The Hunger and Other Stories Page 6

  Julio reached for the pill box and controlled his fingers as they removed the last cigarette. Paco grinned.

  “So in the meantime, let’s have our meeting. Whoever got what, lay it out on the floor.”

  The boys began reaching into bags and parcels, and into their pockets, and taking out watches and rings and handfuls of money. These items they spread on the floor.

  The rich man, Julio thought, lying still in the bushes, with his fat dead face, waiting for the flies, waiting, while a little Mexican boy with red wet hands runs away, fast, fast. . . .

  The grating sound of heavy machinery being pushed across cement came muffled through the wooden doors of the freight dock. There were a few indistinct voices, and the distant hum of other machines that never stopped working.

  The night was still airless. Julio and Albert Dominguin walked along the vacant land by the boxcar, clinging to the shadows and speaking little.

  Finally Julio said, “This guy really do all that that Paco said?”

  “He got smart,” Albert said.

  “Kick you?”

  “You could call it that. Just as good.”

  “So what kind of a stink you guys raise to cause all that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing my ass.”

  “Aah, you know Paco. He got p-o’ed at the picture and started to horse around. Dropped a beer bottle off of the balcony or something, I don’t know.”

  “Then this guy booted you guys out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did Paco give him a fight?”

  “No,” Albert said, thoughtfully. They climbed up the side of a car and jumped from the top to the ground. “He’s too smart for that. They would of called the cops and all that kind of crap. This way’s better.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Yeah, real nervous. I’m dying to death, I’m so frigging nervous. Listen—when I get through tonight, Paco and all the rest of you guys better lay off me.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “So what is it?”

  “Twenty-of. This is the place—he went by right over there.”

  Julio wondered if Albert could hear his heart. And if Albert could read his thoughts. . . .

  He felt the greasy knife handle slip in his hands, so he took it out and wiped it on his trousers and tested it. He pushed the point of the blade into the soft wood of a car, pretending it was the Jewish boy’s neck.

  He pulled the knife out and didn’t do that any more.

  They sat on the cindery ground beside a huge iron wheel.

  “Really a rat, huh?” Julio said.

  “The most,” Albert said.

  “How old?”

  “Who knows—twenty-five, thirty. You can’t tell with them.”

  “You don’t suppose he—I mean this guy—you don’t think he’s got a family or anything like that, do you?”

  “What the hell kind of a thing is that to say? Christ, no! Who’d marry a greaseball slob like that?” Albert laughed softly, and took from his leather jacket pocket a red-handled knife that had to be operated manually. He opened it and began to clean his fingernails. Every two or three seconds he glanced up toward the dark unpaved street.

  “So nobody’s going to miss him, right?” Julio said.

  “No. We’re going to all break down and cry. What’s the matter, you chickening out? If you are, I ain’t going to sit here on my can all—”

  Julio clutched Albert’s shirt-front and gathered it in his fist. “Shut up. You hear? Shut your goddam face about that stuff or I’ll break it for you.”

  “Shhh, quiet down . . . we’ll talk later. Let go. If you want to screw everything, just keep shooting your mouth.”

  Julio felt the perspiration course down his legs.

  He tried to stop the shudder.

  “Okay,” he said.

  On tracks a mile distant a string of freight cars lumbered clumsily out of a siding, punching with heavy sounds at the night. There were tiny human noises, too, like small birds high out of sight. Otherwise, there was only his own breathing.

  “I want to hear ‘mackerel snapper’ when this is over,” Julio said.

  “You ain’t done nothing yet,” Albert said, looking away quickly.

  “Screw you,” Julio said. But his voice started to crack, so he forced a yawn and stretched out his legs. “So when the hell we going to get a goddam sickle?” he said.

  Albert didn’t answer.

  “Kind of a gang is this, anyway, we don’t have any goddam sickles?”

  “Five-of. He ought to be along pretty quick now.”

