Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction Read online

  What Durant saw was a big, scarred, hungry man, hunched over and desolate as a lost child. “Do I really look that bad?” he said, managing to laugh.

  “Do you really feel that awful?”

  “I was thinking of lunch. Lunch can be pretty terrible.”

  “Not where we eat it,” she said. “Why not come with us?”

  Major Durant went with them, with the three men, Ed, Teddy, and Lou, who danced through a life that seemed full of funny secrets, and with the girl, Marion. He found he was relieved to be with others again, even with these others, and his step down the walk was jaunty.

  At lunch, the four spoke of painting, ballet, and drama. Durant grew tired of counterfeiting interest, but he kept at it.

  “Isn’t the food good here?” said Marion, in a casual and polite aside.

  “Um,” said Durant. “But the shrimp sauce is flat. Needs—” He gave up. The four were off again in their merry whirlwind of talk.

  “Did you just drive here?” said Teddy, when he saw Durant staring at him disapprovingly.

  “No,” said Durant. “I came in my boat.”

  “A boat!” they echoed, excited, and Durant found himself center stage.

  “What kind?” said Marion.

  “Cabin cruiser,” said Durant.

  Their faces fell. “Oh,” said Marion, “one of those floating tourist cabins with a motor.”

  “Well,” said Durant, tempted to tell them about the blow he’d weathered, “it’s certainly no picnic when—”

  “What’s its name?” said Lou.

  “The Jolly Roger,” said Durant.

  The four exchanged glances, and then burst into laughter, repeating the boat’s name, to Durant’s consternation and bafflement.

  “If you had a dog,” said Marion, “I’ll bet you’d call it Spot.”

  “Seems like a perfectly good name for a dog,” said Durant, reddening.

  Marion reached across the table and patted his hand. “Aaaaaah, you lamb, you musn’t mind us.” She was an irresponsibly affectionate woman, and appeared to have no idea how profoundly her touch was moving the lonely Durant, in spite of his resentment. “Here we’ve been talking away and not letting you say a word,” she said. “What is it you do in the Army?”

  Durant was startled. He hadn’t mentioned the Army, and there were no insignia on his faded khakis. “Well, I was in Korea for a little while,” he said, “and I’m out of the Army now because of wounds.”

  The four were impressed and respectful. “Do you mind talking about it?” said Ed.

  Durant sighed. He did mind talking about it to Ed, Teddy, and Lou, but he wanted very much for Marion to hear about it—wanted to show her that while he couldn’t speak her language, he could speak one of his own that had life to it. “No,” he said, “there are some things that would just as well stay unsaid, but for the most part, why not talk about it?” He sat back and lit a cigarette, and squinted into the past as though through a thin screen of shrubs in a forward observation post.

  “Well,” he said, “we were over on the east coast, and …” He had never tried to tell the tale before, and now, in his eagerness to be glib and urbane, he found himself including details, large and small, as they occurred to him, until his tale was no tale at all, but a formless, unwieldy description of war as it had really seemed: a senseless, complicated mess that in the telling was first-rate realism but miserable entertainment.

  He had been talking for twenty minutes now, and his audience had finished coffee and dessert, and two cigarettes apiece, and the waitress was getting restive about the check. Durant, florid and irritated with himself, was trying to manage a cast of thousands spread over the forty thousand square miles of South Korea. His audience was listening with glazed eyes, brightening at any sign that the parts were about to be brought together into a whole and thence to an end. But the signs were always false, and at last, when Marion swallowed her third yawn, Durant blew himself in his story through the wall of his tent and fell silent.

  “Well,” said Teddy, “it’s hard for us who haven’t seen it to imagine.”

  “Words can hardly convey it,” said Marion. She patted Durant’s hand again. “You’ve been through so much, and you’re so modest about it.”

  “Nothing, really,” said Durant.

  After a moment of silence, Marion stood. “It’s certainly been pleasant and interesting, Major,” she said, “and we all wish you bon voyage on The Jolly Roger.”

