Now and on Earth Page 5

  “Mama mean to Jo,” Mack observed wisely.

  Roberta whirled and slapped him, and his fat face puckered and he bawled. Shannon’s eyes flickered dangerously. She will beat the stuffing out of Mack herself, but it infuriates her to see anyone else touch him. She slid under the table. Roberta knew what was coming, and she tried to kick her chair back; she even kicked Shannon. But, of course, that wouldn’t stop her. In a split second Shannon had buried her teeth in Roberta’s leg.

  Roberta let out a scream that they must have heard down on the waterfront. She got to her feet—or rather foot—stumbled, and fell backward. And Shannon slid out from under the table, following her, and there was blood trickling from the corners of her mouth.

  I grabbed her by the legs and pulled, and Roberta screamed louder than ever. She dropped down on the floor, shrieking hysterically, and began striking Shannon in the face. Shaking her by the hair. Clawing, and scratching, and screaming. Screaming for us to do something. To stop standing around and do—OoooooOOO! JIMMIE!

  I got Shannon by the nose, and shut off her wind. But she merely held on with her middle teeth, and began to breathe out of the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking, and there was a fiendish animal joy in them. I could have choked her loose of course. Or, rather, some people could. I couldn’t.

  Jo tried tickling her. Mom poured ice water on her until the floor was covered an inch deep. We all threatened—and tried—to blister her. It was useless. It looked as though we were settled there for the night—Roberta sobbing and pleading; Shannon, jaws set, laughing hilariously inside her tiny body.

  It was Frankie who got her loose.

  “All right, Shannon,” she said. “The next time I bring any boys home, just don’t expect to be introduced.”

  Shannon looked at her, hesitated, and opened her mouth. And Roberta jerked free. She had been bitten badly. I know it must have hurt a great deal.

  “You’ve got to spank her, Jimmie,” she wailed. “You’ve just got to take her in hand!”

  “Dammit,” I said. “I can’t spank her!”

  And I certainly couldn’t have by that time. Shannon had got to the open door and was standing with her back to it.

  “Why won’t you introduce me, Frankie?” she said.

  “Huh! Think I’m going to introduce a cannibal like you to anyone?”

  “What’s a cannibal?”

  “That’s what you are. Someone that eats people.”

  Shannon threw back her head and her falsetto laugh filled the room.

  “Jimmie!” snapped Roberta, rubbing her leg. “Are you going to punish that child, or not?”

  I got up; and Shannon took pity on me. She ran. By the time I got to the door she had disappeared. I went out and looked around the house and called her. But there wasn’t any answer.

  I went back inside. “She’s gone,” I said.

  “She’ll be all right,” said Mom. “She’s probably gone over to the drugstore. She hasn’t been over there yet today.”

  “What’s she doing over there? That’s three blocks away.”

  “They give her a nickel’s worth of stuff every day to leave them alone.”

  I turned on Roberta. “You pay them for it, don’t you? You don’t let her go around blackmailing people?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Roberta. “I didn’t ask ’em to give her anything.”

  “Give me some money,” I said.

  “What for?”

  “What for? Good God, Roberta! What’s getting into you? How many other places is she pulling this stunt?”

  Mom and Roberta looked at each other.

  “Out with it,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t believe she has any other place but the grocery store,” said Mom. “And it was—”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “It was just once, Jimmie,” said Roberta. “Just this morning. She wanted some bacon for breakfast, and we didn’t have any. So—she went down to the store and got a half-pound.”

  “Oh God damn!” I said. “Well, I’m going after her. If I’ve got to bring in the money and buy the groceries and do every other damned thing around here—”

  “Keep your shirt on,” said Frankie.

  “But, Frankie!” I said. “The child isn’t five years old yet. What’ll she be like when—”

  “I’ll go get her,” said Frankie. “I’ve got to get a neck-clip, anyway. She can sit in the beauty parlor with me until I’m through.”

  “Yes, but the money—”

  “If you want something to worry about,” said Roberta, “you might look at my leg.”

  And I gave up. Mom and I helped her back to the bedroom and doctored her leg.

  Jo went to practice her play.

  Frankie went after Shannon.

  About ten-thirty, after the others had gone to bed, she and Shannon came in. Shannon threw her arms around me and kissed me and said she was going to be good all next day. And I was relieved, because I knew that she would remember and keep her promise. A promise is a sacred thing with Shannon. I think one reason that she has so little use for us is that we have made so many promises to her that we haven’t kept. But that may not be it. If I were she, I’d dislike us just on general principles.

  She unfolded one tiny fist and dropped something into my lap. A nickel.

  “I didn’t get candy,” she explained proudly. “I told the man I wanted a nickel. For you to buy whisky with.”

  I choked and started to swear, and then I thought, Oh, hell, what is the use. So I kissed her good-night again, and she and Frankie went to bed.

  About fifteen minutes later, when I was settling down with a magazine, Mom came in wearing the old wrapper she sleeps in and sat down on the lounge.

  “I thought you’d gone to bed,” I said.

  “Frankie woke me up.…I wish you’d speak to Frankie, Jimmie.”

  “What about?”

  “You know. About her drinking, and everything.”

