by M. E. Kerr
Elisa said, “I was right about Wolfgang paying a lot of attention to me at the party. His father had told him to make friends with me, as a favor to Vater.”
“Why?”
“Because Vater was planning to send me to Germany, to bring Omi back. Vater knew that as much as I love Omi, I would not want to go. Not even for a few weeks! I am tired of being yanked from schools to go to another place, and this time I did not want to leave because of our friendship.”
“I thought your mother was going over there to get her?”
“That was the plan. But Mutti hates it so here, my father was afraid she would get to Potsdam and not come back. Omi does not look forward to living here, either. But with Mutti still here, there would be a better chance of getting Omi to leave Germany.”
“And if Wolfgang Schwitter was traveling there too,” I said, “you would not miss our friendship.”
“Please do not rub at it,” said Elisa.
“Rub it in,” I corrected her, and wished I hadn’t.
“Vater says all he did was see if Wolfgang planned to visit his grandfather, who is very old. But I know Vater talked Mr. Schwitter into sending Wolfgang at the same time I would go. January. Vater thought I would like to have a traveling companion.”
“Just you and Wolfgang will go?”
“Yes, that is the awful plan.”
We both were crying, but the more she talked, the more I wondered what she was really crying about. All right, we would be separated for a while, bad news for me, but she was obsessed with Wolfgang Schwitter. He was all she had been talking about for months.
“Elisa,” I said, “you like Wolfgang, don’t you? And aren’t you coming right back?”
She suddenly had fire in her eyes. “Wolfgang Schwitter has never paid any attention to me before! He never even called me up on the telephone to thank me for giving him Wurst! Remember at the church he forgot my name and called me Phyllis? I reminded him of that at their party. That was when he teased me by dedicating a song to Phyllis. Jessica, he flirted so with me!”
“Maybe he meant it.”
“He said that we were going to be a good team. You see, he already knew then that I was going to Germany, and he would go then too to see his grandfather.”
“But the night of the party he didn’t try to date you, did he? Didn’t you think if he was so attracted to you, he would?”
“No. He was leaving for New York the next day. Before the Morro Castle shipwreck the musical would have opened a few weeks from today.”
I blew my nose and tried to ignore my mother calling again from downstairs.
I said, “Elisa, I doubt that Wolfgang needed much persuading. You are not like anyone else in Cayuta. You are beautiful, and you are sophisticated.”
“I had no friends until you,” she said. “I told you I have trouble making friends. And I am not beautiful! With my short fingers and arms? You just like me, the same as I like you. You think because I know a few languages that makes me sophisticated? You are naïve, Süsse. You saw Wolfgang at the film night. All he cared about was buying the pin Omi gave me. He did not look at me two times after that conversation.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to make her feel better. It was just beginning to sink in that she was leaving.
“This is all a maneuver of my father’s!” Elisa said. “I am humiliated and ashamed to believe Wolfgang was captured by me. I want nothing to do with anyone forced to like me. I have become suddenly a laughing spot!”
Stock, I said to myself silently.
“Elisa,” I said, “you have no reason to be ashamed.”
“I have every reason to be ashamed, and I wish I wasn’t going. Vater knew I would not want to go, not even with Wolfgang to sweeten the journey. Deep in his heart he knew how happy I had become here. That’s why Vater waited as long as he could to tell me.”
“Do you have to go?” I said. “Is it an order?”
“Yes, I have to go. That doesn’t mean I have to pay any attention to Wolfgang Schwitter! I won’t! I will not!”
“Isn’t Adolf Hitler supposed to be dangerous?”
“Only if you are Jewish. That’s what Grossmutter says. Omi says he is good for Germany! She says he is for Germany what Roosevelt is for America!”
“Oh, I hate you to go, Elisa.”
It was at that moment the prison sirens rang, louder than the whistle and more persistently. The sirens never rang unless there was a dire emergency.
Running down the stairs, we collided with my mother at the bottom step.
“What are you girls, crazy? Dressing up like that! Are you out of your minds?”
“Why is the prison siren sounding, Mother?” I asked. “Someone couldn’t have escaped!”
“No! Someone couldn’t have! That is an escape-proof prison now,” said my mother. “We haven’t had anyone break out up there since your father and I came here!”
The sirens persisted.
Elisa clapped her hands together. “What if it is him?”
“Who?” Mother asked.
“Him. Slater!”
“Elisa, he wouldn’t be in the prison with the parade in progress,” said my mother. “He’d be downtown.”
“Loose,” I said.
30
Dear Seth,
You may remember that when I gave you the yellow cashmere sweater a while back, I tried to say how pleased I am to think of you and my beloved J. J. having a future together. I could not pick a better young man for a son-in-law. I know your father from Rotary, and it is my guess that like father like son. Your father and I both are family men, the type who’d rather be walking in the woods with our women than down on a golf course with other men.
Now everyone in Cayuta is at the Halloween parade. Mrs. Joy has gone for lunch-and-a-look with neighbors. J. J. and you have taken our Buick for a picnic at Joyland Park.