  Julio grinned, closed his knife, reopened it with a swift soft click, closed it again. His hands were moist and the knife handle was coated with a grimy sweat which made it slippery. He wiped it carefully along the sides of his jeans.

  “The Kats have got sickles. Five, for Chrissakes.”

  “Kats, schmats,” Albert said. “Knock it off, will you?”

  “What’s the matter, Albert? Don’t tell me you’re scared!”

  Albert drew back his fist and hit Julio’s shoulder, then quickly put a finger to his lips. “Shhh!”

  They listened.

  It was nothing.

  “Hey, little boy, hey, Albert, know what?” Julio combed his hair. “Know what I know? Paco, he don’t think I’ll do it. He wants you and I to come back so he can give with the big-man routine. He don’t think I’ll do it.”

  Albert looked interested.

  “He’s real sharp. Having a great big ball right now. Where’s it going to put him when we get back with that Jewboy’s ears?” Julio laughed.

  In the stillness, footsteps rang sharply on the ground, but ponderously as gravel was crunched and stones were sent snapping.

  The footsteps grew louder.

  Albert listened, then he rose slowly and brushed the dirt from his jeans. He opened his knife, looked at Julio and Julio got up. They hunched close by the shadow of the boxcar.

  The steps were irregular, and for a moment Julio thought it sounded like a woman. For another moment he heard Grandfather’s words and saw the carrion in the bushes.

  The images scattered and disappeared.

  “Dumb jerk don’t know what he’s walking into, right?” Julio whispered. The words frightened him. Albert wasn’t moving. “Wetbacks. Greasers. Mex—right? Okay. Okay, Albert? Okay.” The blade sprang out of the handle.

  “Shut up,” Albert whispered. “There he is. See him?”

  There were no streetlamps, so the figure was indistinct. In the darkness it could be determined that the figure was that of a man: heavy set, not old, walking slowly, almost as if he were afraid of something.

  “That’s him,” Albert said, letting out a stream of breath.

  Julio’s throat was dry. It pained him when he tried to swallow. “Okay,” he said.

  Albert said, “Okay, look. Go up and pretend you want a handout, y’know? Make it good. Then let him have it, right away.”

  “I thought I saw something,” Julio said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I thought I saw something, I thought I saw something. You mind?”

  “Where?”

  “I couldn’t make out.”

  “Who you bulling? You want to go back?”

  “All right, so I was wrong.”

  The figure had passed the boxcar and disappeared into shadows, but the footsteps were still clear.

  “You ready?” Albert said.

  Julio paused, then he nodded.

  “The hell,” Albert said. “You’re scared green. You’ll probably louse it all up. Let’s go back.”

  Julio thought of going back. Of what would be said, of all the eyes turned on him like ominous spotlights. The laughter he heard was what he hated most.

  Albert looked anxious; the footsteps were dying away.

  “Screw you,” Julio said. “You coming with, or not?” He put the knife up his sleeve and held it
there with his palm cupped underneath.

  Albert rubbed his hands along his shirt. “All right, I’ll follow you—about a minute. Sixty seconds.”

  Julio listened. Suddenly he didn’t tremble any more, though his throat was still dry. There were no more pictures in his mind.

  He waited, counting.

  Then he smiled at Albert and started to walk.

  It will take only a few minutes, he thought. No one will see. No one will give Julio Velasquez the old crap about chicken after this. No one . . .

  Up ahead, he could see the man. No one else: just the man who was a louse and who didn’t deserve to live.

  And the long shadows.

  He looked over his shoulder once, but the darkness seemed alive, so he jerked his head around and walked faster, with less care.

  At last he caught up with the man.

  “Hey, mister,” Julio said.

  Fair Lady

  “Go to Mexico, Elouise,” they had told her. “You’ll find him there.” So she had gone to Mexico and searched the little dry villages and the big dry cities, searched carefully; but she did not find him. So she left Mexico and came home.

