‘No more day-old pompernickel,’ he gave her a reply at last and before she could realize just what he meant by that there was a taptapping at the door and there was Sparrow with a blue-and-white pencil-striped mattress on his back.
‘Got it in the section next to the ’lectric eye-rons,’ Sparrow boasted, dumping the mattress right in the middle of the floor, ‘just picked out the prettiest one, hauled it off the pile, told the girl I was from the basement, they got to have six down there right away to ship to the South Side store, special order, they got up here by mistake. She’s still waitin’ for me to come back ’n get the other five.’
‘Don’t tell Zosh how you got it,’ was Violet’s thought, ‘she’d be so ashamed.’
‘Yeh. But think how proud Frankie’s gonna be,’ Sparrow pointed out and turned to Old Husband. ‘I bought it for you, Old Man, it’s your comin’-home present to sleep on when I got to sleep in the bedroom. I don’t want you bein’ uncomfortable on the front-room couch.’
‘Don’t want.’ Stash kicked at the mattress petulantly.
‘What don’t you want, Old Man?’ Sparrow demanded to know. ‘You’d rather sleep on the couch wit’out no mattress, you mean?’
‘You pay board, what I want.’
So that was it. Just like somebody owed him something. For a moment Sparrow was so hurt he thought of walking right out and leaving Stash to try to handle Violet himself awhile. It took more than a new mattress for that. He himself was being extended beyond his own powers, he knew. ‘You talk like a bolt from the blue, Stash,’ he counseled Old Husband, ‘you don’t get the idea at all. Times have changed. I live here now. You’re the boarder these days. It’s why you got to pay the rent.’
Stash grappled with his truss over the heavy, bleached-out underwear, got it straight all around at last and announced firmly: ‘Am hoosband. You pay rent.’
Violet, sprawled out on the mattress, her hands beneath her hennaed head and her legs spread a bit to explore its possibilities, rolled over and buried her face in her hands, laughter shaking her shoulders. ‘He says he’s my husband,’ she managed to gasp, then dried tears of laughter out of her eyes, gathered the mattress in her arms and marched off to the bedroom with a low word to the punk: ‘I’ll be waiting, lover.’
In a minute she was back: ‘It’s too small for a double bed so I put it on your side – I got so much meat on me I could sleep on the floor ’n it’d feel like plush – but your poor little bones, the way they stick out-’
‘Ess,’ Old Man agreed with a malicious glee, ‘is good enough for Mrs No-good, on floor.’ He pointed commandingly to the sports section wadded into a hole in the battered couch. ‘Mr No-good there.’ He got a good grip on the truss and stood right up to Sparrow. ‘Stash boss by howz now. Stash sleep on bed.’
‘If you don’t stop tryin’ to make trouble around here you can’t tear no more days off my calendar,’ Violet told him, and went into the kitchen to see to the one small bottle of beer remaining there. Sparrow heard the tinkle of glass against the icebox door and followed. ‘We can’t afford to have you drinkin’ up our good beer on us, the way you’re actin’,’ he warned Stash, ‘you stay out.’
When Sparrow passed the bedroom door on the way downstairs for more beer he saw Stash stretched comfortably on the new mattress, working on a fresh cigar and with a half gallon all his own beside the bed. There was something wrong, Sparrow sensed, in the old man’s very posture. If he felt that relaxed today how could anyone be sure he’d feel like getting up at 5 A.M. to go to work tomorrow?
Stash got up in time to go to work the next morning – but Vi had to roll out first and get the coffee perking before he did it. ‘We can’t go on this way,’ Violet told him in the cold little kitchen, afraid to return to bed lest he return there too. ‘There got to be some changes made.’
‘Is right,’ Old Man agreed. ‘You go by job instead.’
Sure enough, he returned that same afternoon with his rusted ice tongs over his shoulder.
‘Did you quit or was you fired?’ she wanted to know before he had hung up his coat.
Stash made no reply. But he stayed home drinking beer the whole afternoon and in the evening Violet and Sparrow held an anxious conference in the kitchen.
‘He says he ain’t gonna do nothin’ but set around ’n read the temper’ture the rest of his life. Then he looks at the calendar like he wishes it was time awready to pull the date off for tomorrow.’
