One On The House (12 page)

“So you think the Navy’s so hot?” the giant sneered. “Well, you’re not so hot yourself! Timmy’s relative…an’ then throwin’-off like that on his outfit!” He tried to push Mrs. Feeley out of the way to go back to the basement to remove the barrels. She blocked the cellar door.

“How do you think you’d look with Painless Parkers? I’ll knock every one o’ your teeth down your throat if you come a step closer.”

“You can’t keep the beer! I gotta have my money!”

“Gawd, you thick mick! I keep tellin’ you, but it’s too simple to ooze through that layer o’ cold mashed potatoes that serves you for a brain! You’re gonna get your money soon as I sell the beer. Go on now, like a good lad, an’ come back at five.”

“I gotta have the money…now!”

Mrs. Feeley stared him up and down, then pointed an accusing finger. “Ain’t that a scapular hidin’ in the steel-wool on your chest?”

“So what?” A hand like an elephant’s hind foot protected the medal.

“Take it off,” Mrs. Feeley roared. “You ain’t got no right to call yourself a Christian, your fellow man lyin’ there unconscious! Like a dead dog on the floor we found him…without the consolations of his religion! Without nothin’! An’ the likes o’ you denyin’ him three lousy half-barrels o’ beer…not even a day’s pay, hardly, for you. You’re just the type! Sunday mornin’ you’ll have the crust to show your face at Mass…big as life an’ twice as ugly. Practically a murderer, that’s all you are! Take your beer! It would choke the throat of any honest Christian that tried to drink it, bad luck to you!”

The driver writhed and twisted one huge brogan on top of the other.

“I didn’t mean nothin’ like that. I’m gonna get fired for sure. Jeez, lady! You better have that money by five!”

“Now there’s a fine lad!” Mrs. Feeley whacked him robustly on the back. “Your mother must be that proud of you!”

He started for the door looking wistfully in the direction of the basement where the three kegs of beer were out of his reach forever.

“Go on!” Mrs. Feeley waved to him. “Don’t keep the cash customers waitin’. Can’t you see I got trade?”

The first two men who had been in the day before came up to the bar in a hurry:

“Two beers, on the double!”

Mrs. Feeley drew them:

“Sneak out for a quickie?”

“We been weldin’…hotter than the hinges! Give us another.”

Mrs. Feeley did. She took forty cents out of the half-dollar the man gave her and decided on a coup d’etat. She drew three beers, picked up one herself and with a sad face said:

“Here’s a peaceful Christian death to poor Timmy.”

“Great God, Woman! What are you talkin’ about?”

“He’s not long for this world,” Mrs. Feeley rolled her eyes piously. “Lyin’ there unconscious…they don’t give us hardly no hope at all; the poison’s clear up to his heart by now.”

“When’s all this?” the man put down his glass.

“Whyn’t you tell us yesterday?” his companion said.

“Much good it would o’ done,” Mrs. Feeley tossed her head. “You an’ yer likes, in your mad pursuit o’ the Almighty Dollar, a fine lot you care for a poor lad, a hero…caterin’ day an’ night to your lusts, providin’ you with beer an’ not even able to pay for it because he was too generous! Give you too much for your money, that’s what he done!” She used a trick she had acquired early in life and reserved for special occasions when aid was required: she quivered her chin.

“Is he in the Vet’rans?”

Mrs. Feeley shook her head.

“He’s a emergency…too sick to be moved.”

“Gee, I’m sorry. We never knew nothin’. He never says a word, just draws the beer quiet-like with that faraway look. What did you say was wrong?”

“Bustured appendix. They’ll never sop up all the poison outa him. Lyin’ here like a dead haddock he was.”

“He never mentioned havin’ no relatives,” the second man said.

“That ain’t surprisin’,” Mrs. Feeley said.

“Anythin’ we can do?”

“You can go out an’ drag in the lame, the halt, an’ the blind if you can’t do no better…we gotta have customers! An before five o’clock!”

“Golly! We gotta get back. That foreman’s a…beggar!”

“Pass the word,” Mrs. Feeley said, “Bound to be some vet’rans workin’ with you that was his friends. What we need is a few sailors. Leave it to the Navy to look out for their own!”

