money to run a car anyhow.

  From the desk she noticed the cushion in the middle of the couch was askew. As she pushed it back into place she heard paper slipping between upholstery and the clink and jangle of silver. She pulled the cushion out and underneath it there were three five-dollar bills and another six dollars in quarters, stuffed in the crevice between the seat and the back of the couch. The boy could not have been sleeping there without knowing, which meant he must have hidden it himself, using the couch as his personal bank and not telling her what he had, though he knew she was short. The audacity of it. He could not have come by the money honestly. Only question was how, whether stealing or – she supposed he might have picked up work here and there but it was unlikely, what with him being so indolent. Some months ago she caught him skipping out of the Smiths’ house, such a spring in his step, and was certain he had been stealing and would need a whipping until Mrs. Smith came to the door behind him and said thank you in that sweet voice of hers she used for dogs and babies. Other times, whenever Mrs. Smith saw the boy moping, it was obvious she pitied him, which made no sense, because could the woman not see what he was? Turned out she had been paying him to wash her windows and Kay had to say thank you but he has schoolwork to do and I would not wish him to inconvenience you, he is clumsy, like to break things, and with your fine ornaments, the figurines and whatnot, we could not afford to replace them in case of an accident. And Mrs. Smith had drawn her lips out in a line that reminded Kay of the way Ruth performed those times she got highhanded with them when they were children. It was an expression that said, I cannot believe you are sassing me, and you a grown woman, with a boy so thin his pants won’t stay up and in the wrong light you can see straight through his neck, like the skin shade on a lamp.

  Kay gathered up the notes and coins from the crack of the couch and put the money in her purse. There was no lock on the door to the apartment and she was certain Mrs. Smith snooped when they went out, there being times when Kay returned from an outing and a cushion was not where she remembered, or papers on the desk sat with their smug corners square, and throughout the apartment lingered a perfume she could never place, a blend of peaches and leather, like a fruit picker’s shoes only ladylike, churned up with flowers and fog. No doubt Mrs. Smith had a spare key to the desk drawer, meaning she must have read the letters and knew all their business and so would be sure to think them Communists. Or worse. What is worse than a Communist? Any kind of criminal. But we are not criminals. I am not, no. But? But I cannot speak for my husband. And the boy? The boy, Lord, the boy is the boy, he does what boys will, and I teach him a lesson when I must. He has come by some money. Yes, I suppose, but it could have fallen from Hank’s pockets or the boy might have earned it, and at least this solves the problem of groceries. For the moment, only for the time being. Yes, I know, but can you not let me have that relief, even for today? What about the rent, Kay? What about it? What will you do for the rent, if Hank does not come back? Hank always comes back, sooner or later, with the odor of sin so thick on his skin.

  On the shortest route into town there was the dog that growled at a gate so she went north up Pratt then right along the alley, which still smelled to her like DDT, that scent of almonds, but also oleander, heavy and sickly. Branches of pink and white blossom dangled over the high tops of fences all the way down to Van Ness Avenue, except at the empty lot where in the evenings the boy played with his friends. No idea of their names except the Japanese one, Teddy he was called. She had told the boy not to play with Teddy but they kept turning up together. There was something wicked about the friendship. Boys should not be so fond of each other, not by the age of twelve.

  The glare from the dust on the ground made her squint, a problem of being fair, unlike her siblings, all of them dark as skunks except Vernon, so that some had suggested – Rosa in fact used to speculate when they were girls, playing dolls in her bedroom – Kay and Vernon might have a different father from all the rest, but such talk neglected that Papa in his youth was golden-haired as a Valkyrie, before he went bald. Hank was almost bald, just past fifty, growing fat where he used to be fine, one of the leanest most beautiful men she had ever laid eyes on when first he met her, one day in the family store, and removed his hat, showing his waves of rich brown hair combed so neatly, and the shine on his shoes almost blinding, and now there was no hair to speak of, the baldness hidden under that filthy panama hat, and his jaw undiscoverable in the drapes of fat that hung from his cheeks, and if there was a shine on his shoes it was most likely from filth. It seemed to happen to men.

  Palm fronds rattled against one another, clattering as tanned animal skins stretched taut, and the breeze lifted her hair where she’d tried to make it tidy. Whatever the route it was just over a mile to the store but it took more than half an hour on foot because there was always something to look at, the oleander ca
scading over fence tops or dogs running along Owens Avenue that would give anyone a fright with their snarling. Probably belonged to those Mexican Communists one heard talk about, fruit pickers trying to put honest farmers out of business was what Hank said and she supposed he must be right.

