Some Came Running (53 page)

She was really a very attractive girl, and he noted—without suspecting how Frank did the same identical thing—the way she bent her slim pretty neck over her work. He had had her pegged right from the start. She was a highly nubile female. Although she kept this nubility under careful wraps, when she was around him, he thought ruefully. Frank must have warned her that his kid brother was some kind of ogre.

So he found himself back alone again, in his seven a.m. to eleven p.m. shift; after a week of helplessly watching a very sexually attractive young woman, which only made it worse now. He had a good simple bookkeeping system now; but that didn’t help a damned bit toward lessening the hours he had to spend in this crummy little hole, usually all by himself. Now and then one, two or all three of the drivers (Frank did not have the fourth car ready yet) would be sitting around in the office to talk to or play checkers with, but that did not happen very often in any one day. During one day, ’Bama stopped in to see him, just back from a week’s highly successful junket to Cincinnati, he said—and left volubly disgusted at the long hours his friend Dave was working; and another time, Wally Dennis stopped by to talk writing, and beat him playing checkers. But that was all. He had written nothing at all since the Monday morning he had left the Frenches’. And obviously, he had no prospect of doing any in the near future. Anyway, the high enthusiasm he had felt over there had already evaporated completely, leaving him empty. He was sleeping less than six hours a night. His bowels were off. And he had been nowhere since this damned thing started—except to his hotel.

Apparently, from what Frank said, they were making money. But, of course, as he also said, it would be a long slow haul to replace their capital and start paying a profit. Actually, he had to admit Frank had been pretty fair about the salary. He was paying him fifty dollars a week; two hundred dollars a month. Hell, that was more than a buck sergeant made in the Army. The drivers were only getting $31.25, or $125 a month. Living as he was—which meant not doing anything—he was even able to save a little bit every week. But then, what was the point of saving up a little money if you had no way to spend it? At least the drivers got two out of every three Sundays off.

Dave had gotten to know the three drivers pretty well, since they’d all started this thing. There wasn’t much else for him to do. He found he had acquired a very deep warm spot for all three of them, and the more he learned about them, the more he liked all three of them.

But of them all, Dave felt he liked Albie Shipe the best. Always laughing and saying something funny in his incredibly dumb, half-moronic way Albie Shipe was in the unique position of having everybody start to laugh at him as soon as he grinned and before he could even say a word. Not tall, but with a tremendously muscular though narrow-shouldered build, guffawing confidently, Albie presented this sly perpetual role of oafish humor because it made everybody smile and laugh. Barely able to decipher a newspaper, he kept in the front seat of his taxi a huge stack of comic books, which he read slowly, with avid concentration. He loved movies with the same avidity he loved comics, and every third night, which he got off, could be found there. You could always tell when Albie was at the show, the other two told Dave, because his guffawing laugh would ring all over the theater at every slightest excuse for one. In spite of all this, he was a shrewd checker player. All three of them were, although Fitzjarrald had a definite slight edge. All of them beat Dave.

But even knowing and being friends with the drivers wasn’t enough to keep him in this wretched half alive existence for-goddamned-ever; and after miserably suffering it for over an entire month, in a fit of passionate love of freedom he worked himself up into, Dave decided he had had enough. Before rebelling, he decided upon who his successor—or his assistant, rather—was going to be: It was going to be Albie. Fired up, he called Frank at home at ten-thirty in the evening.

“What is it now?” Frank wanted to know.

“I’m quitting!” Dave cried. He had already let the boys off early.

“What the hell? What’s gone wrong now?”

“I’m not a slave!” Dave cried into the phone. “I don’t have to suffer this kind of treatment from anybody! I’m a man!—a human being! With a human being’s rights and privileges! Nobody has the right to work a
mule
sixteen and seventeen hours a day—let alone a human being! The rights and dignity of man are being destroyed all over the world! But as long as I’m able, I intend to defend my self-respect as a human being! I’m through! I quit! Get yourself another slave!”

“Stay right there,” Frank said wearily. “I’ll be right down.”