  Then they said, “Paris! That’s the place he’ll be. Only, hurry, Elouise! It’s getting late.” But Paris was across an ocean: it didn’t exist, except in young girls’ hearts and old women’s minds, and if she were to see him there, a boulevardier, a gay charmer with a wine bottle—no, they were wrong. He wasn’t in Paris.

  In fact—it came to her one day in class, when the sun was not bright and autumn was a dead cold thing outside—Duane wasn’t anywhere. She knew this to be true because a young man with golden hair and smooth cheeks was standing up reading Agamemnon, and she listened and did not dream.

  She did not even think of Duane—or, as it may have been, Michael or William or Gregory.

  She went home after grading the papers and thought and tried to recall his features. Then she looked about her room, almost, it seemed, for the first time: at the faded orange wallpaper, the darkwood chiffonier, the thin rows of books turned gray and worn by gentle handling over the years. The years . . .

  She discovered her wrists and the trailing spongy blue veins, the tiny wrinkled skin that was no longer taut about the hands; and her face, she studied it, too, in the mirror, and saw the face the mirror gave back to her. Not ugly, not hard, but . . . unbeautiful, and old. And what is a thing, after all, when it is no longer young, if it is not old?

  She searched, pulled out memories from the cedar chest, and listened in the quiet room to her heart. But he was not there, the tall stranger who waited to love her, only her, Miss Elouise Baker, and she knew now that he never would be. Because he never was.

  It was on that night that Miss Elouise wept softly for death to come and take her away.

  And it was on the next morning that she met, and fell in love with, Mr. Oliver O’Shaugnessy.

  It happened this way. Miss Elouise was seated at the bus stop waiting for the 7:25, seated there as on years of other mornings; only now she thought of death whereas before she’d thought of life, full and abundant. She was an elderly schoolteacher now, dried-up and desiccated, like Mrs. Ritter or Miss Ackwright; cold in the morning air, unwarmed by dreams, cold and heavy-lidded from a night of staring, frightened, into darkness. She sat alone, waiting for the 7:25.

  It came out of the mist with ponderous grace, its old motor loud with the cold. It rumbled down the street, then swerved and groaned to a stop before the triangular yellow sign. The doors hissed open and it paused, breathing heavily.

  But Miss Elouise stared right into the red paint, sat and stared in the noise and the smoke and didn’t move at all or even blink.

  The voice came to her soft and unalarmed, almost soothing:

  “You wouldn’t be sitting there thinking up ways to keep the kiddies after school, would you?”

  She looked up and saw the driver.

  “I’m sorry. I . . . must have dozed off.”

  She got inside and began to walk to her seat, the one she’d occupied every morning for a million years.

  Then it happened. A rushing into existence, a running, a being. Later she tried to remember her impressions of the surrounding few seconds. She recalled that the bus was empty of passengers. That the advertising signs up above had been changed. That the floor had not been properly swept out. Willed or unwilled, it happened then, at the moment she reached her seat and the doors hissed closed. With these words it happened:

  Fair Lady.

  “What did you say?”

  “Unless you’re under twelve years of age, which you’d have a hard time persuading me of, miss, I’ll have to ask the company’s rightful fare.” Then gently, softly, like the laughter of elves: “It’s a wicked, money-minded world, and me probably the worst of all, but that’s what makes it spin.”

  Miss Elouise looked at the large red-faced man in the early-morning fresh uniform creased from the iron and crisp. The cap, tilted back over the gray locks of hair; the chunks of flesh straining the clothes tight and rolling out over the belt; at the big, broad, burly man behind the wheel who smiled at her with his eyes. She looked at Oliver O’Shaugnessy, whom she’d seen before and before and never seen before this moment.

  Then she dropped a dime into the old-fashioned black coin box and sat down.

  But not in her usual seat. She sat down in the seat first back from the man who’d said Fair Lady when it took just those words out of a fat dictionary of words to bring her to life.

