The next day everything went up in a man-made smoke. The clique of men who had been watching Martin’s every movement like vultures bought up his mortgage, made a few arrangements, and sat back waiting for Martin to have to retire from his business. It was the “well-known squeeze play,” as Edmund solemnly judged it, and there was nothing that anybody could do about it.
“Well, that’s it,” said Martin wearily, “I should have been more careful. That’s it and that’s all.”
And the motives of greed and spite which these men were exhibiting were enough to eat up Martin’s soul, it was the grand fruition of his worst fears about what they might do, and of the ultimate corruption of ordinary men. At the same time it was also the mysterious act of reality which completed the intentions he had had all along and closed the door irrevocably upon the whole uncertain affair: they had him where they wanted him, and that was where he really, secretly wanted to be, no matter what he tried to tell himself.
What shocked him frozen, in black realization of how mad men could be, was an unexpected thing: it turned out that two of the machinators in the sordid deal were men who had been former close associates of his, two men he had always habitually trusted as a matter of course, as he would trust the light of the sun, two men he had even respected for their quiet dignified mode of living, their charming little families, their manner of civility and plain sense and agreeableness. He could never possibly have dreamed that they would be involved in any such scheme against him or against anyone else either.
“Wally and Jim!” he cried in amazement. “You’re not telling the truth. There must be some mixup!”
“No, no, no!” moaned the paralytic Jimmy Bannon, waving his finger in grotesque rapture at Martin.
“Wally and Jim!” cried the old man, dumbfounded. “Well, what do you know about that, those two fellows!”
It was mad, mad. The windows were darkened, the world was mad and rumbling with doom, all deranged and sickly.
“I don’t believe there’s anything you can do, George, if those guys choose to run you out,” said Edmund gravely.
“Thath what they’re gonna do, Joth!” howled Jimmy Bannon, rolling his head mournfully.
He had lost his shop at last. Now that it was all over he wanted to be alone, to think about it, he wanted to get in his car and just drive around on deserted country roads.
When he went driving that day he kept looking at the farmhouses, among their fields and trees and homely stonewalls in the beautiful summer sun and shade of late afternoon, he kept wondering what the farmers were thinking there, if their lives were in any remote way similar to his own, if they had troubles and fears and crazy lonesomeness such as he had, and if they had also known men whom they liked and respected who had suddenly turned against them and turned the world into a place fearsomely lonesome. The winey glory of the sun was making deep green shade at the well, by the far stonewall, at the dusty old door of the red barn, a world of sun making grainy gold in the grass and shimmering across the fields, making speckles of shade in the woods of the afternoon earth. It was strange, strange.
But when he had driven back to Galloway and the town was all a bustle in the early Saturday night rush of excitement and shopping and going-out, when he drove by the barbershops and saw the men getting their Saturday night shaves, when he saw the men standing at the bars, foot on the brass rail and hat shoved back, and he saw the little children darting in the shadows and yelling with glee, and all the crowds milling in the lights of Daley Square, he suddenly felt cheerful and almost jolly.
It made him laugh now, to think of Wally and Jim and what they had done.
“Those things happen, hey?” he laughed. “Well, they can have it, that’s not for me! They can be as crazy as they like; by God, I’ve still got my own honesty and my own soul! I may be broke, but I’ve still got my own soul!”
He got his two old friends, Joe Cartier and Ernest Berlot, and they went to their favorite club on Rooney Street for a complete night of drinking. Martin had some money on him and he insisted on spending every last cent of it on his two old cronies who were good enough to drink with him when he needed them and their grave good presence.
“Don’t look so gloomy!” he kept shouting at them all night. “Drink up! Have a good time! Be happy! Don’t worry about me, I can get a job anywhere anytime, and make as good a living as I’ve ever done. Billy! another round of drinks!” he howled.
“Well, kid,” said old Joe Cartier ruminatively, “I guess what has to happen, happens, and it shore ain’t no good to cry over it.”
