The Big Rock Candy Mountain (93 page)

“Ha,” his father said. “A duck feed. I haven't had a duck feed for two-three years.”

“I gave three to the fellow I borrowed the gun from,” Bruce said, “and two to the boy who loaned me the boots. There's two in the icebox.”

“You can't have a duck feed on two ducks,” his father said. “What did you give them all away for?”

“To pay my debts,” Bruce said. The old man came into the bedroom behind him.

“Packing up?” he said. “Where you going?”

“I'm pulling out for Minneapolis,” Bruce said, turning. His father was staring at him with quick, prying eyes, the little dewlaps of skin below his jowls giving him a pugnacious, bulldog look.

“I thought school didn't start till the middle of January or so.”

“It doesn't. I'll go visit Kristin.”

“You make up your mind pretty sudden, don't you?”

“I got a letter,” Bruce said. “They'll give me a little job. There's nothing to stick around here for.”

Standing with one hand on the lid of the suitcase, he set himself. In a minute he wouldn't be able to do this patter-chorus any longer, and then they would be out in the open. There was a light trembling in his legs, and his face was stiff.

“No,” his father said after a pause. “I guess not.” He wandered to the dresser, fingered the corner of a pile of handkerchiefs. He turned around. “Need any money?”

Bruce's lips flattened against his teeth. “Not from you,” he said.

Now they were looking at each other as they had wanted to look for twenty years without either of them daring. The trembling came up inside him, came up and outward, and he clenched his hands to keep them steady. He saw the dark face before him go darker.

“What the hell is eating you?” his father said. “Nobody's been holding you here.”

“Nobody could,” Bruce said.

He saw the symptoms of his father's quick and growing anger, the old old symptoms, remembered from his cradle, it seemed to him, the way his head wagged back and forth, the way his teeth came together, the way he snorted through his nose and his eyes got hard and boring.

“I'll tell you what's eating me,” he said, and it was as if he were sitting on his voice, holding it down. “It's the same thing that's been eating me ever since I was old enough to walk. You've never been a decent father to me ...”

“What?” the old man said. “What are you talking about?” He was in a shaking rage, but Bruce's voice, coming like a sharp thin blade, cut him off, stabbed him with the accumulated grievances of his whole life.

“You never were a decent father to Chet,” he said. “You broke him before he ever had a chance to get started. You never were a decent husband to mother ...”

Both his father's hands were over his head. “Shut up!” he shouted. His whole head shook, and his hands came down in a pounding gesture. “Shut up! What in Christ's name are you saying?”

The abrupt, wide-shouldered lurch with which he swung away said that he was not going to stand and listen to any more damned nonsense, but in an instant he had pivoted as if in a dance step and come back. His voice was a harsh rattle. “How haven't I been a decent father? How did I break Chet?”

“You cowed us both from the time we were out of diapers,” Bruce said, the shaking like an ecstasy inside him. “You bullied and stormed and never tried to understand that you were dealing with children. You kept on running whiskey when you knew all of us hated it and suffered for it. You made Chet ashamed in front of his friends, and you chased him into finding friends he didn't need to be ashamed in front of. You led mother a dog's life all the time she was married to you.”

The rage had disappeared from his father's face, and he looked tired, weak, flabby. “You too, I suppose,” he said.

“I went through college being ashamed of you,” Bruce said. “Lying about you on questionnaires and registration forms. Father's profession—rancher, cattle buyer, veterinary! Other people could respect their fathers. I couldn't. All I could do was ...”

His father's voice was so like a groan that he stopped, out of breath and panting. The old man's face twisted, the loose flesh puckered in a wild grimace. “Oh Jesus God,” he said, “I had to make a living, didn't I? I had to support you, didn't I? You lived on me all the time you were having such troubles being ashamed of me, didn't you?”

