In Milton Lumky Territory (1984) Read online

  “I’d have to think it over,” he said, thinking about his job at C.B.B., his apartment in Reno, his friends there, his boss Ed von Scharf, on whom he depended, everything that he had planned for himself.

  But, he thought, I could make it pay. I could run it. A retail outlet of my own, a business of my own. Nobody to tell me what to do. I’d have a free hand. Put my talent and experience to work.

  “It does sound good,” he admitted.

  “Do you know when we have to order merchandise for Christmas?”

  “In the Fall,” he said.

  “In August,” she said, with resentment. “I’d want you to be already in and fully organized by then.”

  He nodded. And then he took the bottle opener, opened the other bottle of beer, found a tall tumbler in the rack on the drainboard, and poured a second glass of beer. Susan watched absently.

  “Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “As a sort of celebration,” he said, feeling clumsy and thick-tongued.

  “Oh no thanks,” she said. “It’s too early in the day. Anyhow I have the darn checks to finish.” She started off, and when he followed he found her again seated with the checkbook before her, pen in hand, writing and frowning.

  “I guess it’s agreed on,” he said, bewildered, but aware that unbelievably, in essence, he had said he would do it.

  “Thank God,” she said with fervor, pausing in her check-writing. “I really need you, Bruce,” she said. And then she resumed her work.

  He stood sipping his beer, standing in the cool living room.

  4

  WHEN HE GOT BACK to Reno with the load of car wax he drove directly to the Consumers’ Buying Bureau building and searched up his boss, Ed von Scharf. He found him in a stock room in the rear, seated on a carton, with a Popsicle in one hand and an inventory sheet on the floor before him. Wearing his tie, vest, black oxfords and herringbone trousers, his boss had been making an inventory and flinging around cartons of electric mixers. His black hair was speckled with the dust of the brown cardboard cartons; it made his look distinguished.

  Bruce said, “I ran into an emergency up in Montario. I have to go back. If I can’t get an indefinite leave of absence, then I guess I’m quitting my job.” On the drive he had worked out his story. “My Dad’s ill,” he said, knowing how little his employers could complain against that reason. “I want to be up there indefinitely.”

  They argued for an hour and a half. Then they went upstairs and discussed it with two of the Pareti brothers who owned C.B.B. At last the Paretis wrote out a two-weeks’ paycheck, shook hands with him, and told him he was free to go. He left with the assurance that his job would be there if and when he wanted it again.

  His boss walked out to his car with him, grave and discouraged. “It’s a hell of a surprise,” he said, as Bruce unhitched the trailer load of car wax. “Keep in touch. Will you?”

  He clapped Bruce on the back, wished him and his family luck, and then returned to the C.B.B. building.

  With a strong sense of guilt, Bruce drove away in the direction of his apartment. But, at least, he had made sure of his job, if things did not work out. It was only practical.

  After he had told the landlady, he went upstairs and got out a suitcase and began packing his things. By sundown he had carried all his things down to the Merc, loaded them where the boxes of wax had been only a few hours earlier, and then had given Mrs. O’Neill back the apartment key. She wished him luck, too, getting up from the dinner table to follow him down the hall.

  At eight-thirty he began the drive back to Idaho.

  THE NEXT MORNING he blearily entered Boise. He stopped at a motel and rented a room. Without unloading any of his things he undressed, got into bed, and slept through the day. At five-thirty in the evening he arose, took a shower, shaved, put on clean clothes, and then drove over to downtown Boise and the R & J Mimeographing Service.

  As he was parking, Susan Faine appeared at the office doorway, half a block away, waved to him, and disappeared back inside. He finished parking, got out of the car, and walked down.

  Inside the office, Zoe de Lima greeted him with a frigid nod and at once turned her back. He said hello to her but she did not answer; she busied herself at her typewriter.

  She knows, he said to himself.

