Appointment in Samarra (23 page)

Twenty thousand dollars! Why in God’s name had he ever asked for that much? He knew perfectly well why he had asked for that much: at the time he needed ten thousand, but he figured he might as well get a good hunk while he was at it. Ten thousand had gone in no time: it cost, even with the cheap labor and construction costs of last summer, about eight thousand to build the inclined driveway inside the building, which
he had calculated would mean eventually a great saving in electric power bills through decreased use of the elevator. So far it hadn’t made much difference, if any. In fact, Julian would not have argued very long if someone suggested that the driveway was an ill-advised project. Then what else was there? Well, there were those two three-wheel motorcycles. The idea of them was a mechanic would ride the motorcycle to, say, the Davis’ garage, hook some kind of gadget on the Davis’ Cadillac, and drive the car, with the motorcycle trailing along behind, back to the Gibbsville-Cadillac Motor Car Company for servicing or repairs. That was another idea that was going to make a saving, but the saving, Julian was sure, had failed to make a showing on the books. And why
two
motorcycles? One was enough. More than enough. Then there were the trees, those beautiful, slender trees. Julian had conditioned himself against ever seeing them when he passed them, but now he made himself think of them. There they were out there in the little strip of grass along the curb. Seven-hundred and sixty-six dollars and forty-five cents’ worth of them, including freight and planting. Julian knew to the penny what they cost, but he still was not sure of the name of them. They had been purchased while he was in a fine, naturalistic mood as an aftermath of a City Beautiful luncheon. There had been trees a long time ago where the Gibbsville-Cadillac Motor Car Company now stood, and there had been trees along the curb, but they had been chopped down. Then one day Julian went to a City Beautiful luncheon and everybody got up and said a few words about trees and what they did for a residential section—Julian’s garage was in a residential section—and by the oddest coincidence there chanced to be a man from a nursery at the luncheon, and Julian signed. And that about took care of the extra ten thousand dollars.

The other ten thousand had gone for expenses, real ones, like payments on notes, payroll, and so on.

Lute was right on another score: Ed Charney was a good customer. “I’m a good customer of Ed’s,” Julian reminded himself, “but he’s a better one of mine.” Something ought to be done about Ed, but he supposed the best thing to do for the present
was to lay off trying to fix it up. Yes, he certainly had loused things up last night: Ed Charney sore at him, Caroline—well, he wouldn’t think of that now; he was at work, and he would try to think of things only in so far as they affected his business. If Ed Charney got really sore—but he wouldn’t do that; he wouldn’t throw a pineapple at the garage. This was Gibbsville, not Chicago. And after all, the English name meant something around here. “No thanks to me, however,” Julian said under his breath.

“Darn his buttons anyhow,” said Mary Klein.

“What is it, Mary?” said Julian.

“Luther Fliegler,” she said. “He makes out these slips when he gets gas, but you never can tell whether he means ten gallons or seventy gallons, the way he makes figures.”

“Well, I don’t think he’d be making out a slip for seventy gallons. A car doesn’t hold that much gas,” said Julian. “Besides, that’s not your headache. Let Bruce worry about it.”

Mary turned to look at him. “Sure, but you forget. You told Bruce he could go to Lebanon over the weekend.” She spoke as a woman who was carrying on in spite of all injustice. Bruce Reichelderfer was the bookkeeper, and Julian had given him the week-end.

“That’s right, I did. Well, let me see it.”

She handed him the slip. She was right as usual; you could not tell from the figures whether Lute had meant 10 or 70. “We ought to use the French seven,” he said. “Then we’d always know. However, I guess we can take a chance that he meant ten gallons. He wouldn’t be signing for seventy gallons all at once.”

“Well, I just wanted to be right on it. Sixty gallons of gas, that costs money, and we can’t just—”

