John Steinbeck - The Winter of Our Discontent

“No, I haven’t.”

“Where’s Marullo?”

“He’s out of town.”

“Guess maybe you might have to close up for a while.”

“What is this, Chief?”

“Well, Charley Pryor’s boy ran away from home this morning. Got a cold drink there somewhere?”

“Sure. Orange, cream, lemon, Coke?”

“Give me a Seven-Up. Charley’s a funny kind of guy. His boy Tom is eight. He figures the world’s against him and he’s going to run away to be a pirate. Anybody else would of give him a crack acrost the behind, but not Charley. Aren’t you going to open this?”

“Sorry. There you are. What’s Charley got to do with me? I like him, of course.”

“Well, Charley don’t do things like other people. He figures the best way to cure Tom is to help him. So after breakfast they get a bedroll together and a big lunch. Tom wants to take a Jap sword for self-protection, but it drags so he settles for a bayonet. Charley loads him in the car and drives him out of town to give him a good start. He let him out over near Taylor Meadow—you know, the old Taylor place. That’s about nine o’clock this morning. Charley watched the kid a while. First thing he did was sit down and eat six sandwiches and two hard-boiled eggs. And then he went on acrost the meadow with his brave little bindle and his bayonet and Charley drove home.”

Here it came. I knew it, I knew it. It was almost a relief to get it over.

“ ’Bout eleven he come slobbering out on the road and hooked a ride home.”

“I think I can guess, Stoney—is it Danny?”

“’Fraid so. Down in the cellar hole of the old house. Case of whisky, only two empties, and a bottle of sleeping pills. Sorry I got to ask you this, Eth. Been there a long time and something got at him, at his face. Cats, maybe. You remember any scars or marks on him?”

“I don’t want to look at him, Chief.”

“Well, who does? How about scars?”

“I remember a barb-wire cut above the knee on his left leg, and—and”—I rolled up my sleeve—“a heart just like this [73] a heart just like this: Steinbeck also had a tattoo, similarly etched with a Stanford classmate. tattooed. We did it together when we were kids. Cut in with a razor blade and rubbed ink in. It’s still pretty clear, see?”

“Well—that may do it. Anything else?”

“Yes—big scar under his left arm, piece of the rib cut out. He had pleural pneumonia before the new drugs and they put in a drain.”

“Well, of course if there was a rib cut, that’ll do it. I won’t even have to go back myself. Let the coroner get off his ass. You’ll have to swear to those marks if it’s him.”

“Okay. But don’t make me look at him, Stoney. He was—you know—he was my friend.”

“Sure, Eth. Say is there anything in what I hear about you running for Town Manager?”

“It’s news to me. Chief—could you stay here two minutes—”

“I got to go.”

“Just two minutes while I run across the street and get a drink?”

“Oh! Sure! I get it. Sure—go ahead. I got to get along with the new Town Manager.”

I got the drink and a pint too to bring back with me. When Stoney had gone, I printed BACK AT TWO on a card, closed the doors, and drew the shades.

I sat on the leather hatbox behind the counter in my store, sat in the dim green darkness of my store.

At ten minutes to three I went out the back door and around the corner to the front of the bank. Morph in his bronze cage drew in the sheaf of money and checks, the brown envelope, and the deposit slips. He spread the little bank books with a Y of fingers and wrote small angled numbers with a steel pen that whispered on the paper. As he pushed the books out to me he looked up with veiled and cautious eyes.

“I’m not going to talk about it, Ethan. I know he was your friend.”

“Thanks.”

“If you slip out quick you might avoid the Brain.”

But I didn’t. For all I know Morph may have buzzed him. The frosted-glass door of the office swung open and Mr. Baker, neat and spare and gray, said quietly, “Can you spare a moment, Ethan?”

No use to put it off. I walked into his frosty den and he closed the door so softly that I did not hear the latch click. His desk was topped with plate glass, under which were lists of typed numbers. Two customers’ chairs in echelon stood by his tall chair like twin suckling calves. They were comfortable but lower than the desk chair. When I sat down I had to look up at Mr. Baker and that put me in the position of supplication.

“Sad thing.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think you ought to take all the blame. Probably would have happened anyway.”

“Probably.”

“I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing.”

“I thought he had a chance.”

“Of course you did.”

My hatred was rising in my throat like a yellow taste, more sickening than furious.

“Apart from the human tragedy and waste, it raises a difficulty. Do you know whether he had relatives?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Anybody with money has relatives.”

“He had no money.”

“He had Taylor Meadow, free and clear.”

“Did he? Well, a meadow and a cellar hole—”

“Ethan, I told you we planned an airfield to service the whole district. The meadow is level. If we can’t use it, it will cost millions to bulldoze runways in the hills. And now, even if he has no heirs, it will have to go through the courts. Take months.”

“I see.”

His ire fissured. “I wonder if you do see! With your good intentions you’ve thrown the thing sky high. Sometimes I think a do-gooder is the most dangerous thing in the world.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I ought to get back to the store.”

“It’s your store.”

“It is, isn’t it? I can’t get used to it. I forget.”

“Yes, you forget. The money you gave him was Mary’s money. She’ll never see it now. You threw it away.”

“Danny was fond of my Mary. He knew it was her money.”

“Fat lot of good that will do her.”

“I thought he was making a joke. He gave me these.” I pulled the two pieces of ruled paper from my inside pocket, where I had put them, knowing I would have to draw them out like this.

Mr. Baker straightened them on his glass-topped desk. As he read them a muscle beside his right ear twitched so that his ear bobbed. His eyes went back over them, this time looking for a hole.

When the son of a bitch looked at me there was fear in him. He saw someone he hadn’t known existed. It took him a moment to adjust to the stranger, but he was good. He adjusted.

“What is your asking price?”

“Fifty-one per cent.”

“Of what?”

“Of the corporation or partnership or whatever.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You want an airfield. I have the only one available.”

He wiped his glasses carefully on a piece of pocket Kleenex, then put them on. But he didn’t look at me. He looked a circle all around me and left me out. Finally he asked, “Did you know what you were doing, Ethan?”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel good about it?”

“I guess I feel as the man felt who took him a bottle of whisky and tried to get him to sign a paper.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“He was a liar.”

“He told me he was. He warned me he was. Maybe there’s some trick in these papers.” I swept them gently from in front of him and folded the two soiled pencil-written sheets.

“There’s a trick all right, Ethan. Those documents are without a flaw, dated, witnessed, clear. Maybe he hated you. Maybe his trick was the disintegration of a man.”