Short Stories: Five Decades

by Irwin Shaw

  Hugo groaned in complicated agony. He had walked a long way and he was in the middle of the city, with the bustle of the business section all around him, but he couldn’t walk away from that picture of Haley’s kid lying torn apart under the burned trees whose names he would never know.

  Slowly, he became aware that the activity around him was not just the ordinary traffic of the weekday city. He seemed to be in a parade of some kind and he realized, coming out of his private torment, that people were yelling loudly all around him. They also seemed to be carrying signs. He listened attentively now. “Hell, no, we won’t go,” they were yelling, and, “U.S. go home,” and other short phrases of the same general import. And, reading the signs, he saw BURN YOUR DRAFT CARDS and DOWN WITH AMERICAN FASCISM. Interested, he looked carefully at the hundreds of people who were carrying him along with them. There were quite a few young men with long hair and beards, barefooted in sandals, and rather soiled young girls in blue jeans, carrying large flowers, all intermingled with determined-looking suburban matrons and middle-aged, grim-looking men with glasses, who might have been college professors. My, he thought, this is worse than a football crowd.

  Then he was suddenly on the steps of the city hall and there were a lot of police, and one boy burned his draft card and a loud cheer went up from the crowd, and Hugo was sorry he didn’t have his draft card on him, because he would have liked to burn it, too, as a sort of blind gesture of friendship to Haley’s soldier son. He was too shy to shout anything, but he didn’t try to get away from the city-hall steps; and when the police started to use their clubs, naturally, he was one of the first to get hit, because he stood head and shoulders above everybody else and was a target that no self-respecting cop would dream of missing.

  Standing in front of the magistrate’s bench a good many hours later, with a bloody bandage around his head, Hugo was grateful for Brenatskis’ presence beside him, although he didn’t know how Brenatskis had heard about the little run-in with the police so soon. But if Brenatskis hadn’t come, Hugo would have had to spend the night in jail, where there was no bed large enough to accommodate him.

  When his name was called, Hugo looked up at the magistrate. The American flag seemed to be waving vigorously on the wall behind the magistrate’s head, although it was tacked to the plaster. Everything had a bad habit of waving after the policeman’s club.

  The magistrate had a small, scooping kind of face that made him look as though he would be useful in going into small holes to search for vermin. The magistrate looked at him with distaste. In his left ear, Hugo heard the magistrate’s voice—“What are you, a fag or a Jew or something?” This seemed to Hugo like a clear invasion of his rights, and he raised his hand as if to say something, but Brenatskis knocked it down, just in time.

  “Case dismissed,” the magistrate said, sounding like a ferret who could talk. “Next.”

  A lady who looked like somebody’s grandmother stepped up belligerently.

  Five minutes later, Hugo was going down the night-court steps with Brenatskis. “Holy man,” Brenatskis said, “what came over you? It’s a lucky thing they got hold of me or you’d be all over the front page tomorrow. And it cost plenty, I don’t mind telling you.”

  Bribery, too, Hugo recorded in his book of sorrows. Corruption of the press and the judiciary.

  “And the coach—” Brenatskis waved his arm hopelessly, as though describing the state of the coach’s psyche at this juncture were beyond the powers of literature. “He wants to see you. Right now.”

  “Can’t he wait till morning?” Hugo wanted to go home and lie down. It had been an exhausting day.

  “He can’t wait until morning. He was very definite. The minute you got out, he said, and he didn’t care what time it was.”

  “Doesn’t he ever sleep?” Hugo asked forlornly.

  “Not tonight, he’s not sleeping,” said Brenatskis. “He’s waiting in his office.”

  A stalactite formed in the region of Hugo’s liver as he thought of facing the coach, the two of them alone at midnight in naked confrontation in a stadium that could accommodate 60,000 people. “Don’t you want to come along with me?” he asked Brenatskis.

  “No,” said Brenatskis. He got into his car and drove off. Hugo thought of moving immediately to Canada. But he hailed a cab and said “The stadium” to the driver. Perhaps there would be a fatal accident on the way.

