The Feud (25 page)

“How about it, babe?” he asked, taking both her hands in his. His were callused, as she had noted the night before. “You wanna get hitched?”

She answered quietly, her blood rising. “I wouldn’t kid about something like that, Ernie.”

“I ain’t kidding. I’m almost twenty-four and not getting any younger. I thought I’d wait till my mom died, but heck, that might not happen for years yet. She’s real healthy—uh, thank the Lord. But life could be nice with a good woman like yourself, Bernice. Might as well live in Mom’s house till her time comes, ‘cause it’s rent-free. I got my own room: you could move right in.”

Bernice felt that the night’s experience just went to prove that something nice might happen at any time, no matter how black things looked. This had actually worked out better than if she had got anywhere with Harvey Yelton, who after all was already married and as old as her father. Whereas Ernie could be considered a pretty good catch by any standard. He was not exactly a big tycoon, but he had a regular job pumping gas at the Flying Red Horse on state route 35, and his mother’s house was only a few blocks from Bernice’s parents’. Ernie’s mother sat on a porch glider every evening in summertime. She was thought to be a sour kind of person, but what the devil, Bernice could get along with anybody if necessary.

Ernie was still looking at her. He said, “Come on, how about it?” He winked. “Winter’s coming in a couple months. Be real nice to snuggle up in bed on them cold nights. Trouble is, when would we do any sleeping?” He cackled merrily.

Bernice decided not to mention their difference in age. He must be aware of that himself, since they had known each other for so many years.

She said, “If you have to have an answer right this minute, Ernie, it’d have to be yes.”

He gave her a big kiss. When she finally pulled away to catch her breath, his hand stayed up under her skirt.

“By George,” she said, looking into his lap, “I bet you’re ready to do it right here in the middle of the road.”

They climbed into the back, and the car stayed where it was until some old farmer came along with a tractor and made Ernie pull over onto the shoulder. Later on they drove to the nearest town that had a courthouse, and until it opened they were drinking coffee in a lunchroom.

But after a while Ernie had fallen into a less than enthusiastic mood. He said again that he was scared to spring the news on his mother and that maybe when they got back to Hornbeck he would have to proceed by degrees, first pretending to have just a date with Bernice for the movies, and then walk her back past where his mother would be sitting on the porch glider, which she continued to use until the weather turned really cold.

“At that rate it’ll take quite a while, won’t it?” asked Bernice, who was beginning to get a little concerned that he was having second thoughts. “Might be Christmas, for golly sakes.”

Ernie said, “Well, the house does belong to her, you know, and I think she was figuring on me staying single for the rest of her life.”

Bernice decided to call his hand. She got off the diner stool and she said, “It’s been real nice knowing you, Ernie.”

“Hey, come on, Bernice.”

“You some kinda Indin-giver? You talk about being married, and then when you get whatcha want, you take it back?”

“Now just sit down,” said Ernie, glancing with embarrassment at the other patrons in the nearby booths. “I don’t mean we shouldn’t get married right now. I just mean I’ll break it slow to my mom. Meantime, if you don’t mind staying at your own house? It ain’t so far away.”

“Oh.” Bernice was mollified. Her pregnancy would be covered: that was always her main worry.

Jack’s mother returned to the kitchen from the dining room, where she had been talking on the phone with Bernice. When it rang she had taken the skillet from the burner and turned off the gas. She now reversed that process and began to fry eggs again.

“Oh, gosh,” she said in a moment. “These are pretty far gone. They sure look like they’re cooked through.”

Jack whined. He hated it when the yolks were not molten but crumbled into yellow dust at the touch of a fork. There was one means by which to pull this from utter disaster, according to his friend Dickie Herkimer: you mashed the yolks and whites together along with lots of catchup, and you spread the resulting mixture on a piece of buttered toast and then salted it heavily. Dickie had a solution for every problem, but the only trouble with this one was that Jack loathed catchup.

“Well,” said his mother, placing on the table before him a plate bearing two eggs and a quantity of fried potatoes, “you’re just going to have to make do, Jack. We can’t afford to throw these away, and if I keep ‘em warm for Tony they’ll just get harder and tougher.”

