Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“A man is entitled to some relaxation,” Elias said. “Where’s that bottle?”

“This is nice,” Palangio said. “This is very nice.”

“This is like the good old days,” Elias said.

“I hate to go home.” Palangio sighed. “I ain’t even got a radio home.”

“Pinky!” Elias called. “Turn on the radio for Angelo Palangio.”

“One room,” Palangio said. “As big as a toilet. That is where I live.”

The radio played. It was soft and sweet and a rich male voice sang “I Married an Angel.”

“When I get home,” Elias remembered, “Annie will kill a pedigreed pigeon for supper. My lousy wife. An’ after supper I push the hack five more hours and I go home and Annie yells some more and I get up tomorrow and push the hack some more.” He poured himself another drink. “That is a life for a dog,” he said. “For a Airedale.”

“In Italy,” Palangio said, “they got donkeys don’t work as hard as us.”

“If the donkeys were as bad off as you,” Geary yelled, “they’d have sense enough to organize.”

“I want to be a executive at a desk.” Elias leaned both elbows on the bar and held his chin in his huge gnarled hands. “A long distance away from Brownsville. Wit’ two thousand pigeons. In California. An’ I should be a bachelor. Geary, can yuh organize that? Hey, Geary?”

“You’re a workin’ man,” Geary said, “an’ you’re goin’ to be a workin’ man all yer life.”

“Geary,” Elias said. “You red bastidd, Geary.”

“All my life,” Palangio wept, “I am goin’ to push a hack up an’ down Brooklyn, fifteen, sixteen hours a day an’ pay th’ Company forever an’ go home and sleep in a room no bigger’n a toilet. Without a radio. Jesus!”

“We are victims of circumstance,” Elias said.

“All my life,” Palangio cried, “tied to that crate!”

Elias pounded the bar once with his fist. “Th’ hell with it! Palangio!” he said. “Get into that goddamn wagon of yours.”

“What do yuh want me to do?” Palangio asked in wonder.

“We’ll fix ’em,” Elias shouted. “We’ll fix those hacks. We’ll fix that Company! Get into yer cab, Angelo. I’ll drive mine, we’ll have a chicken fight.”

“You drunken slobs!” Geary yelled. “Yuh can’t do that!”

“Yeah,” Palangio said eagerly, thinking it over. “Yeah. We’ll show ’em. Two dollars and seventy-fi’ cents a day for life. Yeah. We’ll fix ’em. Come on, Elias!”

Elias and Palangio walked gravely out to their cars. Everybody else followed them.

“Look what they’re doin’!” Geary screamed. “Not a brain between the both of them! What good’ll it do to ruin the cabs?”

“Shut up,” Elias said, getting into his cab. “We oughta done this five months ago. Hey, Angelo,” he called, leaning out of his cab. “Are yuh ready? Hey, Il Doochay!”

“Contact!” Angelo shouted, starting his motor. “Boom! Boom!”

The two cars spurted at each other, in second, head-on. As they hit, glass broke and a fender flew off and the cars skidded wildly and the metal noise echoed and re-echoed like artillery fire off the buildings.

Elias stuck his head out of his cab. “Are yuh hurt?” he called. “Hey, Il Doochay!”

“Contact!” Palangio called from behind his broken windshield. “The Dawn Patrol!”

“I can’t watch this,” Geary moaned. “Two workin’ men.” He went back into Lammanawitz’s Bar and Grill.

The two cabs slammed together again and people came running from all directions.

“How’re yuh?” Elias asked, wiping the blood off his face.

“Onward!” Palangio stuck his hand out in salute. “Sons of Italy!”

Again and again the cabs tore into each other.

“Knights of the Round Table,” Palangio announced.

“Knights of Lammanawitz’s Round Table,” Elias agreed, pulling at the choke to get the wheezing motor to turn over once more.

For the last time they came together. Both cars flew off the ground at the impact and Elias’s toppled on its side and slid with a harsh grating noise to the curb. One of the front wheels from Palangio’s cab rolled calmly and decisively toward Pitkin Avenue. Elias crawled out of his cab before anyone could reach him. He stood up, swaying, covered with blood, pulling at loose ends of his torn sweater. He shook hands soberly with Palangio and looked around him with satisfaction at the torn fenders and broken glass and scattered headlights and twisted steel. “Th’ lousy Company,” he said. “That does it. I am now goin’ to inform ’em of th’ accident.”

He and Palangio entered the Bar and Grill, followed by a hundred men, women, and children. Elias dialed the number deliberately.

“Hullo,” he said, “hullo, Charlie? Lissen, Charlie, if yuh send a wreckin’ car down to Lammanawitz’s Bar and Grill, yuh will find two of yer automobiles. Yuh lousy Charlie.” He hung up carefully.

“All right, Palangio,” he said.

“Yuh bet,” Palangio answered.

“Now we oughta go to the movies,” Elias said.

“That’s right,” Palangio nodded seriously.

“Yuh oughta be shot,” Geary shouted.

“They’re playin’ Simone Simon,” Elias announced to the crowd. “Let’s go see Simone Simon.”

Walking steadily, arm in arm, like two gentlemen, Elias and Angelo Palangio went down the street, through the lengthening shadows, toward Simone Simon.

F lacker: all right now, Kid, now you’d better talk,” Andrew dictated. “Business: Sound of the door closing, the slow turning of the key in the lock. Buddy: You’re never going to get me to talk, Flacker. Business: Sound of a slap. Flacker: Maybe that’ll make you think different, Kid. Where is Jerry Carmichael? Buddy: (Laughing) Wouldn’t you like to know, Flacker? Flacker: Yeah. (Slowly, with great threat in his voice) And I’m going to find out. One way or another. See? Business: Siren fades in, louder, fades out. Announcer: Will Buddy talk? Will Flacker force him to disclose the whereabouts of the rescued son of the railroad king? Will Dusty Blades reach him in time? Tune in Monday at the same time, etcetera, etcetera …”

Andrew dropped onto the couch and put his feet up. He stretched and sighed as he watched Lenore finish scratching his dictation down in the shorthand notebook. “Thirty bucks,” he said. “There’s another thirty bucks. Is it the right length?”

“Uhuh,” Lenore said. “Eleven and a half pages. This is a very good one, Andy.”

“Yeah,” Andrew said, closing his eyes. “Put it next to Moby Dick on your library shelf.”

“It’s very exciting,” Lenore said, standing up. “I don’t know what they’re complaining about.”

“You’re a lovely girl.” Andrew put his hands over his eyes and rubbed around and around. “I have wooden hinges on my eyelids. Do you sleep at night?”

“Don’t do that to your eyes.” Lenore started to put on her coat. “You only aggravate them.”

“You’re right.” Andrew dug his fists into his eyes and rotated them slowly. “You don’t know how right you are.”

“Tomorrow. At ten o’clock?” Lenore asked.

“At ten o’clock. Dig me out of the arms of sleep. We shall leave Dusty Blades to his fate for this week and go on with the further adventures of Ronnie Cook and His Friends, forty dollars a script. I always enjoy writing Ronnie Cook much better than Dusty Blades. See what ten dollars does to a man.” He opened his eyes and watched Lenore putting her hat on in front of the mirror. When he squinted, she was not so plain-looking. He felt very sorry for Lenore, plain as sand, with her flat-colored face and her hair pulled down like rope, and never a man to her name. She was putting on a red hat with a kind of ladder arrangement going up one side. It looked very funny and sad on her. Andrew realized that it was a new hat. “That’s a mighty fine hat,” he said.