Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Mike,” Victor said reproachfully.

“My friends, my relatives,” Mike said, “they prove it to me. Your business is wonderful, ten cars an hour stop at your door; you sell cigarettes to every farmer between here and Chicago; on your slot machine alone …” Mike waved a short thick arm at the machine standing invitingly against a wall, its wheels stopped at two cherries and a lemon. Mike swallowed hard, stood breathing heavily, his deep chest rising and falling sharply against his sheepskin coat. “Three hundred dollars!” he shouted. “Six months at fifty dollars! I built this shack with my own hands for you, Victor. I didn’t know what kind of a man you were. You were an Italian, I trusted you! Three hundred dollars or get out tomorrow! Finish! That’s my last word.”

Victor smoothed his newspaper down delicately on the counter, his hands making a dry brushing sound in the empty lunchroom. “You misunderstand,” he said gently.

“I misunderstand nothing!” Mike yelled. “You are on my land in my shack and you owe me three hundred dollars …”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Victor said, looking coldly at Mike. “That is what you misunderstand. I have paid you every month, the first day of the month, fifty dollars.”

“Victor!” Mike whispered, his hands dropping to his sides. “Victor, what are you saying …?”

“I have paid the rent. Please do not bother me any more.” Calmly Victor turned his back on Mike and turned two handles on the coffee urn. Steam, in a thin little plume, hissed up for a moment.

Mike looked at Victor’s narrow back, with the shoulder blades jutting far out, making limp wings in the white shirt. There was finality in Victor’s pose, boredom, easy certainty. Mike shook his head slowly, pulling hard at his mustache. “My wife,” Mike said, to the disdainful back, “she told me not to trust you. My wife knew what she was talking about, Victor.” Then, with a last flare of hope, “Victor, do you really mean it when you said you paid me?”

Victor didn’t turn around. He flipped another knob on the coffee urn. “I mean it.”

Mike lifted his arm, as though to say something, pronounce warning. Then he let it drop and walked out of the shack, leaving the door open. Victor came out from behind the counter, looked at Mike moving off with his little rolling limp down the road and across the cornfield. Victor smiled and closed the door and went back and opened the paper to Walter Winchell.

Mike walked slowly among the cornstalks, his feet crunching unevenly in the October earth. Absently he pulled at his mustache. Dolores, his wife, would have a thing or two to say. “No,” she had warned him, “do not build a shack for him. Do not permit him onto your land. He travels with bad men; it will turn out badly. I warn you!” Mike was sure she would not forget this conversation and would repeat it to him word for word when he got home. He limped along unhappily. Farming was better than being a landlord. You put seed into the earth and you knew what was coming out. Corn grew from corn, and the duplicity of Nature was expected and natural. Also no documents were signed in the compact with Nature, no leases and agreements necessary, a man was not at a disadvantage if he couldn’t read or write. Mike opened the door to his house and sat down heavily in the parlor, without taking his hat off. Rosa came and jumped on his lap, yelling, “Poppa, Poppa, tonight I want to go to the movies, Poppa, take me to the movies!”

Mike pushed her off. “No movies,” he said harshly. Rosa stood in a corner and watched him reproachfully.

The door from the kitchen opened and Mike sighed as he saw his wife coming in, wiping her hands on her apron. She stood in front of Mike, round, short, solid as a plow horse, canny, difficult to deceive.

“Why’re you sitting in the parlor?” she asked.

“I feel like sitting in the parlor,” Mike said.

“Every night you sit in the kitchen,” Dolores said. “Suddenly you change.”

“I’ve decided,” Mike said loudly, “that it’s about time I made some use of this furniture. After all, I paid for it, I might as well sit in it before I die.”

“I know why you’re sitting in the parlor,” Dolores said.

“Good! You know!”

“You didn’t get the money from Victor,” Dolores wiped the last bit of batter from her hands. “It’s as plain as the shoes on your feet.”

“I smell something burning,” Mike said.

“Nothing is burning. Am I right or wrong?” Dolores sat in the upright chair opposite Mike. She sat straight, her hands neatly in her lap, her head forward and cocked a little to one side, her eyes staring directly and accusingly into his. “Yes or no?”

“Please attend to your own department,” Mike said miserably. “I do the farming and attend to the business details.”

“Huh!” Dolores said disdainfully.

“Are you starving?” Mike shouted. “Answer me, are you starving?”

Rosa started to cry because her father was shouting.

“Please, for the love of Jesus,” Mike screamed at her, “don’t cry!”

Dolores enfolded Rosa in her arms.… “Baby, baby,” she crooned, “I will not let him harm you.”

“Who offered to harm her?” Mike screamed, banging on a table with his fist like a mallet. “Don’t lie to her!”

Dolores kissed the top of Rosa’s head soothingly. “There, there,” she crooned. “There.” She looked coldly at Mike. “Well. So he didn’t pay.”

“He …” Mike started loudly. Then he stopped, spoke in a low, reasonable voice. “So. To be frank with you, he didn’t pay. That’s the truth.”

“What did I tell you?” Dolores said as Mike winced. “I repeat the words. ‘Do not permit him onto your land. He travels with bad men; it will turn out badly. I warn you!’ Did I tell you?”

“You told me,” Mike said wearily.

“We will never see that money again,” Dolores said, smoothing Rosa’s hair. “I have kissed it good-bye.”

“Please,” said Mike. “Return to the kitchen. I am hungry for dinner. I have made plans already to recover the money.”

Dolores eyed him suspiciously. “Be careful, Mike,” she said. “His friends are gangsters and he plays poker every Saturday night with men who carry guns in their pockets.”

“I am going to the law,” Mike said. “I’m going to sue Victor for the three hundred dollars.”

Dolores started to laugh. She pushed Rosa away and stood up and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Mike asked angrily. “I tell you I’m going to sue a man for money he owes me, you find it funny! Tell me the joke.”

Dolores stopped laughing. “Have you got any papers? No! You trust him, he trusts you, no papers. Without papers you’re lost in a court. You’ll make a fool of yourself. They’ll charge you for the lawyers. Please, Mike, go back to your farming.”

Mike’s face set sternly, his wrinkles harsh in his face with the gray stubble he never managed completely to shave. “I want my dinner, Dolores,” he said coldly, and Dolores discreetly moved into the kitchen, saying, “It is not my business, my love; truly, I merely offer advice.”

Mike walked back and forth in the parlor, limping, rolling a little from side to side, his eyes on the floor, his hands plunged into the pockets of his denims like holstered weapons, his mouth pursed with thought and determination. After a while he stopped and looked at Rosa, who prepared to weep once more.

“Rosa, baby,” he said, sitting down and taking her gently on his lap. “Forgive me.”

Rosa snuggled to him. They sat that way in the dimly lit parlor.

“Poppa,” Rosa said finally.

“Yes,” Mike said.

“Will you take me to the movies tonight, Poppa?”