“That’s right,” said the old barber Berlot with a wry smile, “you remember what I lost in my time. I guess I’d have been crying about it for fifteen years if that’s what I’d have done.”
“There you are!” exulted Martin. “We may be broke, but we’ve got our own honesty and our own souls! I don’t think any of us need worry about what we’ve done in our lifetime,” and he gripped their shoulders broodingly.
Later on in the night he wept when he heard a young Irishman sing in a sweet tenor voice all the old songs that recalled his youth to him.
“Isn’t it funny the way you start out on your life,” he cried mournfully, “thinking that the whole world is a beautiful place just waiting for you to make your way in it! It’s a beautiful dream you have when you’re young, before you learn how some men can be, how things can break. But, by God, boys, if I had to live it all over again, I would! I would! Because it’s a sweet life when you come down to it! Listen to that boy sing—there you have all the sweetness and beauty of life put together in one lovely song, and what more could you ask for? At least we’ve got that, we’ve got beauty and a few sweet memories and those poor little kids of ours we put in the world, who trust us and love us and believe in us so much! It’s a sweet life. Forget everything else, I say, because it’s a sweet life and God is good to us in the end.”
At four o’clock in the morning the two oldtimers carried him home mumbling and exhausted and drunk, they helped him upstairs in his house, undressed him fumblingly while his wife hurried around preparing sedatives, they dumped him in the bed, looked at each other helplessly, and then tiptoed sheepishly away and went home.
And little Mickey, aroused from sweet grave slumber by all the noise and terrible excitement in the house, stood now in the doorway and looked at his father fearfully as he lay there mumbling and drunk in the bed.
Yet on Monday morning the big man was up bright and early, shaving and dressing and eating breakfast in grave, scowling, meditative silence. Mickey watched his father—his clean white shirt-collar tight and neat against the ruddy flesh of his neck, his eyes sorrowful and thoughtful, his face set in morning absorption and determination, his prim and solemn movements all betokening a new purpose and many anxious considerations. His wife spoke to him about little things and he stared at her with his agonized brooding tenderness. Then he went quietly out of the house, without a word, got in his car, and drove away.
That morning he got himself a good-paying steady job in a downtown printing plant, came right back home and told his wife that everything would be all right again now.
So George Martin, in the space of a week, had lost a business valued at some twenty thousand dollars, had drained his last savings from the bank in order to meet most of his debts and avoid the dishonor of a complete bankruptcy, and was now become a wage-earner in another man’s firm after twenty years in business for himself.
Yet the shock of this really stunning change was received calmly, cheerfully, even gleefully by the Martins young and old. They had always been vigorously absorbed in living itself, never quite conscious of those finer points with regard to “position” in a community, thus heedless of that delicate, invisible, yet definite change that had come about in the family’s worldly status. It was even possible they would have to move out of the big house and find a cheaper place to live. Yet their only thought was of the humor and pathos of the situation and the chagrin
of their father. They rallied around him laughing with him, and all were immediately concerned with the simple matter of earning more money all around.
They sat around the front room in the evenings that summer and talked:
“Now you’ll know how it feels to have to get up and hurry so you won’t be late for work!” cried Ruth to her father goadingly.
And they all laughed eagerly, the laughter ran through the house, the kids sat on the edge of the sofa watching and listening in rapt fascination, the mother was making lemonade for everybody in the kitchen, the father sat back in his chair grinning.
“Ah, whattayou mean?” he snorted, winking quickly aside at the kids. “Now wait a minute! What makes you think I had such an easy time of it working for myself. I notice you used to get mighty, mighty tired just folding those little old papers for me at the shop, I used to have to carry you home, you little sparkplug you!”
She sat on the arm of his chair teasing him: “Now you’ll know what it feels like to punch a time clock at the last minute!” And she pushed him on the arm and made a wry face.
The kids yelled with laughter.