Jack grimaced at the plate. “Don’t we have any bacon or sausage or anything?”

“No we don’t,” his mother said positively. “Your dad’s in the hospital, remember? And he can’t earn a living on the flat of his back. You oughta thank your lucky stars you get good fresh eggs to eat, with all the starving people in China.”

“What about toast?”

“Oh, my! I forgot.” She rushed to the shelf of the kitchen cabinet, where the toaster, at the end of a long cord stretching from a baseboard socket, was smoking. She opened the little door on each side and removed the contents. “Not too burnt to be saved!” She took the toast to the sink and scraped each piece on both sides, then came to the table and seized the bowl that held the blob of country butter, which was supplied by the same farmer who came to the house once a week with the fresh eggs. Jack hated this hick stuff and yearned for the civilized product that was cut into smooth sticks and wrapped in translucent paper: this junk came in waxed paper which, after it was refolded a few times, was crisscrossed with white lines and looked soiled. His mother started to smear the scraped toast, but Jack stopped her.

“That makes it worse!” He took the toast from her, and began to put jelly on it, apple jelly, the most tasteless kind, but there wasn’t any other flavor in the house. He was ready to be bolder in his complaints about food in the absence of his father, with whom such objections did not sit well, but then it occurred to him that he would be acting like a punk in view of the family’s troubles. “I’m just kidding,” he lied, trying to ignore the diseased look of the burned and scraped bread. “It’s O.K.”

“That was Bernice,” his mother said, pouring him a glass of milk. “I guess it’s all right to tell. She never asked me to keep it under my hat. She’s getting married. They went over the state line.”

This was amazing news to Jack. He dropped his toast on top of the eggs. “Married? Who to?”

“Ernie Krum.”

“Ernie Krum!
My God Almighty.”

“Well, do you have to curse, Jack?”

“I’m sorry … but he’s a real moron, Ma. You know that.”

“I don’t know anything of the kind, Jack, and neither do you. And if you did, it would be a good idea not to mention it if he’s gonna be your brother-in-law.”

“Ernie Krum? He happens to be the most stupid guy in Hornbeck. You know, he’s on the fire department, but when he was burning some paint off his garage with a blowtorch he set it on fire, and he goes and gets the garden hose, but by that time it’s outa control and the whole department has to be called out?”

“Well, if I was you,” said his mother, tidying up around the sink, “I wouldn’t dwell on it.”

“Oh, gee!” said Jack. He was really humiliated by the thought of being related to Ernie. “Can’t you stop her, Ma?”

His mother said, “Why, of course not. And I wouldn’t if I could. It’s high time Bernice settled down. She’s not getting any younger. She’s had her fling, but life isn’t all beer and skittles. She can make a mighty fine housewife if she puts her nose to the grindstone, and Ernie is a real nice boy. He used to come around and sell magazines when he was a kid. He was always a real little gentleman and would tip the baseball cap he always wore in those days. He was cute as a button.”

In indignation Jack suddenly remembered, “He’s younger than Bernice!”

“Oh, but just a year or so. That don’t matter at all.” She walked into the dining room and in a moment could be heard calling up the stairs, “Tony!” When she came back she said, “Is your brother O.K.? Not like him to be last for breakfast.”

“He claims he’s got a job.” Jack wondered whether he had done the right thing, but he couldn’t recall Tony’s having sworn him to secrecy.

“He’s got another think coming,” their mother said firmly. “That boy’s going to finish high school, or else.”

Jack toyed with his eggs. He was still thinking about Bernice. God, it was really lousy that she was getting married to Ernie Krum. He felt he could never live that down. He shrank to think of what Dickie Herkimer would have to say. And not only was Ernie younger than Bernice, he was also probably shorter. He was a little bowlegged runt of a guy. If they had a baby it might be stunted or something. This was a catastrophe.

Tony appeared and quietly took his place at the table.

Their mother said, “Your eggs are coming up.” She began to crack them into the skillet: Tony always had at least four, even when there was meat in accompaniment. “I hear you’re supposed to have a job?”

“Sairdies,” said Tony.

She said to Jack, “Durn it, why dint you tell me that?”

