Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

He leaned against a tree and closed his eyes. He was in his Pop’s dressing room at the theater and Pop was in his silk bathrobe with pieces of beard stuck here and there over his face and his hair gray with powder. Beautiful women with furs came in, talking and laughing in their womanly musical voices and Pop said, “This is my son, Eddie. He is a little Henry Irving,” and the women cried with delight and took him in their arms, among the scented furs and kissed him, their lips cool from the winter outside on his warm red face. And Pop beamed and patted his behind kindly and said, “Eddie, you do not have to go to Military School any longer and you don’t have to spend Christmas with your aunt in Duluth, either. You are going to spend Christmas in New York alone with me. Go to the box office and get a ticket for tonight’s performance, Row A, center. ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs …’ Yes, Pop, yes, Pop, yes …”

Eddie blinked his eyes and looked around him at the mean wood walls of the Academy. Prison, prison. “I wish you burn,” he said with utter hate to the peeling paint and the dead ivy and the ramshackle bell tower. “Burn! Burn! ”

Abruptly he became quiet. His eyes narrowed and the cast of thought came over his face beneath the stiff short visor of his military cap. He regarded the dreary buildings intently, his lips moving silently over deep, unmentionable thoughts, the expression on his face a hunter’s expression, marking down prey for the kill far off in the tangled jungle.

If the school burned down he couldn’t sleep in the December woods, could he, they would have to send him home, wouldn’t they, and if he was rescued from the burning building Pop would be so grateful that his son was not dead that … The school would have to burn down completely and they would never send him back and fire burns from the bottom up and the bottom was the cellar and the only person there was the Custodian, sitting lonely there, longing for his Christmas bottle …

With a sharp involuntary sigh, Eddie wheeled swiftly and walked toward the cellar entrance, to seize the moment.

“Lissen,” he said to the Custodian, rocking mournfully back and forth next to the furnace. “Lissen, I feel sorry for yuh.”

“Yeah,” the Custodian said hopelessly. “I can see it.”

“I swear. An old man like you. All alone on Christmas Eve. Nothin’ to comfort yuh. That’s terrible.”

“Yeah,” the Custodian agreed. “Yeah.”

“Not even a single drink to warm yuh up.”

“Not a drink. On Christmas!” The Custodian rocked bitterly back and forth. “I might as well lay down and die.”

“I got a change of heart,” Eddie said deliberately. “How much does a bottle of applejack cost?”

“Well,” the Custodian said craftily, “there’s applejack and applejack.”

“The cheapest applejack,” Eddie said sternly. “Who do you think I am?”

“You can get a first-rate bottle of applejack for ninety-five cents, Eddie,” the Custodian said in haste. “I would take that kindly. That’s a thoughtful deed for an old man in the holiday season.”

Eddie slowly assorted ninety-five cents out in his pocket. “Understand,” he said, “this ain’t a usual thing.”

“Of course not, Eddie,” the Custodian said quickly. “I wouldn’t expect …”

“I won it honest,” Eddie insisted.

“Sure, Eddie.”

“But on Christmas …”

“Sure, just on Christmas …” The Custodian was on the edge of his rocker now, leaning forward, his mouth open, his tongue licking at the corners of his lips.

Eddie put out his hand with the coins in it. “Ninety-five cents,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”

The Custodian’s hand trembled as he took the money. “You got a good heart, Eddie,” he said simply. “You don’t look it, but you got a good heart.”

“I would go get it for you myself,” Eddie said, “only I got to write my father a letter.”

“That’s all right, Eddie, my boy, perfectly all right. I’ll take a little walk into town myself.” The Custodian laughed nervously. “The clear air. Pick me up. Thank you, Eddie, you’re one of the best.”

“Well,” Eddie said, starting out. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” the Custodian said heartily. “Merry Christmas, my boy, and a happy New Year.”

And he sang “I saw three ships go sailing by, go sailing by,” as Eddie went up the cellar steps.

Five hours later Eddie walked down Forty-fifth Street, in New York City, without an overcoat, shivering in the cold, but happy. He marched across from the Grand Central Station through the good-natured holiday crowds, reciting gaily to the lights, the neon signs, the bluecoated policemen, “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?” He crossed Sixth Avenue, turned into the stage-entrance alley of the theater over which the huge sign read in electric bulbs, The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. “And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” he shouted thickly at the alley walls, as he opened the stage door and ran upstairs to his father’s dressing room.

The door was open and his father was sitting at his make-up table, applying grease and false hair carefully, close to the mirror. Eddie sidled in softly.

“Pop,” he said, standing at the door. Then again, “Pop.”

“Uh.” His father touched up an eyebrow with a comb, making it bush out.

“Pop,” Eddie said. “It’s me.”

His father soberly put down the grease-stick, the small comb, the false hair, and turned around.

“Eddie,” he said.

“Merry Christmas, Pop,” Eddie said, smiling nervously.

“What’re you doing here, Eddie?” His father looked him straight and seriously in the eye.

“I’m home, Pop,” Eddie said quickly. “I’m home for Christmas.”

“I am paying that money-grabbing Military Academy forty-five dollars extra to keep you there and you tell me you are home for Christmas!” The great voice boomed out with the passion and depth that made audiences of fifteen hundred souls shiver in their seats. “A telephone! I want a telephone! Frederick!” he called for his dresser. “Frederick, by God Almighty, a telephone!”

“But, Pop …” Eddie said.

“I will talk to those miserable toy soldiers, those uniformed school-ma’ams! Frederick, in the name of God!”

“Pop, Pop,” Eddie wailed. “You can’t call them.”

His father stood up to his six-foot-three magnificence in his red-silk dressing gown and looked down on Eddie, one eyebrow high with mockery on the huge domed forehead. “I can’t call them, my son says. Little snot-nose tells me what to do and what not to do.”

“You can’t call, Pop,” Eddie yelled, “because there’s nothing to talk to. See?”

“Oh,” his father said, with searing irony, “the school has disappeared. Poof! and off it goes. The Arabian Nights. In Connecticut.”

“That’s why I’m here, Pop,” Eddie pleaded rapidly. “There ain’t no more school. It burned. It burned right down to the ground. This afternoon. Look, even my overcoat. Look, I don’t have an overcoat.”

His father stood silent, regarding him soberly through the deepset cold gray eyes under the famous gray brows. One of the famous long thick fingers beat slowly, like the pendulum of doom, on the dressing table, as he listened to his son, standing there, chapped by exposure, in his tight uniform, talking fast, shifting from one foot to another.

“See, Pop, it burned down, I swear to God, you can ask anyone, I was lying in my bed writing a letter and the firemen got me, you can ask them, and there wasn’t no place for them to put me and they gave me money for the train and … I’ll stay here with you, Pop, eh, Pop, for Christmas, what do you say, Pop?” Pleading, pleading … His voice broke off under his father’s steady, unrelenting stare. He stood silent, pleading with his face, his eyes, the twist of his mouth, with his cold, chapped hands. His father moved majestically over to him, raised his hand, and slapped him across the face.