Short Stories: Five Decades Page 6

  Ernest stood up, hiding his mouth, which was twitching, and walked into the bedroom and closed the door and lay down on the bed, in the dark, with his eye open.

  The next day, an hour before sailing time, Charley and Dr. Stryker and Sally went down to the Bremen, and boarded the ship on different gangplanks. They stood separately on the A Deck, up forward, waiting for Preminger. Preminger came, very boyish and crisp in his blue uniform, looked coldly past them, touched a steward on the arm, a dark, good-looking young steward, said something to him, and went aft. Charley and Dr. Stryker examined the steward closely, so that two weeks later, on a dark street, there would be no mistake, and left, leaving Sally there, smiling at Lueger.

  “Yes,” Sally said two weeks later, “it is very clear. I’ll have dinner with him, and I’ll go to a movie with him, and I’ll get him to take at least two drinks, and I’ll tell him I live on West Twelfth Street, near West Street. There is a whole block of apartment houses there, and I’ll get him down to West Twelfth Street between a quarter to one and one in the morning, and you’ll be waiting there, you and Stryker, under the Ninth Avenue L, and you’ll say, ‘Pardon me, can you direct me to Sheridan Square?’ and I’ll start running.”

  “That’s right,” Charley said, “that’s fine.” He blew reflectively on his huge hands, knotted and cleat-marked from last Saturday’s game. “That is the whole story for Mr. Lueger. You’ll go through with it now?” he asked. “You’re sure you can manage it?”

  “I’ll go through with it,” Sally said. “I had a long talk with him today when the boat came in. He is very … anxious. He likes small girls like me, he says, with black hair. I told him I lived alone, downtown. He looked at me very significantly. I know why he manages to sleep with two ladies a voyage, like Preminger says. I’ll manage it.”

  “What is Ernest going to do tonight?” Dr. Stryker asked. In the two weeks of waiting his voice had become so dry he had to swallow desperately every five words. “Somebody ought to take care of Ernest tonight.”

  “He’s going to Carnegie Hall tonight,” Sally said. “They’re playing Brahms and Debussy.”

  “That’s a good way to spend an evening,” Charley said. He opened his collar absently, and pulled down his tie. “The only place I can go with Ernest these days is the movies. It’s dark, so I don’t have to look at him.”

  “He’ll pull through,” Dr. Stryker said professionally. “I’m making him new teeth; he won’t be so self-conscious, he’ll adjust himself.”

  “He hardly paints any more,” Sally said. “He just sits around the house and looks at his old pictures.”

  “Mr. Lueger,” Charley said. “Our pal, Mr. Lueger.”

  “He carries a picture of Hitler,” Sally said. “In his watch. He showed me. He says he’s lonely.”

  “How big is he?” Stryker asked nervously.

  “He’s a large, strong man,” Sally said.

  “I think you ought to have an instrument of some kind, Charley,” Stryker said dryly. “Really, I do.”

  Charley laughed. He extended his two hands, palms up, the broken fingers curled a little, broad and muscular. “I want to do this with my own hands,” he said. “I want to take care of Mr. Lueger with my bare fists. I want it to be a very personal affair.”

  “There is no telling what …” Stryker said.

  “Don’t worry, Stryker,” Charley said. “Don’t worry one bit.”

  At twelve that night Sally and Lueger walked down Eighth Avenue from the Fourteenth Street subway station. Lueger. held Sally’s arm as they walked, his fingers moving gently up and down, occasionally grasping tightly the loose cloth of her coat and the firm flesh of her arm just above the elbow.

  “Oh,” Sally said. “Don’t. That hurts.”

  Lueger laughed. “It does not hurt much,” he said. He pinched her playfully. “You don’t mind if it hurt, nevertheless,” he said. His English was very complicated, with a thick accent.

  “I mind,” Sally said. “Honest, I mind.”

  “I like you,” he said, walking very close to her. “You are a good girl. You are made excellent. I am happy to accompany you home. You are sure you live alone?”

  “I’m sure,” Sally said. “Don’t worry. I would like a drink.”

  “Aaah,” Lueger said. “Waste time.”

  “I’ll pay for it,” Sally said. She had learned a lot about him in one evening. “My own money. Drinks for you and me.”

