by John Sanford
“You’re a good man, Danny.”
“Ah, not so very.”
“Good enough for me.”
“I’m an ordinary guy, I told you, a very ordinary guy. You’d only find it out for yourself some day, so I’ll admit it in advance: an ordinary guy.”
“Nobody’s anything else.”
“You’ve been warned. Don’t expect extraordinary things of me.”
“I thought you knew something about people. It’s the ordinary ones that do all the unusual things.”
“Like Lincoln?”
“Most of the Lincolns are called Johnson. There’s nothing magical about a name. The magic’s in the person.”
“Daniel, my mother wanted me to be—Daniel Johnson—and I was supposed to show her how far I’d get on nothing. Well, this is how far: a clerk in an employment-agency. I guess I didn’t have the magic.”
“You can do any of the great things that other people can do, or at least you can try, but whether you do them, or just try, or even only want to try, you mustn’t make small of yourself to me. Please don’t do that.”
“I do it because I want you to know the truth.”
“The truth? The truth about you is what I know—and I say you do have the magic.”
He made an hourglass of his hands and watched the sand run out. “If I haven’t,” he said, “I can always get it from you.”
“I said you were a good man. I say it again.”
“Don’t say it too often, because I might turn around and call you a good woman, and then you’d be hurt: you’d think it was faint praise. A biting and scratching lay—that’s what you’d like to be called.”
“Couldn’t you call me both?”
He laughed, saying, “I don’t know you well enough. I don’t even know where you come from. Where in hell were you born, Mary, and was it especially for me?”
“It must’ve been,” she said. “I was born in a little frame house over near Freehold, between the Tennent Church and the Monmouth battlefield. You must see that church some time. It’s a beauty.”
“I want to see the frame house.”
“I’ll show it to you. Tonight, if you like.”
“Well, you were born. What happened after that?”
“I looked around and said, ‘Where’s Danny?’”
“And somebody—Ed, probably—said, ‘Oh, him? He’s peeing his brains out over on Bowling Green.’”
“There was a big barn at the edge of the orchard, and I had the run of it, because we didn’t farm the place. Everything was in that barn—old harness, broken tools, newspapers from 1905, and a very faint but still sweet smell of hay God knows how long gone. You weren’t there, though.”
“I must’ve been sitting on a dock, arguing with Goggly Roger Lynch, a mean little snot-nose.”
“You weren’t in the woods along the branch, either, or at the Tennent school, or in the churchyard reading the stones—or if you were, you never came when I was there. And then we moved away to Red Bank, but you weren’t at the high school, or down by Swimming River, or at any of the dances at Pleasure Bay, or just walking along the street and kicking maple leaves.”
“I was probably in the lunchroom at De Witt, reading salty stuff scribbled on a wall. Like, ‘Poor Alice she gave away two hundred dolars worth before she found out she could sell it.’”
“And then I took a job in Newark, and for four years I went there every morning on the train, but I never saw you anywhere along the line or anywhere else—in New York, in Asbury, at the Rutgers games, or here at the beach—but I did see someone else, and for a very short while I thought he was you, and then one day I looked out of a window, and I didn’t have to say, ‘Where’s Danny?’ any more, because there you were on the sidewalk, blowing smoke at the snow.”
“It took me a long time,” he said.
“Not so long, Dan, Not too long.”
He smoothed the sand before him, and with a fingertip he drew the word ‘Mary,’ and running the loop of the ‘y’ to her wrist, he drew a knot and a bow, and the name became a tag, and he stared at it, and then he dug his hands deep into it, saying, “I’m lucky. I’m lucky. I must’ve been born in Luckville.”
A voice overhead said, “Where’s Luckville?” Dan and Mary glanced up and saw Jack Hill, and he smiled and sat down, and for a moment he said nothing, and when he spoke, he said what he had said before. “Where’s Luckville?”
“Quite a distance from here,” Dan said.
“You’re looking great, Mary.”
“That’s how I feel, Jack.”
“It works out, then, eh?”
“What works out?” Dan said.
“This—you two.”
“You want a medal?”
“What’re you sore about, kid?”
“I’ll make you a diagram.”
“You’d better, because I’ll need one to understand. I put you on the train for Luckville.” “You didn’t put anybody on anything. You got off, that’s all.” “I gave you my place.”
“I wish to Christ you’d go away,” Dan said, “because if you keep on talking about Mary like she was something that went from hand to hand, this’ll end in black and blue.”
“I did you a good turn,” Jack said, “and what happened before you came on the scene is absolutely unimportant. Think what you like, say what you like, knock my brains out if you like—I’ll always believe I did you a good turn. I have many friends, and I could’ve picked any of them for the Luckville train, but I picked you. Did you ever ask yourself why?”
“Go away, will you?” Dan said. “I’lease go away.”
