Rich Man, Poor Man (33 page)

Thomas had stopped bringing his lunch from home. For three days running he had left the paper bag of sandwiches and fruit that Clothilde prepared for him lying on the kitchen table when he had gone off to work. Clothilde hadn’t said anything. After three days she had caught on, and there were no more sandwiches waiting for him. He ate at the diner down the highway. He could afford it. Uncle Harold had raised him ten dollars a week. Slob.

‘If anybody wants me,’ Uncle Harold said, ‘I’m down at the showroom.’

Thomas kept staring out across the highway, chewing on the stalk of grass. Uncle Harold sighed and got into his car and drove off.

From inside the garage there came the sound of Coyne working a lathe. Coyne had seen him in one of his fights on a Sunday down at the lake and now was very polite with him and if Thomas neglected a job, Coyne more often than not would do it himself. Thomas played with the idea of letting Coyne do the two o’clock grease job.

Mrs Dornfield drove up in her 1940 Ford, and stopped at a pump. Thomas got up and walked over to the car slowly, not rushing anything.

‘Hello, Tommy,” Mrs Dornfield said.

‘Hi.’

‘Fill her up, please, Tommy,’ Mrs Dornfield said. She was a plump blonde of about thirty with disappointed, childish, blue eyes. Her husband worked as a teller in the bank, which was convenient, as Mrs Dornfield always knew where he was during business hours.

Thomas hung up the hose and screwed the cap back on and started washing the windshield.

‘It would be nice if you paid me a visit today, Tommy,’ Mrs Dornfield said. That was always what she called it - a visit. She had a prissy way of talking, with little flutterings of her eyelids and lips and hands.

‘Maybe I can break loose at two o’clock,’ Thomas said. Mr Dornfield was settled behind the bars of his teller’s cage from one-thirty on.

‘We can have a nice long visit,’ Mrs Dornfield said.

‘If I can break loose.’ Thomas didn’t know how he would feel after lunch.

She gave him a five dollar bill and clutched at his hand when he gave her change. Every once in a while after one of his visits she slipped him a ten dollar bill. Mr Dornfield must be giving her nothing, but nothing.

There was always lipstick on his collar when he came from visiting Mrs Dornfield and he left it on purposely so that when Clothilde collected his clothes for washing she’d be sure to see it. Qothilde never mentioned the lipstick. The shirt would be neatly washed and ironed and left on his bed the next day.

None of it really worked. Not Mrs Dornfield, nor Mrs Berry-man, nor the twins, nor any of the others. Pigs, all of them. None of them really helped him get over Clothilde. He was sure Clothilde knew - you couldn’t hide anything in this stinking little town - and he hoped it made her feel bad. At least so bad as he felt. But if she did feel bad, she didn’t show it.

Two o’clock is happy time,’ Mrs Dornfield said.

It was enough to make a man throw up.

Mrs Dornfield started the motor and fluttered off. He went back and sat down on the chair tilted against the wall. Coyne came out of the garage, wiping his hands. ‘When I was your age,’ Coyne said, looking after the Ford disappearing down the highway, ‘I was sure it would fall off if I did it with a married woman.’

‘It doesn’t fall off,’ Thomas said.

‘So I see,’ Coyne said. He wasn’t a bad guy, Coyne. When Thomas had celebrated his seventeenth birthday Coyne had broken out a pint of bourbon and they’d finished it off together in one afternoon.

Thomas was wiping the gravy of the hamburger off his plate with a piece of bread when Joe Kuntz, the cop, came into the diner. It was ten to two and the diner was almost empty, just a couple of the hands from the lumberyard finishing up their lunch, and Elias, the counter-man, swabbing off the grill. Thomas hadn’t decided yet whether or not he was going to visit Bertha Dornfield.

Kuntz came up to where Thomas was sitting at the counter and said, ‘Thomas Jordache?’

“Hi, Joe,’ Thomas said. Kuntz stopped in at the garage a couple of times a week to shoot the breeze. He was always threatening to leave the force because the pay was so bad.

‘You acknowledge that you are Thomas Jordache?’ Kuntz said in his cop voice. ‘What’s going on, Joe?’ Thomas asked.

‘I asked you a question, son,’ Kuntz said, bulging out of his uniform.

“You know my name,’ Thomas said. ‘What’s the joke?’

‘You better come with me, son,’ Kuntz said. ‘I have a warrant for your arrest.’ He grabbed Thomas’s arm above the elbow. Elias stopped scrubbing the grill and the guys from the lumberyard stopped eating and it was absolutely quiet in the diner.

‘I ordered a piece of pie and a cup of coffee,’ Thomas said. Take your meathooks off me, Joe.’