  There was one 40-watt bulb burning over the player’s entrance and the shadows thrown by its feeble glare made it look as though a good part of the stadium had disappeared centuries before, like the ruins of a Roman amphitheater. Hugo wished it were the ruins of a Roman amphitheater as he pushed the door open. The night watchman, awakened from his doze on a chair tilted back against the wall, looked up at him. “They don’t give a man no rest, none of them,” Hugo heard the watchman think as he passed him. “Goddamned prima donnas. I hope they all break their fat necks.”

  “Evenin’, Mr. Pleiss. Nice evenin’,” the watchman said.

  “Yeah,” said Hugo. He walked through the shadows under the stands toward the locker room. The ghosts of hundreds of poor, aching, wounded, lame, contract-haunted football players seemed to accompany him, and the wind sighing through the gangways carried on it the echoes of a billion boos. Hugo wondered how he had ever thought a stadium was a place in which you enjoyed yourself.

  His hand on the locker-room door, Hugo hesitated. He had never discussed politics with the coach, but he knew that the coach cried on the field every time the band played The Star-Spangled Banner and had refused to vote for Barry Goldwater because he thought Goldwater was a Communist.

  Resolutely, Hugo pushed the door open and went into the deserted locker room. He passed his locker. His name was still on it. He didn’t know whether it was a good or a bad sign.

  The door to the coach’s office was closed. After one last look around him at the locker room, Hugo rapped on it.

  “Come in,” the coach said.

  Hugo opened the door and went in. The coach was dressed in a dark suit and his collar was closed and he had a black tie on, as though he were en route to a funeral. His face was ravaged by his vigil, his cheeks sunk, his eyes peered out of purplish caverns. He looked worse than Hugo had ever seen him, even worse than the time they lost 45 to o to a first-year expansion club.

  “My boy,” the coach said in a small, racked voice, “I am glad you came late. It has given me time to think, to take a proper perspective. An hour ago, I was ready to destroy you in righteous anger with my bare hands. But I am happy to say that the light of understanding has been vouchsafed me in the watches of this painful night.” The coach was in one of his Biblical periods. “Luckily,” he said, “after Brenatskis called me to tell me that he had managed to persuade the judge to dismiss the case against you for a hundred dollars—naturally, your pay will be docked—and that the story would be kept out of the papers for another hundred and fifty—that will make two hundred and fifty, in all—I had time to consider. After all, the millions of small boys throughout America who look up to you and your fellows as the noblest expression of clean, aggressive American spirit, who model themselves with innocent hero worship after you and your teammates, are now going to be spared the shock and disillusionment of learning that a player of mine so far forgot himself as to be publicly associated with the enemies of his country—Are you following me, Pleiss?”

  “Perfectly, Coach,” said Hugo. He felt himself inching back toward the door. This new, gentle-voiced, understanding aspect of the coach was infinitely disturbing, like seeing water suddenly start running uphill, or watching the lights of a great city go out all at once.

  “As I was saying, as long as no harm has been done to this multitude of undeveloped souls who are, in a manner of speaking, our responsibility, I can search within me for Christian forbearance.” The coach came around the desk and put his hand on Hugo’s shoulder. “Pleiss, you’re not a bad boy—you’re a stupid boy, but not a bad boy. It was my
fault that you got involved in that sordid exhibition. Yes, my fault. You received a terrible blow on the head on Sunday—I should have spotted the symptoms. Instead of brutally making you do wind sprints and hit the dummy for two hours, I should have said, ‘Hugo, my boy, go home and lie down and stay in bed for a week, until your poor head has recovered.’ Yes, that’s what I should have done. I ask your forgiveness, Hugo, for my shortness of vision.”

  “Sure, Coach,” Hugo said.

  “And now,” said the coach, “before you go home to your loving wife and a good long rest, I want you to do one thing for me.”

  “Anything you say, Coach.”

  “I want you to join me in singing one verse—just one small verse—of The Star-Spangled Banner. Will you do that for me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hugo said, sure that he was going to forget what came after “the rockets’ red glare.”

  The coach gripped his shoulder hard, then said, “One two, three.…”

  They sang The Star-Spangled Banner together. The coach was weeping after the first line.

