'Gramps! Grandma!' Pete was enthusiastic about everything. Chances were he'd never heard of a business collapse. If he had, it meant nothing to him. Chester wished he could say the same.
Wonderful smells filled his nose as soon as he walked through the door. When he saw his mother's face a moment later, he knew something was wrong no matter how good the odors wafting out of the kitchen were. She looked as if she'd been wounded and didn't want to admit it even to herself. After the hugs, after the kisses, Martin asked, 'What is it, Ma? And don't tell me it's nothing, on account of I know that's not so.'
Sue and Otis exchanged glances. Whatever it was, they already knew. Louisa Martin spoke in a low voice, as if in a sickroom: 'Your father's been laid off.'
Five words. Five words that changed-ruined-not just one life but at least two, maybe four. 'Oh,' Chester said, a soft, pained exhalation-he might have been punched in the stomach. Rita's lips skinned back from her teeth. Like her mother-in-law, she was trying to find out how much it hurt.
Laid off. It hurt bad. Martin didn't need to find out how much. What, after all, was the difference between bad and worse? Not enough to matter.
A toilet flushed. Out came Stephen Douglas Martin, rubbing his hands together. One look at Chester's face told him everything he needed to know. 'So you heard already, did you?'
'Yeah,' Chester said harshly. 'I heard. What are you going to do, Pa?'
'Darn good question,' his father replied. 'Wish I had a darn good answer to go with it. Almost forty years at that place, and then-' He snapped his fingers. 'I'm scrap metal. That's what I am now, scrap metal. Yesterday was my last day. But I tell you one thing: I'm going to have the best darn Thanksgiving anybody ever had, and you can take that to the bank.' If Louisa and Sue and Rita hadn't been there, and especially if Pete hadn't, he might have expressed himself more pungently.
'This is a fancy spread.' Chester wouldn't say any more than that. Lurking behind the bland statement was a not-so-bland worry. If you're out of work, how can you afford it?
Casually, Louisa Martin said, 'Otis and Sue gave us a little help. Not much, just a little.' Chester nodded. Otis was still working. The older Martins must have told him so they could make sure they got whatever help they needed for a proper holiday dinner.
Knowing what Chester knew took some of the enjoyment away from the feast: it seemed too much like sharing a condemned man's last meal. But that didn't stop him from eating till he was groaningly full. When would his next chance to gorge himself on meat come? He had no idea. Like a savage in the jungle, he made the most of the chance he did have.
About ten o'clock, Pete started getting sleepy and fussy. Sue and Otis took their son and some leftovers and headed back to their place. Chester had waited for that; he needed to speak to his parents without his sister and brother-in-law listening. He started, 'Pa, the bosses had no business-'
'No business?' Stephen Douglas Martin said. 'Ha! Business is all they had, the… so-and-so's.' Yes, he had trouble swearing in front of women.
'What I meant was, we'll figure out something now that…' Chester's voice trailed away. He thought his father would know what he meant any which way. Now that the elder Martins had no money coming in, how could they afford to give anyone else a hand? They had to worry about keeping their own place.
'Yes, we'll manage. One way or another, we'll manage,' Rita said. She had the same stubborn pride as anyone born a Martin.
Stephen Douglas Martin said, 'I hear you two were talking about California.'
'Yes, that's true,' Chester said. 'There's no work in Toledo, or none to speak of. If you have a job, you're all right. If you lose one, though, you haven't got a prayer of finding anything new.'
'Thanks so much,' his father said. 'That's just what I wanted to hear.'
'I'm sorry, Pa. I'm sorry as… the devil. But that doesn't mean I wasn't telling the truth.'
'I know,' his father said. 'I sure wish it did, though.'
'What about California?' Rita kept her mind on business.
'I'll tell you what,' Chester's father said. 'Louisa and I have some money set aside. They aren't going to throw us in the poorhouse right away, so you don't need to worry your heads about that. I know this is a hard place to find work, on account of you've both done everything you could, but you haven't had any luck. If I stake you two train tickets out West and enough money to keep you going a couple of months… well, what do you think about that?'
'We'll pay you back,' Chester said without even looking at Rita. 'As soon as one of us gets something, we'll pay you back, a little bit at a time till it's all done.'
'You don't need to say that, Chester,' his father said with a small smile. 'If I wasn't sure of it, you think I'd offer?'
'I don't know,' Chester answered. 'Depends on how bad you and Ma want to get rid of us, I guess.'
'Chester!' his mother said reproachfully.
'California.' Rita murmured the word. 'Things are supposed to be good there, or as good as they are anywhere. They've got the farms, and they've got the moving pictures, and they've got all the people building houses for the people moving there for the other things.'
'And the weather,' Chester said. 'If we go to Los Angeles, we can kiss snow good-bye. I wouldn't miss it a bit, and that's the truth.'
'You ready to tear everything up by the roots?' Stephen Douglas Martin asked. 'If you do this, I can't give you much more help till I'm back on my own feet.' If I ever am hung unspoken in the air. He went on, 'Don't want you winding up in a Blackfordburgh out there, even if you did vote for the fellow.'
'I voted for Coolidge and Hoover this time around,' Chester said. Rita made a face at him. He made a face right back, and went on, 'I held my nose, but I did it. But I don't think Hoover's exactly a ball of fire.'
'He's a ball of…' Now Rita seemed hampered in her choice of language. ' I didn't vote for Coolidge,' she added.
'He's had most of a year to make things better. He hasn't done it,' Louisa Martin said. 'He hasn't done much of anything, not as far as I can see.'
'President Blackford did everything under the sun for four years in a row,' Stephen Douglas Martin said. 'He didn't make things better, either.' Chester's father was a rock-ribbed-Chester sometimes thought a rock-headed- Democrat. He continued, 'Look how the war with the Japs is winding down now.'
'Neither side ever wanted to fight that one all out, though,' Chester said. 'That's why it's winding down. It's not anything special Hoover's done.'
'They haven't dropped any bombs on his head, the way they did on Blackford's,' his father retorted. He wagged a finger at Chester. 'Still want to go to Los Angeles after that?'
'Yes!' This time, Rita spoke up before Chester could. She sounded even hungrier for California than he was.
'Thank you, Pa, from the bottom of my heart,' Chester said.
'If you get work, I may come out there myself,' his father said. 'Anybody who thinks I'd miss snow is crazy.'
'California,' Rita said again, as if she expected to pan for gold and pull nuggets the size of eggs from a clear, cold mountain stream.
'California,' Chester echoed, as if he expected to go to Los Angeles and wind up a motion-picture leading man the day after he got there. He went on, 'There are people who hop a freight for a chance like this.' He had, every now and then, thought of being one of them. 'I will pay you back, Pa. So help me God, I will.'
'I told you once, I wouldn't stake you if I didn't think you were good for it,' Stephen Douglas Martin answered. 'Only thing I worry about is how many people will be going out there, looking for whatever they can find.'
'At least there are things to find in California,' Chester said. 'This town is dying on its feet. I've lived here all my life, except for when I was in the Army, but I won't be sorry to say good-bye.' He laughed. Sorry? He hadn't been so glad since the day the guns stopped and he realized he'd made it through the Great War alive.
XX
