William Saroyan - The Laughing Matter

Evan did as he was told. At last his brother slept. He’d lost a lot of blood. He was in bed two weeks. Then, still weak and unrestored, he got up and drove off. He came back a couple of days later by train, and stayed three months. He left three thousand dollars with the old man, and a thousand with Evan, for school.

“For God’s sake,” Evan said, “at least let him know where you are once in a while. He knows I’m all right, but he worries about you. He’s too proud to ask you himself. Phone or wire or write once in a while.”

“I can’t,” Dade said. “This one last time, then I’ll come home, and we’ll figure something out. California maybe. A lot of his friends from the old country are out there. Tell him so, if you want to. I don’t want to, in case it doesn’t work out. I think it will. It may take a little time. Can’t you come home over the weekends?”

“I come as often as I can.”

“We’ll figure something out when I get back. You doing all right at school?”

“I’m doing all right.”

“We’ll go to California,” the older brother said. “Buy a vineyard. All his people have vineyards out there. We’ll put a house on it. It’ll be his house. We’ll buy a car. We’ll drive him around to his people. Whatever it is that you’re going to be doing, you can do out there. Tell him these things. I don’t know how.”

“I’ll try, Dade.”

“Thanks. What are you going to be doing?”

“I’m going to try to write.”

“Books?”

“Yes, Dade.”

“You know how to do that?”

“Well, no, but it’s what I want to do. I guess I’ll have to teach for a living, though.”

“What’ll you teach?”

“Literature, I guess.”

“That’s pretty good,” Dade said. “You tell me some books to read sometime.”

“Take this one with you,” Evan said.

He handed his brother a small book that Dade slipped into his coat pocket without first finding out what the book was.

“Thanks,” Dade said. “I’ll read it. I’ll read every word of it. I promise. Just look after the old man until I get back.”

Evan had looked after the old man as well as he’d been able to, getting in over the week ends, talking to him, eating the old-country food the old man cooked. But Dade was a long time getting back. One weekend when Evan came home he found the old man sick in bed.

“Why didn’t you phone?” he said.

“Ah,” the old man said. “It’s nothing.”

It was pneumonia, though, and after six days Petrus Nazarenus died. Three months later Dade came home, and for the first time in his life Evan saw his brother weep.

He saw Dade stand in the old man’s room and weep like a small boy.

“My dirty luck,” Evan heard his brother say.

Years later, more than twenty years later, walking to the airplane with his brother, on his way back to Swan and Red and Eva, the younger brother said the words back to the older one.

“What’s the matter, Dade? What did I do? What did you do? What did the old man do? He comes to America, works hard, after three years sends for his wife and son. They come, another son is born, he thinks he’s going to have the family at last that he’s always wanted, a lot of boys, a lot of girls, all of them well, their mother well, their father well, but two years after his wife reaches America she’s dead, and he doesn’t want to look at another woman. He can’t. He becomes a sad old man in a silly little cigar store in Paterson, New Jersey, living for his sons. You know what’s happened to you , Dade. And here it is happening to me, too. What for, Dade? What’d he do wrong? What’d you do wrong? What’d I do?”

He stopped, began again suddenly, speaking softly but swiftly.

“You know you want to see your kids, Dade. You know the only thing you live for is your kids. You know the only thing you think about is your kids. You know you’re here in San Francisco to get more money to send them. Is it right to live a life of pride and loneliness?”

“It is right,” the older brother said in their own language.

“You’re fifty now, man,” Evan said. “You’re not a swift kid racing around Paterson any more. What are you going to do? Are you finished, Dade? Are we all finished?”

His brother only looked at him.

“What am I supposed to do?” the younger brother said. “Be finished, too?”

He stopped again, trying to think what to do, what to do next.

“I can’t leave Red. I can’t leave Eva. I don’t know them. I don’t have the faintest idea who they are. What’d I do wrong, Dade? I went away to work for eight weeks, to get money for a car, so we could ride around a little. Two months, and she wrote every day. Yes, every day. And I wrote her. What’s the matter, Dade? What’s the matter with us?

“Listen,” he said suddenly. “I’m not going back. I can’t look at her any more. I’ll never be able to look at her again. There’s no use going back. All right, Red’s dead, Eva’s lost. All right. That’s how it is, and I can’t go back.”

He began to walk swiftly, though.

Dade watched him climb the steps and get aboard. He watched the plane turn on its wheels and roll slowly to the place for the take-off. When it was up and going, he went for a taxi.

The book was The Oxford Blake , a small book with thin pages. Dade hadn’t finished reading it yet, but any time he wasn’t home the book was with him. He brought it out of his pocket now, in the taxi going back to San Francisco, opened it, and began to read.

Red was too busy to be frightened, but the thing was dangerous. It was a thing in which an enormous fire burned, in which a great deal of heat gathered. It was a thing on enormous wheels. It was too heavy to move, because movement is a light thing, but it did move, and he himself started it moving. Cody Bone put Red’s hand on the lever, helped him move it down, and then, sure enough, the thing made noises and began to go. His father and his sister watched him, standing far below and waving.

He tugged at the whistle handle, but once was enough. He pulled the bell cord, but once was enough for that, too. Now, here they were slowing down to draw up alongside another locomotive on another track, the other engineer leaning out, waiting for them.

“Hi,” Red said.

“Hi, boy,” the engineer said. He was a younger man than Cody Bone, a man who chewed tobacco and spit, his face smeared here and there, a man who smiled only with his eyes.

The two engineers talked a moment, then the new one said, “Is that your grandson, Cody?”

“Yes,” Cody said. “Pat’s boy. We call him Red.”

When the engine went off Red said, “I’m not your grandson, am I?”

Red thought perhaps he might be, but hadn’t heard.

“Well, not really, Red,” Cody said. “I just said that because—— Well, I guess I wish you were my grandson.”

“If I was,” Red said, “would I lose my father?”

“Oh, no,” Cody said. “Evan’s your father. You can never lose him. Your father is always your father, and so is your grandfather.”

“Who is my grandfather?” Red said.

“Evan’s father.”

“But he’s dead.”

“Your mother’s father. He’s your grandfather, too.”

“Why do I have two grandfathers, but one father?”

“You’ve got two grandmothers, too. Your father’s mother and your mother’s mother. Now, we’ve got to go along here a little, pick up three boxcars, and push them back in front of the depot. There you’ll see your father again. And that will be the ride in the big black baby. What do you think of it?”