  “If you say so,” Lueger said, steering her into a bar. “One drink, because we have something to do tonight.” He pinched her hard and laughed, looking obliquely into her eyes with a kind of technical suggestiveness he used on the two ladies a voyage on the Bremen.

  Under the Ninth Avenue L on Twelfth Street, Charley and Dr. Stryker leaned against an elevated post, in deep shadow.

  “I … I …” Stryker said. Then he had to swallow to wet his throat so that the words would come out. “I wonder if they’re coming,” he said finally in a flat, high whisper.

  “They’ll come,” Charley said, keeping his eyes on the little triangular park up Twelfth Street where it joins Eighth Avenue. “That Sally has guts. That Sally loves my dumb brother like he was the President of the United States. As if he was a combination of Lenin and Michelangelo. And he had to go and get his eye batted out.”

  “He’s a very fine man,” Stryker said. “Your brother Ernest. A man with true ideals. I am very sorry to see what has happened to his character since … Is that them?”

  “No,” Charley said. “It’s two girls from the YWCA on the corner.”

  “He used to be a very merry man,” Stryker said, swallowing rapidly. “Always laughing. Always sure of what he was saying. Before he was married we used to go out together all the time and all the time the girls, my girl and his girl, no matter who they were, would give all their attention to him. All the time. I didn’t mind. I love your brother Ernest as if he was my young brother. I could cry when I see him sitting now, covering his eye and his teeth, not saying anything, just listening to what other people have to say.”

  “Yeah,” Charley said. “Yeah. Why don’t you keep quiet, Stryker?”

  “Excuse me,” Stryker said, talking fast and dry. “I don’t like to bother you. But I must talk. Otherwise, if I just stand here keeping still, I will suddenly start running and I’ll run right up to Forty-second Street. I can’t keep quiet at the moment, excuse me.”

  “Go ahead and talk, Stryker,” Charley said gently, patting him on the shoulder. “Shoot your mouth right off, all you want.”

  “I am only doing this because I think it will help Ernest,” Stryker said, leaning hard against the post, in the shadow, to keep his knees straight. “I have a theory. My theory is that when Ernest finds out what happens to this Lueger, he will pick up. It will be a kind of springboard to him. It is my private notion of the psychology of the situation. We should have brought an instrument with us, though. A club, a knife, brass knuckles.” Stryker put his hands in his pockets, holding them tight against the cloth to keep them from trembling. “It will be very bad if we mess this up. Won’t it be very bad, Charley? Say, Charley …”

  “Sssh,” said Charley.

  Stryker looked up the street. “That’s them. That’s Sally, that’s her coat. That’s the bastard. The lousy German bastard.”

  “Sssh, Stryker. Sssh.”

  “I feel very cold, Charley. Do you feel cold? It’s a warm night but I …”

  “For Christ’s sake, shut up!”

  “We’ll fix him,” Stryker whispered. “Yes, Charley, I’ll shut up, sure, I’ll shut up, depend on me, Charley …”

  Sally and Lueger walked slowly down Twelfth Street. Lueger had his arm around Sally’s waist and their hips rubbed as they walked.

  “That was a very fine film tonight,” Lueger was saying. “I enjoy Deanna Durbin. Very young, fresh, sweet. Like you.” He grinned at Sally in the dark and held tighter to her waist. “A small young maid. You are just the kind I like.�
�� He tried to kiss her. Sally turned her head away.

  “Listen, Mr. Lueger,” she said, not because she liked him, but because he was a human being and thoughtless and unsuspecting and because her heart was softer than she had thought. “Listen, I think you’d better leave me here.”

  “I do not understand English,” Lueger said, enjoying this last coyness.

  “Thank you very much for a pleasant evening,” Sally said desperately, stopping in her tracks. “Thank you for taking me home. You can’t come up. I was lying to you. I don’t live alone …”

  Lueger laughed. “Little frightened girl. That’s nice. I love you for it.”

  “My brother,” Sally said. “I swear to God I live with my brother.”

  Lueger grabbed her and kissed her, hard, bruising her lips against her teeth, his hands pressing harshly into the flesh of her back. She sobbed into his mouth with the pain, helpless. He released her. He was laughing.