‘What’s he owe you, Elias?’ Kuntz asked, his fingers tight on Thomas’s arm.

‘With coffee and pie or without the coffee and pie?’ Elias said.

‘Without.’

‘Seventy-five cents,’ Elias said.

‘Pay up, son, and come quiet,’ Kuntz said. He didn’t make more than twenty arrests a year and he was getting mileage out of this one.

‘Okay, okay,’ Thomas said. He put down eighty-five cents. ‘Christ, Joe,’ he said, ‘you’re breaking my arm.’

Kuntz walked him quickly out of the diner. Pete Spinelli, Joe’s partner, was sitting at the wheel of the prowl car, with the motor running.

‘Pete,’ Thomas said, ‘will you tell Joe to let go of me.’

‘Shut up, kid,’ Spinelli said.

Kuntz shoved him into the back seat and got in beside him and the prowl car started towards town.

The charge is statutory rape,’ Sergeant Horvath said. There is a sworn complaint. Ill notify your uncle and he can get a lawyer for you. Take him away, boys.’

Thomas was standing between Kuntz and Spinelli. They each had an arm now. They hustled him off and put him in the lockup. Thomas looked at his watch. It was twenty past two. Bertha Dornfield would have to go without her visit today.

There was one other prisoner in the single cell of the jail, a ragged, skinny man of about fifty, with a week’s growth of beard on his face. He was in for poaching deer. This was the twenty-third time he had been booked for poaching deer, he told Thomas.

Harold Jordache paced nervously up and down the platform. Just tonight the train had to be late. He had heartburn and he pushed anxiously at his stomach with his hand. When there was trouble, the trouble went right to his stomach. And ever since two-thirty yesterday afternoon, when Horvath had called him from the jail, it had been nothing but trouble. He hadn’t slept a wink, because Elsa had cried all night, in between bouts of telling him that they were disgraced for life, that she could never show her face in town again, and what a fool he had been to take a wild animal like that into the house. She was right, he had to admit, he had been an idiot, his heart was too big. Family or no family, that afternoon when Axel called him from Port Philip, he should have said no.

He thought of Thomas down in the jail, talking his head off like a lunatic, admitting everything, not showing any shame or remorse, naming names. Who could tell what he would say, once he started talking like that? He knew the little monster hated him. What was to stop him from telling about the black-market ration tickets, the faked-up secondhand cars with gear boxes that wouldn’t last for more than a hundred miles, the under-the-counter mark-ups on new cars to get around the Price Control, the valve and piston jobs on cars that had nothing more wrong with them than a clogged fuel line? Even about Clothilde? You let a boy like that into your house and you became his prisoner. The heartburn stabbed at Uncle Harold like a knife. He began to sweat, even though it was cold on the station, with the wind blowing.

He hoped Axel was bringing plenty of money with him. And the birth certificate. He had sent Axel a telegram asking Axel to call him because Axel didn’t have a telephone. In this day and age. He had made the telegram sound as ominous as he could, to make sure Axel would call, but even so he was half-surprised when the phone rang in his house and he heard his brother’s voice on the wire.

He heard the train coming around the curve towards the station and stepped back nervously from the edge of the platform. In his state he wouldn’t be surprised if he had a heart attack and fell down right where he stood.

The train slowed to a halt and a few people got off and hurried away in the wind. He had a moment of panic. He didn’t see Axel. It would be just like Axel to leave him alone with the problem. Axel was an unnatural father; he hadn’t written once to either Thomas or himself, all the time that Thomas had been in Elysium. Neither had the mother, that skinny hoity-toity whore’s daughter. Or the other two kids. What could you expect from a family like that? ‘

Then he saw a big man in a workman’s cap and a mackinaw limping slowly towards him on the platform. What a way to dress. Harold was glad it was dark and there were so few people around. He must have been crazy that time in Port Philip when he’d invited Axel to come in with him.

‘All right, Tm here,’ Axel said. He didn’t shake hands.

‘Hello, Axel,’ Harold said. ‘I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t come. How much money you bring with you?’

‘Five thousand dollars,’ Axel said.

I hope if s enough,’ Harold said.

‘It better be enough,’ Axel said flatly. There isn’t any more.’

He looked old, Harold thought, and sick. His limp was worse than Harold remembered.

They walked together through the station towards Harold’s car.

‘If you want to see Tommy,’ Harold said, ‘you’ll have to wait till tomorrow. They don’t let anybody in after six o’clock.’

I don’t want to see the sonofabitch,’ Axel said.

