Keep the Change (8 page)

Joe knocked. In a moment the door opened and there stood his Aunt Lureen in a blue flowered dress and white coat sweater. She held her face, compressed her cheeks, and cried, “He’s back!” A cloud crossed her face. The sight of Joe seemed to produce a hundred contradictory thoughts.

“Yes,” Joe said. “I’m back, all right!” For some reason, he whistled. A maladroit quality of enthusiasm seemed to penetrate the air and the sharp whistling brought it up to pitch.

Joe hugged Lureen—she was small and strong—and followed her self-effacing step into the house with its wooden smells, its smells of generations of work clothes and vagaries of weather, of sporting uniforms and overcoats, straight into the vast kitchen which more than anything recalled the thriving days when they had watched game shows from behind TV trays. Joe’s oldest memory was of his Uncle Smitty standing up in his army uniform and announcing, “I for one am proud to be an American.” Joe had a photograph of Smitty from his army days, a hard young face that seemed to belong to the ’40s, the collar of his officer’s tunic sunk into his neck, Joe’s grandparents beaming at him. There was nothing in that picture to hint that little would go right for Smitty.

Aunt Lureen carried the tea tray into the dining room. You could see the drop of the street to the trestle for a train that used to cancel talk in its roaring traverse. She had never married, never even had a beau. She had radiated duty from the beginning, a duty which lay basically elsewhere, a broad, sexless commitment to vagary, that is, to others.

“Weren’t you an angel to come see us,” said Lureen, staring with admiration. Joe poured the tea, thinking, That’s just a pleasant formality and of course there is no need for me to reply specifically. Around them the halls and rooms seemed to express a detailed emptiness. “What have you been doing, Joe?” The words of these questions fell like stones dropped into a deep well. Joe thought if he could just get some conversational rhythm going, this wouldn’t be such a strain. He had long since lost his nerve to ask about the lease.

“I’ve been on the road. That’s about all I’ve got to say for myself.”

“Doing what?”

“Little deal going there with the space program.” What a childish lie! The space program was all he could think of about Florida. That and coconuts. If he had been doing anything there, he wouldn’t be here. He had struck a void but he could scarcely tell her he no longer knew what he was doing.

“How did you enjoy working in the space program?”

“Well, I got out in one piece,” said Joe. He thought this peculiar reference to himself in an atmosphere which included the explosion of a space shuttle would add solemnity to this occasion. In the world of coconuts, there would be no real parallel. But Lureen missed the gravity of his remark. She bent over in laughter. It was as if he had picked coconuts after all. How painful it was!

Everything was magnified. Lureen’s chaste little paintings were on the wall. It had been her escape during decades of school teaching; the bouquets, the curled-up kittens, the worn-out slippers next to the pipe and pouch, the waterfall, all made a kind of calendar of her days. Her pictures reflected her tidy view of a family life she hadn’t had.

Smitty could be heard coming in through the kitchen, a lurching, arhythmic tread on the old wooden floor, whistling “Peg o’ My Heart.” Then he roared; but this was from afar, a great and bitterly insincere braying. His appearance was anticlimactic, his carefully combed auburn hair, his ironic face, his handsomely tailored but not so clean blue suit, making one wonder as he appeared in the parlor, who
did
roar in the next room, surely not this person whose face swam with indecision. Smitty had spent many years now in what he called “study” and his shabby-genteel presence was entirely invented.
What had become of the hard-faced soldier of the ’40s?

“Joe, my God it’s you.”

“Home at last.”

“A good tan, I see.”

“Pretty hot.”

“Your late lamented father could have used a trip or two to the Sun Belt. He might have lived longer.”

Joe didn’t say anything in reply.

“But when you’ve pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, palm trees seem to be thin stuff. Will you join me for a drink?”

“Not right now. Lureen and I are having a visit.”

“Ah,” said Smitty. “Then this must be my stop.”

Smitty suggested by sheer choreography that an appointment awaited him. When he’d gone, Joe said, “Smitty hasn’t changed.”

“No, we can count on Smitty.”

“Has he gone out for a drink?”

“It won’t amount to much. No money.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Joe, making the remark as minimal as possible. A quick look of annoyance crossed Lureen’s face. There was something here Joe couldn’t quite follow. He felt like a parasite. He might as well have said, “Smitty is drinking the lease.”

