The Winter of Our Discontent

  Business piled up that morning. It was worse than I had thought it might be. The sun turned hot and fierce and very little wind moved, the kind of weather that drives people on their vacations whether they want to go or not. I had a line of customers waiting to be served. One thing I knew, come hell or high water, I had to get some help. If Allen didn't work out, I'd fire him and get someone else.

  When Mr. Baker came in about eleven, he was in a hurry. I had to stand off some customers and go into the storeroom with him.

  He put a big envelope and a small one in my hands, and he was so rushed that he barked a kind of shorthand. "Tom Watson says the deed's okay. He doesn't know whether it's papered. He doesn't think so. Here are conveyances. Get signatures where I've checked. The money's marked and the numbers noted. Here's a check all made out. Just sign it. Sorry I have to rush, Ethan. I hate doing business like this."

  "You really think I should go ahead?"

  "Goddammit, Ethan, after all the trouble I've gone to--"

  "Sorry, sir. Sorry. I know you're right." I put the check on a canned-milk carton and signed it with my indelible pencil.

  Mr. Baker wasn't too rushed to inspect the check. "Offer two thousand at first. And raise your offer two hundred at a time. You realize, of course, you've only got a five-hundred balance in the bank. God help you if you run short."

  "If it's clear, can't I borrow on the store?"

  "Sure you can if you want interest to eat you up."

  "I don't know how to thank you."

  "Don't go soft, Ethan. Don't let him poor-mouth you. He can be a spellbinder. All dagos can. Just remember number one."

  "I am sure grateful."

  "Got to go," he said. "Want to hit the highway before the noon traffic." And out he went and nearly knocked Mrs. Willow down in the doorway where she had been over every cantaloupe twice.

  The day didn't get any less frantic. I guess the heat that splashed the streets made people edgy and downright quarrelsome. Instead of a holiday, you'd have thought they were stocking up for a catastrophe. I couldn't have got a sandwich over to the Morph if I'd wanted to.

  I not only had to wait on people, I had to keep my eyes open. A lot of the customers were summer people, strangers in town, and they steal if you don't watch them. They can't seem to help it. And it's not always stuff they need either. The little jars of luxuries take the worst beating, foie gras and caviar and button mushrooms. That's why Marullo had me keep such stuff back of the counter, where the customers aren't supposed to go. He taught me it's not good business to catch a shoplifter. Makes everyone restless, maybe because--well, in his thoughts anyway--everyone is guilty. About the only way is to charge the loss off to somebody else. But if I saw someone drifting too close to certain shelves, I could forestall the impulse by saying, "Those cocktail onions are a bargain." I've seen the customer jump as though I'd read his mind. What I hate worst about it is the suspicion. It's unpleasant to be suspicious. Makes me angry, as though one person were injuring many.

  The day wore on to a kind of sadness, and time slowed down. After five Chief Stoney came in, lean and grim and ulcerish. He bought a TV dinner--country steak, carrots, mashed potatoes, cooked and frozen in a kind of aluminum tray.

  I said, "You look like you had a touch of sun, Chief."

  "Well, I ain't. I feel fine." He looked miserable.

  "Want two of those?"

  "Just one. My wife's gone visiting. A cop don't get holidays."

  "Too bad."

  "Maybe it's just as well. With this mob hanging around, I don't get home much."

  "I heard you were away."

  "Who told you?"

  "Willie."

  "He better learn to keep his big mouth shut."

  "He didn't mean harm."

  "Hasn't got brains enough to mean harm. Maybe not brains enough to stay out of jail."

  "Who has?" I said it on purpose and I got even more response than I had anticipated.

  "Just what do you mean by that, Ethan?"

  "I mean we've got so many laws you can't breathe without breaking something."

  "That's the truth. Gets so you don't really know."

  "I was going to ask you, Chief--cleaning up, I found an old revolver, all dirty and rusty. Marullo says it's not his, and it sure isn't mine. What do I do with it?"

  "Turn it over to me, if you don't want to apply for a license."

  "I'll bring it down from home tomorrow. I stuck it in a can of oil. What do you do with things like that, Stoney?"

