Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction Page 6

  “Maude and I figured we owed ourselves a little something,” said Earl. “We held back all these years, putting money back into the business and all, and then, when the kids were grown up and the big offer came for the plant, we all of a sudden felt kind of crazy, and said, ‘Why not?’ And we just went ahead and ordered everything we’d ever wanted.”

  Earl glanced at Charley Freeman, who stood apart and in the background, half smiling, seeming to be fascinated by the scene. “We started out, Maude and I,” said Earl, “in a two-room apartment down by the docks. Put that in the story.”

  “We had love,” said Maude.

  “Yes,” said Earl, “and I don’t want people to think I’m just another stuffed shirt who was born with a wad of money and blew himself to this setup. No, sir! This is the end of a long, hard road. Write that down. Charley remembers me back in the old days, when I had to work my way through school.”

  “Rugged days for Earl,” said Charley.

  Now the center of attention, Earl felt his self-confidence returning, and he began to see Charley’s coming back into his life at this point as a generous act of fate, a fine opportunity to settle the old scores once and for all. “It wasn’t the work that made it rugged,” Earl said pointedly.

  Charley seemed surprised by Earl’s vehemence. “All right,” he said, “then the work wasn’t rugged. It was so long ago I can remember it either way.”

  “I mean it was tough being looked down on because I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” said Earl.

  “Earl!” said Charley, smiling in his incredulity. “As many fatheads as we had for fraternity brothers, not one of them for a minute looked down—”

  “Make ready for de pigdures,” Slotkin said. “Stardt mit de grill—breadt, saladt, und a big, bloody piece of meadt.”

  The maid brought a five-pound slab of steak from the freezer, and Earl held it over the grill. “Hurry up,” he said. “Can’t hold a cow at arm’s length all day.” Behind his smile, however, he was nettled by Charley’s bland dismissal of his college grievances.

  “Hold it!” said Slotkin. The flashbulbs went off. “Good!”

  And the party moved indoors. There, Earl and Maude posed in room after room, watering a plant in the solarium, reading the latest book before the living room fireplace, working pushbutton windows, chatting with the maid over the laundry console, planning menus, having a drink at the rumpus room bar, sawing a plank in the workshop, dusting off Earl’s gun collection in the den.

  And always, there was Charley Freeman at the rear of the entourage, missing nothing, obviously amused as Maude and Earl demonstrated their packaged good life. Under Charley’s gaze, Earl became more and more restless and self-conscious as he performed, and Slotkin berated him for wearing such a counterfeit smile.

  “By God, Maude,” said Earl, perspiring in the master bedroom, “if I ever have to come out of retirement—knock on wood—I can go on television as a quick-change artist. This better be the last picture, by golly. Feel like a darn clotheshorse.”

  But the feeling didn’t prevent his changing once more at Slotkin’s command, this time into a tuxedo. Slotkin wanted a picture of dinner by candlelight. The dining room curtains would be drawn, electrically, to hide the fact of midafternoon outdoors.

  “Well, I guess Charley’s getting an eyeful,” said Earl, distorting his face as he punched a collar button into place. “I think he’s pretty darn impressed.” His voice lacked conviction, and he turned hopefully to Maude for confirmation.

  She was sitting at her dressing table, staring mercilessly at her image in the mirror, trying on different bits of jewelry. “Hmm?”

  “I said I guess Charley’s pretty impressed.”

  “Him,” she said flatly. “He’s just a little too smooth, if you ask me. After the way he used to snoot you, and then he comes here all smiles and good manners.”

  “Yeah,” said Earl, with a sigh. “Doggone it, he used to make me feel like two bits, and he still does, looking at us like we were showing off instead of just trying to help a magazine out. And did you hear what he said when I came right out and told him what I didn’t like about college?”

  “He acted like you just made it up, like it was just in your mind. Oh, he’s a slick article, all right. But I’m not going to let him get my goat,” said Maude. “This started out as the happiest day of our lives, and it’s going to go on being that. And you want to know something else?”

  “What’s that?” Backed by Maude, Earl felt his morale rising. He hadn’t been absolutely sure that Charley was inwardly making fun of them, but Maude was, and she was burned up about it, too.