‘He’ll get tired of settin’ ’n settin’. He’ll go back to work just to have somethin’ to do,’ Sparrow hoped vaguely.
Old Man never wore pants or shoes or shirt about the house. When ready to eat he simply thrust knife and fork into the truss and sat wiggling his toes, in their heavy socks, till food was put before him. He broke in upon the conference, shuffled his upper plate into position and said, ‘Ready.’
‘Ready for what?’ Violet wanted to know in alarm. She had set plates for only two. Stash reached over and placed Sparrow’s plate in front of himself.
‘This stuff ain’t for you, Old Man,’ Sparrow pointed out, ‘this is fresh stuff. You couldn’t digest it. It’ll be ripe for you tomorrow, there’ll be lots left over.’
‘I digest awright,’ Stash assured him. ‘Now I’m eat. Ever’tin’ frash. Tomorrow you eat, little bits left all over.’
Sparrow and Violet watched the old man spreading creamery butter upon fresh rolls with something akin to horror. He helped himself to her dollar-twenty-a-pound ham.
‘Pick the strorberries,’ she commanded Sparrow, ‘I got to see how far this thing is going to go.’ But her voice faltered.
It went as far as the ‘strorberries.’ Stash poured half a pint of whipping cream over them and lit a tailor-made cigarette out of Sparrow’s pack, left lying carelessly beside the sugar bowl.
‘Why don’t you finish the cream, Old Man?’ Sparrow asked. ‘It might go sour.’
‘Is for coffee,’ Stash explained regally, shoving his cup toward the perking Silex. Violet filled it with a strange docility.
‘Now Stash gone by bed some more – ever’tin’ be nice, quiet,’ he warned them both after the very last of the cream had gone into his coffee and the last of the coffee had gone down his throat.
The fact that the right-hand button of the underwear’s trap had now loosened didn’t in the least detract from the dignity of the old man’s exit. They heard the closing of the bedroom door, the sighing of the new mattress giving surcease to his brittle old bones and the first gentle snore before either dared to speak.
‘It looks like our move,’ Violet said dismally, after the dishes were washed and they had returned to the front-room couch; there was scarcely room for both of them to lie comfortably on its worn springs.
‘Don’t say “our,”’ Sparrow reminded her, ‘say “yours.” You married him.’
‘Yeh, but I wouldn’t have had to hang onto him this long if you went out ’n got a steady job,’ she pointed out. ‘You could make it on the legit if you really wanted.’
‘Sure. I could get a Number Two shovel ’n get on a blast-furnace shift in Indiana Harbor ’n come home nights in the same shape as Stash is now ’n be snorin’ here on the front-room couch while you’re-’ He stopped himself.
‘Go ahead – finish what you started to say.’ Her eyes had darkened dangerously. ‘I s’ppose I’m in heat every time I see a pair of pants hangin’ on the line? All I think about, I guess, is that velvet-lined meat grinder?’
‘That about sizes it up,’ Sparrow thought discreetly. But all he said aloud was, ‘All I meant was if I had a full-time job I couldn’t do my fam’ly duty so good.’
‘You’re not breakin’ no records as it is,’ she assured him, ‘’n anyhow I’m not tellin’ you to start swingin’ no shovel. You could be a Western Union messenger ’n drop in to see me between messages.’
‘I’d never get back to the office on time,’ he predicted, ‘I’d be fallin’ off the bike. Why don’t you go by
Western Union yourself?’ And added silently, ‘Then I could rest up between messages.’
‘Fat chance I got of goin’ to work,’ Violet complained as might anyone unjustly deprived of the inalienable right to work for a living. ‘Who’d take care of Zosh ’n that oversize fart hound you palmed off on Frankie? If I didn’t get down there ’n sweep the floor the bottles’d be overflowin’, they’d be up to the sink.’
‘So long as they don’t go no higher,’ Sparrow philosophized, ‘if they did they’d get in the way of the dishes.’
‘Frankie’s got her so spoiled she won’t even put the dishes on the sink, she waits for me to pick them up now, just like she’s tryin’ to see how much I can take off her. I’m glad they only got one room ’cause she eats all over the place. I find dishes in the drawer, they must of been there since Frankie was in the army.’