  “Come,” he said, holding her close. “I am anxious to meet your brother. Little liar.”

  “All right,” she said, watching Charley and Stryker move out from the L shadow. “All right. Let’s not wait. Let’s walk fast. Very fast. Let’s not waste time.”

  Lueger laughed happily. “That’s it. That’s the way a girl should talk.”

  They walked swiftly toward the elevated ramp, Lueger laughing, his hand on her hip in certainty and possession.

  “Pardon me,” Stryker said. “Could you direct me to Sheridan Square?”

  “Well,” said Sally, stopping, “it’s …”

  Charley swung and Sally started running as soon as she heard the wooden little noise a fist makes on a man’s face. Charley held Lueger up with one hand and chopped the lolling head with the other. He carried Lueger back into the shadows against a high iron railing. He hung Lueger by his overcoat against one of the iron points, so he could use both hands on him. Stryker watched for a moment, then turned and looked toward Eighth Avenue.

  Charley worked very methodically, getting his two hundred pounds behind short, accurate, smashing blows that made Lueger’s head jump and loll and roll against the iron pikes. Charley hit him in the nose three times, squarely, using his fist the way a carpenter uses a hammer. Each time Charley heard the sound of bone breaking, cartilage tearing. When he got through with the nose, Charley went after the mouth, hooking along the side of the jaws with both hands, until teeth fell out and the jaw hung open, smashed, loose with the queer looseness of flesh that is no longer moored to solid bone. Charley started crying, the tears running down into his mouth, the sobs shaking him as he swung his fists. Even then Stryker didn’t turn around. He just put his hands to his ears and looked steadfastly at Eighth Avenue.

  When he started on Lueger’s eye, Charley talked. “You bastard. Oh, you lousy goddamn bastard,” came out with the sobs and the tears as he hit at the eye with his right hand, cutting it, smashing it, tearing it again and again, his hand coming away splattered with blood each time. “Oh, you dumb, mean, skirt-chasing sonofabitch, bastard.” And he kept hitting with fury and deliberation at the shattered eye.…

  A car came up Twelfth Street from the waterfront and slowed down at the corner. Stryker jumped on the running board. “Keep moving,” he said, very tough, “if you know what’s good for you.”

  He jumped off the running board and watched the car speed away.

  Charley, still sobbing, pounded Lueger in the chest and belly. With each blow Lueger slammed against the iron fence with a noise like a carpet being beaten, until his coat ripped off the pike and he slid to the sidewalk.

  Charley stood back, his fists swaying, the tears still coming, the sweat running down his face inside his collar, his clothes stained with blood.

  “O.K.,” he said, “O.K., you bastard.”

  He walked swiftly up under the L in the shadows, and Stryker hurried after him.

  Much later, in the hospital, Preminger stood over the bed in which Lueger lay, unconscious, in splints and bandages.

  “Yes,” he said to the detective and the doctor. “That’s our man. Lueger. A steward. The papers on him are correct.”

  “Who do you think done it?” the detective asked in a routine voice. “Did he have any enemies?”

  “Not that I know of,” Preminger said. “He was a very popular boy. Especially with the ladies.”

  The detective started out of the ward. “Well,” he said, “he won’t be a very popular boy when he gets out of here.”

  Preminger shook his head. “You must be very careful in a strange city,” he said to the interne, and went back to the ship.

  Strawberry Ice Cream Soda

  Eddie Barnes looked at the huge Adirondack hills, browning in the strong summer afternoon sun. He listened to his brother Lawrence practice finger-exercises on the piano inside the house, onetwothreefourfive, onetwothreefourfive, and longed for New York. He lay on his stomach in the long grass of the front lawn and delicately peeled his sunburned nose. Morosely he regarded a grasshopper, stupid with sun, wavering on a bleached blade of grass in front of his nose. Without interest he put out his hand and captured it.

  “Give honey,” he said, listlessly. “Give honey or I’ll kill yuh …”

  But the grasshopper crouched unmoving, unresponsive, oblivious to Life or Death.

  Disgusted, Eddie tossed the grasshopper away. It flew uncertainly, wheeled, darted back to its blade of grass, alighted and hung there dreamily, shaking a little in the breeze in front of Eddie’s nose. Eddie turned over on his back and looked at the high blue sky.

