Puttering About in a Small Land

  “I’d like to wash my face,” she said. She put her hand down to her foot. “I think I broke off the heel of my shoe.” From her foot she took her shoe, holding it up. The heel had been broken off, and he did not see it anywhere. Probably it had rolled into the gutter. “I’ll take them off,” she said. Leaning against him, grasping him with her fingers, she took off both shoes. “Is that it over there? Over by that wall.”

  He found the heel—she was right—and brought it to her. Now she had taken off her stockings and put them into her purse. Barefoot, she began to walk, slowly, and with great stiffness.

  “I guess the dahlia got lost,” she said.

  He led her back to the business street, and together they found a shoe-repair shop. Inside at the machines, a boy in a blue uniform was stitching the sole of an Oxford; the shop screeched with racket.

  “Be right with you folks,” the boy said.

  Liz seated herself in one of the cloth and chrome chairs, by the ashtray. “Do you have a cigarette?” she said to Roger, in an unsteady, weary voice.

  He lit a cigarette for her, and put it into her hand.

  “Isn’t it strange?” she said presently.

  “What,” he said, rousing himself.

  “How we found each other. You came up to the school to put your little boy in…there Chic and I were, watching them play football. We had never heard of each other…and now we’re completely together. Nothing separating us, nothing holding us apart. And a month ago we had never heard of each other.”

  He said nothing. What could he answer to that? She is dumb, he thought. Yes, there is no doubt.

  “What do you think it was that brought us together?” Liz said.

  His voice answered, “Nothing brought us together. We brought ourselves together.”

  “Don’t you think that Something watches over us?”

  “No. Why should it?”

  Considering that, she said, “Do you think in the world there’s just one person?”

  “No,” he said.

  The boy shut off his machine and hurried cheerfully over. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I see you got your shoes off, lady, all ready there.” He took the broken shoe and heel from Liz and examined them. “Catch it in a grate? The other day a lady caught her heel in one of them sidewalk grates—you know? I can fix it back on right now; cost you seventy-five cents.” Without waiting, he trotted back behind the counter and began working with a hammer and small nails.

  “What do you want to do?” Liz said. “I’ll leave it up to you.”

  “I want to go on,” he said.

  “So do I,” she said. “It’s worth it. I know how I feel and I know how you feel about me. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t even care if she knows. In a way I’m glad she knows. Does that sound silly?”

  “No,” he said, lying, wanting to keep going and knowing that he had to listen to her and believe her if he really meant to.

  “Are you willing to run the risk?” she asked. “Maybe she’ll tell Chic. He’d probably kill me. Or you. Maybe both of us. And the courts will uphold him.”

  “I don’t think he will,” he said.

  “You’re not afraid, are you? No, I know you’re not. Or you wouldn’t have gotten into this in the first place.”

  “I don’t think she’ll say anything to him,” he said.

  Liz got to her feet, swayed as she pressed out the cigarette against the ashtray. Then, very slowly and cautiously, she walked in her bare feet across to the boy working with his hammer. To the boy she said, “This man and I slept together last night.”

  The boy worked feverishly, not looking up. Probably he had been listening to the whole conversation.

  “Come on,” Roger said, standing up. “Leave him alone.”

  She came back. “I wanted him to know,” she said. “He knows anyhow.” Turning to the boy, she said, “Didn’t you already know?”

  The boy poured himself into his work, ignoring her; the hammer clacked in a frenzy.

  “Why do we have to hide?” Liz said, seating herself. Her face still had the dry, set look, the shock. “I want to tell them. They know anyhow. I’m going back to your store with you.”

  “No,” he said.

  Finishing the job on the shoe the boy came around the counter, wiping his hands on his apron. “That’ll be six bits,” he said, staring past the two of them. He was flushed and a little hysterical; he shoved the shoe at Roger and started back again.

