The Good Old Stuff (15 page)

I folded it up and placed it in the envelope. I walked over and threw it into her lap. “I don’t believe it, Dorothy.”

She shrugged. “Why would the man write it, then?”

“He’s wrong. He’s got to be wrong. Dan wasn’t that type. Sure, he’s taken on a load at times, but he never mixed pleasure with business, civilian or military. He was a very sober guy about his work. That was a stupid trick. He couldn’t do it.”

“I thought the way you did. So did his father. And then we got the other letters.”

“More!”

“Not like that. Dan’s father called the right people in Washington, and somehow he got hold of a list of names and addresses of the crew of the boat. He wrote to them all. Asked them all to come clean with him.”

“What happened?”

“They were worse. A couple didn’t answer. A few didn’t want to talk about it. The rest said that Dan came onto the boat drunk at ten o’clock at night with a woman and a man, both civilians. They said that the next ranking officer tried to argue with Dan, but Dan wouldn’t listen. He insisted that they go on a ‘moonlight cruise.’ They went, and he was drowned. Now what can I believe?”

I sat and thought it over. It didn’t sound like Dan, but then again, you can’t tell. Sometimes the soberest people pull the damnedest stunts.…

I smacked my fist into my left palm and said, “They’re wrong, Dorothy. I know they’re wrong. Dan couldn’t do it. There’s a mistake someplace. I’m going to find it.”

I didn’t feel quite as confident as I sounded. But the look in her eyes was worth it. She held her head high, and for a fraction of a second she was the girl I had known before. Her eyes were bright.

Then that slack mask seemed to slide down over her face. She smiled at me with immense politeness. “That’s very nice of you, Howard. I’m certain Dan would have appreciated it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some housework to do.”

She walked me to the door. I stood uncertainly, one foot still in the hall and one down on the brick porch. She put her hand on my arm and looked at me. “I know it’s hopeless, Howard, but I want you to try. For your sake. If you don’t you’ll always wish you had. But don’t let it get you. Please. It isn’t that I’ve lost faith in Dan. That isn’t it. Anybody can
make a mistake. I think he did. I just hate the whole stigma of the thing. How will Billy like reading that letter when he grows up? What kind of a background does it give the boy? You see how it is? I hate it all.” She turned and leaned her face against the doorframe.

I didn’t have the guts to say a word. I half ran out to the car and drove down the street. The soft rain hissed against the windshield. I seemed to see Dan’s bulky, soaked body on a white sandy beach. The waves seemed to nudge and nibble at it as they rolled up against his shoulder.…

Mr. and Mrs. Christoff sat across from me in the booth in the hotel coffee shop in Cleveland. They both looked much older and more frail than I had remembered. Mrs. Christoff’s eyes had a shadow of the same expression that Dorothy’s had worn. But they had another boy. Mr. Christoff sucked noisily at his coffee and then clattered the cup down into the thick saucer.

“Damn it, Howard, what’ll you get out of it? Why don’t we forget it? Let’s not tear the top of a cut that’s beginning to scab over.”

“I don’t want to be stubborn. I told you before, Mr. Christoff. I don’t believe it.”

He turned to his wife and spread his hands with a mock helpless gesture. “Eight or nine letters we got, saying that Danny got drunk and took out a boat he wasn’t supposed to. Eight or nine letters we got, and this fella doesn’t believe any of them.”

She stuck her small chin out and tilted her head up at his. “Now you leave him alone, Carl Christoff. He’s trying to help. Sometimes in the night I wake up and wonder if all those letters are wrong. Maybe he was drugged. You can’t tell. Give him that list of names and addresses. Let him try. He can’t hurt anything.” She turned to me and her voice softened. “What do you plan to do?”

“Go see all those fellows. Get a firsthand account. Then see if there’s anything in any of the stories that doesn’t add up. There’ll be something out of line.”

They sat and stared across the table at me, two seamed faces in which hope struggled with the habit of despair … and lost.

“There was a piece in the paper about it, you know,” she said. “The Cleveland paper. People know about it. They still tell us they’re sorry. And it was a year ago. They like to tell us they’re sorry.” She looked down into her coffee.