“I know, Mary. You’re right.” Somehow her tone filled him with terror, the kind that he felt when he knew he was doing something bad. It was an old experience; he still thought of it in the terms of boyhood: “—when I’m doing something bad.” And it wasn’t her tone alone; it was her manner, and it was not a new manner. For weeks, and probably months, she had behaved like someone, a school teacher, who was meaning to speak to him
about his lessons or conduct. She was Right, and he was Wrong. She could make him feel like a thief, a lecher (although God knows he never had made a pass at her), a drunkard, a no-good bum. She represented precisely what she came from: solid, respectable, Pennsylvania Dutch, Lutheran middle class; and when he thought about her, when she made her existence felt, when she actively represented what she stood for, he could feel the little office suddenly becoming overcrowded with a delegation of all the honest clerks and mechanics and housewives and Sunday School teachers and widows and orphans—all the Christiana Street kind of people who he knew secretly hated him and all Lantenengo Street people. They could have their illegitimate babies, their incest, their paresis, their marital bestiality, their cruelty to animals, their horrible treatment of their children and all the other things which you could find in individual families; but collectively they presented a solid front of sound Pennsylvania Dutch and all that that implied, or was supposed to imply. They went to church on Sunday, they saved their money, they were kind to their old people, they were physically clean, they loved music, they were peace-loving, they were good workers. And there they sat, with their back curved in at the small part, their oilcloth cuffs covering their sleeves, their fresh blouse as neat after five hours’ wear as Julian’s shirt after two. And they were thinking what a pity it was that this wonderful business wasn’t in the hands of one of their own men, instead of being driven into the ground by a Lantenengo Street—wastrel. And yet, Julian made himself admit, Lute Fliegler is a Pennsylvania Dutchman and one of the swellest guys that ever lived. Thinking that over Julian returned to his old theory: it was possible, wasn’t it? that Lute’s mother had had a quick one with an Irishman or a Scotsman. A hell of a thing to think about that old Mrs. Fliegler, who still baked the best pie crust Julian had ever tasted.

Every few minutes Julian would jot down some figures as they came into his head. All the time he looked very busy, and he hoped he was making a good impression on Mary Klein. The sheets of paper that lay before him were filling up with
neat, engineering style lettering and numerals. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division….

*   *   *

He did. What’s the use of trying to fool myself? I know he did. I know he did and no matter what excuses I make or how much I try to tell myself that he didn’t, I’ll only come back to the same thing: He did. I know he did. And what for? For a dirty little thrill with a woman who—oh, I thought he’d got all that out of his system. Didn’t he have enough of that before he married me? Did he still think he was a college boy? Did he think I couldn’t have done the same thing to him, dozens of times? Did he know—oh, of course he didn’t know that of all his friends, Whit Hofman was the only one that I can truthfully say never made a pass at me. The only one. Ah, Julian, you stupid, hateful, mean, low, contemptible little son of a bitch that I hate! You do this to me, and
know
that you do this to me!
Know
it! Did it on purpose! Why? It wasn’t only to get even with me. It wasn’t only because I wouldn’t go out in the car with you. Are you so dumb blind after four and a half years that you don’t know that there are times when I just plain don’t feel like having you? Does there have to be a reason for it? An excuse? Must I be ready to want you at all times except when I’m not well? If you knew anything you’d know I want you probably more then than any other time. But you get a few drinks in you and you want to be irresistible. But you’re not. I hope you found that out. But you didn’t. And you never will. I love you? Yes, I love you. Like saying I have cancer. I have cancer. If I did have cancer. You big charmer, you. You irresistible great big boy, turning on the charm like the water in the tub; turning on the charm like the water in the tub; turning on the charm turning on the charr-arm, turning on the charm like the water in the tub. I hope you die.

I hope you die because you have killed something fine in me, suh. Ah hope you die. Yes-suh, Ah hope you die. You have killed something mighty fine in me, English, old boy, old kid, old boy. What Ah mean is, did you kill something fine in me or did you kill something fine. I feel sick, sick as a dog. I feel sick and I would like to shoot my lunch and I would like indeed
to shoot my lunch but I will be damned if I want to move out of this bed, and if you don’t stop being nasty to servants—I said r. I said a word with r in it, and that makes me stop this silly business. I wonder why? I wonder why r?

