John MacDonald - The Good Old Stuff

I sat and thought it over. It didn’t sound like Dan, but then again, you can’t tell. Sometimes the soberest people pull the damnedest stunts...

I smacked my fist into my left palm and said, “They’re wrong, Dorothy. I know they’re wrong. Dan couldn’t do it. There’s a mistake someplace. I’m going to find it.”

I didn’t feel quite as confident as I sounded. But the look in her eyes was worth it. She held her head high, and for a fraction of a second she was the girl I had known before. Her eyes were bright.

Then that slack mask seemed to slide down over her face. She smiled at me with immense politeness. “That’s very nice of you, Howard. I’m certain Dan would have appreciated it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some housework to do.”

She walked me to the door. I stood uncertainly, one foot still in the hall and one down on the brick porch. She put her hand on my arm and looked at me. “I know it’s hopeless, Howard, but I want you to try. For your sake. If you don’t you’ll always wish you had. But don’t let it get you. Please. It isn’t that I’ve lost faith in Dan. That isn’t it. Anybody can make a mistake. I think he did. I just hate the whole stigma of the thing. How will Billy like reading that letter when he grows up? What kind of a background does it give the boy? You see how it is? I hate it all.” She turned and leaned her face against the doorframe.

I didn’t have the guts to say a word. I half ran out to the car and drove down the street. The soft rain hissed against the windshield. I seemed to see Dan’s bulky, soaked body on a white sandy beach. The waves seemed to nudge and nibble at it as they rolled up against his shoulder...

Mr. and Mrs. Christoff sat across from me in the booth in the hotel coffee shop in Cleveland. They both looked much older and more frail than I had remembered. Mrs. Christoff’s eyes had a shadow of the same expression that Dorothy’s had worn. But they had another boy. Mr. Christoff sucked noisily at his coffee and then clattered the cup down into the thick saucer.

“Damn it, Howard, what’ll you get out of it? Why don’t we forget it? Let’s not tear the top of a cut that’s beginning to scab over.”

“I don’t want to be stubborn. I told you before, Mr. Christoff. I don’t believe it.”

He turned to his wife and spread his hands with a mock helpless gesture. “Eight or nine letters we got, saying that Danny got drunk and took out a boat he wasn’t supposed to. Eight or nine letters we got, and this fella doesn’t believe any of them.”

She stuck her small chin out and tilted her head up at his. “Now you leave him alone, Carl Christoff. He’s trying to help. Sometimes in the night I wake up and wonder if all those letters are wrong. Maybe he was drugged. You can’t tell. Give him that list of names and addresses. Let him try. He can’t hurt anything.” She turned to me and her voice softened. “What do you plan to do?”

“Go see all those fellows. Get a firsthand account. Then see if there’s anything in any of the stories that doesn’t add up. There’ll be something out of line.”

They sat and stared across the table at me, two seamed faces in which hope struggled with the habit of despair... and lost.

“There was a piece in the paper about it, you know,” she said. “The Cleveland paper. People know about it. They still tell us they’re sorry. And it was a year ago. They like to tell us they’re sorry.” She looked down into her coffee.

“I like you, Howard,” the man said. “Always have. I’m glad to know you’re loyal to Dan. But I don’t want you wearing yourself out on this thing. You’ve had a bad time.” He reached in his inside pocket and pulled out a list of names and addresses. It was a new typed list, clean and crisp. He slid it across the black marble top of the table. “Here’s the names. Take some time before you do anything. Think it over. Maybe it’d be better for you to keep that little germ of doubt... maybe it’d be worse to find out that Dan made that kind of mistake. Think it over.”

I didn’t look at the list. I slipped it into my own pocket.

Mrs. Christoff turned to her husband. “Maybe you ought to give him the letters the boys wrote to you.”

“Can’t, Mary. Tore ’em up. Didn’t want ’em around.” He looked down at his thick, twisted hands. Then he looked up with a quick smile. “No need to make this a wake, Howard. Tell us about yourself.”

We sat for an hour while I talked gently of the high wild mountains, the stinging cold of the Himalayas. It was the first time I spoke of it to anyone. I skipped the parts they wouldn’t want to hear. As I spoke, I remembered a part I had forgotten. A small dark room with the shifting light of a fire. Two stocky men pawing at my hand and speaking in low tones to each other. A heavy block of wood and the flash of a knife. No pain as the rotted fingers were pared away. Then a bright needle of pain and the smell of burnt flesh as something that glowed red in the dusky light was touched against my hand.

I was conscious of a great stillness, and the booth and the two pale faces across from me faded off into a blackness. I was lost on a high plateau, and there was no way to turn to get my face out of the burning wind, the flakes of driving ice. I stood silently for a time, and then I heard a muttering. The two faces came out of the gloom at me, slowly growing until I was again in the booth and the old man, his eyes wide and frightened, was fumbling with my rigid right hand, the hand that had closed down over the heavy tumbler of water, splintering the glass, the dark blood flowing out onto the black tabletop.

I was okay. We found a drugstore and the clerk bandaged the long slit in the palm of my hand. But they weren’t at ease with me after that. I took them back to their apartment and left them at the door. I promised to tell them what I discovered, no matter how damning to Dan it might be.

I walked back out to the car and drove slowly through the broad streets of night. Red neon screamed at me: Mick’s Bar and Grill . I stopped between two cars and went in. I sat at the bar and ordered brandy and water. I pulled the list out and looked at it. Rochester, Boston, Waterbury, Scranton, Harrisburg, Brooklyn, Jersey City, San Francisco, Seattle. Most of them in the East. Made it easier.

The bar was noisy. I sat and drank quietly, brushing off two drunks that tried to make conversation. As I sat there, the point of following it up seemed to fade away. Everybody makes a mistake sometime. Who was Dan to be different? Surely his family would have more faith in him than a friend. Blood is thick. They had been convinced. They were trying to forget, trying to readjust. I would be stirring up all the old pain. He was dead. Let it lie. Drop it. I ordered another brandy. I took the list out again. In a few motions I could tear it to ribbons and drop it into the spittoon underneath the red leather stool. I shoved it back into my pocket.

I drove back to Bennetville and checked out. The room clerk smiled in a superior fashion and said, “I’m very sorry, Mr. Garry, but we can’t refund the nine days’ rent you’ve paid. It’s impossible.”

I stood with both hands on the desk and looked at him. I stared at his small pale eyes, his gay necktie, his white hands. Slowly the smile faded.

“Surely you understand our position?”

Again I didn’t answer. I continued to stare. Then he smiled again, but I noticed he moved back a little way, to where he was certain I couldn’t reach him.

“I believe, Mr. Garry, that in this situation maybe we can make an adjustment. Maybe a return of one week’s rent.”

I nodded.

It bothered me. I wondered what there was in merely staring at him that had made him back down. I went into the men’s room and looked into the mirror. I really saw myself for the first time. I hadn’t wanted a refund particularly. I knew that I would be cheated. In the mirror I saw a long gaunt face with a scar that glowered in a reddish line across my cheek. My eyes looked sunken back into my head. They were dark and shadowed and much too bright. There were deep lines from my nostrils to the corners of my mouth. It was the face of a violent man. I stared at myself and understood. My face, in repose, carried the look of a man in whom slow anger is bubbling up, ready to break out in physical violence. I didn’t like it. It bothered me.