  "Oh, check to see if they're hot and then throw them in the ocean." He seemed to be feeling better, but it had been a long, hot day. I couldn't let him be.

  "Remember a couple of years ago there was a case somewhere upstate? Police were selling confiscated guns."

  Stoney smiled the sweet smile of an alligator and with the same gay innocence. "I had one hell of a week, Eth. One hell of a week. If you're going about needling me, why, don't do it, because I've had one hell of a week."

  "Sorry, Chief. Anything a sober citizen can do to help, like getting drunk with you?"

  "I wish to Christ I could. I'd rather get drunk than anything I can think of."

  "Why don't you?"

  "Do you know? No, how could you? If I only knew what it's for and where it's from."

  "What you talking about?"

  "Forget it, Eth. No--don't forget it. You're a friend of Mr. Baker. Has he got any deals on?"

  "I'm not that good a friend, Chief."

  "How about Marullo? Where is Marullo?"

  "Went in to New York. He wants to get his arthritis checked over."

  "God almighty. I don't know. I just don't know. If there was just a line, why, I'd know where to jump."

  "You're not talking sense, Stoney."

  "No, I'm not. I talked too much already."

  "I'm not too bright but if you want to unload--"

  "I don't. No, I don't. They're not going to pin a leak on me even if I knew who they were. Forget it, Eth. I'm just a worried man."

  "You couldn't leak to me, Stoney. What was it--grand jury?"

  "Then you do know?"

  "A little."

  "What's behind it?"

  "Progress."

  Stoney came close to me and his iron hand grasped my upper arm so tightly that it hurt. "Ethan," he said fiercely, "do you think I'm a good cop?"

  "The best."

  "I aim to be. I want to be. Eth--do you think it's right to make a man tell on his friends to save himself?"

  "No, I don't."

  "Neither do I. I can't admire such a government. What scares me, Eth, is--I won't be such a good cop any more because I won't admire what I'm doing."

  "Did they catch you out, Chief?"

  "It's like you said. So many laws you can't take a deep breath without you break one. But Jesus Christ! The guys were my friends. You won't leak, Ethan?"

  "No I won't. You forgot your TV dinner, Chief."

  "Yeah!" he said. "I'll go home and take off my shoes and watch how those television cops do it. You know, sometimes an empty house is a nice rest. See you, Eth."

  I liked Stoney. I guess he is a good officer. I wonder where the line falls.

  I was closing up shop, drawing in the fruit bins from the doorway, when Joey Morphy sauntered in.

  "Quick!" I said, and I closed the double front doors and drew the dark green shades. "Speak in a whisper."

  "What's got into you?"

  "Someone might want to buy something."

  "Yeah! I know what you mean. God! I hate long holidays. Brings out the worst in everybody. They start out mad and come home pooped and broke."

  "Want a cold drink while I draw the coverlets over my darlings?"

  "I don't mind. Got some cold beer?"

  "To take out only."

  "I'll take it out. Just open the can."

  I punched two triangular holes in the tin and he upended it, opened his throat, and drained it into him. "Ah!" he said and set the can on the coun
ter.

  "We're going on a trip."

  "You poor devil. Where?"

  "I don't know. We haven't fought over that yet."

  "Something's going on. Do you know what it is?"

  "Give me a clue."

  "I can't. I just feel it. Hair on the back of my neck kind of itches. That's a sure sign. Everybody's a little out of synch."

  "Maybe you just imagine it."

  "Maybe. But Mr. Baker doesn't take holidays. He was in one hell of a hurry to get out of town."

  I laughed. "Have you checked the books?"

  "Know something? I did."

  "You're kidding."

  "Once I knew a postmaster, little town. Had a punk kid working there, name of Ralph--pale hair, glasses, little tiny chin, adenoids big as goiters. Ralph got tagged for stealing stamps--lots of stamps, like maybe eighteen hundred dollars' worth. Couldn't do a thing. He was a punk."

  "You mean he didn't take them?"

  "If he didn't it was just the same as if he did. I'm jumpy. I'm never going to get tagged if I can help it."

  "Is that why you never married?"

