The Criminal (2 page)

This day I'm telling you about, I'd been to the restroom three times in less than three hours. The third time I came back to my desk, Henley jerked his head at me. I went into his office, and maybe my knees weren't knocking together but they sure felt like it.

"What's the matter with you?" he said. Just like that.

"What do you mean, what's the matter?" I said. Honestly, I didn't know what to say, I was too rattled to think.

"What are you chasing all over the office for? Can't you stay out of that restroom for five minutes? How can you ever get any work done if you're never at your desk."

"I manage to get my work done," I said.

"I asked you a question." He scowled at me. "You must have been back to the toilet six times in the last half hour."

I knew there was no use correcting or arguing with him. I knew I'd better think of something fast or I'd be in big trouble. And it was just about the worst time possible for
that
kind of trouble. Mother-Martha's mother, that is-had been having some pretty hefty doctor bills, and it looked like Martha was going to need a new upper plate any day-it hadn't been much good since she'd got it mixed up with the garbage and put it in the incinerator-and Bob was just getting started in high school. Bob had gone right from the Kenton Hills Grammar School to Kenton Hills High School. He'd gone from grade to grade with the same kids, ever since he'd started to school, and I hated to think of how he'd feel if I lost my job and we had to move and he had to start into some strange school with a strange bunch of kids. He hadn't been doing too well in school lately, as it was. It might set him back seriously if he had to make a change now.

Henley was waiting for me to say something. He was hoping I'd tangle myself up, give him an excuse to fire me. I think he was, anyway.

"Well," he said, "how about it? For God's sake, are you deaf and dumb?"

And all of a sudden I had an inspiration.

"No, I'm not deaf and dumb," I said, looking him straight in the eye, "and I'm not blind either."

"Huh?" he grunted. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that restroom was getting to be a kind of play room," I said. "People have been hanging around back there, smoking and swapping jokes, when they should be out here working. I'm putting a stop to it."

"Well, say, now." He leaned back in his chair. "That's all right, Al! Been giving 'em hell, huh?"

"They get out fast," I said, "when they see me coming."

"Who were they, Al, some of the worst offenders? Give me their names."

"Well…" I hesitated. And I thought about Jeff Winter and Harry Ainslee and some of the others that had tried to knife me every time I turned my back. One of their favorite tricks was to loaf along until they saw I was tied up on something, then spring some deal that had to be settled right away. You know, trying to make it look like I was slowing down. Like I was a bottleneck and they couldn't get their jobs done on account of me.

But I wasn't going to be lowdown just because they were. I wouldn't be like them for any amount of money.

"I think one's been about as bad as another," I said. "I wouldn't want to name anyone in particular."

"Mmmm. Uh-huh," he nodded. "Well, I'll tell you what you'd better do, Al. You lock the place up, and keep the key at your desk. Make 'em come to you for it whenever they want to go."

So that's what I did. That's how I squeezed out of one of the tightest places I'd ever been in. And there wasn't anything wrong with it, was there? After all, I was supposed to be in charge of the outer office. The men should get permission from me before leaving their work.

Henley didn't ride me about a thing for the rest of the day, and he stopped watching me. Then that night, as I was getting ready to leave, he called me into his office again.

"Been thinking about you, Al," he said. "Looks like you're more on the ball than I thought you were. You keep it up, and maybe we can boost you to three-fifty."

"Why, that's-that's fine!" I said. My salary was three twenty-seven-fifty a month (and it still is). "I'll certainly do all I can to deserve it."

"Three-fifty," he said, his eyes veiled, smiling in a way I didn't understand. "That's pretty good money for a man your age, isn't it?"

"Well," I laughed. "I'm not exactly a Methuselah, Mr. Henley. I won't be forty-nine until next…"

"Yeah? You don't think it is good money?"

"Yes, sir. I mean-I was just going to say that… Yes, sir," I said.

"You agree you'd be damned lucky to get it, a man your age?"

"I'd be… be darned lucky to get it," I said. "A man my age."

I went on home, not feeling too good although there wasn't any reason why I shouldn't have. I'd done the right thing, the only thing I could have done. I hadn't hurt anyone and it looked like I might have got myself a raise, so everything was all right. But I guess I kind of wanted someone to tell me it was.

We had pickled beets, peas, and sweet potatoes for dinner that night. It seemed that Martha had taken the labels off the cans to make some candlestick shades, and she didn't know what was in them until she opened them up.

