Puttering About in a Small Land

  “His counters are bad,” Chic said.

  “Why?” She was fascinated. To her it was like receiving some exclusive service, an analysis, a test; in college she had taken aptitude tests, intelligence tests—the results had always made her shiver with interest.

  “Too close to the door. They intimidate the customer. Customers want to be able to get in freely. Serve themselves, have access to the racks and displays without having to account for themselves.” He tapped the sketch. “With the counters by the door, the customer is accosted—or thinks he’ll be accosted—as soon as he crosses the threshold. I noticed it as soon as we entered the store. The only plea for a counter in the front is that it cuts down on shoplifting, and it makes it possible sometimes to reduce the staff and have one man double in two jobs—salesman and clerk. Now, if he were operating a grocery store, where there’s no real selling, just clerking, and plenty of small merchandise…he’d have to have his counters by the door.”

  “I see.” She studied a sketch of lighting. She saw a great deal in what he had laid out before her. Yes, she thought, I see all right. “You must let him look at these,” she said.

  Without a trace of humor, Chic said, “What do you think he’ll say? I thought I’d talk to you first because you know him better than I do. As long as he’s tied up to a one-man operation he’ll never—”

  “What would you do?” she interrupted, catching the drift of it, the real idea under the surface. “Sell your bakery?”

  Chic said, “It’s not my bakery. I hold a percentage of the stock and I draw out a salary. What I’d do is resign my job there and sell a part of the stock, convert it, and put that in to match what Roger has in inventory and fixtures and so forth.”

  “Would you work?” she persisted. “You’re not talking about a silent partnership, are you?”

  “I’d like to try my hand at retail selling.”

  “You’d be in the store, then.”

  He nodded.

  “These sketches,” she said, sitting down on the arm of the couch. “They’re for a new store, aren’t they? Or are they for remodeling?”

  “Either,” he said. “A lot would depend on how he feels about his location. That’s something he’d know more about. And to remodel, the leases of at least one adjoining store in the building would have to be bought up, preferably the lawn-swing place. That would give the frontage he needs.”

  Virginia said, “And you’re really serious, aren’t you?”

  On Chic’s face was such a sober look that she did not have to hear his answer.

  “But you just saw it once,” she said. “And you hardly know anything about us.”

  “It’s all in the books,” Chic said. “I’ll know what I need to know when I can see the books. When I know the yield and the overhead and what he’s had to write off and so forth.”

  To her the idea had begun to sound fabulous. Going to the phone, she said, “Can I call my mother and talk to her?”

  “If you want,” Chic said. He began to rearrange the sketches, preparing them for Roger.

  The phone buzzed in her ear, and then she heard her mother’s dry voice. “Hi,” Virginia said. “Say, listen. How about coming over here awhile? There’s something I think you’d get a kick out of.”

  “Well, you could come and get me,” Marion said tartly. “That would give me time to do a few things I have to get done.”

  “Just a second.” Turning to Chic, she said, “Can we go pick her up in your station wagon?”

  “Certainly,” Chic said, bending over his sketches.

  “We’ll come and get you, then,” Virginia said. “In about ten minutes.”

  “What is it?” Marion said. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “You’ll see,” she said. “Good-bye. We’ll be over in ten minutes.” She hung up.

  “Yes,” Chic said, “I’d like to get her view, too. She’d probably be able to help me get a line on his reaction.”

  As she got her coat, Virginia said, “Why didn’t you bring Liz?”

  Chic said, “At the last moment she got nervous and had to go along.”

  “Up to the school?” It surprised her. “Did they both go?”

  “Yes, both of them. She was worried about the boys. They didn’t cotton up to the idea of riding with a stranger. She’s always been the one who’s taken them in the past.”

  Oh no, Virginia thought to herself, wanting to laugh out loud. Four and a half hours of listening to Liz Bonner’s conversation. Poor Roger.

  “I see you smiling,” Chic said.

  “I was just thinking back,” she said, making up a more politic explanation. “Roger had this big theory about making the driving efficient—you’d do it on Friday and we’d do it on Sunday, and now they’re both going up together.”

