Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

“Why don’t we just wait, and see if he grows out of it,” M suggested to Dr. Thomas U, whose daughter Penny was taking piano lessons with her. “It’s just my maternal intuition that he’ll grow out of it,” she added apologetically.

And Dr. U had replied, “A maternal intuition is sometimes more dependable than a medical one. Let’s do nothing more for the time being, and see what happens.”

Nothing did happen. Jess seemed to return to normalcy. But one day, he was washing his hands at the kitchen sink — the black cast-iron kitchen sink of their Maine farmhouse — kitchen sink with large, ever-reliable pitcher pump at the end. Done with washing his hands, he sipped a few mouthfuls of water from the pump lip. And in aimless, awkward fashion, his usual fashion, holding on to the pump handle, he reached over and touched the massive, old-fashioned “Dual Atlantic” stove, as it was called. It was a truly massive construction of cast iron (they didn’t care how much metal they used in those days; oh, they were prodigal once!), with nickel-plated grille about the upper edge and just before the compartment for heating water, grates and firebox in which to burn wood or coal — which Ira adapted to burn kerosene. Gas burners on top (hence the adjective “Dual”), supplied by a tank of propane outside, just beside the back stairs — Yankee ingenuity the stove represented, Yankee ingenuity of the twenties and thirties, as weighty with nostalgia as with cast iron (and for all its bulk, with too small an oven to suit M). In every way, though, it was adequate: it warmed the kitchen winter nights with steady kerosene flame, during the long years the kids grew up, almost twenty in all; the long years of his mental depression, M’s limitless constancy, teaching school and giving piano lessons for the only reliable cash income of the household. Meanwhile he lost so much money waterfowl farming that all her withholding taxes were rebated. Clear profit!

“Do you ever expect to show a profit in your waterfowl business?” The IRS person had called Ira and his daffy accountant, Quinner, into the IRS office.

“I hope so, sir.”

“When do you think that will be?”

“I can’t tell yet.”

Holding the iron pump handle, the boy reached out aimlessly, and touched the stove — he uttered a wild shriek, and burst into tears: for no reason, no reason!

Oh, I’ve lost! The words sprang from within Ira’s heart: I’ve lost! I’ve lost! The son he doted on. Maybe because of that blow he had struck him. Lost his temper completely — like Pop. Oh, anguish! The anguish beyond remorse, anguish of irrevocable, unbearable loss. “What’s the matter?” Ira asked, numbed to the core, already bereaved, an automaton speaking — while M looked in utter consternation, and Hershel swung a disbelieving gaze from brother to parents. “What happened?” Ira pursued — without hope. He knew full well what had happened: the kid was off his rocker, out of his mind.

“I got a shock!” Jess wailed. “I got a shock when I touched the stove.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ira humored him — with all the bitterness of futility. He was already reconstituting the self to adjust to this hideous catastrophe: his kid had gone insane. He had fallen prey to dementia praecox. “You say you got a shock when you touched the stove?”

“I did! I did, Dad. I just put my hand on it!”

Well, what harm in his trying to do the same, see if he got the same effect? The kid was so earnest, vehement; he sounded rational. But so did some of the schizophrenics at the Augusta State Hospital where Ira had worked for four years, and many of them had complained, raged about diabolic magnetism, baleful electric currents. What the hell. . what was there to lose? Humor him, that’s all. Ira arose from the kitchen table, went to the stove, rested his hand on the nickel-plated grille. Nothing. Just as he expected. “Is that what you did?”

“No. I was holding on the pump handle. Like this.” Jess leaned over, reached for the stove, but made no contact.

“All right. I’ll do it too.” Last chance. Last chance. Better be knocked down by a shock, knocked to the floor, anything to prove the kid right. What joy that would be, no matter the jolt, even if knocked cold — and sure enough, it came! Not a great jolt, but sufficient to make him recoil. “Well, for Christ’s sake!” he cried out, this time shaken by pure bliss. “You’re right! Listen, M, there is a — there’s current in there. An electric current. I just felt it.”

“There is?” She too showed her great relief.” I wonder how?”

“I don’t know. There’s a short somewhere. No doubt about it. Okay, Jess, don’t touch the damn thing. I mean the two of them together, pump handle and stove — everybody. Let’s see if I can’t figure this out.”

Eventually he did. They had had the supplier of their bottled butane gas install a new gas dryer in the hall, and the mechanic had attached the ground wire to the water-pump pipe under the kitchen. Ira called up the owner of the company from which he bought his bottled gas, and in no uncertain terms made clear his indignation at this instance of flagrant carelessness or sheer ineptitude. “One hell of a job!” he stormed. “Was the guy who installed it a qualified electrician?”

“Why, yes,” was the answer at the other end of the phone.

Ira thought he detected a qualm. “Well, he ought to lose his license, that’s all I can tell you. My kid got quite a shock. He’s been going through a difficult phase in his adolescence and when he let out that yell, I thought he had gone completely off his pulley. I wanna tell you, that took ten years off my life. And my wife’s too.”

“I can sympathize with you,” the businessman at the other end commiserated. “I know just what you feel. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. It’s our mistake. We’ll fix it right off, and we’ll make it right with you.”

“Yes? How?”

“The next five tanks of gas are on us.”

“Well.” Mollified. “It wasn’t my intention to put the screws on you because of that.”

“I understand. It’s a mistake. And we made it. If five tanks of gas squares us with you, that’s all we ask.”

“Okay.” Ira was a heavy user of bottled gas in his “dressing plant,” euphemism for his waterfowl slaughterhouse. Five large tanks of butane at about ten dollars apiece, that represented most of a year’s supply — free! “I appreciate the—” For him to use the word gesture would be too highfalutin. “I appreciate the goodwill.”

“That keeps us in business.”

X

Ira did as he had resolved, and always it seemed that if he really meant it, if his fate hung on the event, it came to pass. He was hired. He was assigned to the Loft’s candy store on 149th Street and Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. The corner was an extremely busy one, a shopping mart of the populace, bustling, noisy, heavily traveled, the junction of trolley lines, the location of a large subway station, a train interchange with a large platform above the street. And everything below the platform, shop windows and window shoppers, throngs and vehicles, was shaded by it, submerged in the perpetual shadow of a subway station which in the Bronx became a stop on an elevated line. Located in the midst of a medley of storefronts was Loft’s, and here Ira was assigned.

He worked six days a week: weekdays from three to ten in the evening, Saturdays, a full eight-hour shift from three to eleven at night. And Sunday, from nine-thirty to six. On Sundays the store closed early. Mom had to change her schedule on Sunday, give him some breakfast first, anything, fry a couple of eggs, serve up a roll and Swiss cheese with his coffee. He remembered what had hounded him, what had driven him off to work. It wasn’t for the sake of the sixteen bucks a week, it was only that goyish boyfriend Minnie had had. It was that goddamn terror. When that crowded into him, preempted his psyche, it didn’t matter if he told himself a thousand times he had been safe as hell — he couldn’t dispel it, budge it. Guilt, guilt, guilt — as if he had murdered somebody: Minnie herself. Guilt, guilt, and more guilt. But enough of that! he told himself en route to the 116th Street subway station. It would soon be time to put on a big smile for the customers. That was why he had a job: to keep busy wrapping up the “99¢ Special,” to keep the diffuse terror at bay.