The Winter of Our Discontent

  "I don't think so. That was a federal man. Department of Justice. Didn't you ask for his credentials?"

  "Didn't think of it. He flashed them but I didn't look."

  "Well, you should. You always should."

  "I wouldn't think you'd want to go away."

  "Oh, that doesn't matter. Nothing happens over Fourth of July weekend. Why, the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor on a weekend. They knew everyone would be away."

  "I wish I could take Mary someplace."

  "Maybe you can later. I want you to whip your brains and try to find where Taylor is."

  "Why? Is it so important?"

  "It is. I can't tell you why right now."

  "I sure wish I could find him, then."

  "Well, if you could turn him up maybe you wouldn't need this job."

  "If it's that way, I'll sure try, sir."

  "That's the boy, Ethan. I'm sure you will. And if you do locate him, you call me--any time, day or night."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I wonder about people who say they haven't time to think. For myself, I can double think. I find that weighing vegetables, passing the time of day with customers, fighting or loving Mary, coping with the children--none of these prevents a second and continuing layer of thinking, wondering, conjecturing. Surely this must be true of everyone. Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think.

  In the strange, uncharted country I had entered, perhaps I had no choice. Questions boiled up, demanding to be noticed. And it was a world so new to me that I puzzled over matters old residents probably solved and put away when they were children.

  I had thought I could put a process in motion and control it at every turn--even stop it when I wanted to. And now the frightening conviction grew in me that such a process may become a thing in itself, a person almost, having its own ends and means and quite independent of its creator. And another troublesome thought came in. Did I really start it, or did I simply not resist it? I may have been the mover, but was I not also the moved? Once on the long street, there seemed to be no cross-roads, no forked paths, no choice.

  The choice was in the first evaluation. What are morals? Are they simply words? Was it honorable to assess my father's weakness, which was a generous mind and the ill-founded dream that other men were equally generous? No, it was simply good business to dig the pit for him. He fell into it himself. No one pushed him. Was it immoral to strip him when he was down? Apparently not.

  Now a slow, deliberate encirclement was moving on New Baytown, and it was set in motion by honorable men. If it succeeded, they would be thought not crooked but clever. And if a factor they had overlooked moved in, would that be immoral or dishonorable? I think that would depend on whether or not it was successful. To most of the world success is never bad. I remember how, when Hitler moved unchecked and triumphant, many honorable men sought and found virtues in him. And Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Vichy collaborated for the good of France, and whatever else Stalin was, he was strong. Strength and success--they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught. In the move designed for New Baytown some men had to get hurt, some even destroyed, but this in no way deterred the movement.

  I could not call this a struggle with my conscience. Once I perceived the pattern and accepted it, the path was clearly marked and the dangers apparent. What amazed me most was that it seemed to plan itself; one thing grew out of another and everything fitted together. I watched it grow and only guided it with the lightest touch.

  What I had done and planned to do was undertaken with full knowledge that it was foreign to me, but necessary as a stirrup is to mount a tall horse. But once I had mounted, the stirrup would not be needed. Maybe I could not stop this process, but I need never start another. I did not need or want to be a citizen of this gray and dangerous country. I had nothing to do with the coming tragedy of July 7. It was not my process, but I could anticipate and I could use it.

  One of our oldest and most often disproved myths is that a man's thoughts show in his face, that the eyes are the windows of the soul. It isn't so. Only sickness shows, or defeat or despair, which are different kinds of sickness. Some rare people can feel beneath, can sense a change or hear a secret signal. I think my Mary felt a change, but she misinterpreted it, and I think Margie Young-Hunt knew--but she was a witch and that is a worrisome thing. It seemed to me that she was intelligent as well as magic--and that's even more worrisome.

  I felt sure that Mr. Baker would go on a holiday, probably on Friday afternoon of the Fourth of July weekend. The storm would have to break Friday or Saturday to give it time to take effect before election and it was logical to suppose that Mr. Baker would want to be away when the shock came. Of course that didn't matter much to me. It was more an exercise in anticipation, but it did make several moves necessary on Thursday, just in case he left that night. My Saturday matter was so finely practical that I could move through it in my sleep. If I had any fear of that, it was more like a small stage fright.

  On Monday, June 27, Marullo came in soon after I had opened up. He walked about, looking strangely at the shelves, the cash register, the cold counter, and he walked back to the storeroom and looked about. You would have thought from his expression that he was seeing it for the first time.

  I said, "Going to take a trip over the Fourth?"

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Well, everybody does who can afford it."

  "Oh! Where would I go?"

  "Where's anybody go? Catskills, even out to Montauk and fish. School tuna running."

  The very thought of fighting a thirty-pound plunging fish drove arthritic pains up his arms so that he flexed them and winced.

  I very nearly asked him when he planned to go to Italy, but that seemed too much. Instead, I moved over to him and took him gently by his right elbow. "Alfio," I said, "I think you're nuts. Why don't you go into New York to the best specialist? There must be something to stop that pain."

  "I don't believe it."

  "What have you got to lose? Go ahead. Try it."

  "What do you care?"

