Эд Макбейн - Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

We went into Timmy’s room. He was sleeping peacefully, his blond head turned into the pillow. We sat together in the old easy chair near his crib, Joan on my lap, her head on my shoulder. We sat quietly for a long time. The December winds raced over the river and shuddered against the windows in the small room.

Her mouth close to my ear, Joan whispered, “Are you very angry with me?”

“About what?”

“Paris. About not going.”

“No,” I said, but I suppose my voice could not hide my disappointment.

“I didn’t want a baby so soon, you know,” she said.

“I know, darling.”

“But I do love him. He seems so helpless. Doesn’t he seem helpless to you?”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you wonder about us?” Joan asked.

“Sometimes.”

“I do. A lot. I sometimes feel... I don’t know... I feel we never talk to each other much any more, the way we used to when we were single.” She paused. She was silent for a very long time. Then she said, “I don’t want to get lost.”

“We won’t get lost.”

“I don’t want to get lost in people.”

“We won’t.”

“I feel so... so terribly afraid that...” She shook her head.

“What is it, darling?”

“I have the feeling I never finished being a girl,” she whispered, “and now I have to be a woman. I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I feel like sitting on the dock where the ferry comes in and just let my feet hang in the water, and then I remember I’m a mother now and can’t do that, but at the same time everything here seems so... as if, well, as if I could do that and nobody would mind very much or even notice it.” She paused again. “I’m going to say something terrible.”

“What?”

“I wish we hadn’t had the baby.” She took a deep breath. “I wish we could have gone to Paris.”

“We’ll go one day,” I whispered.

“Will it matter then?” she said, and she began weeping softly against my shoulder, and I could feel her trembling in my arms. In a little while we went back to bed. The apartment next door was silent.

My first real encounter with Herbie came shortly after Christmas. Joan’s mother had given us a television set as a present, and I was busy at the pay telephone on the second-floor landing of Finley when Herbie came lumbering up the steps. I guess he couldn’t help overhearing my conversation, which was with a television man, and which concerned the price of putting up an antenna and installing the set. He lingered awhile at the top of the landing, and when I hung up, he asked, “How much does he want?”

“Too much,” I said.

Herbie smiled. There was a sweetness to his smile that contradicted his absurd appearance and his horrible speech. He offered his smile the way some men offer their hands for a handshake, openly and without guile.

“I’d be happy to do it for you,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Put up the antenna, take care of the installation.”

“Well, thanks,” I said, “but I think...”

“I know how,” Herbie said.

“Well, I’m sure you do, but...”

“I mean, in case you didn’t think I knew how.”

“I just wouldn’t want to impose on your time, Herbie.”

“Be no imposition at all. I’d be happy to do it.”

I was trying to figure how I could possibly tell Herbie I would prefer paying for a professional job, even if it meant paying more than I would have to pay him for the installation, when he suddenly said, “I didn’t mean to charge you, you...”

“What?”

“All you’d have to do would be pay for the parts, that’s all. I’d be happy to put it up for the experience alone.”

“Well...”

Herbie smiled gently. “None of us have too much money to throw around, I guess.”

“I couldn’t let you do that,” I said.

“You’d be doing me a great favor,” Herbie answered.

So that Saturday I went up to the roof with Herbie to put up the television antenna. It took me about five minutes to realize I wasn’t needed at all, but I went on with the pretense of helping anyway, handing Herbie a tool every now and then, holding the antenna erect while he put the straps around the chimney, generally offering needless assistance. We’d been up there for about a half-hour when Jason and Norman joined us. They were both wearing old Navy foul-weather jackets, the wind whipping their hair into their eyes.

“Well, now, that’s a pretty good job, Herbie,” Jason said.

Herbie, tightening the wire straps around the chimney, smiled gently and said, “Thank you.”

“How long have you been going to that school of yours?” Norman asked.

“Oh, just two months.” Herbie shrugged apologetically. “This isn’t too hard to learn, you know.”

“Do you like doing it?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, I love it,” Herbie said.

Jason looked at Norman with a smile on his face and then turned to Herbie again. “Were you involved with electronics in the service?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” Herbie said without looking up. He was retightening each wire strap until I felt sure the chimney brick would crumble. “I was a small-arms instructor at Fort Dix.”

“That right?” Jason said, a curious lilt to his voice.

Herbie laughed. “I think I was taken by mistake. My eyes are terrible, you know.”

“No!” Jason said, in mock surprise. “Your eyes? I don’t believe it.”

I looked at Jason curiously because I suddenly realized he was riding Herbie, and I couldn’t see why, nor did I think it was very nice to ride a guy who was doing me a favor and saving me money. But Herbie didn’t catch the inflection of Jason’s voice. He went right on tightening the wire straps, and he laughed a little and said, “Oh, sure, I’ve been wearing these thick glasses ever since I was a kid. But, I don’t know, the doctor who examined me said I was okay, so they drafted me.” He shrugged. Cheerfully he added, “They used to call me Cockeye when I was a kid.”

“How’d you like the Army?” I asked.

“I thought I was going to be a hero,” Herbie said musingly. “Me, a hero. Wiping out German machine-gun nests, things like that, you know? Instead, the minute I got in, they took one look and realized just how blind I really was. They figured if they sent me over to fight, I’d be shooting at the wrong army all the time. So they made me an instructor.” He shrugged. “After a while I began to enjoy it. I like taking things apart and putting them together again.”

“Then television ought to be right up your alley,” Jason said.

“Sure,” Herbie agreed. He stepped back from the chimney and surveyed his work. “There, that ought to hold it. We get some pretty strong winds on this end of the island.”

He walked away from the chimney and began paying out a roll of narrow wire to the edge of the roof. He worked with an intense concentration, a faint smile flickering on his mouth, as if he were pleased to see that things he’d learned in theory were actually capable of being put into practice.

“So you never got to be a hero, huh, Herbie?” Norman said, and his voice carried the same peculiar mocking tone as Jason’s.

“I guess not,” Herbie said, smiling. He shrugged. “But it’s just a matter of coming to grips, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t what?” Norman said.

“All of it. All of life. Coming to grips, that’s all.” He shrugged. “When I was a kid, I used to cry in my pillow because they called me Cockeye. One night I threw my glasses on the floor and then stepped on them and broke them in a million pieces. Only that didn’t change anything. I was still cockeyed in the morning, only worse because I didn’t even have my glasses.”