Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction

  In the small world of a man hunched over, Franklin cocked the trap and had a nightmarish feeling that they had been shooting clay pigeons for years, that that was all there was to life, that only death could end it.

  His feet were frozen.

  “Ready,” said Franklin.

  “Pull!” said Karl.

  Out went the clay pigeon. Bang went the gun, and the bird was dust.

  Rudy tapped his temple, then saluted Karl with a crooked finger. Karl returned the salute. That had been going on all afternoon—without a trace of a smile. Karl stepped back and Rudy stepped up, the next cog in the humorless clay-pigeon-destroying machine.

  It was now Karl’s turn to work the trap. As he and Franklin changed places, Franklin hit him on the arm and gave him a cynical smile. Franklin put everything into that blow and the smile—fathers and sons, young dreams and old dreams, bosses and employees, cold feet, boredom, and gunpowder.

  It was a crazy thing for Franklin to do. It was the most intimate thing that had ever passed between him and Karl. It was a desperate thing to do. Franklin had to know if there was a human being inside Karl and, if so, what the being was like.

  Karl showed a little of himself—not much. He showed he could blush. And for a split second, he showed that there was something he’d like to explain to Franklin.

  But all that vanished fast. He didn’t smile back. “Ready,” he said.

  “Pull!” said Rudy.

  Out went the clay pigeon. Bang went the gun, and the bird was dust.

  “We’re going to have to find something harder for you guys and easier for me,” said Merle. “I can’t complain about the gun, because the damn thing cost me six hundred dollars. What I need is a six-dollar gun I can hold responsible for everything.”

  “Sun’s going down. Light’s getting bad,” said Rudy.

  “Guess we better knock off,” said Merle. “No question about who the old folks’ champion is, Rudy. But the boys are neck-and-neck. Ought to have some kind of shoot-off.”

  “They could try the rifle,” said Rudy. The rifle leaned against the fence, ready for crows. It had a telescope. It was Merle’s.

  Merle brought an empty cigarette pack from his pocket and stripped off the foil. He handed the foil to Karl. “You two boys hang this up about two hundred yards from here.”

  Franklin and Karl trudged along the fence line, trudged off two hundred yards. They were used to being sent together on errands one of them could have handled alone—were used to representing, ceremoniously, their generation as opposed to their fathers’.

  Neither said anything until the foil was tacked to a fence post. And then, as they stepped back from the target, Karl said something so shyly that Franklin missed it.

  “Beg your pardon?” said Franklin.

  “I’m—I’m glad you’re not gonna take over the factory,” said Karl. “That’s good—that’s great. Maybe, when you come through town with a show, I’ll come backstage and see you. That all right? You’ll remember me?”

  “Remember you?” said Franklin. “Good gosh, Karl!” For a moment he felt like the actor he’d dreamed briefly of being.

  “Get out from under your old man,” said Karl, “that’s the thing to do. I just wanted to tell you—in case you thought I was thinking something else.”

  “Thanks, Karl,” said Franklin. He shook his head weakly. “But I’m not going to be an actor. I’m going to take over when Father retires. I told him last night.”

  “Why?” said Karl. “Why?” He was angry.

  “It makes the old man happy, and I don’t have any better ideas.”

  “You can do it,” Karl said. “You can go away. You can be anything you want!”

  Franklin put his hands together, then opened them to form a flower of fatalism. “So can anybody.”

  Karl’s eyes grew huge. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t! Your father doesn’t just have you. He’s got his big success.” He turned away, so Franklin couldn’t see his face. “All my old man’s got is me.”

  “Oh, now, listen,” said Franklin. “Hey, now!”

  Karl faced him. “I’m what he’d rather have than the half of Waggoner Pump he could have had for two thousand dollars!” he said. “Every day of my life he’s told me so. Every day!”

  “Well, my gosh, Karl,” said Franklin, “it is a beautiful relationship you’ve got with your father.”