“Don’t you say nothin’ about the Army,” the first man said. “My boy never come back from North Africa.”

“Yeah? So that gives you license to forget an’ neglect them that did come back, I guess? Timmy ain’t without friends.”

“You can say that again, lady. When we come back at noon we’ll take up a collection…get him some flowers.”

“Save it for the wake,” Mrs. Feeley retorted.

“That’s one thing, when I die I told my old lady not to wake me! I don’t want ’em to wake me!” the second man said.

“Don’t worry, Buster,” Mrs. Feeley said. “When you die, they won’t be able to wake you: not even with a A bomb!”

The men hurried back to the factory and Mrs. Feeley began polishing glasses.

Guess that put a flea in their ear. An’ didn’t I fix that truck driver? Miss Tinkham always says the Devil can quote Scripture for his own purposes. She looked up as Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen came in. They had several paper bags and the string bag was full too.

“That’s the biggest two dollars’ worth I seen in some time,” Mrs. Feeley said.

“They ain’t no caviare or hummin’-bird’s tongues in here, but it’ll stick to your ribs!” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

“Gimme the Bon Ami,” Mrs. Feeley got a rag and started polishing the windows.

The paste dried quickly and Mrs. Feeley rubbed it off with wadded-up newspaper. The window gleamed in the bright sunshine.

“You know what this place needs?” she turned to her friends. “It needs a new name…an’ a new policy. Too drab! Miss Tinkham, you an’ me is goin’ to put a nice border o’ Bon Ami with a scallop edge to it all around the big front window. Then you’re gonna print the new name in big letters.”

When the factory workers came out of the near-by buildings at noon, they found the big front window of the late Infantry Bar bearing the following legend in foot-high letters:

ROAD TO RUIN SALOON

ICE COLD BEER

5
¢

A SKOONER

TOMORROW

About twenty-five men entered the saloon in a group. Mrs. Feeley ran her eye quickly and expertly over the crowd, picking out the spenders, the tippers, and the duds. The men who had been in the afternoon before hailed her like old friends.

“Give us some o’ them nickel beers!” they shouted. Most of the men were sitting at the tables and crowding into booths. She noticed the way they made themselves at home, opening lunch kits or paper bags, eating good dark bread and meat or nasty white-bread sandwiches, according to the industry and temperament of their wives. Instinct told her this was time for a speech. She pounded on the bar with the bung starter:

“Fellers (I almost said gennlemen), Timmy Rafferty’s at death’s door in the hospital, an we…myself, Feeley’s the name, an’ Miss Tinkham (get up, Miss Tinkham an’ let ’em see you), an’ Mrs. Rasmussen here is takin’ over the joint till poor Timmy is either buried decent or back on his feet. If any o’ you gents has any ideas, we’ll make you acquainted with Ol’-Timer here. They ain’t a better bouncer from Coast to Coast, an’ I might add, a lighter hand with a Mickey Finn. So keep your manners about you, an’ we’ll all get along fine. Leave your needles an’ thread home, if you had any ideas about sewin’ up your pockets. I personally will dispense with the justice around here. You’ll find us all hard, but fair: what we lack in fairness, we make up in hardness. You been sittin’ on your hands long enough! Dig down in them jeans an’ start buyin’.”

Mrs. Rasmussen and Miss Tinkham wore their gay plastic aprons as they carried trays of beer to the tables.

Mrs. Feeley and Old-Timer drew the beer and lined it up on the bar. The workmen were a drouthy lot and kept the ladies trotting briskly back and forth carrying beer to them.

“Thought you said beers was a nickel?” a man at the bar said.

“You iggermunt? Can’t you read the sign?”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

“You musta missed the main word: tomorrow!”

She glanced up as a hulking male lumbered up to the bar and leaned on it. It was the beer-truck driver.

“What you doin’? Countin’ the take?” she said.

“I’m thoisty!” he pleaded.

“It’ll be ten cents! See how
you
like it!” The giant grinned and laid down two nickels. Mrs. Feeley pushed them back to him: “You ain’t a bad ox!” she smiled. “You ain’t got a old pie-anna you ain’t usin’, have you?”

