Bingo (31 page)

“But she would have had a better chance.” Jack’s voice rose.

“Yes, goddammit, yes! What do you want me to do about it? These things don’t seem very important until they hurt someone you care about. I never thought about it. Hell, Jack, when I grew up there were no women in business around here except for Celeste and she was a law unto herself. I’m sorry as hell about this.”

Foster, not a man to speak from the heart, was exhausted by
his efforts. He seized the handkerchief in his breast pocket and mopped his brow.

“Foster, I thank you for going to bat for me.”

“Don’t be so accommodating and nice,” Jack snarled at me.” There’s a community reinvestment act and the
Clarion
fits the bill. The banks, taking the money out of the community, are required by law to put a certain amount back, to stimulate the local economy. I’ll find an angle because the
Clarion
belongs to you!”

Foster’s voice was heavy. “You can slice it any way you want to, Jack. Chesapeake and Potomac isn’t going to give her the cash. They don’t care what goes on in Runnymede. They’ll do the minimum to comply with the reinvestment act.”

“That’s what we’re fighting,” I said. “That’s why we don’t want the Thurston Group or Mid-Atlantic Holding Shares to get the
Clarion
, because once the paper slips out of the control of the community it no longer serves the community as effectively.”

“I understand,” Foster said.

“You sure do, because if you really ran Runnymede Bank and Trust, the
Clarion
would be Nickel’s. We’re being devoured by corporate giants who don’t see our faces, hear our voices, or pass us in the streets. People have got to fight back.” Jack stood up.

“I don’t know what to do.” Foster wiped his forehead again.

“Jack, come on.” I tugged at Jack’s arm. “Foster, no hard feelings on my part.”

As we dragged ourselves across the Square I dreaded telling the gang. Right now my life was a potato chip in the maw of big corporations. Yesterday I’d gotten a call from my local insurance company, Richards, Hilton, and Richards, telling me they’d referred my Jeep claim to the wrong company, Maryland Accident Protection. The claim belonged to the giant firm of First Eagle Insurance. The Eagle lady called and grilled me. Christ, you would have thought I’d had the Jeep stolen on purpose. She hinted darkly that I shouldn’t have authorized any repairs, but of course I
was doing what the Maryland Accident Protection claim adjuster told me to do. In the meantime, Eagle had two decades of insurance payments from me and not one claim until now. What was the difference if it was Eagle or Chesapeake and Potomac? They were out to screw me. To them we existed as walking pocket-books to be emptied. I felt very hateful at that moment.

Jackson left me at the
Clarion
steps. He was as downcast as I was.

“Nickel, don’t give up. There’s got to be a way.”

“I don’t know, honey. Let me digest this first and then if we have room for a legal fight, I’ll think about it. I figure the minute you commit a problem to the judicial system you just tripled it.”

“I can’t fault you there.” He kissed me on the cheek, a social kiss but it burned my cheek.

I walked straight into Charles’s office and told him everything. I said if he was going to sell, he might as well give it to Diz Rife because better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, not that Diz himself was a devil. As I left he picked up the phone. Can’t blame Charles. He has to look out for himself.

As I walked to my desk Lolly whimpered. She could read my mood like a weathercaster.

“The worst?” Michelle asked.

I nodded.

John rose. “This is as good a time as any. I’m quitting. I took a job with
National Geographic
. Guess I’ll tell Charles.” He squared off in front of me. “Nick, I give you credit for trying. Maybe it’s time for you to move on too.” He lightly rapped on the door to Charles’s office and went in.

Roger broke a pencil.

“Hey, it’s not a funeral. Charles will fight for your jobs.”

“We wanted you to have it,” Michelle said.

Within minutes the news spread through the plant. Arnie and Hans came out to verify the story. Arnie, speechless, walked back to the printing press. I followed him. When I reached the big
press, quiet because we’d run off the paper for the day, Arnie had his hands smacked against the feed. He was crying.

I tiptoed over to him and put my arm around him. “They say all good things must come to an end.”

