Smoke Ghost & Other Apparitions (27 page)

"Now, you're being stupid, Skeeter," Cappy informed him, pointing a grey-sweatered arm. "I hate a stupid man." Then Cappy proceeded to lay down the law. "Look here, we paid our respects to the dead when we went to the funeral. A hat's part of being respectful. But that's over. Now we pay our respects to truth. Even Wilmer had some respect for truth, you know. He'd have never let himself be argued into wearing a hat. Well, I say Wilmer was just about the dirtiest man who ever lived. I don't believe he ever took a genuine bath in his whole life. Anyone care to dispute me?"

There was a chorus of relieved "No's." A happy recollective light came into George's eyes and he said, "Remember the time Wilmer tried to come in here after cleaning catchbasins without even changing to his drinking coat? Ed told him to stay out." (The owner of the Amity Liquor Store, who was leaning forward with spread elbows on the bar, nodded confirmation.) "Wilmer offered to stay in the back room and do his drinking there, but Ed wouldn't agree even to that. Said it would stink up the can. It ended with Wilmer in the alley and Otto taking his shots and beers back to him."

"I remember!" Skeeter put in eagerly. His wide smile seemed almost to link his ears. "I took turns with Otto rushing them. We'd just open the door a crack and stretch out two long arms. Wilmer got stinking too."

"Stinking both ways," Ed said, walking forward behind the counter to wait on a package customer.

George said, "If we had an absolutely clean world – I mean if science had conquered crapping and there were just one turd to be found once a year in one place, Wilmer would buy a ticket a sufficient time ahead and go get it."

"My wife would never let Wilmer set foot in our apartment," Driscoll put in with another of his deliberate nods. "Not even when he'd bring me home drunk. I think she could smell Wilmer in her sleep, and it would wake her up when I couldn't even when I'd fall down."

The happy light was really sparkling now in George's eyes and his satyr grin was at its wickedest as he launched out in the dreamy chant suitable for a big-city pastoral. "Wilmer would come to me and he'd say, 'How do I get a woman, George?' and I'd inhale and make a disgusted face – no, the face of a connoisseur – and say to him, 'First off, take a bath, Wilmer. Take a long, long bath with lots of hot water and soap,' and he'd listen to me and then he'd give me the hurtest look..."

"Maybe Wilmer finally did take a bath," Skeeter burst in excitedly. "Maybe that's what gave him the pneumonia." And he laughed alone in thin high peals.

"Wilmer once did shack up with a woman," Driscoll stated soberly. "It happened a long while ago. She was as dirty as he was. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true."

George was frowning thoughtfully now. "I get a funny feeling," he said, "thinking of Wilmer standing back there in the alley, covered with sewage, having his drinks, refusing to make even the smallest concession to popular opinion. It's as if he'd created his own little world and were being true to it. I think the key to his character's there, if I could just put it into words."

"You have," Driscoll said heavily.

"Enough of that now," Cappy said with the air of an orchestra leader dropping his baton to bring a movement to a close. "We're agreed Wilmer was the dirtiest man going. I often told him so myself. Now I want to say–"

"I've got it!" George interrupted. "The key to Wilmer's character was ambition. He knew he could never reach the top in any other line, so he decided to become the dirtiest man in the world."

"We've closed that topic," Cappy said impatiently, collecting his brown bottle of beer from the new round of drinks Ed was preparing. "Now I want to make the statement that Wilmer was also the most disgusting drunk I ever knew. We all get a little glassy-eyed from time to time, but Wilmer would get as polluted as a pig day after day. He really craved his liquor."

"That's right, Cappy, that's right," George agreed, easily taking fire again. "Remember how every day at four-thirty, regular as clockwork, we'd watch him come through that back door in his green drinking coat with that oh-so-eager look in his eyes?"

The bank carillon jangled out the quarter hour and for a bit no one said anything. The floor creaked as Driscoll reached for his second bourbon and water.

"Otto would generally be with him," George went on, "because he quit work at the same time. But we'd hardly notice Otto. All we could see would be Wilmer's face as he stuck it ahead of him through the door – Wilmer's face and that longing in it."

"Otto wasn't at the funeral," Driscoll remarked.

"He's having to janitor Wilmer's buildings along with his own until they get a replacement," Ed explained. The owner of the Amity had drawn himself a small glass of beer along with Skeeter's large one and was temporarily part of the group.

