Nothing but a Smile (36 page)

Despite all this talk of paring it down, she had to admit to herself she maybe wasn't as carefree about walking away as she'd been putting on with Wink.

It was difficult to stomach the notion of getting chased off a place she'd worked so hard to hang on to—originally hanging on to the shop for the sake of her parents and Chesty, then for this new growing family she'd found herself in. Heck, she'd taken off her clothes in order to hang on to that place!

Well, not entirely. That wasn't completely fair. Honestly, there'd been other factors in doing the girlies, she knew. She couldn't have enjoyed doing it quite so much if it had merely been a matter of paying the bills and taxes.

She thought of what Reenie liked to say about life being what actually happened—she'd been saying that a lot since she eloped with Keeney

And this was not exactly the same as being
chased off
—not if it meant taking hold of their life and planning a new path for themselves. It felt okay when she thought of it that way.

The baby kicked again.

“All right, already!” she said, patting her belly, then pushing up out of the glider. “I'm doing it, baby. Keep your pants on—or dress, as the case may be.”

Out on the porch steps, she raised her hand high, hoping to wave him in. Hopefully he was at a good stopping point to
take a break and drive her into St. Johns to the pay phone. She didn't want to use the one in the house and risk having Len overhear her conversation with Mort Doerbom.

It was as awkward asking for his help as she thought it would be, though he acted very civil, as genteel as ever, even asking after her health. She admitted she was expecting, and he said, “Yes, that's wonderful. That's why I asked, actually. I uh, happened past the shop a little while ago and happened to glance in and I
thought
so … Well, congratulations. To both of you. That's very exciting.”

He didn't sound excited, but it wasn't really the purpose of the call, so she moved on, telling him briefly what had happened and asking him if he could draw up a document with which they could sign over S&W Publishing and its licenses and trademarks to Mr. Jericho Price, free and clear—something they could sign and pop in the mail back to Mort and have him deliver so they wouldn't have to deal with the man directly.

She watched Wink as she spoke, waiting just outside the phone booth, still in his borrowed work clothes, hands in his pockets. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen his arms sunburned like that. She'd always thought of him as the indoor, night-owl type.
Not a lot of tanning going on in the darkroom …

When she told Mort to send the bill to the same address, in care of Wink's uncle, Mort told her, “Don't be absurd. This is a wedding present. Or a moving present—whatever.” And then he asked to speak to Wink.

When she cupped the receiver and opened the folding door to tell him, he squinted back at her as if talking to Mort was the last thing he wanted to do. Besides, Wink didn't need to give his permission. She'd already cleared it with him on the drive to
town. He'd shrugged and said, “It's yours to give away or not, Sal. It's always been.” But he took the phone now, plastered on a wincing little smile, and said, “Hey, Mort. How're tricks?”

She'd never heard him say anything so trite, and she chalked it up to his discomfort. She stayed in the booth, curious to know what this was about. It was a tight fit with her belly, but Wink tipped the receiver away from his ear, and she squeezed up against him to listen.

“Dutton. Listen. I understand your immediate concern is primarily potential retaliation—the intruder and altercation the other night, making sure you're all safe. Only natural. But in terms of these federal agents who were coming around earlier, I feel I should advise you, unofficially, that they have since been round to ask
me
questions about your activities—”

“Christ on a duck.” Wink inhaled deeply, like he was bracing himself. “What'd you tell them?” Sal found she'd started stroking his chest, as if this might calm things down.

“I told them nothing, really, partly because I know my rights and partly because I don't know the answer to such personal questions as what your political leanings are, if you
are
a subversive, whatever in the wide world that means. But I have to say, these investigators appear to be people with a real agenda. Have you heard of HUAC?”

“I
think,”
Wink said. “Something to do with industrial cooling systems, or … ?”