  "Come to think of it, by God, that's one of the reasons."

  I folded my apron and put it in the drawer under the cash register. "Takes too much time and effort to be suspicious, Joey. I couldn't take the time."

  "Have to in a bank. You only lose once. All it needs is a whisper."

  "Don't tell me you're suspicious."

  "It's an instinct. If anything's just a little bit out of norm, my alarm goes off."

  "What a way to live! You don't really mean that."

  "I guess I don't. I just thought if you'd heard something, you'd tell me--that is, if it was any of my business."

  "I think I'd tell anybody anything I know. Maybe that's why nobody ever tells me anything. Going home?"

  "No, I think I'll go eat across the street."

  I switched the front lights off. "Mind coming out through the alley? Look, I'll make sandwiches in the morning before the rush. One ham, one cheese on rye bread, lettuce and mayonnaise, right? And a quart of milk."

  "You ought to work in a bank," he said.

  I guess he wasn't any lonelier than anybody else just because he lived alone. He left me at the door of the Foremaster and for a moment I wished I could go with him. I thought home might be a mess.

  And it was. Mary had planned the trip. Out near Montauk Point there's a dude ranch with all the fancy fixings you see in what they call adult Westerns. The joke is that it's the oldest working cattle ranch in America. It was a cattle ranch before Texas was discovered. First charter came from Charles II. Originally the herds that supplied New York grazed there and the herdsmen were drawn by lot, like jurors, for limited service. Of course now it's all silver spurs and cowboy stuff, but the red cattle still graze on the moors. Mary thought it would be nice to spend Sunday night in one of the guest houses.

  Ellen wanted to go into New York, stay at a hotel, and spend two days in Times Square. Allen didn't want to go at all, any place. That's one of his ways of getting attention and proving that he exists.

  The house boiled with emotion--Ellen in slow, dripping, juicy tears, Mary tired and flushed with frustration, Allen sitting sullen and withdrawn with his little radio blasting in his ear, a thumping whining song of love and loss in a voice of sub-hysteria. "You promised to be true, and then you took and threw, my lovin' lonely heart right on the floor."

  "I'm about ready to give up," Mary said.

  "They're just trying to help."

  "They seem to go out of their way to be difficult."

  "I never get to do anything." Ellen sniffled.

  In the living room Allen turned up the volume. ". . . my lovin' lonely heart right on the floor."

  "Couldn't we lock them in the cellar and go off by ourselves, carotene, dear."

  "You know, at this point I wish we could." She had to raise her voice to be heard over the pounding roar of the lovin' lonely heart.

  Without warning a rage came up in me. I turned and strode toward the living room to tear my son to shreds and throw his lonely lovin' corpse on the floor and trample it. As I went loping through the door the music stopped. "We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin. Officials of New Baytown and Wessex County were this afternoon subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury to answer charges ranging from fixing traffic tickets to taking bribes and kickbacks on town and county contracts. . . ."

  There it came--the Town Manager, the council, the magistrates, the works. I listened without hearing--sad and heavy. Maybe they had been doing what they were charged with, but they'd been doing it so long they didn't think it was wrong. And even if they were innocent they couldn't be cleared before the local election, and even if a man is cleared the charge is remembered.They were surrounded. They must have known it. I listened for a mention of Stoney and it didn't come so I guess he had traded them for immunity. No wonder he felt so raw and alone.

  Mary was listening at the door. "Well!" she said. "We haven't had so much excitement in a long time. Do you think it's true, Ethan?"

  "Doesn't matter," I said. "That's not what it's for."

  "I wonder what Mr. Baker thinks."

  "He went on a holiday. Yes, I wonder what he feels."

  Allen grew restive because his music was interrupted.

  The news and dinner and dishes put off our trip problems until it was too late for a decision or for further tears and quarreling.

  In bed I got to shivering all over. The cold, passionless savagery of the attack chilled right through the warm summer night.

  Mary said, "You're all goose lumps, dear. Do you think you have a virus?"

  "No, my fancy, I guess I was just feeling what those men must feel. They must feel awful."

  "Stop it, Ethan. You can't take other people's troubles on your shoulders."