“I picked you for a peculiar reason, a reason you wouldn’t appreciate, hating me the way you do: I picked you because I thought you’d be better for Mary than anyone I know, including myself.”
Dan sat up, saying, “Pick! Pick! Who the hell’re you to pick—God?”
“God couldn’t’ve managed this with miracles; I did it with a phone-call. How else could you have met Mary—by wishing? by praying? by standing on a corner? by running an ad? If you’d done any of those things, you’d be doing it yet. You met Mary through me, and you hate me for it, and we aren’t friends any more—but do you want to go back to the beginning, when I had Mary, and you had a few dim dreams? Like hell, you do. I put something in your way that you’ve come to prize, as I knew you would, but you don’t prize me for doing it.”
“As you knew I wouldn’t.”
“No,” Jack said. “I didn’t know that.”
“You must be wild.”
“You hate me for the best thing you’ve had in your life, and it was given to you in love.”
Dan looked down at his hand, and slowly he brushed a pepper-and-salt of sand from his palm. “I’ve heard you talk of love many times,” he said, “and it was a good thing to hear, because people don’t talk about it nearly enough, but this is one occasion when the word is as out of place in your mouth as a flower-arrangement in a toilet-bowl. I’m not ashamed of the word. I even use it myself. I’m only ashamed of what you do to it.”
“That’s because you still misunderstand it.”
“It’s an open book for Jack Hill, though,” Dan said. “You use big words for yourself, and you wind up with love, the biggest, but big words don’t make a big man any more than big clothes make a grown-up out of a child: when you talk about love, you rattle around in it. What happened on this beach a year ago was that you saw a broad that you wanted to climb on, and when you climbed off, you walked away and stuck a pin in the address-book of your mind, and it went in at J for Johnson—and that’s the whole story, the one you’ve got the gall to end with the big word. I hate you for that more than anything.” He rose now, and turning away, he looked at clouds far at sea and foundering.
Hill rose too, saying, “Well, Mary, I hope you enjoy him—and you her, Dan, because she’s very enjoy …,” but Dan had spun about, and a hard-slung clutch of skin and bone struck Hill on the mouth, bringing blood to dye
a syrup of spittle. “… joyable,” he said, and another handful, this one on his jaw, shocked him loose from the mixture he was mouthing, and it sidled off his face as foam. “Enjoyable,” he said.
Steve White came between them, saying, “Beat it, Jack, or get to hell off the beach!”
Hill said, “Very enjoyable,” and walked away.
“I’m sorry, Steve,” Dan said. “I held back as long as I could.”
“If I’d been in the office today,” the lifeguard said, “I wouldn’t’ve sold him a locker, but it’s my trick under the umbrella, and the first thing I knew, he was climbing the platform and parking himself. I didn’t want any trouble, so I told him to keep away from you. He had to suck around, though.”
“How’d you know there’d be trouble, Steve?”
The lifeguard looked at Mary while speaking to Dan, saying, “I’ve known your girl for quite a while, and I like her almost as much as I do my own,” and then he looked at Dan while speaking to Mary, saying, “Explain to him, will you? I have to go back.”
After Steve had gone, Dan stood where he was, watching breaker on breaker break at the feet of a boy with a shovel. At length, the boy said, “I seen the fight.”
“What’re your last name, first name, and middle initial?”
“I wish the fight would’ve lasted longer. Then it would’ve been a longer fight.”
“Give your age, place of birth, and the size of your neckband.”
“I like long fights because short fights don’t last long enough.”
“The fight was twice as long as a fight that’s only half as long. Give the name of your bank and your favorite cereal.”
“I like to see people get hit in fights because they bleed.”
“Do not write in this space except with blood.”
“The man you were fighting got bloody. I liked that.”
“Boys are funny people,” Dan said.
“You say queer things,” the boy said.
“I come from Queerville.”
“I live in Allentown, Pennsavania.”
“Do you believe in the overthrow of violence by the force of Government?”
“Well, I have to see if the man is still bloody,” the boy said. “G’bye, Mr. Queer.” And he ran away. Mary said, “Come over here and sit down, Mr. Queer.” Dan sat, saying, “I’d sooner stand.” “Look at me.”
He looked, saying, “I’d sooner hide.”
“Why do you feel so bad, Mr. Queer?”
“It was no fight, Mary. It was no fight at all.”
“It wasn’t a long fight, but it was certainly a fight, and you’re a fighter from Fightville, and the little boy can go bust.”
“I looked good against Jack, but that’s because he can’t punch his way out of a lukewarm shower. If he’d been built like Steve, I’d’ve probably run away, or if I’d scrabbled up enough nerve to stand still, I’d’ve wound up with a broken jaw—but run or stay, you’d’ve known me for what I am—all yellow and a yard wide. I told you I was ordinary, Mary. I told you!”
