Catch As Catch Can Page 3

  “What time is it?” the man asked.

  Cooper pushed back his sleeve and turned his watch to the light. “He left about fifteen minutes ago,” he said.

  “How far did he say it was to town?”

  “About eight miles,” Cooper answered. “They’ll be coming soon.” The man didn’t say anything. He had been awfully nice so far and Cooper was genuinely sorry for him. “Do you feel all right?” he asked.

  “I feel fine,” the man said, without rancor. “I’m in the pink.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “I shouldn’t have asked that.”

  The man turned his head slightly and smiled. “Just innocent sarcasm,” he said. “I’m full of innocent sarcasm.”

  “Would you like a cigarette?” Cooper asked.

  “No. I don’t think I should. You go ahead and smoke though.”

  “That’s all right. I really don’t want one.”

  “Is your wife all right?”

  Cooper turned and looked at her. She sat motionless behind the wheel, her head turned away from them as she stared out the side window. “She’s all right,” he said slowly. “A little shaken up from the shock, I imagine. It’s her first accident.”

  “It’s mine too,” the man said.

  “Is there much pain?”

  “It’s gone down. My leg is numb and I can’t feel it so much. Occasionally a muscle twitches and there’s pain, but it isn’t too bad. How did my leg look?”

  “I don’t know,” Cooper said. “I didn’t really look at it.”

  “Is it broken?”

  “Yes,” Cooper said. “It’s broken.”

  He had always wondered how a leg looked when it was broken and it had only taken one glance for him to know. The man turned silent and Cooper heard the clatter of the crickets approach and the croaking of what he thought was a bullfrog. The noise of the crickets was really quite deafening when you concentrated on it, and it grew very cold in the country at night even though the days were hot. He could feel the cold air on his skin but inside he was burning. He was worried about the cold. He knew that an injured man should be kept warm, otherwise shock would set in, and he had taken every precaution to keep the man warm. He had his own overcoat, and fortunately there had been a blanket in his car which Cooper had placed carefully beneath him. Then he had removed his coat and covered the man with it. He was going for Louise’s coat when the man had stopped him, saying he would be all right.

  “Are you warm enough?” he asked now.

  “I’m all right,” the man said. “How about yourself? You must be chilly.”

  “No,” Cooper said. “I’m all right.”

  The man was about his own age, he judged, with a mature, competent face. All through life there had been people with mature, competent faces, and he had always admired them. There was a gash on the man’s forehead that had stopped bleeding, and one side of his lips had swelled up like grotesque blisters.

  “How did it happen?” the man asked. “You know, I haven’t any idea how it happened.”

  Cooper didn’t know how it had happened. He was asleep and Louise was driving. Then there was a jolt and Louise’s scream, and then that loud, abrupt thud and the grinding crunch of metal and the tinkle of showering glass.

  “I don’t know how it happened,” he said. “My wife was driving.”

  “It reminds me of a cartoon I once saw in a magazine. It was a picture of a big desert with one tree on it and a car had smacked into the tree, I thought it was funny at the time.”

  “Yes,” Cooper said. “It’s very funny.”

  “Do me a favor. Ask her to come out for a minute. I want to talk to her. I want her to tell me how it happened.”

  Cooper hesitated for a moment and rose. “All right,” he said. “Will you be all right?”

  “Sure,” the man said. “I won’t run away.”

  Cooper turned and walked to the car. The man turned his head to watch him. It was uncomfortable and he turned back again and stared up at the night as he waited. Cooper spoke to Louise in a low voice through the window, then he opened the door and sat down beside her. A few minutes later he walked back alone to the man and squatted beside him.

  “She was starting to pass you. She ran over something and thought it was a blowout. She slammed the brake on and turned the wheel.”

  “Just like that, huh?” the man said.

  “Yes,” Cooper said. “Just like that.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Yes. She’s all right.”

  “Why wouldn’t she come out?”

  Cooper was afraid of that and he didn’t know what to say.

  “I must look pretty bad.”

  “You look all right. Just a little blood, but it’s all dry.”

  “Did you tell her that?”

  “Yes,” Cooper said. He turned and looked at Louise who sat in the automobile and stared fixedly out the side at the dark fields. “She’s that way about everything. She can’t stand anything morbid.”

  “Morbid!” the man exclaimed. “Do I look morbid?”

  “That’s just the way she is. It’s the same with everything. She won’t go to a movie unless it’s a comedy or romance. That’s the way she is.”

  The man didn’t speak and Cooper felt lame and awkward. At that moment he hated Louise for the way she was and he despised himself because she was his wife and he was so closely involved with her. He stood up slowly and looked down the road.

  “Do you see anything?”

  “No,” Cooper said. “Not yet.”

  “I wish to hell they’d come. It’s getting cold.”

  “Are you?” Cooper said with alarm. “Maybe I should move you into the car.”

  “No. It’s all right.”

  “I think I’d better move you there anyway. I’ll be very careful and I’m sure she won’t mind.”

  The man turned his head and looked at him with surprise. “It isn’t that,” he said. “I don’t think I should move. I feel like I’m bleeding inside. It’s probably a rib.”