I said it was a dandy dinner, the very things I liked. Sometimes I forget myself and scold her, but I try not to. She can't help it, you see, according to the doctors. She's been a little giddy ever since she started going through the change of life. Maybe even before.

Well, so we all started eating, and I brought up the matter of the raise in an offhand way. I mentioned that first, and then I just sort of dragged in the other things, the restroom and so on.

Martha said it was wonderful; she carried on for a minute or two about how smart I was. "I guess you showed them," she said. "They have to get up pretty early in the morning to get ahead of my Al."

Bob looked down at his plate, He didn't eat anything.

"Didn't you hear your father?" Martha frowned at him. "All those people have been picking on him, and now he's got
them
in hot water. And maybe he'll get a raise besides!"

"I'll bet he don't," said Bob.

"Well, now," I said. "I really didn't get the boys in any trouble. Nothing like it. I simply… What makes you think I won't, Bob?"

"Nothing," he mumbled. "I'm not hungry."

"You see?" I laughed. "You can't tell me, can you? if you don't have a reason for a statement, you shouldn't make it."

"'Scuse me," he said. "I don't want anything more to eat."

He pushed back his chair, and started to get up.

I told him to stay right where he was.

"Al," said Martha, nervously. "If he doesn't want to eat-"

"I'm handling this," I said. "I'm still head of this family. He acts like I'd-he made a certain statement. Now, he can explain himself or he'll sit there and eat."

Bob hesitated, his head bowed over his plate. He picked up his fork and began to eat.

"I don't think I'm unreasonable," I said. "Why, my God, if I'd been willing to do the things that some people do, I wouldn't have to- to-worry about a job. I'd be sitting on easy street. I'll tell you something, young man: if you had just a few of my problems, things I never even mention, maybe you'd…"

I went on talking to him, trying to show him where he was wrong. And he was wrong. Like I say, I'm not unreasonable. I'm not like Henley. I wasn't just being ornery, trying to make him say something he didn't want to just because I was worried and sore at myself.

I'm not like that. I hadn't done anything to be ashamed of.

"You see, Bob?" I said. "Answer me!"

He didn't answer. He poked a bite of sweet potato into his mouth.

And then, suddenly, he choked and his face went white, and he started vomiting… That's when he really changed. He was never quite the same boy after that.

I started out to tell you about that day,
the
day it happened. I'll pick up where I left off, with Bob walking me part way to the station.

We were about six blocks from the house, almost to the corner where Bob had to turn off toward school, when a car pulled in at the curb. Jack Eddleman leaned out the window, grinning at us.

"What do you say there, Talberts?" he called. "What do you think of the new buggy?"

"It looks all right," I said, bearing down a little on the
looks
. "Real estate business must be good these days."

"All business is good. It just depends on the men that are it."

"Is that a fact?" I said.

"Got you that time, huh?" He let out a laugh, that jackass bray of his. "Hop in and I'll drive you to the station."

"No, thanks," I said. "I'm walking with my son."

"Keepin' an eye on him, huh?" He laughed again. "How you getting along with the girls these days, Bob? Been under any washing machines lately?"

Bob tried to smile. He ducked his head, and started to turn away. I told him to wait. I said I had something to say to Mt Eddleman, and I wanted him to hear it.

Then, I stepped out to the curb, and I'm telling you: maybe that big red-faced loud-mouth had never been told off before, but he was then.

I… I wonder if you're like I am? I mean, sometimes I can speak up and lay down the law to people, and at others I'm just as mild as milk. I'll let them walk all over me. It seems like I just can't find the words or the nerve to say anything.

I remember when Martha and I were on our honeymoon. We'd taken a room American plan at this Niagara Falls hotel, and I'd had to pay in advance so, of course, we couldn't move. And, well, this head waiter in the dining room, he'd treated us like dirt right from the beginning. I don't know why. We'd tipped well, and we hadn't demanded any extra service or anything like that. I guess he just picked on us because he thought he could get away with it.

Well, he
did
get away with it for a while, three-no, four days. It was dinner of the fourth night when I jumped him. He'd set us down at a little table back near the kitchen, and the table cloth may have been white at one time, but you'd never have known it. There was enough catsup and gravy on it to paint a barn door.

"I'd like another table," I said, "or at least a clean cloth."

"No kidding," he said, real sarcastically. "You're pretty hard to please, aren't you?"

