The Folded Leaf

by William Maxwell

  Without help from Warner, and unable to work in the drugstore with his arm in a cast, Reinhart was ready to drop out of school, but Mr. Dehner made an arrangement with him, apparently out of the kindness of his heart. Reinhart didn’t inquire too closely into it. When his arm was well he washed windows and polished furniture for Mr. Dehner, made the beds in the dorm, and was general handy man for the place. In return for this, he was given his room free and enough money to eat on.

  The work didn’t take much time, but he was obliged to listen politely to Mr. Dehner, who lay in wait for him, in the front hall among the spinning wheels and the glass hens.

  “Dick,” he would begin, in a piercing whisper, “could I have a word with you? Steve Rush is—I know I’ve spoken to you about this before but he’s two whole months behind now in his rent and something’s got to be done. You know how fond I am of him and I don’t want him to get thrown out of school or anything like that, but on the other hand there are certain fixed charges—light, heat, food for me, dog biscuit for Pooh-Bah, and the money I have to pay the bank every month—because they own this house, you know; I don’t. I wouldn’t take it if you gave it to me. It’s too big and it’s altogether too much of a responsibility. When I was younger perhaps but not now. Not at my age. I don’t suppose the bank could sell it either, but then they don’t want to, I’m sure. It’s more profitable to rent it to some gullible person like me. You know the bank I mean? Not the bank across from the Co-op. The other one, the bank downtown. All they do there is sit around and clip coupons and give people two per cent interest on money they loan out for four and a half and five. It’s shocking, I must say, and not like the antique business, but what can I do? I have to have a roof over my head, no matter what happens, and I have to eat…. What was I talking about? Dear me, I don’t remember. Well, anyway, I don’t want to keep you. You’re sure you’re dressed warmly enough? Because it’s quite cold out. Much colder than it looks. You ought to have a sweater on, under your coat, in weather like this. It’s strong healthy young creatures like you who die of pleurisy and pneumonia….”

  For two and a half years Reinhart had been listening to Mr. Dehner, who liked to talk to him because he was older than the other boys, and more patient. Dick was twenty-three now, and his hair was already getting thin. When he combed it, leaning over the washbowl, he would look down sometimes and count the hairs in the basin and shake his head sadly, but he never put oil on his scalp or did anything about it.

  He went to Mass every Sunday but he also, from time to time, visited a house on South Maple Street. The eye of God must relax occasionally, and Dick seemed to know when this was about to happen. Once when he was waiting for a streetcar downtown a woman came along in a maroon-colored roadster and picked him up. They drove to a town thirty miles away, and spent the night there in the hotel. The woman was married and Dick knew that he had committed a sin with her, but after he had been to confession his sins no longer weighed on him.

  Every so often he came home roaring drunk and sat up in bed and held an inquisition on himself and all the others. “You, Geraghty,” he would say, “who do you think you’re fooling? I saw you come in last night with that sly, satisfied look on your face. I know what you were up to. The first thing you know you’ll get that poor girl in trouble, and then what’ll you do? Where’ll you get the money to have her taken care of?… And you, Howard, you Christer, isn’t it about time you began sleeping with your hands outside the covers?… You needn’t laugh, Colter. Don’t think I don’t know how you got through that physics course … Peters, what you need is a secret vice … And you, Latham, you’re going to kill somebody some day, do you hear? You’re going to kill somebody with your bare hands and you’ll burn in hell for it… And you, Amsler, why don’t you tell your mother to stay home? Because you don’t dare, that’s why. Because you’re afraid of her, you damn, damn, double-damn fucking little coward…. I’m sorry, boys. I’m very sorry. I guess I’ve had a little too much to drink. Drink … Reinhart, you’re drunk, you’re pissyass drunk. You’re so drunk the bed’s going around. And whether you realize it or not… but it’s so nice sometimes, it’s such a wonderful, wonderful relief….”

  The boys didn’t hold anything that he said against him afterwards, possibly because he sat around all the next day with his head in his hands and looked so gray and his misery was so acute that they could only feel sorry for him. But also because when Reinhart came home drunk, nobody escaped damnation and it cleared the air for a while.