  “Do you feel any blood in your mouth?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been swallowing. What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Cooper said. “I know it means something. Turn your head and spit and I’ll see.”

  The man turned his head and spat on the ground. Cooper bent to the ground and looked. It was too dark. He held his hand before the man’s mouth. “Go ahead and spit,” he said. The man spat into his hand. He turned to the light and saw with relief that there was no blood. “There’s no blood,” he said, and wiped his hand on his trousers.

  “That’s good,” the man said. He was silent for a few moments, and then, with quiet disgust, he said, “Lot’s wife! She reminds me of Lot’s wife.”

  “I’m really terribly sorry,” Cooper apologized. “It’s just the way she is. Some people are like that.”

  “I know,” the man said. “I didn’t mean anything. I’ll take that cigarette now.”

  “Do you think you should?”

  “It’s all right. It won’t hurt.”

  Cooper took his pack from his pocket and lighted two cigarettes. He handed one to the man. The man inhaled deeply and held the smoke a long time before exhaling.

  “Be sure and wash your hands when you get home,” the man said, without moving his eyes from the sky.

  “I will,” Cooper said. “Why?”

  “You’d better use Lysol,” the man said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Spit is very morbid,” the man said. “Spit is exceedingly morbid. I once saw someone spit and I was sick for days. I couldn’t eat. It was morbid all right. It was worst than when my mother died.”

  Cooper didn’t reply and they smoked their cigarettes and waited without talking until the ambulance came.

  CASTLE OF SNOW*

  My Uncle David was a sober man, and my Aunt Sarah, an earthy, practical woman, lived uncomplainingly with him in what seemed to be a perfect and ha
rmonious relationship. When he was reading or occupied with his thoughts, she was always busy with the housework. Occasionally he would find himself tedious, and she seemed able to anticipate these infrequent excursions. When he would look up from his book and remove his glasses, she was always at liberty from her chores and ready to provide the relief he desired.

  “Reading,” she would complain. “Always reading. How can you waste so much time with your books?”

  “I’m not wasting time,” my Uncle David would reply defensively. “There is knowledge here in these books, and knowledge is a very great thing.”

  “What’s so great about it?” my Aunt would demand. “You can’t leave it to the children. It’s something you have to take with you when you go.”

  “It’s the same with all great things,” my Uncle would answer. “You must take them to the grave with you. You cannot leave great things behind.”

  “If you take all the books in your trunk,” my Aunt would scoff, “there won’t be room for you.”

  “It’s not the books,” my Uncle would try to explain. “The great things are what they create. Great things are here,” he would say, tapping his forehead slowly. “And here,” he would add, a little more loudly, and tap his finger over his heart.

  The great tragedy in my Uncle’s life was the failure of the revolution in Russia. He was born in a small village not far from what is today Leningrad. He was an active socialist in his youth—so active that he had been forced to flee the authorities. He was good at figures, and when he came to this country he found employment as a bookkeeper with a manufacturing firm, working there until the great depression threw it into bankruptcy.

  He watched the revolution from this country, and he rejoiced when the Czarist government was overthrown. He had faith then that in Russia would soon be found the culmination of all that is beautiful in mankind. When the original aims of the revolution failed to materialize and were abandoned for ends that were more prosaic and more easily achieved, my Uncle’s faith was questioned. He watched the betrayal of his hopes in the following years, and when the reality could no longer be ignored, he turned silent and went to his books for solace.

  The first effects of the depression struck close, throwing many of our friends and neighbors into unemployment immediately. I was attending elementary school then, and I was just barely able to understand the implacable laws of economics and the harsh punishments of poverty.

  One morning my Uncle David took me to the city for a winter coat. Autumn was turning bitter, and the coat I had worn in previous seasons had been diverted to the use of my younger cousin. It was a cold, gray afternoon when we returned, and as we walked up the street to the house, we came upon a pile of furniture stacked desolately in the street near the curb. We stopped to look and my Uncle answered my questions, explaining the tragedy to me in a low, unhappy voice. It was my first experience with eviction and I was horrified by such a drastic circumstance.

  “But that’s terrible!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes,” my Uncle agreed. “It is terrible.” He placed his hand on my shoulder and we resumed walking. “It’s terrible for someone to be put out on the street. And it’s terrible and frightening to be unable to help.”

  2

  The next week my Uncle lost his job. When I came home for lunch one day, he was sitting by the window reading. He glanced up briefly at me when I entered, and returned to his book without a word. My Aunt put a finger to her lips, motioning for silence, and when I sat down to eat, she told me that the firm had closed and he was without work.

  There must have been some money saved, for he was unemployed for almost three months and we continued to live on the same standard. My Aunt Sarah was a thrifty manager and an excellent cook, and if she economized on the food, it passed without notice.

  My Uncle went looking for work every day. He would be gone when I awoke in the morning and he would return late in the afternoon or sometimes in the evening long after we had eaten. He would enter wearily, seat himself at the table with a dejected sigh, and announce his failure. My Aunt would set some food before him, and he would eat in silence, staring despondently at some point on the kitchen wall. After eating, he would sit awhile. Then he would rise, go to the trunk for a book, settle in the living room, and read late into the night.

