them

  “Turn left again. No, right. You can make the light if you hurry…”

  Downtown Bernard handed him another check, torn hastily out of his checkbook and ripped unevenly along the perforated edge. “Here. Get a handsome car. Meet me back here at three,” he said. He slammed the car door and bounded away. Jules lifted the check to his eyes. Ten thousand dollars? He had to squint to keep the figures on the check from swimming away. A check made out to Jules Wendall for ten thousand dollars?

  For a while he could not move. Then, not knowing what he was doing, he started the car clumsily and blundered around a corner and onto a one-way street. He was going the wrong way. A yellow taxicab nearly ran into him, its horn blaring. Not chagrined but only giddy, his head smooth and bouncing as crockery, he began to back up. The cab driver was honking his horn. Jules thought the sound was like music. He got his long car back around the corner, backwards, then started off again. Halfway down the block he nearly collided with a city bus, pulling away from the curb. Gracefully, magically, he swung out around the bus and did not hit anyone approaching in the left lane, which opened up for him strangely and let him through, and so he drove around for perhaps ten or twenty minutes, unsure of the time, not even thinking thoughts cast in the form of words but only basking in the music of that check on the seat beside him, made out to Jules Wendall for ten thousand dollars.

  He would cash the check and take off. For California.

  It was a temptation but he couldn’t do it. Never. He liked Bernard and could not steal from him. Also, it would be sinful to bring this adventure to an end so abruptly. His fate might be in riding out the adventure. And there was the girl, Bernard’s niece, whose face in his memory was so tantalizingly unclear. He kept seeing her move across his vision, around the front of the car, out there beyond the shining black expanse of the hood. He tried to see her face but could not quite remember it—only the level, serious, impertinent stare, and his ears rang alarmingly. Was she thinking of him? Speaking of him? It was not enough to get such wonders thrown at him, Jules thought sternly, he had to be equal to them. What a disaster, what a shame for all of his life, if he turned out unequal to what happened to him!

  He drove around a while longer, in a daze, wondering if he might stop at his mother’s place to show her the check—but that was a crazy idea. He wanted to stop people on the street and show it to them. Better to think about the more serious side of his new life: finishing high school. It would be difficult to finish with so much money being thrown at him. He’d have to resist distractions, resist even the excitement of Bernard’s niece, whom he might someday see again…he would have to finish high school at night…he could finish quickly, and then…and then he would go East to school, somewhere in the East to college, though his mind buckled at the thought and the ringing in his ears grew shriller. All he knew of college was Wayne State University, a bunch of modern glass-and-aluminum buildings in the middle of the rubble of Detroit, and all he knew of the East was the gentle swooping line it made on a map, worn out by the Atlantic Ocean. Still, it was a turning point in his life, he knew, the very beginning of his life. He would have to be equal to it.

  “This looks like Chapter One,” he said.

  He managed to park the car—in his zeal getting the right back tire up on the curb and then bouncing violently down again, going through his pockets twice before he could find the right change for the meter, and he was off down the street to the National Bank of Detroit, hoping for the same teller. When he entered the bank its high ceiling assured him: they’d have enough money for him here. But what if someone ran up to him and asked, “How did you get a check like that, Jules? We know you, Jules, of all people you!” What if the policeman in the corner began strolling toward him, casually unsnapping his holster and taking out his gun?

  He waited in line. The line at the next window was moving faster but he did not cross over to it, being very good, very virtuous. He was a good citizen; with his new trim haircut, he was on his way! He waited.

  He wasn’t going to get the same teller he had gotten before. This one was a middle-aged man, a suspicious man. When Jules’s turn came the teller looked right into his face. He stared at the check, looked back at Jules, and said, “Are you Jules Wendall?” Jules smiled to show that this question gave him no discomfort. He took out his wallet and slid out his driver’s license, leaving the wallet on the counter so that the man might see, if he chose, more money inside, folded up, bunched up. Then Jules remembered the other check, the check for two hundred dollars. He searched his pockets for it. He laid it on the marble counter, smoothing it out, wondering if it was worth cashing—two hundred dollars, after all, was not much. The teller picked up this new check. His mouth was thin and sour. “You haven’t endorsed this,” he said.

