Authors: James Jones
Frank had offered him four times as much as his pension, if he would move clear out of the county. But the old son of a bitch refused to leave Parkman, just out of sheer cussedness, just as he’d refused to drop the c and mid t off his name and change e to i all these years, just so he could continue to wander town a worthless poolroom drunken bum and listen to people say, There goes Old Man Herschmidt, Frank Hirsh’s father, and then cackle over it, the no-good bastard.
No wonder Mother’s life had been ruined, and she had nothing but sadness and had become practically a recluse except for her Holiness Church friends.
What he should have done, obviously, was offered him the $120 a month if he’d promise
not
to leave Parkman, then the old reprobate would have insisted on moving to Terre Haute.
Through the half-glassed wall of the office cubicle he saw Al Lowe bearing down on him across the storeroom. What now? he wondered with a muffled sigh.
Al was bright eyed in the doorway. “Frank, Mrs Stevens and her daughter, Virginia, just came in. You know, the Stevens-Bookwright marriage.”
Frank spoke with slow stolid patience:
“And why should I care if Mrs Stevens and her daughter, Virginia, come in any more than other people?”
“Well, the marriage,” Al said. “They’re looking at silver. Big wedding. You know the story. I thought you’d want to know they came in?”
Frank did indeed know the story. More of it than Al knew. He was a friend of Arthur Bookwright’s father who was Harold Bookwright the sales manager for the Sternutol Chemical Company’s local marketing division. It was one of the biggest weddings Parkman would see in some years.
Frank was a secret partner in the Parkman Dodge Agency, which partially thanks to Harold had sold Sternutol Chemical some replacement pickups for their old ones. Now he said to Al with the same slow patience:
“Al, T L Stevens runs the Western Auto Store. His daughter is marryin up into the executive bracket of Sternutol Chemical. His wife ain’t goin to pick her daughter’s silver pattern, or her china pattern, here in Parkman. For the same reasons, she’s goin to have a big wedding—if it takes T L two years to pay for it.
“And if they did pick a pattern that I carried, there wouldn’t be enough money in it for us to even get excited because at least fifty percent of the guests will be Sternutol people and such, from out of town, and will buy their presents someplace else.”
“Well, it would be a big piece of prestige, not to mention advertising, if they did pick her patterns in our store, not to mention the extra money.”
With his infuriatingly slow German patience, Frank said:
“Sure it would. But they just won’t, Al. They’re just shoppin. Hell, they’ll go to Terre Haute, and Danville, maybe even to St Louis and Indianapolis, and probly wind up in Chicago, at Marshall Field’s; before they’re done.” He got up from the desk and steered Al out into the storeroom.
“But Virginia just might happen to see one of our patterns she liked?” Al said.
“Virginia won’t have a damn thing to say about it, Al.”
Al nodded gravely. “You mean her mother’ll do all the picking. I guess that’s right.” His voice was quite calm now. Frank reached up his hand on the tall Al’s shoulder, rather like a small coach exhorting a large substitute he is about to send in. In fact, it rather made Frank think of that, he felt very paternal.
In the office, the phone rang.
“Mr Hirsh!” Edith Barclay called from the office door. “Telephone!”
The watch repairman, for the first time since noon, looked up from his bench. He looked at Edith standing in the door, and continued to look at her.
“Yes?” Frank said. “Who is it.”
“Mr Roberts of the Second National,” Edith said.
“I’ll be right there,” Frank said.
She went back in.
The watch repairman looked back down.
“Now you go on back up there,” Frank said with his hand on Al’s shoulder. “And be nice and polite, and show them everything they want to see. Just like you really thought they might take somethin. We might sell them a good watch for T L for Christmas, later on.”
Al nodded with a solemn patience that mirrored Frank’s voice. Frank stood a moment watching him go. Sometimes Frank wondered how Al had ever managed to survive four years of war as a Combat Infantryman. It seemed impossible. Yet he had. And had the ribbons and medals to prove it. And yet he didn’t show any more effects of it than if he had been away four years at the University of Illinois up in Champaign. Four years away from his wife had rolled off him like water off a duck’s back. Frank did not think he himself could have stood that. If all veterans were as well adjusted as Al Lowe, there wouldn’t be any veterans’ problem. Al was thirty-two, Frank calculated, that was just about four years younger than Dave, wasn’t it? He went on back to get the phone.
