'Now, Timmy, you come back into the stockroom and tell me what's what.'
He led the boy away, and Carl went around behind the counter and sat on Henry's stool. No one said anything for quite a while. We could hear 'em back there, Henry's deep, slow voice and then Timmy Grenadine's high one, speaking very fast. Then the boy commenced to cry, and Bill Pelham cleared his throat and started filling up his pipe.
'I ain't seen Richie for a couple of months,' I said.
Bull grunted. 'No loss.'
'He was in . . . oh, near the end of October,' Carl said. 'Near Halloween. Bought a case of Schlitz beer. He was gettin' awful meaty.'
There wasn't much more to say. The boy was still crying, but he was talking at the same time. Outside the wind kept on whooping and yowling and the radio said we'd have another six inches or so by morning. It was mid- January and it made me wonder if anyone had seen Richie since October - besides his boy, that is.
The talking went on for quite a while, but finally Henry and the boy came out. The boy had taken his coat off, but Henry had put his on. The boy was kinda hitching in his chest the way you do when the worst is past, but his eyes was red and when he glanced at you, he'd look down at the floor.
Henry looked worried. 'I thought I'd send Timmy here upstairs an' have my wife cook him up a toasted cheese or somethin'. Maybe a couple of you fellas'd like to go around to Richie's place with me. Timmy says he wants some beer. He gave me the money.' He tried to smile, but it was a pretty sick affair and he soon gave up.
'Sure,' Bertie says. 'What kind of beer? I'll go fetch her.'
'Get Harrow's Supreme,' Henry said. 'We got some cut-down boxes back there.'
I got up, too. It would have to be Bertie and me. Carl's arthritis gets something awful on days like this, and Billy Pelham don't have much use of his right arm any more.
Bertie got four six-packs of Harrow's and I packed them into a box while Henry took the boy upstairs to th~ apartment, overhead.
Well, he straightened that out with his missus and came back down, looking over his shoulder once to make sure the upstairs door was closed. Billy spoke up, fairly busting:
'What's up? Has Richie been workin' the kid over?'
'No,' Henry said. 'I'd just as soon not say anything just yet. It'd sound crazy. I will show you somethin-', though. The money Timmy had to pay for the beer with.' He shed four dollar bills out of his pocket, holding them by the corner, and I don't blame him. They was all covered with a grey, slimy stuff that looked like the scum on top of bad preserves. He laid them down on the counter with a funny smile and said to Carl: 'Don't let anybody touch 'em. Not if what the kid says is even half right!'
And he went around to the sink by the meat counter and washed his hands.
I got up, put on my pea coat and scarf and buttoned up. It was no good taking a car; Richie lived in an apartment building down on Curve Street, which is as close to straight up and down as the law allows, and it's the last place the ploughs touch.
As we were going out, Bill Pelham called after us: 'Watch out, now.'
Henry just nodded and put the case of Harrow's on the little handcart he keeps by the door, and out we trundled.
The wind hit us like a sawblade, and right away I pulled my scarf up over my ears. We paused in the doorway just for a second while Bertie pulled on his gloves. He had a pained sort of a wince on his face, and I knew how he felt. It's all well for younger fellows to go out skiing all day and running those goddam waspwing snowmobiles half the night, but when you get up over seventy without an oil change, you feel that north-east wind around your heart.
'I don't want to scare you boys,' Henry said, with that queer, sort of revolted smile still on his mouth, 'but I'm goin' to show you this all the same. And I'm goin' to tell you what the boy told me while we walk up there. . . because I want you to know, you see!'
And he pulled a .45-calibre hogleg out of his coat pocket - the pistol he'd kept loaded and ready under the counter ever since he went to twenty-four hours a day back in 1958. I don't know where he got it, but I do know the one time he flashed it at a stickup guy, the fella just turned around and bolted right out the door. Henry was a cool one, all right. I saw him throw out a college kid that came in one time and gave him a hard time about cashing a cheque. That kid walked away like his ass was on sideways and he had to crap.
Well, I only tell you that because Henry wanted Bertie and me to know he meant business, and we did, too.
So we set out, bent into the wind like washerwomen, Henry trundling that cart and telling us what the boy had said. The wind was trying to rip the words away before we could hear 'em, but we got most of it - more'n we wanted to. I was damn glad Henry had his Frenchman's pecker stowed away in his coat pocket.
The kid said it must have been the beer - you know how you can get a bad can every now and again. Flat or smelly or green as the peestains in an Irishman's underwear. A fella once told me that all it takes is a tiny hole to let in bacteria that'll do some damn strange things. The hole can be so small that the beer won't hardly dribble out, but the bacteria can get in. And beer's good food for some of those bugs.
Anyway, the kid said Richie brought back a case of Golden Light just like always that night in October and sat down to polish it off while Timmy did his homework.
Timmy was just about ready for bed when he hears Richie say, 'Christ Jesus, that ain't right.'
And Timmy says, 'What's that, Pop?'
'That beer,' Richie says. 'God, that's the
Most people would wonder why in the name of God he drank it if it tasted so bad, but then, most people have never seen Richie Grenadine go to his beer. I was down in Wally's Spa one afternoon, and I saw him win the goddamndest bet. He bet a fella he could drink twenty two-bit glasses of beer in one minute. Nobody local would take him up, but this salesman from Montpelier laid down a twenty-dollar Bill and Richie covered him. He drank all