  “With my father?” said Karl incredulously. “With yours—with yours. It’s him I’m supposed to get to love me. He’s supposed to be eating his heart out for a son like me. That’s the big idea.” He waved his arms. “The station wagon, the duets, the guns that never miss, the damn-fool son that works on hand signals—that’s all for your father to want.”

  Franklin was amazed. “Karl, that’s all in your head. You are what your own father would rather have than half of Waggoner Pump or anything!”

  “I used to think so,” said Karl.

  “The plate and cube you made,” said Franklin, “you gave them to my father, but they were really a present for yours. And what perfect presents from a son to a father! I never gave my father anything like that—anything I’d put my heart and soul into. I couldn’t!”

  Karl reddened and turned away again. “I didn’t make ’em,” he said. He shivered. “I tried. How I tried!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My father had to make ’em!” said Karl bitterly. “And I found out it didn’t make any difference to him who made ’em, just as long as your father thought I’d made ’em.”

  Franklin gave a sad, low whistle.

  “When my old man did that, he rubbed my nose in what the big thing was to him.” Karl actually wiped his nose on his jacket sleeve.

  “But Karl—” said Franklin.

  “Oh, hell,” Karl said, tired. “I don’t blame him. Sorry I said anything. I’m OK—I’m OK. I’ll live.” He flicked the foil target with a fingertip. “I’m gonna miss, and the hell with ’em.”

  Nothing more was said. The two trudged back to their fathers. It seemed to Franklin that they were leaving behind all they’d said, that the rising wind was whirling their dark thoughts away. By the time they had reached the firing line, Franklin was thinking only of whiskey, steak, and a red-hot stove.

  When he and Karl fired at the foil, Franklin ticked a corner. Karl hit it in the middle. Rudy tapped his temple, then saluted Karl with a crooked finger. Karl returned the salute.

  After supper, Rudy and Karl played duets for flute and clarinet. They played without sheet music, intricately and beautifully. Franklin and Merle could only keep time with their fingers, hoping that their tapping on the tabletop sounded like drums.

  Franklin glanced at his father. When their eyes met, they decided that their drumming wasn’t helping. Their drumming stopped.

  With the moment to think about, to puzzle him pleasantly, Franklin found that the music wasn’t speaking anymore of just Rudy and Karl. It was speaking of all fathers and sons. It was saying what they had all been saying haltingly, sometimes with pain and sometimes with anger and sometimes with cruelty and sometimes with love: that fathers and sons were one.

  It was saying, too, that a time for a parting in spirit was near—no matter how close anyone held anyone, no matter what anyone tried.

  A Night

  for Love

  Moonlight is all right for young lovers, and women never seem to get tired of it. But when a man gets older he usually thinks moonlight is too thin and cool for comfort. Turley Whitman thought so. Turley was in his pajamas at his bedroom window, waiting for his daughter Nancy to come home.

  He was a huge, kind, handsome man. He looked like a good king, but he was only a company cop in charge of the parking lot at the Reinbeck Abrasives Company. His club, his pistol, his cartridges, and his handcuffs were on a chair by the bed. Turley was confused and upset.

  His wife, Milly, was in bed. For about the first time since their three-day honeymoon, in 1936, Milly hadn’t put u
p her hair in curlers. Her hair was all spread out on her pillow. It made her look young and soft and mysterious. Nobody had looked mysterious in that bedroom for years. Milly opened her eyes wide and stared at the moon.

  Her attitude was what threw Turley as much as anything. Milly refused to worry about what was maybe happening to Nancy out in the moonlight somewhere so late at night. Milly would drop off to sleep without even knowing it, then wake up and stare at the moon for a while, and she would think big thoughts without telling Turley what they were, and then drop off to sleep again.

  “You awake?” said Turley.

  “Hm?” said Milly.

  “You decided to be awake?”

  “I’m staying awake,” said Milly dreamily. She sounded like a girl.

  “You think you’ve been staying awake?” said Turley.

  “I must have dropped off without knowing it,” she said.

  “You’ve been sawing wood for an hour,” said Turley.