He sobbed. “They’ll junk my baby. They’ll fire us.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. I patted the sleeping machine. I loved her too. “I reckon they will.”

“You’ll be okay,” he said.

“You go, I go. A bunch of goddamned computers and a pay raise aren’t enough for me. This is the paper. We’re the paper.”

He wiped his eyes and I wiped mine. I noticed that Hans was misty-eyed, too, and the other guys in the back stood dumbfounded with misery.

“Hey, let’s go smoke Isaac’s cigar.” Why I thought of this I still don’t know.

We trooped back into the editorial room. I opened my drawer, grabbed the little penknife my dad had given me when I was in sixth grade. I cut off the end of the cigar and lit her up. We passed it around like a peace pipe. Even Michelle took a puff.

Then Arnie produced a full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. I don’t drink but I took a pull. We cried and drank and smoked and sang and one by one we crept away. John outdrank everyone. Two drinks and I was a basket case. Roger hiccupped. Michelle drank Hans under the table, to everyone’s surprise. Even Charles got snookered.

I stumbled over to bingo that night. If Lolly and Pewter hadn’t been with me I’m not sure I would have found my way to Saint Rose’s. I bought a card, sat down next to Mr. Pierre, who sniffed the air suspiciously, and Mother tells me that my head hit the card. Somebody got me home. I don’t remember a thing although Mother said that even Peepbean was sympathetic when I moaned before I passed out that the loan was denied. Imagine that, Peepbean being sympathetic.

M
y mouth felt like cotton, my head throbbed, and an intruder was in my kitchen. I hauled myself out of bed, disturbing Pewter, who slept on the pillow next to me. It was eight in the morning, late for me. I stood at the top of the stairs straining my ears. There definitely was someone in my kitchen. I couldn’t understand why Lolly hadn’t barked.

Click, click, click, her claws tapped on the floor downstairs. A second set of clicks ballooned in my ears. If I called my dog, the thief would know I was awake. I didn’t know what to do so I hastened to the bathroom and threw up. Why did people drink if this was the result? After the purge I felt somewhat restored, although my headache continued unabated but at least it didn’t feel like a migraine. This was a new-model headache.

I tiptoed back to the top of the stairs and slowly, one careful step at a time, crept down. Suddenly Lolly Mabel skidded around the corner. Chows smile a lot and Lolly’s wrinkled red face registered pure joy at seeing me and at being chased, because right on her tail was Goodyear. I relaxed and sat on the stairs. Lolly licked me. Goodyear kissed me too.

Mother was bending over the big butcher block in the center of the kitchen. “You look like the dogs got at you under the porch.”

I moaned. “You’re all heart.”

“And a lot of liver too. Here, drink this.”

She handed me a foul concoction. “What’s in here?”

“Trust your old mother. It’s the cure for your ills.”

I gulped it down. My throat caught fire. My eyes watered. My hand shook and Mother snatched the glass from my fingers before I could drop it. She then pried open my mouth once I stopped shaking and poured down black coffee. My body was too assaulted to even puke again. In about five minutes I decided I would live. Pewter, on the butcher block, purred at me.

“Well?” Mother demanded.

“Very effective.”

“Sit down. I’m going to feed you.”

“No. I couldn’t possibly.”

“Your blood sugar is in your toes. You need to eat. By noon you’ll feel like yourself again.” She pulled out my cast-iron skillet.

A small nook with a bay window overlooked the meadows to the west. That’s where I ate my breakfasts and my dinners if I was home for dinner. The big dining room had Grandma’s formal dining table but I bet I used that room less than five times a year. I lived in the kitchen, but then I think everyone does. I rested my head on my hand and gazed out on the meadows. My pink and white azaleas blossomed at the edge of the yard, and in the woods at the edge of the meadow I could see the pink and white dogwoods at the peak of blooming. The whole world was pink and white. Even my tongue was pink and white.

Lolly and Goodyear tore back into the kitchen. This time Lolly was chasing Goodyear.