  With her coat and purse, Susan approached him from the back of the office. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Together, they walked down the sidewalk and got into the car. “I told her,” Susan said. “We screamed at each other all day. Did you do it?” She craned her neck and saw all his clothes, suitcases, boxes of personal articles crammed into the back. “You did.”

  “I quit my job,” he said. “And gave up my apartment.”

  “Let’s go eat,” she said. “I’m starved.”

  “Should you leave her?” he said.

  “Why not?” Susan said. “Oh, I see what you mean. But she’s still a partner. She has a key. I can’t make her leave. It’ll take a week or so to have the legal business finished. Anyhow I don’t think she’d do anything vindictive. She’s hurt, and she’s mad at me, but she’s a reputable person. I’ve known her for years. We still expect to be friends.”

  He said, “Well, you know her; I don’t.”

  They sat for an interval in the car. The late-afternoon glare from the sidewalks was intolerable, and Susan shifted about uncomfortably. “Maybe I’ll go back inside and tell her we might as well close up for the day,” she said. She got out of the car and hurried back down the sidewalk. Time passed. Bruce put on the radio and listened to the news. Then, at last, he saw Mrs. de Lima leave the office, walking off briskly in the opposite direction. Susan locked up the office and came toward him, smiling.

  “That’s that,” she said, getting in beside him.

  “Where do you want to eat?” he asked, starting up the car.

  “I have to go home,” Susan said. “Mrs. Poppinjay has to leave exactly at six forty-five on the dot, hail or rain or snow. And I really have to have dinner with Taffy; it’s something I need, as well as her. Mrs. Poppinjay starts a roast usually and then I take over when I get home and finish up and serve the meal, and Taffy and I eat together. It works out pretty well. Have you had dinner? I don’t know why I didn’t ask … I just took it for granted that you’d eat with us.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  When they got to her house Susan introduced him to Mrs. Poppinjay, a white-haired plump short old lady who obviously wanted to leave and get home to her own family. Taffy was off in her own room, coloring with crayons and listening to a children’s program on TV, her back to the set. She barely noticed him as Susan brought him into the room and told her what his name was and that he’d be working at the office.

  “Nice-looking little girl,” he said, although he had not been able to see much more than that there was a little girl there, and that she was busy on the floor, and that she had light, almost blond hair. “Does she take after you or Walt?”

  Susan, with a laugh, said, “She’s not Walt’s child. God forbid. I’ve been married twice.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Taffy was born during the Korean War. I didn’t meet Walt until early in 1955. I remember he had a brand new ‘55 Chevrolet V8 and he was always telling me that it was the first V8 Chevy built and there was something wrong with the rings. It used oil.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s a fact.”

  “Walt’s on the road a lot, too, like you. Over to Salt Lake City and over to the Coast, to L.A. in particular. That’s strange, isn’t it… to think of you both driving around. He’s a factory representative. Conferences and sales meetings.” She hung up her coat and put on an apron.

  “There’s plenty of money in galvanized iron,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “and look how much I got out of it.”

  AFTER DINNNER they sat smoking and relaxing. Taffy had gone off by herself, probably back to her room. She seemed to be a quiet child, resourceful, not minding hav
ing to be by herself. The house was warm and peaceful. It smelled of pot roast.

  “Am I enough of a cook for you?” Susan said.

  “You certainly are,” he said. What a pleasure it had been, compared with the restaurant and roadside cafe meals he had endured for the last two years. None of the fried greasiness. The overcooked vegetables, watery and tasteless.

  “I’m excited,” Susan said.

  “So am I.”

  “I know we’re going to be successful. And I’ve told Zoe; that’s a terrible load off my mind. As soon as you left yesterday I began preparing myself for it. And this morning when we opened the office I said, ‘Zoe, I want to talk to you.’ And I told her.”

  “Good,” he murmured, feeling sleepy.

  “Is it heartless?” Susan said.

  “No,” he murmured. “That goes on all the time.”

  “Now I’m having misgivings.”

