“Excuse me,” said the engineer to the woman, squeezing past her as if she were an irate shopper in Macy’s basement. On the way he brushed against Jiggs, who immediately fell back and began to crouch and wave him in with his fingertips.
“Come on, come on,” said Jiggs.
But it was the pseudo-Negro who caught his attention. He had come between the engineer and Jiggs and shook his head sadly and good-naturedly. “Hold on, fellows,” he said, undoing his cuff link. “I’m afraid there’s been a rather pathetic misunderstanding here — a sad commentary in fact on the fraility of us all. Fellows—”
“No,” cried the engineer angrily. “Don’t roll up your sleeve.”
“Go ahead and roll up your sleeve,” cried Jiggs, misunderstanding, dancing ominously and now waving the pseudo-Negro into him.
The engineer groaned. “No. I—” he began, taking another step toward the grinning alpiner. Here was the villain!
But in that instant, even as he was passing the woman, whom he had forgotten, she drew back her fist clear to her earlobe and, unleashing a straight whistling blow, struck the engineer on the fleshy part of his nose, which was already swollen and tender from hay fever.
Oh, hideous exploding humiliating goddamnable nose pain, the thump-thud of woe itself. Oh, ye bastards all together. “Come here,” he thought he heard himself say as he struggled to get at the alpiner — did he hit him? — but the next thing he knew he was sitting on the front steps enveloped by the dreadful cordiality of misunderstandings cleared away, of debits to be balanced. The bastards, friends and foe, were all apologizing to each other. As he held his nose, he saw the pseudo-Negro rolling his sleeve down. He had shown them his white patch.
Only Mort Prince was still angry. “That’s not the point,” he was saying furiously to the householders, who, the engineer perceived instantly, were anxious for him to score his point. They were allowing him his anger. Everyone felt bad. The engineer groaned.
“I thought they were blockbusters, for Christ’s sake,” Jiggs was telling a newcomer. “They been here,” he assured Mort Prince. “And they come from Jersey.”
“I just want to make it damn clear I’m selling to anyone I please, regardless of race, creed, or national origin.”
“Me too! That’s just what I was telling Lou here.”
“And hear this,” said the writer, massaging his wristlet grimly. “If there is any one thing that pisses me off, its bigotry.”
“You’re right,” cried Jiggs. “Mr. Prince, if Mae and I didn’t have our savings in our house — listen, let me tell you!” But though everyone listened, he fell silent.
“We keep the lawr, Mr. Prince,” said the alpiner earnestly. Then, seeing a chance to put a good face on the whole affair, he laughed and pointed his chin toward the engineer. “Tiger over there though, he was coming for me. Did you see him? I’m telling you, he was coming and I was getting out of his way. Tiger.” Hand outstretched, he crossed to the engineer.
The engineer held his nose and looked at the hand. He had had enough of the whole crew.
“You not from Jersey, fella?” asked the alpiner, for some reason taking off his hat. “Mae here said — now isn’t that something!” He called upon the neighborhood to witness the human comedy.
The engineer did not answer.
“You don’t work for Oscar Fava?” cried the tall woman, meaning the question for the engineer, but not quite bringing herself to look at him. “You know Fava’s real estate over there, next to Pik-a-Pak,” she asked Jiggs and when he nodded she offered it to the engineer as a kind of confirmation, perhaps even an apology. “Over in Haddon Heights.”
“I thought it was in Haddonfield,” said Jiggs. They argued the point as another earnest of their good faith. “You never been over to Tammy Lanes in Haddonfield?” Jiggs asked him.
The engineer shook his head.
“Wasn’t that Oscar Fava come over last night?” Jiggs asked Mae.
“And he was with him,” said the woman. “Him or his twin brother.”
“You know what I wish he would do,” the alpiner told the other householders, presuming to speak of the engineer fondly — a true character was he, this engineer, another five minutes and they’d call him Rocky. “I wish he’d come on down to Tammy with us tonight, just to bug Oscar.” Again he held out a hand to the engineer. “Come on down just for laughs.”
“No, thank you,” said the latter gloomily. He rose. “I’ve got to be on my way.” He looked around for the pseudo-Negro, who had vanished. Most of all he wanted to get away from Mort Prince, who was still trying to hit upon some way to use his anger, a special delayed Hemingway writer’s sort of anger. It was embarrassing. This was the age of embarrassment, thought the engineer, of unspendable rage. Who to hit? No one. Mort Prince took the engineer by the arm and pulled him inside. The best Mort could do was slam the door on the householders, catching Jiggs in midsentence:
“Any time any of youse want to come down—”
Reviving now, the writer opened a fresh beer and hung suspended from himself, free and clear of the refrigerator, while he told them: “I’ve got it, by God. I’m going to call up this guy Oscar Fava and let him sell it Stick around for laughs,” he told the engineer.
“No, thanks,” said the engineer, who was sick of them and their laughs.
Fetching his firkin, in which he had packed his medicines, he took three Chlortrimeton tablets for his hay fever and rubbed his nose with an ice cube.
“Bill,” said the pseudo-Negro earnestly, “if I can’t persuade you to make the tour with us, at least promise me you’ll come as far as Virginia.”
“No, thanks,” said the engineer, politely now. “I’ve really got to be going. I’d be obliged if you’d take me to the bus station.”
“Very well,” said the pseudo-Negro, as formally as the other. Shaky as he was, he was as sentient as anyone. He knew there were times for staying and times for leaving, times for sitting and times for standing. He stood up.
“Perhaps it would be possible for us to meet you in your hometown later this summer, he said.
“Perhaps,” said the engineer and picked up his firkin.
A white misty morning in northern Virginia found a young man, pleasant of mien and moderately disoriented, dressed neatly and squatting on a stout cedar firkin beside a highway which ran between a white-oak swamp on one side and a foggy hill, flattened on top like a mesa, on the other. He sat on the firkin and counted his money several times, reviewed the contents of a notebook, and from time to time read a page or two from a small red volume. Then he unfolded an Esso map of Virginia and spread it out on an expensive case of blue leather. Opening the firkin, which was as cedarous and cool inside as a springhouse, he took out a round molding of sweet butter, a box of Ritz crackers, a plastic knife, and a quart of buttermilk. As he ate his breakfast he traced the red and blue lines on the map with his gold pencil.
Where could he have spent the night? Not even he was certain, but he must have spent it tolerably well because his Brooks Brothers shirt was still fresh, his Dacron suit unwrinkled, and his cheek smooth and fragrant with soap. Another fact may be pertinent. An hour or so earlier, a Mayflower van with two riders had turned off the highway onto the gravel road directly behind him and pulled up at a farmhouse nestled at the foot of the foggy hill. Mayflower vans, he had learned recently and already forgotten, are owned by their drivers, who usually drive them home after finishing a haul.