James Cain - The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction

Still, I made out all right, because it didn’t mean nothing to me. But then all of a sudden I felt my lips go numb and my heart begun pounding like it would jump out of my throat. I was just looking at my watch, and it was 3:28 and I was getting ready to make my 3:30 entry in the book, when I heared it, just like he said. Maybe you think I’m lying, but I tell you it give kind of a sigh and then went right quiet again. And I was still pretty shaky when he come up to relieve me at four.

“Well,” he says, “you was right.” And he wasn’t wild no more, but stood there looking out at it.

“How you mean?” I says.

“Plenty of them got it tougher than I got it. Foley, for instance.”

“Did they send for him?” I says.

“No,” he says. “He just went.”

He went in the box and lit a cigarette. “You better enter it in the book,” he says. “I took note of the time. It was three twenty-eight.”

NOVEMBER 17, 1929

The office of the town commissioners, second floor. Water Witch Fire Engine House. It is an afternoon in May. The members of the board, who are Mr. Hinsch, chairman, and Messrs. Matchett and Oyster, have just returned from lunch after a public hearing which lasted all morning, and are now about to go into executive session, from which, of course, the public is excluded.

Mr. Hinsch: Well, gentlemen, the way I get it, we got to act on this matter of a pension for Scotty Akers, what I mean for his family. And I say let’s not have no more bum argument like we had this morning. It’s too damn hot.

Mr. Matchett: I never seen the beat of them people, a-whooping and a-hollering, and a-carrying on, the way they done.

Mr. Oyster: And it don’t make no difference which way we settle it, we got one side or the other sore as hell at us.

Mr. Hinsch: That’s right. It don’t make no difference what we do, we got ourself in Dutch.

Mr. Matchett: And us only trying to do the right thing.

Mr. Hinsch: It’s this here goddam fight that makes all the trouble.

Mr. Oyster: This here fight makes it bad. Wonder why the hell Scotty couldn’t of been squirting water in the fire when that string-piece beaned him, ’stead of on them Water Witches.

Mr. Matchett: Scotty sure was a caution, thataway.

Mr. Hinsch: How come that fight to get started? I ain’t never got that straight in my head yet.

Mr. Oyster: Scotty started it.

Mr. Matchett: Yep, Scotty started it, just like he always done.

Mr. Oyster: You see, when them Semper Fidelises drives up in their truck, they finds them Water Witches already at the fire. Well, Scotty, he was driving the Semper Fidelises’ truck. And soon as he seen them Water Witches, he hollers out: “Hell, ain’t you got the fire out yet? Get out of the way and let some firemen get to it.”

Mr. Matchett: That’s what Scotty said. I was there and I heard him.

Mr. Hinsch: It’s a wonder Scotty couldn’t of shut up once in a while. I always did say Scotty could of shut his trap and improved hisself.

Mr. Oyster: And with that, them Water Witches turns the hose on the Semper Fidelises. And they had a fight. And right in the middle of it the roof of the house that was on fire falls and a string-piece beans Scotty on the head. And when they pick him up, he’s dead.

Mr. Matchett: And the house burns down.

Mr. Oyster: That’s the hell of it, the house burns down.

Mr. Hinsch: What I say, if them two companies got to have a fight every time they go to a fire, why can’t they put the fire out first and then have the fight coming back?

Mr. Matchett: That’s the way them Eyetalians does when two funerals have a race. They always race coming back from the graveyard. That there is a better way. It stands to reason.

Mr. Oyster: You would think them boys would stop to think that a house costs money. And them trucks costs money, too.

Mr. Hinsch: And here we got all them Semper Fidelises saying the town had ought to pay Scotty’s family a pension, account of him getting beaned like you might say in the line of duty, and all them Water Witches says it’s a hell of a note to sock a pension on the taxpayers, account of Scotty being the one that started the fight. And it don’t make no difference which way we settle it, we got ourself in Dutch.

Mr. Matchett: A fellow don’t hardly know what to do.

Mr. Hinsch: Them companies wasn’t so bad before this here Rotary Club butted in with all their lovey-dovey stuff.

Mr. Matchett: Why, no! What I mean, they had a fight now and then, but they didn’t have nobody get killed or no house burn down, like of that.

Mr. Oyster: But them Rotarys wasn’t satisfied. They had to get up a association and have all the firemen belong to it, so them two companies would love one another. Who the hell ever hear tell of a couple of fire companies that love one another?

Mr. Hinsch: I don’t think much of that stuff. You got to have competition.

Mr. Oyster: And come to find out, they love each other so damn much they had a fight and the house burns down. And Scotty gets killed.

Mr. Hinsch: Them Rotarys makes me sick. Why the hell does them fellows belong to a order like that?

Mr. Matchett: I hear a fellow say they don’t pay no benefits nor nothing.

Mr. Oyster: That’s right. Jim Peasely, that was president last year, told me so hisself. They ain’t got no insurance or nothing like that.

Mr. Matchett: And they ain’t got no regalia.

Mr. Oyster: And then another thing, why don’t they have their meetings at night? Daytime ain’t no time for a order to meet. I’d like to see them try to pull off a initiation, what I mean, a real initiation, with a big class of candidates, like that, in the daytime. Why, you couldn’t do it.

Mr. Matchett: All they got is a password.

Mr. Oyster; Password? Why, hell, they ain’t got a password no more than a snowbird has. They got a motto, that’s all they got. “Serve yourself,” or something like that, I forget just what it is. But not no regular password, not even a grip.

Mr. Hinsch: Is that right?

Mr. Matchett: I swear to God, I never knowed that. I thought they had a password and a grip.

Mr. Hinsch: Ain’t they got nothing at all?

Mr. Oyster: Not a damn thing! And to hear them fellows talk, and read them pieces in the paper, you would think it was something.

Mr. Hinsch: When I get an order, I want something for my money.

Mr. Matchett: Me, too. I’m in the Junior Order and Heptasophs now, and before long — well, I reckon you boys know what I got my eye on. I hope to get took in the Odd Fellows.

Mr. Oyster: Shall we tell him, Hinsch?

Mr. Hinsch: Go ahead and tell him.

Mr. Oyster: We got a little surprise for you, Matchett. It’s all fixed up for you with the Odd Fellows. They act on it next meeting. Fact of the matter the committee has already passed on it.

Mr. Matchett: Is that right!.. Well, boys, that there was sure some surprise, and I tell you it makes a fellow sure feel good. I kind of had an idea, but a fellow can’t never be sure.

Mr. Oyster: Yep, she’s all fixed up. You’ll be right on the steamboat when this summer’s excursion pulls out.

Mr. Matchett: It sure does make a fellow feel good.

Mr. Hinsch: What I say, if them Rotarys hadn’t of butted in with this here Buddy Association, everything would of been all right. Them firemen didn’t need no association. They ought to of kept them companies separate. But then they got in this here bum argument about what color plumes they’re going to have on their hats and then everything is balled up like hell.

Mr. Oyster: That there is a hot thing to have a argument about, ain’t it, what color plumes they’re going to have? My God! What difference does it make what color plumes they have? They could have green plumes and it wouldn’t make no difference to me.