Lureen said, “We’ve done the best we could.”

Smitty stuck his red face in the doorway. “Joe, may I see you a moment?” The face hung there until it was confirmed Joe would come.

Joe got up and followed him into the parlor. There was a small desk with a leather panel in its top and a chair behind it. Smitty pulled an armchair up for Joe and seated himself opposite, at the desk. He was agitated as he drew some old
forms out of the drawer and placed them on the desk top. Joe could hear children bouncing a rubber ball off the side of the house. Lureen would attend to them shortly. She viewed children as other people view horseflies. Her gentleness disappeared in their presence. They feared her instinctively. Joe heard the shout and the ball bouncing stopped.

“Joe,” Smitty said, “I’m right in the middle of a deal that will produce my fortune. We make our own luck, don’t you agree? It’s funny that after years in the insurance business I should have come up with this! But to my own astonishment I find myself getting into seafood, which is all the rage in this diet-conscious time, shrimp to be exact, Gulf Coast shrimp which I am going to import into Montana! Et cetera, et cetera, but anyway, do you have life insurance?” Smitty clasped his hands on top of the papers in the manner of a concerned benefactor. “I know it’s a far cry from shrimp!”

“No.”

“Can you appreciate that I am an agent for American Mutual? That is, until that mountain of crustaceans begins rolling North!”

“No, actually, Uncle Smitty, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, I am. And while I disapprove of nepotism, the smoke-filled room and scratching one another’s backs, I am in a position to enhance the advantages you already possess by virtue of your youth.” He began to write on one of the forms. “I think I can spell your name,” he chuckled. “Don’t worry, lad! You’re not buying life insurance! And I can find out from Lureen what you’re using for an address these days!” Joe began to relax again. “This is just a request to quote you some rates, which will be mailed to your home, sometime … hence.” He folded up the papers decisively and placed them back in the drawer.

“Thank you,” said Joe in a wave of relief.

“You, sir, are welcome.”

“I look forward to going over those rates.”

“At your leisure, at your leisure. I’m certainly in no rush, what with an avalanche of pink headed my way from the Texas coast!”

Joe clapped his hands on his knees preparatory to rising.

“Shall we?”

“One small matter,” Smitty said. Joe froze. “The rather small matter, of the filing fee.”

Joe slapped at his pants pockets. “I’m not sure I—”

“Have your wallet? I can help there. You do have it. And the filing fee, which is nominal by any civilized standards and which does not begin to recompense me for the time I will have to put in, comes to twenty dollars.”

Joe got his wallet out. He peered at the bills like a timid card player.

“There’s one!” said Smitty, plucking a twenty into midair. He was immediately on his feet, an expression not of triumph but of horrible relief on his face. “With any luck, and assuming you pass the physical, you will be able to direct a windfall to an heir of your choice. In your generation, where the act of procreation has been reduced to a carnival, you might have your hands full picking a favorite! And now I excuse myself.” He shot out the door.

When Joe returned to his aunt, she said, “Did you give him any money?”

“I’m afraid I did.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m sure he needed it for something important.”

It was a formality with Lureen, when short of other topics or in any way embarrassed, to deplore Montana’s failing industries.
She started in today on the collapse of the cattle industry, the ill effects of the Texas and Midwestern feedlots, the evils of hedging and the betrayal of the agricultural family unit by Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz. She attacked the usurious practices of the Burlington Northern Railroad, the victimization of the Golden Triangle wheat man and the sabotage of the unions by neo-fascist strawmen posing as shop stewards. It took her out of herself, out of her meekness; and it made Joe extraordinarily uncomfortable to watch her form a timid oratory behind this array of facts. When she was through, she folded her hands like a child who has just finished playing a piece on the piano.

Joe tried to look out the window, anywhere.

“Joe, right after you got back, Mr. Overstreet announced that he was dropping his lease with us,” Lureen said.

“I wondered where it went. My check hasn’t come in a long time.”

“Even before that, we, Smitty and I, had got into some, uh, some projects. Which we expect will do just fine. I don’t know what came over Mr. Overstreet. We’ve had that arrangement for
so
long.”

“Well, who else can you get?”

“I really don’t know. Overstreets have us surrounded. I really don’t know who else would want it. It’s kind of unhandy. And the grass is good this year. I’d even buy the yearlings if someone would run them for me.” Joe was paralyzed by sudden excitement.