  He made her sound unattractive to herself because he wanted her to wake up more. He wanted her to wake up enough to talk to him instead of just staring at the moon. She hadn’t really sawed wood while she slept. She’d been very beautiful and still.

  Milly had been the town beauty once. Now her daughter was.

  “I don’t mind telling you, I’m worried sick,” said Turley.

  “Oh, honey,” said Milly, “they’re fine. They’ve got sense. They aren’t crazy kids.”

  “You want to guarantee they’re not cracked up in a ditch somewhere?” said Turley.

  This roused Milly. She sat up, frowned, and blinked away her sleepiness. “You really think—”

  “I really think!” said Turley. “He gave me his solemn promise he’d have her home two hours ago.”

  Milly pulled off her covers, put her bare feet close together on the floor. “All right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m awake now. I’m worried now.”

  “About time,” said Turley. He turned his back to her, and dramatized his responsible watch at the window by putting his big foot on the radiator.

  “Do—do we just worry and wait?” said Milly.

  “What do you suggest?” said Turley. “If you mean call the police to see if there’s been an accident, I took care of that detail while you were sawing wood.”

  “No accidents?” said Milly in a small, small voice.

  “No accidents they know of,” said Turley.

  “Well—that’s—that’s a little encouraging.”

  “Maybe it is to you,” said Turley. “It isn’t to me.” He faced her, and he saw that she was now wide awake enough to hear what he had been wanting to say for some time. “If you’ll pardon me saying so, you’re treating this thing like it was some kind of holiday. You’re acting like her being out with that rich young smart-aleck in his three-hundred-horsepower car was one of the greatest things that ever happened.”

  Milly stood, shocked and hurt. “Holiday?” she whispered. “Me?”

  “Well—you left your hair down, didn’t you, just so you’d look nice in case he got a look at you when he finally brought her home?”

  Milly bit her lip. “I just thought if there was going to be a row, I didn’t want to make it worse by having my hair up in curlers.”

  “You don’t think there should be a row, do you?” said Turley.

  “You’re the head of the family. You—you do whatever you think is right.” Milly went to him, touched him lightly. “Honey,” she said, “I don’t think it’s good. Honest I don’t. I’m trying just as hard as I can to think of things to do.”

  “Like what?” said Turley.

  “Why don’t you call up his father?” said Milly. “Maybe he knows where they are or what their plans were.”

  The suggestion had a curious effect on Turley. He continued to tower over Milly, but he no longer dominated the house, or the room, or even his little barefoot wife. “Oh, great!” he said. The words were loud, but they were as hollow as a bass drum.

  “Why not?” said Milly.

  Turley couldn’t face her anymore. He took up his watch at the window again. “That would just be great,” he said to the moonlit town. “Roust L. C. Reinbeck himself out of bed. ‘Hello—L.C.? This is T.W. What the hell is your son doing with my daughter?’” Turley laughed bitterly.

  Milly didn’t seem to understand. “You’ve got a perfect right to call him or anybody else, if you really think there’s an emergency,” she said. “I mean, everybody’s free and equal this time of night.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Turley said, overacting. “Maybe you’ve been free and equal with the great L. C. Reinbeck, but I never have. And what’s more, I never expect to be.”

  “All I’m saying is, he’s human,” said Milly.

  “You’re the expert on that,” said Turley. “I’m sure I’m not. He never took me out dancing at the country club.”

  “He never took me out dancing at the country club, either. He doesn’t like dancing.” Milly corrected herself. “Or he didn’t.”

  “Please, don’t get technical on me this time of night,” said Turley. “So he took you out and did whatever he likes to do. So whatever that was, you’re the expert on him.”

  “Honey,” said Milly, full of pain, “he took me out to supper once at the Blue Mill, and he took me to a movie once. He took me to The Thin Man. And all he did was talk, and all I did was listen. And it wasn’t romantic talk. It was about how he was going to turn the abrasives company back into a porcelain company. And he was going to do the designing. And he never did anything of the kind, so that’s how expert I am on the great Louis C. Reinbeck.” She laid her hand on her bosom. “I’m the expert on you,” she said, “if you want to know who I’m the expert on.”

