Hard City

by Clark Howard

  “Yeah.”

  “Say ‘yes,’ not ‘yeah.’ I told you things were going to be swell after Johnny and I got married, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah. Yes.”

  “And guess what?” she surprised him one day by saying. “You don’t have to go to any more drugstores for me. I’ve stopped taking that medicine for good.”

  “Really?” Richie stared at her with his mouth open. He could hardly believe his ears.

  “Really,” Chloe assured with one of her glowing smiles. She tapped him on the nose with one finger. “Don’t you think I deserve a big hug and kiss for that bit of news?”

  Richie put his chin on his chest and tried to turn away, but Chloe got her arms around him before he could escape and pressed a warm kiss on his lips, then hugged him fervently. “Oh, Richie,” she said. “For the first time in years I feel like I don’t have to be scared of life. I know that probably doesn’t make sense to you; you’re too young to know what it’s like to be scared of life. But, believe me, it’s very important not to be. The quieter and more peaceful life is, the better. I’ve been along enough bumpy roads to last the rest of my life.”

  There were certainly no bumps in her life now. Johnny Eaton had turned out to be exactly what he had represented himself to be—not a whit more or less. When he and Chloe had been going together, he had frequently summed up his goals in life by saying, “I don’t need nothin’ fancy, not me. A good, steady job, decent little wife, couple quarts of beer on Saturday night, listening to the ballgame of a Sunday afternoon—that’s the life for me.” Because early in their relationship he had taken her out to movies and for Chinese food and for strolls in the park, Chloe had not taken what he said literally. But after they married and settled down, she realized she should have. Those two quarts of beer on Saturday night were it for him. After supper during the week, he sat and smoked and read the Herald-American. When he finished the paper, he sat out in front of the building in the summertime and talked to his brother-in-law, who lived a few doors down. In the wintertime he might listen to a radio program or two. That, Chloe learned, was all the recreation Johnny needed. Along with his three or four minutes of intercourse at bedtime, that is. Chloe had sought an uneventful life; she had found it.

  When the staleness of her existence began to show, Estelle detected it at once. “Tell me, Mrs. Eaton,” she tried to keep it light, “does your husband know you’re unhappy?”

  “I am not unhappy,” Chloe demurred.

  “No, and I’m not six pounds too heavy,” Estelle, who was getting fleshy, said sarcastically. “Why don’t you say something to him, for God’s sake,” she urged. “Let him know that your main purpose in life is not to see how many nights straight you can sit out front talking to Hannah.”

  Hannah was Johnny’s sister. It had been with her and her husband, Skeet, that Johnny had roomed prior to marrying Chloe. It was no secret that Hannah had tried to talk her brother out of the marriage. She felt that Johnny should try to find someone who had not already been through one husband and already had a child to raise. She was cordial to Chloe, in a reserved way, but had never retreated from her belief that her brother could have done much better.

  “I don’t want to say anything to him, ‘Stelle,” the bored woman replied. “I got just what I bargained for, and I’m not going to complain about it. I’m sure,” she added without conviction, “that in time I’ll get used to it.”

  She would too, Chloe promised herself. She had to—for Richie as well as for herself. All she had to do was work at it. Day by day. Work at being ordinary. Take care of the apartment. See to the meals. Give Richie some extra care and attention to make up for past burdens she had placed on him. She had to face each day—and night—with a smile. When she sent Johnny off to work in the morning, smile; Richie off to school, smile; greet Richie with a smile when he came home, greet Johnny with a smile when he came home-smile at supper, smile at bedtime, smile at Hannah, smile all—the—goddamn—time.

  Diligently Chloe applied herself. Johnny took to calling her “Sunshine,” and said she’d have to be put under a washtub or they’d never get any rain. Richie found her behavior curious, even a little suspicious, but welcome nevertheless. It was nice to come home from school to a smile instead of someone with a “splitting headache” who had to have “medicine” from Lake Street right away. Richie enjoyed the uneventful life they now led. As usual, he was no more attuned to Chloe’s needs than she was to his. The fact that there might be desolation behind his mother’s smile never occurred to him; his life had improved, dramatically, so he guessed hers had also. She must be enjoying life—she was smiling all the time. As far as Richie was concerned, things could go on forever exactly as they were right then. It would suit him just fine. Everything had gotten a lot better; because he was so young, Richie assumed it would stay that way. The measure of it, he subconsciously gauged, was his mother’s smile. As long as she kept smiling, life would be okay.

