Chapter 9
SAILOR SLAYS COUPLE, COPS KILL, the headlines blared. Beneath the headlines there was a picture of Kathy and her husband, and another one of Chuck alone that Eddie recognized. He'd taken it a few years back when he and Chuck were on the same ship in Norfolk.
Eddie had been buying the New York papers since he came back to Stubbin's Corner. Anderson, the storekeeper, noticed the shocked expression on Eddie's face, came hobbling up, his narrow fox-like face eager with the scent of scandal.
"What's the matter, Eddie? Somebody you know?" he asked with a cackle.
"Yeah, I knew the sailor," Eddie answered without thinking.
"No kidding? Say, maybe you knew the girl, too, eh? Hey, that's something! You have to tell me all about it!"
"Later, Clem, later," Eddie said, folding the paper and taking it to Ben Jone's place next store. Damn it, he should have kept his mouth shut. He had forgotten the eagerness with which a small town leaps on any gossip.
There were no other customers in the bar. Buying a bottle of beer, he brought it to a corner booth and read through the paper. It still didn't register. Chuck Huzak! How could he do such a thing? Eddie thought he knew him. It gave him an eerie feeling to read about Kathy. Just a few short weeks ago he had given her a tumble on the couch while her husband slept in the next room. Well, there wasn't any sense recalling that.
Carefully reading the article, he searched for some mention of Selma, but the paper said nothing about her. That was a relief, knowing that she hadn't been involved. Maybe it was just as well that he had fucked off the way he did, although if he were around he might have managed to cool Chuck off.
Using a knife that way! It just didn't figure. Chuck had always been so level-headed, too. Getting clobbered on the head that time he got mugged might have set him off. Eddie stayed in the bar all afternoon, nursing beers. Losing his roll at Aqueduct had made him a cautious spender.
The more he thought about Chuck and Kathy, the more confused he got. So he banished them from his mind. They were dead now, it was too late to solve their problems. He was alive and he still didn't know what he was going to do. Coming home had been a ball for the first few days. He looked up some of his old high school buddies, and they had some good drunks together.
Most of them were married, though and that seemed to put them in a different world. A world of babies and wives and furniture payments that were due the first of every month. The way they paired off amazed Eddie. Some of the women they married were real losers.
He groaned now when he remembered how he had thrown away his money. If he'd only stopped to think, he would have bought a car as soon as he got out of the Navy. If you didn't have a car, you weren't anything in civilian life. In New York, it didn't matter so much; but it was everything here in Stubbin's Corner.
He still had a couple of hundred left so he could buy a clunker, but by the time he paid the insurance he'd be stone broke again. Even a heap would be a nice thing to have. If he got too disgusted with things, he could just point it west and take off for California.
By five o'clock, the place started filling up with workers who had just left the day shift at the shoe factory. Not feeling like eating with his parents, he ordered a roast beef sandwich along with another bottle of beer. He really should cut down on eating out, but eating at home was getting to be a pain in the neck. They were on his back every chance they got, asking him when he was going to work.
He was just finishing the sandwich when Dick Miller, his sister's husband, came in. Dick was a tall, heavy-set man in his thirties who worked as a foreman in the shoe factory. Eddie had never cared much for him, thinking him something of a slob. But he was his brother-in-law, so he smiled at Miller when he pushed his way through the crowd towards Eddie's table.
"Hello, Dick, have a seat."
"Some people have it made, all right. Sitting on their backside all day in a saloon."
"Just have to play your cards right."
"I was hoping I'd meet you here," Miller said, sitting opposite Eddie and handing him a sheet of paper. "Got a little present for you, Eddie."
"What's that?"
"The vacation's over, Boy. It's an application for a job at the plant. Ann and your folks and me got together and decided it's time for you to settle down."
"You did, huh?" Eddie asked, ignoring the application blank on the table.
"Yeah. Too many guys your age, Eddie, waste a hell of a lot of time loafing around after they get out of the service. That's no good. The sooner you get set into place, the better."
"So all of you decided that I have to get a job sewing soles to shoes?"
"Not sewing. I got you in the tannery. Took a little pull but I've been in the company for ten years now. The pay's a little better there. They start you off at one sixty-seven an hour, ten cent raise every year you're there for the first five years. It's a pretty good deal. You start Monday."
