At one of the stores, Simmons himself signed off on the paperwork. He nodded to Cincinnatus. "I've seen you delivering things here more than once, haven't I?" he asked.
"That's right, suh," Cincinnatus answered.
"You drive for yourself?"
"Yes, suh."
The grocery man studied him. "You do that just 'cause it's the way things worked out, or are you one of those people who can't stand taking orders from anybody? People like that, they start going crazy if they have to let somebody else tell 'em what to do, so they end up with a job where they work for themselves-either that or they really do go nuts. I've seen that happen a time or two."
With a shrug, Cincinnatus answered, "I don't reckon I'm like that. You ask somebody else, he might tell you different. But I think I just want to make a living, do the best I can for my family."
"You want a job with me?" Simmons asked. "Delivery driver, twenty-two fifty a week. You won't get rich, but it's steady." He pointed to the clipboard in Cincinnatus' hand. "What you're doing there, you're liable to starve on."
That held the unpleasant ring of truth. Even so, Cincinnatus didn't need to think very long before he shook his head. "Thank you kindly, suh, but I got to tell you no."
"Do you?" Simmons scowled. Cincinnatus got the idea not many people-and especially not somebody like a colored truck driver-told him no. He went on, "You won't tell me you clear twenty-two fifty a whole lot of weeks these days."
"No, suh." Cincinnatus admitted what he could hardly deny. "But what happens if I take the job with you, and things get worse like they look like they're doin' and then you let me go? I'd've been drivin' one o' your trucks, right? — not my own. Probably sell that. Then I'd really have to start at the bottom. I done that before. Don't want to have to try and do it again."
"Have it your way," the grocery man said with a shrug. "Don't expect me to ask you twice, that's all."
"I don't, suh. Didn't expect you to ask me once. Right decent of you to do it."
Suddenly, Simmons seemed less a boss and more a worried human being: "Do you really think it'll get that much worse? How could it?"
"How? Dunno how, Mr. Simmons," Cincinnatus answered. "But you ever know times that weren't so bad, they couldn't get worse?"
That seemed to strike home. "Go on, get out of here," Claude Simmons said, his tone suddenly harsh. "Here's hoping you're wrong, but"-he lowered his voice-"I'm afraid you're liable to be right."
Over supper that night, Cincinnatus asked Elizabeth, "Did I do the right thing? Twenty-two fifty steady money, that ain't bad. Ain't great, but it ain't bad."
"You done just right." His wife spoke with great authority. "Couple-three months, he forget why he took you on and he let you go. What kind of mess we in then? Way things is, leastways you know what you got to do to git by."
"I thought the same thing-the very same thing," Cincinnatus said. "We're in trouble now, but we'd be ruined if I took that job and I lost it. We'll go on the best way we know how, that's all."
"Can't get worse'n what it was when you was in jail," Elizabeth said.
"Hope to God it can't," Cincinnatus answered. He didn't know exactly how bad it had been for his family. But when he laughed, he didn't feel mirthful. "When I was in jail, I didn't have to worry none about where my next meal was comin' from. I knew I was gonna get fed. Wouldn't be much, an' it wouldn't be good, but I was gonna get fed."
He would have got beaten, too, but he didn't talk about that. It wasn't anything his family needed to know, and it wasn't relevant to the discussion. Elizabeth said, "One way or another, the Lord provide for us."
"That's right," Cincinnatus said. Clarence Darrow might not have believed in God, but he did. The confidence that God was keeping an eye on him even while he went through the worst of times in jail was hard to come by, but it had proved true. So he remained convinced, at any rate.
And, one day about six weeks later, when he went to the railroad yard to see what he could haul, he remarked to the conductor, "I ain't had nothin' for the Simmons stores in a while now."
The white man sent him an odd look. "You wouldn't want that assignment if I gave it to you, Cincinnatus," he answered. "Old man Simmons went bankrupt week before last. Didn't you know?"
"No," Cincinnatus said softly. "I missed that." He looked up toward the heavens. A drop of drizzle hit him in the eye, but he didn't care. "Thank you, Jesus," he whispered. He might not have much, but what he had, he would keep a while longer.
