The Laughing Matter (6 page)

“Now, you both go along to Doc Rocha's,” Susie said. “You got a hour. Go bathe now, dress up, I see you back here about noon. They'll be those working boys coming in during lunch hour.”

Every time Dade Nazarenus planned to leave his home on the vineyard in Clovis he telephoned his brother Evan and urged him to pick up his family and stay in the house during his absence.

Once before, early in December, Evan had wanted to go, but Swan had come down with the flu. By the time she'd been better it was almost Christmas, so they didn't go because they wanted to spend Christmas in their own home.

It wasn't much of a house, a Veteran Loan proposition, $500 down, $72 a month against a mortgage of $10,950,
payable in twenty years, or 240 months. Fifteen of the 240 months had gone by. It was
theirs
, though. At any rate, they liked to think it was. The house was detached, but the neighbors were near and the yard was small. Still, it wasn't bad. It wouldn't do for a large family, though, and that was what Evan believed they would become.

His salary at the university was enough to meet the payments on the house, buy groceries, and pay the bills of plain living.

They couldn't afford a car. When the offer came from the University of Nebraska for Evan to go there for eight weeks during the summer, he talked it over with Swan, accepted the offer, planning on his return to make a down payment on a new Chevrolet. He brought home $900. He was about to buy the car when Swan suggested they wait a while longer, or pay cash for a secondhand car. The matter had rested there, and early in August, only a few days after Evan's return from Nebraska, Dade telephoned and made the invitation again.

“I've had a woman come in and get the place ready,” he said. “I've put the key in the mail. You'll get it this afternoon. I've got the icebox full of stuff, and the deep freezer. You'll find all kinds of meat in there. The figs are ripe on the tree. They get ripe by the hour. I'd like to see all of you, but I won't be able to just now. Come down and stay as long as you like. I've got to go to San Francisco. It's for a week at least, possibly two. It may be three. When do you have to be back at the university?”

“I've got a month,” Evan said, “but we wouldn't stay that long.”

“Come on down and decide when you get here how long
you want to stay. I know Swan and the kids are going to have fun. It's very hot.”

“Can't you stop here on your way to San Francisco?”

“I'm flying up,” Dade said. “My car's being overhauled. The boy will bring it to the house in three or four days. When he does, take Swan and the kids for a picnic. There are some nice places around.”

“We'll take the train in the morning,” Evan said. “Wish you were going to be there, though. The kids ought to know their father's brother.”

“We'll make it sometime,” Dade said. “Christmas maybe.”

In Paterson, as a boy, Dade had worked at a variety of jobs, anything that came along, but once he'd got his pay at the end of the week he was another man. He put on expensive clothes and went out to look around. He found things that Evan might not have found in a lifetime. At seventeen he knew a side of the Jersey towns that neither Evan nor the old man knew. He began to take trips, after which he would visit Evan and the old man for a week or two, sometimes a month. Then he would be gone for another four or five months.

“He is gambler,” the old man told Evan. “He go to gamble. I want my boy to work for money. Gamble is bad. When I was young man I was gambler. I know my Dade.”

The years went by. Dade and the old man talked quietly by the hour when Dade came home. The old man was not angry with Dade, but Evan knew he wanted Dade to take a job, like everybody else.

When Dade was twenty-five and Evan was at Princeton, the old man telephoned early one morning and told Evan in their own language to come home right away.

When he got home he saw Dade in bed, the old man trying to do something about Dade's left arm and shoulder.

“I'll call a doctor,” Evan said.

“No,” Dade said. “I don't want anybody to know about this. Dig in there and see if you can get the slug out.”

“I can't do that,” Evan said. “A surgeon's got to do it, Dade.”

“In the top drawer there I've got some instruments in a box,” Dade said. “Put them in boiling water. Then dig in there and get the slug out. Get it out and let me sleep. I've been driving all night.”

