I finished the beer and crumpled the can in my hand. “Thanks for the beer.”
“It’s okay.”
I turned to go. She called me back. “What are you going to do now? This summer, I mean.”
“I figured on goin’ hitching until school opened in the fall. But now I don’t know.”
“You’ll be eighteen soon,” she said.
“That’s right. Vote, all that shit. Another two months I’ll be all grown up. Seven weeks.” I looked at the smoke curling out of her nose. “Tell me something.”
“Yes?”
“If you had the hots for my father, why didn’t you do something about it?”
“I was afraid, I guess.”
“Of what?”
Her eyes were thoughtful. “Of rejection. That he might laugh at me. Think I was a silly kid.” She hesitated a moment. “That happened to me once. With another man. It took me months to get over it.”
“That wouldn’t have happened with my father,” I said. I vaulted the porch rail and landed on the soft earth.
“Jonathan.” She came to the rail and looked down at me. “Don’t you feel alone? Terribly alone?”
“I always did,” I said. “Even when he was alive.”
I took the key from under the doormat and let myself in. I went through the back hallway into the kitchen. The only sound in the house was my footsteps. There were pots on the stove and dishes placed neatly on the counter near the sink. The world might come to an end, but Mamie would have everything ready for dinner at seven o’clock. That was the time my father liked to eat. I wondered whether it would change now.
Suddenly I was hungry. I opened the refrigerator door, found the ham and cheese and made myself a sandwich. I pulled out a can of beer and sat down at the kitchen table. I took the first bite of the sandwich before I realized what was wrong. There was not another sound in the house.
I got up and turned on the kitchen TV. The warming buzz followed me back to my chair. A moment later the screen flashed into life and my father’s face scowled at me. His hoarse voice filled the kitchen.
It was his most famous speech. The Challenge to Democracy. “A man is born, he works and he dies. Then there is nothing…”
I got up again and switched channels. I’d heard that speech before. A rerun of Star Trek was on Channel 11. I settled into that one. Monsters on other worlds were much more palatable than the monsters on this one. Mr. Spock did his number. He never cracked a smile.
I finished the sandwich and walked out of the kitchen, leaving the set on. The noise trailed me through the house. I peeked out the windows before going upstairs to my room. The reporters were still there.
I got out of my suit and into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. I changed the black leather shoes for a pair of sneakers. Then I went into the bathroom and rubbed all the gook out of my hair. I looked into the mirror. My face stared back at me critically.
Not bad. No pimples.
I nodded to my reflection and went downstairs. The door to my father’s study was open. I stood there for a moment and then went into the room.
Already there was something musty about it. As if suddenly it were yesterday’s room. You could feel somehow that it was no longer his room.
I walked over and looked down at the desk. It was covered with papers and reports. Several ashtrays still held the butts of cigars, and the wastebasket was full. Idly, I went behind the desk and sat in the oversize leather chair. It was still shaped by my father’s big ass, and I sank right into it. I pulled myself forward and began looking through some of the papers.
Most of them were reports from various locals around the country. Dues collections, arrears, contract notices. All dull stuff. I wondered why my father had wasted his time going through each and every one of them with all the other things he had to do.
Once I had asked. Now I remembered his reply. “You can’t run a big business, son, without knowing your finances every minute. And don’t you forget, this union is one of the biggest in the country. Our pension fund alone has a surplus of almost two hundred million dollars, and we have investments in everything from government bonds to Las Vegas.”
“Then you’re no different than any of the companies you fight,” I said. “All you care about is profits.”
“We have different motivations, son.”
“I can’t see the difference,” I said. “When it comes to your money, you’re just as reactionary as anyone else.”
My father took his heavy reading glasses off and put them on the desk. “I never knew you were interested in what we do.”
“I’m not,” I said quickly. “It’s just that from what I see, big labor and big business are one and the same thing. Money is all that matters.”
My father’s piercing blue eyes searched my face. At last he spoke. “Someday, when I have time, we’ll go into that. I think I’ll be able to convince you that you’re wrong.”
But as usual when my turn came, he never had the time. Now it was too late. I put the papers back on the desk and began to open the drawers.
The center drawer was filled with more papers. So was the left-hand top drawer. But the right-hand top drawer had nothing in it. Absolutely nothing.
It didn’t make sense. All the other drawers were packed to overflowing. I put my hand in the drawer and fished around. Still nothing. Then I noticed a small catch. I pressed it and the bottom of the drawer slid forward.
I looked down into the false bottom. There, blue-black, oily and deadly, was a big Colt Government Model Automatic. Slowly I picked it up. It weighed a ton in my hand. This was no toy; this was serious business. Somewhere I had read that a bullet from a Colt .45-caliber automatic makes a hole as big as a silver dollar when it comes out the other side.
I put it back in the drawer and shut it. I sat there staring at the closed drawer, and after a while I got to my feet and left the room. I took another can of beer from the fridge and went out on the back porch.