Sylvia Enos had always enjoyed books. Like anyone who'd grown up in the days before wireless sets brought words and music straight into the home, she'd used books to while away a lot of empty hours in her life. That didn't mean she'd ever thought she would end up writing one herself.
Well, yes, she had a coauthor. He was a real writer. He told her to call him Ernie, so she did. He'd been shot up during the war; he'd served in Quebec, and had written a couple of novels about that. She'd even read one. But times were just as hard for writers these days as they were for everybody else. He'd got himself a thousand-dollar contract for I Sank Roger Kimball, by Sylvia Enos, as told to… and five hundred dollars of that went into his pocket and the other five hundred into Sylvia's, and five hundred dollars bought a hell of a lot of groceries, so Sylvia was writing a book.
"Tell me how it happened," Ernie would say, sitting in the chair in her front room, smoke curling up from his pipe as he took notes. "Tell me exactly how it happened. Make it very plain. Make it so plain anyone can follow."
"I'll try," Sylvia would say. "I'll do my best." She found herself echoing the direct way in which he spoke. "When I got on the train bound for Charleston, I thought-"
"Wait. Stop." Ernie held up a hand. He was a big man, burly like a prizefighter, and the scars above his eyebrows and on his cheeks argued he'd been in his share of scraps, whether in the ring or just in one saloon or another. "Don't tell me what you thought. Tell me what you did."
"Why don't you want to know what I thought?" Sylvia asked. "That's why I did what I did."
"Tell me what you did," Ernie insisted. "I'll write that. People will read it. Then they'll know what you did. And they'll know why, too."
Sylvia frowned. "Why will they know that?"
Ernie was a handsome man, but normally one with a slightly sullen expression. When he smiled, it was like the sun coming out. "Why? Because I'm good," he said.
That smile by itself was almost enough to lay Sylvia's doubts to rest. She'd had room in her life for precious few romantic thoughts since the Ericsson sank, but Ernie's smile coaxed some out from wherever they'd been hiding all these years. She knew that was foolishness and nothing else but. How could she help knowing it, when he was five or ten years younger than she was?
He listened. She didn't think she'd ever had anyone listen so closely to what she said. She knew George hadn't when he was still alive. She'd loved him, and she was sure he'd loved her, too. But he hadn't listened like that-nor, as she had to admit to herself, had she listened to him so. Paying such close attention hadn't occurred to either one of them.
Ernie not only listened, he took detailed notes. Sometimes he lugged a portable typewriter to her flat. The battered leather of its case said he'd lugged it to a lot of different places, most of them worse than Boston not far from the harbor. He typed in quick, short, savage bursts, pausing between them to stare at the ceiling and gnaw on the stem of his pipe.
In one of those pauses between bursts, Sylvia said, "The way the keys clatter, it sounds like a machine gun going off."
The pipe stopped twitching in his mouth. It swung toward her, as if it were a weapon itself. "No," he said, his voice suddenly harsh and flat. "You don't know what you're talking about. Thank God you don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I drove an ambulance," he said, at least as much to himself as to her. "Sometimes I was up near the front. Sometimes I had to fight myself. I know what machine guns sound like. Oh,
yes. I know. But I was on the safe side of the St. Lawrence"-he laughed-"when I got shot. An aeroplane shot up a train full of soldiers. Poor, stupid bastards. They never even found out what it was about before they got shot." He shrugged. "Maybe that was what it was about, that and nothing more. I went to help them, to take them away. A hospital was close by. Another aeroplane came over. It shot up all of us. I got hit."
Ernie went back to typing then. The next time Sylvia thought of making some unasked-for comment, she kept it to herself instead.
He delivered the finished manuscript on a day when winter finally seemed ready to give way to spring. Thrusting it at her, he said, "Here. Read this. It is supposed to be yours. You should know what is in it."
He flung himself down on the sofa, plainly intending to wait till she read it. It wasn't very thick. Sylvia sat down in the chair by the sofa and went through it. Even before she got halfway, she looked up at him and said, "I understand why I did what I did better now than I did when I did it."