  The walk along Inyo made her nervous so she turned up D Street and then east along Kern, hurrying past the house where they had last lived, not wanting to pause because of the eviction and the shame of it and the neighbors all knowing. Mrs. Coffey was at her window watching but Kay kept her eyes on the pavement and did not even flinch or turn around when she heard a screen door open and the woman calling her name in a tone that said you still owe me for that cup of flour you borrowed three months ago and the window pane your boy broke last year. Next time Kay would remember and stick to Inyo.

  Across the railroad tracks she came into town and found herself passing the 202 Club, Save More Drugs, Palace Meats, the bargain department store and grocery store and pastry shop, past Linder’s Hardware and the hotel where she believed Hank stayed so often they could have bought a house with what he squandered, and right into the bank at the corner. The teller took half the money Kay had found in the couch and said good morning but with a tone that also said I know you owe money all over town. Everyone knew. The debts and eviction and whatnot. It was impossible Mother should ever come, because then she would see, and the shame of the whole family knowing Hank was just what they warned when she said if they did not let her marry she would run away, and then that’s just what she did anyway. How could she blame them for hating Hank when she did herself?

  Kay wandered down the street looking in store windows until she was standing beneath the twin Moorish towers of the theater staring at the face of Randolph Scott, with a kerchief tied round his neck and Dorothy Malone in blue jeans holding a rifle at her waist and The Nevadan in black and red letters between them. Scott looked like Hank before he started to lose his hair and turn fat only Scott was more handsome. Even so, there was in his bearing a quality – the way he held his tall frame and cocked his head, turning his chin just off center as if using it to point in the direction he was heading – that gave her a queasy feeling such as she got when Hank drove too fast on mountain roads or when he pressed his tongue deep in her mouth and was ripe with the scents of ten thousand women. Westerns were not her preference and fifty cents was fifty cents but it being free money after a fashion she decided to treat herself, and Scott was a good Republican after all, so it was supporting the cause of justice in a way, in times such as this, when Reds were trying to tear the country apart from the inside out.

  The ticket seller was a girl with spit curls and red nail varnish and a fat mole on her chin colored in with eyebrow pencil as if that would turn it into a beauty mark. Still looked like a witch and a slut. The girl was too busy reading Modern Screen to glance up, just handing over the ticket as if Kay was a ghost, not even saying anything. Insolence.

  It being a weekday and still during school hours there were not that many others in the audience and no one else in the balcony. The newsreel flickered without its stories really settling because what was the point of it all anyway, the events of the world?

  The picture starts with a bank robber hiding gold. He’s called Tanner only it’s Forrest Tucker in the part and his meaty face made Kay think of her father, cheeks pink as pork cutlets. Tanner is galloping across a valley, the Sierras in the distance covered with snow, which meant they’d shot the thing late last year most like. It was supposed to be Nevada but Kay recognized the landscape as just the other side of the mountains, over towards Lone Pine and the Alabama Hills. Lawmen on horseback are chasing Tanner, their guns drawn, and then out of nowhere there’s another man, a dark rider who keeps following, even when the others give up. What message did it send, that the law would abandon its pursuit of a violent criminal? Except it was Nevada, or meant to be, so perhaps that was all the explanation one needed.

  Tanner’s crossing a stream and the dark rider follows like they’re dancing with each other, until you can see it’s Randolph Scott in a three-piece suit and homburg. When Tanner gets a look at the getup he calls Scott greenhorn and forces him to swap clothes, only Scott hesitates so Tanner wonders what he has on underneath, ruffles maybe? A couple of men downstairs in the theater guffawed but the ruffles tickled a memory, not about ruffles as such, but about what Scott might wear. He has this knowing smirk that reminded her of a look she had started seeing on the face of the boy, a grin like the cat with the canary, head cocked to one side, chin doing all the indicating. Every time she saw it that expression made her want to broom the boy’s legs.

  Tanner and Scott ride together through the dust, and the sight of them set Kay’s heart beating faster so she was aware of it in her chest and neck and the rise and fall of her stomach against the weight of her cotton dress. The theater was cool and the seat more comfortable than any in the garage apartment. Imagine sinking between the rows after the movie finished and hiding there, turning on a single light at night and eating popcorn, living between the concessions counter, powder room, and auditorium. It would be perfect, alone save the people on screen for company.