The watch repairman did not look up as he passed.
F
RANK, HOWEVER, WAS NOT
aware of the repairman this time because he was thinking about Al Lowe’s wife. He did not allow himself to think about Geneve usually. But he was beginning to wonder why she hadn’t called him. It was because of Geneve that he had hired Al for the store when Al was working as a laborer for the Sternutol after he got back from the Army. She had suggested him. And had sold him on it. Geneve was twenty-nine, three years younger than Al, and looked a lot like a
Vogue
magazine model. Those four years in the Army had rolled off her back, too, Frank thought, feeling a little sly. She had worked at the Mode Shop across the square all during the war as a sort of head salesgirl and assistant buyer for Dotty Callter, and then had just kept on working there, she was a good girl, she and Al were pooling their incomes to save. She was a smart girl, too. He would never have thought of Al himself. She ought to be calling him again now in a few days it had been over a month since her last buying trip to Chicago for Dotty.
He stopped in the door of the office and looked at his watch, thinking he ought to call Dave right away, before the opportunity slipped. He would call him as soon as he got through with Ned Roberts, he thought. Then the thought came into his mind suddenly from nowhere that he ought to go to church with Agnes when she went next Sunday. He hadn’t been for a long time now. And it would please her. And it couldn’t hurt anything. But then the very idea of having to sit for two hours in the midst of so many people who knew Dave was back and had deposited money in the Second National made him cringe inside.
He took the phone carefully from Edith’s hand. “Hello?”
“Hi, Frank,” Ned Roberts’s tenor voice said in his ear. “I just wanted to call and congratulate you on Dave’s safe return from the wars, Frank.”
“Well thanks, Ned,” he said. “We’re real glad to have him back.”
“I didn’t even know he was in town until a half hour ago, Frank.”
“Yes it was sort of sudden,” he said. “We weren’t even sure he was goin to be able to make it down here at all.”
“He sent the clerk over from the Parkman to make a rather substantial deposit. That was how I found out he was here.”
“You mean that fifty-five hundred,” he said. “Yes, he asked me about that.”
There was a tiny, almost imperceptible, pause at the other end. But Frank did not go on. Let him hold the ball. The voice said, “I don’t suppose he’ll be staying long?”
“Well, Ned, we don’t know. We’re hopin he’ll decide to stay quite a while. After all, we haven’t seen him for a long time. But you know how Dave is.”
“Ha-ha-ha, yes, quite a fellow, but I understood the clerk to say he was staying at the Parkman?”
“Yes,” he said. “I did that. You know how Agnes has been feelin so damned poor lately. I just didn’t feel like I ought to have him stay at the house. He understood that.” It was an unturnable flank. Agnes had been feeling bad. She always was.
“Yes, that’s right,” the voice said. “Of course, it’s better.”
“Besides, she’s been redecoratin lately, you know,” Frank said. “You know how women are with decoratin. Everything messed up, and them ready to cry. Dave’s comin out the house for dinner tonight though, of course.”
“Yeah, this decorating’s rough,” Ned said. “Well, don’t let her overwork herself doing it. We don’t want her getting down bad-sick again.”
“I’m holding her down some,” he said. “Much as I can. But you know how Agnes is.”
“Yes, that’s right. Always driving herself.”
“Well, I got to get back, Ned. Some people out front.”
“Yes,” the voice said, “Mrs Stevens was in a short while ago and said she and Virginia were going to stop by your place to look at silver. She said they were going over to Indianapolis to look tomorrow.”
“Yes, so I understand,” Frank said. “We never expected them to pick a silver pattern for a marriage like that in Parkman. Well, thanks for callin, Ned.”
“Forget it, Frank. Just wanted you to know how happy I was over Dave getting back safely.”
“Yes. And thanks.” He hung up and stood looking down at the phone too outraged to think rationally. Did he actually expect he was going to get me to admit anything? Get back safely! The war’s been over almost two years. A hot flame of pure rage soared up through him, consuming Ned Roberts and his goddamned Second National, charring beyond all recognition the Stevens women with their monstrous gall to come in his store with no intention of buying, and continued on burning Parkman, Illinois, to the ground entire with all its environs like a conflagration, while he stood slack-faced and thoughtless.