‘It don’t look like you’ll have time to be cleanin’ up down there any more,’ Sparrow reminded her, ‘the way Old Man is actin’ you’ll have to start in up here first.’
‘He’ll come to his senses when I won’t let him tear the days off the calendar ’r read the temper’ture.’
‘How you gonna stop him?’
‘I’ll put the calendar up where he can’t reach it ’n lock the window so he can’t lean out. He can’t open it by hisself, the lock gets stuck. He has to holler for me to come unlock it.’
‘Don’t let him lean out too far.’
‘That’s what scares me, he leans out too damned far.’
‘Hold his legs.’
‘That’s the part that scares me, it’s when I’m holdin’ his legs. What if I let go?’
‘You won’t let go.’
‘I know I won’t.’
‘But you might forget to lock the window – well, I’m glad tearin’ days off the calendar is all he wants to tear off.’ Sparrow spoke with an uneasy gratitude. He wasn’t as certain, as he once had been, that Violet was an unmixed blessing.
‘Hurry up, honey,’ she panted in his ear, ‘we got to get dressed pretty soon ’n get down to the hall. I got to get Old Man dressed ’n shaved ’n clean socks on him. After all, the New Year’s party is for him.’
‘This one ain’t,’ Sparrow commanded her, ‘quit quackin’ ’n get to work.’
That was as far as Violet and the punk ever did get in resolving the problem of having a husband in the home. Had it not been for chance and an icy pane, old Stash might in time have driven them both to carrying messages for Western Union.
The first guest to arrive at the New Year’s Eve ball was Umbrella Man and as soon as he came in it was apparent that the occasion had been misunderstood. He carried a rebuilt umbrella ‘for bride-lady’ under his arm, his pants were pressed and no one could convince him that it was just a coming-out party for Old Husband because Old Husband had just come out.
Then Meter Reader the Baseball Coach came bringing a third baseman’s mitt with the signature of Stanley Hack autographed into the leather for Sparrow; and a book on how to throw your voice for Violet. He pretended never to have heard of anyone called Old Husband at all and had just dropped in to kiss the bride. So all he’d do when they tried to explain things to him was to say, ‘Don’t thank me, thank my boys.’
So they guessed somebody had been going around saying Violet had finally divorced Old Husband at last and was getting hitched to the punk. Which, with all the presents the rumor had brought in, didn’t do any particular harm. So everyone had a long pull of wiśniowa on it while Stash went about showing his clean socks to everyone and pointing with pride toward Violet, to show it was Mrs Him had given them to him.
Then Antek the Owner arrived with a bruised cheek. He’d been drinking his own whisky all day, till Mrs Owner had locked him out in order to have something left for Monday’s customers. Owner was on the verge of tears. ‘Married fourteen years ’n never a harsh word – now she bats me with the mattress board ’n locks me out of my own home. I got no home no more, fellas. I got nothin’, it’s all in her name. Owner’s out in the cold world all alone, can’t even get in to see his own little girl – isn’t that a shame, fellas?’
He didn’t draw a tear. Everyone knew he got maudlin as regularly as he had a good week and was locked out till he sobered up. Locking him out, after a good week, was the only thing that sobered him. He had a crying need for pity and could never understand why no one sympathized with a man robbed, overnight, of wife, home, family, honor and his lifetime savings.
When Owner wanted to cry, he cried, and anything at all did for an excuse. What really mattered with Owner wasn’t on the tongue but in the heart; since he had no words for his heart, he wept.
‘I’m not cryin’ for my own trouble,’ he confided in Frankie, leaning so heavily across the wheelchair’s arm that Frankie had to brace it with his foot to keep it from being rolled backward, ‘I’m cryin’ for everybody’s.’ He took off his glasses to cry the better for everyone; for the lenses were so splashed with tears they were indistinguishable from the beads of sweat about his round bald brow.
‘You’re cryin’ from the skull now, Owner,’ Frankie informed him. ‘When it starts comin’ out of your ears it’s time to use the handkerchief.’ And assured Sophie from where he stood behind her, ‘He’ll be back behind his bar Monday morning.’