  That roused him. “It’s done,” he said. “I’m up here; I quit my job and gave up my apartment.”

  She nodded in agreement. “And it’s going to be wonderful. We’ll go in together tomorrow, and I’ll start showing you around. Or actually we could drive over tonight. No, we can wait.” And then a thought struck her. “Bruce, maybe we should wait until Zoe is out. I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to have to bump into her; we’ll wait. How are you fixed for money?”

  “How do you mean?” he said. “I have a two weeks’ paycheck they gave me. And I have some cash.” He did not know what she was driving at.

  Considering at length, Susan said, “Where are you staying?”

  “At the Jack Rabbit Inn Motel,” he said.

  “How much is it?”

  “Six bucks a day.”

  She winced. “That’s forty-two dollars a week.”

  “I’ll start looking for a room,” he said. “I don’t intend to be there as long as a week. If I’m not coming into the office right away I can start looking.”

  Susan said, “But I want you to come in right away. I want to get started.” She fooled irritably with her cigarette. “I don’t want to wait - what do you think? Would it bother you to have to be there while Zoe’s there?”

  “I don’t care,” he said. He doubted if it would bother him. After all, he did not know the woman; he had nothing to lose by her animosity.

  “I want to start paying you,” Susan said, “but I can’t until the legal papers are signed and she’s officially not connected with the business. That means not until she’s received the money from me, for her share. So you won’t get paid anything for at least a week.”

  That jolted him. “Okay,” he said, hoping he would be able to get by.

  “That puts you in a bad spot,” she said. “I can see it does. I’m sorry, Bruce; I didn’t think of it until after we’d decided and you’d already started back to Reno.”

  They both were silent.

  Suddenly she said, “Listen, why don’t you stay here?”

  He felt as if the top of his head had come loose.

  “Of course,” she said, reaching out and tapping him urgently on the hand. “you can sleep here and eat here; there’s two spare bedrooms, and plenty of closet space. Why not?”

  Struggling, he said, “If nobody minds.”

  “The neighbors, you mean? I don’t think they’ll even notice. I hope not. Why should they? Anyhow, we have a lot to get settled. I want you to start working right now; we can go down together to the office at night, after dinner. After Taffy goes to bed. And I’ll have a key made for you. And the weekend’s coming up.” She put out her cigarette and leaped up. “Let’s go carry your things in from the car. Do you have everything you need?”

  “Yes,” he said. He hadn’t left anything at the motel. “But are you sure you want to do this?” To him it seemed a big step.

  “I know I do,” she said, opening the front door. “It’s perfectly natural; I’m surprised we didn’t think of it earlier.” Pausing, she said over her shoulder, “Unless you feel squeamish about it.”

  “Squeamish,” he echoed. “How?”

  “I guess you don’t. Embarrassed, maybe I mean. We’re going to be together all the time anyhow. In a small business with just two people - you’re used to a big outfit, aren’t you? A small business is much more personal, almost like a family.”

  At one time he had worked for a drugstore that employed only one clerk, in addition to himself as stockboy. So he knew.

  “I’m pretty easy to get along with,” he said.

  “I hope so,” she said, “because I’m not. I have moods. I get depressed. When you came here yesterday I was having one of my depressed periods. But you snapped me out of it.” In a spontaneous flurry, she caught hold of his sleeve and tugged him along with her, down the path to the car. “You’re good therapy for me,” she told him over her shoulder.

  Within the hour he found himself installed in a high-ceilinged bedroom, his suitcases and boxes piled up on the floor off to one side and his clothes hanging in the closet. His shaving gear was put away in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, along with his squeeze bottle of deodorant, hairbrush, toothbrush, and all the rest of the little bottles and tubes and tins.

  By now Susan’s child had gone to bed. The TV set was off. The house, with just him and Susan up and about, had become informal to a degree new to him; he had never known such an absence of pressure on him.

  The two of them sat in the living room, relaxing. Presently Susan started hearkening back to her days as a school teacher. It seemed always in the back of her mind.