“I like you, Howard,” the man said. “Always have. I’m glad to know you’re loyal to Dan. But I don’t want you wearing yourself out on this thing. You’ve had a bad time.” He reached in his inside pocket and pulled out a list of names and addresses. It was a new typed list, clean and crisp. He slid it across the black marble top of the table. “Here’s the names. Take some time before you do anything. Think it over. Maybe it’d be better for you to keep that little germ of doubt … maybe it’d be worse to find out that Dan made that kind of mistake. Think it over.”

I didn’t look at the list. I slipped it into my own pocket.

Mrs. Christoff turned to her husband. “Maybe you ought to give him the letters the boys wrote to you.”

“Can’t, Mary. Tore ’em up. Didn’t want ’em around.” He looked down at his thick, twisted hands. Then he looked up with a quick smile. “No need to make this a wake, Howard. Tell us about yourself.”

We sat for an hour while I talked gently of the high wild mountains, the stinging cold of the Himalayas. It was the first time I spoke of it to anyone. I skipped the parts they wouldn’t want to hear. As I spoke, I remembered a part I had forgotten. A small dark room with the shifting light of a fire. Two stocky men pawing at my hand and speaking in low tones to each other. A heavy block of wood and the flash of a knife. No pain as the rotted fingers were pared away. Then a bright needle of pain and the smell of burnt flesh as something that glowed red in the dusky light was touched against my hand.

I was conscious of a great stillness, and the booth and the two pale faces across from me faded off into a blackness. I was lost on a high plateau, and there was no way to turn to get my face out of the burning wind, the flakes of driving ice. I stood silently for a time, and then I heard a muttering. The two faces came out of the gloom at me, slowly growing until
I was again in the booth and the old man, his eyes wide and frightened, was fumbling with my rigid right hand, the hand that had closed down over the heavy tumbler of water, splintering the glass, the dark blood flowing out onto the black tabletop.

I was okay. We found a drugstore and the clerk bandaged the long slit in the palm of my hand. But they weren’t at ease with me after that. I took them back to their apartment and left them at the door. I promised to tell them what I discovered, no matter how damning to Dan it might be.

I walked back out to the car and drove slowly through the broad streets of night. Red neon screamed at me:
Mick’s Bar and Grill
. I stopped between two cars and went in. I sat at the bar and ordered brandy and water. I pulled the list out and looked at it. Rochester, Boston, Waterbury, Scranton, Harrisburg, Brooklyn, Jersey City, San Francisco, Seattle. Most of them in the East. Made it easier.

The bar was noisy. I sat and drank quietly, brushing off two drunks that tried to make conversation. As I sat there, the point of following it up seemed to fade away. Everybody makes a mistake sometime. Who was Dan to be different? Surely his family would have more faith in him than a friend. Blood is thick. They had been convinced. They were trying to forget, trying to readjust. I would be stirring up all the old pain. He was dead. Let it lie. Drop it. I ordered another brandy. I took the list out again. In a few motions I could tear it to ribbons and drop it into the spittoon underneath the red leather stool. I shoved it back into my pocket.

I drove back to Bennetville and checked out. The room clerk smiled in a superior fashion and said, “I’m very sorry, Mr. Garry, but we can’t refund the nine days’ rent you’ve paid. It’s impossible.”

I stood with both hands on the desk and looked at him. I stared at his small pale eyes, his gay necktie, his white hands. Slowly the smile faded.

“Surely you understand our position?”

Again I didn’t answer. I continued to stare. Then he smiled again, but I noticed he moved back a little way, to where he was certain I couldn’t reach him.

“I believe, Mr. Garry, that in this situation maybe we can make an adjustment. Maybe a return of one week’s rent.”

I nodded.

It bothered me. I wondered what there was in merely staring at him that had made him back down. I went into the men’s room and looked into the mirror. I really saw myself for the first time. I hadn’t wanted a refund particularly. I knew that I would be cheated. In the mirror I saw a long gaunt face with a scar that glowered in a reddish line across my cheek. My eyes looked sunken back into my head. They were dark and shadowed and much too bright. There were deep lines from my nostrils to the corners of my mouth. It was the face of a violent man. I stared at myself and understood. My face, in repose, carried the look of a man in whom slow anger is bubbling up, ready to break out in physical violence. I didn’t like it. It bothered me.