Gradually, he became aware of the girl who was not looking at him curiously from her desk but who might as well have been. Resisting an impulse to turn on his heel and go out in the storeroom, he sat down at his own desk and put an expression on his face. He had no mirror but it felt like it must look ghastly. He took it off and put on another which was no better. He was glad Edith still had not looked up. She was a good girl. He was the laughingstock of Parkman, Illinois. He was also the brother of Dave Hirsh, Army veteran, and, he decided, he was very likely to remain very publicly both until something both public and embarrassing happened to somebody else and changed the focus of public attention.
And there was nothing he could do, now, about it. It was done. If Dave didn’t even stay in town overnight, it would still serve to stir up all the old dirt. He wondered how the judge had found out about the deposit, that had sure been a godsend. But he knew he’d never find out, not from the judge anyway.
It was so bad, really, that he could almost afford to feel hopeful because it could not possibly get any worse. Who knew? He might be able to talk Dave into investing the fifty-five hundred dollars before he threw it away. If Frank had had that much unattached capital to invest when he started out, God only knew what he’d be worth today. Of course, money was worth a lot more then. But the inflation was going to get worse. And fifty-five hundred dollars invested now in 1947 would count for as much as ten thousand dollars by 1950. If he turned Dave’s money over once for him and then matched it with an equal amount of his own, they’d have enough to incorporate as an investment firm. Hirsh & Hirsh, Inc. Wouldn’t that make the judge’s neck rigid! If this new factory came in, and a man could find out just where the new highway bypass was going to be laid, Christ there’d be plenty of opportunities for good investment in this town. Maybe Hirsh Bros, Inc would be better. Why there was no limit to what they might do. Frank’s mind went on by itself, building empires of wealth and fame that did not include the judge, creating between brothers and partners a great love and friendship and loyalty where there was none, and amassing respect until it weighed more than a mountain and displaced as much space, all out of Dave’s measly fifty-five hundred dollars.
Then the balloon burst, overinflated by his own treacherous breath, leaving him with his mouth dangling the shreds of rubber and staring off across the space that a moment before had been a solid, opaque bubble.
His own violated sense of reality told him it was an impossibility. Not because he couldn’t have done that for Dave but because Dave wouldn’t let him. What dumbfounded Frank was that he should even have imagined it.
Al Lowe was standing in the office doorway.
“Yes, Al,” he said. “What is it.” Still, it was nevertheless an idea to consider.
“Mrs Stevens wants to see you,” Al said, emphasizing the last word.
“I’ve shown her every piece of silver we’ve got in the store. Now she wants to see you.”
Frank sighed. Must have been sitting here quite a while. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be right there.” He got up and followed Al out into the storeroom.
Al turned around. “I tried everything I could, Frank,” he said, his voice agitated. “I ran up and down and showed her everything she asked for and a lot that she didn’t and I was as nice and polite and she just stood there. Kept looking and looking and staying and staying. Then she asked to see you.”
“That’s all right,” Frank said. “She didn’t ask for me because she’s dissatisfied with your service.” He put his hand gently on Al’s back and started him toward the front. “This is her big day, and she wants to take advantage of it.”
Al went a few steps, and then stopped and turned again.
“I just heard, Frank. Mrs Stevens told me.”
“Mrs Stevens?”
“Yes. She must have picked it up at the bank.”
“Picked up what.”
“About Dave,” Al said. He looked as if he would have liked to say he was sorry, but could not be sure this was proper. Unlike Edith Barclay, Al Lowe was not too young to remember Dave Hirsh.
“Oh.” Frank rubbed his hand over his face thoughtfully. Then he said:
“You were in high school with him, weren’t you?”
“No. He graduated—” Al said. “He left—” He tried once more. “I was in the eighth grade when he was a senior.”
“That’s right,” Frank said, “you were younger.” He thought some, and then said: “I haven’t seen Dave for nineteen years. He’s probably changed some.” He put his hand on Al’s back again. “Let’s get on up there.”
“Okay,” Al said. “I wonder why he put his money in the Second National?”