Ironweed

It was a collie.

o o o

Billy came back, clear-eyed, sat across from Francis, and offered him another smoke, which he took. Billy topped his own beer and drank and then said, “George.”

“Oh my God,” A

“Let her alone, I’ll do it,” Billy called to his mother.

“What about George?” Francis asked.

“The cops were here one night lookin’ for him,” Billy said. “It was Patsy McCall puttin’ pressure on the family because of me. George writes numbers and they were probably go

“Some power the McCaIls put together in this town.”

“They got it all. They ever pay you the money they owed you for registerin’ all those times?”

“Paid me the fifty I told you about, owe me another fifty-five. I’ll never see it.”

“You got it comin’.”

“Once it got in the papers they wouldn’t touch it. Mixin’ themselves up with bums. You heard Martin tell me that. They’d also be suspicious that I’d set them up. I wouldn’t set nobody up. Nobody.”

“Then you got no cash.”

“I got a little.”

“How much?”

“I got some change. Cigarette money.”

“You blew what you had on the turkey.”

“That took a bit of it.”

Billy handed him a ten, folded in half. “Put it in your pocket. You can’t walk around broke.”

Francis took it and snorted. “I been broke twenty-two years. But I thank ye, Billy. I’ll make it up.”

“You already made it up.” And he went to the phone in the dining room to call George in Troy.

A

“Yeah,” said Francis. “I was a good-lookin’ devil.”

“Some thought so, some didn’t,” A

“Oughta get it framed,” Francis said. “Lot of North Enders in there. George and Martin as kids, and Patsy McCall too. And Iron Joe. Real good shot of Joe.”

“It surely is,” A

Billy came back and A

“Oh that’s a prize picture,” she said, and stood up. “A prize picture.”

“Well, it’s yours, so get it framed.”

“Mine? No, it’s yours. It’s baseball.”

“Nah, nah, George’d like it too.”

“Well I will frame it,” A

“Sure,” said Francis. “Here. Here’s ten dollars toward the frame.”

“Hey,” Billy said.

“No,” Francis said. “You let me do it, Billy.”

Billy chuckled.

“I will not take any money,” A

Billy laughed and hit the table with the palm of his hand. “Now I know why you been broke twenty-two years. I know why we’re all broke. It runs in the family.”

“We’re not all broke,” A

“Peg’s workin’,” Francis said.

“A private secretary,” A

“She’s beautiful,” Francis said. “Kinda nasty when she puts her mind to it, but beautiful.”

“She shoulda been a model,” Billy said.

“She should not,” A

“Well she shoulda, goddamn it, she shoulda,” said Billy. “They wanted her to model for Pepsodent toothpaste, but Mama wouldn’t hear of it. Somebody over at church told her models were, you know, loose ladies. Get your picture taken, it turns you into a floozy.”

“That had nothing to do with it,” A

“Her teeth,” Billy said. “She’s got the most gorgeous teeth in North America. Better-lookin’ teeth than Joan Crawford. What a smile! You ain’t seen her smile yet, but that’s a fantastic smile. Like Times Square is what it is. She coulda been on billboards coast to coast. We’d be hipdeep in toothpaste, and cash too. But no.” And he jerked a thumb at his mother.

“She had a job,” A

“He was all right,” Billy said. “I checked him out. He was legitimate.”

“How could you know what he was?”

“How could I know anything? I’m a goddamn genius.”

“Clean up your mouth, genius. She would’ve had to go to New York for pictures.”

“And she’d of never come back, right?”

“Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t.”

“Now you got it,” Billy said to his father. “Mama likes to keep all the birds in the nest.”

“Can’t say as I blame her,” Francis said.

“No,” Billy said.

“I never liked that fellow,” A

Nobody spoke.

“And she brought a paycheck home every week,” A

Nobody spoke.

“Cigarette?” Billy asked Francis.

“Sure,” Francis said.

A

“Turkey smells real good,” Francis said to her.

“Uh-huh, I bought a plum pudding,” she said to all, showing them the can. She looked at her father. “Mama said you used to like it for dessert on holidays.”

“I surely did. With that white sugar sauce. Mighty sweet.”

“The sauce recipe’s on the label,” A

“I’ll make it,” Peg said.

“It’s nice you remembered that,” Francis said.

“It’s no trouble,” Peg said. “The pudding’s already cooked. All you do is heat it up in the can.”

Francis studied her and saw the venom was gone from her eyes. This lady goes up and down like a thermometer. When she saw him studying her she smiled slightly, not a billboard smile, not a smile to make anybody rich in toothpaste, but there it was. What the hell, she’s got a right. Up and down, up and down. She come by it naturally.

“I got a letter maybe you’d all like to hear while that stuffis cookin’ up,” he said, and he took the yellowed envelope with a canceled two-cent stamp on it out of his inside coat pocket. On the back, written in his own hand, was: First letter from Margaret.

“I got this a few years back, quite a few,” he said, and from the envelope he took out three small trifolded sheets of yellowed lined paper. “Come to me up in Canada in nineteen-ten, when I was with Toronto.” He unfolded the sheets and moved them into the best possible light at longest possible arm’s length, and then he read:,

“‘Dear Poppy, I suppose you never think that you have a daughter that is waiting for a letter since you went away. I was so mad because you did not think of me that I was going to join the circus that was here last Friday. I am doing my lesson and there is an arithmetic example here that I ca