  The country! Why anybody ever went to the country … What things must be doing in New York now, what rash, beautiful deeds on the steaming, rich streets, what expeditions, what joy, what daring sweaty adventure among the trucks, the trolley cars, the baby carriages! What cries, hoarse and humorous, what light laughter outside the red-painted shop where lemon ice was sold at three cents the double scoop, true nourishment for a man at fifteen.

  Eddie looked around him, at the silent, eternal, granite-streaked hills. Trees and birds, that’s all. He sighed, torn with thoughts of distant pleasure, stood up, went over to the window behind which Lawrence seriously hammered at the piano, onetwothreefourfive.

  “Lawrrrence,” Eddie called, the rrr’s rolling with horrible gentility in his nose, “Lawrrrence, you stink.”

  Lawrence didn’t even look up. His thirteen-year-old fingers, still pudgy and babyish, went onetwothreefourfive, with unswerving precision. He was talented and he was dedicated to his talent and some day they would wheel a huge piano out onto the stage of Carnegie Hall and he would come out and bow politely to the thunder of applause and sit down, flipping his coat-tails back, and play, and men and women would laugh and cry and remember their first loves as they listened to him. So now his fingers went up and down, up and down, taking strength against the great day.

  Eddie looked through the window a moment more, watching his brother, sighed and walked around to the side of the house, where a crow was sleepily eating the radish seeds that Eddie had planted three days ago in a fit of boredom. Eddie threw a stone at the crow and the crow silently flew up to the branch of an oak and waited for Eddie to go away. Eddie threw another stone at the crow. The crow moved to another branch. Eddie wound up and threw a curve, but the crow disdained it. Eddie picked his foot up the way he’d seen Carl Hubbell do and sizzled one across not more than three feet from the crow. Without nervousness the crow walked six inches up the branch. In the style now of Dizzy Dean, with terrifying speed, Eddie delivered his fast one. It was wild and the crow didn’t even cock his head. You had to expect to be a little wild with such speed. Eddie found a good round stone and rubbed it professionally on his back pocket. He looked over his shoulder to hold the runner close to the bag, watched for the signal. Eddie Hubbell Dean Mungo Feller Ferrell Warnecke Gomez Barnes picked up his foot and let go his high hard one. The crow slowly got off his branch and regretfully sailed away.

  Eddie went over, kicked away
the loose dirt, and looked at his radish seeds. Nothing was happening to them. They just lay there, baked and inactive, just as he had placed them. No green, no roots, no radishes, no anything. He was sorry he’d ever gone in for farming. The package of seeds had cost him a dime, and the only thing that happened to them was that they were eaten by crows. And now he could use that dime. Tonight he had a date.

  “I got a date,” he said aloud, savoring the words. He went to the shade of the grape arbor to think about it. He sat down on the bench under the cool flat leaves, and thought about it. He’d never had a date before in his life. He had thirty-five cents. Thirty-five cents ought to be enough for any girl, but if he hadn’t bought the radish seeds, he’d have had forty-five cents, really prepared for any eventuality. “Damn crow,” he said, thinking of the evil black head feeding on his dime.

  Many times he’d wondered how you managed to get a date. Now he knew. It happened all of a sudden. You went up to a girl where she was lying on the raft in a lake and you looked at her, chubby in a blue bathing suit, and she looked seriously at you out of serious blue eyes where you stood dripping with lake water, with no hair on your chest, and suddenly you said, “I don’t s’pose yuh’re not doing anything t’morra night, are yuh?” You didn’t know quite what you meant, but she did, and she said, “Why, no, Eddie. Say about eight o’clock?” And you nodded and dived back into the lake and there you were.

  Still, those radish seeds, that crow-food, that extra dime.…

  Lawrence came out, flexing his fingers, very neat in clean khaki shorts and a white blouse. He sat down next to Eddie in the grape arbor.

  “I would like a strawberry ice cream soda,” he said.

  “Got any money?” Eddie asked, hopefully.

  Lawrence shook his head.

  “No strawberry ice cream soda,” Eddie said.

  Lawrence nodded seriously. “You got any money?” he asked.