  And there it ended.

  Back aboard The Jolly Roger, Durant finished the stale quart of beer and told himself he was ready to give up—to sell the boat, return to the hospital, put on a bathrobe, and play cards and thumb through magazines until doomsday.

  Moodily he studied his charts for a course back to New London. It was then he realized that he was only a few miles from the home village of a friend who had been killed in the Second World War. It struck him as wryly fitting that he should call on this ghost on his way back.

  He arrived at the village through an early-morning mist, the day before Memorial Day, feeling ghostlike himself. He made a bad landing that shook the village dock, and tied up The Jolly Roger with a clumsy knot.

  When he reached the main street, he found it quiet but lined with flags. Only two other people were abroad to glance at the dour stranger.

  He stepped into the post office and spoke to the brisk old woman who was sorting mail in a rickety cage.

  “Pardon me,” said Durant, “I’m looking for the Pefko family.”

  “Pefko? Pefko?” said the postmistress. “That doesn’t sound like any name around here. Pefko? They summer people?”

  “No—I don’t think so. I’m sure they’re not. They may have moved away a while ago.”

  “Well, if they lived here, you’d think I’d know. They’d come here for their mail. There’s only four hundred of us year around, and I never heard of any Pefko.”

  The secretary from the law office across the street came in and knelt by Durant, and worked the combination lock of her mailbox.

  “Annie,” said the postmistress, “you know about anybody named Pefko around here?”

  “No,” said Annie, “unless they had one of the summer cottages out on the dunes. It’s hard to keep track of who is in those. They’re changing hands all the time.”

  She stood, and Durant saw that she was attractive in a determinedly practical way, without wiles or ornamentation. But Durant was now so convinced of his own dullness that his manner toward her was perfunctory.

  “Look,” he said, “my name is Durant, Major Nathan Durant, and one of my best friends in the Army was from here. George Pefko—I know he was from here. He said so, and so did all his records. I’m sure of it.”

  “Ohhhhhh,” said Annie. “Now wait, wait, wait. That’s right—certainly. Now I remember.”

  “You knew him?” said Durant.

  “I knew of him,” said Annie. “I know now who you’re talking about: the one that got killed in the war.”

  “I was with him,” said Durant.

  “Still can’t say as I remember him,” said the postmistress.

  “You don’t remember him, probably, but you remember the family,” said Annie. “And they did live out on the dunes, too. Goodness, that was a long time ago—ten or fifteen years. Remember that big family that talked Paul Eldredge into letting them live in one of his summer cottages all winter? About six kids or more. That was the Pefkos. A wonder they didn’t freeze to death, with nothing but a fireplace for heat. The old man came out here to pick cranberries, and stayed on through the winter.”

  “Wouldn’t exactly call this their hometown,” said the postmistress.

  “George did,” said Durant.

  “Well,” said Annie, “I suppose one hometown was as good as another for young George. Those Pefkos were wanderers.”

  “George enlisted from here,” said Durant. “I suppose that’s how he settled on it.” By the same line of reasoning, Durant had chos
en Pittsburgh as his hometown, though a dozen other places had as strong a claim.

  “One of those people who found a home in the Army,” said the postmistress. “Scrawny, tough boy. I remember now. His family never got any mail. That was it, and they weren’t church people. That’s why I forgot. Drifters. He must have been about your brother’s age, Annie.”

  “I know. But I tagged after my brother all the time in those days, and George Pefko never had anything to do with his gang. They kept to themselves, the Pefkos did.”

  “There must be somebody who remembers him well,” said Durant. “Somebody who—” He let the sentence die on a note of urgency. It was unbearable that every vestige of George had disappeared, unmissed.

  “Now that I think about it,” said Annie, “I’m almost sure there’s a square named after him.”

  “A square?” said Durant.

  “Not really a square,” said Annie. “They just call it a square. When a man from around here gets killed in a war, the town names some little plot of town property after him—a traffic circle or something like that. They put up a plaque with his name on it. That triangle down by the village dock—I’m almost sure that was named for your friend.”