“You mean, you’d need someone to just run the place for a while?” Joe asked.

“Now that Overstreets have let it go, I really don’t know anyone out there I could ask. Do you have any ideas?”

“I’ll do it!” Joe said. “Let me do that.”

“Would you really?”

Smitty banged through the kitchen and entered the room once again but with an air of tremendous renewal. Joe was frustrated. Smitty had donned what seemed to Joe to be a fairly astounding outfit: two-tone leather evening slippers and a jacket of English cut, a kind of round-shouldered smoking jacket in pearl gray wool, tied with a royal red sash. He had a drink in his hand and a large book, which he reached over to Joe. He sat down in a Windsor chair next to Lureen, lacing his fingers around the drink and resting his chin on his chest while his eyes burned in Joe’s direction. In this cheap house, in a modest town, he had achieved a tone of specious artifice usually available only to the very successful. Joe felt the excitement, the need to be wary.

“This is a book,” Smitty intoned, then seemed to lose his train of thought. “This, sir, is a book,” he began again.

“I see that it is,” Joe said.

Smitty delivered a weary sigh, Lord Smitty peering from a dizzying aerie.

“It is Roget’s”—what satisfaction it seemed to give him to intone the two voluptuous vowels of “Roget’s”!—“
Thesaurus
.” This last was said with such abrupt concussion it was like a sneeze. “And it is a gift from me … to you.”

“Thank you,” said Joe.

“Here is how Roget’s Thesaurus is to be employed. First look up the key words you wish to use. They will all be big ones. But this book will tell you the
little plain words
that
little plain people
like your aunt and I know and in this way you will be able to make yourself understood to us. Neither of us is in the space program.”

“I expect it will come in very handy,” said Joe. He reached out and accepted the book from Smitty’s hands. Smitty gazed
at him with what looked like all the world to be hatred, then made another of his formal departures, raising a forefinger to level one of Lureen’s watercolors.

“I wonder what brought that on,” said Joe. A sharp tinkling sound was heard repeatedly from the direction of the kitchen, almost the sound of Christmas decorations falling from the tree. Joe looked at his aunt; she looked back. They headed for the kitchen. There they found Smitty with a tray poised over one shoulder like a waiter. It held a quantity of crystal stemware that had belonged to Joe’s mother. With his free hand Smitty took up each glass by its base and hurled it to the floor, where it burst. His auburn hair was flung out in every direction and it reminded Joe of some old picture of the devil.

With a pixieish expression, Smitty’s gaze moved from Joe to Lureen and then back. He held a glass by its stem. He paused. He turned his eyes to the glass. In slow motion, the glass inverted and began its descent to the floor. Joe watched. It seemed to take a very long time and then it became a silver star to the memory of Joe’s mother. It disappeared in the debris of its predecessors. Smitty sent the remainder of the glasses to the floor with a motion like a shot-putter, even tipping up on one slippered toe. Then he relaxed. Nothing had happened really, had it? All for the best, somehow. Still, thought Joe, it makes for a rather long evening.

“Why don’t I show you your room,” said Lureen, “and we can get caught up on our rest.” Because it had become ridiculous to let this pass without remark, she lowered her voice to say that “everyone,” meaning Smitty, had problems which Joe couldn’t be expected to understand because he hadn’t been around. Smitty stood right there and listened blithely.

“Taking this all in?” Joe asked Smitty quietly.

“Mm-hm.”

“You know,” Lureen mused desperately, “Duffy’s Fourth of July at Flathead Lake was a hundred years ago.” Joe had no idea what to do with that one other than take it as an obscure family reference intended to restore the intimacy she had withdrawn. Duffy’s Fourth of July at Flathead Lake. What was that?

“Joe doesn’t know what you’re talking about,” sang Smitty. Then he turned to Joe. “You are among friends,” he said gravely. “Think of it: your own flesh and blood.” He leaned his weight in the pockets of his robe like an old trainer watching his racehorses at daybreak. All his gestures seemed similarly detached from his surroundings. Smitty walked up to the barometer and gave the glass a tap. This seemed to give him his next idea. “I think I’ll head for my quarters now,” he said. “The artillery has begun to subside. Another day tomorrow. One more colorful than the other.”