The Winter of Our Discontent (6 page)

“And why not? They had the money. Whale oil from the seven seas, and spermaceti. Do you know what spermaceti is?”

Red gave a whining sigh.

“I see you don’t. A light, lovely rose-smelling oil from the head cavity of the sperm whale. Read
Moby-Dick
, dog. That’s my advice to you.”

The setter lifted his leg on the cast-iron hitching post at the gutter.

Turning to walk away, Ethan said over his shoulder, “And make a book report. You might teach my son. He can’t even spell spermaceti, or—or anything.”

Elm Street runs at an angle into High Street two blocks from the old Ethan Allen Hawley house. Halfway down the first block a delinquent gang of English sparrows were fighting on the new-coming lawn of the Elgar house, not playing but rolling and picking and eye-gouging with such ferocity and so noisily that they didn’t see Ethan approach. He stopped to watch the battle.

“Birds in their little nests agree,” he said. “So why can’t we? Now there’s a bunch of horse crap for you. You kids can’t get along even on a pretty morning. And you’re the bastards Saint Francis was nice to. Screw!” He ran at them, kicking, and the sparrows rose with a whispered roar of wings, complaining bitterly in door-squeak voices. “Let me tell you this,” Ethan said after them. “At noon the sun will darken and a blackness will fall on the earth and you will be afraid.” He came back to the sidewalk and proceeded on his way.

The old Phillips house in the second block is a boarding house now. Joey Morphy, teller at the First National, came out of the front door. He picked his teeth and straightened his Tattersall waistcoat and said, “Hi,” to Ethan. “I was just going to call on you, Mr. Hawley,” he said.

“Why do they call it Good Friday?”

“It’s from the Latin,” said Joey. “Goodus, goodilius, goodum, meaning lousy.”

Joey looked like a horse and he smiled like a horse, raising a long upper lip to show big square teeth. Joseph Patrick Morphy, Joey Morphy, Joey-boy—“the Morph”—a real popular guy for one only a few years at New Baytown. A joker who got off his gags veily-eyed like a poker player, but he whinnied at other people’s jokes, whether or not he had heard them. A wise guy, the Morph, had the inside dope on everything—and everybody from Mafia to Mountbatten—but he gave it out with a rising inflection, almost like a question. That took the smartaleck tone out of it, made his listener a party to it so that he could repeat it as his own. Joey was a fascinating monkey—a gambler but no one ever saw him lay down a bet, a good book-keeper and a wonderful bank teller. Mr. Baker, First National president, trusted Joey so completely that he let the teller do most of the work. The Morph knew everyone intimately and never used a first name. Ethan was Mr. Hawley. Margie Young-Hunt was Mrs. Young-Hunt to Joey, even though it was whispered that he was laying her. He had no family, no connections, lived alone in two rooms and private bath in the old Phillips house, ate most of his meals at the Foremaster Grill and Bar. His banking past was known to Mr. Baker and the bonding company and it was immaculate, but Joey-boy had a way of telling things that had happened to someone else in a way that made you suspect they had happened to Joey, and if that was so, he had really been around. Not taking credit made people like him even more. He kept his fingernails very clean, dressed well and sharply, and always had a clean shirt and a shoeshine.

The two men strolled together down Elm Street toward High.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you. You related to Admiral Hawley ?”

“Don’t you mean Admiral Halsey?” Ethan asked. “We’ve had lots of captains but I never heard of an admiral in the family.”

“I heard your granddad was a whaling captain. Kind of connected up in my mind with the admiral, I guess.”

“Town like this has got myths,” said Ethan. “Like they say people on my dad’s side did some pirating way back and my mother’s family came over in the
Mayflower
.”

“Ethan Allen,” Joey said. “My God—you related to him too?”

“Might be. Must be,” said Ethan. “What a day—ever see a prettier? What was it you wanted to see me about?”

“Oh, yes. I guess you’re closing the store twelve to three. Would you make me a couple of sandwiches about half past eleven? I’ll run in and get them. And a bottle of milk.”

“Bank’s not closing?”

“Bank is. I’m not. Little Joey’ll be right in there, chained to the books. Big weekend like this—everybody and his dog cashing checks.”