  When they had finished and the echoes had died down under the grandstand, the coach said, “Good. Now go home. I’d drive you home myself, but I’m working on some new plays I want to give the boys tomorrow. Don’t you worry. You won’t miss them. I’ll send them along to you by messenger and you can glance at them when you feel like it. And don’t worry about missing practice. When you feel ready, just drop around. God bless you, my boy.” The coach patted Hugo a last time on the shoulder and turned to gaze at Jojo Baines, his eyes still wet from the anthem.

  Hugo went out softly.

  He stayed close to home all the rest of the week, living off canned goods and watching television. Nothing much could happen to him, he figured, in the privacy of his own apartment. But even there, he had his moments of distress.

  He was sitting watching a quiz show for housewives at nine o’clock in the morning when he heard the key in the door and the cleaning woman, Mrs. Fitzgerald, came in. Mrs. Fitzgerald was a gray-haired lady who smelled of other people’s dust. “I hope you’re not feeling poorly, Mr. Pleiss,” she said solicitously. “It’s a beautiful day. It’s a shame to spend it indoors.”

  “I’m going out later,” Hugo lied.

  Behind his back, he heard Mrs. Fitzgerald think. “Lazy, hulking slob. Never did an honest day’s work in his life. Comes the revolution, they’ll take care of the likes of him. He’ll find himself with a pick in his hands, on the roads. I hope I live to see the day.”

  Hugo wondered if he shouldn’t report Mrs. Fitzgerald to the FBI, but then decided against it. He certainly didn’t want to get involved with them.

  He listened to a speech by the President and was favorably impressed by the President’s command of the situation, both at home and abroad. The President explained that although things at the moment did not seem 100 percent perfect, vigorous steps were being taken, at home and abroad, to eliminate poverty, ill health, misguided criticism by irresponsible demagogues, disturbances in the streets and the unfavorable balance of payments. Hugo was also pleased, as he touched the bump on his head caused by the policeman’s club, when he heard the President explain how well the war was going and why we could expect the imminent collapse of the enemy. The President peered out of the television set, masterly, persuasive, confident, including all the citizens of the country in his friendly, fatherly smile. Then, while the President was silent for a moment before going on to other matters, Hugo heard the President’s voice, though in quite a different tone, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you really knew what was going on here, you’d piss.”

  Hugo turned the television off.

  Then the next day, the television set broke down, and as he watched the repairman fiddle with it, humming mournfully down in his chest somewhere, Hugo heard the television repairman think, “Stupid jerk. All he had to do was take a look and he’d see the only thing wrong is this loose wire. Slap it into the jack and turn a screw and the job’s done.” But when the television man turned around, he was shaking his head sadly. “I’m afraid you got trouble, mister,” the television repairman said. “There’s danger of implosion. I’ll have to take the set with me. And there’s the expense of a new tube.”

  “What’s it going to cost?” Hugo asked.

  “Thirty, thirty-five dollars, if we’re lucky,” said the television repairman.

  Hugo let him take the set. Now he knew he was a moral coward, along with everything else.

  He was cheered up, though, when his mother and father telephoned, collect, from Maine, to see how he was. They had a nice chat. “And how’s my darling Sibyl?” Hugo’s mother said. “Can I say hello to her?”

  “She’s not here,” Hugo said. He explained about the trip to Florida with her parents.

  “Fine people, fine people,” Hugo’s mother said. She had met Sibyl’s parents once, at the wedding. “I do hope they’re all enjoying themselves down South. Well, take care of yourself, Hooey.…” Hooey was a family pet name for him. “Don’t let them hit you in the face with the ball.” His mother’s grasp of the game was fairly primitive. “And give my love to Sibyl when she gets home.”

  Hugo hung up. Then very clearly, he heard his mother say to his father, 1000 miles away in northern Maine, “With her parents. I bet.”

  Hugo didn’t answer the phone the rest of the week.

  Sibyl arrived from Florida late Saturday afternoon. She looked beautiful as she got off the plane and she had a new fur coat that her father had bought her. Hugo had bought a hat to keep Sibyl from noticing the scalp wound inflicted by the policeman’s club, at least at the airport, with people around. He had never owned a hat and he hoped Sibyl wouldn’t notice this abrupt change in his style of dressing. She didn’t notice it. And back in their apartment, she didn’t notice the wound, although it was nearly four inches long and could be seen quite clearly through his hair, if you looked at all closely. She chattered gaily on about Florida, the beaches, the color of the water, the flamingos at the race track. Hugo told her how glad he was that she had had such a good time and admired her new coat.