  “It’s hard to keep track of them all, these days,” said the postmistress.

  “Would you like to go down and see it?” said Annie. “I’ll be glad to show you.”

  “A plaque?” said Durant. “Never mind.” He dusted his hands. “Well, which way is the restaurant—the one with a bar?”

  “After June fifteenth, any way you want to go,” said the postmistress. “But right now everything is closed and shuttered. You can get a sandwich at the drugstore.”

  “I might as well move on,” said Durant.

  “As long as you’ve come, you ought to stay for the parade,” said Annie.

  “After seventeen years in the Army, that would be a real treat,” said Durant. “What parade?”

  “Memorial Day,” said Annie.

  “That’s tomorrow, I thought,” said Durant.

  “The children march today. School is closed tomorrow,” said Annie. She smiled. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to endure one more parade, Major, because here it comes.”

  Durant followed her apathetically out onto the sidewalk. He could hear the sound of a band, but the marchers weren’t yet in sight. There were no more than a dozen people waiting for the parade to pass.

  “They go from square to square,” said Annie. “We really ought to wait for them down by George’s.”

  “Whatever you say,” said Durant. “I’ll be closer to the boat.”

  They walked down the slope toward the village dock and The Jolly Roger.

  “They keep up the squares very nicely,” said Annie.

  “They always do, they always do,” said Durant.

  “Are you in a hurry to get somewhere else today?”

  “Me?” said Durant bitterly. “Me? Nothing’s waiting for me anywhere.”

  “I see,” said Annie, startled. “Sorry.”

  “It isn’t your fault.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m an Army bum like George. They should have handed me a plaque and shot me. I’m not worth a dime to anybody.”

  “Here’s the square,” said Annie gently.

  “Where? Oh—that.” The square was a triangle of grass, ten feet on a side, an accident of intersecting lanes and a footpath. In its center was a low boulder on which was fixed a small metal plaque, easily overlooked.

  “George Pefko Memorial Square,” said Durant. “By golly, I wonder what George would make of that?”

  “He’d like it, wouldn’t he?” said Annie.

  “He’d probably laugh.”

  “I don’t see that there’s anything to laugh about.”

  “Nothing, nothing at all—except that it doesn’t have much to do with anything, does it? Who cares about George? Why should anyone care about George? It’s just what people are expected to do, put up plaques.”

  The bandsmen were in sight now, all eight of them, teenagers, out of step, rounding a corner with confident, proud, sour, and incoherent noise intended to be music.

  Before them rode the town policeman, fat with leisure, authority, leather, bullets, pistol, handcuffs, club, and a badge. He was splendidly oblivious to the smoking, backfiring motorcycle beneath him as he swept slowly back and forth before the parade.

  Behind the band came a cloud of purple, seeming to float a few feet above the street. It was lilacs carried by children. Along the curb, teachers looking as austere as New England churches called orders to the children.

  “The lilacs came in time this year,” said Annie. “Sometimes they don’t. It’s touch-and-go.”

  “That so?” said Durant.

  A teacher blew a whistle. The parade halted, and Durant found a dozen children bearing down on him, their eyes large, their arms filled with flowers, their knees lifted high.

  Durant stepped aside.

  A bugler played taps badly.

  The children laid their flowers before the plaque on George Pefko Memorial Square.

  “Lovely?” whispered Annie.

  “Yes,” said Durant. “It would make a statue want to cry. But what does it mean?”

  “Tom,” called Annie to a small boy who had just laid down his flowers, “why did you do that?”

  The boy looked around guiltily. “Do what?”

  “Put the flowers down there,” said Annie.

  “Tell them you’re paying homage to one of the fallen valiant who selflessly gave his life,” prompted a teacher.

  Tom looked at her blankly, and then back at the flowers.

  “Don’t you know?” said Annie.

  “Sure,” said Tom at last. “He died fighting so we could be safe and free. And we’re thanking him with flowers, because it was a nice thing to do.” He looked up at Annie, amazed that she should ask. “Everybody knows that.”