"I noticed Otto's drinking coat back on the hatrack," Skeeter put in. "Not Wilmer's green one, though. I wonder what became of it?"

"Stop all that useless chatter," Cappy commanded. "George was describing something I want to hear."

With a quick smile and nod to Cappy, George continued, "That look of longing on Wilmer's face would be so powerful and so touching that time and again we'd all offer to buy him a drink."

"Yes, and he's take them, too," Cappy said curtly. "Wilmer cadged more drinks than most men. He'd accept them and he'd drink them, sometimes two or three at a time, and pretty soon he'd be so polluted I'd get disgusted with him."

"I bet Wilmer left a pretty big tab behind," George said with an inquiring look at Ed. The latter shook his head. "Just eighty-five," he said. "His mother came in and paid it this morning."

"It's strange to think of a big dirty souse like Wilmer still having a mother," George said, puckering his forehead. "I know he roomed with Otto and the old lady would hardly let him in her house, but he depended on her a lot just the same. You could tell."

"You're out of order," Cappy reproved him. "We haven't got to Wilmer's psychology yet. We're still on his drinking."

"Wilmer cadged drinks, all right," Skeeter said. "I bought him a glass of muscatel not two weeks ago. Maybe it was the last drink he ever had. No, I guess not."

"Wilmer was getting to be a wino the last two years," Driscoll said. "He was shifting over. I suppose it was the easiest thing to drink on the job."

"Oh, but there was nothing in the world like Wilmer polluted," George launched out again, the faraway twinkle back in his eyes. "He'd grow a bigger moon face, he'd get stupid-sillier, and he'd even fall on his face with more finality than another man. Remember how he'd always want to pass out and sleep in the back room here and you wouldn't let him, Ed? You'd say, 'No' and chase him out front and ten minutes later he'd be back there and we'd hear empty cartons crunch as he flopped on them."

"I couldn't let him sleep in here by himself," Ed said with a grin. "Imagine what would have happened if he'd waked up alone at four a.m."

Skeeter chortled. "Many's the time," he said, "I helped drag Wilmer out in the alley on a summer night when you'd closed up and we'd leave him snoozing there. Or help Otto get him home, though that didn't happen so often."

"Wilmer's drinking always heavied up in the summer," Driscoll observed, "which isn't the way of a normal man who shifts from whisky to beer then. I suppose he knew he didn't have to worry about freezing to death."

George said, "Right now I can hear Wilmer's snores. I can visualize the dirty green glow of his drinking coat when he was sleeping in the alley with the moon coming over the water tower."

"That's enough about Wilmer's drinking," Cappy said decisively. "I've got one more thing to say about him and then we'll quit. Wilmer was undoubtedly the stupidest man I ever knew in my life."

"Oh, but that's right," George said swiftly. "'How do I get a woman, George?' 'George, how do I get a white-collar job?' 'Why do they hold elections, George, on the days when the bars are closed?' 'George, how do people know if their kids are left-handed?'"

Skeeter boasted, "Once I actually got Wilmer to ask for a left-handed monkey-wrench at Tanner's hardware."

"Wilmer couldn't even do simple arithmetic," Driscoll asserted. "I don't believe he could count on his fingers."

Ed nodded at that. "Sometimes he'd question his tab," he said, "and I'd add it over for him very slowly. It was pitiful how he'd pretend to follow me."

George said, "Remember how for two whole months he thought I was a Communist, because I came in here carrying a book? He even got Otto believing it."

"Yes," Skeeter pressed, "and remember the day you brought a girl in here who was a model – a dress model – and Wilmer asked her how much she'd charge to undress in the back room?"

"That wasn't stupidity," George contradicted, "that was tactlessness. Wilmer never knew how to go about anything."

"All right, all right, we've talked enough about Wilmer now," Cappy commanded loudly, getting his next bottle of beer.

"I guess you're right, Cappy," Skeeter said in a hushed voice. "I forgot we'd just been to his funeral."

"That's not the point," Cappy told him disgustedly, "you're being stupid again, Skeeter. We haven't said anything but the truth and Wilmer can't hear us anyhow. It's just that we've heard enough about him for today. I'm sick of the subject. Somebody talk about something else. Go ahead."