  14

  When they arrived at the school—at three-thirty in the afternoon—all three boys awoke from their lethargy and began talking in grandiose terms. As soon as Roger had shut off the engine the boys spilled from the car, onto the dusty ground. Walter and Jerry set off at a trot, in the direction of the main building; Gregg remained behind, looking to his father to tell him what to do.

  “I should take him inside,” Roger said to Liz Bonner. “Shouldn’t I? Or what?”

  Liz, still seated in the car, said, “Yes, let’s go in.” Neither she nor Roger had said much during the trip. They had both watched the countryside, commented on the scenes that passed; after the car had left the mountains, Liz had kicked off her shoes and curled up on the seat to nap.

  “Are you coming?” Roger said. He stepped out, stiffly, and came around to her side of the car. Both his legs felt as if they had knots in them, and his head ached. After Liz had gone to sleep he had turned on the car radio and tuned to crime and humor programs for the boys. By the time they had reached the school, none of them even cared to listen. The trip was a real grind, he realized. No joke about that. He was relieved that he did not have to take the wheel going back. The traffic on Highway 99 would be terrific.

  Lowering her feet to the ground, Liz straightened laboriously to a standing position. “Mind if I go in like this?” she said to him, stretching her arms. She had left her shoes on the floor of the car. “They won’t care; they’re used to me.” She picked up her purse and started after the boys.

  “Its good to get out,” he said, keeping up with her.

  “Did I snore?”

  “No,” he said, startled.

  “Chic says sometimes when I go to sleep in the car I snore. Have you got a cigarette?”

  He gave her his cigarettes and then lit a match for her; both of them halted and stood with their hands shielding the match. A late-afternoon wind had appeared; Liz’s long skirt pressed against her legs, and as she stepped away with her cigarette a gust of wind untied her hair and spread it in a sheet across her face. Holding her cigarette away from her she turned aside, throwing her hair back.

  “Will they be given dinner?” Roger asked her.

  “Yes,” she said, “at six. That’s why Edna makes us all pop up before then with the poor little prisoners.”

  Gregg, slowing ahead of them, said, “Daddy, when will you and Mommy come back?”

  “Next Friday,” he said.

  “Oh I see,” Gregg said. Hanging back, he drooped and scuffed at the dirt beneath his feet.

  “What do you see?” Liz said, catching the boy around the waist and propelling him up and forward; Gregg stumbled and she hugged him against her. Giggling, he struggled. Liz let him go and he raced off, circled her and Roger, and came rushing back with his arms out. “Take it easy,” Liz said, fending him off. She gave Roger a breathless smile.

  “Don’t get burned on her cigarette,” Roger said to his son.

  “He won’t get burned,” Liz said, holding her cigarette high. “You worry too much. And suppose he does get burned. Look.” She brought her bare wrist close to Roger’s eyes. “See?”

  He saw a white scar. Her skin was warm and
smooth as he took hold to see better. Both of them stopped walking.

  “Let me see!” Gregg yelled. Ahead of them, the two Bonner boys had disappeared onto the terrace of the building; they knew their way.

  “The little boy down the street did that to me,” Liz said. “With the head of a match. I bet him I wouldn’t pull away. I was in love with him.”

  “Did you?”

  She said, “You bet your life I did. I ran all the way home screaming. I told my father, and he went down the street and told Eddie Tarski’s father, and he whipped Eddie half to death. I didn’t tell them it was my idea.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Eight. I had no stamina.” She kicked a stone; it rolled to one side of the path. “That was in Soledad. Have you ever been to Soledad?”

  “No,” he said.

  “It’s up in the Salinas Valley. Right on the S.P. track. There’s a minimum-security prison near there…we used to hang around and kid with the prisoners; they had them in the fields. We used to put pennies on the train track. They came out flat. I still have one… I carry it around for good luck.”

  Gregg said, “Didn’t it make the train go off the track?”

  Coming to the steps, they started up. “How soon do you want to head back?” Roger said to Liz. He hoped she wanted to stay awhile; he was counting on it.