  “Frankie can carry liquor,” I said. “She’s the one person I’ve seen that it really did good. She never drinks to keep from feeling bad. It’s always to make her feel better.”

  “Well, it’s a bad thing, anyway. It’s cheapening and coarsening. She’s going to take one drink too many with some of these fellows, and it’ll be too bad.”

  “Frankie’s not like that.”

  “You don’t know what she’s like. No one does.”

  “Oh, all right,” I said. “I’ll speak to her.”

  “I wish you would.…What do you think we’d better do about Pop, Jimmie?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Mom,” I said. “Look. Haven’t we had enough trouble for one evening? Do we have to thresh out everything now?”

  “We are going to have to do something, Jimmie.”

  “Don’t I know it? Am I holding back? But I can’t think tonight. I just can’t.”

  Mom looked down at her hands. “Do you suppose if I rented a typewriter—”

  “Please don’t ask me that, Mom.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a lot in your own mind, Jimmie? Don’t you think that if you really tried—”

  I laughed. “That’s it,” I said. “I haven’t really tried. Not really. You get me a typewriter Monday and I’ll go to work again.”

  The sarcasm was wasted on Mom. I might have known it would be. I’m always broadcasting when I should be receiving.

  “That’s a bargain,” she said, getting up. “I’ll get the typewriter and have the table cleared for you right after supper. All you’ll have to do is write.”

  All I’ll have to do is write.…

  So I had that to worry about.

  I thought I was hungry. I told myself I was. I threw down the magazine and went into the kitchen. I made a big pot of coffee and a plate of tuna sandwiches. I started to eat.

  The first sandwich started coming up as I was biting into the second. I kept right on eating. Take it, damn you, I said, you’ve had your own way long enoug
h. I swallowed, and stuffed a whole sandwich down my throat. I threw my head back, and tossed down a cupful of scalding coffee.

  That did it. I strangled and a geyser spewed out, splashing over the walls and floor. I got over the sink, and there was a tidal wave of it. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t any more fish in me, but there was plenty of blood. I brought up a cupful with every gasp. I didn’t have to cough. A deep breath was enough to start it rolling.

  Then Roberta was there with her arm around me. She sat me down in a chair and fed me cold water.

  “What have you been doing to yourself, Jimmie?”

  “Nothing,” I whispered.

  “Did you really want a drink that bad?”

  “No,” I said. “I just thought I wanted one. Besides, we don’t have the money to throw away.”

  “You sit there,” she said. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  She went back into the bedroom, and then I heard the front door close. And through the dinette window I saw her hurrying down the sidewalk, her fur coat over her nightdress.

  She was back in a minute—not more than three, anyway—with a pint of whisky. I took a stiff drink before I told her that she shouldn’t have bought it.

  “It was my money,” she said. “I’d been saving it to take to church. It’s been so long since I took anything—anything like that—Jimmie. And you’re supposed to, and I hated to go any more without doing it. And—and—”

  “Honey,” I said. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.…”

  I guess I had forgotten how much Roberta did and does love me. I guess I have wanted to forget. You cannot fight a person who loves you, and I have had to fight.

  But, now. Well, I know what the Church means to Roberta, and I knew that in her own mind she had damned herself a little by diverting that dollar from its original destination. That dollar—the seven cents she had chiseled from Mom was probably part of it. I remembered all over again.

  I was going to school at the University of Nebraska, and Lois, my partner in so many nights of love, had been married a month. And I was, to put it politely, on the make. I met Roberta at a school mixer (they were not exclusively for students). I rubbed her and felt her, and she didn’t seem to mind. So the next night I took her for a ride; and the night after that I took her to another dance. It was still all right. I could go as far as I liked.

  Well, I had observed the best fraternity traditions. I’d shown her a good time. I hadn’t got her drunk or told her she’d have to walk or ride. It was just a case of two people wanting something they knew would be good. Or so I thought.

  We went up to my room.

  I said, “Don’t you want to take your dress off? It might get wrinkled.”

  She took off her dress and lay down again.

  I said, “How about those other things? Can I help you?”

  She said, “Does it hurt very much?”

  I didn’t get it for a minute. “You’re not sewed into them, are you?”

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “I don’t mind, but if it’s going to hurt I want to know. So I won’t holler.”

  “Look,” I said, “are you a—haven’t you ever done this before?”

  “I certainly have not!”

  “Well—well, what the hell are you doing here then?”

  “Why you know. I love you.”

  “Well, look, honey,” I said. “I appreciate it, and all that, but—but I don’t want it that bad. You’ll love some other guy later on, and—”

  “No, I won’t. Now, show me how.”

  “But—but, baby,” I said. “I won’t let you do this.”

  And she said, calmly, “You may as well. I’ll never love anyone but you. No one will ever have me but you.”

  I was never any good at arguments.

  Two months later when Jo was conceived, we got married. I didn’t have to marry her; she made that very clear. But she also made it clear that wherever I was, there she was going to be, forever and always. I thought it might be inconvenient to have her and children around without a marriage license. So—

  But, as I was saying, there is one thing I am sure of. Roberta loves me. She loves me so much that she doesn’t give a whoop whether I go to heaven or hell if she can go along. She would, in fact, prefer hell. I would need her there. I might not—I might see someone I liked better—in the other place.