I drove to Chicago. I made an appointment with Saggerty. He sat behind his desk and studied me for long minutes. I remembered that he used to make me uncomfortable. I realized that it was a technique with him. I stared back at his wispy figure, his mop of iron-gray hair, thinking that it was a technique with him, a means of feeding his own self-esteem. I grinned inside when I saw it was working in reverse. I was making him uneasy. He picked up a pencil and tapped his nose with the eraser end.

“So you want to come back to work, Garry. You look fit, but pretty thin.”

“You looking for an engineer or a guy with a shovel?”

“Don’t be huffy, son. We want you back. We’ve got a million highway jobs, all hot. I was just remembering how you and Christoff used to work together.”

I didn’t answer.

“Strange thing about Christoff. I heard about it. Always seemed like a solid boy. Guess he came a little unwrapped.”

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

“You can report in the morning. I’ll have Boon pick the job for you. See him. How about pay?”

“How about it? I’m three years older, nearer four. I’m that much smarter. I’ll take what I had before, plus fifteen hundred.”

“Too much.”

I picked my hat off the corner of his desk and stood up. He stared up at me and I held his eye. I turned and walked toward the door. He didn’t break until I had it open. He coughed.

“Okay, Garry. Your price. Tomorrow morning.” I nodded and left.

Boon gave me an average one. Forty miles of two-lane concrete potholes to convert to four-lane divided blacktop. Grade elimination. Curve elimination. A big shortage of equipment and some very porky labor—guys who wanted the water brought in a sterling bucket and wanted a half hour to drink it. We had to clip off as much as we could before the blizzards shut us down. Then the rest of it could be handled in the spring.

For a couple of weeks I felt good. I spent every minute on the job and slept like sudden death. Then Dan came between me and the work. Something would come up, and I’d stand and look off toward the blue hills. How would Dan handle this? I’d see his blunt face and slow grin. Hear him say, “What makes Garry run? Slow down, kid. Relax. You got a chunk of hill over there you can use for fill. Save fifteen minutes on each truck.” Then maybe I’d stomp on his foot and we’d roll over and over in the dust, growling at each other, while the men stood around and grinned at each other, delighted with the damn fool engineers.

That’s the way it was. It happened oftener and oftener. I’d stand in the chill mornings and expect him to walk around the side of one of the cats. It wasn’t that I needed the guy so badly. The job was going okay. It seemed almost as though he hadn’t been buried, as though he couldn’t rest. I owed him something, and I knew it. I knew what he would have done for me.

I went back to Chicago and talked to Boon. Then I went in and saw Saggerty. He started to get tough with me.

I held up my hand and stopped him. “Now look. I like the outfit. I like to work for you. Don’t get me wrong. Let’s not do a lot of fencing and trying to break each other down. I’ve got something I have to do. It’s a favor for a friend. An obligation. I’ve tried to ignore it, but I can’t. If it keeps on, I won’t be any good to you. Let me go handle it. Give me a leave of absence. I’ll be back. I’ve talked to Boon. The job’s
under control. He’s got a new guy named Brent that he can assign to it. I’ll help Brent for a few days and then shove off.”

For a while his face was as sour as spoiled milk. Then he grinned and stuck out his hand. I was surprised. But when I thought it over, I realized that he’d have to have a few qualities like that to get where he was. You can’t be petty all the way through and expect to hold anything but a petty job.

I got Brent established and gave him some advice about finishing it off. Then I went back to town. I packed my stuff and loaded it in the car. I sat and pulled the list out of my pocket. With a pencil, I marked the sequence.

The repair manager
said, “Dosani? Yeah. You can talk to him. He’s over in the far right corner of the shop.”

I walked over. Dosani had a starter motor in the vise. He had just clipped one battery cable onto it. He started to hold the other against the housing. He saw me and waved me back with his hand. I stepped back. He was a tall slim boy with swarthy skin and black shining hair that fell down across his forehead. He held the other battery cable against the housing and the motor spun, throwing the fresh oil back in a fine mist. He unhooked the battery and then spun the heavy handle of the vise. He whistled. He laid the motor carefully on the bench and then turned to me.

“Which car is yours?”

“None of them. I want to talk about something else. The manager told me I could come back here and bother you.”

“Look, mister. I’m not paying that bill until the damn radio works. Understand?”