Reinhart in Love

by Thomas Berger

  Humbold’s face cleared, as if it were a stage after the curtain calls, with the players scurrying off.

  He asked without prejudice: “All right, bud. What’s your price?”

  Reinhart smiled and said: “Just as I suspected, Claude. You’d rather even pay out money than answer a question.”

  The boss’s bowtie jumped with his dirty little chuckle. “Can’t say, bud, I don’t recall ever doing either one.”

  The mayor gargled and spat, then said: “Bub—have I gotten your appellation correct? Bub, to put it succulently, the duly constituted legislative body of this municipality in Janooary of Nineteen hundred and forty-six voted in the affirmative to bring before the people a special bond issue, which was, pursuant to that decision of the counsel in deliberative session assembled, in the month of Febooary, same year—we are still in that year, incidentally”—he stopped, put a new cigar between his lips, puffed, removed it, and struck a kitchen match on the edge of Claude’s desk, leaving behind a long superficial wound. When its job was done, the match dropped from his limp fingers to the floor. Claude stabbed out desperately with a black-and-white oxford and killed the flame before it did more than scorch the hardwood in approximately the diameter of a nickel.

  The mayor’s head suddenly fell upon his chest. Somewhere inside him stayed the smoke from his second drag.

  C. Roy laid a big clamshell of a hand on his brother’s arm.

  “Bob, I didn’t think you was through.”

  It took more than that to stir the mayor, whose cigar was burning a hole in his vest. But at last he was shaken awake and, beating out the embers with the paddle-end of his necktie, he resumed: “In the due course of events, said special bond issue was brought to the polls in Murch of Nineteen hundred and forty-six, aforesaid year, carried to the citizens of this great town, who exercising their franchise, approved it to a degree characterized by the Fourth Estate as, I believe, overwhelming.”

  “There’s your data, bud,” said Claude, getting ready to thrust the papers at Reinhart again.

  “I guess that was about the time I got out of the Army,” Reinhart noted.

  “Ah,” exclaimed the mayor, and the cigar fell from his teeth into his lap. “You are a veteran of the late unpleasantness! Claude Hum-bold, you never told us that. We got a medal down at the town hall for you then, Bub, and will arrange for a public investiture. Never say our ‘umble community balks before recognition of the vast and massive debt—excuse me. C. Roy, was I not smoking?”

  “You was,” answered the chief. “And your stogie is at present laying on your lap, underneath your belly.”

  “Hear, hear!” shouted Claude. Every time Reinhart looked his way, he shoved the papers and pen at him.

  “It has been decided,” Bob J. went on, “most expeditious and advantageous to run the main adjacent to the veterans’ community, thereby servicing the needs of those heroes and their families as the obeisance of this municipality to the late example they set for all Americans by trouncing the Heinie and stemming the Yellow Tide. It is the least we can do to flush away their wastes.”

  C. Roy sniggered: “Shee-at.”

  “But what about this company that won the contract?” naively asked Reinhart.

  The mayor pointed the cigar at him. “No individooal can level the finger of calumny at that award. Cosmopolitan Sewers, Inc.—”

  “Limited!” shouted Claude.

  “—had the low bid, my friend, and I refer you to the record.”

  “But Your Honor,” said Reinhart, “and please don’t take offense, I just want to understand. You and your brother are on the board of Cosmopolitan Sewers.”

  “I tole you I would ream out your guts, and I sure will,” said C. Roy, extending his bristling jaw.

  But the mayor nodded benevolently. “A fair question, Bub, the fairest of queries. Precisely as you have remarked. But we are resigning. I refer you to the documents which your employer is striving to hand you. We made a mistake, and are big enough to amend same. Bub, what more can we do?”

  “Why,” asked Claude, “are you—” And the chief joined him in objection, but Bob J. overruled them with his three chins.

  “No, gentlemen and colleagues, let us admit our misendeavors. We have nothing to conceal.” He solemnly chewed his tongue, having once again mislaid the cigar.

  “Nevertheless, bud,” said Claude, “only a dirty skunk would reveal a confidence, and you was made this offer mainly because of your integrity.” He succeeded in forcing the papers on Reinhart.