  “Any time,” Liz said.

  “I’d like to stick around awhile,” he said. “I like it here. I was born on a farm.”

  “Oh you were?”

  “In Arkansas.”

  “This isn’t like a farm,” she said, with certitude. “There’s no crops, no beef herds or sheep; it doesn’t do anything except keep the little prisoners chained up. Does it remind you of a farm? Why?”

  “The animals.”

  “What animals?” She looked at him blankly.

  “The horses,” he said. “The rabbits.”

  “Oh.” She seemed to remember. “That’s right. I pay five dollars a month so Jerry and Walter can learn to ride. Or maybe its five dollars for the laundry.”

  At that moment Mr. Van Ecke, the arithmetic teacher, in tie, sweater, and khaki shorts, came by and noticed them. “Hi, Liz,” he said. “Hello there, Mr. Lindahl. You finally got it all straightened out, did you?”

  “Pretty well,” Roger said.

  Van Ecke fell in beside them. “Where’s the chief baker, Liz? Home with his loaves?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him.

  On the terrace, at the doorway of the building, the two Bonner boys had met a group of their compatriots. Gregg avoided them, conscious of his inferiority. Without appearing to do so, he edged away until he stood with Liz and his father and Mr. Van Ecke.

  “Dad,” he said, “you want to see my room where I live with the other boys?”

  “Okay,” Roger said. “Lead on.”

  “I’ll meet you here,” Liz said to him. “Or if something goes wrong, I’ll meet you at the car. Don’t leave without me.” She called after him, “Even if you can’t find me, I’m still here somewhere.”

  Led by his son, Roger ascended to the small boys’ dorm, and was shown the clean, plain, large room in which the six small boys slept in three double bunk units. One of the dressers had Gregg’s name pasted on it, and on top lay a heap of Gregg’s comic books and Little Golden Books.

  “Fine,” Roger said, unable to be interested.

  “Would you like to meet Billy, Dad?” Billy was his son’s new friend. Over the weekend Gregg had rattled on about him and about their doings. “I think he’s downstairs. Or maybe he’s across the hall. I think he’s across the hall, Dad.”

  Roger said. “I think he’s downstairs.” He prodded his son back down the stairs to the lobby of the building.

  Outside, on the railing of the terrace, Liz perched by herself, smoking the cigarette that he had given her. When she recognized him and Gregg she hopped down, smiling.

  “Where’s Van Ecke?” Roger said.

  “Off on his chores.”

  “Where’re Jerry and Walter?”

  “Off helping some kid build a shortwave receiver. You should go over there; that’s your specialty. Can’t you do that? Didn’t you build shortwave receivers when you were a kid?”

  “A few,” he said.

  “You could really impress them,” Liz said. Ducking down pursing her lips, she said to Gregg, “Does your father impress you by being able to build shortwave receivers?” She arose, so close to Roger that he had to step back to avoid the sweep of her hair. “Boy,” she sighed. “You really have Chic buffaloed. The way he has it figured is that you’re the only one who isn’t afraid of Edna Alt—” She lowered her voice. “And who has the guts to walk out of here not impressed. He’s really afraid of her. I am, too.”

  “She’s tough,” Roger said.

  “Down on the field,” Liz said, “when we met you and you grabbed Gregg and hustled him off—Chic mulled over all that—first he thought you were mad at us; so did I. We both thought we said something, or the boys picked on Gregg. You know. I guess I told you.” She eyed him pensively. “Then when he found out that you got your check back from Edna, he worried that around, and he came up with the announcement that you saw through her. All the way home he talked about that. ‘That Lindahl knows his own mind.’ ‘Lindahl doesn’t lick up any of that line she puts out.’”

  “What did he think when he found out we’d put Gregg back in the school?”

  “Oh, he pondered that, too. Finally—I was vacuuming the living room—he came in and said, ‘Lindahl made his point. He had to show the old—whatever—that it was going to be on his terms. It was a matter of principle with him.’ And so on. And he asked me if I knew what kind of work you did. I told him I thought Edna said you were in the shirt business.”