  Jules signed his name with a bank pen and was surprised to see that his handwriting differed from check to check. He had even begun putting a second “n” in his last name but realized what he was doing just in time. On the ten-thousand-dollar check “Jules” looked buoyant and youthful; on the second check, signed under the teller’s gaze, “Jules” looked humble and middle-aged. The teller stared at the two signatures. He looked at Jules’s driver’s license.

  “This driver’s license has expired,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s expired. On your birthday, in April.”

  “But…but I didn’t know, I forgot…I mean…” He managed to get hold of himself. He said, “Thank you for reminding me. I’ll go to the police station right away.”

  The teller turned away, taking both checks. Jules watched him while pretending not to watch. What if the money was not available? What if none of this was real? He was only eighteen years old, and it was not enough for these surprises to fall into his lap, he had to be equal to them. He had to be equal to Bernard’s expectations. Finish high school. Go to college. Major in philosophy. He had to be equal to a supreme Jules, a dictator who expected even more than Bernard did. He had to be equal to Bernard’s niece, who at her age already knew more than he could learn, probably, just by living in a house like that.

  Now the teller was conferring with another man. The two of them stood back near a big vault door, which was closed. Over their heads Jules saw a camera. Was his picture being taken? What if there was a robbery in this bank in the next few minutes and Jules’s picture somehow got taken in the midst of it? It might be that Bernard himself was a criminal, a forger. The two of them might be arrested. And it would be assumed that Jules had been his accomplice for years of crime, his bodyguard, his chauffeur, his son…But the teller might give him the ten thousand dollars after all. And a crowd of people would gather around him in silence, watching as the money was counted out into his quaking hands.

  Then it occurred to Jules that no sane person asked for ten thousand dollars. He should have opened a checking account in his own name. How did you open a checking account?

  Too late. The teller was on a telephone, the other man was sending a cautious look Jules’s way, and the line at the windows on either side of him moved along, people were served, money and papers were given out or handed in, people turned and got out of the bank and disappeared, the gears were in motion and he, Jules, was caught up helplessly in them. The man was still on the telephone. He looked over toward Jules. A babble of voices rose suddenly in the bank, coming clear to Jules. Everyone was talking at once. The bank’s high ceiling sent back echoes to him, making his pulse race.

  The teller returned with the other man and a portly, severe-looking woman. The three of them looked at Jules. The teller smoothed the two checks down on the counter and said, “There is some question at the other end about a check made on this account two days ago, Mr. Bernard Geffen at the Bank of the Commonwealth, a check that was certified by Mr. Geffen for twelve thousand dollars. We’ll be getting a call on that in a minute or two. Would you mind waiting?”

  “Did you want this in cash? In vario
us denominations, in cash?” the woman asked.

  “I guess so,” said Jules.

  Behind him, in line, people shifted from foot to foot, murmuring, impatient with the back of his head and his tight-fitting clothes, not liking the dull shine to the back of his coat and thinking little of his scuffed shoes. Shoes! He needed to buy shoes! His mind reeled with all that he needed to buy and to do. He would have to drop over at the high school and see about night courses, sign up, rush into all those old courses he’d given so little thought to before, all the courses he’d flunked, with a punk’s smirk. Jules Wendall, a punk.

  He waited. Finally a buzzer sounded. The teller picked up a telephone receiver and listened. Jules tried not to listen. The woman moved away, adjusting her glasses. The teller nodded briskly. He put down the receiver. “Did you want this in various denominations or mainly in large bills?”