They wandered in from all over the ward, the invited and the uninvited, the wary and the seeking, the strayed, the frayed, the happy and the hapless, the lost, the luckless, the lucky and the doomed. Some, on the assumption that if anyone were getting out of jail it must be the punk again, to congratulate Sparrow; only to find all the more reason for celebration when they learned that, just for this once, it wasn’t the punk at all.
Everyone got congratulated for something or other whether he deserved it or not. Everyone but Old Man, who couldn’t even get congratulated on his new socks. So he tried going about announcing ‘Stash boss by howz’ while clutching a week’s worth of calendar dates; and still no one paid him any mind.
And some came just to celebrate the season with Frankie Machine.
Yes, and one blind peddler so drunk he merely sat in a corner and called out, from time to time, that he, alone of all good hustlers, had come to mourn a hustler.
To mourn for Fomorowski, Blind Pig defied them all.
While the whole long hall rejoiced.
And Violet, finding pity at the bottom of a whisky glass, began making every stewbum, who came up to kiss her, shake hands with Old Husband first and admire his socks. Till the old man, clutching his calendar dates like so many retrieved hours, felt the party must really be for him after all.
Meter Reader kept running back and forth in the center of the floor scooping up an imaginary grounder he’d missed in some long-gone summer’s double header. For Meter Reader didn’t know a meter from an egg beater: it was only that long ago he had come into a meter reader’s cap. It had lost the insignia above the peak, but still served when he coached the Endless Belt & Leather Invincibles. He was still trying to explain Endless Belt’s 19-1 loss to Lefkowicz Fast Freight and the boys were egging him on.
‘I’m proud of my boys,’ Meter Reader insisted, ‘proud of every man of them.’ He still lived over that overwhelming defeat though it had been achieved on the Fourth of July and the year was running out with the hour. He still had to establish that he felt no shame in that defeat. When Meter Reader grew excited he couldn’t see he was being jived a bit.
The phone rang and someone said it was Owner Budzban of Endless Belt wanting to talk to his coach about spring training. Of course it was only Sparrow phoning from across the street, but the hall grew quiet so Meter Reader could hear the message better. Out of the corner of the eye everyone watched him listening so humbly, head sinking slowly in despair while the punk told him he was through at Endless Belt – his check would be mailed to him Monday morning. No, there was nothing wrong with his work at Endless Belt, it was just that the company couldn’t afford to back a losing team any longer. Fee
ling was running pretty strong, the boys wanted a winner this year so it had been decided to let Coach go with the best of New Year’s wishes.
Meter Reader came out of the booth looking broken-hearted. Losing the job was nothing, he had held onto it only because it had made a coach of him with each returning spring. ‘One hell of a New Year’s resolution they made there, it’s all I got to say,’ he mourned. ‘But I seen it coming since July. Well, I’ll find something else’ – then as if suddenly jolted by the full truth of what had happened to him he seized Frankie by the sleeve and shouted right in his ear, ‘I’m proud of my boys! Every fool man of them!’
‘Meter Reader!’ someone called, ‘there’s a Mexican out here wants you to coach for Vera Cruz next season – can you talk Mex? What should we tell him?’
Meter Reader, to whom all things were possible, waddled out to see what kind of offer Vera Cruz had for him. Before he reached the door the phone rang for him once more and the same voice came on again: ‘Is Owner Budzban. You could have job back but we got to get new coach. Is okay?’
So he smelled the punk at last and came out of the booth this time refusing to talk to anyone. He got a good hold of the bar and wouldn’t let go. It took Meter Reader some time to grow suspicious – but once he became so he overdid it. When the phone rang and he was told his girl was on the line he refused unconditionally to answer. For a week now he wouldn’t be believing the simplest sort of neighborhood gossip.
While Sophie sat so flushed with excitement that she looked ready to get up and start dancing herself any minute. Sparrow wheeled her under the mistletoe and kissed her, and all the boys kissed her, till it hardly felt that she was just somebody in a wheelchair at all.
High atop the Christmas tree a single tinsel star looked down and Old Husband, weaving a little in the middle of the floor, pointed the neck of an empty whisky bottle at it and shouted, ‘Aj´ Za stary jestem popatrzyc´ na gwiazdyck.’ He had grown too old to look at stars. And fell back, exhausted, into many waiting arms.
The Man with the Golden Arm Page 21
