aeroplane came over. It shot up all of us. I got hit.'
Ernie went back to typing then. The next time Sylvia thought of making some unasked-for comment, she kept it to herself instead.
He delivered the finished manuscript on a day when winter finally seemed ready to give way to spring. Thrusting it at her, he said, 'Here. Read this. It is supposed to be yours. You should know what is in it.'
He flung himself down on the sofa, plainly intending to wait till she read it. It wasn't very thick. Sylvia sat down in the chair by the sofa and went through it. Even before she got halfway, she looked up at him and said, 'I understand why I did what I did better now than I did when I did it.'
She wondered if that made any sense at all. It must have, for he gave her a brusque nod. 'I told you,' he said. 'I'm good.'
'Yes.' She nodded back. 'You are.' She went back to reading. When she looked up, another forty-five minutes had gone by and she was finished. 'You make me sound better and smarter than I am.'
That made him frown. 'You should sound the way you are. How do I fix it?'
He was serious. Sylvia laughed and shook her head. 'Don't. I like it.' Ernie still looked discontented. She laughed again. 'I like you, too.' She'd never said that before.
'Thanks,' he said, and put the manuscript back into a tidy pile and imprisoned it with rubber bands. 'I enjoyed working with you. I think the book will be all right.' By the way he sounded, the second was more important than the first.
Even so, when he headed for the door Sylvia planted herself in front of him, put her arms around him, and gave him a kiss. It was the first time she'd kissed a man, the first time she'd wanted to kiss a man, since she'd kissed George good-bye for the last time during the war.
Ernie kissed her back, too, hard enough to leave her lips feeling bruised. He squeezed her against him, then all at once shoved her away. 'It's no good,' he said. 'It's no damn good at all.'
'Why not?' Sylvia said. 'It's been so long…' Knowing desire had been a delicious surprise. Knowing it, having it stirred, and now having it thwarted seemed more than she could bear.
'Why not, sweetheart? I'll tell you why not,' the writer answered. 'I got shot in Quebec. You know that. You don't know where. I got shot right there. Not enough left to do a woman any good. Not enough left to do me any good, either.'
'Oh,' Sylvia said. That didn't seem nearly strong enough. 'Oh, hell.'
He looked at her and nodded. 'Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.' The words weren't quite in his usual style. Maybe he was quoting from something, but Sylvia didn't recognize it. He bared his teeth in what seemed more snarl than smile. 'I'm sorry, sweetheart.'
' You're sorry?' Sylvia exclaimed. 'You poor man!'
That was the wrong thing to say. She realized it as soon as the words were out of her mouth, which was, of course, too late. Ernie set his jaw and glared. No, he wasn't one to take pity-he'd despise it for weakness, maybe Sylvia's, more likely his own. 'Shouldn't have messed with you,' he said. 'My own stupid fault. I forget every once in a while. Then it tries to wag. Like a goddamn boxer dog wagging his little docked tail. But a boxer can hump your leg. I can't even do that.' He kissed her again, even harder and rougher than before. Then he walked straight out the door. Over his shoulder, he threw back a last handful of words: 'Take care of yourself, kiddo.'
The door slammed. Sylvia burst into tears. 'Oh, hell, ' she said again. 'Oh, hell. Oh, hell. Oh, hell.' She was sure she would never see him again.
She was sure, but she was wrong. One day a couple of weeks later, he waved to her as she came out of her block of flats. She'd never known she could feel joy and fear in the same heartbeat. 'Ernie!' she called. 'What is it?'
'You have your money in a bank,' he said. That wasn't at all what she'd expected. 'Which bank is it?'
'Plymouth and Boston Bank and Trust,' she answered automatically. 'Why?'
'I thought I remembered that,' Ernie said. 'I saw the passbook on your coffee table. Take the money out. Take it all out. Take it out right away. The bank is going to fail. It will fail very soon.'
Fear of a different sort shot through her. 'God bless you,' she whispered. 'You're sure?'
'No, of course not,' he snapped. 'I came here because I was guessing. Why else would I come here?'
Sylvia flushed. 'I was going somewhere else, but I'll head over there right now. Thank you, Ernie.'
His face softened, just for a moment. 'You're welcome. Writers find things out. I know someone who works for the bank. Who worked for the bank, I mean. He saw the writing on the wall. He quit. He said anywhere else in the world was better than to be there right now.' He paused and nodded to Sylvia. 'Nice to think I can do something for you, anyhow.' Touching a finger to the brim of his sharp new fedora, Ernie hurried away. The crowd on the street swallowed him up.
Plymouth and Boston Bank and Trust was only a few blocks away: the main reason Sylvia banked there. She ran almost the whole way. The lines didn't stretch out the door, as she'd seen at other banks in trouble. But she felt panic in the air when she went inside. Everyone was speaking in the low near-whispers people used when they tried to show they weren't afraid. She filled out a withdrawal slip and worked her way to the front of the line.
How many lines have I stood in? How many hours of my life have I wasted in them? Too many-I know that.
At last she stood before a teller's cage, with its frosted glass and iron grillwork. The young man looked very unhappy when he saw the slip. 'You want to close out your entire account?' he said in that soft, no-I'm-not-afraid voice.
'That's right,' Sylvia answered firmly. 'You do have the money to cover it?'
The teller flinched. 'Yes, we do. We certainly do. Of course we do.'
'Well, then, kindly give it to me,' Sylvia said.
'Yes, ma'am. Please wait here. I'll be back with it.' The teller disappeared into the bowels of the bank.
Before he returned, an older man stepped into the cage and said, 'Ma'am, I want to personally assure you, the Plymouth and Boston Bank and Trust is sound.'
'That's nice,' Sylvia told him. 'If it turns out you're right, maybe I'll put my money back in. If it turns out you're wrong, I'll have the money-if that teller ever gets back. How long is he going to take?'
He chose that moment to return. While the frowning older man looked on, he counted out bills and change for Sylvia. 'Here you are, ma'am,' he said. 'Every penny that's owed you.' He sounded as if he were doing her a favor by giving her back the money, and as if she hadn't done the bank a favor by depositing it there in the first place.
By the time she left, the lines did stretch out the door. 'Did you get it?' someone called to her. She didn't answer; she didn't want to get mugged when people found out she was carrying cash. She just headed home, as fast as she could.
Plymouth and Boston Bank and Trust closed its doors for good the next day.
XII
Mary McGregor went about her chores with a certain somber joy. That had nothing to do with how hard things were on the Manitoba farm where she'd spent her whole life. It had a great deal to do with how hard the market crash had hit the United States. She hardly cared what happened to her, so long as the United States got hurt.
And, by all the signs, the occupiers did hurt. Fewer green-gray U.S. Army motorcars rattled along the road to Rosenfeld that ran past the edge of the farm. Fewer U.S. soldiers prowled the streets of the local market town. And the Rosenfeld Register, published these days by an upstart from Minnesota who used occupation propaganda as filler, kept on weeping about how hard a time people south of the border were having.
None of which made things on the farm any easier, only somewhat easier to bear. Things on the farm were desperately hard, and all the harder because Julia had married Kenneth Marble and gone off to live with him. She came back to visit fairly often, usually bringing Beth Marble, Kenneth's mother, with her, and Kenneth himself stopped by every so often for a burst of work for which a man's strength came in handy. Things weren't the same, though, and Mary and her own mother both knew it.
'One of these days before too long, you'll meet somebody, too,' Maude McGregor said over supper after a