There was a pause on Mort's end. “Well, no matter. Suffice it to say I took it upon myself to contact some
actual
free speech advocates I know out east—not like your Mr. Price—and it sounds as if certain elements on the federal level are currently beating the bushes for pawns to help them stir things up in the coming months. Really bring their agenda to the fore. They appear to be intent on finding any accomplice to help execute their
investigations, no matter how coerced. The way these people think, it makes your Mr. Price look like small potatoes, and so I'd be cautious in returning to Chicago, were I you. If you do return, I've been thinking they might actually try something as manipulative as charging you under the Mann Act—that is, transporting a female across state lines for immoral purposes.”

“What?”

“I know, I know. Never mind that she's your legal spouse and you'd merely be returning to your home or that immoral purposes, at this stage, I'm sure, would only be to assist you in producing cheesecake … I could thoroughly imagine these people employing just such a spurious distortion of the statute. But this is only one tack they might take I thought you should be wary of. These people seem capable of all manner of trumped-up charges simply to get witnesses before them and making the sorts of allegations they clearly want them to make. I … I'm just saying be careful.”

There was a long pause while they waited for more. There wasn't more. Finally, Wink said, “Thank you, Mort. I appreciate the straight dope on this. I mean it.”

After he hung up, she asked Wink if he understood any of that.

He shrugged. “I guess just …
Don't go back to Chicago
?”

What
she'd
taken away was
Stay away from J. Edgar Hoover and overzealous congressmen,
but her husband's interpretation seemed like a more practical approach.

“Let's go,” he said. “We should get home before it gets dark.”

She followed him to the Buick, not saying what she was thinking: that she hoped the farm wasn't really going to end up being
home
home and that they would soon be in a place where they didn't think in terms of the dark.

The day they drove down to talk to the Ann Arbor bank about buying the store, they got there an hour before their appointment, so he drove out past the stadium and showed her where Uncle Len once took him to see his first real football game. Then they crossed back down to the river. He couldn't figure out where the beach was, but he remembered, very young, visiting some cousins or someone and swimming in the river.

She frowned a little when she saw the murky water and said, “Count me out on that one, pal.” He wondered if she was thinking of the trouble they'd had at the last beach they visited.

At the bank, while the loan officer was going over their application for a GI loan, he and Sal got to talking about just how long they might be able to make do living over the new shop and the pressing need to find a better place to live.

The loan officer stopped reviewing their application and watched them discussing this, smiling as he waited. When he had their attention, he had Wink sign at a few designated spots and then acknowledged he'd been eavesdropping, saying, “Sounds like you're looking for a place to live, too, maybe?”

Wink suspected he had the job on account of he was probably a vet himself. He seemed about his own age, mid-to late twenties. Short stocky guy, but handsome. Rode a tank, was Wink's best guess.

The guy nodded his head a little, looking like a doctor dishing out a troubling prognosis. “Well, housing's tight here, just like anywhere. Maybe more so in a town like this, all these fellas
coming back to school. They're building, though. Like gang-busters. If you can wait for construction—”

Wink patted his wife's belly. The loan officer's eyebrows jumped a little, like Wink had passed gas or done something really off-color. “Sort of on a schedule,” Wink reminded him. “Already
built's far
preferable.”

“Say!” The loan officer snapped his fingers. Wink had never known a guy to actually snap his fingers when getting an idea, outside of in the movie pictures, but this character did it. “I know
of one
house actually—beautiful place, right next door …”

For a second, Wink thought he meant right there, adjacent to the bank, but the guy cleared this up.

“Next to
my
house, I mean. In the Burns Park neighborhood. For sale by owner.”

They'd passed that neighborhood, he was pretty sure, going out to the stadium earlier. It looked a great deal like the one she'd liked coming into town, the one the real estate agent had called the Old West Side.

The loan officer was smiling wide. “We'd be neighbors!”

Wink told him to set it up, and he said he would; that he'd even bring them over there personally, put in a good word for him with the seller.

They shook hands. It was all falling into place.