I kicked back my chair, and jumped up. I shoved my face right up against his. "You're doggone right, I'm hard to please," I said, "and I'm pretty hard to get along with when I'm not pleased, so maybe you'd better not give me any more trouble. Just a little more nonsense like you've been pulling"-I said-"and I'm liable to mop up the floor with you. Now, you give us a good table and make it fast, and from now on you watch your p's and q's when you're around us."

Well, he folded up like an accordion, didn't give me a word of back talk. He took us to the best table in the dining room, and for the next three days you'd have thought we were royalty, the service we got.

Martha couldn't get over the way I'd acted. She was as proud as punch of me, but it startled the daylights out of her.

"My goodness," she kept saying. "I never knew you could be like that, Al."

"Well, sometimes I can and sometimes I can't," I said. "I guess I take just so much, and then I blow up."

Well, as I was saying. Any other time, I might have let Jack Eddleman get away with it; I'd let him get away with a lot of stuff before this. But this time he was picking on the wrong party.

"Now, I'll tell you something, Jack," I said. "I don't think we'd better have any more talk about that washing machine business. Neither to me or Bob or anyone else. Your daughter came over to our house uninvited. She walked right in while Mrs. Talbert and I were away, and wandered out into the kitchen where Bob was working. if she'd minded her own business like he was minding his, there-"

"Oh, yeah?" He tried to look tough, but his eyes shifted. "It's a darned good thing I looked in your back door. If I hadn't've come over to borrow a hoe, that overgrown youngun of yours would have-well, I won't say it."

"I think you'd better," I said. "I want to hear you say it."

"Aw, hell…" He forced a laugh. "What are we arguing about? You know how I am. I just like to kid."

"Yes, I know how you are," I said. "I've had you sized up for a long time. You keep riding people, making 'em uncomfortable, and the longer they take it the rougher you get. Then, when they call you on it you say you're kidding."

"Huh!" he said. "Look who's talking."

"I don't care whether you look or not," I said, "but you'd better remember what I told you."

He slammed his car into gear, and drove off.

I turned around to Bob. His shoulders weren't sagging now, and he was really smiling instead of just trying to. He was looking at me like he'd used to, like he had that Monday morning in New York when Martha had been afraid I'd be late for work and I'd said Henley could go jump if he didn't like it.

"Gosh," he said. "Gol-lee, Dad. Thanks a lot!"

"It wasn't anything," I said. "I should have called the big bluffer a long time ago."

"I didn't mean that. Not just that. I mean the way you stuck up for me."

"I see," I said. "I-it's this way, Bob. I'm probably overly concerned about you, anxious to keep you out of trouble, and maybe it appears sometimes that I think you did something-that I'm accusing you-when I'm just trying to protect you. I never thought for a minute that there was anything wrong going on between you and Josie under that washing machine."

"Well, gosh," he said, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the sidewalk. "Darn that old girl, anyway."

"You don't have anything more to do with her, do you?" I said.

"Huh-uh. Not much of anything, anyway. I see her at school, of course, and sometimes a bunch of us will be over to the soda fountain together or something like that. But…"

"I'd be pretty careful around her," I said. "It's not that I don't trust you, but I've seen girls like Josie Eddleman before. They can get a boy into an awful lot of trouble."

"Sure, Dad," he said, kind of embarrassed. "I know."

He went on toward school, running to catch up with some other kids.

I went on to the railroad station, and caught the 8:05 into town.

We'd been neighbors with the Eddlemans for almost eleven years. They live at 2200 Canyon Drive, the far southeast corner overlooking the canyon, and we live at 2208 which is four doors down the street. At the time we moved here, there weren't any houses between theirs and ours, and we got to be pretty good friends. Bob was less than a year older than Josie, so naturally they played together, and Fay Eddleman was always trotting across the vacant lots to see Martha, or vice versa, and Jack and I saw quite a bit of each other.

It went on like that for a couple of years, and then a house went up between us and we weren't quite so thick any more. We couldn't be, you know, and frankly I was just as glad that we couldn't. I was glad when the other two vacant lots were built on, and we hardly ever saw Fay and Jack unless we ran into them on the street. They just weren't the kind of people who wore well. You never felt like you could hardly trust 'em. They were always running someone down-joking in a way that could hurt-and I figured that if they did that with other people they probably did it to us.

Of course, the kids went on seeing each other. Hardly a day passed that Bob wasn't over to Josie's house or Josie wasn't over to our place. After all, they'd practically grown up together, and there weren't any other children in our block.

