The Laughing Matter (4 page)

They came to houses, to sidewalks, walked three blocks, then the younger brother turned around and they began to walk back. When they reached the airport he went to the ticket seller and bought a ticket back.

It was almost five in the morning when he reached his brother's house in Clovis. He went in and found the little girl lying naked on top of her bed, her body strewn about in comfort that seemed everlasting. He thought he would see the boy next, but he saw the boy and his mother together, the boy almost as relaxed as his sister, but the woman tense and pathetic. He stood staring at them, and then the woman opened her eyes. For a moment she didn't remember, then did, and sat up quickly, nakedly. Her face twisted, she began to cry silently, her head falling limp, her hair covering her swollen breasts. She got out of bed, hugged him, and whispered something that wasn't words of any kind. He moved with her to their own room and drew back the coverings of her bed. She got in, sobbing, and he sat down to wait, although he couldn't imagine what he could possibly be waiting for now.

He sat in the room in deadly stupor, staring at the floor, his eyes open but blind, listening to the poor woman, not thinking anything and not speaking. It was more than an hour until their daughter, finding them, flung herself into his arms, as if she were her mother absolved. He hugged her, putting his lips to her neck, keeping them there in the same deadly stupor, still unable to think or understand. The woman stopped sobbing when the girl appeared, for she knew she must.

“You're up before
me
, Papa,” the girl said, “and I'm
always
first.” She turned to the woman. “Mama!” she said.
“You're
awake, too.”

The woman tried to smile. The girl went to the woman and got in bed beside her, moving swiftly to get as close to her as possible.

“Papa,” she said, “what's the matter with your face?”

“I stumbled.”

“Papa!” the girl said with absolute disbelief.
“You
don't stumble! Red stumbles! I stumble! You
never
stumble, Papa.”

“I stumbled.”

“Did you
fall
, Papa?”

“On my face.”

“Oh, Papa!” the girl said, getting out of bed.

She ran to kiss him. He watched the woman, and when he saw her face twisting to cry, he shook his head, and she stopped.

“Poor Papa,” the girl said. “Did you stumble like a little boy?”

“No,” he said, and then
had
to go on, speaking to both of them. “I stumbled like a husband, like a father.” He hugged the girl suddenly, bitterly angry at himself, and then, speaking almost with laughter,
“Anybody
can stumble.”

“Does it
hurt
, Papa?”

“No.”

“Mama,” the girl said, “next time Papa's going to stumble, you help him.”

“Yes.”

“Can I go tell Red, Papa?”

“Sure.”

The girl ran out of the room. After a moment the woman whispered the man's name again, as if she were the girl herself.

“You'd better get up,” the man said. “Get them breakfast. You can sleep some more after they're out in the yard.”

The woman leaped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. The girl came back with the boy.

“Let me see.”

He examined his father's face.

“Papa?”

“Yes, Red.”

“I
heard
you last night.”

“We'll talk about it some other time, Red. Now, go get dressed.”

“Will you help me get dressed, Papa?” the girl said.

“Sure.”

He got up at last, getting up suddenly, and went with the girl to her room, the boy running there after a moment, to be with them, bringing his clothes, dressing there.

“I heard a lot of birds singing a long time ago,” he said.

“Me, too,” the girl said.

“I didn't get out of bed to look at them,” he said. “I almost didn't even wake up to hear them, but I heard them just the same. They sang a long time, and they're still doing it. One of them—I
guess
it was one of them—did it in the dark, in the night, all the time Mama was crying and waiting for you to come home.”

“Red?”

The man looked at his son and shook his head.

“Yes, Papa,” the boy said. And then he said, “What
is
a bird?”

“Well,” the man said, “whatever it is, it's there by accident, like everything else alive.”

“Accident?” the boy said. “Like the accident on the highway we saw that time, two automobiles smashed and turned over, the wheels up instead of down?”

“No,” he said. “Like the accident of seeing somebody you've never seen before and liking her so much that together you make a family. Like the accident of meeting her, and the accident of who your children are when they are born.”

“I don't understand.”

“I
do,”
the girl said.

“No, you don't,” the boy said. “You just
say
you do.”

“I
do!”
the girl said. “I
do
understand.”

“Then explain it,” the boy said.

“Well,” the girl said.

“Well…”

The boy laughed.

“She didn't say
anything
, Papa.”

“Don't laugh,” the girl said. “I said
something
. Didn't I, Papa?”

The woman came to the room, washed and clean, in a blue cotton dress, her hair combed neatly.

“I'll get you both a big breakfast,” she said. She was trying hard to go along as if nothing were the matter. “I'll gather some figs from the tree, peel them, cut them up, pour cream over them. Then you'll have crisp bacon with boiled eggs, toast, and milk.”

She glanced at the man as she went off, but he wasn't looking at her.

He went to the bathroom for a shower. When he was dressed the kids were in the yard playing, the boy high in the fig tree, the girl standing under it to catch the ripe figs he was finding for her. They were speaking with voices louder than he had ever before heard in them because they were in the country, in another climate, in a place where things were growing and ripening, where the sun was near and hot. The woman was somewhere in the house. He went to the telephone and asked the operator to get him Warren Walz. When the man came on the line he said, “Come to dinner tonight. Bring the girls. Come at six, and we'll have a drink.”

He went out on the porch and stood there in the sunlight. A car drove up and Cody Bone got out.

“I met your son last night,” Evan said.

“So he told me,” Cody said. “I pass here every morning on my way to work. Thought I'd stop in case the boy wants to ride in the locomotive.”