Evan did as he was told. At last his brother slept. He'd lost a lot of blood. He was in bed two weeks. Then, still weak and unrestored, he got up and drove off. He came back a couple of days later by train, and stayed three months. He left three thousand dollars with the old man, and a thousand with Evan, for school.

“For God's sake,” Evan said, “at least let him know where you are once in a while. He knows
I'm
all right, but he worries about you. He's too proud to ask you himself. Phone or wire or write once in a while.”

“I can't,” Dade said. “This one last time, then I'll come home, and we'll figure something out. California maybe. A lot of his friends from the old country are out there. Tell him so, if you want to. I don't want to, in case it doesn't work out. I think it will. It may take a little time. Can't you come home over the weekends?”

“I come as often as I can.”

“We'll figure something out when I get back. You doing all right at school?”

“I'm doing all right.”

“We'll go to California,” the older brother said. “Buy a vineyard. All his people have vineyards out there. We'll put a house on it. It'll be
his
house. We'll buy a car. We'll drive him around to his people. Whatever it is that you're going to be doing, you can do out there. Tell him these things. I don't know how.”

“I'll try, Dade.”

“Thanks. What
are
you going to be doing?”

“I'm going to try to write.”

“Books?”

“Yes, Dade.”

“You know how to do that?”

“Well, no, but it's what I want to do. I guess I'll have to teach for a living, though.”

“What'll you teach?”

“Literature, I guess.”

“That's pretty good,” Dade said. “You tell me some books to read sometime.”

“Take this one with you,” Evan said.

He handed his brother a small book that Dade slipped into his coat pocket without first finding out what the book was.

“Thanks,” Dade said. “I'll read it. I'll read every word of it. I promise. Just look after the old man until I get back.”

Evan had looked after the old man as well as he'd been able to, getting in over the week ends, talking to him, eating the old-country food the old man cooked. But Dade was a long time getting back. One weekend when Evan came home he found the old man sick in bed.

“Why didn't you phone?” he said.

“Ah,” the old man said. “It's nothing.”

It was pneumonia, though, and after six days Petrus Nazarenus died. Three months later Dade came home, and for the first time in his life Evan saw his brother weep.

He saw Dade stand in the old man's room and weep like a small boy.

“My dirty luck,” Evan heard his brother say.

Years later, more than twenty years later, walking to the airplane with his brother, on his way back to Swan and Red and Eva, the younger brother said the words back to the older one.

“What's the matter, Dade? What did I do? What did you do? What did the old man do? He comes to America, works hard, after three years sends for his wife and son. They come, another son is born, he thinks he's going to have the family at last that he's always wanted, a lot of boys, a lot of girls, all of them well, their mother well, their father well, but two years after his wife reaches America she's dead, and he doesn't want to look at another woman. He can't. He becomes a sad old man in a silly little cigar store in Paterson, New Jersey, living for his sons.
You
know what's happened to
you
, Dade. And here it is happening to me, too. What for, Dade? What'd he do wrong? What'd you do wrong? What'd I do?”

He stopped, began again suddenly, speaking softly but swiftly.

“You know you want to see your kids, Dade. You know the only thing you live for is your kids. You know the only thing you think about is your kids. You know you're here in San Francisco to get more money to send them. Is it right to live a life of pride and loneliness?”

“It is right,” the older brother said in their own language.

“You're fifty now, man,” Evan said. “You're not a swift kid racing around Paterson any more. What are you going to do? Are you finished, Dade? Are we all finished?”

His brother only looked at him.

“What am
I
supposed to do?” the younger brother said. “Be finished, too?”

He stopped again, trying to think what to do, what to do next.

“I can't leave Red. I can't leave Eva. I don't
know
them. I don't have the faintest idea who they are. What'd I do wrong, Dade? I went away to work for eight weeks, to get money for a car, so we could ride around a little. Two months, and she wrote every day. Yes,
every
day. And I wrote her. What's the matter, Dade? What's the matter with us?