  But one Sunday afternoon, the smile disappeared.

  Richie had been at the 4-Star Theater with Louis, where they had seen the matinee showing of a lavish new Technicolor movie, Billy the Kid, with Robert Taylor in the starring role. All the way home, Richie cursed and lamented the fact that the first day he had bought ice cream for Vernie and himself, he had thrown away a Dixie Cup lid with Robert Taylor’s picture on it.

  “How in the goddamn hell was I s’posed to know he’d turn into a good cowboy star?” Richie asked plaintively. “All’s he’s ever been before was a goddamned sissy in love with some stupid girl like in the Waterloo Bridge picture. There oughta be a rule that sissy movie stars can’t change to cowboys!”

  “Never throw nothin’ away,” Louis advised gravely.

  Trudging disconsolately up the stairs when he got to his building, Richie wondered if there was any chance at all that the Dixie Cup lid would still be in the Lake Street gutter where he tossed it, safely lying there with Vernie’s discarded Claudette Colbert. At least, goddamn it, he thought, she would never become a cowboy.

  Entering the living room, Richie stopped dead still. His mother was on the sofa, face in her hands, sobbing. Sitting beside her, Johnny was patting her head, awkwardly trying to console her. After staring a moment, Richie went over to them.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked in a trembling voice.

  “Looks like we’re in a war, boy,” Johnny said solemnly. “The Japs bombed our navy base at Pearl Harbor this morning. News come on the radio a little while ago. It’s a war for sure.”

  “Why is she crying?” Richie asked, lowering his voice as if to prevent his mother from hearing.

  “ ’Cause I’ll be one of the first ones to go,” Johnny said. “I’m 1-A in the draft and I already had my six-months basic training last year. They’ll call me up right quick.”

  Turning away, Richie stared into space. A slow dread began to spread inside of him. If Johnny left, it would be just him and his mother again. That had never worked. Whenever his mother had to fend for herself and for him, without a man to take care of her, things usually went bad. She knew it too; that was why she was crying.

  “When I go,” Johnny said to him, “I’m gonna depend on you to take care of your mother for me, hear?”

  “Yeah,” Richie replied without spirit. His father’s face appeared in his mind. We’ll take care of her, won’t we, boy?

  Why was it that the people who made bargains with him always left him behind to keep them?

  Take care of his mother? Sure, he’d take care of her. He’d start going for her “medicine” again—because that was exactly what was going to happen.

  A shroud of depression was falling over Richie when he saw his mother sit up, wipe her eyes, and force a smile.

  “ ’Course he will, Johnny, he’ll always take care of his mother, won’t you, sugar?” Reaching, she gathered him into her arms, pressing her cheek to his. Richie felt the warm wetness of her tears. “We’ll make it just fine, won’t we, sugar? Wh
en Johnny has to leave, he’s not to worry a single minute about us. Everything will be exactly the same when he comes home. Isn’t that right, sugar?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean it, Richie,” she said, fixing her eyes to his. “We’ll be all right, sugar.”

  Richie nodded slowly.

  Maybe, he thought, he was wrong.

  Maybe, they would be all right this time.

  22

  To Richie, the interior of the Chicago Stadium looked like the biggest place in the world. From the vast arena floor, what looked like a hundred million seats could be seen spreading and rising in sweeping rows up to an intriguing conglomeration, just under a great, sprawling ceiling, of catwalks, pulleys, derricks, ropes, huge spotlights, projection booths, and a vast array of other equipment, unidentifiable to Richie.

  It was during the war, with Johnny Eaton away in the Pacific. Richie had heard from a kid at school that the stadium needed boys to sell peanuts and popcorn during sporting and other events. Richie had hurried there after school and been hired for that very night.