“Okay, so I’ll punch a clock, what about it!” cried the old man grinning, and he tried to think of something funny to say. Then the mother came in with the lemonade, and they all sat there late into the night laughing, arguing, shouting, almost celebrating this strange new turn in the family’s fortunes which was so exciting and wonderful, somehow, because it made them all sit together in the front room and have “regular parties,” as Mickey delightedly saw it.
Joe was inflamed with a new idea in the heat of all the enthusiasm.
“See, Pa? I saved a lot of money on my trip and sent it home to Ma. Now it’ll come in handy. I know a guy who wants to sell out his gas station. Just a little place on Kimball Street, two pumps and a lubrication stand. I’m gonna take it! Monday, by God, Monday!”
“I’ll be your helper, Joey!” cried out Charley, tugging at his big brother’s arm. “After school. I’ll work real good! You know I’m real good!”
“Sure thing.”
“Ma!” cried Charley. “Maybe I can quit school now and just work for Joey, huh? I don’t have to go to school any more, huh? I want to start working!”
“You will not,” said the mother, peering at him.
“And me,” said Mickey, frowning thoughtfully, “I’m gonna start a paper route”—and he looked around at everybody grinning sheepishly.
“Say,” said the old man, looking up at Ruth and winking, “maybe that’ll solve all our problems. Mickey’ll start a paper route.”
The family roared with laughter. People passing on the road outside might have thought that a great celebration was going on in the Martin house. In the heart of such a family, whether mere events were happy and good and wonderful, or unfortunate, even calamitous, they could never really be discouraged or disheartened, they could only be excited and gleeful and, in the end, all together. Together there was never really cause for anything but rejoicing, the sheer force and joy of their numerous presence was in itself a surging enthusiasm, they looked at each other and knew each other well in that casual, powerful, silent way that brothers and sisters, parents and children have.
Big Rosey, for instance, the big sister and lusty guardian of their lives, was sitting beside young Peter on the sofa chuckling and then roaring with laughter and throwing in a few digs herself when someone kidded someone else. Peter, sitting beside her meditatively yet watching everything with deep pleasure and consolation, was amazed at this big girl, the very bulk and consequence of whose hearty chuckles and shouts of whooping laughter and huge convulsive movements made him joyful that she was just there and was his sister. He couldn’t have known why. It was her presence, the great and good mystery of her being there beside him, and of all the family being there with him, and he being with them. To feel these unknowable yet so overwhelming affections for his brothers and sisters and parents, to see them there in the room with him and laugh with them, this was gravity and glee and wonder.
And the father himself was most thankfully aware of these things that bound them together: he wondered that he should ever have rued and regretted any mistakes in his life, any decision and miscalculation, when it was so that all things were equal, all things were bound together, and all things were the same and just as well with his family and its single beating heart.
No one was really downcast: the mother herself spoke of going back to work in the shoeshops if it ever became necessary. Even young Lizzy wanted to leave high school now and get a job.
“What’s so horrible about leaving school!” she muttered in her proud scornful way. “What do I care about history and books. I want to make some money and have a good time. Phooey!” she cried.
“She wants to make some money so she can go to Hollywood and be a big actress!” goaded big Rosey, stroking Lizzy’s head teasingly. “Look at her! Ain’t she a raving beauty?”
Elizabeth stuck out her tongue at her.
“Look at that!” whooped Rosey. “Ain’t she the ladylike one! Just like Greta Garbo! She’s gonna go to Hollywood and become a big actress and then she’ll come around here in a fancy car all dressed to kill and stick up her nose at us!” She stroked her kid sister’s head gleefully.
“Is that what you’ll do, Liz?” chuckled Joe fondly. “Ain’t you going even to say hello to me when you’re famous? And after all the times I used to let you play baseball with the boys! When all the other girls were playing house in left field, Liz used to rap them singles to right field! Hyah, hyah, hyah!”
They all rocked with laughter again, and Elizabeth scowled and smoldered.