“I paid my own tuition and most of my expenses for four years,” Bruce said. “I worked from the summer when I was thirteen. Remember? When I worked at the news company and didn't even know that checks should be cashed, and kept them every week in a cigar box till the manager told me to cash them so he could keep his books straight? And why do you suppose I worked? I worked so I could get free from you at the earliest possible minute. Even at thirteen. If it hadn't been for mother I'd have been free of you five or six years ago.”

The rage tried to come back into his father's face, but he saw that it wasn't real rage; it was an attempt, lost from the beginning, to generate a passion and bully him down, and Bruce closed his mouth over the cold words. It was as if he stepped back, watching the old man's contorted features trying to be the old fighting domineering face, and failing.

The old man acted as if he were strangling. He swung around again, swung back. His face was black with dark blood, and a distended vein beat in his temple. In two steps he came close to Bruce and seized his arm.

“Bruce,” he said, “I hope you make a success. I hope you make a lot of money and get everything you want.” His hand was shaking Bruce's arm, and his breath, tainted with stale tobacco (the old, stale father-smell, remembered and constantly renewed down the years), beat against Bruce's face. “I hope you have all the luck in the world,” he said, and shook his arm, dropped it. “But I never want to see you again!”

He turned away, for good this time, but not before Bruce saw the tears in his eyes. As he went out the door, walking fast and cramming the black hat on his head, his shoulders were almost as wide as the opening, but they looked bleak and strengthless and strangely forlorn.

 

It was not until the fast hard steps had diminished and gone down the hall that Bruce felt his own face wet. There was a hard agony in his throat and chest, and when he turned again to his packing he did it wearily, without enthusiasm, and in his mind was a dull wonder that the break with the father he hated could make him almost as miserable as the death of the mother he had loved.

Late in the afternoon he took his suitcases to the Ford, came back for the books that would have to be returned to the library on the way, and closed the door of the partment, leaving his key on the table inside. There was his whole life ahead, but he went toward it without eagerness, went almost unwillingly, with a miserable sense that now he was completely alone.

X

“I was just standin' there, see?” the desk clerk said. “Right in front of Joe Vincent's. This big Duke guy was chewin' a toothpick out in front, talkin' to Imy Winckelman—you know, the lightweight. Then these four soldiers come by. By God, that Duke must hate soldiers like poison. First thing I know I see Duke saunter up behind and kick one of the soldiers' ankles together so he almost falls down, and when he staggers, Imy is right there to be bumped into, and Imy shoves the soldier, and first thing any of the soldiers know they're gettin' the hell beat out of them. I saw Duke slough one and give him the boots, and Imy was standin' in the doorway sluggin' with two others, and the fourth one jumps on Duke's back and starts battin' his ears off. Duke must of shook him twenty feet, right on his head. By the time you could spit twice there was nothin' but old Army Store duds around.”

The telephone rang, and he picked it up wearily. “Winston Hotel. Yeah, he's right here.” He held the phone dangling. “You, Harry.” He waved the phone at the booth to the right of the desk and Bo went in and pulled the door shut. Probably Dubois. It was about time.

“Hello,” he said.

Dubois' voice crackled in the earpiece. “Talk a little slower,” Bo said.

“I say I just got back,” Dubois said. “Thought I'd call you up and put you wise.”

“Well, how is it? How're things going down there?”

“They're making progress,” Dubois said. “It's a tough place to get going. They practically have to pack things in and out on their backs.”

“I know all that,” Bo said. “What I want to know is when do they start taking out ore?”

The voice crackled and fizzed. Bo's left arm was growing numb again, propped on the shelf. He changed hands in the tight booth and put the receiver to his right ear. “Talk a little slower,” he said.

“... about three weeks,” Dubois said. “But there's one thing down there I don't quite like the looks of.”

“Oh Christ,” Bo said. “What is it this time?”

“You know those options we hold?”

“I ought to.”

“Well, they aren't enough.”

“What do you mean, they aren't enough?”

“Janson's got us surrounded, did you know that?”

“How can he have us surrounded when we own that whole strip?”

