Dear Amy,
Well, I got in that overtime like I said, and put forty dollars in the bank this week. It’s adding up, and it can’t add up too soon...
It was hot in the room. A bunch of kids were playing handball in the alley, and their screaming was in his ears until he could hardly think. He started to write again.
...I sure don’t like the city. It’s noisy and hot, and there isn’t anybody to talk to. It’s not like back home. You can’t hardly meet anybody...
He put down his pencil and looked at the words. They were true. Everything was different in the city, but people were still people. They still got lonely and knew hunger. If a starving man stole a loaf of bread it wasn’t the same as stealing for profit. Everything was different in the city.
The ball kept bouncing against the wall, and now it was as if it were bouncing against his head. He wrinkled up the letter and threw it on the floor. It was too hot to write. He couldn’t sit in a hot room forever...
He met Blanche about three houses down the street. He never asked, but she might have been waiting for him.
“I’m going down to the corner for a beer,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to come with me.”
She wasn’t wearing the blue sweater. It was too warm for that. Spring and summer had a way of running together this time of year. She wore the cotton dress and that soft look that came sometimes when the shadows were kind.
“A friend of mine got generous and gave me a whole case of beer,” she answered. “Why don’t we go to my place? I don’t like the corner much any more.”
Her words were as good as any. He went along with her for a couple of blocks to a rooming house the duplicate of his own. She lived on the second floor. He stooped when he went through the doorway.
“You’re big,” she said, closing the door behind them. “Golly, you’re big — you know?” Then she ran her hand up his back and around his shoulders. “But you’re so skinny I can feel the bones through your shirt. I bet you don’t eat half enough.”
“I don’t like restaurant cooking,” he said.
“I don’t either! I tell you what you should do. I’ve got a hot plate, see?”
He saw. He saw a room no larger than his own, but with a hot plate and a sink and a yellowed enamel refrigerator in one corner. He looked for a chair, but the only one he could find had laundry on it. He sat down on the edge of the bed. By this time, she’d taken the beer out of the refrigerator, opened the cans, and handed one to him. All the time she kept talking.
“I do most of my own cooking, so if there’s something you’d like something you’re hungry for — you just buy it and bring it here. Those restaurants can kill you.”
She took a couple of pulls at the beer.
“God, it’s hot!” she said.
She pulled off her dress. She didn’t wear anything underneath except a slip as thin as a silk curtain. She was thin, too, her thighs, her stomach, her small breasts poking at the slip. She finished her beer and tossed the can into the sink, and then reached down for the hem of her slip. Then she looked at the window. The shade was rolled up to let in the night breeze in case one ever came, so she turned out the light.
Afterwards, he lay with her a while, staring at the ceiling and listening to his heart beat. Finally he spoke.
“That man at the bar last week — Morrell. Is he the friend who gave you the beer?”
It wasn’t that he had to make conversation. It was that he felt guilty and wanted to be reassured that it was nothing to her.
“What of it?” she answered. “I work for him sometimes. I entertain his customers.”
“He’s got some kind of business, then?”
“Morrell? He’s got all kinds of business.”
“I guess some people know how to make money. I wish I knew.”
“Morrell knows, all right. That’s one thing he knows.”
Blanche sounded sleepy. He waited a while, thinking she might speak again; but she didn’t and he left her that way. He wasn’t sure what to do, so he left two dollars on the refrigerator.
He didn’t intend to go back; but he did, of course. After a few more Saturdays it didn’t bother him. He’d give her a few dollars for groceries, and she’d have supper waiting when he got off work. The rest of his pay went into the bank the same as before, and he wrote home every week as usual. One night Blanche wanted to go out, so they went back to the bar on the corner and had a couple of beers and listened to the music in the record machine. Then Morrell came back to their booth.
“Well, it’s been a long time,” he said. “You don’t come around much any more, Blanche. What’s the matter? Got somebody keeping you busy?”
He had an obscene smile. He sat down beside Blanche again, and she edged over toward the wall.
“Still saving your money, farmer? Still going to buy back that farm?”
He shook his head. “I don’t aim to buy back anything,” he said. “All I want is a few acres for a truck garden and a house. Just a little piece of ground.”
Morrell nodded, still smiling.
“That’s what I like to hear — a man with ambition. But the trouble is, farmer, you’re going to be an old man before you get that piece of ground doing it the hard way.”
Morrell’s teeth were like pearls, and a diamond ring on his finger shot fire. The farmer listened.
“Is there an easy way?” he asked.
“Look at me,” Morrell said. “Six years ago I was broke — hoisting crates at the warehouse the same as you. But I got smart. I saved my dough, too, and then I did what the big boys do. I invested my dough.”
“In a business?”
“In the market, chum. Ain’t you ever heard?”
“But I don’t know anything about the market.”
“So who knows? I got me a broker — one of those young sharpies out of college. He studies all the time — tells me what to buy and when to sell. Not this six and seven percent old lady stuff, but the sweet stuff. You got to gamble to get anywhere in this world.”
Blanche was restless. She shoved her half-finished beer away from her.
“You talk big, Morrell,” she said, “but talk don’t do the farmer any good.”
“So why should I do the farmer good?”
“Why should you blow your mouth off?”
The farmer didn’t want any part of the argument. He would just as soon have dropped the subject; but Blanche’s taunt only made Morrell talk more.
“You think I talk big and that’s all?” he said. “You think I’m bluffing? Okay. I’ll show you how I’m bluffing. You want me to cut you in, farmer? It happens I’ve got a sweet thing going right now. Give me a hundred dollars and I’ll double it for you. Go ahead, try me and see.”
The farmer hesitated. He looked at Blanche and caught a glimpse of that twisted smile again.
“My money’s in the bank,” he said.
“Okay, so the bank opens Monday morning, don’t it? One hundred dollars, that’s all I’ll cut you in for. I know you’ve got it. You’ve got plenty.”
One hundred dollars. Monday noon he went to the bank on his lunch hour, and Monday night he gave the money to Morrell. He knew that he was a fool and never expected to see the money again; but Blanche had set it up for him and he didn’t want to back out.
It was exactly three weeks later that Morrell gave him two hundred dollars.
“You got lucky,” Blanche said.
“Luck?” Morrell laughed. “Using your head ain’t luck, honey. Any time you want to get smart again, farmer, let me know. Any time...”