The muggy weather and the dwindling supply of clothes they'd packed continued to remind him of the need to get all their stuff in one state. He was working on it. This time of year, Uncle Len couldn't really afford to leave the crops for even one day, but he did, hauling one load of furniture and darkroom equipment from Chicago to Ann Arbor in his ancient REO stake truck. Meanwhile, Keeney and Reenie were working on packing the apartment
and the shop and would drive a load of mostly housewares in Keeney's panel truck while the Rooney brothers minded the news shop. Wink estimated that would probably leave him with one return trip, probably with Uncle Len's truck, to get the last of it, but he would wait to do that till they had everything in order in Ann Arbor.

The current owner of the retail space had agreed to let them store their property on the premises before the closing, a thing which Wink found damn neighborly. “This,” he told Sal, “is why we're in Michigan now. You picture this kind of cooperation going on back in the city?”

Sal didn't say one way or the other whether she could picture that, just made a little face. Lately, the baby was making her very tired. He could tell she needed a place of her own and soon.

She'd been holding it in as long as she could, but Sal finally had to admit after a few days of this that she was just too exhausted to continue carting herself back and forth to his uncle's farm. So they were staying at a motor court out toward someplace that was honestly called Ypsilanti until tomorrow, when they'd have the closing on the new shop and they could move in there, at least for the time being. The cold snap they'd driven into had passed, and it was just plain sticky now—not a fun time for a pregnant lady, summertime in southeastern Michigan.

She tried to think positive thoughts about the Burns Park house they'd be looking at tomorrow, after the closing for the shop. If it was as great as it sounded, maybe they wouldn't even have to temporarily move the rest of their household stuff into
the new camera shop. Maybe, very soon, they'd finally be home, not waiting up on the farm or in this Ypsilanti place.

Wink had tried to cheer her up earlier with some claim that the original Rosie the Riveter—the tough gal behind the famous picture—lived right around here. She wasn't sure where he got
that,
and besides, it wasn't going to make her feel any better about living out of a suitcase.

She watched him through the open window, crossing the dark parking lot from the manager's office. He'd been using the pay phone to check on several elements of the whole exhausting upheaval, and from the way he was walking, she knew something was wrong.

He said it right away, as soon as he was through the door. “The shop is gone.”

She didn't understand how this could be. “You mean they got a better offer, or … ?”

He was shaking his head, jerking his thumb in the direction of—what? The pay phone? Downtown Ann Arbor? “The
old
shop,” he said.
“Your
shop. There was a fire.”

Apparently, Reenie and Keeney were fine. The second load, mostly of housewares they'd packed for their trip out to Ann Arbor the next day, was also safe. Keeney hadn't felt his panel truck would be secure enough out on the street, so he'd parked it in a garage for the night, ready to go the next morning. They were at the Berghoff, having a late dinner, when they heard the sirens coming up Adams.

Keeney told him the fire inspector told him, “Well, it looks like they at least waited till you were safely out,” and that Reenie had said this:

“Bilge. They were just waiting for dusk.”

What had burned was mostly overstock in the basement— supply inventory, the photo paper and darkroom chemicals, boxes of Kodak film, and a wall of the specials they'd published themselves. And, of course, the building itself. There would be no third load of belongings coming from Chicago.

She reminded Wink that they had insurance on the property, that even if they could no longer sell it or use it as collateral, between his savings and the insurance money she'd collect and the lenient nature of GI loans, they'd be okay. She wasn't going to cry about it.

Still, it didn't stop her from trembling. She'd lived there since she was a little girl.

“I know,” Wink said, putting his arm around her and rubbing her belly. “We'll be fine. We'll be just jake, just dandy … Those fucking ass-fuckers.”

He supposed it was possible Price had nothing to do with the fire. Maybe it was Kid Fortunato, acting alone, paying them back for the KO in the alley. But either way, it didn't matter. Those people were involved, either way, no matter how much of an arm's distance the fake Little Lord Fauntleroy liked to keep from the rough stuff.