  “Thank you,” Liz said to the boy. “I appreciate it.” She stepped into the shoe and then into its mate. “It’s fine,” she said to Roger. Now, in her shoes again, she picked up her purse and started toward the front of the store. Roger dug into his pockets, found a dollar, and gave it to the boy.

  “Thanks,” the boy said, glancing at him and swallowing.

  Liz, at the doorway, said, “Why are you so embarrassed?”

  The boy ducked his head and snapped on one of the machines. But she walked back toward him.

  “Why shouldn’t we sleep together?” she said to the boy. “We’re in love. Isn’t that what counts? I have two children and he has one little boy, a real cute little boy. What else can we do? We can’t get married; we would if we could. It’s not our fault.”

  Roger took hold of her arm but she resisted.

  “Wait,” she said. “I want to ask him. Why does he think it’s so wrong?” To the boy she said, “Have you ever slept with a girl? You have, haven’t you? You weren’t married to her, were you? Why do you blame us and not blame yourself for doing it? You ought to be consistent.” To Roger she said, “He isn’t consistent. That’s all I want him to be. He can think anything he wants, but he should be consistent; we’re not any different from anybody else. Everybody does it. Then everybody must be guilty. Isn’t that right? Maybe that’s what they mean by original sin.” The boy had left the counter; he had gone to the rear of the store. Liz followed after him. “I just want to ask you,” she said. “I want to find out, that’s all. Can’t you answer me? Wouldn’t you go to bed with me if you had the chance? Is there anything wrong with it?”

  The boy did not answer. Roger led her from the shoe repair store, outside onto the sidewalk.

  “This is our punishment,” Liz said. “It’s what we deserve. We’ve lost any contact with them, haven’t we? We’re in another world from them. They can’t hear us and we can’t hear them. That boy never heard a word I said; I could have said anything. He had his eyes completely shut.”

  “He heard, all right,” Roger said, thinking that the shoe repair store was only a couple of blocks from his own store.

  “No,” she disagreed, as they walked along the sidewalk. “He didn’t hear anything. I could stop anybody and they wouldn’t hear what I was saying.”

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” she said. “You still want to go on, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “I just wanted to be sure,” she said.

  Seeing her like this, he did not know what to do with her. He had to get back to the store, but he was afraid to leave her. Yet they could not keep walking along the sidewalk; they had to go somewhere, make up their minds.

  “I better go home,” she said. “I shouldn’t be down here, in this area. But I have to go to the jewelry store; otherwise Chic’ll wonder what I was doing today. He might call the house while I’m not home, and I have to have something to tell him. You better not come in the jewelry store with me. They’ve seen me and Chic together; I’ll get my watch and go on home and wait for you.”

  He said, “It’s too risky.”

  “What?” she said. “Oh, you mean your coming by the house. It’s too risky now.”

  “Later on,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s so. Explain what you mean. You mean you want to call it off?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t mean that.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You mean you want to call it of
f.”

  He was silent.

  “What if I hadn’t come by?” she said. “Would you have gotten in touch with me?”

  “I would have,” he said.

  She peered at him, her eyebrows up. “Are you trying to get even with me for something? It isn’t my fault that Chic came by your place and your wife found out where you were.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Can’t you tell me what’s going on in your mind? I don’t want to leave you; I don’t want you to leave me. Let’s try to make it work.” She drew herself down into her coat, like a brown bird.

  “Sure,” he said. “But we have to be careful.”

  “Well, I don’t understand,” she said. “But it’s up to you; I can’t make you do what you said you were going to do.” She started slowly off. “Maybe you can call me sometime.”

  “I think I’m right,” he said.

  “You probably won’t call me,” she said. “Anyhow I’ll be thinking about you.” Her voice wavered. “What a surprise. You didn’t say anything at first.”

  “I’ll give you a call,” he said. Going after her he put his arm around her; she pressed against him and then she caught hold of him and kissed him. A group of kids, driving by in a Mercury sedan, loudly whistled and honked and waved. She let go of him and looked up seriously.

