He bought a Chronicle, and, reseated at the counter, began to read over the “men wanted” ads. There were no jobs worth talking about. I could be a salesman, he decided. Or service penny-gum machines. He read the personals then, and after that the personals in business. Look how some guys stay alive, he thought. I will come into your own home and hypnotize you into not smoking. Or if you want, I will show up at your kid’s birthday party and entertain with puppets. His game went back to the personals. “Inside dope on bughouse,” he read. “Thank St. Jude for saving my heirloom furniture.” Christ. He put the paper away.
Early in the afternoon Julie showed up at their apartment. He had been taking a nap. Astonished to see her so early, he sat up. But before he could speak, Julie said, “I’ve been fired.” She began taking off her shoes and stockings.
“Why?” he said.
Julie said, “Some customer called in and told the office manager that I didn’t believe in God. He had me come into his office and he asked me and I told him it was so, but it wasn’t any of Western Carbon and Carbide’s business. But he said the morals of the employees were Western Carbon and Carbide’s business. And he also said that they never found that college girls worked out. They’re never satisfied with their jobs. They’re always troublemakers.” She hung up her coat in the closet.
So Tootie was right. They were out to get him.
“Listen,” he said. “How would you like to leave the Bay Area?”
“And go where?”
“Beats me,” he said. “But we’ll work it out.”
“There’re lots of jobs in the Bay Area,” Julie said, going into the kitchen and beginning to pile dishes into the sink. “I won’t have any trouble. I’ve already listed myself at some of the employment agencies. You have to expect this sort of thing. Anyhow, you have your job.”
“No,” he said.
“No what? What do you mean? You mean after one day you’re not working there anymore, for that man?” She ceased working with the dishes and came into the bedroom to stand facing him. “How come you’re home? Why aren’t you at work?”
Al said, “We’re in trouble.”
“You held that job just one day, didn’t you?” Julie said. “That good job.”
He nodded.
“You quit?”
“Yes,” he said finally.
“Will you tell me why?”
“I don’t know why,” he said. “I know what happened, but I don’t know why. You have to take my word. There wasn’t anything else I could do.” He faced her, his hands in his pockets. His wife had folded her arms tightly before her, as if she were cold. Her face had a withered, old expression, and all her features, her nose and eyes and mouth, became by degrees smaller. The bones themselves seemed to shrink. As if, he thought, the life-force inside her were thinning out. Turning to air. Vanishing. Puffing away as she breathed in and out. Maybe that was all it was anyhow, merely air. Air in all of them, that kept them alive.
“I’m going to divorce you”, she said.
He made a move toward her, to reassure her. To warm her back up to some kind of life. But she drew away. She avoided him.
“This is no time for this,” he said. “This sort of thing.”
“I suppose you’re going to hit me,” she said. “Like you did that poor man.”
“What poor man?”
“That drunk who got onto your lot, and you hit him.”
He did not remember. He had no idea what she was talking about. “We’re both out of work,” he said, “and we’re going to have to start over, probably somewhere else entirely. But we’ll make it back up. I learned a lot from this.”
“No,” she said. “We’re through.”
After a time he said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make a deal with you. Give it one month. If we—” He hesitated.
“Yes,” she said with bitterness. “If we don’t find some sort of job. We. Not you.”
He said, “If I don’t have something worthwhile in a month, then we’ll break up.”
“I can’t make a deal with you,” Julie said, “because—do you want to know why? Can you face the truth? You’re not honest. You can’t be trusted.” She moved farther away, as if afraid. Dreading his reaction. But he did nothing. “Now hit me,” she said. “And prove how reliable you are. How honest you are.”
The phone rang.
As she went past him to answer it, he said, “Let it go.”
“It’s probably one of the agencies,” she said. “For me.” She picked up the receiver, said hello. Then she put her hand over the receiver and said to him, “Do you know somebody named Denkmal?”
“God no,” he said.
“Anyway it’s for you,” she said. She held it out to him.
He shook his head no.
Julie, her hand over the phone, said to him in a soft voice, “I’m not telling your lies for you. You’ll have to do it yourself from now on.” Again she held the phone out.
So he took the phone from her and said hello.
A man’s voice said, “Al Miller?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Say, Miller, my name’s Denkmal. I own the barbershop. You know, across from you. Listen, I can see your lot from here. You better get down here.”
He hung up, ran past Julie and out of the apartment, downstairs and across the sidewalk, to the Chevrolet.
When he pulled up at the curb before the lot, the barber in his white uniform came across the street, through traffic, and up beside him. They stood together, facing the lot. Nothing stirred.
Denkmal said, “I don’t know what they did. I thought they were customers, looking at cars.”
“Did they go in the back?” Al said. He walked onto the lot, and the barber followed. The cars in the first line seemed okay.
“They were doing something,” the barber said.