“All right,” she said, “laugh. I’ll make more money than anybody. Just wait.”
“Will you buy me a cup of coffee when I meet you outside the Ritz?” the old man asked with heavy innocence. Again they all roared with laughter and slapped their knees, and Liz stalked fiercely out of the room. But she was back again in a minute flouncing around gayly and snorting down her nose at Joe and Rosey.
Thus it was—a convocation of resolves and excitements. However: “There’s no point in staying home now that I’ve got this Boston job,” Francis told Peter. He added, with a wry smile, “I see no reason why I should clutter up the house anyway, do you?”
“Clutter up the house? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, that’s just the feeling I have. It was a silly thing to say anyway.” He smiled a little wistfully. “I just have more fun in Boston.” He was starting another year at Harvard that Fall.
In the mornings now George Martin drove down to work with his favorite daughter, Ruth. Trim, businesslike little Ruth, who had always been so cheerful and reliable, so dear to him, and a comfort to his heart, who knew him perhaps better than anyone else in the house, who was ultimately a great loyal friend of his life, she and he went to work together in the same printing shop, working just a few feet from each other at the linotype and at the folding machine, looking up from their tasks every now and then to exchange merry glances of delight because they were working together now.
And it was such a joy and gladness for the troubled old man to see his Ruthey there, working with him in the morning, evidence enough that he was not alone and scorned in the world, as he could so ruefully feel, evidence that the sun shone on the earth even through all the error, misery, and madness of things which he told himself were, when all was said and done, mere caprice and accident.
3
[1]
That summer Tommy Campbell, Peter’s boyhood partner in the prowling riverside adventure, sandy-haired, vigorous, intelligent Tommy, showed up in the uniform of the United States Army.
It was dusk, hushed and summer-still, and in the reddening light of New England June, Peter and Alex Panos were sitting on the porch tilting their chairs against the wall of the house and talking. Peter had just completed his first year of college.
They saw a figure striding up the road a
half-mile away, they could see the soft dust he raised in the road as he walked, and they noticed that he was some sad and lonely-looking young soldier. Alexander commented on him, saying: “Look at that soldier coming up the road, lost and sad in thoughts of death!” But they did not actually recognize him.
At the hedge, young Tommy Campbell cried out: “All right, you two civilians! Sound off!”
The two boys just gaped.
“I’m off on the Road to Mandalay, you deadbeats!” cried Tommy, swaggering up the walk. “You better take one good last look at me because you won’t be seeing me for a long time!”
And they were amazed because he had “gone and done it”—for Tommy had always boasted that some day he would travel around the world and be an “adventurer.” He really looked like one now. He gripped their hands enthusiastically, squeezed their arms with a strong manly grasp, laughed, and told them that he was going to the Philippine Islands in a few weeks.
“No more hoeing the rows for me for a while.” And he smoothed his sleeve and put his leg up on the porch banister in a casual, elegant, and soldierly manner. “You guys can stay home and read books and go to school—that’s not for me any more. No more 4-H club for me either, that’s for girls all right. I want to see the tropics, I want to see pygmies and weird birds!”
“So that’s where you’ve been all this time!”
“Yep. Maneuvers in the West Indies. Didn’t you read about them in the papers, down in Martinique? That’s where I’ve been. What are you guys up to? I mean these days,” he grinned slyly.
And there was nothing, absolutely nothing they could say.
That night the three boys really had a go at it conversing on all subjects and weighing the drift and possibility of their respective fortunes in the world. They solved all the problems of existence and the universe and rubbed their hands in anticipation of new ones. They sat in Peter’s bedroom in a litter of books and papers and letters, smoking cigarette after cigarette, drinking coffee by the pot, laughing uproariously, talking about women, politics, books, and the soul of man. It was all exclusively their subject in the smoky little bedroom there with the patchwork quilt, the football pictures on the wall, and the bright lace curtains that puffed in the summernight breeze.