  It seemed as though this picture was just one hold-up after another, outlaws jabbering at each other while Scott stands around wearing that smug smirk all the time. She had never seen such a look on Hank or her father. Something almost feminine about it, like expressions on one of Mother’s church friends, full of the Spirit and proud of her faith, judging in silence everyone around her. She realized, staring at Randolph Scott’s face, that this was perhaps what made her hate the look when she saw it on the boy: it seemed so unmanly.

  Now Scott and Tanner are camping by a stream, water flowing between their legs, around the fire, queer place to camp, any fool would tell you never to camp on water. They sit like men always do, legs splayed, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, water gushing between them, Scott wearing a pinkie ring on his left hand. Mother always said never go about with a man wears a pinkie ring, it would end in sadness even if the man was quality, only she didn’t explain why. When Kay caught the boy wearing a toy ring on his little finger last summer she thrashed him until his legs were blue.

  Head to foot, Tanner and Scott lie next to each other, and it’s supposed to be night, although they must have shot the scene during the day, because of the blue sky and it just being deep shadow instead of dark. Always confusing why the pictures did that and not just shoot in the actual night when it was supposed to be night in the story. Undoubtedly something to do with working hours and the unions. That was proof the Communists were even dead set against reality – that is to say, making a picture during the day and calling it night.

  Tanner sneaks off in the dark but Scott sees him leaving and like a woman who doesn’t know how to stop her husband when she catches him ducking out for a floozy, he raises himself on his bedroll and follows, riding under blue skies meant to be black, shadowing Tanner through rocky land that was almost certainly the Alabama Hills above Lone Pine. Hank had wanted to buy a plot over there, put down a deposit, but somehow got the wrong idea about the deal, and then the deposit was gone and the land never theirs. That kind of disaster was always happening with Hank.

  Scott’s riding up to a ranch, two cowpokes staring like he’s a Martian, and he meets the young woman who runs the place, Miss Galt, only at first he thinks she’s a cowboy and is surprised when the boy steps from behind a horse and it’s Dorothy Malone. She’s small and slight like a boy, so it was understandable he might have been confused. A man downstairs made a rude noise. It wasn’t clear what he meant by it but the sound plucked at Kay’s gut and she felt herself flush.

  Scott asks to trade his horse seeing as it’s injured and Miss Galt says it’ll take three weeks to heal. He says he’ll wait, and she says not here he won’t, and he asks where then, and she suggests in Twin Forks only she doesn’t know what they’ll make of him in his three-piece suit and homburg and he says proba
bly more or less what folks would think of her if she showed up in his hometown dressed like a man and she says they’d probably think she was pretty sweet and that’s what they’ll make of Scott in Twin Forks, pretty sweet. Wouldn’t a real man just lean over and show a woman like Miss Galt how sweet he was? It seemed queer. She tells the cowpoke Rusty to fetch the gentleman – that is Scott – a horse, and Rusty, who’s been staring the whole time, is relieved to understand it’s a man he’s looking at, because he couldn’t tell from Scott’s appearance, what with the suit and homburg and cute womanly ways. As Scott rides away, Rusty stares as if smitten, whistling like a lovebird.

  Scott did look pretty sweet though not half as much as back in the thirties when he and Cary Grant set up housekeeping together and all those pictures of them playing husband and wife and Hedda Hopper and others saying about it not being normal, but then they both had wives now, because how else could it be? Maybe that was why the reference to ruffles earlier.

  Now Scott’s wearing cowboy duds and next thing he’s in this saloon looking at a sheriff whittling false teeth and sitting next to Tanner. The story was hard to follow, nothing explained, just one scene after another and still no idea what Scott’s character was called. Why was it that in cowboy duds he made a person feel even queasier in the stomach than when he was dressed in a suit? He looked like a tall girl with no bosom, pants pulled up high, shirt pressed flat against his windowpane chest.

  The saloon’s owned by Dorothy Malone’s father, that is the father in the picture, which is Mr. Galt, which is the actor George Macready, him with that terrible scar on his right cheek, like a sickle arcing up from the hinge of the jaw to his cheekbone. He’s after the gold Tanner robbed and asks Scott to work for him but Scott’s not interested and Galt’s men rough him up, only it looks about as real as babies boxing. It made one wonder if this was how men really behaved when women weren’t around, if they roughed each other up all the time and camped by streams and slept headto-foot but would betray a fellow if there was money involved.