Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Just helping out.”

“Holy smoke, what a voice!”

“No, just a barroom buzzo.”

“But it’s great! Say, you said boy soprano, but you never said a word about what your voice changed to. Look, that sounded like the Metropolitan Opera.”

I explained a little about singing to him, how easy it is for a fourflusher to sing a few notes so they sound like a million dollars and really not be any good at all. Nothing I could say made any impression on him. So far as he was concerned, somebody by the name of John Charles Chaliapin had fallen out of the sky and hit him over the head, and he wasn’t going to have it any different. “Well, all right. If you think it’s good, who am I to argue about it? Once I got five hundred dollars a week for it, and if you insist, we’ll agree it’s worth a thousand now.”

“Well—”

“Yeah?”

“Never mind.”

What he meant, I didn’t need any mind reader to tell me, was that I should sing in his choir the next night, and why not? I had nothing to do, and it had been quite some time since anybody had admired me, unless it was Holtz, for the way I fixed flats. “However, if you really believe all this, and feel your choir could use me over the week end, we might waive the question of pay, and—”

“Would you? Would you?”

We shook hands and told names. His was Branch, it turned out, Jim Branch. He took me inside, and next thing I knew he’d shaken up a drink, a housekeeper was serving sandwiches in the big living room, he was playing me some new Pinza records he had, I was singing along with them, and he was as excited as a kid with a new puppy. Then pretty soon we seemed to have a party going on, with six or eight or a dozen of his friends, all sunburned like he was, all looking like they’d get more fun out of a nice pile driver than a grand-opera record, but all pretty good guys, willing to humor him along. He was about as bad on the piano as he could get and still hit a few notes, but we had some Maine Stein Song and Vagabond King and Mandalay, and I threw in plenty of winks with it, so nobody got the idea it was to be taken seriously. And then all of a sudden, off in a corner by itself, I see a gimlet eye drilling me through and I almost went through the floor. Because to me that spelled Las Vegas and trouble. I kept on yodeling, but began thinking fast. And the more I thought the less I knew what to do, because if I slipped outside and tried to beat it, he wouldn’t have been human if he didn’t pick up the telephone, and then there’d be a patrol car, pulling up beside me with cops. If I stayed, at least I’d know what was going on. So I bellowed some Old Man River and they clapped and yelled for more, but pretty soon he lurched over in front of me, took a sip of his drink, and said: “Y’ call y’self Dillon?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Dillon’s my name.”

“Who y’ think y’ kidd’n?”

“Why, nobody, that I know of.”

“Me? Y’ try’n kid me? Why, goddam it, I seen y’ play. I seen y’ play football, play right halfback f’ Fall River, seen y’ play against Prov’nce, ’n y’ name’s Healy!”

I guess there was more, something about a touchdown I scored on some pass I intercepted in the last quarter, quite a play, the way he told it. But I didn’t exactly hear it. All I got was a mumble, as they all began talking to each other, and then a silence, as they sat looking at me. I got my breath and said: “That’s right, except it wasn’t Providence. It was Green Bay.”

“That’s right. Goddam if I—”

“And I did call myself Healy. Under the rules, the eligibility rules, I mean, you can’t play college football once you’ve played pro. But if you need the money, you’ve got to change things around. So—”

“You Jack Dillon?”

“That’s me.”

“Of — Mar’land?”

“I’m the guy.”

“Holy jumping...”

I told you, they were more bedrock than musical, and at the way he kowtowed in front of me, they all went into a different key. They were nothing but oil men, drillers and contractors and engineers, but most of them had been to college, and there’s something about a guy who uses steel that goes for football more than he does opera. All of a sudden it was a different kind of afternoon, with the piano forgotten and the party going on around me, with drinks and jokes and friendly talk. Most of them were from the West and had never heard of me, but that made no difference. And changing my name made no difference either. That a guy could even stay on the same field with the Green Bay Packers and not get killed was wonderful to them. To me, it all felt great. I wished it could go on that way forever.

Somewhere along the line I took a trip to the powder room, and from there to the bar to sweeten my drink. At a table, reading a magazine, was a woman, and I remembered I’d seen a car drive up and heard some kind of whisper going on. I started to go, but she motioned to me, and then looked up. “Oh! I thought you were one of the oil gang, or petrol patrol, as I call them.”

“No, just a visiting fireman.”

“I’ve been told. Mr. Dillon, is that it?”

“To his friends, Jack.”

“And quite a celebrity, I believe?”

“You’re supposed to bow.”

She got up and bowed. “I’m Mrs. Branch.”

“I’m very pleased to know you.”

“To her friends, Hannah.”

“Now I’m not only pleased, but honored.”

“I don’t believe you are at all.”

“Anyway, excited.”

“Now that’s more like it.”

She fixed my glass and made a light one for herself, and we stood there looking at each other. She was maybe twenty-five, a little less than medium height, kind of thick in the chest and what went with it, slim in the waist and what was below. All that you could see fine, in the blue slacks and a peppermint-candy sweater with stripes running around. But what you noticed most was the eyes, and I still don’t know if they really looked like they did, or were a production job, from what she did to bring them out. Her hair was light, with a brassy green in it, and fell on her shoulders in curls. But her skin was copper, like some vase in a Chinaman’s window. I’ve seen plenty of sunburn in my time, but never anything like that, and it made the eyes look like something that came out of the sea. They were big, and light gray to start with, but with that dark color around them, they had a dangerous, slaty, sharky expression, and I think she knew it, and did everything to heighten it. But when we got to talking, it was about me, and what I did. She acted surprised when I said I squirted spray on a fruit ranch. “A celebrity, engaged in labor? I thought at the very least, you tasted tea, with sighing maidens bringing it to you, with a rose petal in every cup.”

“Well, the dope’s brought by Mexicans.”

“The — what did you say?”

“Dope. Soup. To kill the bugs. They bring it in trucks, roll off the drums, and stack it up at one end of the row so we can put it in the tank and squirt it on the trees.”

“Sounds fascinating.”

“But — let’s talk about you.”

“Me?”

“That sunburn. Are you that way all over?”

“... I wonder.”

She stared at me so I couldn’t look away. I went over to where she was perched on a stool by the bar, and I knew, and she knew, what I meant to do. I was going to give that sweater a wipe, from her waist to her neck, that would tell how she was all over. But from somewhere inside me came a warning, a gone, sick feeling that reminded me of what the liquor had made me forget: If that wipe did tell something, and we began to whisper date, I’d be no more use to her than a cigar-store Indian. So when I got to her I stopped, mumbled how good-looking she was, gave her a light kiss on the lips, and took a sip of my drink. Her eyes flickered, and she looked at the floor. Then: “Have I got something on me?”