  “I’m gonna try you out on peanuts, kid,” a short, swarthy man said, hanging a vendor tray around Richie’s neck and resting it against his stomach. On Richie’s head he put a white cap with a large red 15¢ on its front. The man’s name was Rondo; he was the vending manager.

  “Can I work way up there?” Richie asked, pointing to the top balcony. Rondo shook his head.

  “That’s nigger heaven, kid. The cheapest seats. We send black kids to sell up there, otherwise them spades won’t pay for what they get. An’ if a white kid takes me up to show me who cheated him, he can’t never pick the guy out ’cause they all look alike. You’re gonna work Mezzanine, Section D, right over there,” He pointed. “You go up and down the aisles yelling, ‘Hot roasted peanuts!’ Lemme hear you yell it.”

  “Hot roasted peanuts!” Richie yelled.

  “Louder.”

  “Hot roasted peanuts!!”

  “Come on, you can do better than that. Yell it out!”

  “Hot roasted peanuts!!!” Richie screamed.

  “Good,” said Rondo. “Go to it.”

  In Section D of the mezzanine, Richie cruised the aisles, up and down, down and up, from one aisle to the next, yelling as loudly as he could. There were other boys doing the same thing, and men, most of them frail or handicapped in some way, 4-F in the draft. Some of them carried the same kind of vending tray that Richie carried; some had coolers, for ice cream; some had heaters, for hot dogs. Their yells overlapped each other’s and blended into a cacophony of sound.

  Richie saw as he worked that the arena floor had now been uncovered, a dozen interlaced tarpaulins having been rolled back and dragged aside. Exposed was a shiny white rectangle of ice that two men driving small tractors were spraying with a thin stream of water and smoothing. Other men were hurrying about doing other things at the edge of the ice, and above, in the fascinating array just under the ceiling, still other men were moving about, it seemed to Richie, very precariously. Every minute or so, he glanced up from his hawking to see if one was falling. When he reached the end of his section and started back to sell to the later arrivals, Richie noticed that at the end of the arena floor, musicians in fancy red coats were filing onto a bandstand with their instruments. Their coats reminded Richie of King of the Royal Mounted, a new serial with Allan Lane that had just started at the Imperial.

  A lot of Richie’s buyers in the mezzanine were boys and girls his own age, there with their parents. They were dressed in clothes that were nicer than his best school clothes, and their parents seemed to buy them whatever they wanted; they all had souvenir programs, balloons, felt banners, and anything they wanted to eat. Sometimes when he was waiting to be paid by a parent, one of the kids would look at him in a way that rankled Richie. He could not explain what kind of look it was; he just knew he did not like it. Usually it would be a girl and Richie always knew he was blushing when he walked away.

  It irritated him to see so many kids there with their fathers. Johnny Eaton had been one of the first called up, leaving Richie without even a surrogate father. He knew from the war lectures given in school that most of the men on what they called the “home front” were involved in jobs in war plants or as policemen or some other essential occupation that prevented them from going off to fight the war. Even so, Richie could not help feeling discriminated against again; he had done without a father for so long, it somehow did not seem fair that he had to lose Johnny so quickly.

  When he sold out his tray, Richie returned to the vendor room and Rondo filled it up again. Referring to a chart he had taped to the wall, he said, “Okay, kid, move over to Mezzanine, Section H. How’s your throat?”

  “Getting sore,” Richie said huskily.

  “It’ll be like that the first few nights you work. Here”—Rondo handed him several foil-wrapped lozenges—“suck on these here; they’ll help.”

  As he was working Section H, the arena lights dimmed, the bandstand lighted up, and the red-coated band members began playing a vibrant marching tune. It played two numbers, was applauded after each, and then, after a loud drumroll, a voice announced through a loudspeaker, “Ladieees and gentlemen! Boys and girls! The Chicago Stadium proudly presents . . . the Sonja Henie Ice Show!”