He looked haggard and tired, and also as if he had been drinking too much all evening, when he came into the office; but Dave was not going to be put down.

“All right,” Frank said, running his fingers through his hair. “Now what is it?”

“Look at this place!” Dave bellowed. He swept his arm around the grubby little office. “How would
you
like to spend your entire life in here! It’s unjust! Every man has certain inalienable rights, by God! Even the lowest of the low! No man has a right to treat another like I’m being treated! to force him against his will! and chain him to a desk! or a job! I won’t stand for it! I don’t have to!”

“I told you it would be hard for a while until we got it going,” Frank said tiredly. He sat down on the corner of the desk.

“If I wanted to be a slave laborer, I could go to Russia! What do you think we fought this war for! For freedom, that’s what! But I ain’t got any freedom! I’m a man! With a man’s rights! You can kill me, but you can’t force me to work seventeen hours a day!”

“All right,” Frank said. “We will get you an assistant. But we will have to pay him. And that means it’ll take just that much longer before we can start makin any money.”

“To hell with the money!” Dave bawled. “I’m not going to live like a slave!”

“Okay,” Frank sighed. “I’ll start lookin for a guy tomorrow.”

“I’ve already got one,” Dave said, his voice becoming normal. “Albie Shipe.”

“Albie!” Frank exclaimed. “Hell, he can’t even count!”

“He’s too dumb to be dishonest,” Dave said. “He’s the man I want.”

“But he can’t do that work,” Frank protested.

“Yes, he can. Your girlfriend set it up for us. Any ten-year-old child can do it.”

“My who?” Frank said.

“Your secretary.”

“Oh, her,” Frank said, relieved.

“I’ll work until five o’clock, but not a second later,” Dave said. “And I want every other Sunday off. Sundays we can close at six, and the guy on duty can work an extra hour.”

“That means we will lose every Sunday evening’s business,” Frank said.

“Hell with the business!” Dave bellowed. “Six or eight dollars ain’t worth a man’s life!”

Frank sighed. “Okay. I might as well check the receipts with you while I’m here. I take it you let the boys off.”

Somehow or other, in some subtle way, Dave knew he had him buffaloed. Frank didn’t want him to quit. By threatening
to
quit, he could make him do what he wanted. He filed it away for future reference, his chest swelling; he felt he had accomplished a major victory for the rights of man in Parkman, Illinois.

“Now I want to ask you somethin,” Frank said, while Dave got out his books to run the check. “What’re the chances of these drivers cheatin on us?”

“Cheating?” Dave said. “Oh, I see what you mean. Well, I don’t see how they can, since I take all the calls.”

“Yes, but what if they run somebody uptown, say, and then another party hails them right there?” Frank said. “We got no way of checkin that, have we? Can you time them?”

Dave shook his head. “I can’t time them. Sometimes they stop for a sandwich or a Coke or to get a pack of cigarettes. Anyway, you can’t tell how long a trip will take. No, I don’t see any way you can control something like that, for sure, unless you buy meters and put them on the cars.”

“I looked into that,” Frank said, and shook his head. “Too expensive.”

“Then I don’t see any way you can control it,” Dave said.

Frank nodded. “Okay. But you keep an eye on them. And if one of them seems to be takin a lot longer with his trips, see if you can’t find some way to check him.”

“All right. I’ll see what I can do,” Dave said, getting out the cash. He opened the book. He still had not lost his feeling of swelling triumph.

“You tell Albie about the change,” Frank said when they had finished the check. “And I’ll try to find another driver. I may not be able to find one tomorrow, though.”

“Then we run shorthanded tomorrow,” Dave stated, “and until you do find one. Because Albie goes to work for me tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Frank said irritably. “Look: If I can find one, I will. If you want to run shorthanded, run shorthanded, I don’t give a damn. Now; is that all? You got any other problems you want to take up with me?”

“No,” Dave said. “That’s all.”

“Okay,” Frank said. He got up off the desk corner. “I’ll see you sometime tomorrow then,” he said and went to the door. But before he got there he stopped and turned back around.