  31

  It didn’t seem to bother Spud or Sally that Lymie was with them a great deal of the time. They felt that in a way he was responsible for their happiness, and out of gratitude they included him in it. He accepted the role of the faithful friend, the devoted, unselfish intermediary. As such he was useful in many ways. When Sally met him on the Broad Walk between classes, she took all his books from him and shook them. If nothing fell out, it was Lymie’s fault; he had lost the note somewhere, or left it in the wrong book, or was hiding it. When Spud had to ease his congested feelings by talking to somebody, about Sally, there was Lymie, always at hand, always willing to listen, to encourage, and even (to a certain extent) sharing his delight, his wonder at what had happened to him and at the extraordinary change which had come over the world.

  Sometimes all three of them sat in a booth in the back of the Ship’s Lantern, and Spud and Sally talked about the house they were going to build as soon as they got married. Spud wanted a two-story sunken living room with a balcony. Sally agreed to the balcony but she was more concerned with the fireplace. It was to be stone, and very big. In addition to the dining room, kitchen, and usual number of upstairs bedrooms, there was also to be a library, a gun room, a billiard room, and a five-car garage. And the house was to be near the water, so that they could keep a sailboat. They drew plans and elevations on paper napkins or in Spud’s loose-leaf notebook. So far as Lymie could make out, looking at these plans upside down, the house was of no recognizable style but merely enormous.

  When they grew tired of arranging the future, Spud measured his hand against Sally’s (she had stopped biting her nails) and was amazed each time at how much bigger a boy’s hand is than a girl’s. Or they sat and looked at each other and smiled and were sometimes pleased with the silence, or drove it away by talking a silly, meaningless language that they had invented between them. Because they felt free to say anything they wanted to in front of Lymie, they didn’t realize that he was there, much of the time. But if he got up to go, they would get up too and go with him.

  When the weather was bright they sometimes went walking along the Styx, a small creek that ran through the campus and across the town and out past the country club and then, a thin strip of woods along either side of it, into open farm land, the corn and wheat fields. Eventually they settled in some sunny spot and Spud would put his head in Sally’s lap. Lymie lay on the ground near them, with his hands or his forearm cushioning his head, and looked up into the sky. If Sally wanted to kiss Spud, she went ahead and did it. And once when she was feeling particularly happy she leaned over and kissed Lymie. He took his handkerchief out and wiped his mouth with mock fastidiousness.

  Sally made a face at him. “Lymie’s an old woman-hater,” she said. “He’s the world’s worst. But how could we ever get along without him?”

  “Dandy,” Spud said, rolling over. “We wouldn’t have a bit of trouble. We need Lymie the way a cat needs two tails.” He sat up then and picked a burr from his trousers and poked at Lymie and said, “Old friend, tell us a story.”

  “I don’t know any stories,” Lymie said.

  “Yes, you do,” Spud said. “Tell us that story you told me last summer on the beach. The one about the kid that fastened his sled on behind a big sleigh and couldn’t get it loose.”

  “You mean The Snow Queen’,” Lymie said. “That’s too long. And anyway I don’t remember all of it any more.” He shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand. “I found a stor
y in the library the other day. It was in a book of German legends but it’s not a fairy story. It’s about a man who had a coat that he liked very much. It made me think of you, Sally. But it wasn’t the same kind of a coat, of course.”

  “Never mind what kind of a coat it was,” Spud said. “Let’s hear the story.”

  Lymie waited a moment before he began: “There was a man who had a coat which was woven in the design of a snakeskin but softer than velvet. He lived in a cold country but when he wore the coat he did not know whether it was winter or summer out, and at night when he fell asleep, it was with the coat spread over his blanket, so that he was as warm in his unheated balcony as his neighbors were who had tiled stoves to sleep on. And he still was not happy. He was perpetually examining his elbows to see whether they were beginning to wear out. He was haunted night and day by the thought that not this year perhaps or the next but certainly some day his beautiful snakeskin coat would wear out, and then he would be cold again.”