Jack shrugged and told Tony, “Bernice is getting married to that goof Ernie Krum.”

“Jack!” their mother protested. “Don’t you cut me off like that! And I don’t wantchoo go around talking like that about Ernie. Do you hear me?”

Jack lapsed into sullen silence and began to mess up the food on his plate so that it would look as if he had eaten more than he had, but this was unsuccessful and ended up in creating a seemingly greater quantity than that with which he had begun.

Tony drank some milk. “Ernie’s not so bad,” he said. “I think he works out with weights, you know. I seen him with his shirt off once in a while, washing his car, and he’s got good lats: they come from body-building. Like the trapezius, you know?” He indicated the muscles between the neck and the shouldercap; presumably he was flexing his own, but they didn’t show that much with a shirt on. However, Jack had seen them often enough, and the rest of Tony’s terrific build, but the truth was that he was out of patience at the moment with all this stuff and thought it basically pretty dumb—great as it might be. He would rather have been taking a steamboat cruise in tropical waters, outwitting professional cardsharps in nightly games and winning a king’s ransom, the thinnest of gold cigarette cases (with its own built-in lighter) in one tuxedo pocket and a tiny but deadly pearl-handled automatic in another; in the cast of characters, a raven-haired beauty with a cruel red mouth and a squat, greasy, pockmarked hoodlum, whose boss has fair hair and eyes pale as window-glass and devastating cunning but no conscience whatever—

“Jack!” His mother had just served Tony. “I want you to eat some of that good food you are smearing all over the place. Do you hear me?”

He groaned an assent and began to fork up a series of the tiniest morsels possible. These did actually have a different taste from that of larger pieces, strange as it might seem, in addition to which the process had a somewhat comic quality to it. At least his mother thought so. She laughed and said, “What a nut you are!” He could usually get on her good side by doing something crazy.

The telephone rang again. She went into the dining room. Jack didn’t like to listen to only her end of a conversation, because it was invariably boring, so he said to Tony, “What kinda jobja get?”

“Bakery.” His brother’s eggs were just right, Jack noticed: sunny-side-up. Tony broke one yoke with the corner of a piece of toast, and then he soaked the toast in it, just as Jack would have done if able.

“All the free pie you can eat?” Jack asked. “You get paid besides?”

“Sure,” Tony said, chewing. “But it’s not the one in Hornbeck. It’s over in Millville.”

Again Jack was astounded.
“Millville?
For God’s sake, you’re a wanted man over there!”

Tony winced while swallowing, and then he snorted. “You know, I forgot all about that? You think that cop’ll recognize me again?”

The secret of the man of action apparently lay in not being conscious of very much. Though certainly a dreamer, Jack himself was always thinking of consequences when it came to practical affairs. He wouldn’t have punched a cop even if he were physically able to, because before doing it he would be restrained by the thought of retribution. Could Tony be called courageous or stupid, or were they the same thing?

The hum of his mother’s voice had stopped coming from the next room, and she had hung up the telephone but did not immediately return to the kitchen. It suddenly occurred to Jack that before she got back he might quietly dispose of the remaining food on his plate by some other means than eating it, but the idea came too late. He got no farther than pushing back his chair.

Their mother was in the doorway. She had a special look, not necessarily sad, not even shocked; it was serious, of course, but then, except when he was clowning around, she was usually serious, like most other adults. But this was a look of another dimension.

Tony had been wolfing down his breakfast, most of which was already gone, but it was he who first responded to their mother’s strange appearance in the doorway. Jack remembered that later, and once again he revised his innermost opinion of his brother, who was certainly not an insensitive person. Perhaps each of us has only a limited amount of feeling, and Tony reserved his supply for that which mattered most.

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

“It’s your father,” she said. “Last night he took a turn for the worst.”

Tony dropped his fork and went to her. “Better come and sit down,” said he. He led her through the dining room into the living room, Jack coming along behind.

It was unprecedented that anyone would use the front room at this time of day. Tony saw their mother to the couch. She sat down, but reluctantly.

“I have to—”

“Not for a minute or two,” Tony said. “You just sit there.”

Jack was scared, but he managed to say, “Well, if he can get worse, he can get better too, you know, Ma.”