  "I can because I do."

  "I wonder if you'll ever be a businessman. You're too sensitive, Ethan. It's not your crime."

  "I was thinking maybe it is--everybody's crime."

  "I don't understand."

  "I don't much either, sweetheart."

  "If there was only someone who could stay with them."

  "Repeat, please, Columbine!"

  "How I would love to take a holiday just with you. It's been forever."

  "We're short on unattached elderly female relatives. Put your mind to it. If only we could can them or salt or pickle them for a little while. Mary, madonna, put your mind to it. I ache to be alone with you in a strange place. We could walk the dunes and swim naked at night and I would tousle you in a fern bed."

  "Darling, I know, darling. I know it's been hard on you. Don't think I don't know."

  "Well, hold me close. Let's think of some way."

  "You're still shivering. Do you feel cold?"

  "Cold and hot, full and empty--and tired."

  "I'll try to think of something. I really will. Of course I love them but--"

  "I know, and I could wear my bow tie--"

  "Will they put them in jail?"

  "I wish we could--"

  "Those men?"

  "No. It won't be necessary. They can't even appear before next Tuesday, and Thursday is election. That's what it's for."

  "Ethan, that's cynical. You aren't like that. We'll have to go away if you're getting cynical because--that wasn't a joke, the way you said it. I know your jokes. You meant that."

  A fear struck me. I was showing through. I couldn't let myself show through. "Oh say, Miss Mousie, will you marry me?"

  And Mary said, "Oho! Oho!"

  My sudden fear that I might be showing through was very great. I had made myself believe that the eyes are not the mirror of the soul. Some of the deadliest little female contraptions I ever saw had the faces and the eyes of angels. There is a breed that can read through skin and through bone right into the center, but they are rare. For the most part people are not curious except about themselves. Once a Canadian girl of Scottis
h blood told me a story that had bitten her and the telling bit me. She said that in the age of growing up when she felt that all eyes were on her and not favorably, so that she went from blushes to tears and back again, her Highland grandfather, observing her pain, said sharply, "Ye wouldna be sae worrit wi' what folk think about ye if ye kenned how seldom they do." It cured her and the telling reassured me of privacy, because it's true. But Mary, who ordinarily lives in a house of flowers of her own growing, had heard a tone, or felt a cutting wind. This was a danger, until tomorrow should be over.

  If my plan had leaped up full-grown and deadly I would have rejected it as nonsense. People don't do such things, but people play secret games. Mine began with Joey's rules for robbing a bank. Against the boredom of my job I played with it and everything along the way fell into it--Allen and his mouse mask, leaking toilet, rusty pistol, holiday coming up, Joey wadding paper in the lock of the alley door. As a game I timed the process, enacted it, tested it. But gunmen shooting it out with cops-- aren't they the little boys who practiced quick draws with cap pistols until they got so good they had to use the skill?

  I don't know when my game stopped being a game. Perhaps when I knew I might buy the store and would need money to run it. For one thing, it is hard to throw away a perfect structure without testing it. And as for the dishonesty, the crime--it was not a crime against men, only against money. No one would get hurt. Money is insured. The real crimes were against men, against Danny and against Marullo. If I could do what I had done, theft was nothing. And all of it was temporary. None of it would ever have to be repeated. Actually, before I knew it was not a game, my procedure and equipment and timing were as near perfection as possible. The cap-pistol boy found a .45 in his hand.

  Of course an accident was possible but that is so in crossing the street or walking under a tree. I don't think I had any fear. I had rehearsed that out of me, but I did have a breathlessness, like the stage fright of an actor standing in the wings on his opening night. And it was like a play in that every conceivable mischance had been inspected and eliminated.

  In my worry that I would not sleep, I slept, deeply and as far as I know without dreams, and overslept. I had planned to use the dark pre-day for the calming medicine of contemplation. Instead, when my eyes jerked open, the tail of the cow in the lake had been visible at least half an hour. I awakened with a jar like the blow of driven air from high explosive. Sometimes such an awakening sprains muscles. Mine shook the bed so that Mary awakened, saying, "What's the matter?"