  Her voice dropped to a whisper. “For all his superior ways, and kidding us about our TV set and everything, I don’t think the great Charley Freeman amounts to a hill of beans. Did you see his suit—up close?”

  “Well, Slotkin kept things moving so fast, I don’t guess I got a close look.”

  “You can bet I did, Earl,” said Maude. “It’s all worn and shiny, and the cuffs are a sight! I’d die of shame if you went around in a suit like that.”

  Earl was startled. He had been so on the defensive that it hadn’t occurred to him that Charley’s fortunes could be anything but what they’d been in college. “Maybe a favorite old suit he hates to chuck out,” he said at last. “Rich people are funny about things like that sometimes.”

  “He’s got on a favorite old shirt and a favorite old pair of shoes, too.”

  “I can’t believe it,” murmured Earl. He pulled aside a curtain for a glimpse of the fairyland of the terrace and grill, where Charley Freeman stood chatting with Slotkin and Converse and the writer. The cuffs of Charley’s trousers, Earl saw with amazement, were indeed frayed, and the heels of his shoes were worn thin. Earl touched a button, and a bedroom window slithered open.

  “It’s a pleasant town,” Charley was telling them. “I might as well settle here as anywhere, since I haven’t very strong reasons for living in any particular part of the country.”

  “Zo eggspensif!” said Slotkin.

  “Yes,” said Charley, “I’d probably be smart to move inland, where my money’d go a little farther. Lord, it’s incredible what things cost these days!”

  Maude laid her hand on Earl’s shoulder. “Seems kind of fishy, doesn’t it?” she whispered. “You don’t hear from him for forty years, and all of a sudden he shows up, down-and-out, to pay us a big, friendly call. What’s he after?”

  “Said he just wanted to see me for old times’ sake,” said Earl.

  Maude sniffed. “You believe that?”

  The dining room table looked like an open treasure chest, with the flames of the candelabra caught in a thousand perfect surfaces—the silver, the china, the facets of the crystal, Maude’s rubies, and Maude’s and Earl’s proud eyes. The maid set steaming soup, prepared for the sake of the picture, before them.

  “Perfect!” said Slotkin. “So! Now talk.”

  “What about?” said Earl.

  “Anything,” said the woman writer. “Just so the picture won’t look posed. Talk about your trip. How does the situation in Asia look?”

  It was a question Earl wasn’t inclined to chat about lightly.

  “You’ve been to Asia?” said Charley.

  Earl smiled. “India, Burma, the Philippines, Japan. All in all, Maude and I must have spent two months looking the situation over.”

  “Earl and I took every side trip there was,” said Maude. “He just had to see for himself what was what.”

  “Trouble with the State Department is they’re all up in an ivory tower,” said Earl.

  Beyond the glittering camera lens and the bank of flashbulb reflectors, Earl saw the eyes of Charley Freeman. Expert talk on large affairs had been among Charley’s many strong points in college, and Earl had been able only to listen and nod and wonder.

  “Yes, sir,” said Earl, summing up, “the situation looked just about hopeless to everybody on the cruise but Maude and
me, and it took us a while to figure out why that was. Then we realized that we were about the only ones who’d pulled themselves up by their bootstraps—that we were the only ones who really understood that no matter how low a man is, if he’s got what it takes, he can get clean to the top.” He paused. “There’s nothing wrong with Asia that a little spunk and common sense and know-how won’t cure.”

  “I’m glad it’s that easy,” said Charley. “I was afraid things were more complicated than that.”

  Earl, who rightly considered himself one of the easiest men on earth to get along with, found himself in the unfamiliar position of being furious with a fellow human being. Charley Freeman, who evidently had failed as Earl had risen in the world, was openly belittling one of Earl’s proudest accomplishments, his knowledge of Asia. “I’ve seen it, Charley!” said Earl. “I’m not talking as just one more darn fool armchair strategist who’s never been outside his own city limits!”

  Slotkin fired his flashbulbs. “One more,” he said.