  Lymie turned his head slightly without taking his hand away, and saw that Spud had picked up a stick and was writing something with it on the bare ground. Sally was watching him. When they realized that he had stopped talking, Spud tossed the stick away and took Sally’s hand instead. “Go on,” he said. “We’re listening.”

  “One night in a dream,” Lymie continued, “the man saw himself giving the coat away to a beggar, and the light and the happiness from the dream lasted just long enough, after he had awakened, for him to see that that was what he must do with the coat—give it away. He sat all day with the coat across his knees, just inside the front door of his house, waiting. And although it was a part of town where many beggars lived and although seldom a day passed that one of them didn’t come to his door asking for something, this day there wasn’t a one.

  “Toward nightfall, as he was about to give up his search, there were steps outside and he rushed out and found that a very rich man, with his horse and his two servants, was about to enter his house. He knew that the man was rich because he had fur on his collar and silver on his bridle and silver spurs on his heels. Without waiting to find out what had brought the rich man there, he pressed the coat on him and ran back into the house and locked the door. Almost immediately he realized that something was wrong, that he had acted in confusion, but by that time the rich man and his two servants were almost out of sight and he was ashamed to run through the streets after them.

  “Instead of a coat to keep him warm that night, a coat which was woven in the design of a snakeskin but softer than velvet, he had only a slight hope that the rich man, in spite of the fur on his collar and the silver on his bridle and spurs, would understand the value of what had been given to him and find some use for it. And even so, he slept better than he had slept in a long time.”

  When Lymie finished, he took his hand away from his eyes. There was a silence and then Sally said, “I don’t think I like that story very much. It’s too sad. And besides, I don’t know what it means exactly.”

  “It was just a story I read in that book I was telling you about. I read several of them. Do you want to hear any more?”

  “No,” Spud said. “One’s plenty. I’m going to turn my attention, my undivided attention, to Miss Forbes. Are you happy, Miss Forbes?”

  “About as happy as I ever expect to be,” Sally said. “And you, Mr. Latham?”

  “Tolerably happy,” Spud said. “Just tolerably.” He made a clucking noise with his tongue, and heaved a sigh as Sally pulled his head back into her lap.

  After a time, Lymie grew restless and wandered off, but they soon came and found him. There is a species of cat that does need two tails.

  32

  One afternoon when Sally and Spud were sitting in a booth in the Ship’s Lantern, Armstrong and his girl walked in. The girls name was Eunice. She had fluffy light-brown hair and hazel eyes and at nineteen she was pretty in a sly, selfish way. She saw Sally and Spud, and without waiting to be asked, sat down with them. Armstrong moved in beside her. There was no room for Lymie when he appeared. Spud wanted to move over, so that he could squeeze in next to them, but Lymie insisted that he had a conference with his German instructor and fled.

  Armstrong’s girl was wearing his jeweled fraternity pin on her coral-pink cashmere sweater. She unpinned it for Sally to admire and Sally, turning it over to examine the safety clasp, dropped it.

  “Oh, that’s just like you, Forbes!” the other girl exclaimed.

  “Well I didn’t go to drop it,” Sally said, trying to peer under the table. “It just slipped through my—”

  “Don’t step on it, anybody,” Armstrong said. “Don’t move your feet for a second while we look for it.”

  He and Spud slid out of their seats and got down on their knees in front of the booth and began searching.

  “If that pin meant as much to you, Sally Forbes, as it does to me—” the girl said bitterly. Spud’s head rose above the table. “Did you find it?” she asked anxiously.

  He had the fraternity pin in his hand and put it on the edge of the table. As if the pin exercised a kind of foolish fascination for her, Sally started to pick it up again. The other girl snatched it from her and pinned it on the front of her sweater, above her heart. In her gratification at getting the pin back, she forgot to thank Spud.

  Both boys got up, dusted the knees of their trousers, and then sat down again. The palms of Spud’s hands were black from the dirt that he had been fingering, under the table. He tried to clean them off with his handkerchief. Armstrong’s hands were still immaculate. He offered a package of Camels around. Spud shook his head but the girls each took one. Armstrong lit a match with his thumbnail and cupped his large hand around it as he held the match toward Eunice first and then for Sally. It was the gesture of a full-grown man, not a boy, and must have required practice.