“I never thought of that,” said Ethan.

“Oh, sure. Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day—any long weekend. If I wanted to stick up a bank, I’d do it just before a long weekend. The stuff’s right there all laid out, waiting.”

“You ever get stuck up, Joey?”

“No. But I had a friend that did twice.”

“What did he say about it?”

“Said he was scared. Just took orders. Laid down on the floor and let ’em have it. Said the money was better insured than he was.”

“I’ll bring you the sandwiches when I close up. I’ll knock on the back door. What kind you want?”

“Don’t bother, Mr. Hawley. I’ll slip across the alley—one ham and one cheese on rye, lettuce and mayonnaise, and maybe one bottle of milk and a Coke for later.”

“Got some nice salami—that’s Marullo.”

“No, thanks. How’s the one-man Mafia holding up?”

“All right, I guess.”

“Well, even if you don’t like guineas, you got to admire a guy can build a pushcart into all the property he owns. He’s pretty cute. People don’t know how much he’s got salted away. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. Banker’s not supposed to tell.”

“You didn’t tell.”

They had come to the corner where Elm angles into High Street. Automatically they stopped and turned to look at the pink brick and plaster mess that was the old Bay Hotel, now being wrecked to make room for the new Woolworth’s. The yellow-painted bulldozer and the big crane that swung the wrecking ball were silent like waiting predators in the early morning.

“I always wanted to do that,” Joey said. “Must be a kick to swing that steel ball and see a wall go down.”

“I saw enough go down in France,” Ethan said.

“Yeah! Your name’s on the monument down by the water-front.”

“Did they ever catch the robbers that stuck up your friend?” Ethan was sure the friend was Joey himself. Anyone would have been.

“Oh, sure. Caught ’em like mice. It’s lucky robbers aren’t smart. If Joey-boy wrote a book how to rob a bank, the cops would never catch anybody.”

Ethan laughed. “How’d you go about it?”

“I got a pipeline, Mr. Hawley. I just read the papers. And I used to know a guy pretty well was a cop. You want the two-dollar lecture?”

“ ’Bout six bits’ worth. I’ve got to open the store.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Joey, “I am here this morning—No, look! How do they catch bank robbers? Number one—record, got caught before. Number two—get fighting over the profits and someone blows it. Number three—dames. Can’t let dames alone, and that ties into number four—they got to spend that money. Watch new spenders and you got them.”

“So what’s your method, professor, sir?”

“Simple as socks. Everything opposite. Never rob a bank if you ever got caught or booked for anything. No confederates— do it alone and don’t tell a soul, nobody. Forget dames. And don’t spend it. Put it away, maybe for years. Then, when you’ve got some excuse for having some money, bring it out a little at a time and invest. Don’t spend.”

“How about if the robber got recognized?”

“If he covers his face and don’t talk, who’s going to recognize him? You ever read descriptions by eyewitnesses? They’re nuts. My cop friend says sometimes when they’d plant him in the line-up, he got picked out over and over again. People swore their eyes out he did whatever it was. That’ll be six bits, please.”

Ethan put his hand in his pocket. “I’ll have to owe you.”

“I’ll take it out in sandwiches,” said Joey.

The two crossed High Street and entered the alley that right-angled from the other side. Joey went in the back door of the First National Bank on his side of the alley, and Ethan unlocked the alley door of Marullo’s Fruit and Fancy Groceries on his side. “Ham and cheese?” he called.

“On rye—lettuce and mayonnaise.”

A little light, grayed by the dusty iron-barred window, came into the storeroom from the narrow alley. Ethan paused in the twilight place shelved to the ceiling and stacked with the cartons and wooden cases of canned fruits, vegetables, fish, processed meats, and cheese. He sniffed for mice among the seminal smells of flour and dried beans and peas, the paper-and-ink odor of boxed cereals, thick rich sourness of cheeses, and sausage, reek of hams and bacon, ferment of cabbage trimmings, lettuce, and beet tops from the silvery garbage cans beside the back door. Perceiving no rusty must of mouse, he opened the alley door again and rolled the covered garbage cans into the alley. A gray cat darted to get in, but he drove it away.