  “Of course you’re not, Earl,” said Charley. “That was rude of me. What you say is very true, in a way, but it’s such an oversimplification. Taken by itself, it’s a dangerous way of thinking. I shouldn’t have interrupted. It’s simply that the subject is one I have a deep interest in.”

  Earl felt his cheeks reddening, as Charley, with his seeming apology, set himself up as a greater authority on Asia than Earl. “Think maybe I’m entitled to some opinions on Asia, Charley. I actually got out and rubbed elbows with the people over there, finding out how their minds work and all.”

  “You should have seen him jawing away with the Chinese bellboys in Manila,” said Maude, challenging Charley with her eyes to top that.

  “Now then,” said the writer, checking a list, “the last shot we want is of you two coming in the front door with your suitcases, looking surprised, as though you’ve just arrived….”

  In the master bedroom again, Earl and Maude obediently changed back into the clothes they’d been wearing when they first arrived. Earl was studying his face in a mirror, practicing looks of pleased surprise and trying not to let the presence of Charley Freeman spoil this day of days.

  “He’s staying for supper and the night?” asked Maude.

  “Oh heck, I was just trying to be a good fellow on the phone. Wasn’t even thinking when I asked him to stay here instead of at the hotel. I could kick myself around the block.”

  “Lordy. Maybe he’ll stay a week.”

  “Who knows? Slotkin hasn’t given me a chance to ask Charley much of anything.”

  Maude nodded soberly. “Earl, what does it all add up to?”

  “All what?”

  “I mean, have you tried to put any of it together—the old clothes, and his paleness, and that crack about doing better now than he’d had any right to expect six months ago, and the books, and the TV set? Did you hear him ask Converse about the books?”

  “Yeah, that threw me, too, because Charley was the book kind.”

  “All best-sellers, and he hadn’t heard of a one! And he wasn’t kidding about television, either. He really hasn’t seen it before. He’s been out of circulation for a while, and that’s for sure.”

  “Sick, maybe,” said Earl.

  “Or in jail,” whispered Maude.

  “Good gosh! You don’t suppose—”

  “I suppose something’s rotten in the state of Denmark,” said Maude, “and I don’t want him around much longer, if we can help it. I keep trying to figure out what he’s doing here, and the only thing that makes sense is that he’s here with his fancy ways to bamboozle you out of money, one way or another.”

  “All right, all right,” said Earl, signaling with his hands for her to lower her voice. “Let’s keep things as friendly as we can, and ease him out gently.”

  “How?” said Maude, and between them they devised what they considered a subtle method for bringing Charley’s visit to an end before supper.

  “Zo … zo much for dis,” the photographer said. He winked at Earl and Maude warmly, as though noticing them as human beings for the first time. “Denk you. Nice pagatch you live.” He had taken the last picture. He packed his equipment, bowed, and left with Lou Converse and the writer.

  Putting off the moment when he would have to sit down with Charley, Earl joined the maid and Maude in the hunt for flashbulbs, which Slotkin had thrown everywhere. When the last bulb was found, Earl mixed martinis and sat down on a couch that faced another, on which Charley sat.

  “Well, Charley, here we are.”

  “And you’ve come a distance, too, haven’t you, Earl?” said Charley, turning his palms upward to indicate the wonder of the dream house. “I see you’ve got a lot of science fiction on your shelves. Earl, this house is science fiction.”

  “I suppose,” said Earl. The flattery was beginning, building up to something—a big touch, probably. Earl was determined not to be spellbound by Charley’s smooth ways. “About par for the course in America, maybe, for somebody who isn’t afraid of hard work.”

  “What a course—with this for par, eh?”

  Earl looked closely at his guest, trying to discover if Charley was belittling him again. “If I seemed to brag a little when those fool magazine people were here,” he said, “I think maybe I’ve got a little something to brag about. This house is a lot more’n a house. It’s the story of my life, Charley—my own personal pyramid, sort of.”

  Charley lifted his glass in a toast. “May it last as long as the Great Pyramid at Gizeh.”

  “Thanks,” said Earl. It was high time, he decided, that Charley be put on the defensive. “You a doctor, Charley?”

  “Yes. Got my degree in 1916.”