“Where would you go? I mean, that's what
he
wanted to know.”

“We'd work around the yards.”

They went to the fig tree, and from high up in it the boy saw Cody. At first he wasn't sure it was Cody because when he had first seen him Cody had been part of the locomotive, but when the man smiled and Red saw the square teeth, he knew who it was.

“This is my daughter, Eva,” Evan said.

“Eva,” Cody said.

“How do you do,” the girl said.

The boy was down and out of the tree, to see the man
out
of the locomotive, away from it, a thing he especially
wanted to notice. It was a great difference, but the man was still the man Red liked.

“You want a fig?” Red said. He offered the one in his hand.

“I certainly do,” Cody said. He ate the fig whole. “I just came by to say hello.”

“No,” Evan said. “Mr. Bone came by to find out if you'd like to ride in the locomotive. Around the yards.”

“When?” Red said.

“Now,” his father said, “if you like.”

The boy looked from his father to Cody, thinking about it, perhaps a little frightened.

“All right,” he said. “You want to go watch, Eva?”

“Yes,” the girl said.

They walked around the house to Cody's car, the woman in the house moving from the kitchen to the parlor to watch. She saw the engineer help the children into the front seat, to sit there beside him, and she saw her husband get in the back. When they were gone she wept bitterly, wandering around the house, straightening things out.

She had heard her husband on the telephone speaking to Warren Walz, and she knew that by six o'clock she'd have to gather herself together, but what was she to do?

“He's just like his brother,” Warren Walz said to his wife. “Not a word about last night. No concern at all about what we might have put ourselves through trying to be helpful. Not even the decency to ask if we'd
like
to come to dinner. An order. Come to dinner. Come at six. Bring the girls. We'll have a drink. Just like that.”

“It couldn't have been something ordinary,” May Walz said. “She couldn't have been that rude if it had been something ordinary. She slammed the door in my face.”

“I went all over Clovis looking for him,” the man said.
“Into every place that was open. The bars, the park, the poolroom, Susie's.”

“Susie's?” the woman said. “You didn't tell me.”

“I was too busy trying to get you calmed down,” the man said. “You
were
frightened.”

“I was
sure
she'd come and open the door,” the woman said. “Other people fight and still manage to be polite. After all, they
had
asked us over. You weren't too busy to tell me everything else. What's it like?”

“Messy.”

“Was anyone there?”

“Two Mexican boys and an old man.”

“Who was
he?”

“I don't know.”

“I mean, it won't get around that you went there, will it?”

“It never occurred to me.”

“A thing like that could be an awful nuisance,” the woman said. “This isn't a big town like Fresno, or a city like San Francisco, where such things go unnoticed. Dade doesn't go to San Francisco to visit the
museums
, does he?”

“What do you mean?”

“He goes for a week or so every couple of months, doesn't he?”

“Yes.”

“He never has to do with anybody we know here.”

“I don't know anything about Dade,” the man said. “What's more, I don't want to. It's none of my business why he goes to San Francisco. I don't like his brother any more than I like him. I'll phone and say we can't make it.”

“We've
got
to go.”

“Why?”

“To let them save face, at least,” the woman said. “After all, if they've got no manners, we have.”

“Both of them make me feel uncomfortable,” the man said.
“Inferior
, even. I don't want to go.”

“We've got to go,” the woman said.

“You want to find out what the trouble was,” the man said. “I don't
care
what it was. What could it have been? He's crazy, like his brother. They had a fight, and he went off. He came back, and it was all over. I don't want to go. I don't like being
told
to come to dinner.”

“I'm sure he meant to be as polite as possible under the circumstances,” the woman said. “I'm sure he gave you credit for knowing he
was
ashamed. I'm sure he believed you'd understand his need to make the invitation as short as possible. After all, he
did
remember to call. That alone shows that he's not insensitive to our having been involved. He called early. It would be rude not to be there, all of us, at six.”

“I don't like him,” the man said.

“Even so,” the woman said. “I think we've manners enough to go as if nothing had happened. Their kids are lovely and get along with ours so well.
They'll
have fun, at any rate.”

“I don't like the idea of going, that's all,” the man said. “I'd like to think of some halfway decent way of getting out of it.”

“It'll be
easy
to get out of it,” the woman said, “but there's no way of getting out of it decently. Getting out of it can mean almost anything to them. Wouldn't it be simpler to forget last night and go?”

“Sure it would,” the man said. “But I'm not sure I want to forget last night. You gave me a rough time. You gave yourself a rough time. What the hell for? You came home from the pictures and said they insisted that we go over. We put the kids to bed, with Mrs. Blotch sitting in the parlor, and we drove there. We found a drunken maniac on the road, who refused to greet us, or let us greet him. We found his wife in a faint in front of the house. We found his son trying to lift her up. The woman slammed the door in our faces. I chased all over town, going into places I don't like to be seen in, looking for him. You stood there on the porch at the door half the night, scared to death. We sat up until three in the morning because we were so keyed up, believing we
ought
to, believing they
might
telephone. I'm not sure I want to forget last night. I think I'd rather forget him and his brother.”

May Walz had never known her husband to be so garrulous or so bitter about anything.

“I know what we'll do,” he went on. “We'll pack up and drive to Yosemite for a week. We're planning to go before summer's over, anyway. Why not go now? I'll drive over and
tell
him, instead of phoning. That'll make it decent enough. He'll understand. I think he'll
prefer
it. I'll tell him the kids have had it in their hearts to get to Yosemite all summer, and they've been so eager to go lately that we decided to do something for once when they want us to.”

“We always have, haven't we?” the woman said.