Oh, I guess I better get up. There’s nothing to be gained by lying here in bed and feeling sorry for myself. It’s nothing new or interesting or novel or rare or anything. I’m just a girl who just feels like dying because the man I love has done me wrong. I’m not even suffering any more. I’m not even feeling anything. At least I don’t think I am. No, I’m not. I’m not feeling anything. I’m just a girl named Caroline Walker, Caroline Walker English, Caroline W. English, Mrs. Walker English. That’s all I am. Thirty-one years old. White. Born. Height. Weight. Born? Yes. I always think that’s funny and I always will. I’m sorry, Julian, but I just happen to think it’s funny and you used to think so too, back in the old days when I knew you in an Eton collar and a Windsor tie, and I loved you then, I loved you then, I love you now, I love you now, I’ll always love you to the day I die and I guess this is what they call going to pieces. I guess I’ve gone to pieces, because there’s nothing left of me. There’s nothing left for me of days that used to be I live in mem-o-ree among my souvenirs. And so what you did, what you did was take a knife and cut me open from my throat down to here, and then you opened the door and let in a blast of freezing cold air, right where you had cut me open, and till the day you die I hope you never, never know what it feels like to have someone cut you open all the way down the front of you and let the freezing blast of air inside you. I hope you never know what that means and I know you won’t, my darling that I love, because nothing bad will happen to you. Oh, lovely Callie, your coat is so warm, the sheep’s in the meadow, the cows in the corn.
“No, I don’t think I’ll get up for a while, Mrs. Grady.”

*   *   *

It was inevitable that every time Al Grecco went to the garage in which Ed Charney kept his private cars, he should think of a photograph one of the boys from the west had shown around. Probably a great many men—and the women of those
men—in Al Grecco’s line of work had the same thought, inspired by the same photograph (there were thousands of copies of the photograph), whenever they looked inside an especially dismal garage. The photograph showed a group of men, all dead, but with that somehow live appearance which pictures of the disfigured dead give. The men were the victims of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago, when seven men were given the Mexican stand-off against the inside wall of a gang garage.

“It’d be a nice wall for it,” Al said, as he opened the garage door.

He went upstairs and lugged a case of champagne down the steps. Then he went up again and lugged a case of Scotch down, and then he lifted them into a dull black Hudson coach, which was used for deliveries. He backed the car out into the street, Railroad Avenue, and then got out and slid the garage doors shut. He took one more look at that blank wall before he finally closed the door. “Yes. It sure would be a nice wall for it,” he said.

No man could call him what Ed Charney had called him and get away with it. Not even Ed Charney. He thought of his mother, with the little gold earrings. Why, he could remember when she didn’t own a hat. She would even go to Mass on Sunday with that scarf over her head. Often in the far past he had told her she was too damn lazy to learn English, but now, thinking of her, he thought of her as a good little woman who had had too much work to learn much English. She was a wonderful woman, and she was his mother, and if Ed Charney called him a son of a bitch, all right; if he called him a bastard, all right. Those were just names that you called a guy when you wanted to make him mad, or when you were mad at him. Those names didn’t mean anything anyhow, because, Al figured, if your mother was a bitch, if you were a bastard, what was the use of fighting about it? And if she wasn’t, you could easily prove it. What was the use of fighting about it? But this was different, what Ed Charney had said: “Listen you God damn dirty little guinny bastard, I sent you up there last night to keep an eye on Helene. You didn’t have to go if you didn’t
want to. But what do you do? You double-cross me, you son of a bitch. I bet English gave you a sawbuck so he could take her out and give her a jump, and you sit back there collecting fifty bucks from me becuss I’m sap enough to think you’re on the up-and-up with me. But no. Not you. Not you. Why, you smalltime chiseling bastard, you. You dirty lousy mother——bastard.” And more like that. Automatically Al had tried to explain: all she did was dance with him; she wasn’t outside long enough to do anything with English (“You’re a dirty liar. Foxie told me she was out a half an hour.”); English was stewed and not on the make (“Don’t tell me about English. I’m not blaming him. I’m blaming you. You knew she was my girl. English didn’t.”), and so on. In his heart Al wanted to tell Ed the real truth; that he could have made Helene himself if he hadn’t been on the up-and-up. But that wouldn’t do any good now. Or it wouldn’t do enough harm. Ed was crazy mad. He was so crazy mad that he said all these things to Al over the telephone from his own house, most likely in front of his wife. Oh, positively in front of his wife. If she was in the same house she couldn’t help hearing him, the way he was yelling into the telephone. So Al just stood there at the phone and took it without making any real comeback. At first he had been stunned by the accusation of being a double-crosser. But in Al’s and Ed’s line of work it is never wise to call an associate a double-crosser; if the associate is guilty, the thing to do is punish him; if he isn’t guilty, it puts the idea into his head. And then when he remembered the bad thing that Ed had called him, that began to put the idea into Al’s head. He hadn’t made any plans about what he was going to do. Not yet. But something would have to be done. “I guess it’ll be me or him,” he said, thinking of that wall.