  “Kids,” he said.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I know you are. I came down here to see you just one last time. I want to see you again, but I can’t. Take care of yourself, you promise?”

  “Yes,” he said. Leaving her, he walked off, in the direction of the store.

  Customers surrounded the counter, a flock of them hiding Pete from sight. He felt guilt. His own store, he thought.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he stepped behind the counter.

  Pete, ringing up the sale of a table model radio, said, “That woman wants her radio. Here’s the number.” He passed Roger the claim check.

  After the customers had been taken care of, Roger picked over the tags by the register; he involved himself in the business of the day. “A good hour of business,” he said to Pete. “Is Olsen downstairs?”

  “He’s next door,” Pete said, writing down the sale of the radio in his book. “Having a cup of coffee.”

  An elderly lady appeared in the doorway, carrying a fat cloth shopping bag. “Are you the radio repairman?” she said to Pete. “I have a radio here I want to get fixed.” She began to unfasten the shopping bag. “It just went dead. It’s worked fine for thirteen years; I don’t understand why it should go dead. Maybe it’s a broken wire.”

  Or a worn-out sazifryer, Roger thought to himself. He helped her free the radio from its bag, and plugged it in. Pete brought the push broom from the closet at the rear and began sweeping.

  “Afraid you’ll have to leave it,” Roger said. “I’ll make out a tag.” He unclipped his pen and wrote the date on the top tag.

  “Oh dear,” the old lady said. “I don’t know what I’ll do without it; I depend on it for the news.”

  After the old lady had left, he said to Pete, “There’s a bunch of dead flies in the window. And the sign in front of the Emerson 21-inch is on its face. Maybe you can reach it without moving anything big.”

  “Okay,” Pete said, sweeping. “Hey, you know, you look sort of hung over today. Why don’t you go over to the Finnish steam bath place for a while? It’d do you some good.” The telephone rang; he leaned his broom against the wall and walked over to answer it. “Modern TV,” he said.

  A young couple entered the store and stopped before the display of Westinghouse television sets. “Good morning,” Roger said to them. “Something I can show you?”

  He did his best, but nothing came of it. The young couple thanked him, said they would return and buy either the ivory or the plain plastic set, and left with a handful of literature.

  “Time-wasters,” Pete said, again sweeping.

  At eleven o’clock Olsen returned from having his roll and coffee at the Rexall Drugstore. Passing Roger, he jerked his thumb and said, “There’s an old fart over there who wants to see you. The old guy from next door.”

  “Jules Neame,” Pete said. “I saw him ambling over there.”

  “Me?” Roger said. Christ, he thought. I know. I see.

  “More lawn swings,” Pete said. “Get your sleeves rolled up and pitch in.”

  Leaving his coat under the counter, Roger walked next door to the drugstore. At the soda fountain Jules Neame, big and untidy, sat eating a roast beef sandwich. The top button of his trousers was undone, and he had stuffed a paper napkin into his collar so that it hung, like a bib, down the front of his shirt. When he saw Roger he motioned him over to the vacant stool next to him.

  “Hi, my friend,” Neame said, smiling at him.

  “Hello, Jules,” he said.

  “How’s everything going?”

  “Okay,” Roger said. “As well as could be expected.”

  “It comes a lot of different ways, doesn’t it? You never know. I guess we ought to be glad of what we have. We shouldn’t look too far ahead: we should enjoy it now.” Neame gnawed at his sandwich, speaking with his mouth full. “Here we are, Mr. Lindahl; we know that, but what else do we know? They talk about heaven and the afterlife. I think we’d be better off not worrying about that. Life is too short. We torment ourselves with worries about that, when we have enough to worry about already. We have enough travail in our lives. Guilt is useless. The world torments us, and we react by tormenting ourselves. I wonder how we can ever have such a low opinion of ourselves that we join in. I suppose we agree that they’re right about us. We don’t merit any happiness, and when we do get a trace of it we feel we’ve stolen something that doesn’t belong to us.”