  That is Roberta. I didn’t mind so much that Saturday night.

  We moved in to the lounge, and she took a nip or two from the bottle so that the whisky on my breath wouldn’t bother her. And then we sat and talked about everything under the sun. I said I was going to get ahold of myself, and be different, and she said I didn’t need to be different. However or whatever I was, she’d love. She said she was the one that was going to be different—“I know I’m hateful and cross and mean, Jimmie, but it seems like I just can’t help it. I’m always sorry afterwards, but I can’t help it at the time. But I’m going to be different from now on; really, I am.”

  That’s the way the evening ended. Not quite, but we’ve covered the other matter.

  There was an armistice all day Sunday.

  I almost felt good Monday morning. Mom fixed my breakfast, and I actually ate some.

  “You still want me to get the typewriter, Jimmie?” she said.

  “Sure. I’m going to sit down tonight and beat the holy hell out of it.”

  Gross picked me up in a new Ford just as I’d crossed Pacific.

  “You see, that really wasn’t my car the other night,” he said. “This is my car. I mean it’s the one my wife’s folks bought for her.”

  “It’s a nice car,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I already heard plenty about how nice it is. I wish I could tell ’em to take it and ram it.”

  “In-laws are funny people,” I said.

  “They ain’t to me. I don’t know what to do sometimes. I thought, maybe, if I could get a little clerical experience I might get some kind of civil service job. That would be nice and dignified, and it would pay pretty good.”

  I kept him talking about himself. I knew, if I didn’t, the conversation would turn to my private affairs.

  When he left college, he said, he’d played pro football for two years. Then he’d begun to lose his speed, and they’d canned him, and he’d joined the army. They discharged him after eleven months because of a permanently disabled ankle.…He received a seven-dollar compensation check from the Government every month. He’d gone from the army into aircraft work. He didn’t say so, but it was apparent that he was fit for nothing but manual labor.

  We walked into the plant together. Moon was at the desk examining the books.

  “I see you haven’t straightened these out yet, Gross,” he said ominously.

  “I’m making headway,” Gross protested. “The things are crazy, Moon. And you know how it is—half the time I don’t know when stuff is brought in or taken out of here.”

  “Dilly,” said Moon, “do you think you can handle these books?”

  “Why—” I began. “Why, I—”

  “I think you can,” Moon said. “Gross, show Dilly the ropes. When you get through, you can start dusting the racks.”

  8

  Early last winter I was coming out of the post office in Oklahoma City when I ran into Mike Stone. I told him I’d just been up to the recruiting station, trying to join the army.

  It was the day Mike had been released under 50,000-dollar bond on a criminal syndicalism charge, and he undoubtedly had many things on his mind. But he stopped to inquire into my troubles, regardless.

  “I don’t think a change of scenery is going to help you, Dill,” he said. “But—but if you’ve just got to go some place, how about the West Coast? Our attorney borrowed a car from his brother at San Diego when he was out there on vacation, and he’s got to send it back. If you want to take it, your transportation won’t cost you anything.”

  It sounded pretty good. If I got ou
t there on a limb, sort of, maybe the foundation would extend my fellowship. Or maybe I could connect with one of the Hollywood studios. I went home.

  “Well,” said Roberta, “where’s your uniform? I thought you’d be on the way to Fort Sill, by now. They didn’t turn you down because you had a wife and three children, did they?”

  “Jimmie was probably afraid they’d make him sleep on the ground,” said Mom. “I never saw such a boy always to be afraid he’d get an ant or a little worm on him or something.”

  “You ought to join the Foreign Legion, Jimmie,” said Frankie. “You could get some good material for stories.”

  I said, “Get my things packed. I’m going to California.”

  “Ho-hum,” said Roberta. “Can you folks eat macaroni and cheese for lunch?”

  “I’m going in a car. Mike Stone’s lawyer is going to give me his car to go in.”

  Roberta came alive then. So!—I’d been chasing around with those filthy Reds again. Well, she hoped they’d send me over the road with the rest of the crowd; it’d serve me right.

  “Jimmie, you mustn’t have anything to do with them,” Mom said. “We’ve already got about all the trouble we can stand.”

  Frankie said, “I always liked Mike. What’s the deal? Maybe I’ll go along. I’m getting doggoned tired of cashiering for fifteen a week and getting docked for shortages I don’t make.”

  “I’m going by myself,” I said. “As soon as I get settled and see how things are, I’ll send for the rest of you. Roberta, when my check comes, wire me forty and keep the rest.”

  “You’re not going any place but to jail,” said Roberta. “I warn you, James Dillon: If you even look like you’re going to—”

  “I don’t know, Roberta,” said Mom. “It might be all right. There’s really nothing I’ve got to stay here for, and Frankie ought to get away from Chick. I don’t see how she stands him slobbering and sulking around all the time.”

  “Oh, Chick’s all right, Mom,” said Frankie. “He just doesn’t know quite how to take you people. And he gets blue and disgusted because he doesn’t have a better job.”