  To thousands of hands clapping in the darkness, large double doors opened at one end of the ice and two lines of brightly dressed skaters flowed out onto the ice and began the opening number. At that point, Richie moved back up the aisle and stood on the mezzanine floor behind the last row of seats, in case anyone wanted to come back there and buy peanuts; hawkers were not allowed to cruise during the performance. From where he stood, Richie had a splendid view of the show, and he watched it with awe. It was unlike anything he had ever seen, even in the movies. The closeness of it, the color, the extra dimension, all served to excite and thrill him, make his eyes grow wide, his mouth hang open, and an occasional “Jeez!” slip past his lips. When Sonja Henie herself skated out, a tiny blond fluff of a woman from Norway, whose country was then occupied by the German army, the audience rose and cheered as she waved a small United States flag in one hand, a Norwegian flag in the other. It brought a lump to Richie’s throat.

  Again at intermission Richie plied the aisles until he sold his last bag of peanuts. By that time they were not hot anymore, and Richie was not yelling very loudly because his throat felt as if the lining had been stripped out of it. But he had sold forty bags of peanuts, for which, at two cents a bag, he received eighty cents.

  “Come back Tuesday night,” Rondo told him. “Hockey game. Black hawks play the Rangers. Be here at six-thirty.”

  Walking the six blocks home, Richie stayed on partly lit Madison Street which, as usual, had a lot of pedestrian traffic. It would not do to walk down the darker side streets, where gangs of kids, both white and black, prowled at night to see who they could catch, and with what. Only when he got to Oakley Boulevard did Richie cut over to Warren and hurry to his building. He went directly home; it was a condition imposed by his mother when she consented to his taking the job at the stadium. His mother did not particularly like him working at night, but realistically she knew it was advantageous, with Johnny gone and a government allotment inadequately replacing his wages. Chloe herself had even taken a job, as a clerk in a nearby bakery. Allowing Richie to earn his own spending money relieved her of having to give him an allowance. Every little bit helped.

  “I made eighty cents!” Richie exclaimed when he got home.

  “Why, that’s wonderful, sugar!” his mother praised, giving him her usual smile. She was curled up on the couch with a cup of coffee, writing Johnny a letter on a small lined tablet. “You’d better get ready for bed now,” she said with the same fixed smile. “It’s late.”

  “Sure.”

  Richie went down the hall toward the bathroom. Before he got there, he paused and from the darkness looked back into the living room at his mother.

  A
s it always did lately, the smile faded from her face.

  One evening when Richie was not working, his mother said, “I’m going out with ‘Stelle for a while tonight. To a movie or something. If I don’t get out of this house for an evening now and then, I’ll go crazy. Dorothy’s coming over to stay with you.”

  “I don’t need her to stay with me,” Richie said. If he was old enough to hawk at the stadium, he was old enough to stay home alone.

  “I’ll feel better knowing she’s here with you,” Chloe said.

  It had been a while since Richie had seen Dorothy. After the wedding, Johnny and his mother had not gone out much, and since Johnny’s return to the army, Chloe had stayed home every night.

  When Dorothy arrived, she looked exactly the same to Richie, but Chloe said, “My, you’re getting tall, hon.” She didn’t seem taller to Richie because Richie himself was taller. Secretly, he was glad to see her again. “We won’t be late, hon,” his mother told Dorothy. “We’re just going downtown to the Garrick to see Mrs. Miniver.” Glad I’m missing that, Richie thought. “And maybe for a sandwich after,” Chloe added.

  When Chloe left, Dorothy got a Coke out of the icebox, poured half of it in a glass for Richie, and together they listened to the new radio show, “Stage Door Canteen.” On the program that night were Ronald Colman, Veronica Lake, and Teresa Wright. “Why don’t they never have nobody good?” Richie complained. “Like Buck Jones or Charles Starrett or Bob Steele?”

  “Maybe,” Dorothy replied drily, “there’s not room in the radio studio for their horses.”

  “They could leave ’em outside—” Richie began, but broke off when he realized that Dorothy had been ribbing him. As he grinned at being fooled, Dorothy mussed his hair and gave him a quick hug. They listened to “Duffy’s Tavern” and “People Are Funny,” and then Dorothy told him it was time to get ready for bed. “Go get undressed,” she said. “I’ll run your tub.”