“Three more. I was supposed to pay them fifteen.”
“I see.” Farrell kept his tone noncommittal. “Then you’d be a member in good standing, dues paid up and so forth. Is that it?”
“I don’t know.” Jimmy’s eyes were still fixed with a miserable intensity on the carpet at his feet. “They said I couldn’t play football in the afternoon any more... until I paid them I couldn’t play any more.”
“So that’s why you’ve been moping around the house,” Farrell said. “This beats anything I’ve ever heard of. You can’t play in front of your own home until you’ve paid them fifteen dollars. Did they bother anyone else at school?”
Jimmy shook his head. He wasn’t crying any more; he seemed beyond tears, stunned into a helpless inertia.
Barbara said, “Jimmy, why didn’t you tell us about this before?”
“I was scared.”
Farrell said, “Why didn’t you take a swing at these characters?” He couldn’t keep the irritation and anger from his voice, and Barbara looked at him sharply and said, “Well, that’s not important now.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Farrell said. Jimmy had stolen because he had been afraid not to; that was pretty obvious. And Farrell wasn’t sure which disappointed him more, the fact that his son was a thief or the fact that he was a coward. “Listen to me, Jimmy,” he said, trying to put some warmth in his voice. “We’re going to take this problem to the police and they’ll straighten it out. But there’s another problem here the police can’t solve. That problem is yours, Jimmy, and only you can solve it.”
Jimmy was watching him closely, Farrell saw, and under the swollen lids his eyes looked like mere pinpoints of tension. Jimmy said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I can’t stand by your side every minute of the day and night,” Farrell said. “Neither can your mother, neither can the police. And eventually these kids will start bothering you again. They think you’re a soft touch. So unless you stand up to them they’ll make your life miserable. But tell them to go to hell just once, and you’re in the clear. It might cost you a black eye but I’ll guarantee you won’t mind that. You can hold your head up and laugh at them. They’re bullies and bullies always have a big gutless streak running underneath the big talk.”
Farrell hesitated; was he telling Jimmy the truth? Or was he simply handing him pap, giving him an injection of verbal glucose? Tell them to go to hell once and you’re in the clear. Adults didn’t buy these inspirational shots in the arm, so why should kids? Tell the boss to go to hell and you got fired. And was it an inevitably provable theory that all bullies were cowards? Wolverines were bullies and so were tigers and sharks. There were bullies in Farrell’s office, and the people who stood up to them simply got kicked in the teeth for their pains.
Farrell glanced at Barbara. “I think maybe you’d better drive him to and from school today.”
“What did you think I planned?” she asked drily. “Buy him a bow and arrow and let him swing through the trees?”
Jimmy said, “Mommy, I don’t want you to take me to school. I’ll be all right.”
Farrell glanced at him. He seemed tense and nervous, but there had been an edge of determination to his voice. “You want to handle this yourself, is that right, Jimmy?”
“Yes.”
“Stop it, both of you,” Barbara said. “I know you’re heroes, but I’m not. Wash your face, Jimmy. I’m driving you to school. And I’m going to talk to the principal about this business. Before anybody starts fighting we’ll find out exactly who and what we’re supposed to be fighting.” She tousled his hair and said, “Hurry now, while I change.”
Farrell checked the time as he slipped on his jacket. “You’ll have to run me to the station. I don’t have time to walk.”
She had changed into slacks, kicked off her slippers and stepped into a pair of brown loafers. “Sure, let’s go. The fighting Farrells. Dauntless and heroic to the end.”
“You think I was wrong?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She was frowning as she pulled on a car coat, and pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “Not really, I must admit. I’d like to take those two kids by the back of their necks and knock their stupid heads together. That’s how tolerant and progressive I am. Well, are you all set?”
In the afternoon Farrell called Barbara from the office. She was in good spirits; she had had a reassuring talk with Mr. Davidson, the principal of Rosedale Consolidated. There was no gang activity in the school, no trouble at all in fact, except the normal, spontaneous frictions that developed among groups of boys and girls sharing the same playground space and equipment. But Mr. Davidson had promised to investigate the matter, and ask the Rosedale police to detail additional patrolmen and police cars to the immediate vicinity of the school. It was a good start, Barbara felt, and Farrell agreed with her.
There was a plans meeting on Atlas refrigerators at four o’clock, Farrell’s last chore for the day. Jim Colby, the account supervisor, presided at the head of the long table in the soundproof conference room. From where Farrell sat there was a panoramic view of rooftops, skyscrapers and the iron webbing of buildings under construction, hazy and insubstantial in layers of rolling blue smoke and fog. Farrell enjoyed the view and a cigarette. Colby did not look to him for original thinking. Farrell was a workhorse of a writer, valuable on service brochures, point-of-sale booklets and laboriously accurate operating instructions — the man at the long oar, was Colby’s phrase for Farrell.
Jerry Weinberg and Clem Shipley, both alert hustlers, were present and a suggestion of Weinberg’s — to image the refrigerator as the heart of the home and feature it against backgrounds of fireplaces and toddlers in footed pajamas — had earned a thoughtful nod from Colby, and his approval had stimulated Weinberg into a tense and insistent elaboration of his idea.
“You see...” He adjusted his glasses and took a sheaf of papers from an inside breast pocket. “I’ve taken a little survey among friends of mine, and I came across this fact, which I consider significant. They’re married men for the most part, with two or three children, and they live either in the suburbs or in good housing developments on a short commute. We’d need a larger sample, of course, if we decided to use this thinking, but at any rate here’s the pattern of these friends of mine when they get home at night: the kitchen or the dining alcove is the place cocktails are usually served — and the why of this is what’s significant, it seems to me. First of all, a man likes to be close to his wife at the end of the day, to talk to her about what happened at work and so forth. The living room is usually full of kids watching TV, and the wife is usually in the kitchen anyway, putting the finishing touches on dinner. So her husband joins her there with a drink. The steak is broiling, there’s the aroma of good food in the air, everything is warm and cozy and secure — a soothing combination of physical and psychological satisfactions that makes a man relax from the tensions of his work. This is the heart of the home — the kitchen.” Weinberg glanced alertly around the table. “You know, the old colonial homes had what they called a keeping room — this was the warmest room in the house, with the stove and fireplace in it, and this was where the family sewed and read and ate, where the kids got their Saturday night baths, where they repaired harness in the bitter winter weather, where they...”
“Yes, I understand,” Colby said. “So?”
“Well, my idea is — what about re-creating one of those beautiful old keeping rooms in a photograph? Huge stone fireplace, spinning wheel, thick-beamed ceiling, brass pots and pans shining in the firelight. People naturally. Kids, a grandmother.” Weinberg slapped the top of the table. “And right in the middle of this beautiful, lovely antique room there’s a shining model of the Jet-chilled Atlas right where it belongs, in the heart of the home.”