“Gosh, no.”

“Bet you’re musical!” she persisted. “That chest on you…an’ that fine mouthful o’ crockery!”

“Boy, do I love to sing!”

“You an’ Miss Tinkham had ought to get together…she’s some musician. You ain’t never heard nothin’ like it in your life. You heard o’ this Tuscan-ninny?”

“He’s on the raddy-o.”

“He’s nothin’ but a organ-grinder, longside o’ her! Did you know she can sing two notes higher than music?”

“Jeez!”

“Yeup. We all sing. When we bear down hard on ‘Feverous Sal,’ it might be the Andrews Sisters.”

Mrs. Feeley left the truck driver to go over and see the man who had mentioned a contribution for Timmy. Besides, the truck driver was already landed, bait, hook, and sinker.

“What’s your name?” She put out her hand cordially to the man whose son had not returned from North Africa.

“Whitey,” he said. “Have a beer.”

“Thanks. Never drink during business hours.” She winked.

“You had one with us at eleven…seen you.”

“That was a special occasion. Poor Timmy! You was sayin’ somethin’ about some flowers…”

“We got fourteen dollars here,” he said. “There’s some more guys promised me a buck apiece. I’ll just get the money from ’em now, an’ you can buy the flowers when you go to the hospital.”

Mrs. Feeley sauntered over during the lull to a small quiet man sitting by himself with a beer, untouched, in front of him.

He had thick glasses and stooped shoulders. Mrs. Feeley thought he looked like a tailor.

“What’s the trouble? Don’t you like the beer?”

“Can I’ll just drink my glass tea? Timmy lets me.”

“Okay, Schlepperman!” Mrs. Feeley grinned.

“Not Schlepperman…Sammele.”

“Why do you come in, if you don’t like beer?”

“The company. I like to hear the fellows.”

“You like tea cold?”

Sammele shrugged. “What else can I do? I don’t like the taste from the Thoimos.”

Mrs. Feeley turned “Mrs. Rasmussen, how’s to heat Mr. Miller’s tea for him?”

Mrs. Rasmussen came up and took the bottle of tea to the back room.

“Gutstein’s the name.”

“You just told me your name was Sam Miller…make up your mind!”

“That means Sammy…Little Sam.”

Mrs. Rasmussen brought the hot tea in a glass.

“Sorry, I’m fresh outa lemon,” she said.

Sammele looked at her. “Such a kindness I wouldn’t soon forget.”

“An’ listen, Sam Miller, you don’t have to buy no beer, if you don’t drink it,” Mrs. Feeley said.

“At night, with a corn-beef sandwich, a glass beer’s nice. But in the daytime, it makes me spots before the eyes. Too much basting!”

Whitey, who was collecting the money, came up to Mrs. Feeley. “We got twenty dollars…get somethin’ he’d like.”

“No strings to it?” Mrs. Feeley asked. “Can I get him anythin’ I want with it? Somethin’ to do him some real good?”

“You’re the doctor.”

“That’s swell o’ you!” Mrs. Feeley said. “Be sure to stop in before you go home; we’re bound to know somethin’ by then.”

Sammele came up with a two-dollar bill. “For Timmy,” he said. “More I’d give if I hadn’t signed as a coat-maker on the Morris Plan with a schlemiel…when I’ll learn?”

“Come in for your tea tomorrow, Mr. Miller. Don’t forget, now.” The customers were leaving in groups. This lunch-hour trade constituted the main part of the bar’s business, Mrs. Feeley felt sure.

“A few stops in on their way home, but I bet there’s nobody of an evenin’, nor no transients. We’ll have to do somethin’ about that.”

Mrs. Rasmussen and Miss Tinkham were cleaning up the empty tables.

“Tips! We got over four dollars in tips!” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

“We can use that to eat off, ain’t it? That ain’t takin’ nothin’ from Timmy.”

“That’s okay,” Mrs. Feeley said. “We took in nine-sixty from the beer. Timmy don’t want no flowers.” She held out the money the men had chipped it. “He’s too sick. We’re gonna buy him a nice big bunch o’ hop-blossoms!”

“Hop-blossoms! How quaint,” Miss Tinkham said.