“All right, kids,” Mother warned them, “slow it down or no treaties.”

The dogs recognized the word
treaties
and the angelic expressions that came over those furry faces made me laugh and then my head hurt again.

“Oh.” I put my head in my hands.

“Try not to think about it and take these.” She tossed two B.C. powders at me.

B.C. powders, manufactured in Memphis, are a remedy known to Southerners. B.C. cures a headache, arthritis, neuralgia,
rheumatism, maybe even bad temper. This wonder drug has but one drawback. It tastes violently awful. You can swallow it in pill form like an aspirin but that’s for weak-asses. If you want the substance to slam into your bloodstream at full speed you take the little packet of powder, knock it back in your throat, then drink whatever is at hand as fast as you can.

I fetched myself a Coke, steadied my feet, threw back two packets of B.C. powder, and chugged the co-cola.

I sat down with a thump. “I’ve got so much liquid in me my stomach will rise and fall with the tide.”

“Don’t worry, the coffee and Coke will go through you in no time.”

She fried up some eggs, the butter sizzling in the pan, as she looked out the big kitchen window.

“Oh, no.”

“What?” I need not have asked because I heard the screech outside.

The dogs barked.

“That’s enough,” Mother said.

Goodyear stopped but Lolly didn’t.

“Lolly, I can’t bear it.” Lolly turned to study my expression. She decided to growl instead.

With a voice that would waken the dead, Aunt Wheezie stuck her head in the back door: “Yoo-hoo.”

“We’re in the kitchen,” Mother replied.

Louise stomped through the mud room, which was right off the kitchen. She cheerfully burst upon us, prepared to improve my lot despotically. A bag of groceries nestled in her arm.

“Gonna fix you up.” She placed the groceries on the butcher block.

Pewter stuck her head in the bag which prompted Aunt Wheezie to unpack it quickly and toss the bag on the floor. Pewter jumped off the butcher block—the thud was deafening—and shot into the bag. Her rattling around in there sounded like defective machine-gun fire.

“Pewter, let Mommie bribe you with some catnip.”

“Sit down. I’ll do it.” Mother fetched some catnip, fresh, out of the pantry where it was sequestered in a shiny Italian cracker tin.

Pewter vacated her bag and pounced on the catnip. Her eyes rolled in her head. She abandoned herself to pleasure.

“Better living through chemistry.” I laughed. “Kitty drugs.”

“Here.” Mother set a plate before me.

She set one down for herself and Aunt Wheezie, too, and we ate a calm breakfast. Wheezie didn’t let me clear the table. She did it. Mother washed. Wheezie dried and I began to feel much better.

“Eagle Insurance trying to screw you?” Mother asked.

“Yeah. Another job for Jackson.”

“You pay these people thousands of dollars over the years, you need them once, and they do everything they can to evade their responsibility.” Louise snapped the dish towel.

“And we have to put up with it because one company is about as bad as another,” Mother added.

“You can’t even buy the car you want anymore. What’s the difference if it’s insurance or cars or bowel cleaners like Comet,” Louise said.

“Bowl cleaners,” I corrected her.

“No, I mean bowel.” Her voice rose.

“Fleet, then, not Comet.” I smiled.

“Wonder what Comet would do up there?” Mother splashed around in the water. “Bet you’d have the cleanest intestines known to man.”

“Remember Packards?” Louise got a dreamy expression. “Now there was a car. They don’t build ’em like that anymore.”

“
They
don’t even build ’em. Robots do it,” I said.

“Rolls-Royces and Bentleys are still made by people, people who aren’t afraid to have their names on the car. I read that.” Mother pulled the plug and the water spiraled down into the drain.

If we lived in New Zealand it would spiral in the opposite direction. If I ever visit New Zealand or Australia I’ll probably spend too much time staring into drains and toilets. The natives will fear I have a nasty fixation on fluids.

“I’d like to own a great car and keep it for the rest of my life.” I gazed out at the beautiful dogwoods again.