Charley didn’t need to have this spelled out for him. Fear, anger, despair... “Freddy Choynsky?” he said. “Didn’t you say, when you fired him that last time, that you couldn’t stand to see his face around?”
The old man’s hooded eyes held him fast.
“Well...” the old man said deliberately, “maybe I could learn to...”
When he got home that evening Charley found Uncle Eddie Aurelius there.
“Look who’s here,” said Marie brightly, with a tight smile. “Uncle Eddie came in especially to see you.” Her eyes and mouth sent him an unmistakable message.
Uncle Eddie Aurelius was a keg-shaped little man, with no neck and no hair, snapping blue eyes, and a cauliflower ear.
“You going to stop this nonsense?” he demanded.
Charley felt very tired. “How about some coffee, Marie?” he asked.
“You listen to what Uncle Eddie has to say,” she said implacably.
What Uncle Eddie had to say was to recount, omitting no detail, the story of how he was asked to take the second mortgage in order to enable the Roscos to get their house; of what Charley had said, of what Marie had said, of what Aunt Loraine (Mrs. Uncle Eddie) had said, and, finally, what he, Eddie Aurelius had said. He then reminded them of each and every time a payment had been late and of what he had said on each occasion, having invariably been understanding and magnanimous.
“I know, Uncle Eddie. I know. You been very, very—”
“I’ve been very, very kind,” the uncle snapped. “I know I have. I haven’t pressed you. Am I a bloodsucker? I’m no bloodsucker. You are in to me for plenty of money. Do you think I’m a millionaire? Well, I’m not, kiddo — get that idea out of your soft head right now. Long as I knew you didn’t have the money,” he said, “long as I knew you couldn’t get the money, I was willing to wait. But why in the hell should I wait now, when all you got to do is just pick up the phone and ask for the money?”
Charley said, “I can’t.”
“Oh, yes, you can,” snapped Uncle Eddie, quick and fierce. “Oh, yes, you can. And you will, too. You want to be a hero? Not on my money, sonny, you’re not going to be any hero. Listen. I wouldn’t put you out of the house. Couldn’t do it. But if I don’t get the money owing to me, the money that’s coming to me, I’m going to drop the whole thing. Sell out. Turn the mortgage over to a mortgage company. You think they will let you wait like I done? Ho ho. That dirty dog up there in the State pen, you think he’s going to be grateful to you for not picking up the check?” He snorted, sought Marie’s eyes.
She began to cry.
Charley threw back his head, spread his arms. He struck the table with his clenched fist. He seemed to be striking it into a pool of blood. Deeper and deeper his fist went into the blood. He sobbed. He sat and looked at his hands.
Then he walked over and picked up the telephone.
William O’Farrell
A Paper for Mr. Wurley
A fascinating story; how George Bostwick, high school senior, discovered the terrible dangers that lurk in our everyday lives... If you were George’s English teacher, what mark would you give him?
My name is George Bostwick and next June I’m going to graduate from Santa Monica High School. Maybe. The reason I’m only maybe going to graduate is Mr. Wurley. He teaches English IV and he’s a — you know, perfectionist?
He gave the class this practically impossible assignment that has to be handed in today. The assignment is that we have to write a paper on any subject that we’re interested in, and I sat up most of last night thinking about subjects I was interested in, and they were and still are football, cars, detective stories, and girls, not necessarily in that order.
But I have a feeling that Mr. Wurley would think that I should not be interested in these things to the exclusion of, say, Percy Bysshe Shelley or Lord Byron, and when I fell asleep I was still waiting for the inspiration that had not yet come.
“Just write it in your own words,” he said, “as though you were talking to a friend.”
Okay, friend:
So, on account of having stayed up most of last night, I slept late this morning and missed the school bus. My Mom and Dad are back east visiting, so I’m staying with my cousin Freddie who has a little house up Malibu Canyon. But right now Freddie is off on this fishing trip and he didn’t wake me up. It was nine o’clock when I got down to the Pacific Coast Highway and started thumbing rides and worrying about the paper that I hadn’t written and about what would happen to me when I didn’t hand it in.
Pretty soon this lady came along in an Austin-Healey Sprite. She stopped and I saw that she was a nice-looking blonde lady but kind of old. She wore a wedding ring and must have been around thirty.
“You got a driver’s license?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, and started climbing out. “We’re headed the same way, so you can drive me home.” She got her knees jammed up against the steering wheel and had a hard time breaking free. “Like trying to get out of a sitz bath,” she said.
Well, a Sprite’s a sports car, and a little one at that, and it’s not too easy for people of a certain age to get in and out of one, but that wasn’t why she was finding it so tough. When she finally made it and walked around to climb into the other seat I saw what her trouble was. She was stoned! But stoned!
They got a thing in California called “Drunk in Auto.” You can go to jail for it. Well, it was just last week that Freddie gave me the loan of his car to take the driving tests. My license being new and all, I wasn’t sure I wanted to drive her anywhere.
“Maybe you’d like me to go over to the Mayfair Market and call a cab,” I said.
“Young man,” she said, “you leave me sitting on the highway, I’ll have your Good Samaritan card picked up. You won’t even be a Bad Samaritan. You’ll be a Lousy Philistine. I live just this side the Sea Lion. Hop in the car and drive.”
So I did what she told me to. And I’ll say this for her — that was a real sweet car she owned. A stick job with four forward shifts, a tachometer, a windshield washer — the works. She wasn’t any trouble, either. By the time we passed Malibu Pier she was asleep.
I looked in the side pocket and found her registration. Her name was Phyllis Bennett and she lived near the Sea Lion Café, like she’d said. A lot of picture people, actors and what-all live around there. I parked outside the gate in this thick wall and woke her up.
“You’re home, Mrs. Bennett,” I said. “Thanks for the lift.”
For a minute she looked as though she was wondering who I was and how I’d come into her life. Then she smiled. “Hello, kid. Give me a hand.”
I helped her out and through the gate and into a patio. Man, when I got inside was I surprised! It was real cool. Not fancy, you understand, but nice. You could hear the sound of waves down on the beach. There was a garden with flowers in it and a big white table with chairs around it and a red-and-white umbrella over it, and down at the other end of the patio there was a little swimming pool shaped like a kidney bean.
The house was nice, too. No tricked-up gingerbread — just a comfortable place to live. The beach stairs were on the right and there were three steps just ahead that led up to the door. Mrs. Bennett started for the door but, passing the table, she gave this sort of sigh and suddenly sat down.
“Got to rest a minute. Who are you, anyway?” she asked.
Well, I’m not what you might call gabby and I don’t much like talking about myself, but I answered her the best I could. I told her my name and where I lived and how I was first-string tackle on the team at Samohi. She listened politely but she couldn’t have been paying much attention because, while I was giving her a play-by-play rundown on last Saturday’s game, she got up in the middle of the second quarter.