It was the Marmon, in the back. They had broken all the glass, slashed the tires, ripped the seats, smashed the gauges of the dashboard. When he lifted the hood he saw that they had cut wires, torn parts loose. And the paint was ruined. They had gouged and scratched it, and with a hammer, dented the hood and doors. The headlights had been wrenched loose and broken. Looking down he saw that water was leaking out in a pool. They had smashed the radiator.
“You better call the Oakland Police Department,” Denkmal said. “You had it almost completely rebuilt, didn’t you? I’ve been watching you; good Lord, you’ve been working on it for a couple of years.”
“The motherfuckers,” Al said.
Denkmal said, “It didn’t look like juveniles. Usually it’s juveniles that do vandalism.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t kids.”
“The police will say it was kids,” Denkmal said.
Al thanked the barber for calling him. The barber went back across the street to his barbershop. Al remained on the lot, standing with his back to the ruined car, watching the traffic pass. Then he went into the little basalt blockhouse and shut the door and sat down, by himself.
What else can they do? he asked himself. They got my wife’s job; mine was already gone. They got my Marmon. Maybe Tootie was right; maybe they’ll stick a shiv into me, or beat me up. Or rape Julie. Who knows? He did not know. He had cost Harman forty thousand dollars at least; perhaps more.
He remembered how, as a kid, he had used a gun. The only time. He had had the job of feeding the chickens and ducks in their pens. He had gone down there and found field rats galloping around; so his dad had given him the .22 rifle and he had clambered up on the roof of the chicken house and sat cross-legged, above the pen, watching for the field rats to come out of their burrows. He had shot one. He had hit it in the hindquarters and it had spun around like a gear in a clock, its feet flailing. Around and around it had gone, and then, just when he thought it was going to die, it bolted for its hole, made it, and disappeared.
In his mind he tried to picture how a man would look, hit somewhere, spinning around and around. I can’t make It, h
e thought. Fuck it. I won’t buy a gun.
For an indefinite long time he remained there, at his desk, in thought. And then he noticed that several cars were parked at the curb a little way down. The garage doors had been opened, and Lydia Fergesson was coming out of the garage. With her were several men in business suits, all looking grave.
Seeing him in the little house, Lydia came across the lot toward him. “Mr. Miller,” she said, opening the door of the house. “We were able to stop the check. The money I have taken out and put for safekeeping in a safety-deposit box.” Her eyes flashed as she spoke. Her face had heavy makeup on it, and she wore a fur neckpiece, black coat, dark stockings, and carried a big leather purse. Her whole body vibrated with tension, almost a kind of excitement. Near even to frenzy.
“Good,” he said.
“The body lies in state at this mortuary. Qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis. Eh, Mr. Miller?” She put down a white embossed card on his desk. “The service will be tomorrow in the morning, at eleven. Then he will be cremated.”
He nodded, picking up the card.
“Do you wish to go to view the deceased?” Lydia said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t decide.”
“There is always the problem of what clothes,” she said. “They contacted me in that matter. He had new ties he had bought, but it was my conclusion not to use anything but what we are all familiar with. The minister is Unitarian. Do you know songs he enjoyed?”
“What?” Al said.
“They play on the organ songs he enjoyed.”
“No,” he said.
“Then they will play hymns,” Lydia said. “Worse luck.”
Al said, “I hastened his death, by arguing with him at Harman’s house. Did you know that?”
“You were doing your duty.”
“How do you know?”
“He gave me a complete account of the proceedings. He recognized that you were attempting to save him from himself.”
Al stared down at his desk.
“He did not hold it against you.”
Al nodded.
“Please go and view the remains,” Lydia said.
“Okay,” he said.
“Today,” she said. “Because if you do not do it today there will be no remains to view.”
“Okay,” he said.
“You’re not going to,” Lydia said. “Why not?”
“I don’t see any point in it,” he said.
Lydia said, “No one can make you do anything, Mr. Miller; I recognize that about you. You do exactly as you want. I have been thinking about you today; you are very much in my thoughts. I want to bestow on you enough money to get you started again.”
He glanced at her, taken utterly off guard.
“Your economic existence is in ruins,” Lydia said. “Is it not? Because of your obedience to duty. Someone must restore you by stepping in and aiding you, someone who can. I have the money.”
He did not know what to say.
“You are thinking,” she said, “that you would be sharing in the loot.”
At that, he laughed.
“Wash your conscience clear,” Lydia said. “You have nothing to feel guilty for.”
“I want to feel guilty,” he said.
“Why, Mr. Miller?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You want possibly to share in his death.”
Al said nothing.
“Instead of viewing him,” she said, “This is what you do. It is your system.”
He shrugged, still gazing down at the desk.
Opening her big leather purse, Lydia searched and then put out her hand with something; he saw that it was a five-dollar bill. She pushed the bill into his shirt pocket. As he stared at it, she said, “I want you to buy flowers to send to the mortuary for display.”