  “Uh-huh. Where you practicing?”

  “Little old to start practicing medicine again, Earl. Medicine’s changed so much in this country in recent years, that I’m afraid I’m pretty much out of it.”

  “I see.” Earl went over in his mind a list of things that might get a doctor in trouble with the law. He kept his voice casual. “How come you suddenly got the idea of coming to see me?”

  “My ship docked here, and I remembered that this was your hometown,” said Charley. “Haven’t any family left, and trying to start life all over on this side again, I thought I’d look up some of my old college friends. Since the boat landed here, you were the first.”

  That was going to be Charley’s tale, then, Earl thought—that he had been out of the country for a long time. Next would come the touch. “Don’t pay much attention to the college gang, myself,” he said, unable to resist a small dig. “Such a bunch of snobs there that I was glad to get away and forget ’em.”

  “God help them if they didn’t outgrow the ridiculous social values of college days,” said Charley.

  Earl was taken aback by the sharpness in Charley’s voice, and not understanding it, he hastily changed the subject. “Been overseas, eh? Where, exactly, Charley?”

  “Earl!” Maude called from the dining room, according to the plan. “The most awful thing has happened.”

  “Oh?”

  Maude appeared in the doorway. “Angela”—she turned to Charley to explain—”my sister. Earl, Angela just called to say she was coming here with Arthur and the children before dinner, and could we put them up for the night.”

  “Gosh,” said Earl, “don’t see how we can. There’re five of them, and we’ve only got two guest rooms, and Charley here—”

  “No, no,” said Charley. “See here, tell them to come ahead. I planned to stay at the hotel, anyway, and I have some errands to run, so I couldn’t possibly stay.”

  “Okay, if you say so,” said Earl.

  “If he’s got to go, he’s got to go,” said Maude.

  “Yes, well, got a lot to do. Sorry.” Charley was on his way to the door, having left his drink half finished. “Thanks. It’s been pleasant seeing you. I envy you your package.”

  “Be good,” said Earl, and he closed the door with a shudder a
nd a sigh.

  While Earl was still in the hallway, wondering at what could become of a man in forty years, the door chimes sounded, deep and sweet. Earl opened the door cautiously to find Lou Converse, the contractor, standing on the doorstep. Across the street, Charley Freeman was getting into a taxi.

  Lou waved to Charley, then turned to face Earl. “Hello! Not inviting myself to dinner. Came back after my hat. Think I left it in the solarium.”

  “Come on in,” said Earl, watching Charley’s taxi disappear toward the heart of town. “Maude and I are just getting set to celebrate. Why not stay for dinner and, while you’re at it, show us how some of the gadgets work?”

  “Thanks, but I’m expected home. I can stick around a little while and explain whatever you don’t understand. Too bad you couldn’t get Freeman to stay, though.”

  Maude winked at Earl. “We asked him, but he said he had a lot of errands to run.”

  “Yeah, he seemed like he was in kind of a hurry just now. You know,” Converse said thoughtfully, “guys like Freeman are funny. They make you feel good and bad at the same time.”

  “What do you know about that, Maude?” said Earl. “Lou instinctively felt the same way we did about Charley! How do you mean that, exactly, Lou, about feeling good and bad at the same time?”

  “Well, good because you’re glad to know there are still some people like that in the world,” said Converse. “And bad—well, when you come across a guy like that, you can’t help wondering where the hell your own life’s gone to.”

  “I don’t get you,” said Earl.

  Converse shrugged. “Oh, Lord knows we couldn’t all dedicate our lives the way he did. Can’t all be heroes. But thinking about Freeman makes me feel like maybe I could have done a little more’n I have.”

  Earl exchanged glances with Maude. “What did Charley tell you he’d been doing, Lou?”

  “Slotkin and I didn’t get much out of him. We just had a few minutes there while you and Maude were changing, and I figured I’d get the whole story from you sometime. All he told us was, he’d been in China for the last thirty years. Then I remembered there was a big piece about him in the paper this morning, only I’d forgotten his name. That’s where I found out about how he sunk all his money in a hospital over there and ran it until the Commies locked him up and finally threw him out. Quite a story.”