“Not on the west,” Dubois said. “And that's where the payoff is going to be. Creer's got his tunnel in three hundred feet now, and if you ask me, he's got something. And where'd we be if he struck it and bought up those options of Janson's? We ought to get Janson out of there before somebody gives him the idea he's got something valuable.”

Bo stared at the corrugated metal wall of the booth, its green paint flaking off and its surface scratched with addresses, names, numbers, doodle-marks. “How much dough would that mean?”

“I smelled around,” Dubois said. “I'd be willing to bet we could pick up the whole block for two thousand.”

“Yeah,” Bo said. “Where would we get the two thousand?”

“Hell, we can raise that,” Dubois said. “Three ways, that's only seven hundred apiece. The way I figure it, it's a good gamble.”

“Maybe it's a good gamble,” Bo said, “but I tell you, Paul, I'm all tied up.”

Dubois was laughing at the other end. “Hock your overcoat,” he said. “We just can't afford to pass it up, the way I figure it. If Creer or one of the big outfits picks them off they'll buy us out at their price, you watch. Or freeze us out.”

Bo moistened his lips and shook his left arm hard. “Have they moved any ore at all?”

“Getting a shipment out in a week or two. They've been in the vein for three or four days, and it looks good.”

“A week or two,” Bo said. “Tomorrow. Next month. By Jesus I wish something would ever happen today, instead of next week. Where are you now?”

“Over at the Newhouse.”

“Going to be there a while?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll be over,” Bo said, and hung up.

“I'd hate to tangle with him,” the clerk was saying. “He's a tough monkey.”

Old Fat Hodgkiss, one of the permanent roomers, was rubbing his bald head. “I wish he'd come around in front of here and pick on somebody,” he said. “I could use a little excitement.” He yawned his chins tight, relaxed them again. Mrs. Winter, the “widow” on the second floor, passed through the lobby and gave them all a bright smile. Getting skinnier every day, Bo thought. A bird could perch on her hipbones.

“Going over town?” Bo said.

“Yes.”

“Guess I'll give you a break and walk along,” he said. To Dobson, the clerk, he said, “If Mrs. Nesbitt comes in, you haven't seen me.”

The clerk raised a weary hand. “What makes you think she'd be looking for you?” he said. Fat Hodgkiss laughed.

The afternoon street was bright after the lobby. Mrs. Winter pegged along beside Bo, swinging her handbag. “What's the matter?” she said. “You and Elaine still on the outs?”

“Don't talk about that squaw,” he said. He was feeling, clear down his left side and into his leg, the barely-perceptible numb tug, the feeling as if he had been lying down and had put half his nerves to sleep. But no prickling, no itch of returning sensation when he walked or when he shook the fingers of his left hand. He was remembering what Elaine had said to him the last time he mentioned it: “For the love of Mike, quit belly-aching. What you need to do is go out and do something. You're just rotting on your own bones.”

“How you feeling?” he said to Mrs. Winter. “Any better?”

“I always feel better in the spring,” she said. “I cough myself purple all winter, and then in the spring I'm better.”

“It's a hell of a town,” Bo said. “Deader than a dead fish.”

“How's your mine going?”

“How'd you know I had a mine?”

“You told me.”

“Did I? I'm just on my way over to see my partner about it now.”

“Something stirring?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Mrs. Winter said. “Waiting is the worst job there is.” She looked at him under her mascaraed lashes. “Especially when you're having trouble with your lady friend.”

“I said to skip her!”

Mrs. Winter paid no attention. “Maybe she's tired of waiting too. Some women are like that. She'll be all right when you get your break and the mine comes in.”

“Maybe she'll be all right,” Bo said. “But she won't be in on the mine.”

Mrs. Winter swung her handbag. In the bright sun the lines showed through the paint on her face. “This is where I go in,” she said, stopping by an entrance. She lifted her peaked face and breathed deeply. “Smell that air!” she said. “Spring's wonderful. Everything turns out right in the spring. First thing you know you'll be right back on top of the world.”