The Friends of Meager Fortune (23 page)

He remembered Lula’s tenth birthday party, the last one he and Will were invited to.

“A birthday party hurrah,” Camellia had said. And everyone had laughed at her. But Will had not laughed. Thinking of this, Owen was sorry he had not seen her grace before.

No, he must take responsibility. He had used her fall from public grace to enliven himself, at first mischievously and without malice—but look what had become of it!

“If I allow for Nolan to be Push—and Buckler to oversee the mountain—then I can go away. In fact, I will leave tonight,” he thought.

And he thought of something else, important but fleeting. What if it was not Buckler’s kind or Nolan’s kind or Trethewey’s kind that came through in the end of things—what if it was much less than that? Solomon Hickey’s kind of man, or Tomcat Tomkins’, or Gravellier’s? What if their kind would be the type to judge those men on the mountain who worked now on behalf of legions of houses, railways, and docks not yet built?

What if they were the ones who spoke out against him?

“Then their judgment won’t matter,” he thought. But he did not completely believe this.

There was a train at midnight, and he turned to the station. There in the dimly lit high-ceilinged building with its cement floor and its photo of a train going through the Rocky Mountains, he bought his ticket. The lone ticket, the teller told him, on the midnight train.

He nodded, put it in his overcoat pocket, and decided this: “I am not needed—when I go, Camellia will be better
off—everything will die down—Reggie will see I am gone and come back to her.”

Yet instead of going home, telling his mother, packing, or doing any of these things, he immediately turned toward the bottom row of houses, to let Camellia know. And all the way there he knew he wanted to see her more than anyone else in the world—and the strangest sensation overcame him. Camellia was free to go with him. Or to come later. That, in fact, is why he had bought the ticket.

He was plagued by this thought, as some are by thoughts they hate, and he shook his head, pulled his overcoat tighter, and made it to her street. Once there, he realized his thoughts about her were fleeting and not serious. Strangely, they would have been serious had he been sixteen and not twenty-six.

When she spoke to him on those walks to her house from his, she often spoke of Reggie. “A big kid,” she said.

Owen saw them quite differently than anyone else in town. He saw them—Reggie especially—completely vulnerable and lost together in that little house, where they had tried to make a home, frightened of the world outside. Though he was angry at her for praying, he could at least understand why. Once, asking her what she wanted to do, offering to help in any way, she asked if someday he could see his way to write her a recommendation so she might get a job—a good job, at the five-and-ten.

SIX

At the front of Camellia’s lane botched with snow gone blue in the night, Sterling—a kind of colossus in the town, his figure always apparent—stood watching the house. Owen went by him and knocked on her door.

“Come in,” she said, and hurried him inside.

“What?” she said, turning and out of breath. “Have you seen my Reggie?”

He paused, secretly disappointed by her question. “No—what I want to know is—do you think you are in trouble?”

“No,” she smiled, “people always say silly things—”

“Are you sure?” he said angrily.

“Yes,” she said, taken aback, looking at him curiously.

“I’m leaving then. It is best I go—the boys on the mountain will be okay—they have done work like this all their lives—”

“Leaving?” A cloud came over her face. It was as if he could see her heart beating. She turned the radio down. As she did, she said softly: “Don’t go yet—you’re my only friend and we are going to find Reggie—and—”

He wanted to make her understand that he wasn’t running away, but how could he after she said this?

“If I go tonight, I think everything might be okay—Reggie might come back—but if I don’t, Camellia, what will happen—?”

“I’m not sure—” Camellia said, smiling slightly.

“If I go the rumors will stop.”

“Yes,” she nodded, “of course—yes. Would you like a sandwich—I have—I was—I mean I don’t want you to go—” And then taking a breath as if steeling herself to hear information
she didn’t know, she sat down on the couch and stared at the corner of the room. “I don’t know what to do.”

Because she said this he suddenly took two hundred dollars and placed it in her hand.

“What is this for?” she asked. She stood, half-scared, dropping the money but looking beyond him.

“Just in case,” he said, as confused by what he had done as she was. He bent, his body trembling, and picked the money up. As he stood up he kissed her. Suddenly, so she couldn’t protest. She backed away as if he had burned her face.

“No,” she said, tears in her eyes, “no, Owen.” But she was staring beyond him now in panic.

He turned, and saw in the lower kitchen window Sterling looking in on them—his face almost beatific in its self-absorption. Owen ran outside, falling and picking himself up. But Sterling was gone, along the back lane and across a snowplowed track and over a crooked fence.

He went back to the house, where he calmed himself, leaning against the door.

“You keep the money—you must keep it.”

After saying goodbye, but promising himself never again to touch her, he moved quickly back up the dreary snow-filled street.

This final kiss—the third—had actually determined everything. He could not go. He knew this as he walked. The kiss would be in every house, exaggerated. It hadn’t been her doing. It had been his. Going wouldn’t do anything but jeopardize her.

He determined not to speak to anyone. To ignore them and make his way home, and to get to the mountain as soon as possible. He now knew what he had been remembering when
he had dreamed of Will at the door, saying: “Wait until I set things straight with Reggie.”

It was a conversation he had had years ago after he had told Will how much he cared for Lula.

“Why?” Will had asked.

“I don’t know—her uncle is a professor, she likes books—so do I, so you know—”

“That’s nonsense—fool’s gold. Camellia is the one who loves you,” Will had said.

“Camellia,” he said surprised.

“Reggie likes her—but wait until I set things straight with Reggie and you take her out. She’s got no friends either very much—she would be safe with someone like you.”

“Safe?” he had laughed.

“Yes,” Will had said, “from all those who think of her as less than themselves. How you stood up for the LeBlanc boy proves it.”