  “I was still teaching when I met Pete,” she said. “Taffy’s Dad. That was in 1949. He wanted me to quit, and I did when Taffy came along. And we moved from Montario to Boise.” From a bureau drawer she brought forth a huge scrapbook. Seated beside him she turned pages, showing him snapshots and documents from the near past. “My sixth grade class at Garret A. Hobart in 1948,” she said, pointing to a print.

  At last he got to see the class picture for the fifth grade of 1945, his class. Sure enough, his fat round face peered from the second row. There he was, one of a number of grumpy, stodgy-looking small boys, lost among his peers and certainly so different in appearance from now that no one would make the connection. In fact, had he not known this print, he would have failed to recognize himself or even be aware that he was somewhere among the faces. Both he and Susan studied the class picture. There she was, quite easy to spot; she stood to one side, rigid and formal, with a smile, her eyes partly shut because of the bright sun. Wearing her suit with the big buttons … astonishing, he thought, to see this picture again. A copy had belonged to him but his mother had gotten it years ago; he had not seen it since that time.

  And, in the photograph, Miss Reuben as she was then, in 1945, but not as he remembered her. He saw only a very pretty, muscular young woman, smartly-dressed, somewhat thin, with anxious lines around her eyes and mouth. A worrier, he thought. Tense, ferociously conscious of the responsibility of managing a class. Perhaps too tense. Too concerned. He remembered that one day a boy had been cut badly on a broken pop bottle during recess; Miss Reuben had run for the nurse, and although she had brought the nurse at once, and managed to get the other children to return to their business, she had been forced to go off by herself for awhile, and even then, even as fifth graders, they had been aware of her near-hysteria. She had stood gripping her handkerchief, her back to everybody, poking at her eyes and nose. At that time, of course, it had made them all giggle. They had barely been able to restrain their mirth.

  While he sat studying the picture he saw beneath it, in microscopic print, the names of the students. Sure enough, there was his name: Bruce Stevens. However, Susan did not notice. She had started recalling other events and was no longer interested in the page.

  “I never should have given up teaching,” she said. “But I just wasn’t suited for it. I used to come home shaking from head to foot. The noise and confusion. It always gave me a headache. Children running
in all directions. Pete said I had no aptitude for dealing with children. He said I was too neurotic. Maybe he was right. That’s one of the reasons why we split up. We couldn’t agree on how to raise Taffy.”

  “What’s he doing now?” he asked, turning the page to obscure his name.

  Susan said, “He’s in Chicago. I don’t have any idea what he’s doing. He was an engineering student when I met him. I was twenty-six and he as twenty-five.”

  “How old were you when you started teaching?” he said.

  “Let’s see,” she said. “I started in Tampa, Florida. In 1943. I remember, because the Battle of Stalingrad was going on the month I first had a class of my own. I was nineteen.”

  “What about when you first started at Garret A. Hobart?”

  She said, “It was 1945, so I was twenty-one.”

  So she was exactly ten years older than he. She was thirty-four, now. About what he had thought.

  “I’ve never seen any of those little people since,” Susan said. “They just vanished. Thirteen years ago … they must be almost grown up by now. My lord, they would be grown up; they were eleven or so then, so they’d be twenty-four years old now. Married, and some of them with children.” She got a pensive expression on her face. “Some of them could have children starting to school. That would be stretching it, though. But it makes you stop and think.”

  “It’s a long thirteen years between eleven and twenty-four,” he said.

  “Very important. But when I look back it doesn’t seem to have made very much difference as far as I’m concerned. Twenty-one to thirty-four. But I shouldn’t say that. Here I have Taffy, and I’ve been married and divorced twice! So I don’t mean that. But I feel the same. I don’t feel I’ve changed much inside during that period. I suppose I look different.” She turned back to re-examine the picture of herself taken in 1945.

  “I don’t think you look much different,” he said. And certainly she did not.