Anne was still sitting where I had left her. She waved to me. I waved back, then sat down on the swing chair. I took a sip of the beer and we sat there, each of us, just staring at each other across the fence that separated our backyards.
***
“Why did you go through my desk?”
“I don’t know. It was there, that’s all.”
“I don’t object. I was just curious.”
“You’re dead. It shouldn’t matter to you anymore. The dead have no privacy.”
“I’m not dead. I thought you were beginning to understand that.”
“That’s a lot of shit. Dead is dead.”
“Dead is never. You’re still alive.”
“But you’re not.”
“Why did you switch to Star Trek? Were you afraid to look at me?”
“It was a better program.”
“Why are you sitting here? I thought you were going away.”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“You’re going.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“That girl over there. I haven’t finished with her yet.”
“You haven’t changed, have you?”
“Why should I? You’re still alive.”
***
The beer can was empty. I got to my feet and threw it into the plastic garbage pail near the kitchen door. I pulled open the door and started to go back into the house. I looked back at her.
She hadn’t moved. The smoke from her cigarette was curling up around her face, and her eyes were watching me. She had to be stoned by this time. Then I saw her nod and rise slowly to her feet. I watched her disappear behind the screen door and heard the click of its latch. The sound seemed to hang there until I closed the door behind me. I went upstairs to my room, threw myself on the bed and almost instantly fell asleep.
***
The hum of voices rising through the floor woke me up. I opened my eyes. The afternoon sun had moved away from the windows. I stared up at the ceiling, lis
tening to the drone of voices beneath me.
It was familiar and oddly comforting. There had been so many nights when I had fallen asleep just like this with the sounds of muted conversation in my ears. My bedroom was just over my father’s study.
It was familiar, but there was something different about it this time, something missing. It took a moment before I realized what it was: his voice. Somehow I had always been able to hear it above all the others.
I got out of bed and went downstairs. The study door was closed; the voices filtered through the wood. I opened it and looked in. The room was suddenly silent.
D.J. was in the chair behind the desk, with Moses standing beside him as he used to stand with my father. Jack was seated at the side of the desk on D.J.’s right, and three other men, their backs to me, were sitting in front of the desk. They turned and looked at me silently. I didn’t know them.
“My brother, Jonathan,” D.J. said. It was more an explanation than an introduction.
The strangers nodded cautiously, their eyes guarded.
D.J. didn’t bother to introduce them. “I didn’t know you were home.”
“I came right from the funeral parlor.” I stayed in the open doorway. “Where’s my mother?”
“The doctor gave her a pill and sent her to bed. She’s had a rough day.”
I nodded.
“I thought we’d come in here. There were some things to straighten out before I went home. I’m booked on an eight-o’clock flight, and we have an executive-council meeting first thing in the morning.”
I stepped into the room. “Getting it together?”
Dan looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Carving up the world and all that.” I walked over to the desk and looked down at it. All the papers I had seen in the drawers were now spread across the desktop. The gun wasn’t there. I wondered if they had found it.
“The work doesn’t stop just because…” D.J.’s voice trailed off.
I finished it for him. “The King is dead. Long live the King.”
D.J. flushed. Moses’ voice was gentle. “Jonathan, we really have a great deal of work to do.”
I looked at him. There was a strain in his eyes I had never seen before. An uncertainty. I looked around at the others. Suddenly I knew what it was. The foundation had gone and they were afraid that the house might crumble.
I felt sorry for them. They were on their own now. My father wasn’t around to tell them what to do.
“I’ll get out of your way.” I looked down at my brother. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It will come out all right.”
He didn’t answer.
I held out my hand. “Good luck.”
He looked at my hand, then up at me. His voice was husky as he took it, and there was something very close to tears behind his eyes. “Thank you, Jonathan.” He blinked rapidly. “Thank you.”
“You’ll do okay.”
“I hope so,” he said. “But it won’t be easy. Things won’t be the same.”
“They never are,” I said, and left the room. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it for a moment. The voices began again. I closed my eyes, searching for my father’s voice. But it wasn’t there.
D.J. had loved him. I hadn’t. Why? Why was it different for the two of us? We were both his sons. What had D.J. seen in him that I hadn’t?
I went through the hall to the kitchen. Mamie was in there fussing with her pots and pans, muttering to herself. “What time is dinner?” I asked.
“I doan know,” she answered. “I doan know nothin’ ’bout this house no more. Ever’thing’s topsy-turvy. Your brother doan want dinner an’ your mother upstairs cryin’ her eyes out.”
“I thought the doctor gave her a pill to sleep.”
“Maybe he did. But it ain’t workin’, that’s all I know.” She dipped a ladle into a pot and held it steaming in front of me. “Taste it,” she commanded. “But blow on it fust. It’s hot.”
