William Saroyan - The Laughing Matter

“I love you, and I love him, Red,” the woman said. “I don’t love Eva because she’s like me. I hate Eva.”

“Mama!”

“I love her. I love her, too, Red.”

“She found the stars, Mama.”

“Yes. I love her.”

“Nobody else found them. She’s the one who found them. Didn’t she?”

“Yes, she found them, Red.”

“What’s the matter, Mama?” the boy said.

“I can’t tell you, Red.”

“Don’t you know , Mama?”

“I know.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t tell you, Red”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” the woman wept.

When he had crossed the vineyard and had come to another road he stopped running and began to walk, burning badly, drunk now, and suddenly deadly tired. He stumbled over something—my dirty life, he thought—and fell. He stayed fallen and hurt, inhaling the dust his fall had made, tasting it. He reached forward and clutched the dirt, then got to his feet.

He walked again, tripped over something again, fell hard, and this time cried out, “Oh, Red, my son! Oh, Eva, my daughter!” He wept shamelessly now, the tears mixing with the blood of his cut face.

A car stopped and somebody came and stood over him.

“I’m driving to Fresno, if you want to go.”

He got up without help. He wanted to be polite but he wasn’t ready to look into any man’s face just yet. In the car, he wiped the blood and dirt from his face.

“You don’t see many drunks in the country.”

“I’m awfully grateful to you,” he said in a whisper. “I don’t want to talk.”

“Mind if I do?”

“No.”

“Well, I saw you back a little in the vineyard there. I thought I ought to see how you made out. I don’t know why. It’s none of my business. Another time I would have driven by. That’s all.”

The driver of the car didn’t speak again until they came to the center of the town. He parked the car, and the man turned to look at him for the first time. He was amazed to see a man so young.

“Evan Nazarenus,” he said.

“I know,” the other said. “I’m Cody Bone’s boy. I know Dade. You look alike. Anyway, Cody told me he’d seen you at the depot.”

The young man tried to smile, then got out of the car. The man got out and walked away. He reached a corner, went into a bar, glanced at the drinkers, then went out to the street again. A taxi drew up to let out a young man and a young woman, and the man stepped into it.

“The airport,” he said.

At the airport he asked for a ticket to San Francisco, then went to the phone booth and tried to get his brother. The hotel said his brother was out. Five minutes before flight time he tried again and his brother came on the line.

“Can you meet me at the airport?”

“Sure. When?”

“An hour, I think.”

“I’ll be there.” He waited a moment. “Evan?” his brother said.

“I’ll tell you when I get there.”

“O.K.”

The man went out and got aboard the plane.

He saw his brother, a man of fifty, standing at the gate, a little off from a cluster of seven or eight people, including a small boy and girl. When he came to the gate Evan Nazarenus looked at the boy, about four, and the girl, about six, and loved them with terrible pity.

The brothers noticed one another quickly, and then Evan said, “How about walking?”

“Sure.”

They moved in silence to the highway and began to walk toward San Francisco.

He told his brother softly, suddenly.

“How’s Red?” his brother said.

“He breaks my heart, but she’s his mother, Dade.”

“How’s Eva?”

“She breaks my heart, too.”

“How’s Swan?”

“What?”

“Swan.”

The younger brother stopped walking. He wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to turn and walk away.

“You’re not trying to be funny, are you, Dade?”

“How’s the mother of your kids, Evan?”

“Didn’t you hear what I told you? Or did I say it to myself?”

“I heard you. How’s Swan?”

They walked in silence again until they came to a road.

“Where’s that road go to?” Evan said.

“San Bruno,” his brother said.

The younger brother moved down the road quickly, the older one staying close beside him.

“What do you want me to ask you?” Dade said.

“Anything. Ask me why I didn’t kill her.”

“O.K.”

“Because I love her. What’s the matter with us?”

“How is she?”

“I don’t know. I guess she’s dying. What’s the matter with us, Dade?”

“What do the kids know?”

“Red can’t figure out what it is in your house that smells like rocks. What’s the matter with Red, Dade?”

“Does he know?”

“He knows. By now he knows. The smell of leather is from the chair in the parlor. He found the coffee on the bookshelf. He found the dried bouquet of roses in the silver bowl over the fireplace. He wanted to know if the smell of rocks came from you , from living alone in a house that not so long ago had two small sons and a small daughter in it. He knows by now. He knows something . He’s very close to her. He loves her as I do, with something more of his own. What’s the matter with us, Dade?”

“I don’t know what the smell of rocks is from,” Dade said.

“What’s that bouquet?”

“Hers.”

“How is she? How is your wife?”

“I don’t know, Evan.”

“You can ask me,” the younger brother said. “You can ask me, but when I ask you, you say you don’t know. Is that all? I’m already pitying her. Is that all because of your pride? You don’t know. Is that all?”

“That’s all, Evan.”

“After all this time? Nine years?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Who do we think we are?”

“It’s dirty anyway,” the older brother said, “but if you don’t have pride it’s dirtier.”

“All right, Dade,” he said. “Jesus, all right. Can’t we be dirtier? Can’t we be the dirtiest?”

“I don’t know. Can we? Can’t we?”

“I told you I’m already pitying her,” Evan said. “What’s the matter with us, Dade?”

“You remember some of the boys we knew that are dead,” his brother said. “That’s what’s the matter with us. We’re not. Who are mine, the three of them? Who are they?”

“Yes,” Evan said. “Yes, you want me to go along with any pity I happen to feel. You wouldn’t take anything , but you want me to take anything.”

They came to houses, to sidewalks, walked three blocks, then the younger brother turned around and they began to walk back. When they reached the airport he went to the ticket seller and bought a ticket back.

It was almost five in the morning when he reached his brother’s house in Clovis. He went in and found the little girl lying naked on top of her bed, her body strewn about in comfort that seemed everlasting. He thought he would see the boy next, but he saw the boy and his mother together, the boy almost as relaxed as his sister, but the woman tense and pathetic. He stood staring at them, and then the woman opened her eyes. For a moment she didn’t remember, then did, and sat up quickly, nakedly. Her face twisted, she began to cry silently, her head falling limp, her hair covering her swollen breasts. She got out of bed, hugged him, and whispered something that wasn’t words of any kind. He moved with her to their own room and drew back the coverings of her bed. She got in, sobbing, and he sat down to wait, although he couldn’t imagine what he could possibly be waiting for now.