  Armstrong was a senior and a good campus politician. He had just missed out on being class president, in one of the off semesters. He looked well in his clothes and under all ordinary circumstances (that brief unpleasantness in the gymnasium hardly counted) he was easy and sure of himself. When people are too obviously and too variously blessed there is always a natural desire to find some flaw in them. The only thing that one could object to in Armstrong was that his full, heavy face, although handsome, had no character. Any number of boys in the university at that time could, from a distance, have been mistaken for him. And those qualities which made him outstanding in college probably meant that he would be a mediocrity later in life; though that didn’t necessarily follow. He knew hundreds of people and had no trouble in keeping them straight. Boys kept nodding to him, on their way in or out of the Ship’s Lantern with their dates, and he spoke to them by name. He spoke to the girls as well.

  A tall thin boy with a crew haircut let his girl walk on ahead while he stopped and asked, “How are you, fella?”

  “Not bad,” Armstrong said.

  “What did you get in that psychology exam Friday?”

  “B minus,” Armstrong said. “What did you get?”

  “You’re lying. You didn’t get a B minus out of Lovat. He never gives higher than a C. No kidding, Army, what did you get?”

  “I got a B minus, no kidding.”

  The tall boy put out his hand. “Let me feel you. I just want to touch a guy that got a B minus from Lovat.”

  “I got an A,” Armstrong’s girl said.

  “That doesn’t mean a thing,” the tall boy said. “If you’re a girl all you have to do is sit in the front row and cross your legs once in a while.”

  “You know Spud Latham?” Armstrong asked. “This is Bill Shearer.”

  “Glad to know you, Latham,” the tall boy said and held out his hand. “I’ve seen you around.”

  There was no way that Spud could shake hands without revealing the dirt on the palm of his right hand. He nodded stiffly, and kept both hands under the table, making an easy enemy for the rest of his college life. The tall boy, flushing slightly, tur
ned back to Armstrong.

  “What about that accountancy problem for tomorrow?” he asked. “Have you done it yet? We could do it together.”

  “Okay,” Armstrong said.

  “Come over right after dinner.”

  “I can’t,” Armstrong said. “We’ve got a volley ball game with the A.T.O.’s.”

  “Who’ve they got?”

  “Short and Harrigan and—”

  “Harrigan’s good.”

  “You’re telling me. They’ve also got Safford, Rains—”

  “Is Rains an A.T.O.? I thought he was a Delt?”

  “That’s his brother you’re thinking of. His brother is a Delt. This guy’s an A.T.O.”

  “I wonder why he didn’t pledge Delta Tau Delta?”

  “He could have, I guess,” Armstrong said. “But you know how brothers are with each other. He probably wanted to show his independence so he came down to school and pledged A.T.O. But anyway, he’s good.”

  “He’s damn good,” the tall boy said. “Herb Porter was talking about him. You know Porter, don’t you?”

  “Delta Chi?”

  “Chi Psi.”

  “I meant Chi Psi. Yeah, I know him.”

  “Well, good luck anyway.”

  “Oh, we’ll beat ‘em,” Armstrong said.

  The tall boy shook his head admiringly. “You boys aren’t overmodest, I’ll say that for you.”

  Armstrong smiled. “Why don’t you go bag your head, Shearer,” he said.

  “My girl’s making motions. She’ll give me hell if I don’t… Okay, fella. Be seeing you.”

  “Okay, fella,” Armstrong said.

  There were three of these conversations, all within fifteen minutes. Spud took no part in them. The girls talked to each other, but he sat back with a stiff expression on his face—the expression his mother put on sometimes when she found herself among women whose husbands were more successful than Mr. Latham, and whose diamond rings were more showy than hers. At four o’clock when Spud got up to go, Armstrong took the check and left with him. As soon as they had gone, Armstrong’s girl leaned forward, as if she had something to say which must not be overheard. “Army noticed Spud at our house dance.”