  “I don’t see my name here anywhere,” Reinhart said after a onceover. “You seem to be resigning in favor of Blank Blank. And why are you quitting, Claude? You aren’t a civic official.”

  “Buddy,” said Claude, and hooted in exasperation. “You married my typist, for one—I ain’t got nobody to sock the L.C. Smith. Just you go and write yourself in. For the other, I got two reasons: Uno, you know I ain’t got time for nothing additional. Zwei, I’m trying to keep my promise to your daddy to make a man of you, and this is the thanks I get. You wanna be an expense to him for the rest of your life?”

  “Just what does that mean?” Reinhart felt a chill mince between his shoulder blades.

  “Why,” said the boss, leering on a circuit of the Gibbons, “who you think’s been putting out that salary per week, for which you laid around the Mason place and read books instead of pushing real estate? Me? Bud, you got solid cast iron from ear to ear if you think you can bamboozle your Uncle Dudley.”

  Reinhart couldn’t meet his overbearing eye. He watched his own feet and said miserably: “My dad has been paying my salary.” Without the help of his father and the government, he wouldn’t have had one stinking dollar.

  Claude kept his grin. “This can’t be news to you, bud. You knew it all the while. No? Go on. Go on.… Anyway, that’s over now. In your new position you get fifty fish a week and I’m moving you and the former G. Raven to one of my empty houses in a classy neighborhood, rent-free. How about that, how abou-ou-ou-ou-that?”

  Reinhart again protested, feebly, that he knew nothing about sewers, and in return heard that no officer of such a company ever did: the technical doings were the job of the subcontractor, whom Claude had already signed up. Nor was Reinhart conversant with finance, tax moneys, and the like—nor must he be, according to Claude, who would arrange for all that.

  “Then what’s the point of having me at all?” asked the ex-corporal.

  “Bud, the first thing you yourself suspected when you heard of this project was a stink in Denmark, and you ain’t no different from John Q. Public in that wise. Everybody thinks his tax dollar goes into a crooked pocket when it leaves his own—and I for one won’t fight him on that. But say you get the point here, buddy, O tell me you savvy this: go look in that mirror on the back of the toilet door and then let me know if you ever saw a honester phiz.”

  But what Reinhart saw instead was a weak bastard deserted by his wife and supported by his father, and he came back into the room and signed on as president of Cosmopolitan Sewers, Ltd.

  “By the way,” said Claude, waving the signatures dry, “don’t sweat about this salary, bud. I ain’t paying it, so you’re safe. This is feed from the public trough. Now as to that auto of mine which you been driving. Tell your daddy he don’t owe me any more rent on it. The Sanitation Commission of this town has purchased that there vehicle and earmarked it for the use of the president of Cosmopolitan Sewers.” He awakened the mayor and handed him the documents, then told Reinhart: “You made yourself a nice deal, bud. You’re on your way up, and when you get there, don’t forget who gave ya your first boost.

  “Cosmo has also rented this office, by the way,” Claude said. “Dint I say you would be sitting behind this here desk? A fella will come tomorrow and change the signs, bud. Take a piece a paper and write the way you want your name to show. I’ll be in bidniss from my home from now on, but I’d appreciate it if you would forget the address when certain parties call
.”

  C. Roy put on his police cap, and Reinhart noticed that the badge actually read CHIEF-though it is true his vision was still blurred by shame.

  “Now what else was it—right, right!” asked and answered Claude, squinting towards the ceiling. “Bud, who ever heard of a firm with only a prez? Who’s gonna take the reins if you come down with the virus? Didjever think of that? I’m taking suggestions.”

  “Pardon?” asked Reinhart.

  “Name one more director, bud. Individual of integrity, etcetera, like Hizzoner says you are conspicuous for. Young leader of the community. Specimen of the nation’s manhood. Veteran who stemmed the Yellow Tide.”

  Reinhart immediately thought of Fedder and his colleagues on the Vetsville Betterment Committee. The irony attracted him; for the same reason no doubt, some king actually gave Plato, a know-it-all on the subject of government, the chance to implement his theories, which of course flopped and that was that.

  But before he could speak, Claude said: “Bud, just how close are you to the niggers?”