  "I don't. But I've worked here a long time for a stupid son of a bitch dago. If a yellow dog hurt that much, I'd get to feeling it myself. You come in here and move your arms and it's half an hour before I can straighten up."

  "You like me?"

  "Hell, no. I'm buttering you up for a raise."

  He looked at me with hound's eyes, rimmed with red, and dark brown iris and pupil all one piece. He seemed about to say something but changed his mind about it. "You're a good kid," he said.

  "Don't depend on it."

  "A good kid!" he said explosively and as though shocked by his show of emotion he went out of the store and walked away.

  I was weighing out two pounds of string beans for Mrs. Davidson when Marullo came charging back. He stood in the doorway and shouted at me.

  "You take my Pontiac."

  "What?"

  "Go someplace Sunday and Monday."

  "I can't afford it."

  "You take the kids. I told the garage for you to get my Pontiac. Tank full of gas."

  "Wait a minute."

  "You go to hell. Take the kids." He tossed something like a spitball at me and it fell among the string beans. Mrs. Davidson watched him plunge away again down the street. I picked the green wad from the string beans--three twenty-dollar bills folded in a tight square.

  "What's the matter with him?"

  "He's an excitable Italian."

  "He must be, throwing money!"

  He didn't show up the rest of the week, so that was all right. He'd never gone away before without telling me. It was like watching a parade go by, just standing and watching it go by and knowing what the next float would be but watchin
g for it just the same.

  I hadn't expected the Pontiac. He never loaned his car to anybody. It was a strange time. Some outside force or design seemed to have taken control of events so that they were crowded close the way cattle are in a loading chute. I know the opposite can be true. Sometimes the force or design deflects and destroys, no matter how careful and deep the planning. I guess that's why we believe in luck and unluck.

  On Thursday, the thirtieth of June, I awakened as usual in the black pearl light of the dawn, and that was early now in the lap of midsummer. Chair and bureau were dark blobs and pictures only lighter suggestions. The white window curtains seemed to sigh in and out as though they breathed, because it's a rare dawn that does not wave a small wind over the land.

  Coming out of sleep, I had the advantage of two worlds, the layered firmament of dream and the temporal fixtures of the mind awake. I stretched luxuriously--a good and tingling sensation. It's as though the skin has shrunk in the night and one must push it out to daytime size by bulging the muscles, and there's an itching pleasure in it.

  First I referred to my remembered dreams as I would glance through a newspaper to see if there was anything of interest or import. Then I explored the coming day for events that had not happened. Next I followed a practice learned from the best officer I ever had. He was Charley Edwards, a major of middling age, perhaps a little too far along to be a combat officer but he was a good one. He had a large family, a pretty wife and four children in steps, and his heart could ache with love and longing for them if he allowed it to. He told me about it. In his deadly business he could not afford to have his attention warped and split by love, and so he had arrived at a method. In the morning, that is if he were not jerked from sleep by an alert, he opened his mind and heart to his family. He went over each one in turn, how they looked, what they were like; he caressed them and reassured them of his love. It was as though he picked precious things one by one from a cabinet, looked at each, felt it, kissed it, and put it back; and last he gave them a small good-by and shut the door of the cabinet. The whole thing took half an hour if he could get it and then he didn't have to think of them again all day. He could devote his full capacity, untwisted by conflicting thought and feeling, to the job he had to do--the killing of men. He was the best officer I ever knew. I asked his permission to use his method and he gave it to me. When he was killed, all I could think was that his had been a good and effective life. He had taken his pleasure, savored his love, and paid his debts, and how many people even approached that?

  I didn't always use Major Charley's method, but on a day like this Thursday, when I knew my attention should be as uninterrupted as possible, I awakened when the day opened its door a crack and I visited my family as Major Charley had.

  I visited them in chronological order, bowed to Aunt Deborah. She was named for Deborah the Judge of Israel and I have read that a judge was a military leader. Perhaps she responded to her name. My great-aunt could have led armies. She did marshal the cohorts of thought. My joy in learning for no visible profit came from her. Stern though she was, she was charged with curiosity and had little use for anyone who was not. I gave her my obeisance. I offered a spectral toast to old Cap'n and ducked my head to my father. I even made my duty to the untenanted hole in the past I knew as my mother. I never knew her. She died before I could, and left only a hole in the past where she should be.

  One thing troubled me. Aunt Deborah and old Cap'n and my father would not come clear. Their outlines were vague and wavery where they should have been sharp as photographs. Well, perhaps the mind fades in its memories as old tintypes do--the background reaching out to engulf the subjects. I couldn't hold them forever.

  Mary should have been next but I laid her aside for later.

  I raised Allen. I could not find his early face, the face of joy and excitement that made me sure of the perfectability of man. He appeared what he had become--sullen, conceited, resentful, remote and secret in the pain and perplexity of his pubescence, a dreadful, harrowing time when he must bite everyone near, even himself, like a dog in a trap. Even in my mind's picture he could not come out of his miserable discontent, and I put him aside, only saying to him, I know. I remember how bad it is and I can't help. No one can. I can only tell you it will be over. But you can't believe that. Go in peace--go with my love even though during this time we can't stand each other.