  “Yes. I mean, yes, in large bills. There won’t be enough room…”

  The teller opened a money drawer. He began counting out money, now and then putting his fingers to a large red sponge set in a glass dish. Jules saw this and felt suddenly very dizzy, as if he were going to faint. Then the money was coming to him? Ten thousand dollars on its way?

  He stumbled backward slightly and bumped into a woman with a shopping bag. “Excuse me, please,” he said. The woman muttered something. Jules pressed his cold hand against his forehead, steadying himself. The teller was counting money. The other man folded his arms and smiled at Jules. Voices rose everywhere in the bank. Jules looked over at the camera, thinking that maybe they would take a picture of him as he accepted the money from the teller, maybe that was necessary for legal evidence. He cast his eyes upward to the golden ceiling of the bank, for a moment confusing it with church, thinking he was somehow in church. It was not too late to get out of this. The magic moment had not yet come about. As soon as he touched the bills he would be contaminated, flashbulbs might go off, everyone in the bank might duck to the floor so that only he, Jules, would be left standing for the police to shoot.

  It was too late to get out. He had kept everyone waiting in line. He stood, sweating, while the teller counted out some fifteen or twenty bills onto the counter, then scooped them up and counted them up again. It was obvious that Jules had to take them.

  Ten thousand two hundred dollars…

  He mumbled thanks and turned blindly to leave.

  When he got back to Bernard’s car—he had not quite remembered where he’d parked it—he saw that someone had bumped its left rear fender, nothing much, but the paint was scraped off and the metal dented slightly. He tried to straighten it out with his hands. No use. Maybe Bernard wouldn’t notice. Anyway he had to trade in the car, what did it matter? Jules drove away. He was still a little blind. His eyesight was besieged by particles of light and dust, so that he had to keep blinking to get rid of them. He drove in downtown traffic, soundlessly. Now for an automobile showroom, a Cadillac dealer. He couldn’t find one for some time. He drove around for miles. He wondered if he might be going blind.

  He located a Cadillac showroom and went in. In his wallet, in his back pocket, he had over ten thousand dollars; he had become immortal. “I’d like to buy a new car,” he said politely. “I’d like to trade in my old car.” It occurred to him that he would have gotten a better trade-in at a Ford dealer’s, but that was not his fault, that was Bernard’s fault. The salesman was talking to him. While he explained certain things—his sentences were faultless—he kept eying Jules with a certain curiosity. Jules noticed this but did not let on. He was being told about a car that was in front of him. The car itself escaped his fullest attention. It was too big, resting heavily upon its white-walled tires in the center of the gleaming floor, very still, gleaming itself and overlarge, so that Jules was tempted to close his eyes. He had become an ant, a flea, crawling on the surface of an enormous piece of curving metal.

  The salesman opened one of the doors ceremoniously. Jules was instructed to look inside at something. He did close his eyes for a moment. He was thinking of the nights in the country, himself as a child, when his mother had fed him beer to get him a little drunk and ready for sleep; he felt almost that way now. He hadn’t slept much the night before, he was in terror he’d never sleep again.

  The car salesman was articulate, persuasive, suave. Jules tried to concentrate on his words. It was like Mass: you’re a Cadillac salesman, you’re saying Mass, consecrating the host, offering Communion. For a price. Jules found himself sitting in a small glass-walled office while the salesman went elsewhere, to fetch a priest with more power. A prune-faced genial gray-haired man, steel filings in his eyes. His voice was disarmingly sympathetic, but Jules knew better.

  “I work for a trucking firm,” Jules said, “that is, I did, but I’ve just quit. Now I work for a private person. He instructed me to buy this car.”

  They asked him for identification papers. Jules took out his wallet and was startled at how heavy it was. He showed them his wrinkled driver’s license.

  “This expired last month,” said the older man.

  “But isn’t it still good? I’m still the same person,” Jules said, nearly jumping from his chair.

  “Of course, don’t be alarmed.”

  They smiled at him and at each other. They asked him about his employer: what address?

  “I don’t know exactly,” Jules said.