I blew and tasted. Good beef stew. “Needs more salt.”
She laughed and took the ladle away. “I might’ve expected it. Just like your pappy. That’s what he always used to say.”
I stared at her. “Did you like my father?”
She put the ladle down on the sink and turned to me. “That’s the stupidest question I ever heard, Jonathan. I adored your pappy. He was the greatest man who ever lived.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because that’s the truth, that’s why. You ask anyone back home. They all tell you the same thing. He treated niggers like people before they became blacks.” She went back to the stove and took the cover off the pot and looked inside. “More salt, you say?”
“Yes,” I said, and went out the door. I went upstairs and stood outside my mother’s door.
Mamie was wrong.
There was not a sound.
***
Jack Haney came into the kitchen, where I was having dinner alone. “I’ll join you for a cup of coffee,” he said, pulling up a chair.
“Have some stew,” I said. “There’s enough here to feed an army.”
“No, thanks,” he answered as Mamie put the coffee in front of him. “We’re grabbing a bite on the plane.”
I watched him raise the coffee cup to his mouth. “You’re going down to Washington?”
He nodded. “Dan wants me with him at the executive meeting tomorrow. There could be some legal questions.”
Suddenly it was no longer D.J., not even Daniel, Junior—it was Dan.
“Any problems?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Your father had had it all pretty well worked out.”
“Then what’s D.J. worried about?”
“There’s a lot of old-timers around who might resent having a young man like him take over.”
“Why should they? They knew about it all the time.”
“True enough. But while your father was alive they wouldn’t stand up to him. Now it’s another story. What they don’t understand is that for the first time they’re getting someone who is trained for the job and doesn’t have to learn it as he goes along and that it doesn’t really matter whether he ever worked in the field or organized or walked a picket line. Running a union is much like running a big business. It needs trained men. That’s why the corporations compete for the top men in colleges and universities. Your father always thought that was what we should do. That’s why he pushed Dan through all those schools.”
I knew what he meant. He had been after me to do the same thing. First Harvard Law, then the Business School. He had had it all figured out. Everything except that I wasn’t about to be pushed. I wiped up the last bit of gravy on my plate with a piece of bread.
Mamie stood over my empty plate. “More?”
I shook my head.
She picked up the plate. “’Nough salt?”
“Perfect.”
She laughed and put the coffee down in front of me. “Jus’ like your pappy. Fust complainin’ there’s not enough salt, then lovin’ it ’thout my having to add any.”
I looked at Jack. “Exactly what’s happening tomorrow?”
“The executive committee is supposed to appoint Dan acting president until the next general election. That’s nine months away, next spring. By then we expect to have everything under control.”
I nodded. If my father had planned it, it would work. Father’s plans always worked.
Jack finished his coffee and got to his feet. “Would you explain to your mother why I left and tell her that I’ll call her in the morning?”
I looked up at him. “Okay.”
“Thanks,” he said, starting for the door. A few minutes later I heard a car door slam out in the driveway. I went over to the window and looked out. The big black Cadillac limousine was just moving off. I watched until its red lights turned into the street. Then I went upstairs and stood outside my mother’s door. There was still nothing but silence.
I turned the doorknob softly and
looked into the room. In the fading light of the day, I could make out her outline on the bed. Quietly I walked into the room and looked down at her.
There was something pale and helpless about her asleep that I had never seen in her awake. Gently I straightened the sheet around her. She didn’t move.
I tiptoed out of the room and went down the hall. I pulled my knapsack out of the closet and began to pack. I was finished in ten minutes. There wasn’t very much I had to take.
***
I awoke one minute before the alarm went off. I reached out and turned it off. No point in waking the whole house. I dressed quickly and went downstairs.
The halls were dark, but the kitchen, facing east, caught the first morning light. I turned the switch on the percolator. As usual, Mamie had everything ready.
My father had been an early riser. He would come downstairs alone in the morning and sit and drink coffee until the rest of the house was awake. Those were his thinking hours, he used to say. The alone time. And whatever his problem was, big or little, by the time the rest of the house was awake he had thought it through until it was no longer a problem, but just a task to be done.
I went back to my room and took down the backpack. The study door was open, and on an impulse I went into the room and pulled open the drawer.
The pistol was still there. They had missed the false bottom. I took it out and looked at it. It was well oiled and held a full clip. It still didn’t make sense. Guns were for frightened people, and my father hadn’t known the meaning of fear.
I pulled open a flap of the pack and shoved the gun inside between my underwear and my shirts. I pushed the drawer shut with my knee. The coffee should be about ready by now.
“Jonathan.” My mother was standing in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” The classic answer of a child whose parents have caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. I wondered how long she had been standing there.
She came into the study. “I can still smell his cigars,” she said, almost to herself.
“Airwick’ll get rid of it, if you can believe the commercials,” I said.
Memories of Another Day Page 2