  My Aunt showed great concern for him and she would sometimes entreat him to leave his book and come to bed. He always refused, and if she persisted, he would grow annoyed and move into the kitchen, where she would have to raise her voice to be heard and risk awakening the children. After a while she allowed him to stay up without protest, but she suffered terrible anxiety over his health.

  Finally, after three months, he found work. It was a temporary job on a construction project that fortunately lasted for seven months. Several weeks after it ended, we were forced to sell some furniture. My cousin was moved into my room, and his bed was sold along with several chairs and lamps and a miscellaneous assortment of other household articles. My Uncle made arrangements for the sale, and everything that was to go was moved into the foyer.

  The man came in the afternoon. He entered respectfully, and throughout the entire transaction regarded us with practiced solicitude. He examined each article thoroughly, making whispered calculations to himself, and then retired to a corner of the kitchen with my Aunt to haggle over the price. They were there a long time, arguing stubbornly in low, muttering voices. When my Aunt returned, she wore a petulant expression. She announced obstinately that she was not going to sell.

  “How much will he give you?” my Uncle asked. She told him and he smiled sadly. “Give them to him,” he said. “These are bad times, Sarah. You will not get more any place else.”

  “I won’t do it,” my Aunt argued resolutely. “I’ll get a job first. I’ll go out tomorrow and get a job.”

  “Where?” my Uncle David asked. He smiled at her with sorrow and spoke in a soft, pitying voice. “Where can you find work?”

  “I’ll do what I used to do. It isn’t so long ago that I used to work and I am still in good health. I’ll work as a waitress or I’ll serve drinks in a cabaret. I can still do it.”

  “No, Sarah,” my Uncle said, shaking his head slowly.

  “Why?” my Aunt insisted. “Why not?”

  “You’re not a young girl any more.”

  “But I can do it. I’m strong for a woman.”

  “They don’t want you. When they hire girls they want a young girl with fire in her eyes and firm hips that will roll when she walks. That isn’t you any more.”

  My Aunt was a pathetic figure as she groped for a reply. She was near tears and her naïve sorrow saddened us all. My Uncle put his hands on her shoulders and smiled into her eyes.

  “But when you were younger!” he exclaimed. “Then it was a different story. You could walk into any place then and they would be glad to have you.”

  My Aunt was not mollified, but the furniture was sold, and in the weeks following, other articles moved from the house in small, stealthy groups. Clothing was mended and remended until wear was no longer possible, and all the schoolwork was completed in the afternoon so that a minimum of electricity would be used after darkness.

  One day my Aunt Sarah went out and visited the neighborhood laundries, and she secured work mending shirts, turning frayed collars and cuffs and sewing rents in the fabrics. She would bring the work home with her, and when she was not busy with the housework, she would sit in the kitchen sewing. My Uncle would chide her with a broken, self-pitying humor, and she would respond to his teasing with indignant perseverance, but in all his heavy raillery, he never once attempted to dissuade her.

  Our misfortunes prolonged themselves in a way that was unintelligible to my young mind. It was like a string of rubber being stretched beyond its limits, growing thinner as the tension increases with no promise of respite, and I was aware that a point was being approached at which everything must suddenly and disastrously snap. Relief must come or else a rup
ture occur that would hurl us all into a maelstrom of confusion, chaos, and tragedy. Then one day, without a word beforehand, my Uncle returned with a stranger, a man who had come to buy his books.

  I remember the figure of my Uncle kneeling by the closet before the open trunk. He removed the books singly, each one with both hands, glanced at the title soberly, and passed it to the strange man, who appraised it in a moment and added it to the mounting pile behind him. My Aunt was stunned by this latest development, and she stood motionless, watching the proceeding with profound regret.

  From my Uncle’s actions it seemed that he had been determined to sell them all and had then wavered. Midway through the pile, he hesitated over one book and placed it on the floor behind him. Near the end he withheld another. When all the others had been sacrificed, he picked up the two books and considered each thoughtfully. Then, with reluctance, he handed one to the man and rose. It is interesting to note that in this, possibly the moment of his greatest tragedy, he chose the humor of Chaucer in preference to the comforting promise of the Bible.

  He received a pitiful sum for them, four or six dollars, accepting it without complaint, and then gratuitously offered the trunk with the books. When the man had departed, my Uncle faced my Aunt and handed her the money. The poor woman was too confused to speak. She wanted to upbraid him, and yet she seemed to know that his sacrifice could not be avoided.

  3

  The next week he found a job. He came rushing into the house with wild exuberance, too excited to remain still or speak coherently, and we were transformed to a gleeful mob by the good news. When we were calm, we learned the details. He had been hired by a large bakery as loading supervisor and traffic manager. The pay was good, only ten dollars less than what he had been paid by the manufacturing firm, and, as he was quick to inform us, since prices had dropped, it was really much more. He was to begin work the next day, and we took the snow that had begun falling that afternoon as a good omen.