  Sibyl said she was tired from the trip and wanted to have a simple dinner at home and get to bed early. Hugo said he thought that was a good idea. He didn’t want to see anybody he knew, or anybody he didn’t know.

  By nine o’clock, Sibyl was yawning and went in to get undressed. Hugo had had three bourbons to keep Sibyl from worrying about his seeming a bit distracted. He started to make up a bed on the living-room couch. From time to time during the week, he had remembered the sound of the low laugh from Sylvia’s window and it had made the thought of sex distasteful to him. He had even noticed a certain deadness in his lower regions and he doubted whether he ever could make love to a woman again. “I bet,” he thought, “I’m the first man in the history of the world to be castrated by a laugh.”

  Sibyl came out of the bedroom just as he was fluffing up a pillow. She was wearing a black nightgown that concealed nothing. “Sweetie,” Sibyl said reproachfully.

  “It’s Saturday night,” Hugo said, giving a final extra jab at the pillow.

  “So?” You’d never guess that she was pregnant as she stood there at the doorway in her nightgown.

  “Well, Saturday night, during the season,” Hugo said. “I guess I’ve gotten into the rhythm, you might say, of sleeping alone.”

  “But there’s no game tomorrow, Hugo.” There was a tone of impatience in Sibyl’s voice.

  The logic was unassailable. “That’s true,” Hugo said. He followed Sibyl into the bedroom. If he was impotent, Sibyl might just as well find it out now as later.

  It turned out that his fears were groundless. The three bourbons, perhaps.

  As they approached the climax of their lovemaking, Hugo was afraid Sibyl was going to have a heart attack, she was breathing so fast. Then, through the turbulence, he heard what she was thinking. “I should have bought that green dress at Bonwit’s,” Sibyl’s thoughtful, calm vo
ice echoed just below his eardrum. “I could do without the belt, though. And then I just might try cutting up that old mink hat of mine and using it for cuffs on that dingy old brown rag I got last Christmas. Maybe my wrists wouldn’t look so skinny with fur around them.”

  Hugo finished his task and Sibyl said “Ah” happily and kissed him and went to sleep, snoring a little. Hugo stayed awake for a long time, occasionally glancing over at his wife’s wrists and then staring at the ceiling and thinking about married life.

  Sibyl was still asleep when he woke up. He didn’t waken her. A church bell was ringing in the distance, inviting, uncomplicated and pure, promising peace to tormented souls. Hugo got out of bed and dressed swiftly but carefully and hurried to the comforts of religion. He sat in the rear, on the aisle, soothed by the organ and the prayers and the upright Sunday-morning atmosphere of belief and remittance from sin.

  The sermon was on sex and violence in the modern world and Hugo appreciated it. After what he had gone through, a holy examination of those aspects of today’s society was just what he needed.

  The minister was a big red-faced man, forthright and vigorous. Violence actually got only a fleeting and rather cursory condemnation. The Supreme Court was admonished to mend its ways and to refrain from turning loose on a Christian society a horde of pornographers, rioters, dope addicts and other sinners because of the present atheistic conception of what the minister scornfully called civil rights, and that was about it.

  But when it came to sex, the minister hit his stride. The church resounded to his denunciation of naked and leering girls on magazine stands, of sex education for children, of an unhealthy interest in birth control, of dating and premarital lasciviousness, of Swedish and French moving pictures, of mixed bathing in revealing swimsuits, of petting in parked cars, of all novels that had been written since 1910, of coeducational schools, of the new math, which the minister explained, was a subtle means of undermining the moral code. Unchaperoned picnics were mentioned, miniskirts got a full two minutes, and even the wearing of wigs, designed to lure the all-too-susceptible American male into lewd and unsocial behavior, came in for its share of condemnation. The way the minister was going on, it would not have surprised some members of the congregation if he finished up with an edict against cross-pollination.