“No you don’t,” he remarked to the cat. “Mice and rats are feed for cats, but you’re a sausage nibbler. Aroint! You hear me—aroint!” The seated cat was licking a curled pink paw but at the second “aroint” he hightailed away and scrambled over the board fence behind the bank. “That must be a magic word,” Ethan said aloud. He returned to the storeroom and closed the door after him.

Now through the dusty room to the swinging door of the grocery—but at the cubicle of the toilet he heard the whispering of seeping water. He opened the plywood door, switched on the light, and flushed the toilet. Then he pushed open the wide door with wire-netted glass peekhole and wedged it open, kicking the wood block firmly in with his toe.

The store was greeny from the drawn shades over the big front windows. Again shelves to the ceiling, filled neatly with gleaming canned and glassed foods, a library for the stomach. On one side—counter, cash register, bags, string, and that glory in stainless steel and white enamel, the cold cabinet, in which the compressor whispered to itself. Ethan flipped a switch and flooded the cold cuts, cheeses, sausage, chops, steaks, and fish with a cold bluish neon glare. A reflected cathedral light filled the store, a diffused cathedral light like that of Chartres. Ethan paused to admire it, the organ pipes of canned tomatoes, the chapels of mustard and olives, the hundred oval tombs of sardines.

“Unimum et unimorum,” he intoned in a nasal litanic tone. “Uni unimouse quod unibug in omnem unim, domine— ahhhhhmen,” he sang. And he could hear his wife commenting, “That’s silly and besides it might hurt somebody’s feelings. You can’t go around hurting feelings.”

A clerk in a grocery store—Marullo’s grocery store—a man with a wife and two darling children. When is he alone, when can he be alone? Customers in the daytime, wife and kiddies in the evening; wife at night, customers in the daytime, wife and kiddies in the evening. “Bathroom—that’s when,” Ethan said loudly, and right now, before I open the sluice. Oh! the dusky, musky, smelly-welly, silly-billy time—the slovenly-lovely time. “Now whose feelings can I hurt, sugarfoot?” he said to his wife. “There ain’t nobody nor nobody’s feelings here. Just me and my unimum unimorum until—until I open that goddam front door.”

From a drawer behind the counter by the cash register he took a clean apron and unfolded it and straightened the tapes, put it around his thin middle, brought the tapes around and back again. He reached behind his back with both hands and fumbled a bowknot.

The apron was long, halfway down his shins. He raised his right hand, cupped loosely, palm upward, and he declaimed, “Hear me O ye canned pears, ye pickles and ye piccalilli—‘As soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes came together and led Him into their council—’
as soon as it was day
. The buggers went to work early, didn’t they? They didn’t waste no time nohow. Let’s see now. ‘And it was about the sixth hour’—that’s maybe twelve o’clock—‘and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened.’ Now how do I remember that? Good God, it took Him a long time to die—a dreadful long time.” He dropped his hand and looked wondering at the crowded shelves as though they might answer him. “You don’t speak to me now, Mary, my dumpling. Are you one of the Daughters of Jerusalem? ‘Weep not for me,’ He said. ‘Weep for yourselves and for your children. . . . For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?’ Still breaks me up. Aunt Deborah wrought better than she knew. It’s not the sixth hour yet—not yet.”

He raised the green shades on the big windows, saying, “Come in, day!” And then he unlocked the front doors. “Enter, world.” He swung the iron-barred doors open and latched them open. And the morning sun lay softly on the pavement as it should, for in April the sun arose right where the High Street ran into the bay. Ethan went back to the toilet for a broom to sweep the sidewalk.

A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cats, dogs, butterflies and people.

Ethan Allen Hawley’s quiet, dim, and inward day was done. The man who swept the morning pavement with metronomic strokes was not the man who could sermonize to canned goods, not a unimum unimorum man, not even a silly-billy man. He gathered cigarette ends and gum wrappers, bud cases from the pollenizing trees, and simple plain dust in the sweep of his broom and moved the windrow of derelict toward the gutter, to await the town men with their silver truck.

Mr. Baker took his measured decent way from his house on Maple Street toward the red brick basilica of a First National Bank. And if his steps were not of equal length, who was to know that out of ancient habit he avoided breaking his mother’s back?