  Turley made an animal sound.

  “What, sweetheart?” said Milly.

  “Me,” said Turley, impatient. “What you’re an expert on—me?”

  Milly made helpless giving motions Turley didn’t see.

  He was standing stock-still, winding up tighter and tighter inside. Suddenly he moved, like a cumbersome windup man. He went to the telephone on the bedside table. “Why shouldn’t I call him up?” he blustered. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  He looked up Louis C. Reinbeck’s number in the telephone book clumsily, talked to himself about the times the Reinbeck company had gotten him up out of bed in the middle of the night.

  He misdialed, hung up, got set to dial again. His courage was fading fast.

  Milly hated to see the courage go. “He won’t be asleep,” she said. “They’ve been having a party.”

  “They’ve been having a what?” said Turley.

  “The Reinbecks are having a party tonight—or it’s just over.”

  “How you know that?” said Turley.

  “It was in this morning’s paper, on the society page. Besides,” Milly continued, “you can go in the kitchen and look and see if their lights are on.”

  “You can see the Reinbeck house from our kitchen?” said Turley.

  “Sure,” said Milly. “You have to get your head down kind of low and over to one side, but then you can see their house in a corner of the window.”

  Turley nodded quizzically, watched Milly, thought about her, hard. He dialed again, let the Reinbecks’ telephone ring twice. And then he hung up. He dominated his wife, his rooms, and his house again.

  Milly knew that she had made a very bad mistake in the past thirty seconds. She was ready to bite off her tongue.

  “Every time the Reinbecks do anything,” said Turley, “you read every word about it in the paper?”

  “Honey,” said Milly, “all women read the society page. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a silly something to do when the paper comes. All women do it.”

  “Sure,” said Turley. “Sure. But how many of ’em can say to theirselves, ‘I could have been Mrs. Louis C. Reinbeck’?”

  Turley made a great point of staying calm, of being like a father to Milly, of forgiving her in
advance. “You want to face this thing about those two kids out there in the moonlight somewhere?” he said. “Or you want to go on pretending an accident’s the only thing either one of us is thinking about?”

  Milly stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “You duck your head a hundred times a day to look at that big white house in the corner of the kitchen window, and you don’t know what I mean?” said Turley. “Our girl is out in the moonlight somewhere with the kid who’s going to get that house someday, and you don’t know what I mean? You left your hair down and you stared at the moon and you hardly heard a word I said to you, and you don’t know what I mean?” Turley shook his big, imperial head. “You just can’t imagine?”

  The telephone rang twice in the big white house on the hill. Then it stopped. Louis C. Reinbeck sat on a white iron chair on the lawn in the moonlight. He was looking out at the rolling lovely nonsense of the golf course and, beyond that and below, the town. All the lights in his house were out. He thought his wife, Natalie, was asleep.

  Louis was drinking. He was thinking that the moonlight didn’t make the world look any better. He thought the moonlight made the world look worse, made it look dead like the moon.

  The telephone’s ringing twice, then stopping, fitted in well with Louis’s mood. The telephone was a good touch—urgency that could wait until hell froze over. “Shatter the night and then hang up,” said Louis.

  Along with the house and the Reinbeck Abrasives Company, Louis had inherited from his father and grandfather a deep and satisfying sense of having been corrupted by commerce. And like them, Louis thought of himself as a sensitive maker of porcelain, not grinding wheels, born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Just as the telephone had rung twice at the right time, so did Louis’s wife appear as though on cue. Natalie was a cool, spare Boston girl. Her role was to misunderstand Louis. She did it beautifully, taking apart his reflective moods like a master mechanic.

  “Did you hear the telephone ring, Louis?” she said.

  “Hm? Oh—yes. Uh-huh,” said Louis.

  “It rang and then it stopped,” said Natalie.