There was a long silence.

George was the first to look around at the others. An odd smile began to switch at his lips.

"You know," he said, "we're going to have a hard time finding something to talk about, now that Wilmer's gone. Something real juicy we can all get together on, I mean."

Driscoll nodded slowly and said, "I guess we talked about him more than we realized."

"Oh, we can keep coming back to Wilmer for a while," George went on, "but there'll be nothing new to add and after a bit the whole topic will be so dead we won't want to touch it at all. You know what? We're going to have to find a replacement for Wilmer."

"How do you mean, a replacement?" Driscoll asked.

"You know," George said, "somebody to talk about, somebody to be the stupidest and dirtiest and drunkenest. If we don't find a replacement, Wilmer will ... well, haunt us, you might say."

"Now you're talking like a superstitious lunkhead, George," Cappy said sharply. "Wilmer's dead and a dead man can't affect anybody."

George looked at him quizzically.

Cappy continued, "But you may have something in that replacement idea." The gray-sweatered man began to look thoughtfully at Skeeter.

"Hey, quit that, Cappy," Skeeter said uneasily, almost knocking his glass off the shelf as he reached for it. "I'm not going to be any replacement for Wilmer."

Cappy frowned. "I wouldn't be too sure of that, Skeeter," he said. "You're stupid enough sometimes – I've told you twice today – and I've seen you rubber-legged drunk pretty often and I know you don't wash behind those ears more than once a month."

"Better watch out, Skeeter," Ed warned with a chuckle.

"Hey, quit it, you guys," Skeeter protested. "Quit looking at me, Cappy."

Skeeter was watching Cappy apprehensively. All the others were grinning at Skeeter delightedly except George, who was smiling at the ceiling abstractedly and saying, "You know, it's a very funny thing how we really need Wilmer. Here we've been talking for half an hour as if we were glad to be rid of him, when actually nothing would please us more than if he'd push through the door right now."

A sudden gust of wind in the street outside raised thin swirls of dust, momentarily plastered a sheet of newspaper against the water-marked display window, and since it blew from the direction of the bank, it swelled the volume of the computerized carillon jangling out four-thirty.

A man with his head ducked low against the dust and wearing a dirty green coat with stains down the front pushed in through the door.

The five men in the Amity saw him and turned pale. Skeeter's beer glass crashed on the floor. Then the newcomer looked up.

George was the first to recover.

"Otto, you old son-of-a-gun!" he cried. "What are you doing wearing Wilmer's drinking coat?"

"Mein Gott, I didn't know it," the newcomer protested, looking down again and then raising his eyes guiltily. "The two coats always hung each other beside. I thought I was putting on mine. Here, I take it off."

"That's all right, Otto, forget it," George said heartily, stopping him with an arm around the shoulders. "Here, have a shot of gin."

"Have a drink on me, too, you crazy Dutchman," Cappy bellowed, getting two of his brown bottles and uncapping them.

"And on me," Skeeter squeaked, darting behind the counter to get a washed glass and draw the beer himself.

"A drink on each one of us," Driscoll put in, reaching for the whisky bottle. "Finish that gin, I'll pour you a snort of real liquor."

"And when you're ready for it, a peppermint brandy on the house," Ed finished, smiling broadly.

"Shee, fellows, thanks," Otto said a little wonderingly, "but first I better–"

Cappy thrust a hairy finger at him, "You forget that coat for now," he commanded, "and drink your drinks."

"Okay, Cappity, you win," Otto surrendered. "Shee, fellows, I'm sorry not to be at the funeral, but it went against my heart. That Wilmer, I liked him. Nobody's ever going to take his place."

"Forget funerals," George directed. "How's life been treating you, Otto?"

"Shee, Gay-org, I wouldn't know. Say, not too many drinks, fellow."

About ten minutes later they let Otto go back to exchange the green coat for his own. The loud boil of conversation simmered down.

Cappy said in a gruff undertone, wrinkling his big nose, "You know, that Otto stinks. I never noticed it before because he was always with Wilmer."

"He sure snatched at those drinks when he got going," Skeeter put in, a little ruefully.

"And he's stupid," Cappy said decisively. "Only a very stupid man would accidentally put on a dead man's coat."

"What do you think is happening, Driscoll?" George asked lightly.