Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (14 page)

 
          
Whitcomb
,
Indiana
, on a Tuesday in mid-July. Even the dogs were bored. A couple of them
lying around in the shade under Edsels and LaSaUes didn’t even look up when the
Trailways bus groaned to a stop in front of the Rexall store, farted shrilly,
and opened its door to release the big-bellied sweat-stained driver and the
Down Under Trio. Bob Sangster scratched his big nose, Harry Razza patted his
deeply wavy auburn hair, Louis B. Urbiton gazed about the somnolent downtown of
Whitcomb in mild amaze, and the bus driver opened a bomb-bay door in the rib
cage of the bus to remove the Aussies’ battered and disgusting mismatched luggage.

 
          
“So
this is
America
,” Harry Razza said.

 
          
“Can’t
say I like it much,” Bob Sangster said.

 
          
“Oh,
good,” said Louis B. Urbiton, “there’s a pub.”

 
          
“Bar,”
Harry corrected.

 
          
“Bahhhhh”
Louis amended.

 
          
“Have
a nice day,” the driver said, and remounted his bus.

 
          
The
Aussies stared after him, in astonishment and shock. “What?” demanded Bob.

 
          
“I
call that cheek,” Harry said.

 
          
The
bus door snicked shut. The bus groaned away. The dog under the Edsel opened one
eye, saw the six well-polished shoes of the Aussies, decided in his doggy
innocence that these must be acceptable functioning members of society, and
closed the eye again.

 
          
“We
must phone the delectable Sara,” Harry said, “and have her come gather us.”

           
“Perhaps there’s a phone in yonder
bahhhhh”
Louis suggested.

 
          
“And
we could wait there for her,” Bob said.

 
          
Louis
smiled on him. “What a good idea,” he said.

 
          
The
Aussies picked up their revolting saggy luggage and crossed
Fremont Avenue
to the Veterans’ Bar & Grill, a place
with neon beer signs in the window for enticement and a stubbly bit of
triangular shingle roof over the entrance for decoration. They left the bright
sunlight outside for the damp-smelling darkness within, and once their eyes
adjusted they saw they were not alone in here, though the place was as quiet as
any empty room you’ve ever listened to.

 
          
Fifteen
or twenty people, most but not all male, were scattered along the dark-wood bar
running down the right side of the joint and at the black Formica tables
filling the space on the left. Everybody in Whitcomb retired from the railroad
hung out here, plus a few widows and a couple of unemployed sheet-metal workers
plotting a life of crime. Little was said in this room, and that litde was
muttered. People who hang out in the Veterans’ Bar & Grill in the middle of
a sunny Tuesday in July don’t have much they want to say.

 
          
The
Aussies gazed around this gloomy interior. “Oh, my,” Bob Sangster said.

 
          
“Doctor,”
said Harry Razza, “can this environment be saved?”

 
          
“We’re
not here a moment too soon,” said Louis B. Urbiton. A man of action, he dropped
his bags and raised one hand. “Landlord!”

 
          
In
the large main kitchen of a small local bakery, with the heat of the ovens
compounding the heat of the day and a dozen white-clothed bakers punching and
tearing various doughs into breads and pastries, Sara talked with the
third-generation owner of the place, a fortyish pudgy man looking as sharp and
hip and with-it as a huge green pinky ring and a loud check jacket permitted,
and the Master Baker, an irascible genius of sixty who was good at what he did
and therefore had no need to be hip, and who didn’t like this lumpy
interruption of Sara into the smooth batter of his life one little bit.

 
          
“It’s
just a birthday cake,” Sara pointed out, not for the first time.

 
          
“Just
a birthday cake,” the Master Baker echoed, with ancient irony. He looked as
though he subscribed to some primeval superstition that women were bad luck in
a kitchen, and would prefer Sara to be put ashore at once.

 
          
“And
our name in the paper, Gus,” the owner said, showing how little he understood
the well- springs of his Master Baker’s personality. “Hack- myer’s Bakery,”
breathed this heir, almost rever- endy. “Gus Altervegh, Master Baker.”

 
          
“Just
a birthday cake,” repeated the Master Baker, with the same deadly inflection.

 
          
“Sure,”
Sara said, pretending to ignore the sarcasm.

           
“Just a
twenty-foot
birthday cake!” The Master Baker looked as though he
wanted to hit Sara on the forehead with a wooden spoon.

 
          
“Now,
look,” Sara said, turning to the owner, who was her ally. Useless, but an ally.
“I’ve let you negotiate me down from fifty feet, but that’s all. Twenty’s as
short as I go.”

 
          
“Listen,
I understand,” the owner assured her. “I hear you. I know where you’re coming
from.” The Master Baker ignored his employer, saying to Sara, “You want to take
a stroll in my ovens, lady? Walk around in there, play a little pitch and
catch? Whadaya think we got here, the Bessemer Steel Works?”

 
          
“That’s
all right,” Sara told him. “You can make it in parts, and put the parts
together.”

           
“Sure, Gus,” the owner said. “With
the icing on, who’s to know?”