“You talk about freedom and the rights of men,” he said wearily, but without anger. “I spent fifteen years doin just what you been doin, before I got where I am. You’ve spent one month at it. How would you like to spend fifteen years doin it?”

“I wouldn’t like it,” Dave said.

Frank opened the door. “Well, every man who ever gets to be a success in this world has to do it,” he said as he went out.

“Yeah, and what’s he got when he gets it?” Dave called after him.

Frank stuck his head back in the door. “He gets success, and admiration, and money, and fame, and love, and whatever else it is he wants bad enough to do it for,” he said with that weary impatience. He shut the door.

Dave leaned back in his chair and sat still looking at the door. Outside he heard Frank’s car start up. He didn’t have anything left to do but lock up, since he’d let the boys off early. He was a little surprised. He had expected Frank to be furious and try to argue him out of it. Or else pull his slick businessman’s act and try to sweet-talk him out of it. But it had been ridiculously easy. Frank hadn’t seemed to give much of a damn what they decided about it, and that didn’t seem like Frank.

F
RANK WAS HAVING
his own troubles. As he started up his Buick wearily, he didn’t give a damn whether Dave quit or whether they ran shorthanded or whether they closed the damn bitching place up completely. Frank had finally lost his mistress. As he had known he would.

It was after eleven and the display lights in the business houses were dark, the streets deserted, and sort of aimlessly—and because he did not want to go home—he drove along Plum Street to the end of the block and on up the hill and around the square. The square was nearly deserted, too, and the only places still open and lighted were the two poolrooms and the single all-night restaurant. There was also a dimly reflected light from back in the office of his own store, and he knew that it would be Edith Barclay, working late on her monthly statement. Slowly, he cruised the Buick completely around the square twice, and then, without thinking about it, pulled it into one of the diagonal parking spaces in front of his store. He had thought for a fleeting second of going in and talking to Edith a little while. But now that he was parked he didn’t want to, could barely stand the thought of talking to anyone. He switched off the lights and motor and lit up a cigar and sat in the darkened interior smoking and staring out at his own darkened storefront, nursing his bruises.

That damned Dave! he thought, and was flooded again with the same feeling of weary irritation he had felt back at the taxi office. He puffed hungrily on the big fat Ramón Allones Churchill as if he might suck comfort from
it,
tasting its smoke rich and buttery in his mouth. He had been like this for over two weeks now. And there didn’t seem to be any prospect for sudden change in the near future.

Actually, of course, you couldn’t blame Geneve. She had to look out for her investment she had in Dotty Callter. He thought of how he had asked her in Chicago if there had been any women in on those parties she and Dotty had gone out on, and a great wave of sexual heat rose up through him. Then he remembered other things. Goddam it all!

No, you couldn’t blame her. But he knew who you could blame. His damn wife, Agnes; that’s who. He didn’t know exactly what she had done—and he probably never would—but as sure as God made little green apples she was the one who was behind it. In some way known only to herself, without causing any scandal, she had brought enough gossip pressure to bear on Geneve that she didn’t have any choice but to break it off.

My Christ! he thought, ire running up his back like a breeze rippling across a wheatfleld, it wasn’t as if he had been in love with Geneve! Or as if Agnes was in danger of losing him! If he had threatened her security, or thrown away more money than he could afford, or offered to throw her out of her home, he could have understood it! He had provided for her every want, there wasn’t a thing she asked for she didn’t get—and he loved and respected her. What difference did it make if he slept with some woman? She didn’t like sex and never had. Was he to be held guiltily accountable the rest of his life because he did like it?

She had been so damned sweet to him the past two weeks that it infuriated and sickened him. She knew she had him beaten. And he was helpless to do anything; he couldn’t get Geneve back if Geneve wouldn’t come. Agnes could afford to be magnanimous. It had got so he could hardly stand to be in the house anymore. He tried to wait until she was asleep before he went home. And even then he didn’t want to go. There had been several times lately when, without ever doing or saying anything actually, she had indicated to him that if he needed sex it would be all right for him to sleep with her.

Just to relieve himself, of course, he thought bitterly, just because she was his wife and loved him and wanted to be of service to him.