  Reinhart blushed dark as one, and the boss hastened to add: “No criticism, fella. I admire you for it. The Almighty made some of us black—and some black and blue.” He winked at the chief, who looked very solemn when he himself was not making the sadistic allusions. “I personally give them up some time ago on account of I never understood their lingo. And you never find a spade who can resist the King Brothers—but that’s personal with me, man—ain’t that what they say, ‘man’?—but we all got our peculiarities, bud, don’t you forget it, and Old Glory waves over us all.”

  The mayor suddenly awakened and gave him a nice hand.

  Having nodded graciously to both sides of his audience, Claude went on: “Now here’s what comes off the top of the noodle: Why don’t you get a nice shine boy with you on this board?”

  C. Roy lip-farted and took his cap off, saying: “I still don’t like it.”

  “O.K.,” said Reinhart, who had reached the end of his rope. “I suppose you mean Splendor Mainwaring, since he’s the only Negro I know. But, look, Claude, if you have that much, you know he also just got out of jail. What kind of impression is it going to make when they find that out?”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” asked the boss, amiably gritting his teeth.

  “Your enemies. The ones you referred to a while ago when you wetted me down. Whoever you’ve got that mirror mounted up there to catch.”

  Claude leered so violently that his upper lip curled right up over his little mustache.

  “It always takes you a while, don’t it, bud? Bud, you should know better’n anybody that them natives is restless…. The niggers, bud, get it? Our black brothers are the enemy at present. Last night an individual representing them tried to gain access at the movie house and took the name of the Lord in vain when turned away. He also threatened to go get his black gang. He denounced the legally constituted authorities of this municipality, bud. He left when threatened with the law, but I doubt has changed his mind. This individual was described by a source as none other than—”

  “Yes,” said Reinhart. “Splendor Mainwaring. I figured he would get around to that sooner or later.”

  “I shoulda pegged out his skin on the jailhouse wall,” said the chief, “while we had him.”

  “Well sir,” Claude said, getting cheery again. “If one dark fella gets uppity, there’ll be more to follow. Tear gas, machine guns, National Guard. See ourselves in the newsreels, bud! Might get a nice piece of bidniss out of it, selling them little wood pickaninnies sitting in a outdoor crapper with “Souvenir of Race Riot” burned in the door with a electric pencil—”

  “I don’t get it,” Reinhart interrupted. “Negroes are admitted to the movie; I’ve seen them there myself.”

  “Never when under the influence, bud. Never while stinking.”

  “Then it was because he was drunk, not because he was colored.”

  “Buddy, he was a drunk nigger.”

  “Look,” said Reinhart. “Have they ever turned away a drunken white man?”

  “Look yourself, fella,” said Claude. “You know I take a dim view of elbow-lifting, white or black. I tell the ticket girl to give a bad time to anybody she smells liquor on.”

  “I’m trying not to get lost here,” Reinhart admitted. “You tell the ticket girl? You own the theater?”

  “It ain’t illegal, pal. I leave it up to Hizzoner.”

  The mayor mumbled affirmation without opening his eyes.

  “I don’t mean it is,” said Reinhart. “I just mean … well, why not say a drunk is never allowed in the theater and let it go at that?”

  “You’re getting bullheaded again, bud. Kindly tune in on the following message: He was a drunk nigger.” Claude slapped the desk edge with the tips of his fingers. “I never weasel on moral values, pal. And I never looked for you to do it, either, the way you was raised. But that’s between you and your Maker, bud. Now to go on with what I was saying when I was so rudely. You can’t build a sewer if you’re going to fight a jig war—and that’s what we are going to do, bud, build that sewer, for the convenience of black, white, purple, or polka dot—that’s democracy, bud, and that’s the way of that terrific little guy who was born in a manger. You prove to me Jesus Christ ever took a drink, and I’ll say call me a Red. And I don’t wanna hear no crossback argument that was muscatel they drank at the Last Supper: pure grape juice, bud, and noncarbonated—only one who boozed was Judas…. What we’re up against, to put it in a peanutshell, is your chocolate-colored friend threatens to sue the movie house, which comes down in the end to yours truly, for turning him away because he was a nigger. I never knew that was against the Constitution, did you? I figure it’s all hot air, but why take a chance? You won’t hear no more about it when he’s vice-president of Cosmo.”

