Rich Man, Poor Man

They were at the car now. There was a parking ticket under the windshield wiper. Boylan tore it up without looking at it.

“I’ll drive, if you like,” Rudolph said.

“I’m not drunk,” Boylan said curtly and got behind the wheel.

III

Thomas sat in the cracked chair, tilted back against the garage wall, a grass-stalk between his teeth, looking across at the lumberyard. It was a su

He had a date with the tackle’s girl for tonight.

Uncle Harold came out of the little office behind the filling station. Thomas knew that people had complained to Uncle Harold about his fights, but Uncle Harold hadn’t said anything about them. Uncle Harold also knew that there was a car to be greased before two o’clock, but he didn’t say anything about that either, although Thomas could tell from the expression on Uncle Harold’s face that it pained him to see Thomas lounging like that against the wall, chewing lazily on a stalk of grass. Uncle Harold didn’t say anything about anything anymore. Uncle Harold looked bad these days—his plump pink face was now yellowish and sagging and he had the expression on his face of a man waiting for a bomb to go off. The bomb was Thomas. All he had to do was hint to Tante Elsa about what was going on between Uncle Harold and Clothilde and they wouldn’t be singing Tristan and Isolde for a long time to come in the Jordache household. Thomas had no intention of telling Tante Elsa, but he didn’t let Uncle Harold in on the news. Let him stew.

Thomas had stopped bringing his lunch from home. For three days ru

“If anybody wants me,” Uncle Harold said, “I’m down at the showroom.”

Thomas kept staring out across the highway, chewing on the stalk of grass. Uncle Harold sighed and got into his car and drove off.

From inside the garage there came the sound of Coyne working a lathe. Coyne had seen him in one of his fights on a Sunday down at the lake and now was very polite with him and if Thomas neglected a job, Coyne more often than not would do it himself. Thomas played with the idea of letting Coyne do the two o’clock grease job.

Mrs. Dornfeld drove up in her 1940 Ford, and stopped at a pump. Thomas got up and walked over to the car slowly, not rushing anything.

“Hello, Tommy,” Mrs. Dornfeld said.

“Hi.”

“Fill her up, please, Tommy,” Mrs. Dornfeld said. She was a plump blonde of about thirty with disappointed, childish, blue eyes. Her husband worked as a teller in the bank, which was convenient, as Mrs. Dornfeld always knew where he was during business hours.

Thomas hung up the hose and screwed the cap back on and started washing the windshield.

“It would be nice if you paid me a visit today, Tommy,” Mrs. Dornfeld said. That was always what she called it—a visit. She had a prissy way of talking, with little flutterings of her eyelids and lips and hands.

“Maybe I can break loose at two o’clock,” Thomas said. Mr. Dornfeld was settled behind the bars of his teller’s cage from one-thirty on.

“We can have a nice long visit,” Mrs. Dornfeld said.

“If I can break loose.” Thomas didn’t know how he would feel after lunch.

She gave him a five-dollar bill and clutched at his hand when he gave her change. Every once in awhile after one of his visits she slipped him a ten-dollar bill. Mr. Dornfeld must be giving her nothing, but nothing.

There was always lipstick on his collar when he came from visiting Mrs. Dornfeld and he left it on purposely so that when Clothilde collected his clothes for washing she’d be sure to see it. Clothilde never mentioned the lipstick. The shirt would be neatly washed and ironed and left on his bed the next day.

None of it really worked. Not Mrs. Dornfeld, nor Mrs. Berryman, nor the twins, nor any of the others. Pigs, all of them. None of them really helped him get over Clothilde. He was sure Clothilde knew—you couldn’t hide anything in this stinking little town—and he hoped it made her feel bad. At least as bad as he felt. But if she did feel bad, she didn’t show it.

“Two o’clock is happy time,” Mrs. Dornfeld said.

It was enough to make a man throw up.

Mrs. Dornfeld started the motor and fluttered off. He went back and sat down on the chair tilted against the wall. Coyne came out of the garage, wiping his hands. “When I was your age,” Coyne said, looking after the Ford disappearing down the highway, “I was sure it would fall off if I did it with a married woman.”

“It doesn’t fall off,” Thomas said.

“So I see,” Coyne said. He wasn’t a bad guy, Coyne. When Thomas had celebrated his seventeenth birthday Coyne had broken out a pint of bourbon and they’d finished it off together in one afternoon.

Thomas was wiping the gravy of the hamburger off his plate with a piece of bread when Joe Kuntz, the cop, came into the diner. It was ten to two and the diner was almost empty, just a couple of the hands from the lumberyard finishing up their lunch, and Elias, the counterman, swabbing off the grill. Thomas hadn’t decided yet whether or not he was going to visit Bertha Dornfeld.

Kuntz came up to where Thomas was sitting at the counter and said, “Thomas Jordache?”

“Hi, Joe,” Thomas said. Kuntz stopped in at the garage a couple of times a week to shoot the breeze. He was always threatening to leave the force because the pay was so bad.

“You acknowledge that you are Thomas Jordache?” Kuntz said in his cop voice.

“What’s going on, Joe?” Thomas asked.

“I asked you a question, son,” Kuntz said, bulging out of his uniform.

“You know my name,” Thomas said. “What’s the joke?”

“You better come with me, son,” Kuntz said. “I have a warrant for your arrest.” He grabbed Thomas’s arm above the elbow. Elias stopped scrubbing the grill and the guys from the lumberyard stopped eating and it was absolutely quiet in the diner.

“I ordered a piece of pie and a cup of coffee,” Thomas said. “Take your meathooks off me, Joe.”

“What’s he owe you, Elias?” Kuntz asked, his fingers tight on Thomas’s arm.

“With the coffee and pie or without the coffee and pie?” Elias said.

“Without.”

“Seventy-five cents,” Elias said.

“Pay up, son, and come along quiet,” Kuntz said. He didn’t make more than twenty arrests a year and he was getting mileage out of this one.

“Okay, okay,” Thomas said. He put down eighty-five cents. “Christ, Joe,” he said, “you’re breaking my arm.”