'They always say they'll pay you back, and then they never do, or not enough.' He paused to stoop and hand Wilfred Rokeby another package.
'Thank you, Mort,' the postmaster said.
As if hearing his name reminded him Mary didn't know it, he said, 'That's me-Mort Pomeroy, at your service.' He touched the brim of his hat.
'Oh!' Mary said. She hadn't seen him before, or at least hadn't noticed him, but now she knew who his family was. 'Your father runs the diner down the street from Gibbon's general store.' With money so tight, she couldn't recall the last time she'd eaten there.
'That's me,' he said again, and handed another package, a big, heavy one, to Rokeby. Then he turned back to her. 'That's me, all right, but who are you?' He looked at her as if he were an explorer who'd just sighted a new and unimagined continent.
'I'm Mary McGregor.' She waited.
'Oh,' Mort Pomeroy said, in a tone very different from hers. He couldn't go on with something bright and chipper, as she had, something on the order of, Your father blew up Yanks. Then he blew himself up, too. He couldn't say anything like that, but his face told her he knew who her father was, sure enough. Who in and around Rosenfeld didn't know who Arthur McGregor was?
Too bad, she thought. Now he won't want to have anything to do with me, and he seems nice.
But, after giving Wilfred Rokeby yet another parcel-the next to last one-he managed to put the smile back on his face and say, 'Well, that was a long time ago now, and it certainly didn't have anything to do with you.'
He wasn't quite right. The only thing Mary regretted was that her father hadn't had more luck. But Pomeroy wouldn't know that, of course. And a lot of people in Rosenfeld still stared and pointed whenever she went by, and probably would for years to come. Someone trying to treat her kindly made a very pleasant novelty, especially when the someone in question was a good-looking young man. 'Thank you,' she whispered.
'For what?' He sounded honestly puzzled as he gave the postmaster the last package. That made her like him more, not less.
Rokeby went to work with pencil and paper. 'Comes to nine dollars and sixteen cents, all told,' he said.
'For postage? Can you imagine that?' Mort Pomeroy said, genially astonished, as he paid Rokeby. 'I'll take it out of Bob's hide-if he ever finds a job, I will.'
'Times are hard,' Mary agreed. 'Let me have seventy-five cents' worth of stamps, Mr. Rokeby, if you would.'
'I can do that,' he said, and gave her twenty-five stamps-postage had recently gone up from two cents to three. He put the three quarters she handed him into his cash box. She sighed. The extra twenty-five cents she had to spend on stamps would have paid her way into the theater. Now the money was gone-and gone into the Americans' pockets. One more reason to hate them, she thought.
'Are you in town by yourself?' Pomeroy sounded hopeful.
'I have to meet my mother at the general store,' Mary said with much more regret than she'd expected to feel.
His face fell. 'Oh. Too bad.' He hesitated, then asked, 'If I was to come calling on you one day before too long, would that be all right? Maybe you'd like to see a moving-picture show with me?'
'Maybe I would.' Mary realized she ought to say more than that. 'Yes, I'm sure I would.'
'Swell!' Now the grin came back enormously. 'I've got an auto. Can I pick you up Saturday night? We'll go to a film, see what else there is to do after that-a dance at the church, or something.'
'All… all right.' Mary sounded dazed, even to herself. No one had ever shown this kind of interest in her. Her past left her damaged goods. That had always suited her fine-up till this minute. She was ever so glad Mort Pomeroy didn't seem to care who her father was or what he'd done. 'Saturday night,' she whispered, and hurried out of the post office. Pomeroy and Wilfred Rokeby both stared after her.
C incinnatus Driver used a hand truck to haul crates of oatmeal boxes from his Ford to the market that had ordered them. 'This here's the last load, Mr. Marlowe,' he said, panting a little.