Harold couldn’t help feeling that it was wrong to call your own child a sonofabitch, even under the circumstances, but he didn’t say anything.

‘You have your dinner, Axel?’ he asked. ‘Elso can find something in the icebox.’

‘Let’s not waste time,’ Axel said. ‘Who do I have to pay off?’

The father, Abraham Chase. He’s one of the biggest men in town. Your son had to pick somebody like that,’ Harold said aggrievedly. ‘A girl in a factory wasn’t good enough for him.’

‘Is he Jewish?’ Axel asked, as they got into the car.

‘What?’ Harold asked, irritatedly. That would be great, that would help a lot, if Axel turned out to be a Nazi, along with everything else.

‘Why should he be Jewish?’

‘Abraham,’ Axel said.

‘No. It’s one of the oldest families in town. They own practically everything. You’ll be lucky if he takes your meney.’

Yeah,’ Axel said. ‘Lucky.’

Harold backed out of the parking lot and parted towards the Chase house. It was in the good section of town, near the Jordache house. ‘I talked to him on the phone,’ Harold said. ‘I told him you were coming. He sounded out of his mind. I don’t blame him. It’s bad enough to come home and find one daughter pregnant. But both of them! And -they’re twins, besides.’

“They can get a wholesale rate on baby clothes.’ Axel laughed. The laughter sounded like a tin pitcher rattling against a sink. Twins. He had a busy season, didn’t he, Thomas?’

You don’t know the half of it,’ Harold said. ‘He’s beat up a dozen people since he came here, besides.’ The stories that had reached Harold’s ears had been exaggerated as they passed along the town’s chain of gossip. ‘It’s a wonder he hasn’t been • in jail before this. Everybody’s scared of him. It’s the most natural thing in the world that something like this comes up, they pin it on him. But who suffers? Me. And Elsa.’

Axel ignored his brother’s suffering and the suffering of his brother’s wife. ‘How do they know it was my kid?’

The twins told their father.’ Harold slowed the car down. He was in no hurry to confront Abraham Chase. They’ve done it with every boy in town, the twins, and plenty of the men too, everybody knows that, but when it comes to naming names, naturally the first name anybody’d pick would be your Tommy. They’re not going to say it was the nice boy next door or Joe Kuntz, the policeman, or the boy from Harvard whose parents play bridge with the Chases twice a week. They pick the black sheep. Those two little bitches’re smart And your son had to tell them he was nineteen years old. Big shot Under eighteen, my lawyer says, you can’t be held for statutory rape.’

‘So what’s the fuss?’ Axel said. ‘I have his birth certificate.’

‘Don’t think it’s going to be that easy,’ Harold said. ‘Mr Chase swears he can have him locked up until he’s twenty-one as a juvenile delinquent. And he can. That’s four years. And . don’t think Tommy is making it any easier for himself telling the cops he knows twenty fellows personally who’ve been in there with those girls and giving a list of names. It just makes everybody sorer, that’s all. It gives the whole town a bad name and they’ll make him pay for it And me and Elsa. That’s my shop,’ he said automatically. They were passing the showroom. I’ll be lucky if they don’t put a brick through me window.’

‘You friendly with Abraham?’

‘I do some business with Mr Chase,’ Harold said. ‘I sold him a Lincoln. I cant say we move in the same circles. He’s on the waiting list for a new Mercury. I could sell a hundred cars tomorrow if I could get delivery. The goddamn war. You don’t know what I’ve been going through for four years, just to keep my head above water. And now, just when I begin to see a little daylight this has to come along.’

‘You don’t seem to be doing so bad, ‘Axel said.

‘You have to keep up appearances.’ One thing was sure. If Axel thought for a minute that he was going to borrow any money, he was barking up the wrong tree.

‘How do I know Abraham won’t take my money and the kid’ll go to jail just the same?’

‘Mr Chase is a man of his word,’ Harold said. He had a sudden horrible fear that Axel was going to call Mr Chase Abraham in his own house. Tie’s got this town in his pocket’ The cops, the judge, the mayor, the party organisation. li he tells you the case’ll be dropped, it’ll be dropped.’

‘It better be,’ Axel said. There was a threat in his voice and

Harold remembered what a rough boy his brother had been when they had both been young back home in Germany. Axel had gone off to war and had killed people. He was not a civilised man, with that harsh, sick face and that hatred of everybody and everything, including his own flesh and blood. Harold wondered if maybe he hadn’t made a mistake calling his brother and telling him to come to Elysium. Maybe it would have been better if he had just tried to handle it himself. But he had known it was going to cost money and he’d panicked The heartburn gripped him again as they drove up to the white house, with big pillars, where the Chase family lived.