Evan Connell - Mr. Bridge

“Oh,” she said uncertainly. “Well, of course I don’t understand the ins and outs of the case, but it does sound as though the judge was unfair.”

“Just what would you consider ‘fair’ in this life?” he demanded.

And hearing himself speak to his wife so rudely and so foolishly, he put down his knife and fork and held his head, which was pounding like the ocean.

That winter he decided he could afford a Cadillac. For some time he had been thinking about this, but there were two considerations. First, of course, was the expense. The second was more difficult to evaluate because it had to do with taste. Cadillac quite unmistakably symbolized success, and he did not want anybody who observed him in a Cadillac to assume that he was boasting. So, wanting one, he had told himself it would cost too much. But there came a day when he stopped at an agency to get the brochure, and he arranged for a salesman to bring a Cadillac to the house so he could take the family for a ride.

It was a splendid Saturday afternoon, clear and cold, when the luxurious black machine glided into view. The fat tires squashed sensuously over the icy ruts in the street. Behind the wheel, profoundly aware that he was representing Cadillac, sat Mr. Pulliam the salesman.

After shaking hands with Mr. Bridge, tipping his hat to Mrs. Bridge, and speaking to the children, Mr. Pulliam presented the keys. Then he stood on the front step patting one of the neighborhood dogs and chatting with Harriet while the family went for a drive through Mission Hills.

They were gone about twenty minutes and when they returned Mr. Pulliam inquired confidently whether they had enjoyed themselves.

“Yes, we did,” Mr. Bridge replied.

“You will never buy a finer automobile,” Mr. Pulliam said.

Mr. Bridge frowned. The Cadillac was impeccable, but Mr. Pulliam annoyed him. He turned to the family and said, “Well, speak up. Do you like it, or don’t you? I’m not the only one who’s going to be using it. Shall we see about buying this or look around for something else?”

“It’s okay,” Douglas remarked without much enthusiasm. He had no objection to the car. He was willing to ride in it.

“Well, I certainly like it,” Mrs. Bridge said, modulating her voice to express both her appreciation of the Cadillac and her knowledge that it was terribly expensive.

“What about you two?” Mr. Bridge asked Carolyn and Ruth. He had nearly made up his mind. He was pleased that his wife and son liked the car. The cost troubled him, but he knew he could manage and he felt that the time had come to indulge himself. In the past he had denied himself many things in order to make certain that the family was deprived of nothing. Now, because he had worked hard and was succeeding, and because there were enough securities in the bank so that they would suffer no hardship if he died unexpectedly, he thought he would buy this enormously gratifying piece of machinery.

“It’s gorgeous,” Ruth said, and touched the fender with a fingernail.

“Many of our owners prefer three initials,” Mr. Pulliam observed, pointing to a small metal plate near the door handle. “Although you may prefer two.” He smiled.

Mr. Bridge ignored him because he had interrupted when Carolyn was ready to speak. Furthermore, the suggestion about the initials implied that a decision had been made.

Mrs. Bridge and all three children knew the salesman had miscalculated. Mr. Pulliam looked around helplessly.

Carolyn knew it was her turn to speak. She said in the voice her mother often used, “Oh, it’s awfully nice.”

“I’ll have to think this over,” Mr. Bridge said. “Give me your card in case I decide to call you.”

Mr. Pulliam smiled desperately. He opened his mouth to try again, but after looking up at Mr. Bridge he realized that whatever he said would make matters worse. He smiled once more, handed Mr. Bridge the card as though handing over his sword, slipped into the Cadillac, and drove away stamped with defeat.

For a few minutes Mr. and Mrs. Bridge remained standing on the driveway to discuss the situation.

“He was so sure of himself,” she remarked.

“They’re all alike, every last one of them,” he answered. “If we decide on a Cadillac I’ll go through some other agency. And Lord knows I won’t have my initials on it.”

He continued to think about the Cadillac, but he could not forget the salesman; and the suggestion that he should advertise himself by putting his initials on the door was so offensive that several weeks after the demonstration he bought a Chrysler. The family liked it, and he himself did not feel quite so conspicuous. He concluded that he had made the proper decision.

Gradually the low sky of winter began to lift. Beneath the shrubbery and in dark, cold corners the snow hardened into ice, but everywhere else it was melting. Icicles grew from the eaves, dripping and shining during the day while great pleats of snow skidded from the roof and thundered softly into the drifts.

Then one afternoon a breeze floated through the rose trellis, birds sailed overhead, and it was April. Harriet left the kitchen door open. The laundress strung clothesline in the back yard. Ruth and Carolyn oiled their roller skates and Douglas quit wearing the helmet he had worn nearly every day since October. Mrs. Bridge placed her fur coat in storage. Mr. Bridge, with no regret, carried the big flat-bladed snow shovel to the basement, where he hung it on a nail in the wall behind the furnace. He inspected the window screens. He rolled the lawn mower back and forth and sharpened the blades, and he sharpened the clipping shears.

And then it was summer.

Nothing spoke so persistently of summer as the ceaseless rasping song of the locusts — not the whirring lawn mowers or the morning twitter of sparrows in the birdbath or the shouts of boys playing baseball, the monotonous buzz of houseflies, little girls skipping rope on the sidewalk, not even the ephemeral moths bumping with mild anxiety against a screen. No noise welled from the green heart of summer like the buzzing of the locusts. Each afternoon they began when the hottest part of the day was over, and they did not stop until late at night, unless there was rain.

One evening on the porch he was reading the Star . His wife was sewing buttons on a shirt. Carolyn was reading a book. Douglas sprawled on the floor drawing pictures in a tablet with a box of crayons. Ruth lay on the swing doing nothing. In the dark trees the locusts sang.

Carolyn looked up. “Mother,” she said, “where do they go when summer is over?”

“The locusts? I’m not sure, dear. Ask your father.”

Mr. Bridge lowered his newspaper. “They live only a few weeks, Carolyn.”

“How do they make that noise?”

“Oh, goodness, I used to know,” her mother said. “Let me think. We were taught in school.”

He waited for her to remember, but she could not, so he said, “They are not rubbing their wings together, as most people think. They produce the noise by the vibration of a membrane situated near the abdomen. And as I recall, Carolyn, it’s only the male who ‘sings’—if you care to call it singing. I’m afraid this just about exhausts my knowledge of them. It’s been quite a while since your mother and I were in school.”

But she had noticed that they began in unison, not one after another. She asked how they knew when it was time to begin. He answered that this was a mystery.

“It’s so beautiful,” Ruth said. “It’s like they had an orchestra with a conductor. I could lie here and listen forever.”

Mrs. Bridge said, “They always let us know evening is on the way.”