She wondered if that made any sense at all. It must have, for he gave her a brusque nod. "I told you," he said. "I'm good."
"Yes." She nodded back. "You are." She went back to reading. When she looked up, another forty-five minutes had gone by and she was finished. "You make me sound better and smarter than I am."
That made him frown. "You should sound the way you are. How do I fix it?"
He was serious. Sylvia laughed and shook her head. "Don't. I like it." Ernie still looked discontented. She laughed again. "I like you, too." She'd never said that before.
"Thanks," he said, and put the manuscript back into a tidy pile and imprisoned it with rubber bands. "I enjoyed working with you. I think the book will be all right." By the way he sounded, the second was more important than the first.
Even so, when he headed for the door Sylvia planted herself in front of him, put her arms around him, and gave him a kiss. It was the first time she'd kissed a man, the first time she'd wanted to kiss a man, since she'd kissed George good-bye for the last time during the war.
Ernie kissed her back, too, hard enough to leave her lips feeling bruised. He squeezed her against him, then all at once shoved her away. "It's no good," he said. "It's no damn good at all."
"Why not?" Sylvia said. "It's been so long…" Knowing desire had been a delicious surprise. Knowing it, having it stirred, and now having it thwarted seemed more than she could bear.
"Why not, sweetheart? I'll tell you why not," the writer answered. "I got shot in Quebec. You know that. You don't know where. I got shot right there. Not enough left to do a woman any good. Not enough left to do me any good, either."
"Oh," Sylvia said. That didn't seem nearly strong enough. "Oh, hell."
He looked at her and nodded. "Why this is hell, nor am I out of it." The words weren't quite in his usual style. Maybe he was quoting from something, but Sylvia didn't recognize it. He bared his teeth in what seemed more snarl than smile. "I'm sorry, sweetheart."
" You're sorry?" Sylvia exclaimed. "You poor man!"
That was the wrong thing to say. She realized it as soon as the words were out of her mouth, which was, of course, too late. Ernie set his jaw and glared. No, he wasn't one to take pity-he'd despise it for weakness, maybe Sylvia's, more likely his own. "Shouldn't have messed with you," he said. "My own stupid fault. I forget every once in a while. Then it tries to wag. Like a goddamn boxer dog wagging his little docked tail. But a boxer can hump your leg. I can't even do that." He kissed her again, even harder and rougher than before. Then he walked straight out the door. Over his shoulder, he threw back a last handful of words: "Take care of yourself, kiddo."
The door slammed. Sylvia burst into tears. "Oh, hell, " she said again. "Oh, hell. Oh, hell. Oh, hell." She was sure she would never see him again.
She was sure, but she was wrong. One day a couple of weeks later, he waved to her as she came out of her block of flats. She'd never known she could feel joy and fear in the same heartbeat. "Ernie!" she called. "What is it?"
"You have your money in a bank," he said. That wasn't at all what she'd expected. "Which bank is it?"
"Plymouth and Boston Bank and Trust," she answered automatically. "Why?"
"I thought I remembered that," Ernie said. "I saw the passbook on your coffee table. Take the money out. Take it all out. Take it out right away. The bank is going to fail. It will fail very soon."
Fear of a different sort shot through her. "God bless you," she whispered. "You're sure?"
"No, of course not," he snapped. "I came here because I was guessing. Why else would I come here?"
Sylvia flushed. "I was going somewhere else, but I'll head over there right now. Thank you, Ernie."
His face softened, just for a moment. "You're welcome. Writers find things out. I know someone who works for the bank. Who worked for the bank, I mean. He saw the writing on the wall. He quit. He said anywhere else in the world was better than to be there right now." He paused and nodded to Sylvia. "Nice to think I can do something for you, anyhow." Touching a finger to the brim of his sharp new fedora, Ernie hurried away. The crowd on the street swallowed him up.
Plymouth and Boston Bank and Trust was only a few blocks away: the main reason Sylvia banked there. She ran almost the whole way. The lines didn't stretch out the door, as she'd seen at other banks in trouble. But she felt panic in the air when she went inside. Everyone was speaking in the low near-whispers people used when they tried to show they weren't afraid. She filled out a withdrawal slip and worked her way to the front of the line.
