Old Poppa Tabb was thinking about it the afternoon of the Genaro fight and he was so worried he went downtown looking for Billy, asking the newsboys at the corner, old friends of Billy’s, if they had seen him. In the afternoon, Billy usually passed by the news-stand and talked with the boys till smaller kids came along and whispered, staring at him. Poppa Tabb found Billy in a diner looking to see if his name had gotten into the papers, thrusting big forkfuls of chocolate cake into his wide mouth. The old man looked at him and wanted to rebuke him for eating the chocolate cake but was afraid, so he said: “What’s happening Billy?”
“Uh,” Billy said.
The old man said carefully: “I don’t like this here talk about you stepping around too much with that Hallam guy.”
“You don’t?” Billy said, pushing his fine brown felt hat back on his narrow brow and wrinkling his forehead. “What you going do ’bout it?”
“Well, nothing, I guess, Billy.”
“You damn right,” Billy said flatly. Without looking up again he went on eating cake and reading the papers intently as if his old man hadn’t spoken to him at all.
The Genaro fight was an extraordinary success for Billy. Of course, he didn’t win. Genaro, who was in his late thirties, went into a kind of short waltz and then clutched and held on when he was tired, and when he was fresh and strong he used a swift pecking left hand that cut the eyes. But Billy liked a man to come in close and hold on, for he put his head on Genaro’s chest and flailed with both hands, and no one could hold his arms. Once he got in close, his arms worked with a beautiful tireless precision, and the crowd, liking a great body-puncher, began to roar, and Poppa Tabb put his head down and jumped around, and then he looked up at Billy, whose eye was cut and whose lips were thick and swollen. It didn’t matter whether he won the flyweight title, for soon he would be a bantamweight, and then a featherweight, the way he was growing.
Everybody was shouting when Billy left the ring, holding his bandaged hands up high over his head, and he rushed up the aisle to the dressing room, the crowd still roaring as he passed through the seats and the people who tried to touch him with their hands. His gown had fallen off his shoulders. His seconds were running on ahead shouting: “Out of the way! Out of the way!” and Billy, his face puffed, his brown body glistening under the lights, followed, looking straight ahead, his wild eyes bulging. The crowd closed in behind him at the door of the dressing room.
Poppa Tabb had a hard time getting through the crowd for he couldn’t go up the aisle as fast as Billy and the seconds. He was holding his cap tightly in his hands. He had put on a coat over his white ‘Billy Tabb’ sweater. His thin hair was wet as he lurched forward. The neckband of his shirt stuck up from under the sweater and a yellow collar-button shone in the lamplight. “Let me in, let me in,” he kept saying, almost hysterical with excitement. “It’s my kid, that’s my kid.” The policeman at the door, who recognized him, said: “Come on in, Pop.”
Billy Tabb was stretched out on the rubbing-table and his handlers were gently working over him. The room smelled of liniment. Everybody was talking. Smooth Cassidy was sitting at the end of the table, whispering with Dick Hallam, a tall thin man wearing well-pressed trousers. Old Poppa Tabb stood there blinking and then moved closer to Billy. He did not like Hallam’s gold rings and his pearl-grey felt hat and his sharp nose. Old Poppa Tabb was afraid of Hallam and stood fingering the yellow collar-button.
“What’s happening, Pop?” Hallam said, smiling expansively.
“Nothing,” Pop said, hunching his shoulders and wishing Billy would look at him. They were working on Billy’s back muscles and his face was flat against the board. His back rose and fell as he breathed deeply.
“Have a cigar, Pop!” Hallam said.
“No thanks.”
“No? My man, I got some good news for you,” he said, flicking the end of his nose with his forefinger,
“You got no good news for me,” Poppa Tabb said, still wishing Billy would look up at him.
“Sure I do. Billy gonna be big in a few months and I’m gonna take his contract over – most of it, anyway – and have Cassidy look after him. So he won’t be needing you no more.”
“What you say?” Old Poppa Tabb said to Cassidy.
“It’s entirely up to you, Poppa Tabb,” Cassidy said, looking down at the floor.