"Damn nice of you to go through all that trouble," Eddie said, trying to keep calm. Damn it, where the hell did they get their nerve, getting his life set up the way they wanted without even asking him about it?
"What the hell, you're Ann's brother. Besides, you young guys need a little nudge once in awhile or you'll never get anything done. I'd hate to have a ass as a brother-in-law, anyway."
"Yeah. like I said, it's nice of you to go to all that trouble but I ain't interested in working in no shoe factory so you can forget about it," Eddie said, handing him back the paper.
Miller started to get mad then controlled himself with an effort.
"Look, Eddie, let's be reasonable about this thing. Maybe you ain't been reading the papers but I have and I can tell you that jobs are scarce now. There are plenty of guys who'd jump at a chance like this. What do you figure you're going to get? You're going to have to go to work sometime, you know."
"I'm ready to go to work, but I sure as hell ain't going to spend the rest of my life doing dog-labor in some factory!"
"Oh, you're too good for that, eh? What the hell else are you able to do? What education, what training do you have? You barely got through high school, and what was it you were in the Navy? Quartermaster, whatever the hell that is."
"I was a navigator. How about keeping your voice down? These people ain't interested in this."
"Never mind my voice. So you were a navigator! A hell of a lot of good that'll do unless you go back to sea! What the damn hell do you think you're going to do, Eddie? Get a job on your looks or something? Get off your high horse. You're nothing but an unskilled laborer and the sooner you admit it to yourself, the better. This is the best job you'll get so grab it while you have the chance."
"No, thanks. I'd go back to the Navy before I'd take a dead-end job like that."
"The Navy! That's about all you're good for."
"Listen, Dick, I didn't ask you over here so why don't you do me a favor and take off and let me finish my beer?"
"OK, Eddie, I'll let you finish your beer," Miller said, rising to his feet and resting his fists on the table. "Let me tell you one thing. You know what you're turning out to be? A ass, a loafing, lazy ass?"
"Miller," Eddie said, looking down at his hands, "if you wasn't Ann's husband, I'd deck you here and now. Don't go pushing it, though. I've had just about enough."
"And I've had just about enough of you. Get on the ball or I'll slap some sense into you!"
"Don't talk foolish, Dick," Eddie said getting up. Miller wasn't really a bad guy, he probably thought he was doing him a favor by giving him a hard time. Since he made foreman he'd gotten the idea that he should be treated like a little tin god. It was too long since he'd been told to go to hell, that was his trouble.
Everybody in the bar was quiet as they watched Eddie. He hated backing down like this in front of everybody. It would be easy, too easy, to take Miller. That wouldn't solve anything, it'd just make things worse. He walked past Miller.
"You're like all these young punks nowadays, Eddie. Big talk but yellow inside," Miller's voice taunted him from behind.
That was a little too much to take. Whirling around, Eddie took a quick step forward and lashed out with a left hook that knocked Miller back against the bar. Miller was pretty tough, though and he came back at Eddie.
It was a mistake.
While Miller had a little weight on his side, Eddie had youth and experience. There's a world of difference between a bar-room fighter and a trained boxer, as Eddie demonstrated. Miller swung a round-house right from the heels that missed by a good foot. While he was still off balance, Eddie tore into his body with both hands then moved in with an upper-cut that caught him right on the point of the chin.
Miller went down like a half-empty sack of coal collapsing to the floor.
Shaking his head over Miller's foolishness, Eddie walked through the opening that the onlookers made for him, took a tooth-pick from the glass near the cashier and left. Too bad Miller had been so mule-headed. At least he hadn't hurt him too much.
There wasn't any sense in his staying in Stubbin's Corner anymore. The town was finished for him. He had been kind of foolish to even come back. Hell, who'd want to live in a jerk-water town like this after traveling around the world and living in New York? That's where he'd head now, the big town.
There still was the little problem of what he was going to do. He couldn't see hanging around Selma's place, loafing. He'd have to get some kind of job, but he hated the idea of joining the swarms of people riding the subway every day back in the city. Miller might have a point there. What was it he said? Something about Eddie not being able to get a job unless he went to sea.