  “Great,” Roger said.

  Liz said, “He really went overboard about your store.”

  “I’m glad he liked it.” He could see letting the topic of her husband drop. As far as he was concerned, Chic was a large blur, and he wanted to be the same to him, too.

  Voices drifted along the terrace to them, Mrs. Alt’s voice and those of a man and woman. Presently Mrs. Alt appeared, accompanied by a young well-dressed couple. Trailing behind them came a timid, rabbity-looking girl, perhaps six years old, in a starched dress with embroidered red and yellow roses. Her face had puffed from crying.

  Liz, in a low voice, said in Rogers ear, “How would you like to be sent up here to this penal institution?”

  “Depends,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t like it.”

  Roger said, “You talked me into this thing, for Gregg.”

  “I did?” She stared at him.

  “When you cornered me down in Ojai.”

  “O-hy,” she corrected.

  “You persuaded me to do it.” He saw what Virginia meant, all right.

  Her forehead wrinkled. “I thought you were mad at us; I was trying to apologize.”

  Mrs. Alt and the couple and the rabbity-looking child moved along the terrace in their direction. Seeing them, Mrs. Alt paused in her conversation and nodded. “Hello, Liz. Hello, Mr. Lindahl.”

  Gregg said, “Hello, Mrs. Ant.”

  The young couple smiled. They looked worn out by the ordeal of putting their child into a new school.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Mines,” Mrs. Alt said, “I’d like you to meet Mr.—” The slightest hesitation, a narrowing of her brows so that her eyes became brighter, and then she finished, “Mr. Lindahl and Mrs. Bonner. And this young man is Gregg Lindahl, Mr. Lindahl’s son. I think Gregg and Joanne might very well be in several classes together.”

  They all said hello and shook hands. The two groups commingled for an interval.

  Gregg said to the Mines, “One day I fell out of the window where I was; everybody ran to see if I hurt myself. I think that was just yesterday.”

  Cordially, Mrs. Mines said, “Were you hurt?”

  “No,” Gregg said. “But everybody th
ought I was hurt.”

  To Liz, Mrs. Mines said, “How long has your little boy been in school up here?”

  “He’s not my little boy,” Liz said. “I never saw him before in my life.”

  For some obscure reason, that struck Mr. Mines as funny. Laughing, he said, “I know just how you feel.”

  “Its true,” Liz protested, to everyone in general. “I’m no relation to him. I have two boys—where the hell did they go?” To Roger, she said, “Did you see where Jerry and Walter went?” She seemed absolutely unable to cope with the situation.

  Mrs. Alt, in her energetic fashion, said to Liz, “Come on now, Liz. You know perfectly well you have seen Gregg before in your life. You drove up here with him.” To the Mines, Mrs. Alt explained, “With Liz we sometimes wonder who’s the parent and who’s the child.”

  The Mines smiled, and then they and their child and Mrs. Alt continued on, along the terrace and into the building.

  With gloom, Liz said to Roger, “Why did I say that? Do you know?”

  “It’s okay,” he said. Like Mr. Mines, he, too, saw it as funny.

  “I must be crazy,” Liz said in a despairing voice. She put her arm around Gregg and patted him. “I mean—well, look at how awkward it was. Those people—what was their name?—naturally thought we were married and Gregg was my son. It got me upset as hell. Even Edna Alt started to introduce us as Mr. and Mrs. something.”

  “She salvaged the situation,” Roger said.

  “I guess now she’s sore at me.”

  “Nobody’s sore at you,” Roger said.

  “I get so mad at myself,” Liz said. “Gregg,” she said, “I didn’t mean that.”

  Obviously, Gregg had not followed the interchange. He knew Liz was not his mother; he had paid no attention.

  “Gregg hates me,” Liz said. Suddenly she leaned against Roger and rested her head against his shoulder. Her hair brushed his face; it scratched at him, and he smelled the warm, fragrant presence of the woman. “Can I rest on your shoulder?” she asked him.