“Yes sir, Billy made good tonight and I’m going to take a piece of him,” Hallam said, glancing down at the shiny toes of his shoes. “The boy’ll get on when I start looking after him. I’ll get stuff for him you couldn’t touch. He needs my influence. A guy like you can’t expect to go on taking a big cut on Billy.”
“So you going to butt in ?” Poppa Tabb said.
“Me butt in? That’s ripe, seeing you never did nothing but butt in on Billy.”
“I’m sticking with Billy,” Poppa Tabb said. “You ain’t taking no piece of him.”
“Shut your face,” Billy said, looking up suddenly.
“Shut your face is right,” Hallam said. “You’re through buttin’ in.”
“You don’t fool me none, Hallam. You just after a cut on Billy.”
“You just another old guy trying to chisel on his son,” Hallam said scornfully.
Billy was sitting up listening, his hands held loosely in his lap. The room was hot and smelled of sweat. Old Poppa Tabb, turning, went to put his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Tell him to beat it, Billy,” he said.
“Keep your hands off. You know you been butting in all my life.”
“Sure I have, Billy. I been there ’cause I’m your pop, Billy. You know how it’s always been with me. I don’t take nothing from you. I don’t take a red cent. I just stick with you, Billy. See? We been big together.”
“You never went so big with me,” Billy said.
“Ain’t nothing bigger with me than you, Billy. Tell this hustler to run.” Again, he reached to touch Billy’s shoulder .
“You insult my friend, you got no call,” Billy said. He swung a short right to his father’s chin. Poppa Tabb sat down on the floor. He was ready to cry but kept on looking at Billy, who was glaring at him.
“Goddamn, he your old man,” Hallam said.
“He can get out. I done with him.”
“Sure you are. He’ll get out.”
They watched Smooth Cassidy help Poppa Tabb get up. “What you going to do about this?” Smooth Cassidy was muttering to him. “You ought to be able to do something, Poppa.”
Old Poppa Tabb shook his head awkwardly. “No, there’s nothing, Smooth.”
“But he your boy, and it’s up to you.”
“Nothing’s up to me.”
“It all right with you, Poppa, then it all right with me,” Cassidy said, stepping back.
Old Poppa Tabb, standing there, seemed to be waiting for something. His jaw fell open. He did not move.
“Well, that be that,” Hallam said. He took a cigar out of his pocket, looked at it and suddenly thrust it into Poppa Tabb’s open mouth. “Have a cigar,” he said.
Poppa Tabb’s teeth closed down on the cigar. It was sticking straight out of his mouth as he went out, without looking back. The crowd had gone and the big building was empty. It was dark down by the ring. He didn’t look at anything. The unlighted cigar stuck out of his mouth as he went out the big door to the street.
LUNCH COUNTER
Ever since he had been a kid Fred Sloane had wanted to be a cook, not just any cook but a man who might some day be called a chef. For two years he had done the cooking for the O’Neils, who owned a small quick-lunch.
Mrs. O’Neil, who sometimes helped him in the kitchen, was a heavy, hard-working woman with grey hair, a very clean, sober, earnest woman, always a little afraid of her husband, whom she obeyed from a strong sense of religious duty. Mrs. O’Neil thought Fred boyish but inclined to be easy-going, a young man who grinned too knowingly and was apt to laugh recklessly when she seriously tried to advise him about a more earnest way of living.
She was a good woman and because of her strong convictions would not do any work in the restaurant kitchen on Sundays. Fred liked her because she was so motherly, and he was sorry when her husband openly quarreled with her. One morning when she was very tired and had remained in bed late, her husband told Fred that she was a lazy good-for-nothing slut.
But Fred liked Jerry O’Neil, too, because he was so jovial. Jerry was a few inches over six feet, big-framed, red-faced, a bit bald. He kidded the customers at the counter, and to strangers he winked and whispered hoarsely: “You see that fellow with the cap at the end of the counter? He’s sore at me because his wife’s in love with me.” The man wearing the cap, a steady customer, laughed heartily. Everybody laughed. Jerry shook his head as if to apologize for having so much good humour.