  What about the automobile registration for the other car?

  “It might be in the glove compartment, I don’t know. And I should tell you, I guess, there was a fire in that car, a small fire—it did a little damage to the back seat but nothing bad,” he said.

  They looked at his fixed smile. What was his address?

  “It’s just a room. I plan on moving. I think it’s on Bagley but I don’t know the number—I mean, it isn’t important, I can find it myself without any trouble. I know the neighborhood,” he said.

  There was silence. He eyed the door to the office and wondered if he shouldn’t make a run for it. He had not stolen the ten thousand dollars but still there might have been a robbery earlier that day of ten thousand dollars, so they might arrest him for it. They had to get someone…

  “On second thought,” Jules said, “I better get the car later.” He stood. He went to the door of the office. The middle-aged man took three fast steps toward him, alarmed, and Jules automatically raised his elbow to protect himself. “I’ll come back later!” he said shrilly.

  “But your license, and your wallet, here on the desk—”

  “Oh, yes.” Jules went back to get them. He had some difficulty in stuffing the wallet in his back pocket.

  “You…you said you might be back later? Later today?” said one of the men.

  “Later today, yes,” Jules said wildly. “It’s time I got somewhere. I have to see someone. The lighting in here, the fluorescent lighting, makes my eyes ache.”

  He got out. He managed not to bump into the cars on display. Above the two men who stood watching him was the imperial crest of the Cadillac, a coat of arms fastened high on the wall. Jules made his way to the front door, walking carefully. He walked carefully out to the sidewalk. When he looked back he saw the two men watching him from the show window.

  Bernard was wearing the same raincoat when Jules picked him up. He was in the same hurry. He swung into the car and gave Jules an address, already talking about something urgent, something about precious minerals in the Congo. Jules could hear only every third or fourth word. He was driving with his eyes nearly closed, very exhausted. Bernard seemed to have forgotten about the car and the ten thousand dollars. He was agitated and bullying, thumping the back of Jules’s seat to make his points. “They are not going to crowd me out before I’ve begun. I’m fifty-five years old, and if I don’t begin now, when, when will I begin?”

  “I don’t know,” Jules said.

  He was thinking of Faye, of loving Faye. Out of her mys
terious cool body all this had come. A car, a man, a wallet bulging with bills. She herself was untouched by all of this, and uninterested. He thought of the hours he had spent lying in her arms, of her long slender legs touching the length of his legs, and he wanted to weep bitterly for everything that was being lost to him in this nightmare of a city. Faye had said to him, one night when he was clowning around, “You’re always showing off and joking, but you’re always serious.” He had been struck by that. It was true. Now he wanted to turn to Bernard and say, “You’re always serious but it’s a joke, a joke! You’re always joking!”

  If he wanted to spend that ten thousand dollars he would have to spend it five dollars at a time, passing five-dollar bills. Otherwise he’d be caught.

  Bernard was talking angrily about the pollen count.

  Jules took him to what looked like a private club and Bernard got out. A Negro with a desiccated face hurried to help him, obviously recognizing him. So Bernard did exist.

  Jules waited. It was a clear June day, and high in the sky an airplane was doing mysterious maneuvers. Long fuzzy streams of white trailed out behind it. Jules wondered what it would be like to be up there, free and floating, sailing above the earth, making marks in the sky.

  Bernard came hurrying back, carrying a package. His face was mottled with red, flushed. He said, “Drive over to the east side again. Hurry.”

  At the next stop Jules had to wait quite a while. He was parked near a well-known restaurant, and it interested him, in a way, to watch people coming out from their drawn-out lunches, people with nothing to do on this mild June day except drink and eat and talk. What did people talk about? Surely they didn’t talk about money during all those hours?

  All that day, driving Bernard around, Jules wanted to explain his failure to get a car but he hadn’t the nerve. Anyway Bernard seemed to have forgotten about it. He was talking more and more about St. Louis now; they’d be driving down there the next day.