“Just don’t tell me any more of the things your mother won’t like,” I said. “Just leave that part out.”
“Well really!”
“And stop saying ‘well really’.”
“I think you are a very offensive person,” she said.
“No, you don’t. You think I’m cute. And I think you’re a fascinating little liar. You don’t think I’m doing this for any twenty bucks, do you?”
She gave me a level, suddenly cool stare. “Then why?” Then when I didn’t answer she added, “Because spring is in the air?”
I still didn’t answer. She blushed a little. Then she giggled.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was just plain bored with doing nothing. Perhaps it was the spring too. And something in her eyes that was much older than Manhattan, Kansas.
“I think you’re very nice—really,” she said softly. Then she turned quickly and almost ran out of the office. Her steps along the corridor outside made tiny, sharp pecky sounds, kind of like mother drumming on the edge of the dinner table when father tried to promote himself a second piece of pie. And him with no money any more. No nothing. Just sitting in a rocker on the front porch back there in Manhattan, Kansas, with his empty pipe in his mouth. Rocking on the front porch, slow and easy, because when you’ve had a stroke you have to take it slow and easy. And wait for the next one. And the empty pipe in his mouth. No tobacco. Nothing to do but wait.
I put Orfamay Quest’s twenty hard-earned dollars in an envelope and wrote her name on it and dropped it in the desk drawer. I didn’t like the idea of running around loose with that much currency on me.
3
You could know Bay City a long time without knowing Idaho Street. And you could know a lot of Idaho Street without knowing Number 449. The block in front of it had a broken paving that had almost gone back to dirt. The warped fence of a lumberyard bordered the cracked sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Halfway up the block the rusted rails of a spur track turned in to a pair of high, chained wooden gates that seem not to have been opened for twenty years. Little boys with chalk had been writing and drawing pictures on the gates and all along the fence.
Number 449 had a shallow, paintless front porch on which five wood and cane rockers loafed dissolutely, held together with wire and the moisture of the beach air. The green shades over the lower windows of the house were two thirds down and full of cracks. Beside the front door there was a large printed sign “No Vacancies.” That had been there a long time too. It had got faded and flyspecked. The door opened on a long hall from which stairs went up a third of the way back. To the right there was a narrow shelf with a chained, indelible pencil hanging beside it. There was a push button and a yellow and black sign above which read “Manager,” and was held up by three thumbtacks no two of which matched. There was a pay phone on the opposite wall.
I pushed the bell. It rang somewhere near by but nothing happened. I rang it again. The same nothing happened. I prowled along to a door with a black and white metal sign on it—“Manager.” I knocked on that. Then I kicked it. Nobody seemed to mind my kicking it.
I went back out of the house and down around the side where a narrow concrete walk led to the service entrance. It looked as if it was in the right place to belong to the manager’s apartment. The rest of the house would be just rooms. There was a dirty garbage pail on the small porch and a wooden box full of liquor bottles. Behind the screen the back door of the house was open. It was gloomy inside. I put my face against the screen and peered in. Through the open inner door beyond the service porch I could see a straight chair with a man’s coat hanging over it and in the chair a man in shirtsleeves with his hat on. He was a small man. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but he seemed to be sitting at the end of the built-in breakfast table in the breakfast nook.
I banged on the screen door. The man paid no attention. I banged again, harder. This time he tilted his chair back and showed me a small pale face with a cigarette in it. “Whatcha want?” he barked.
“Manager.”
“Not in, bub.”
“Who are you?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I want a room.”
“No vacancies, bub. Can’t you read large print?”
“I happen to have different information,” I said.
“Yeah?” He shook ash from his cigarette by flicking it with a nail without removing it from his small sad mouth. “Go fry your head in it.”
He tilted his chair forward again and went on doing whatever it was he was doing.
I made noise getting down off the porch and none whatever coming back up on it. I felt the screen door carefully. It was hooked. With the open blade of a penknife I lifted the hook and eased it out of the eye. It made a small tinkle but louder tinkling sounds were being made beyond, in the kitchen.
I stepped into the house, crossed the service porch, went through the door into the kitchen. The little man was too busy to notice me. The kitchen had a three-burner gas stove, a few shelves of greasy dishes, a chipped icebox and the breakfast nook. The table in the breakfast nook was covered with money. Most of it was paper, but there was silver also, in all sizes up to dollars. The little man was counting and stacking it and making entries in a small book. He wetted his pencil without bothering the cigarette that lived in his face.
There must have been several hundred dollars on that table.
“Rent day?” I asked genially.
The small man turned very suddenly. For a moment he smiled and said nothing. It was the smile of a man whose mind is not smiling. He removed the stub of cigarette from his mouth, dropped it on the floor and stepped on it. He reached a fresh one out of his shirt and put it in the same hole in his face and started fumbling for a match.
“You came in nice,” he said pleasantly.
Finding no match, he turned casually in his chair and reached into a pocket of his coat. Something heavy knocked against the wood of the chair. I got hold of his wrist before the heavy thing came out of the pocket. He threw his weight backwards and the pocket of the coat started to lift towards me. I yanked the chair out from under him.
He sat down hard on the floor and knocked his head against the end of the breakfast table. That didn’t keep him from trying to kick me in the groin. I stepped back with his coat and took a .38 out of the pocket he had been playing with.
“Don’t sit on the floor just to be chummy,” I said.
He got up slowly, pretending to be groggier than he was. His hand fumbled at the back of his collar and light winked on metal as his arm swept toward me. He was a game little rooster.
I sideswiped his jaw with his own gun and he sat down on the floor again. I stepped on the hand that held the knife. His face twisted with pain but he didn’t make a sound. So I kicked the knife into a corner. It was a long thin knife and it looked very sharp.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I said. “Pulling guns and knives on people that are just looking for a place to live. Even for these times that’s out of line.”
He held his hurt hand between his knees and squeezed it and began to whistle through his teeth. The slap on the jaw didn’t seem to have hurt him. “O.K.,” he said, “O.K. I ain’t supposed to be perfect. Take the dough and beat it. But don’t ever think we won’t catch up with you.”
I looked at the collection of small bills and medium bills and silver on the table. “You must meet a lot of sales resistance, the weapons you carry,” I told him. I walked across to the inner door and tried it. It was not locked. I turned back.
“I’ll leave your gun in the mailbox,” I said. “Next time ask to see the buzzer.”
He was still whistling gently between his teeth and holding his hand. He gave me a narrow, thoughtful eye, then shoveled the money into a shabby briefcase and slipped its catch. He took his hat off, straightened it around, put it back jauntily on the back of his head and gave me a quiet efficient smile.