When they were not busy in the restaurant and Mrs. O’Neil was upstairs, Jerry talked through the wicket to Fred, who was in the kitchen. Invariably they talked about girls. Jerry had been married a long time, and though Mrs. O’Neil thought him a wild roustabout, he was far too steady and respectable to be unfaithful to her. He just enjoyed telling Fred many pointless jokes and laughing and because he was so eager, Fred used to tell him ridiculous stories about women.
A niece of Mrs. O’Neil’s, very young and pretty, came to stay one night, and wanted to see them cooking in the kitchen. It was necessary for Mrs. O’Neil to help Fred during the seven-o’clock rush hour before she could have her own evening meal upstairs, and the niece was amusing herself looking around the kitchen while waiting for her aunt. Jerry O’Neil was on the other side of the wicket waiting on two customers. When Fred saw the girl, Marion, standing beside him, he smiled and adroitly flipped an omelette in the small pan. Marion was only fifteen years old but well developed, dark-haired, and round-eyed. The sweater she wore fit her tightly. Her skirt was short, the right length for a girl her age, but in a longer skirt she would have looked like a full-grown woman. She was enjoying Fred’s self-assurance. Fred was glad to have her standing beside him, and out of the corner of his eye he noted her eager admiration. He tried to move with all the assurance of a first-class chef. Jerry O’Neil, pressing his wide face to the wicket called in another order. Fred, enjoying himself immensely, rubbed his hands together. He hadn’t spoken to the girl. Suddenly he said: “Would you like to try and flip an omelette?”
“Show me. I don’t think I could do it right,” she said.
“It comes easy, just like this.”
The omelette, browned on one side, turned in the air and flopped down to the pan, sizzling freshly as the blue flames licked the edge. He could hardly help laughing out loud. “Another thing,” he said. “You ought to learn how to break an egg properly. Just tap it smartly once on the edge of the pan.” After he had prepared another omelette, she took hold of the handle of the pan. He, too, held the handle, his hand partly covering hers, and when the omelette was done on one side, he said, “Ready,” and jerked the pan upward.
The girl, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the kitchen, laughed happily. “That was good,” she said. “I can do it myself now.”
“You just need confidence. Cooking eggs is like boiling water. Anybody can do it.”
As he stood there, hands on his hips, grinning and good-humoured, he noticed Mrs. O’Neil, who was cutting bread at the other end of the table. “If you want to get your dinner, I can look after the place now,” he said.
She said sharply: “You aren’t so willing other nights.”
He was surprised, and then angry at the heavy, thin-lipped woman. By her sharp reply she was intimating that he wanted to be alone with her niece, that she understood his feeling when he took hold of Marion’s hand to help her flip the omelette. And so she remained there, big and heavy and alert. He was especially hurt because he had been only trying to show off with the girl and had not thought of her as a woman at all; she was just a young girl who seemed to admire and like him and smiled frankly when he grinned at her. He went on working while Marion stood beside him.
Mrs. O’Neil left the kitchen. At the door she turned and said: “Come right upstairs, Marion.” Fred was so angry at Mrs. O’Neil that he could not be bothered with Marion, who was examining the pots and the mixing bowls and asking questions which he answered curtly. “Mrs. O’Neil is a fool,” he thought. Marion was standing beside him and he was telling her how to make a bacon and lettuce and chicken sandwich. He became more enthusiastic as Jerry O’Neil passed through the kitchen on his way upstairs. “Keep an eye on the place,” he said to Fred, who went on talking with Marion till O’Neil called suddenly from the top of the stairs: “Fred, come here.”
Fred opened the door and looked up the stairs. Jerry O’Neil muttered down to him: “Look here, what are you keeping the girl down there for?” His big face was red and he was angry. He had never seemed so serious. “Cut it out,” he said. “Cut it out.” And he added: “Tell her to come up and have dinner.”
Fred returned to the kitchen. His hands were trembling. Marion was waiting for him, her hands linked behind her back, eyeing him candidly. “They’re sure I’m after the kid. It’s the one thing the O’Neils had ever agreed about,” he thought.
“Your uncle wants you to go upstairs,” he said.
“All right, he ought to call me,” she said smiling. “Are you through showing me things?”