“Listen,” he said suddenly. “I'm not going back. I can't look at her any more. I'll never be able to look at her again. There's no use going back. All right, Red's dead, Eva's lost. All right. That's how it is, and I can't go back.”

He began to walk swiftly, though.

Dade watched him climb the steps and get aboard. He watched the plane turn on its wheels and roll slowly to the place for the take-off. When it was up and going, he went for a taxi.

The book was
The Oxford Blake
, a small book with thin pages. Dade hadn't finished reading it yet, but any time he wasn't home the book was with him. He brought it out of his pocket now, in the taxi going back to San Francisco, opened it, and began to read.

Red was too busy to be frightened, but the thing
was
dangerous. It was a thing in which an enormous fire burned, in which a great deal of heat gathered. It was a thing on enormous wheels. It was too heavy to move, because movement is a light thing, but it
did
move, and he himself
started
it moving. Cody Bone put Red's hand on the lever, helped him move it down, and then, sure enough, the thing made noises and began to go. His father and his sister watched him, standing far below and waving.

He tugged at the whistle handle, but once was enough.
He pulled the bell cord, but once was enough for that, too. Now, here they were slowing down to draw up alongside another locomotive on another track, the other engineer leaning out, waiting for them.

“Hi,” Red said.

“Hi, boy,” the engineer said. He was a younger man than Cody Bone, a man who chewed tobacco and spit, his face smeared here and there, a man who smiled only with his eyes.

The two engineers talked a moment, then the new one said, “Is that your grandson, Cody?”

“Yes,” Cody said. “Pat's boy. We call him Red.”

When the engine went off Red said, “I'm not your grandson, am I?”

Red thought perhaps he
might
be, but hadn't heard.

“Well, not really, Red,” Cody said. “I just said that because—— Well, I guess I
wish
you were my grandson.”

“If I was,” Red said, “would I lose my father?”

“Oh, no,” Cody said. “Evan's your father. You can never lose him. Your father is always your father, and so is your grandfather.”

“Who
is
my grandfather?” Red said.

“Evan's father.”

“But he's dead.”

“Your mother's father. He's your grandfather, too.”

“Why do I have two grandfathers, but one father?”

“You've got two grandmothers, too. Your father's mother and your mother's mother. Now, we've got to go along here a little, pick up three boxcars, and push them back in front of the depot. There you'll see your father again. And that
will be the ride in the big black baby. What do you think of it?”

“It's awful big,” Red said. “Hot and heavy, too. Does it scare
you?”

“Yes,” Cody said. “It
does.”

“It scares me, too,” Red said. “If you want to be my grandfather, I want you to.”

“All right,” Cody said. “I'm your grandfather and you're my grandson, but call me Cody. That's what I'd ask you to call me if you
were
Pat's boy.”

“Does Pat's boy call you Cody?”

“Pat hasn't got a boy. He's got two girls, but when he gets a boy, the boy is going to call me Cody. Now, look, Red, we're going to bump these three boxcars and push them to the depot. Ready?”

“Ready,” the boy said.

They bumped the three boxcars. The man standing near the track went quickly to where the engine had bumped them, worked there a moment, signaled Cody, then Cody made the engine push the cars ahead.

After a few minutes they saw the depot, and there was his father Evan Nazarenus and his sister Eva.

When he came down with Cody Bone from the engine Red went to his father and put his arms around him, hiding his head in the small of his back, not saying anything, because the truth was that something lately had made him feel he might not see his father again.

When the man got home he found the woman lying on the sofa in the parlor, and he saw that she had been crying. He saw that she was desperate and needed help. He saw her eyes say to him, Help me, you're my husband, you're the father of my kids, whatever I am, whatever it is that I've done, whatever it is that I may do if you
do
help me, help me, it's not wrong to help those who have betrayed you, they too are alone, they too are betrayed, help me, Evan.