Rich Man, Poor Man

Outside it was su

They got into Uncle Harold’s car. Axel sat up in front and Thomas had the back seat all to himself. He didn’t ask any questions.

“I bought your way out, in case you’re curious,” his father said. His father didn’t turn in the seat, but talked straight ahead, at the windshield. “Five thousand dollars to that Shylock for his pound of flesh. I guess you got the highest-priced lay in history. I hope it was worth it.”

Thomas wanted to say he was sorry, that somehow, some day, he’d make it up to his father. But the words wouldn’t come out.

“Don’t think I did it for you,” his father said, “or for Harold here …”

“Now, Axel,” Harold began.

“You could both die tonight and it wouldn’t spoil my appetite,” his father said. “I did it for the only member of the family that’s worth a damn—your brother Rudolph. I’m not going to have him start out in life with a convict brother hanging around his neck. But this is the last time I ever want to see you or hear from you. I’m taking the train home now and that’s the end of you and me. Do you get that?”

“I get it,” Thomas said flatly.

“You’re getting out of town, too,” Uncle Harold said to Thomas. His voice was quivering. “That’s the condition Mr. Chase made and I couldn’t agree with him more. I’ll take you home and you pack your things and you don’t sleep another night in my house. Do you get that too?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Thomas said. They could have the town. Who needed it?

There was no more talking. When Uncle Harold stopped the car at the station, his father got out without a word and limped away, leaving the door of the car open. Uncle Harold had to reach over and slam it shut.

In the bare room under the roof, there was a small, battered valise on his bed. Thomas recognized it. It belonged to Clothilde. The bed was stripped down and the mattress was rolled up, as though Tante Elsa were afraid that he might sneak in a few minutes’ sleep on it. Tante Elsa and the girls were not in the house. To avoid contamination, Tante Elsa had taken the girls to the movies for the afternoon.

Thomas threw his things into the bag quickly. There wasn’t much. A few shirts and underwear and socks, an extra pair of shoes and a sweater. He took off the garage uniform that he had been arrested in and put on the new gray suit Tante Elsa had bought for him on his birthday.

He looked around the room. The book from the library, the Riders of the Purple Sage, was lying on a table. They kept sending postcards saying he was overdue and they were charging him two cents a day. He must owe them a good ten bucks by now. He threw the book into the valise. Remember Elysium, Ohio.

He closed the valise and went downstairs and into the kitchen. He wanted to thank Clothilde for the valise. But she wasn’t in the kitchen.

He went out through the hallway. Uncle Harold was eating a big piece of apple pie in the dining room, standing up. His hands were trembling as he picked up the pie. Uncle Harold always ate when he was nervous. “If you’re looking for Clothilde,” Uncle Harold said, “save your energy. I sent her to the movies with Tante Elsa and the girls.”

Well, Thomas thought, at least she got a movie out of me. One good thing.

“You got any money?” Uncle Harold asked. “I don’t want you to be picked up for vagrancy and go through the whole thing again.” He wolfed at his apple pie.

“I have money,” Thomas said. He had twenty-one dollars and change.

“Good. Give me your key.”

Thomas took the key out of his pocket and put it on the table. He had an impulse to push the rest of the pie in Uncle Harold’s face, but what good would that do?

They stared at each other. A piece of pie dribbled down Uncle Harold’s chin.

“Kiss Clothilde for me,” Thomas said, and went out the door, carrying Clothilde’s valise.

He walked to the station and bought twenty dollars’ worth of transportation away from Elysium, Ohio.

Chapter 10

The cat stared at him from its corner, malevolent and unblinking. Its enemies were interchangeable. Whoever came down in the cellar each night, to work in the hammering heat, was regarded by the cat with the same hatred, the same topaz lust for death in his yellow eyes. The cat’s night-long cold stare disconcerted Rudolph as he put the rolls in the oven. It made him uneasy when he was not liked, even by an animal. He had tried to win the cat over with an extra bowl of milk, with caresses, with a “Nice, kitty,” here and there, but the cat knew it wasn’t a nice kitty and lay there, it’s tail twisting, contemplating murder.

Axel had been gone for three days now. There had been no word from Elysium and there was no telling how many more nights Rudolph would have to come down into the cellar and face the heat, the flour dust, the arm-numbing lifting and shoving and hauling. He didn’t know how his father could stand it. Year in and year out. After only three nights, Rudolph was almost completely worn out, with purplish bruises of fatigue under his eyes and his face haggard. And he still had to take the bicycle and deliver the rolls in the morning. And school after that. There was an important exam in math the next day and he hadn’t been able to prepare for it and he never was all that good in math anyway.

Sweating, fighting the greasy, huge trays, the flour smearing chalkily over his bare arms and face, after three nights he was his father’s ghost, staggering under the punishment his father had endured six thousand nights. Good son, faithful son. Shit on that. Bitterly, he regretted the fact that he had come down to help his father on holidays, when there was a rush on, and had learned, approximately, his father’s profession. Thomas had been wiser. Let the family go to hell. Whatever trouble Thomas was in now (Axel had not told Rudolph what it was when he got the telegram from Elysium), Thomas just had to be better off than the dutiful son in the blazing cellar.

As for Gretchen, just walking across a stage three times a night for sixty dollars a week …

In the last three nights Rudolph had figured out approximately how much the Jordache Bakery earned. About sixty dollars a week, on the average, after rent and expenses, and the thirty dollars for salary for the widow who took care of the shop now that his mother was sick.

He remembered the bill for more than twelve dollars that Boylan had paid in the restaurant in New York, and all the money for drinks that one night.

Boylan had gone down to Hobe Sound, in Florida, for two months. Now that the war was over, life was returning to normal.

He put another tray of rolls into the oven.

He was awakened by the sound of voices. He groaned. Five o’clock so soon? He got out of bed mechanically. He noticed that he was dressed. He shook his head stupidly. How could he be dressed? He looked blearily at his watch. A quarter to six. Then he remembered. It wasn’t morning. He had come home from school and thrown himself on the bed to get some rest before the night’s work. He heard his father’s voice. His father must have come home while he was asleep. His first thought was selfish. I don’t have to work tonight.

He lay down again.

The two voices, the one high and excited, the other low and explaining, came up from downstairs. His father and mother were fighting. He was too tired to care. But he couldn’t go to sleep, with all that noise downstairs, so he listened.

Mary Pease Jordache was moving out. She wasn’t moving far. Just to Gretchen’s room across the hall. She stumbled back and forth, her legs hurting from the phlebitis, carrying dresses, underwear, sweaters, shoes, combs, photographs of the children when they were young, Rudolph’s scrapbook, a sewing kit, Gone With the Wind, a rumpled package of Camels, old handbags. Everything she owned, getting it out of the room she had hated for twenty years and piling everything on Gretchen’s unmade bed, raising a small cloud of dust every time she came in with a new load in her arms.