“I am.”
Reluctantly, she moved to the door. She had to pass the scales used for weighing supplies. Stopping, she insisted Fred show her how to operate the scales, and then asked if he could guess her weight within three pounds.
The O’Neils had spoiled the simple pleasure he had been having with the girl, his pleasure in his own capability and, looking at her, he thought nervously of putting his arms around her and kissing her. When she was on the scales he placed his hands on her waist, his palms pressing down on the curve of her slender hips, and for no reason she put her small warm hands on his as they both bent forward to read the scales. On the nape of her neck he saw fine hair, and when she straightened, her back was arched and slender. “You’re a lovely little thing,” he said, almost shyly.
“I like you too, Fred,” she said. By the way her hands were resting on his he knew he could kiss her. While he was having these thoughts and feeling a new need for the girl, he heard Mrs. O’Neil coming slowly downstairs. “Marion,” she called, and then, “Fred.”
As she went out of the kitchen Marion said, “So long, Fred,” and smiled over her shoulder.
“So long, kid.”
Mrs. O’Neil waited till Marion had gone upstairs, then she warned Fred: “Jerry is sore at you. He’s so mad he’s ready to eat you alive.”
“What for?”
“You know.”
“Then tell him to come down and tell me,” he called after her as she climbed the stairs.
He sat on an upturned box waiting for O’Neil to come down, and knew he would not come. No one was in the restaurant; he waited, listening. He heard them talking upstairs. He would never see the girl again, he thought, and wondered why such honest, sober people as the O’Neils suddenly repelled him. Angrily he stood up, hating Mrs. O’Neil and her way of living. He hated Jerry O’Neil intensely because he had called his wife an old slut. He hated them both because they were old, and alert, and sly, and sure of what to expect from him.
THE REJECTED ONE
Karl brought her along the street early one winter evening, taking her to meet his people. As they walked in step with her elbow snug against his side, she was silent, as though feeling his uneasiness and sharing his thoughts. Karl kept glancing intently at her powdered face, at her fine shoulders, and at her thick blonde hair. He was wishing she had on a dark dress that might have looked more quietly elegant than this flowing green one. Even her hair, maybe, was too long and yellow, and her wide-brimmed black hat drooping low over her face gave her a startling full red mouth. He was trying to remember how she had looked that first time he had seen her, before he had grown to love her, but he
could not remember, and as she turned and smiled at him, he seemed to feel all the warmth and roundness of her moving close to him.
“Remember that Mother’s an invalid,” he said cautiously. “She does funny things sometimes.”
“I’ll remember,” she said timidly. Then she began to look puzzled, as if his seriousness had begun to frighten her.
“Anyway, you’ll like my brother,” he said reassuringly. “I feel sure of that.”
When they went into the house, Mamie hung back a little behind Karl so that Karl’s brother and his young wife could not quite see her as they came out of the sitting-room to the hall. Karl’s brother was tall and slender, and had big deep-set brown eyes that kept shifting around restlessly. Karl went up to him, took his arm affectionately, and said, “This is Mamie, John. I know you’ll like her. And you, too, Helen.”
Then they all turned and looked at Mamie, who had been trying to keep close to Karl, but was now alone. She seemed to feel that his brother and his wife were looking at her more shrewdly than Karl had ever done. She swung her head to one side with awkward shyness. The young wife, tall and slim, with a dainty face and girlish in her simple grey dress, glanced swiftly at her husband and her face grew troubled, but she said graciously, “Won’t you come in and sit down?” and she led the way into the sitting-room.
Mamie then seemed to find the words she had prepared so carefully. “I’m glad to see you, John,” she said. “And you, too, Mrs. Henderson, I feel like we were old friends almost.” There was so much warmth in the way she put out her large hands that Mrs. Henderson smiled good naturedly.
At the other end of the long room, a white-haired old lady was sitting in an invalid’s chair. She was dozing, with her head drooping forward, but when they came toward her she opened her eyes, which were blue and soft, and so much like Karl’s. “I’d like you to meet a young lady, Mother,” Karl said.
The New Yorker Stories Page 11