“I can buy flowers,” he said.
“No you can’t,” she said calmly. “Can you? Have you ever done that? Not in your life, my good young friend. Nor have you ever gone to a funeral. You do not know how. There are so many things in this world which you personally do not understand how to go about doing. You are, I would say, if it does not hurt, a barbarian.”
“A barbarian,” he repeated.
“But you have instincts,” she said. She was moving out of the little house, shutting the door after her. “Good instincts which will save you, if they have not already. You must depend on them, and also, my good young friend, on letting someone else show you how to get about in this cruel old world of ours which, alas, you understand so very little. So dreadfully very little.”
“God in heaven,” he said, looking up at her. Her peculiar choice of words, for a moment, frightened him.
She smiled. “What do you think? What do you feel? Tell me now, what your instincts say to you about how to live. How you should begin your life, really for the first time.”
To himself he thought, They tell me to kill myself. But he did not say it aloud; he said nothing.
The door closed. Lydia had gone. He remained where he was, glad to be alone again; glad she was gone. But a moment later the door once more opened. “Mr. Miller,” she said. “I notice that the superb old car of yours is in tatters. What happened to it?”
Al said, “They took it out on the car.”
“That was my impression,” she said, “upon seeing it with broken glass and the fabric ripped.” She re-entered and seated herself at the desk, facing him. “What I will do for you,” she said, “is buy that from you. I know from what I heard in the past, mostly from you, what you expected to get from it. About two thousand dollars. Did you not?”
He nodded.
“Then I will buy it for that.” She laid out a checkbook, and, with a fountain pen, began carefully to write out a check.
“Okay,” he said.
She smiled as she wrote.
“Aren’t you surprised I’m taking it?” he said. It had surprised him, his reaction. His acceptance. “I need the two thousand dollars,” he said. It was as simple as that. With two thousand dollars he could get away. Otherwise, he could not. Probably the two thousand dollars would save his life and his wife’s life.
As soon as Lydia had left, he locked up the lot and drove to the bank on which the check was drawn. The bank cashed it without making any trouble for him; he had the money converted into traveler’s checks, and then he drove quickly back to his apartment.
When he entered he found Julie in the bedroom, packing her clothes in one of their suitcases.
He said, “I have enough money for us to get out of here and make it somewhere else.”
“Do you,” she said, continuing her packing.
Seating himself on the bed beside the suitcase, he laid out the books of traveler’s checks.
After a long time, Julie said, “Where do you intend to take us?”
“We’ll get started,” he said, “and then decide along the way.”
“Right now?” She watched as he got the other suitcase and began to pack his own things.
“We’ll get on the bus as soon as we’re packed,” he said.
To that, she said nothing. She resumed her packing. They both worked together, side by side, until they had gotten as much as was practical to take.
Julie said, “While you were gone, there was another call.” She showed him the pad. “I wrote it down. The man said for you to call him back as soon as you could.”
The number, he saw, was Harman’s home phone.
“He talked very strangely,” Julie said. “I couldn’t make half of it out. At first I thought he had the wrong number; he acted as if he were speaking to a company.”
“An organization,” Al said.
“Yes, he kept saying ‘you people.’”
Al said, “We’re ready.”
Picking up her suitcase, she started toward the door. “I hate to leave all this stuff here.” She halted to touch an ashtray on the coffee table. “It won’t be here when we get back; we’ll n
ever see any of these things again.”
“Sometimes you have to do that,” Al said.
Still lingering, she said, “I like the Bay Area.”
“I know,” he said.
“You did something really dreadful,” she said, “didn’t you? I knew it when I first got home today. Does it have to do with Jim Fergesson’s death? I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe you tried to get his money. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “You’ll never say. I guess things like that happen all the time. I never liked him. He really had no right to the money anyhow. I say what I said before: I wanted him to die. He treated you very badly.” She eyed him.
Picking up his own suitcase, he moved to the door, guiding his wife along ahead of him, out into the hall.
Rather than taking their own car, they went by taxi to the Greyhound bus station. He bought tickets for Sparks, Nevada. An hour later, after waiting in the station, they were on their way by air-conditioned double-decker bus, traveling on Highway 40, through the great flat Sacramento Valley.
It was early evening and the air had cooled. The other passengers dozed or read or looked out. Julie looked out, now and then saying something about the fields and farm houses which they passed.
When they reached Sacramento it was still light. The bus stopped long enough for the passengers to eat dinner, and then once more they were in motion. Now it was dark. The bus began to climb the winding, older highway that led from Sacramento into the Sierras. Most of the other traffic was large trucks. Gazing out, Al saw roadside diners and closed-up fruit stands and gas stations. The fields were behind them now.
“This part is sort of depressing,” Julie said. “I’m glad we can’t really see it. But I wish we could see the Sierras.”
“These are the Sierras,” he said. “It’s like this all the way. Advertising signs and bars.”