  Reinhart shook his head in recognition. If he had had any sense, he would long since have brought Claude and Splendor together.

  “A nigger’s exactly like anybody else,” the boss added. “He just wants to be noticed.”

  “Bub,” said the mayor, not only awakening but rising from his chair with remarkable agility—but then the toad, while fat, is certainly nimble—“Bub, I don’t anticipate you will have cause to regret affixing your assent on this historical compact in any wise. We will be in communication ex officio.” He laid his hand in Reinhart’s, soft and damp as a half-chewed sandwich, took it back, and waddled out.

  What Reinhart waited for was C. Roy. He caught him as the chief was just coming up from the chair, and got his fist over C. Roy’s fingers between the second and third knuckles. Reinhart was very strong in the hands; even so, he probably outdid himself in this demonstration, which was all the more interesting for the chief’s reluctance to complain. Indeed, he grinned in a beastly way as if he were giving rather than getting what-for, but tears at the corner of his eyes betrayed him: it hurt awfully.

  Reinhart suddenly let go, at approximately the point beyond which C. Roy would have been permanently maimed. Enough is as good as a feast. Furthermore, Reinhart had used as much trickery as muscle; it was not clear that, though thirty years younger, he could have out-gripped the chief in a fair contest. Anyway, he had got across his message; that he was not the kind of fellow you could threaten all afternoon with impunity.

  Chapter 18

  “Dad, I don’t mind telling you I had made a mess of just about everything, but finally my luck changed at long last. At long last,” Reinhart repeated, because it was a turn of phrase that he liked.

  Dad ducked out of sight behind the fender of his Chevy, which they were washing with a dribbly hose minus its nozzle. Reinhart pioneered into the dirty surfaces while his pop followed along with the chamois.

  “I don’t know if you realize just how low I was,” the ex-corporal went on. “I had too much pride to let on. But look: Gen walked out on me; I fell behind in schoolwork; I wasn’t on good terms with the neighbors; I was at odds with this colored fellow—and I don’t
have to tell you about the job; I’m still humiliated that you had to pay what amounted to an allowance, and I want you to know that you’ll get every penny back just as soon—”

  “Carlo,” Dad interrupted, speaking through the grille, as it were, so that his voice had a rather metallic tinge, “would you please run that hose down along here?”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah,” said Dad. “Oops, you got me a little there. Sure don’t want to catch cold. Think I should go in and change?”

  “Naw,” Reinhart scoffed. “It’s unusually warm for October. Besides, you were just splashed, not soaked, and are dressed snug.” Dad wore serge pants; a shirt of cotton flannel faded from red to a sort of bruise-blue; a brown sweater; and at his neck you could see the edge of what would be, if Reinhart recalled the schedule, the medium weight, three-quarter-length, 30 per cent wool, 70 per cent cotton underwear that his father donned circa September 21st every year if the woodchuck had seen its shadow on the Labor Day previous. Dad also wore a black hat—as it happened, the same under which Reinhart had discovered him that bleak night in the railway station half a year before.

  “Got a new chapeau, Dad?”

  “Yeah that’s why I’m wearing this one out here. The one I used to wear out here I’ll give to some nigger, I think, if I see one going by.” He looked down the driveway into the street, but none passed at that moment, and disappointedly he stuck his nose again into the grille, asking: “Carlo, did you ever notice how dead leaves get stuck in all the little places here around the radiator? I wonder why.”

  Reinhart laid the hose down to gurgle alongside the driveway, squatted alongside Dad, and said: “Well, they get sucked up off the road by the air that is taken in there, and then they get stuck.”

  Dad chewed on the elucidation while trying to get his thick fingers between the close-set grille fins so as to dry the beads of water off their chromium.

  “Then let me ass you this, Carlo,” he said. “Is it your opinion these leaves do harm? Because I defy anybody to fish them out without arms the length of a baboon, and skinny enough to get in through these here what-do-you-call-ums. You’d think somebody would do something about that problem.”