  The policeman raced his motorcycle engine. The teacher shepherded the children back into line. The parade moved on.

  “Well,” said Annie, “are you sorry you had to endure one more parade, Major?”

  “It’s true, isn’t it,” murmured Durant. “It’s so damn simple, and so easy to forget.” Watching the innocent marchers under the flowers, he was aware of life, the beauty and importance of a village at peace. “Maybe I never knew—never had any way of knowing. This is what war is about, isn’t it. This.”

  Durant laughed. “George, you homeless, horny, wild old rummy,” he said to George Pefko Memorial Square, “damned if you didn’t turn out to be a saint.”

  The old spark was back. Major Durant, home from the wars, was somebody.

  “I wonder,” he said to Annie, “if you’d have lunch with me, and then, maybe, we could go for a ride in my boat.”

  Custom-Made

  Bride

  I am a customer’s man for an investment counseling firm. I’m starting to build a clientele and to see my way clear to take, in a modest way, the good advice I sell. My uniform—gray suit, Homburg hat, and navy blue overcoat—is paid for, and after I get a half-dozen more white shirts, I’m going to buy some stock.

  We in the investment counseling business have a standard question, which goes, “Mr. X, sir, before we can make our analyses and recommendations, we’d like to know just what it is you want from your portfolio: income or growth?” A portfolio is a nest egg in the form of stocks and bonds. What the question tries to get at is, does the client want to put his nest egg where it will grow, not paying much in dividends at first, or does he want the nest egg to stay about the same size but pay nice dividends?

  The usual answer is that the client wants his nest egg to grow and pay a lot of dividends. He wants to get richer fast. But I’ve had plenty of unusual answers, particularly from clients who, because of some kind of mental block, can’t take money in the abstract seriously. When asked what they want from their portfolio, they’re likely to name something th
ey’re itching to blow money on—a car, a trip, a boat, a house.

  When I put the question to a client named Otto Krummbein, he said he wanted to make two women happy: Kitty and Falloleen.

  Otto Krummbein is a genius, designer of the Krummbein Chair, the Krummbein Di-Modular Bed, the body of the Marittima-Frascati Sports Racer, and the entire line of Mercury Kitchen Appliances.

  He is so engrossed in beauty that his mental development in money matters is that of a chickadee. When I showed him the first stock certificate I bought for his portfolio, he wanted to sell it again because he didn’t like the artwork.

  “What difference do the looks of the certificate make, Otto?” I said, bewildered. “The point is that the company behind it is well managed, growing, and has a big cash reserve.”

  “Any company,” said Otto, “that would choose as its symbol this monstrosity at the top of the certificate, this fat Medusa astride a length of sewer pipe and wrapped in cable, is certainly insensitive, vulgar, and stupid.”

  When I got Otto as a client, he was in no condition to start building a portfolio. I got him through his lawyer, Hal Murphy, a friend of mine.

  “I laid eyes on him for the first time two days ago,” said Hal. “He came wandering in here, and said in a casual, fogbound way that he thought he might need a little help.” Hal chuckled. “They tell me this Krummbein is a genius, but I say he belongs on Skid Row or in a laughing academy. He’s made over two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars in the past seven years, and—”

  “Then he is a genius,” I said.

  “He’s blown every dime of it on parties, nightclubbing, his house, and clothes for his wife,” said Hal.

  “Hooray,” I said. “That’s the investment advice I always wanted to give, but nobody would pay for it.”

  “Well, Krummbein is perfectly happy with his investments,” said Hal. “What made him think he might just possibly need a little help was a call from the Internal Revenue Service.”

  “Oh, oh,” I said. “I’ll bet he forgot to file a declaration of estimated income for the coming year.”

  “You lose,” said Hal. “This genius has never paid a cent of income taxes—ever! He said he kept expecting them to send him a bill, and they never did.” Hal groaned. “Well, brother, they finally got around to it. Some bill!”