This had been Will at his best wisdom, and Owen hadn’t seen it.

The very next day he had brought
Ulysses
over to Lula—ran to her with it, thinking she would be impressed.

He turned and followed his footsteps again, about the square.

And then, with some confusion, he realized what part of town he was in.

Solomon Hickey’s barbershop was open on a Friday night, snow drifting down over the candy cane–colored sign, the victory over tyranny allowing this evening, the smell of fresh aftershave faint in the cold night air. The barbershop—called Antonio’s after Solomon’s boss, who was now retired—sat in a little nook on the street, pleasant and well looked after.

Owen paused for a long moment.

“Go home now,” a voice told him.

But he had been drinking Scotch all day, and that voice was fleeting, in among the boys and girls coming down from the hockey game or over from the Grand Theatre. He must stop these rumors for her sake. (He might not have thought this if he hadn’t been so foolish as to kiss her. Still and all, he had caused it.)

So he put his hand on the doorknob, took a deep breath, and walked inside, a bell tinkling.

“Did Sterling run in here?” he asked.

Solomon stopped sweeping and looked at him.

Owen smelled heavy cigarette smoke, hair lotion and shaving cream, and the warm scent of cut hair that had fallen like some deposed bandits to the floor.

Solomon Hickey had been watching Owen for the last five minutes, and did not know why he was anxiously standing outside or now coming in to ask about Sterling. He shrugged.

He, of course, had spread rumors, especially the one most damning—the one about the cave, and the letter found there. Still and all, they were just the rumors everyone else was spreading—they had circled about him too, and once started there was no starting point. In fact, by that point a rumor takes on validation. You could not blame Solomon Hickey more than anyone else in the world.

Owen heard the fizzle of the candy cane light go off. For some reason he never understood, this sound caused a terrible pain to sweep over him—it sounded like the beginning of a night before battle, with flares over the sky, and he found himself bathed in the half-dark light from the street, as if traces of flares were once again in the air over his head.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that Sterling won’t mind his own business,” he said. He knew in a kind of daze that this was who he really wanted to speak to—Sterling.

Then, for some reason, he could hear himself apologizing. But it is not unusual to have very brave men apologize to very foolish ones.

He told Solomon he was leaving town (even though he was certain he would not), and if there were any hard feelings between them, he was sorry. He wished Lula only the best. If Solomon Hickey or Sterling or anyone thought there was anything between him and Camellia, they had the wrong impression. He then asked Solomon to help Camellia, a woman he knew from his time at Lula’s all those years ago. Help him to help Camellia regain her reputation. Turn the tables in the barbershop.

“We have to help her,” he said, and his lips trembled slightly. This caught Hickey by surprise. He seemed delighted.

Owen then said he was willing to clear her of any wrong impression, and apologized for this impression. Camellia loved Reggie and they were both trying to find him.

“And what about Lula—should we help her,” Solomon Hickey asked, “or just leave her die in her room? She’s had a stroke, you know—did you hear that?—and she has no one now—did you hear that?—no one but me!” Again he seemed delighted by this.

“Of course—well, yes,” Owen said, “but—well, that was a long time ago—I mean, when I liked her.”

“Yes, before her stroke,” Solomon said. There were small scissors in one of his pockets and a heavy comb in the other, and his shoes were solid black, and hair spread on the white floor as he lay the broom aside. He looked piqued by Owen’s gall.

“I didn’t know the great Owen Jameson would want to apologize—and run away, my, my,” he said as if speaking to someone else.

“It’s not that—I just want to clear it up,” Owen said.

His leg was paining. Why couldn’t he think? Perhaps he had drunk too much. He decided to go home, turned to go, and then—though hearing Will’s voice in his subconscious telling him to leave immediately—he turned and faced his accuser again. “Just tell me who it was spread these goddamn lies about us—that’s all I want to know—was it you or Sterling?” he said, trying to be calm and taking out a cigarette to light. But his hands shook now from pain and drink.

Solomon thought he had gotten rid of his tormentor with a minimum of trouble. But now he had to readjust in the dark with certain night lights coming on. “No, it wasn’t me,” he said, averting his small dark eyes. “Why would it be me? Your filth has nothing to do with me—you have hurt a lot of people.” He smiled in spite of what he said. “You hurt the Browers—after all that waiting for you that she done.”

The room was in semi-darkness. And Owen remembered the seventeen-year-old boy he had killed in battle. Well, there was not a day when he didn’t. He had come up to the German position—the day before the incident with Reggie—and seen the boy, helmet off, his blond hair tossing in the wind, heart blown away, freckles on his face.

Hickey opened the closet, closed it, and turning around to place the heavy comb on the counter, seemed surprised Owen was still there.

“I thought you were gone,” he said. Suddenly he was ready to put the man out. “If you want to know who talks about you—everyone does. Everyone that comes in here does, every day—you’re killing men up on Good Friday you are, and we know it. But that is not my fault. And everyone talks about Camellia, because she let you make her into used goods—but that’s none of my fault.”

“We have done nothing at all,” Owen said.

Solomon decided not to answer. He just stood still with
his black coat on, waiting silently for the man to leave. Twice he sniffed, and softly touched his cheek because of a paining tooth.

Owen went toward the door thinking only that he would find Sterling and settle it with him. When he turned Solomon followed, motioning with his right hand, holding the heavy lead comb.

“Go,” he kept saying, “you get on.”

Owen thought he remembered this later, but was never sure if it was an actual memory.

At any rate, at that second, seven minutes after nine o’clock on a cold January night in 1947, came a heedless act. Solomon Hickey did something he had never in his life done before. Why, one might ask onward to doomsday, would he do it now?