“Am I supposed to hate you for that?”
“How can you do anything else?”
“Dan, I couldn’t hate you even if you hated me—and maybe you will some day.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I’m not as pretty as a little red pair of shoes.”
“Julia is many years back, Mary.”
“In time, but how far back in your mind?”
“I think of her now and then—not often, but once in a while. She used to call me her God damn Dan, and whenever I God damn myself, I remember her.”
“That’s oftener than you know.”
“I told her once never to let me see beyond her, but she did, and she’s grown smaller ever since. What I see now is after-image, and in time it’ll disappear.”
“You’ll have to live a long life.”
“Good,” he said, “because while she’s shrinking, you’ll be growing, and the longer she takes, the vaster you’ll be when she’s gone” “Nobody’s looking, Dan. Nobody’d notice if you kissed me.”
* * *
They walked up a slope toward a church that cast little shadow on the calcimine of starlight, and they went among graves and headstones, saying only an occasional name read from a flaking slab. From time to time, Mary stooped for a pebble and placed it on the lid of a tomb.
“Why do you do that?” Dan said.
“A girl I know told me it was a custom of the Jewish people. She couldn’t explain what it meant, but it seemed so sad and so beautiful that ever since I’ve done it myself.”
“I think you’re sad and beautiful.”
“There’s one thing I’d like to have my way about, Dan: I’d like to be married in this church. I have a feeling it’d be a good beginning.”
“Do you believe in God?” he said.
“I’ve never asked myself, or maybe it’s simply that I’ve never answered, but many people’ve believed very hard here, and I respect their belief.”
“If you respect it enough, you share it.”
“Possibly, but all I knowingly want to share is the place.”
“I don’t believe at all, Mary, and nothing’ll ever make me believe again.”
“Because of Julia?” she said.
“Julia couldn’t’ve made me disbelieve in frogs. I said my last prayer a minute before Sacco and Vanzetti died. I asked God to pull off a miracle and save two of the best men that ever lived, but He was taking His ease somewhere in His sock-feet, and any belief I might’ve had went to hell with the Italians.”
“It’s odd,” Mary said. “You disbelieve because of them, and if I believe, it’s because of you.”
“You love me a little, don’t you?”
“I couldn’t begin to tell you, Dan.”
“I’ll get married anywhere—here, in Grand Canyon, or in a cigar-store—but it’s got to be to you.”
They were at the car now, and now they were moving through the aromatic emissions of night, and now they were on a pair of tracks in a field, and now they were standing before a barn at the edge of an orchard [old harness, broken tools, newspapers from 1905, and a faint but still sweet smell of hay], and two birds, one near and one far, played the same few bars on their reeds, and Mary said, “The little frame house is beyond those elms.”
“Why was the place a secret last night?” Dan said.
“I didn’t care for you enough: I was only in love with you.”
“You grow!” he said. “You grow all the time!”
“Not I, Dan, but you.”
“I want you to know about an ordinary guy named Dan Johnson: I want you to know what to expect. I’ll love you well and for a long while, I’ll respect you at home and in the street, I’ll be honest with you as far as I know the truth, and I’ll try my best to provide. I’ll have an attack of the ‘forties’ some day, and I’ll wonder why my fine deeds had never gone beyond fine dreams, and the more I wonder, the more I’ll balk at being ordinary to the end. It’s only fair, therefore, to warn you not to make too many plans around me or any that can’t be changed: I may discover that I care more for people than I do for myself, and I may do a fine deed for them and come home to you dead.”
“There’ll be no plans, Dan, but there’ll always be one demand: that you never make dying the fine deed in itself. It’s fine to fight for what you believe in, but if you die, it has to be because only dying will win the fight.”
“Tell me more about my sad and beautiful Mary!” he said.
“Afterward,” she said, and she went toward a dark door [newspapers from 1905, you thought, and a faint but still sweet smell of hay], and he followed her.
PART FIVE
ORDINARY DAN
It was almost midnight when Dan entered the flat—the remodeled parlor of an old private house on the upper West Side—and finding Mary asleep, he undressed in the light of a street-lamp and lay down on the cold half of the brass-railed bed. The warmth of the warm ha
lf drifted toward him under the blankets, but he made no move to touch its source, and for a while he stared into the blue darkness through his less-blue breath, and thinking finally of smoke, he reached out to a bedside table and groped for a cigarette and a match.
In a brief flare-up, he glanced at Mary, and when he shook the flame away, he said, “I thought you were dead to the world.”
“Give me a drag,” she said. “I like to watch you when you don’t know you’re being watched: I learn about you.”
“I hope you never learn anything.”
“What did your father want to see you about?”
“Just what we supposed.”
“How much did he need?”
“A couple of hundred,” Dan said. “Where would I get hold of a couple of hundred?”