  Ellen brought a surge of pleasure. She will be pretty, prettier even than her mother, because when her little face jells into its final shape she will have the strange authority of Aunt Deborah. Her moods, her cruelties, her nervousness are the ingredients of a being quite beautiful and dear. I know, because I saw her standing in her sleep holding the pink talisman to her little breast and looking a woman fulfilled. And as the talisman was important and still is to me, so it is to Ellen. Maybe it is Ellen who will carry and pass on whatever is immortal in me. And in my greeting I put my arms around her and she, true to form, tickled my ear and giggled. My Ellen. My daughter.

  I turned my head to Mary, sleeping and smiling on my right. That is her place so that, when it is good and right and ready, she can shelter her head on my right arm, leaving my left hand free for caressing.

  A few days before, I snicked my forefinger with the curved banana knife at the store, and a callusy scab toughened the ball of my fingertip. And so I stroked the lovely line from ear to shoulder with my second finger but gently enough not to startle and firmly enough not to tickle. She sighed as she always does, a deep, gathered breath and a low release of luxury. Some people resent awakening, but not Mary. She comes to a day with expectancy that it will be good. And, knowing this, I try to offer some small gift to justify her conviction. And I try to hold back gifts for occasions, such as the one I now produced from my mind's purse.

  Her eyes opened, hazed with sleep. "Already?" she asked, and she glanced at the window to see how near the day had come. Over the bureau the picture hangs--trees and a lake and a small cow standing in the water of the lake. I made out the cow's tail from my bed, and knew the day had come.

  "I bring you tidings of great joy, my flying squirrel."

  "Crazy."

  "Have I ever lied to you?"

  "Maybe."

  "Are you awake enough to hear the tidings of great joy?"

  "No."

  "Then I will withhold them."

  She turned on her left shoulder and made a deep crease in her soft flesh. "You joke so much. If it's like you're going to cement over the lawn--"

  "I am not."

  "Or you're starting a cricket farm--"

  "No. But you do remember old discarded plans."

  "Is it a joke?"

  "Well, it's a thing so strange and magic that you are going to have to buttress your belief."

  Her eyes were clear and wakeful now and I could see the little trembles around her lips preparing for laughter. "Tell me."

  "Do you know a man of Eyetalian extraction named Marullo?"

  "Crazy--you're being silly."

  "You will find it so. Said Marullo has gone from here for a time."

  "Where?"

  "He didn't say."

  "When will he be back?"

  "Stop confusing me. He didn't say that either. What he did say and, when I protested, what he ordered was that we should take his car and go on a happy trip over the holiday."

  "You're joking me."

  "Would I tell a lie that would make you sad?"

  "But why?"

  "That I can't tell you. What I can swear to from Boy Scout oath to papal oath is that the mink-lined Pontiac with a tank full of virgin gasoline awaits your highness's pleasure."

  "But where shall we go?"

  "That, my lovely insect-wife, is what you are going to decide, and take all day today, tomorrow, and Saturday to plan it."

  "But Monday's a holiday. That's two full days."

  "That's correct."

  "Can we afford it? It might mean a motel or something."

  "
Can or not, we will. I have a secret purse."

  "Silly, I know your purse. I can't imagine him lending his car."

  "Neither can I, but he did."

  "Don't forget he brought candy Easter."

  "Perhaps it is senility."

  "I wonder what he wants."

  "That's not worthy of my wife. Perhaps he wants us to love him."

  "I'll have to do a thousand things."

  "I know you will." I could see her mind plowing into the possibilities like a bulldozer. I knew I had lost her attention and probably couldn't get it back, and that was good.

  At breakfast before my second cup of coffee she had picked up and discarded half the pleasure areas of eastern America. Poor darling hadn't had much fun these last few years.

  I said, "Chloe, I know I'm going to have trouble getting your attention. A very important investment is offered. I want some more of your money. The first is doing well."

  "Does Mr. Baker know about it?"

  "It's his idea."

  "Then take it. You sign a check."

  "Don't you want to know how much?"

  "I guess so."

  "Don't you want to know what the investment is? The figures, the flotage, the graphs, the probable return, the fiscal dinkum, and all that?"

  "I wouldn't understand it."

  "Oh, yes you would."

  "Well, I wouldn't want to understand it."

  "No wonder they call you the Vixen of Wall Street. That ice-cold, diamond-sharp business mind--it's frightening."

  "We're going on a trip," she said. "We're going on a trip for two days."

  And how the hell could a man not love her, not adore her? "Who is Mary--what is she?" I sang and collected the empty milk bottles and went to work.

  I felt the need to catch up with Joey, just to get the feel of him, but I must have been a moment late or he a moment early. He was entering the coffee shop when I turned into the High Street. I followed him in and took the stool beside him. "You got me into this habit, Joey."

  "Hi, Mr. Hawley. It's pretty good coffee."

  I greeted my old school girl friend. "Morning, Annie."

  "You going to be a regular, Eth?"

  "Looks like. One cuppa and black."

  "Black it is."

  "Black as the eye of despair."

  "What?"

  "Black."

  "You see any white in that, Eth, I'll give you another."