Seth, I am no good to my family anymore. Hanging on this way, I am driving them into bankruptcy. We have run through our personal savings and are now about to lose our credit. The only asset I have is my sizable life insurance policy. Gladys and J. J. will not have to worry about money for quite some time.
I remember when I was a young man, slightly arrogant after I inherited the shoe company from an uncle, I had a favorite saying: I clean my own guns. What I meant was I took care of things myself. I didn’t depend on others.
It is ironical, because that is what I want this to look like: that I was in the garage, cleaning my guns, and there was an accident. I have only two guns, my Colt .38 from army days and the shotgun I intend for my suicide. I do not want to botch it, for I know that if I do, my family will have to live down the disgrace of an attempted suicide, almost worse than suicide itself.
I am writing to you so that someone close to the Joys will know I did not pick a coward’s way out, but a man’s only choice: to do what is best for his family. I consider you family, Seth. I never thanked you for getting your father to send an inmate from The Hill (and poor dear Myra as well) to help with the chores. It was so like you to just take charge behind the scenes, assisting us without announcing it.
It is for you to tell J. J. your wish to marry her. I have not mentioned it to Mrs. Joy or J. J. (named by me Joy! Joy! Joy!—my emotions on her day of birth!). But you know you have my blessings!
Perhaps one day you will share this letter with J. J. Use your own judgment about an appropriate time. I do not believe her mother would welcome this information, for she would feel abandoned by me, but J. J. can decide that.
I am full of memories of the past. Things I used to say and see and sing. There is an old radio here I intend to listen to for a while longer, sit here and smile and hum along. I have every reason to smile, for how happy I have been until these last two years, how I have rejoiced when I would do simple things like come around the corner in my Buick and see this big white house and know that inside, the two people I cherished the most would be waiting to see me. Failure or not, I belong
to them, and there is so much love.
That is why I have to do it.
Be strong for J. J., Seth.
Yours, Horace Joy
31
SLATER CARR
WHAT WAS MR. Joy doing? After Slater shoved the jacket of the Blues uniform into a trash can, he watched Joy mail a letter at the corner postbox.
That was news. He hadn’t expected him to be home. He was surprised too when Mr. Joy walked to the garage instead of going into the house. Wasn’t it late to be going to the parade? Would he have to wrestle him for the Buick?
Slater waited a moment before he followed him into the garage. Inside there was a small radio playing on a table beside an old leather chair with the springs popping.
Mr. Joy did not hear Slater behind him. Slater knew the song playing. “Blue Moon.” It was a sad song he had heard over the portable radio the warden had given him, to learn new songs for The Blues’ performances. It was about standing alone without a dream in your heart, without a love of your own. Without a car, too, Slater thought ironically. Where was the Buick? And what was Mr. Joy, of all people, doing with two guns?
Never mind. Slater could use one of them. He waited while Mr. Joy sat down in the chair. Then he crept toward him and quickly got him in a headlock with his arm, saying, “Don’t move! Just don’t move, Mr. Joy!”
“Who’re you?” Joy grunted.
“The big bad wolf. How much money do you have?”
At first Slater thought Joy was choking, but he was laughing.
Slater said, “Don’t laugh if you want to live. Tell me how much money you can get your hands on!”
“What if I don’t want to live?” Joy managed to say.
Slater loosened his hold on the man slightly. “All the more reason to give me your money,” he told him.
“Where have I heard your voice before? I know your voice.”
“Don’t waste my time! I want money!”
“I’m in the process of declaring bankruptcy,” Joy said.
“How much loose money do you have?” Slater asked him.
“In my wallet there’s about twenty dollars. You’ve worked around here, haven’t you?”
“Don’t try to look back. Hand over the wallet.”
“I know you. You cut my lawn last week. You’re the Bugle Boy.”
While Mr. Joy reached behind to his back trousers pocket, Slater lunged for the pistol. Joy reached up and caught the gun’s nose and the gun’s trigger, and there was the punch of a shot firing. While Joy’s body took the shock, his foot knocked the shotgun to the floor, and there was another explosion.
“What did you do?” Slater shouted.
He saw that somehow Joy had shot himself. Joy slumped over and fell to the garage floor. Then Slater saw blood soaking through the yellow sweater he was wearing, the sweater he had swiped from the warden’s back porch when he was doing away work there. He had always known he would wear it one day when he found a way out. He had put it on that morning under his Blues uniform.
Slater grabbed the towel Mr. Joy had been using to clean his guns. He wrapped it tightly around himself where the shotgun shot had blasted open his arm down to his elbow.
He had no choice but to leave Joy lying in his own blood on the garage floor near the shotgun and the pistol. Joy’s eyes were glazed over like the eyes of a fish at the end of a hook. He was clearly dead.
Slater never would have killed the man. He had actually liked him. Sometimes Joy would come out and work alongside him, weed, paint the trim, whatever he could do to keep himself busy. He hadn’t shown the kind of interest in Slater the warden had; he didn’t really give a damn for him, though he was probably grateful the boss had sent Slater there some days to help out. But Joy would bring him a cold Coke on a hot afternoon, or a PopSicle from the icebox.
