“Oh, for God’s sake!” Holding the bag in the crook of his elbow, Aaron dug his billfold out of his back pocket. He pulled out a five and handed it to the kid. “Buy yourself some chow with this. Nobody should have to steal for food. Go on, beat it.”
The kid looked at the bill as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “You don’t gotta do that, Mister!” he blurted.
“Never mind what I’ve gotta do. Get lost. Amscray,” Aaron said. The kid stuck the fin in the pocket of his faded, ragged jeans and took off like Jackie Robinson swiping second. No, Aaron never would have caught him if he hadn’t had a burden.
Shaking his head, he started back to the house. Ruth was standing on the walkway. She must have come out when he didn’t bring in the next load.
“What was that all about?” she asked as he drew near.
“A hungry kid,” he said, and hefted the sack. “I don’t care how hungry he is, he’s not gonna eat what we bought.”
“No, huh? How much did you give him there?”
She’d seen more than Aaron had figured. “Five bucks,” he answered sheepishly. He would have kept quiet about it, but he didn’t like to lie point-blank.
“That’s more than what’s in the sack is worth,” Ruth said, which was true. She started to laugh. “You’re such a softy! I didn’t think so when we got married, but I know better by now.”
As he had with the kid, Aaron tried to get mad. As he had then, he failed. How could he do it when she was so obviously right?
–
Marian Staley took a copy of the Weed Press-Herald from the stack on the counter at the Rexall. She slid the druggist a nickel. “There you go, Mr. Stansfield,” she said.
“Thanks,” he answered. “Want to read about poor Leroy, do you? That was a terrible thing.”
“Everybody in town is talking about it,” Marian said. Leroy van Zandt had driven a truck for National Wood and Timber, another logging outfit based in Weed. He’d swerved on a twisting road to try to miss a deer, and gone down a steep slope. His rig caught fire when it hit the bottom. He dragged himself out of the upside-down cab, but not soon enough. He died in the back of Doc Toohey’s car on the way to the hospital in Redding.
Heber Stansfield pursed his lips. “He might’ve been lucky to peg out at the end, you know what I’m saying? If Doc had got him to the hospital, chances are he just would’ve suffered longer and then died.”
“I won’t try to tell you you’re wrong,” Marian replied. “But it’s still a crying shame there was no ambulance to pick him up and no hospital here to bring him to. That might have done him some good.”
The druggist nodded. “You don’t hardly got to read the Press-Herald now,” he said. “You and Dale Dropo, the two of you’re on the same page.”
“We need those things. I’m new in town, and I can see it. I’m not surprised the guy who runs the paper can, too,” Marian said. “The lumber-company bosses get rich off the loggers. They ought to take care of them better when they get hurt.”
“That’s a fact, and I won’t try and make like it isn’t,” Stansfield said. “But I will tell you, you better be careful who you say it to. It gets back to the people you work for, you won’t work for ’em no more.”
“I understand that. Oh, boy, do I ever!” Marian said. “They’ve got Weed sewn up tighter than Boeing did in Seattle before the bomb hit. But if nobody ever tells them what they need to hear, another Leroy van Zandt is just waiting to happen.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Heber Stansfield’s bespectacled stare reminded Marian of that of an old, old tortoise that had seen too much of this wicked old world. He went on, “But you got yourself a young ’un-pretty little thing, she is. You ever tell her the fairy tale about the mice what voted to bell the cat? They’re still waiting for a volunteer, an’ so’re we.”
On that cheerful note, Marian took the paper and the bottle of aspirin she’d gone in there to buy and walked back to the Studebaker, which was parked three stores down the street. Linda was waiting inside. She…
Marian stiffened. Linda had rolled down her window. In spite of all Marian’s warnings about never talking to strangers, she was in animated conversation with a man. Marian broke into a run.
And then, three steps later, she slowed again. Panic faded. Only one man in town wore an old-fashioned tweed cap, what they called a newsboy cap. And Fayvl Tabakman, while he might be a great many things, wasn’t a stranger to Linda. Except for Marian, she’d known him longer than anybody here.
The cobbler turned. He touched the brim of the cap in his familiar greeting gesture. “Hallo,” he said. “I saw your little girl, and I thought I would keep an eye on her till you got back.”
“Thanks.” Marian believed him. She still didn’t know whether she felt anything for him, and what it was if she did, but she was sure she didn’t worry about him near Linda. Weed was a pretty safe place. She wouldn’t have left her daughter alone for even a few minutes if it hadn’t been. But an adult eye didn’t hurt.
Tabakman pointed at the newspaper in her hand. In the sunlight, Marian saw that his forefinger had more scars than she could count-marks of how he’d learned his trade and of slips after he did. He said, “It’s a terrible thing about that poor van Zandt man.”
“It is.” Marian nodded. “Mr. Stansfield and I were talking about that in the drugstore just now.”
“Terrible,” Tabakman repeated: and if anyone here knew about terrible, he was the man. “And it doesn’t got to be this way. A hospital? A hospital, I don’t know about. Is expensive, a hospital.”
“I know,” Marian said sorrowfully.
“But an ambulance, an ambulance we could do,” Fayvl Tabakman said-or maybe it was Weed could do. “An ambulance is what? A few t’ousand taler? Can’t be more. We got lots lumber companies here. They split the cost, not so real much for anyone. A few hindert taler, a t’ousand tops. They could. Only they don’t want.”
“You’re right.” Marian hadn’t looked at it from that angle. “It wouldn’t take more than a fleabite out of their bottom line.”
“Mommy,” Linda said, “can we go home now? I have to tinkle.”
“Okay.” Marian realized that listening to grown-ups talk about things that didn’t matter to her couldn’t be very exciting for a little girl. She said her good-byes to Fayvl Tabakman and got into the Studebaker.
Even after she made dinner-lamb chops, which she could do quickly on top of the stove-Tabakman’s idea stayed in her mind. The more she thought about it, the better it seemed.
Except for one thing. Who’ll bell the cat? Heber Stansfield’s question stayed in her mind, too. Whoever did try to bell the cat wouldn’t just be belling one cat, either. That person would have to go to all the lumber bosses in town. The more who said no, the more each of the rest would have to pay. How soon would that be enough to scupper the project?
And if her own boss said no, she might very well be tossing her own job down the drain. She didn’t want to take the chance. Anyone who was a kid during the Depression learned that, when you had work, you hung on to it the way an abalone hung on to a rock.
So, instead of talking to Mr. Cummings or the other big shots, she spent two or three days contemplating ways and means. Then she paid a call on Dale Dropo. “A friend of mine said that, if all the lumber companies chipped in on an ambulance, it wouldn’t cost any one of them too much,” she told the editor of the Weed Press-Herald.
He scratched his cheek. “You’ve got a smart friend,” he said after a moment. “Who is he, she, whatever, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Fayvl Tabakman, the cobbler,” she said. “But talk to him before you put his name in the paper, okay?”
“I will, honest injun,” Dropo said. “It’s a better scheme than trying to get any one outfit to cough up the dough, that’s for sure. Who does the dirty work, though?”
“Here’s what I was thinking,” Marian said-the result of her contemplation. “If you put petitions in the paper and almost everybody in town signed them, wouldn’t the lumber companies have to notice that?”