Oscar Marlowe nodded. 'Yes, I've been keeping track of everything you've brought in,' he answered. Cincinnatus believed him: the storekeeper was a thin, fussily precise man with a little hairline mustache so very narrow it might have been drawn on with a mascara pencil. He said, 'I do appreciate how hard you've worked bringing it all in.'
'It's my job, Mr. Marlowe,' said Cincinnatus, who knew he would feel it in his back and shoulders tonight. Work that had seemed effortlessly easy in his twenties didn't now that he'd passed forty. He added, 'Way things are these days, I got to do everything I can.'
''Oh, yes.' Marlowe nodded. He ran a pink tongue over that scrawny little excuse for a mustache. 'I understand you completely-and agree with you completely, I might add. Even now, though, too many people don't seem to have figured that out. I'm always glad to see someone who has. Let me have your paperwork. The sooner I sign off, the sooner you can be on your way. I don't want to waste your time.'
'Got it right here.' Scipio handed him the clipboard.
'I expected you would.' Marlowe scribbled his name on the forms, making sure he signed in all four necessary spaces. He and Cincinnatus leaned toward each other in mutual sympathy as he wrote. Their both being hardworking men counted for more than one's being white, the other black. The storekeeper said, 'Here you are,' and returned the clipboard to Cincinnatus.
'Thank you kindly, suh.' Cincinnatus turned to leave.
He'd taken only a step or two before Marlowe said, 'Here, wait a second.' He went behind the counter where he kept his meat on ice, wrapped a package in butcher paper, and thrust it at Cincinnatus. 'Take this home to your missus, why don't you? Marrow bones and a little meat-make you a good soup or a stew.'
Cincinnatus wanted to say he couldn't possibly, but common sense won over pride. 'Thank you kindly,' he repeated, and touched the brim of his hap. 'You didn't have to do nothin' like that, Mr. Marlowe.'
'I didn't do it because I had to. I did it because I wanted to.' The storekeeper sounded impatient. 'If you work hard, you ought to know other people notice. And I do. I'm always glad to see you bringing me loads from the docks and the railroad yard.'
'Much obliged.' Cincinnatus touched his brim again, then took the package-it was nice and heavy-out to the truck and set it on the front seat beside him. He had one more delivery to make before he could go home with it.
His last stop wasn't at a grocery store, but at the offices of the Des Moines Register and Remembrance. The crates he unloaded there were large and heavy. 'What is this thing?' he asked the man who took delivery.
'New typesetting machine,' the fellow answered. 'We'll get the paper out faster than ever.'
'That's nice,' Cincinnatus said obligingly.
'And we won't need so many compositors,' the newspaperman added. Seeing that the word meant nothing to Cincinnatus, he chose a simpler one: 'Typesetters.'
'Oh.' Cincinnatus hesitated, then asked, 'What happens to the ones you don't need no- any — more? They lose their jobs?'
'That isn't settled yet.' The newspaperman sounded uncomfortable now. He sounded so uncomfortable, Cincinnatus was sure he was lying. He went on, 'Even if we do let some people go, we'll try to make sure they latch on somewhere else.'
'Uh- huh,' Cincinnatus said. How were they supposed to manage that, with jobs so hard to come by? He figured it for another lie, right up there with old favorites like The check is in the mail.
His skepticism must have shown in his voice; the man from the Register and Remembrance turned red. He said, 'We'll try, goddammit. We will. What else can we do? We've got to save money wherever we can, because we sure as hell aren't making much.'
For that, Cincinnatus had no good answer. He got his paperwork signed and went back to the truck. Outside the Register and Remembrance building, a couple of men were hanging a banner over the doorway. WIN WITH COOLIDGE IN '32! it said, and then, in smaller letters, A RETURN TO PROSPERITY! The Register and Remembrance was the Democratic paper in Des Moines. Its Socialist counterpart, the Workers' Gazette, had its offices across the street and down the block. Even though this was a presidential-election year, the Workers' Gazette displayed no banners extolling the virtues of Hosea Blackford. The paper seemed to want to forget about him.