Why hadn’t the man just let Slater have the gun?
Why the struggle?
Slater went inside the house, where he had never been. He easily found the phone on the parlor table. The operator took a few moments to get him the number he wanted. It was beginning to get dark out.
“Sir?”
“Who is this?” Slater asked.
“It’s the operator, sir.”
“Where’s my party?”
“Sir? This is hard for me.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Marlene Hellman, sir. I shouldn’t even tell a customer my name, but under the circumstances—sir?”
“What? Where’s my party?” He was shouting. He would not have any blood left soon. It was running from the towel down his hand, his arms, on his pants, his shoes, on the rug.
“I am sorry to tell you, sir, that your party is deceased.”
“No!”
“Yes, sir.”
“No! No!”
“I am sorry to say yes, she is deceased, sir. I am sorry.”
He hung up and stood there for a few seconds.
Where would the money be hidden in this house, jewelry, anything of value?
Upstairs, he thought. That was where people kept things, hid things.
He saw the winding staircase and took the steps by twos. He was winded and, he realized suddenly, very weak. At the top of the stairs was a huge master bedroom. He headed in there, his heart racing. His back began to ache suddenly, sharp, hard pains, and his gut. Then he had no feeling below his waist.
He fell across the bed.
Although he had never called her Purr to her face, he whispered to himself: “Purr, how could you be dead?”
He lay on his back, on the double bed, tears suddenly filling his eyes and streaming down his face.
She had always been there for him, even after he had gone to prison. The only mail he had ever received had been from her. She had been the only one who had ever loved him.
All he had wanted to do was see her one more time, play with The Georgia Peaches one more time, play “Lord, I’m Coming Home”…with feeling.
That was the instant the prison sirens began to wail.
32
“DO YOU HAVE the radio on, Richard?”
“No. I have a new hat on. A fedora. It cost five bucks!”
“Don’t you hear the prison sirens?”
“Is it a Halloween stunt?”
“Slater has escaped. They’re looking for him.”
“How did he escape?”
“He must have walked away from the parade. When the sirens sounded, Elisa’s mother called here and said my father should send a guard to bring Elisa home! Then Elisa just ran out the door, across the street, all the while her mother was telling my mother that obviously my father couldn’t control his ‘gangsters.’”
“Slater’s going to need help, Jessie. He could get himself shot!”
“I knew you’d say something like that. You and Elisa are birds of a feather. She said you should try to find him and get him to go back.”
“Yes, but how? How?”
“She said take your bike and see if you can find him. He’s on foot in that blue band uniform. He knows only a few places. I know that much from Daddy telling me. He did away work at City Hall, our house, and the Joys’.”
“Jessie, what if I do find him?”
“Elisa says take him a long coat, a cap, some disguise so he can get back safely.”
“But why would he want to go back? He just escaped.”
“Tell him they’ll shoot him dead if he doesn’t go back. Elisa says he doesn’t want to die.”
“How does she know he doesn’t want to die?”
“She says he couldn’t play like that if he didn’t love life.”
“I think she’s got a crush on him, but so what?”
Once in the summer Elisa had told both Richard and me she might be in love with Slater. I was used to that old line. I knew how she had exaggerated her feelings for him, particularly right after she had heard the bugle. For a while that day, as we’d walked along, Richard had tears in his eyes, even though he’d said to Elisa
it must be swell to feel that way about someone. Later he’d told me he’d thought it over and so what if she did love him? He was a lifer, wasn’t he?
I said, “Richard? I would help you, but I am not allowed out of the house. I am in the doghouse for dressing up as a convict to go in the Halloween parade. Elisa can’t even talk to me on the telephone, her mother’s so furious!”
“I just hope some trigger-happy cop doesn’t shoot him,” Richard said. “I’m going to try to get him on a train.”
“No, take him back!”
“Let me handle this my way.” Since his braces had been removed, Richard was asserting himself more and more.
I said, “You know what Elisa’s mother told me? I called Elisa up to see if the convict costume had gotten her in trouble too, and her mother said I’d never talk to Elisa again!”
“If you want me to find Slater Carr, you’d better let me go right now.”
“Did you hear what I just said? Mrs. Stadler said I’d never talk to Elisa again!”
“How’s she going to stop you?” Richard said.
“That’s what I’d like to know. She said her twin sister was hysterical and Herr Stadler was on his way home from Cornell. All because Slater’s running around somewhere.”
“You’re kidding!”
“She’s afraid the whole prison will break out, and she said the Stadlers were not going to live in fear any longer!”
Richard laughed. “I don’t believe that woman!” he said.
Later on Richard believed that woman.
We all did.
But late Halloween afternoon Richard went off on his bicycle to ride through as many neighborhoods as he could. He wore his long raincoat to give to Slater and had even made a small package filled with sandwiches, a Coke, a jackknife, a map of New York State, ten one-dollar bills, nickels for the phone, iodine, and Band-Aids.
