William Saroyan - The Laughing Matter

He turned to glance at the boy beside him, the boy’s eyes enormous and searching. They were still excited, but no longer frightened.

“Where will I sit?” Red said.

“Right beside me.”

“Can I sit where you sit and lean out the way you do?”

“I think so.”

“Can I make it go?”

“I think so.”

“Eva,” Red said, “you watch from the depot. Watch me run the locomotive.”

“All right,” the girl said.

Cody Bone parked the car in front of the depot.

“I’ll get into my work clothes,” he said. “I’ll be back with the big black baby in five minutes.”

“We’ll be out front,” Evan said.

Across the street, over Harry’s Pool Room, was a hall, six rooms, a kitchen, and two baths. The door on the street was locked, had been since four in the morning. Susie and the two girls were having coffee and cigarettes. The enormous Negress had invited the girls to the front room to sit at the window and look down at the depot and the railroad tracks.

“There’s Cody Bone,” she said.

“Was he ever here?” a girl called Peggy said.

“Cody?” the Negress said. “Lord, no. We been friends the whole time I rent this place. He remember my birthday every year. Just because I tole him one day it was my birthday. I was all dressed up, but it wasn’t no more my birthday than today is. There’s some others. That man there, that boy and girl.”

“That one last night,” the other girl said, a girl called Toy, half Japanese, half Mexican-Indian. “Warren Walz. Was he ever here before?”

“Juss a minute,” Susie said. “My girls don’t know who comes here. All right here to say the name. Nowhere else. A man come here, nobody ever hear about it.”

“I know,” Toy said. “I just want to know if he ever came here before.”

“There they go,” Susie said. “They standing out front there, the man holding hands with the boy and girl.” She turned to the girl. “He never come here before. Why?”

“I’ve seen boys cry.”

“Look over there now,” Susie said. “Here comes Cody with the big black baby. That’s what he call the engine. He doan mean no kind of discrimination by it, though. He love that big black baby. Look now, Toy. You, Peggy. There’s Cody getting down. There he go back up with the boy. He been my friend the whole time. That time of trouble, Cody help me. There he go. There’s the boy sitting in Cody’s place. Look at that.”

The three women watched the locomotive pump and go, the small boy waving to the man and the girl.

“Everybody cry sometime or other,” Susie said when the locomotive was out of sight and the man and the girl had walked down the tracks after it. “They hold it back, then they let it go. You just doan say the name any time you go sit or stand somewhere. You, too, Peggy.”

“What do I care what his name is?” Peggy said.

She was always a little on the defensive because, even though she was blonde and had the better figure, most of the men who came to the place, especially the interesting ones, chose Toy, and she got the Mexicans, the half-breeds, the Filipinos, the Negroes, all the ones who were like dumb animals. She’d never had one who’d cried. They were men at least, she thought.

“Now, you both go along to Doc Rocha’s,” Susie said. “You got a hour. Go bathe now, dress up, I see you back here about noon. They’ll be those working boys coming in during lunch hour.”

Every time Dade Nazarenus planned to leave his home on the vineyard in Clovis he telephoned his brother Evan and urged him to pick up his family and stay in the house during his absence.

Once before, early in December, Evan had wanted to go, but Swan had come down with the flu. By the time she’d been better it was almost Christmas, so they didn’t go because they wanted to spend Christmas in their own home.

It wasn’t much of a house, a Veteran Loan proposition, $500 down, $72 a month against a mortgage of $10,950, payable in twenty years, or 240 months. Fifteen of the 240 months had gone by. It was theirs , though. At any rate, they liked to think it was. The house was detached, but the neighbors were near and the yard was small. Still, it wasn’t bad. It wouldn’t do for a large family, though, and that was what Evan believed they would become.

His salary at the university was enough to meet the payments on the house, buy groceries, and pay the bills of plain living.

They couldn’t afford a car. When the offer came from the University of Nebraska for Evan to go there for eight weeks during the summer, he talked it over with Swan, accepted the offer, planning on his return to make a down payment on a new Chevrolet. He brought home $900. He was about to buy the car when Swan suggested they wait a while longer, or pay cash for a secondhand car. The matter had rested there, and early in August, only a few days after Evan’s return from Nebraska, Dade telephoned and made the invitation again.

“I’ve had a woman come in and get the place ready,” he said. “I’ve put the key in the mail. You’ll get it this afternoon. I’ve got the icebox full of stuff, and the deep freezer. You’ll find all kinds of meat in there. The figs are ripe on the tree. They get ripe by the hour. I’d like to see all of you, but I won’t be able to just now. Come down and stay as long as you like. I’ve got to go to San Francisco. It’s for a week at least, possibly two. It may be three. When do you have to be back at the university?”

“I’ve got a month,” Evan said, “but we wouldn’t stay that long.”

“Come on down and decide when you get here how long you want to stay. I know Swan and the kids are going to have fun. It’s very hot.”

“Can’t you stop here on your way to San Francisco?”

“I’m flying up,” Dade said. “My car’s being overhauled. The boy will bring it to the house in three or four days. When he does, take Swan and the kids for a picnic. There are some nice places around.”

“We’ll take the train in the morning,” Evan said. “Wish you were going to be there, though. The kids ought to know their father’s brother.”

“We’ll make it sometime,” Dade said. “Christmas maybe.”

In Paterson, as a boy, Dade had worked at a variety of jobs, anything that came along, but once he’d got his pay at the end of the week he was another man. He put on expensive clothes and went out to look around. He found things that Evan might not have found in a lifetime. At seventeen he knew a side of the Jersey towns that neither Evan nor the old man knew. He began to take trips, after which he would visit Evan and the old man for a week or two, sometimes a month. Then he would be gone for another four or five months.

“He is gambler,” the old man told Evan. “He go to gamble. I want my boy to work for money. Gamble is bad. When I was young man I was gambler. I know my Dade.”

The years went by. Dade and the old man talked quietly by the hour when Dade came home. The old man was not angry with Dade, but Evan knew he wanted Dade to take a job, like everybody else.

When Dade was twenty-five and Evan was at Princeton, the old man telephoned early one morning and told Evan in their own language to come home right away.

When he got home he saw Dade in bed, the old man trying to do something about Dade’s left arm and shoulder.

“I’ll call a doctor,” Evan said.

“No,” Dade said. “I don’t want anybody to know about this. Dig in there and see if you can get the slug out.”

“I can’t do that,” Evan said. “A surgeon’s got to do it, Dade.”

“In the top drawer there I’ve got some instruments in a box,” Dade said. “Put them in boiling water. Then dig in there and get the slug out. Get it out and let me sleep. I’ve been driving all night.”