Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

“Fellas,” he said apologetically, “this is the guy. And if I gotta go up there again to the top, I wonder could you two make a saddle with your hands and hoist me between you. I’m just plumb tuckered out!”

She kept reading about it all through the meal. She even cried a little, thinking about it. On account of our own, I guess. She got up twice and went in to look, to see if ours was all right, sleeping in there in the dark. She came back and said, “I’m going to lock the door good and tight, after you go to work.”

“It wouldn’t happen to people like us,” I tried to point out. “It’s only when you’ve got a lot of money they do that to you.”

“I don’t care, money or no money, it’s the most unforgivable crime there is, Terry.” Her eyes got all bright blue and blazing, like they do whenever she gets good and sore about something. “I could forgive anything quicker than that. I could understand a man robbing a bank, or even taking another man’s life, but to take a poor helpless little mite like that from its mother! I keep thinking what she must be feeling all day today, since she first went in to look at it this morning and found it gone.”

I sort of hung my head. It did get you. It was lousy. It was the lowest thing under God’s sun to do to anyone. I wasn’t trying to say it wasn’t. I was only trying to say there was nothing poor devils like us could do about it.

“And it’ll die on their hands, poor little thing!” she went on. She slapped at the newspaper. “Look there! It’s got to have a special diet. It’s got to have that new kind of milk with cod liver oil in it. She’s asked the papers to print that, hoping it’ll catch their eye. As though they care, or know enough to look after it!”

It was nearly midnight on the alarm, and I had to go. I felt bad as she did, but I had one of my own to provide for. I stuck my hand in the sugar bowl and couldn’t get it out again. That cheered her up a little. She laughed. “That Mamie, always eating me out of house and home!” Then when I got it out and started filling my pockets, she cracked my hand one. “Two’s enough now!” she said, and put the lid back on the bowl.

“I like her better than I do you,” I said, picking up my cap. “She’s my real girl.”

“Why didn’t you marry her, then?” she snapped. She held her face up to me at the door.

“Don’t keep thinking about the Ellerton case,” I said. “Try to get some sleep. See you in the morning.”

But I heard her turn the lock and put on the safety catch after the door was closed.

It was a swell night, clear and crisp, and all the stars were out. I took the subway to the division stable. Everybody in the car was reading about it. “No Word Yet,” one scarehead said. I heard one man say to another, “They’ll be afraid to bring it back now, even after they get the money; afraid of their own precious skins. It’ll be the same thing over again, like so many times before.”

I thought, pumping the china ring I was holding back and forth, “I’d like to get my hands on ’em!” A million other guys like me must have been saying that all over the city tonight. Day dreams.

Mamie was sure glad to see me when I got to the stable. She whinnied and pawed and her little ears stuck up straight. I said, “How’s my best girl? Lemme see if I got something for my best girl.” I pretended I couldn’t find anything, and she stuck her head down to my pocket and snuffled. She knew where I carried the sugar all right.

I harnessed her myself. I always did; she liked me to better than the stableman, although he was around her more than me. But I was her best beau, I took her out stepping. We rolled out of the stable and down to the plant, and got on line back of the loading-platforms to wait our turn at filling-up.

All the guys were talking about it too. Michaelman said, “Just the same it’s a great boost for our Sun-Ray milk, her mentioning the kid has to have it, in all the papers like that. Wait’ll you see the calls that start to come in for it.”

We all gave him cold looks, like he was out of order. Somebody said, “The firm don’t need business that bad, if it’s got to be built up on somebody’s grief,” and I wished it had been me. I’d been thinking that, but I hadn’t been able to put the words together right.

I left Mamie on line and went to take a look in my order drawer in the office. New orders and cancellations, you know. Once in awhile extras too, but mostly those are asked for by note outside the customer’s door. There wasn’t very much doing and it kind of worried me. Part of the job is to get new customers, see. Not by direct soliciting, like a salesman, but just sort of intangibly, by the kind of service you give your old ones. Promotion depends on three things in my line: getting new orders, getting the old ones paid up on time, and the number of empties you collect and turn in.

I went back shaking my head to myself; not a new order in the drawer. As soon as I got my load stowed aboard and checked, Mamie and me started out. She knew the way down to where the route began, I just held the reins on one finger and let her take her own head. There was no one much but us on the streets any more, no lights to stop for; and her hoofbeats rang out clear and loud on the quiet air. They had a soothing sound to me, but I guess everyone’s different; I wasn’t in bed trying to get some sleep. When we got there she swung into the first route-block and stopped dead in front of the right door, of her own accord.

I only had a two-block route, most of them are short like that in the built-up parts of town, but it wasn’t the cream of the bottle by any means. Deliveries were swiped right and left, and it was a tough neighborhood to make collections in. I always expected to be held up, even in the daytime, before I got back to the office with my receipts.

I loaded up my trays, gave Mamie her second piece of sugar, and climbed up five flights. You work walk-ups from the top down, elevator-buildings from the bottom up. Don’t ask me why. There wasn’t an elevator on my whole route.

The Flannery girl on the fourth floor had been out with the young fellow her Ma didn’t like again, and was getting it laced into her while she undressed. You could hear it all up and down the hall.

“I’m telling ye for the last time, he’ll nivver amount to nothing, you mark my words, young lady! Barney I can’t get ye to go out with, no, it’s always a headache ye’ve got, but this good-for-nothing ye’ll gallivant with until al’ hours of the night!”

And then a plaintive little whine, “But Ma, if you could only see how he does the Big Apple—”

I came out again, and Mamie had moved down one door without being told and was waiting for me to catch up with her. I filled up again and went in the second house. There was a fellow sleeping on the stairs between the third and fourth, all huddled up in a knot. I thought he was a drunk at first, and stepped over him without disturbing him, which is no cinch carrying fifty pounds of loaded baskets. But when I came down again, he woke up and looked at me kind of scared. He was just a kid, eighteen or nineteen, and he looked all in.

“What’s matter, got no place to sleep?” I asked him.

“No,” he admitted, sort of frightened, as though he thought I was going to turn him over to a cop or something. “I been walking around all day and—”

I went on down a couple of steps, then I stopped and looked back at him again. I caught him looking at my tray and kind of swallowing hard. “When’d you eat last?” I said curtly.

He seemed to have a hard time remembering for a minute. “Yesterday morning,” he faltered finally.