  Barely listening to old Neame, Roger toyed with the cream pitcher that the waitress had put on the counter.

  “Good morning, Mr. Lindahl,” the waitress said, pretty in her red blouse and tiny white hat. “How’s business today?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “What will it be today?”

  “Coffee,” he said, reaching for a dime.

  Neame stopped his hand. “Let me pay for it, Mr. Lindahl.”

  He shrugged. “Thanks.”

  “You seem so downcast today,” Jules Neame said to him, as the waitress went off. “I hope whatever it is that’s bothering you turns out to be nothing at all. You’re a deserving man, Mr. Lindahl. Believe me when I say that. I know how you do business; I know how you treat your employees and your customers. Everybody in this block has a high regard for you. If there’s anything I can do to help, I wish you’d tell me. I have a lot of respect and confidence in you. They say—you hear people say—there’s a lot of good in everyone, but I don’t go along with that; to me that’s a terrible thing, taking on the role of judge that way, putting up a standard and passing judgment, as if they were in a position to tell what’s good and what isn’t good. A man has to determine for himself what’s the best thing, and those who are fond of him, if they really respect him, leave it up to him to decide. I know the religious people don’t feel along those lines, but that’s too bad. Human beings are more important than their theories of morality. You know, when I was young I did a lot of speculating about philosophical matters. Did you ever by any chance run into a great thinker by the name of Spinoza? He had something he said, once; about a procession of musicians—a street band, you know, like they have down in the South—going past a funeral. And the music of the band—” He rambled on and on. The coffee came and Roger took up the cup automatically, paying no attention to the large old man beside him.

  “Now my store,” Neame was saying, drinking down a glass of buttermilk, “has all that space in the back, where we keep the merchandise. It’s practically a world of its own, back there. Nobody ever goes back there except myself and my wife, and usually we’re too busy to go back there ourselves. I remember once I went back there and found a cat asleep on one of the sacks of
grass seed. How it got into the store I don’t know. We never notice who passes in and out. If they want to come in, let them come in.” He leaned close to Roger and spoke in a lower murmur of sound. “Why don’t you walk back to the store with me—I have to go back there.” Wiping his mouth he pushed his empty plate away and stepped from his stool. “Just for a moment. I want you to see something. I told your repairman I wanted to talk to you; I saw you in there when I went by the front of your store, but you were busy talking to a young couple so I didn’t go in. I don’t want to stay away from my place too long. I’m not sure how long she’ll stay there; she was so upset. But my wife calmed her down, so I think she’s probably feeling a lot better by now. She didn’t want to go in your store because she didn’t want to cause you any trouble. So she came walking into our place and explained the situation to us; not the whole situation, but just that she wanted to see you for a moment and that she couldn’t go into your store, or she felt that she couldn’t. So I told her to stay there and I’d go over and get you and bring you back.” His hand on Roger’s shoulder, he steered him from the counter, toward the door; the smell of buttermilk blew down the back of Roger’s neck and he felt the weight of the old man’s hand on him, the heavy, boneless paw. “What’s her name?” Neame asked him, as they reached the sidewalk and started toward the lawn furniture shop. “We didn’t want to ask her. You don’t have to say if you don’t want. No, maybe you shouldn’t.”

  Pausing before his own store, Roger signaled to Pete that he was going over to Neame’s store. Pete winked at him and made a motion of lifting some heavy object.

  “She’s a very pretty woman,” Neame said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “She has a very sweet face. Here.” Neame held open the door of his shop, and Roger passed on inside.

  In the back, beyond the partition, Liz sat in the middle of one of Neame’s swings, her hands in her lap, her purse beside her. As soon as she saw him she started to her feet and dashed breathlessly toward him; her figure grew and she came with her arms out. Without a word she reached him and flew against him.

  “Please,” she said.