The stalwart Prohibition agent seemed to become rigid, motionless, his eyes never leaving Murphy’s face. “Well, I’ll be goddamned!”
“You fought that big Jew. When you were with the Rough Riders in Cuba.” Murphy pressed on. “You said all the romance is gone out a’ war. Wasn’t that what you said?”
“Were you in that same big shellhole?” the stalwart man’s face seemed gray under the cellar’s unshaded incandescents, as if the burden of the coincidence taxed all his credulity. “There must have been a hundred of us pinned down that night.”
“I’m tellin’ ye.” Murphy thrust the handtruck forward.
“Wait a minute. Get that box too,” said the Prohibition agent.
“Yeah. Quinn, you comin’?”
Quinn left the side of the table, walked over, picked up the box Tommy had just brought, and joined the others on the elevator platform. Murphy tapped the elevator button on the side of the wall, and all three ascended out of sight. They left behind a strange kind of atmosphere in the cellar, something Ira had never felt before: an intrusion of danger, a peculiar imminence of past peril.
“Come on!” Mr. Klein cried angrily. “Wake up. Tonight is Shabbes b’nakcht. All right, so you don’t have to be ehrlikh. But the candles your mother lights, no? — Listen, Tommy, do me a favor: go beck to strepping the rest of the boxes.”
“All right. Don’t git huffy,” Tommy answered.
“Go beck! I wanna finish here by closing time. The whole day is one big headache already.” Acrimony held Mr. Klein in its grip. “Oy, a shvartz yur! To get something done with these Irish shikkerim,” he lamented as soon as Tommy turned his back. “Come! Two cans French-cut string beans. Grenadine syrup, a bottle. Van Camp’s. Chicken à la king, three cans. Sugar. Move.” Mr. Klein kept passing groceries. “Look what you’re doin’!” he chided.
“Yeh, yeh, I am.” Ira retorted, but he couldn’t get the ominous feeling out of his mind.
“If they don’t find them items in the beskets when they deliver tomorrow, you know who they’ll blame?” Mr. Klein thrust his head forward in harassment. “Me, not you. So—”
“Yeah, but I’m putting ’em in right! You can see I am.”
“All right,” he conceded. “Those guys get me upset, it’s terrible. I’m in that — in that shlakht haus again. Once, a shell hit so close, I didn’t know my own name for two days. Did I give you the tarragon vinegar?”
“Yeah.”
“So that finishes that slip.” He put the invoice behind the others. “I’m gonna take a leak. I don’t want you to move from the table, you hear? You’re the shipping clerk.” He gave Ira the sheaf of invoices. “Every clerk upstairs writes different. But you got a Jewish kupf. So figure out. I don’t wanna lose no more time. This day should be over, Oy!” He left.
Was that the way war felt? Ira couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding as he tried to decipher the scrawl on the invoice. Killing. Battle. What did he say? No romance—
“Hey, Irey! Hey, kid!” The cry came from the street: It was Murphy’s voice.
“Yeah!” Ira yelled.
“Push the button, will ye? The down button.”
Ira hurried to the elevator, pressed the lower button. “OK,” he yelled.
The elevator descended, three men aboard it, Quinn, Murphy, the tall stalwart Prohibition agent, the one who had been at Argonne. But now their demeanor had changed. They were jovial, friendly.
“There’s nothin’ like a good slug o’ booze to make you forget,” said Quinn.
“Or remember, too,” Murphy rejoined, barely humorous as was his wont. “By Jesus, I don’t think I ever woulda remembered. Hey, I remember! Didn’t you say, ‘What’s the use? You chew tobacco an’ spit the juice.’”
“Yeah. Hard to believe. I thought that night never would pass,” the agent puffed on his cigarette, offered the pack to the others. “Talk about steady machine-gun fire. They knew we were in there. If our mortars hadn’t opened up in the morning, and that barrage — say, I recognize your voice now.” He went into a gale of laughter, bent over, coughed cigarette smoke, wheezed with laughter again. “If that wasn’t the funniest goddamn story I ever heard! It’s still funny.”
“That was me, all right.” Murphy pushed the handtruck off the elevator. The others followed.
“What the hell was so funny I don’t know,” said the agent. “Every time somebody asked you what it felt like at the end of that rope, we’d go off.” He laughed again, head back, laughter full and prolonged. “The Germans could hear us. We didn’t give a damn.” He laughed again.
Quinn laughed. Murphy began to laugh too. He was a short man but tough in mien, with a rocky jaw and long arms. He banged the handtruck. His normally fair skin suffused: “A rough sea, ye know, an’ night, an’ about ten guys over me yellin’, ‘Git goin’!’ An’ there ain’t a goddamn lifeboat under me or nothin’. Black water, that’s all. The whole fuckin’ ocean.”
The wooden boxes on the handtruck in his hands shook, as if in lieu of mirth — to which the roaring merriment of the other two men added dimension.
The laughter continued. Ira, too, was infected. It really was funny. He lifted his face, grinning appreciatively toward the laughing faces above him, saw the Prohibition agent’s countenance turn sober, heard him say with quiet urgency: “Where is it, Murph?”
“Back o’ the icebox. The big locked one.”
“Hope it’s good.”
“Bushmill. Johnny Walker. Haig.”
The agent whistled between his teeth: “You don’t miss a trick.”
“Not when it’s all P and T.”
“Any man deserves a sup o’ poteen after bein’ dipped in the drink,” said Quinn. “There’s more Lily cups at the sink.”
“Right.” The agent swallowed. “I’m McCrory.” He took a few steps toward the stairs. “Craig, will you come down here?
“Okay, Major.” The beefy, short-necked man appeared.
“That’s Murphy. That’s Quinn. Remember the story I told you about standing in the mud in a helluva big shell crater all night? There’s the soldier hanging from a rope when his troopship was torpedoed?” He pointed at Murphy. “Would you believe it?”
“No!” And once again a roar of laughter.
“Ira!” Mr. Klein’s angry shout was loud enough to be heard through the swelling guffaw — and stern enough to frighten Ira.
“Here. I’m coming!”
“I told you not to leave the place, didn’t I?” Mr. Klein’s impatient glare tracked Ira returning. “You didn’t peck a thing. Look, it’s the same slip.”
“You took so long,” Ira countered.
“So you shoulda done more!”
“They called me to the elevator. To get it down,” Ira answered.
Under fretful eyebrows lowered over the invoices, Mr. Klein seemed to be trying to block out the view of the group near the elevator. “A shvartz gelekhter,” he growled. “Here, take: three bottles Perrier water.”
“They were in a shellhole together,” Ira said.
“Six Knox gelatin.”
“The one who’s going in the back now is a major. I heard Murphy tell him—”
“Pay attention!” Mr. Klein scolded.
“Oh, Jesus!” Ira muttered rebelliously.
“Three cans pie cherries. Take. Gib dikh a rick. Salt water teffy. Another dozen eggs — beck on the counter. Extract cloves. Smoked kippers, six cans. Gluten bread. Coffee, cocktail onions, a jar—”
“You ain’t givin’ me a chance to pack,” Ira complained.