Eddie stopped short and laughed aloud. God damn it, that was it! Miller had given him the answer. He'd go back to sea!
Not back to the Navy, the hell with that. The merchant marine was what he wanted. A civilian sailor, the best of all possible worlds. Being a quartermaster had never bothered Eddie, it was all the crap that he had to put up with after duty that bugged him. Damn, it'd be good to be at the helm of a ship again! Good old Miller! He'd have to send him a bottle of hooch later on.
Of course, getting a berth might be pretty hard, he'd have to start in as an ordinary seaman. But the difficulties didn't matter. The only thing that counted was that he had a direction to aim for now, he wasn't just waiting for something to happen to him.
When he got home he packed his gear. He was just finished when the phone rang and his father answered it. Then his father came into his room and started berating him for slugging his brother-in-law.
"Take it easy, Pa," Eddie said, picking up his gear. "Dick ain't hurt bad, he'll be all right. Tell him I'm sorry I hit him and that I'm taking his advice."
"Hey, wait a second. Where are you going?"
"I'll let you know when I get there, Pa," Eddie said, walking out of the house. It was a four-block walk to the railroad station and the six forty-five was just pulling in when he got there. It left, cutting in towards the Hudson River valley and heading for New York and the ocean, with Eddie aboard. The train pulled into Grand Central after midnight, he felt as if he were back home again.
Lugging his stuff to the subway, he took a downtown train to West Fourth Street. He didn't know how Selma would take his coming back after running out on her the way he did but he felt pretty certain that he'd be able to make her come along to his way of thinking. What had she said? They were the same kind of people. They could look at something and see how it really was without having to kid themselves about it.
It was awkward, dragging his luggage up the narrow stairs, but he finally got it in front of her door. He started to knock when suddenly the thought came to him that she might have another guy in there. She had told him before that she slept around a lot, and he sure as hell hadn't bothered about being faithful to her. Of course, that was different, somehow.
Face dark with anger, he rapped the door, thinking that if some clown was in there with her, there damn well might be another murder in the building..
Selma opened the door, dressed in the same outfit she was wearing the first time he had seen her.
"Oh, it's you," she said, without enthusiasm.
"Take off the chain and let me in."
"So you decided ; come back?" she asked, flipping the door chain off.
"Yeah, for good, this time," he said, walking in and looking around. The couch was up and it was pretty obvious that there wasn't a man in the place. Satisfied, he went out and started bringing in his luggage.
"For good? What's that mean?" she asked, leaning against the wall with arms akimbo.
"Just what it sounds like."
"You must be drunk. Hear about your buddy?"
"Yeah, I just read about Chuck today. You involved in any of the trouble?"
"No, thank God! I was just coming down the street when they shot him. I didn't even know who it was till I got back to the house and they told me. What a mess that was. The cops were questioning everybody in the building about it."
"Poor Chuck! You know what his trouble was, Selma? He didn't have enough sense to grab what he wanted. He kept looking for something perfect but all the time he knew that nothing was perfect, so he let it go."
"You sound very philosophical tonight, Eddie."
"I've been riding a train since seven and thinking. I'm not going to make Chuck's mistake, Selma. I know what I want and I'm going to get it and keep it. You. I want you and I'm going to marry you. We're the same sort of people."
"What? Are you crazy."
"Maybe. That doesn't matter, though. I'm still going to marry you. We need each other."
He started advancing on her while she backed away from him along the wall.
"But-but, Eddie, we have to be practical about this. Why, you don't even have a job!"
"I'll get one. I'm going back to sea."
"The Navy?" She was up against the couch now, couldn't go any further. Putting both arms around her, lie kissed her lightly on the lips before he answered.
"No, civilian ships. I've decided to try to get into the merchant marine."
"But, Eddie, don't you see how crazy this is," she said, trying to ignore the way he was fondling her body. "A sailor and an artist getting married! Do you know what the odds against that working out would be?"
"Listen, Selma. Everything worth a damn in this world has the odds against it. If people had been worrying about odds, the human race'd have died out long ago."
"But Eddie-"
By this time he had found the buckle of her pants and had pulled them down to her knees. Holding her in his arms, he lowered her to the couch, unbuttoned her shirt and terminated the conversation.