How many lines have I stood in? How many hours of my life have I wasted in them? Too many-I know that.
At last she stood before a teller's cage, with its frosted glass and iron grillwork. The young man looked very unhappy when he saw the slip. "You want to close out your entire account?" he said in that soft, no-I'm-not-afraid voice.
"That's right," Sylvia answered firmly. "You do have the money to cover it?"
The teller flinched. "Yes, we do. We certainly do. Of course we do."
"Well, then, kindly give it to me," Sylvia said.
"Yes, ma'am. Please wait here. I'll be back with it." The teller disappeared into the bowels of the bank.
Before he returned, an older man stepped into the cage and said, "Ma'am, I want to personally assure you, the Plymouth and Boston Bank and Trust is sound."
"That's nice," Sylvia told him. "If it turns out you're right, maybe I'll put my money back in. If it turns out you're wrong, I'll have the money-if that teller ever gets back. How long is he going to take?"
He chose that moment to return. While the frowning older man looked on, he counted out bills and change for Sylvia. "Here you are, ma'am," he said. "Every penny that's owed you." He sounded as if he were doing her a favor by giving her back the money, and as if she hadn't done the bank a favor by depositing it there in the first place.
By the time she left, the lines did stretch out the door. "Did you get it?" someone called to her. She didn't answer; she didn't want to get mugged when people found out she was carrying cash. She just headed home, as fast as she could.
Plymouth and Boston Bank and Trust closed its doors for good the next day.
XII
Mary McGregor went about her chores with a certain somber joy. That had nothing to do with how hard things were on the Manitoba farm where she'd spent her whole life. It had a great deal to do with how hard the market crash had hit the United States. She hardly cared what happened to her, so long as the United States got hurt.
And, by all the signs, the occupiers did hurt. Fewer green-gray U.S. Army motorcars rattled along the road to Rosenfeld that ran past the edge of the farm. Fewer U.S. soldiers prowled the streets of the local market town. And the Rosenfeld Register, published these days by an upstart from Minnesota who used occupation propaganda as filler, kept on weeping about how hard a time people south of the border were having.
None of which made things on the farm any easier, only somewhat easi
er to bear. Things on the farm were desperately hard, and all the harder because Julia had married Kenneth Marble and gone off to live with him. She came back to visit fairly often, usually bringing Beth Marble, Kenneth's mother, with her, and Kenneth himself stopped by every so often for a burst of work for which a man's strength came in handy. Things weren't the same, though, and Mary and her own mother both knew it.
"One of these days before too long, you'll meet somebody, too," Maude McGregor said over supper after a long, wearing day out in the fields. "You'll meet somebody, get married yourself, and move away. I'll probably have to sell this place and move in with you or Julia."
"I wouldn't do that!" Mary exclaimed.
Her mother smiled. "Of course you would. You should. That's the way the world works. Young folks do what they need to do, and older ones ride along with it as best they can. I don't see how we'd go on if things worked any different."
"It doesn't seem right. It isn't right," Mary said-she'd had that passionate certainty for as long as she'd been alive. After a moment, she went on, "If I ever marry anybody"-and the thought had crossed her mind more and more often since she'd passed her twentieth birthday-"he ought to come and live here and help us work this place. Then our children could go right on working it, years and years from now."
"The trouble with that, you know, is that Julia and Kenneth, and their children when they have them, have an interest in this land, too," her mother said.
"Julia doesn't seem very interested," Mary said. "She went off without so much as a backwards glance."
"Julia doesn't seem very interested now," her mother replied. "How she'll feel about things ten or twenty years from now-or how her husband and her children will feel-well, how can anybody know for sure?"
Thinking about what things might be like ten or twenty years from now still didn't seem natural to Mary. She tried to imagine herself at forty, but no picture formed in her mind. That lay too far in the future to mean anything to her now. She wondered if Julia still felt the same way. Maybe not-with a husband at hand, she had to be looking forward to having children.
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