  That’s how it happened. As mysteriously, as unreasonably as any great love has ever happened. And Miss Elouise, from that time on, didn’t question or doubt or, for that matter, even think about it much. She just accepted.

  And it made the old dream an embarrassed little thing. A pale, dated matinee illusion—she couldn’t even bear to think of it, now, with its randy smell of sheiks on horseback and dark strangers from a cardboard nowhere. Duane . . . what an effete ass he turned out to be, and to think: she might actually have met him and been crushed and forsaken and forever lost. . . .

  Now, she could once again take up her interest in books and art and music, and, in a little while, it all came—she was loving her job—loving it. And before, she’d hated it with her soul. Since falling in love with Oliver O’Shaugnessy, these things were hers. She grew young and healthy and wore a secret smile wherever she went.

  Every morning, then, Miss Elouise would hurry to the bus stop and wait while her heart rattled fast. And, sure enough, the bus would come and it would be empty—most of the time, anyway: when it was not empty, she felt that intruders or in-laws had moved in for a visit. But, mostly it was empty.

  For thirty minutes every morning, she would live years of life. And slowly, deliciously, she came to know Oliver as well as to love him. He grew dearer to her as she found, each day, new sides to him, new facets of his great personality. For example, his moods became more readily apparent, though hidden behind the smile he always wore for her: she came to know his moods. On some days he felt perfectly wretched; on others, tired and vaguely disturbed; still other days found him bursting with spring cheer, happy as a fed child. Once, even, Oliver was deeply introspective and his smile was weary and forced as he revolved the large wedding ring on his third finger left hand. Through all, he changed and broadened and grew tall, and she loved him with all her heart.

  Of course she never spoke of these things. Ever. In fact, they conversed practically not at all. He had no way of guessing the truth, though at times Miss Elouise thought perhaps he did.

  Together, it was perfect. And what more can be said?

  For three years Miss Elouise rode with Oliver O’Shaugnessy, her lover, every morning, every morning without fail. Except for that awful day each week when he did not work—and these were dark, empty days, full of longing. But they passed. And it gave such wings to her spirit that she felt truly no one in the world could be quite so happy. Fulfillment there was, and quiet contentment. No wife
in bed with her husband had ever known one tenth this intimacy; no youngsters in the country under August stars had ever come near to the romance that was hers; nor had ever a woman known such felicity, unspoken, undemanded, but so richly there.

  For three magic years. And who could speak with her about love and be on fair ground?

  Then, there came a morning. A morning cold as the one of years before, when she had thought of death, and Miss Elouise felt a chill enter her heart and lodge there. She glanced at her watch and looked at the street, misted and empty and wet gray. It was not late, it was not Oliver’s day off, nothing had happened—therefore, why should she be afraid? Nevertheless, she was afraid.

  The bus came. It swung around the corner far ahead and rolled toward her and came to its stop and, without thinking or looking, she got on.

  And saw.

  Oliver O’Shaugnessy was not there.

  A strange young man with blond hair and thick glasses sat at the wheel. Miss Elouise felt everything loosen and break apart and start to drift off. She was terrified, suddenly, frozen like a china figurine, and she did not even try to move or understand.

  It was not merely that something had been taken—as her father had been taken, her father whom she loved so very much. Not merely that. It was knowing, all at once, that she herself was being taken, pushed out of a world she’d believed in and told to stay away.

  Once she’d known a woman who was insane. They would say to this woman, “You were walking through the house last night, and laughing,” and the woman, who never laughed, she wouldn’t remember and her eyes would widen in fear and she would say, later, in a lost voice: “I wonder what I could have been laughing at. . . .”

  There was a throaty noise, a loud cough.

  “Who are you?” Miss Elouise said.

  “Beg pardon?” the young man said.

  “Where is Oliver?”

  “O’Shaugnessy? Got transferred. Takes the Randolphe route now.”

  Transferred. . . .