           
“Look
at my ovens!” the Master Baker yelled, waving a brawny arm and a bum-pocked
hand. “I can do you a twenty
-inch
cake, max max max!”

      
     
“So what’s that?” the owner asked. “Maybe
twelve, thirteen cakes?”

           
“So what’s that?” the Master Baker
demanded. “Two, three
days?”

           
“Tomorrow,” Sara said.

           
“They’re not gonna be a hundred
every day, Gus,” the owner pointed out.

           
“If they’re waiting on a twenty-foot
birthday cake from me,” the Master Baker said, “they’ll
never
be a hundred.”

 
          
Sara
said, “What about a pizza oven?”

           
Horribly insulted, shocked to the
very roots of his being, the Master Baker stared wide-eyed at Sara, having
never in his life before seen such a dishonorable person. “Www
-what?”

 
          
Sara
was not going to let the good opinion of one small-town Master Baker stand
between her and success in her first assignment out in the world on her own!
Plowing doggedly forward, pretending to see nothing odd in the man’s staring
eyes and ashen complexion, she said, “If I could arrange for a pizza oven,
could you put together five four-foot cakes?”

 
          
The
Master Baker pressed fat palms to his temples. “Five four-foot cakes,” he said,
with a dying fall. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

 
          
“In
the paper, Gus,” the owner said, eager and avid, and to Sara he said, “With a
picture, right?”

 
          
“Absolutely,”
Sara said. “A picture.” Then she suddenly remembered: “Oh, my God, the
photographer!”

 
          
Now
they both stared at her. “Miss?” the owner said.

 
          
“The Australians!”

           
The owner looked like a man thinking
about insurance; does it cover the nervous breakdowns of nonemployees in the
kitchen? “What is it, miss?” he asked.

 
          
But
Sara was already in motion. “A phone, a phone.” Over her shoulder, she called,
“I’ll arrange for the oven, and the cake dish! I’ll get back to you!” And she
was gone.

 
          
The
Master Baker and the owner looked at one another. “A twenty-foot cake dish,”
commented the Master Baker. “They put too much yeast in her head.”

 
          
What
a lot of fun! The regulars of the
Veterans’ Bar & Grill on
Fremont Avenue
had had no
idea
the walls of the grungy place could ring with so much
hilarity. While the never-indicted Frank Sinatra sang “My Way” on the crumbling
Wurl- itzer, widows and retirees and sheet-metal workers all actually sat
upright or even stood on their two feet, their grasp firm on their glasses,
their eyes shining, their flushed cheeks cracked with unexpected laughter. Even
the bartender showed a small smile from time to time, though he always
remembered to cover it by turning to punch the cash register. Only one sodden
bag lady in the comer remained oblivious.

 
          
Harry
Razza flirted with the widows. Bob Sangster explained the real story of Ronnie
Biggs and the great English train robbery to the sheet-metal workers. Louis B.
Urbiton did his impressions of those various stars of stage, screen and
politics which he claimed to have interviewed in his long and illustrious
reportorial career. All his impressions looked and sounded like Burt Lancaster
(whom he didn’t do) except for his impression of Mae West, which was like
nothing on earth.

 
          
“This
is the most fun I’ve had,” one ancient confessed, “since my wife’s funeral.”

 
          
“You
fellows ought to hang out here more often,” said a former railroad company
timer.

           
Batting her eyes, until the practice
made her dizzy, a widow said to Harry Razza, “So you folks are all the way from
Australia
.”

 
          
“Drawn
by the sparkle in your eyes, my darling.”

 
          
“I
never met anybody from
Australia
before,” said a former fireman on the B, P
& T.

 
          
Bob
Sangster turned to Louis B. Urbiton, saying, “Show them your kangaroo.”

 
          
A
retiree gaped, slopping his Lite beer. “You have a
kangaroo?”

 
          
The
bartender lowered his eyebrows and glowered through them.

 
          
“No
kangaroo jokes,” he said.

 
          
“Did
you hear,” Harry Razza asked him, “about the chap who went into the pub with a
carrot in his ear?”

 
          
“Yes,”
the bartender said.

 
          
“No,”
Bob Sangster told the credulous retiree. “He
imitates
a kangaroo.” To Louis B. Urbiton, he said, “Go on, Louis,
show him.”

 
          
So
Louis showed him. The sight of a fairly respectable-looking, neatly dressed in
suit and tie, fifty-one-year-old Australian leaping about the bar, up onto
chairs and back down onto the floor, suitcoat tail flying, hand firmly holding
drink as both hands pretended to be tiny kangaroo paws boxing, the whole while
honking,
was so captivating that
everybody had to do it, beginning with the retirees and finishing with the
widows.
Honk honk honk,
people jumped
up and down, mighty leaps forward and back, pinwheeling their little kangaroo-paw
fists; and all the while, Harry Razza continued to talk to the bartender:
“Then ”
he said, “the chap walks in next
day with a stalk of celery in his ear.”

 
          
“Don’t
tell me the punchline,” the bartender said. “Pm warning you.