By the time Bob was twelve or thirteen, he began to lose interest in Josie. He went over to her house less and less, and when she dropped in on us, he was just as likely as not to go off and leave her. He'd go up to the school grounds and play football or maybe he'd wander down to the canyon to play Tarzan with some other boys. Or sometimes he'd just go up to his room and stay until she left.

Martha scolded him about it, not being polite to a guest, and I spoke to him a time or two, but it didn't seem to have much effect. He went right on being indifferent and acting like she wasn't around, and I was pretty pleased that he did. The more he steered clear of Josie Eddleman, the better it suited me. I don't like to sound dirty-minded or suspicious, but that girl worried me. I've seen grown women who weren't nearly as well-developed as she was at twelve.

Well, one Saturday morning about four months ago, Martha and I walked up to the shopping center after groceries and Bob stayed at the house. There was a leak around the drain of the washing machine, and he was going to fix it. He was lying under the machine, fitting a new gasket he'd cut out of an old shoe, when Josie came in.

It was warm weather. She was wearing some kind of short pants called pedal-pushers and a floweredy thing they call a halter-but which is just a brassiere so far as I'm concerned-and that was all aside from some sandals. She hunkered down, watching him work. Pretty soon, almost before he knew what was happening, she'd crawled under the machine with him. He hadn't asked her to and he was getting along very well by himself, but she was going to give him some help.

Well, Martha and I came in on the tag end of the deal, right after Jack had looked in the back door and started raising Cain, and Bob and Josie were on their feet by that time. But I know it must have looked pretty bad, even though, I'm sure, there wasn't anything in the way of monkey business. You take a big boy like Bob and a half-naked girl like Josie and squeeze them together between the legs of a washing machine, and it just doesn't look good.

I was pretty excited, I guess, and I didn't handle the matter very well. I bawled Bob out and sent him to his room, and I suppose I said things to Jack that could be construed as an apology. I guess I acted like there really was something wrong, and it was all Bob's fault.

No, I didn't handle it well. What I should have done was to tell Jack to take that girl home and wallop her backside and see that she stayed at home. At least see that she stayed away from our house. He knew what she was like as well as I did, He didn't want to admit it, but he knew it was a pretty blamed good idea to keep an eye on her. That's why he'd been over slipping around our back yard and looking in our back door. He'd just made up that story about wanting to borrow a hoe.

Well, anyway, I'd told him off this morning, and it wasn't as good doing it now as it would have been at the time, but better late than never. Bob had been pleased as could be. I felt pretty good about it.

It looked like I was going to have a mighty fine day, with the start I'd gotten, and I did have a fine one. Right up until the last of it, that is.

I'd been at work about an hour when a woman phoned in with a complaint. The call went to Henley first. Apparently, she was a little too hot for him to handle, so he switched her to me but stayed in on the line.

A lot of the tiles in her bathroom were turning brown. Since it was our sub-contract, she wanted us to do the job over. In fact, she was darned well going to make us do it over or take us into court.

"A brand-new house," she kept saying. "A brand-new bathroom and already it looks like some old privy!"

Well, naturally, we weren't going to re-tile the place. There just isn't any profit in residential work, as it is. People only have so much money to spend, but they insist on having all kinds of tile. If they were smart, they'd take less and get a better job. But they just won't do that; they just won't understand that you can't get something for nothing.

A tile contractor comes along, say, and he says, Why, yes, lady (or mister), I can give you a five-foot border there on the walls and I'll give you a three-color terrazzo mosaic for the floor, and I'll keep the job under three hundred. Then, you come along and you say, Why, no, I couldn't do that; I'd have to substitute quantity for quality. But I can give you a
first-class
four-foot border and a
first-class
plain block floor for three hundred. And you know who will get the job. They'll pick the first man every time.

So you have to cut corners, if you want to stay in business. You use cheaper materials and you push the men as hard as they'll be pushed, and whenever the union will let you get away with it you sneak in apprentices instead of using journeymen. Naturally, the work won't hold up, although some jobs hold up longer than others. It just isn't quality.

I let this woman rave on a while, working the mad out of her system, and finally I cut in on her.

"I wanted to ask you, madam," I said. "Were you out around the job any while the house was being built? Well, did you notice whether any of the plasterers were chewing tobacco?"

"Why… well, yes," she said. "What's that got to do with it?"

"Tile is highly absorbent," I explained. "It has a suction action on anything it comes into contact with. If you happen to have one left over from the job you can prove it to yourself. Put the back of it down in some coffee grounds, say. Before long a brown stain will show through the glaze. Now, I imagine one of the plasterers must have spit into his mortar and…"