The Man with the Golden Arm

counseled Old Husband, ‘you don’t get the idea at all. Times have changed. I live here now. You’re the boarder these days. It’s why you got to pay the rent.’

Stash grappled with his truss over the heavy, bleached-out underwear, got it straight all around at last and announced firmly: ‘Am hoosband. You pay rent.’

Violet, sprawled out on the mattress, her hands beneath her hennaed head and her legs spread a bit to explore its possibilities, rolled over and buried her face in her hands, laughter shaking her shoulders. ‘He says he’s my husband,’ she managed to gasp, then dried tears of laughter out of her eyes, gathered the mattress in her arms and marched off to the bedroom with a low word to the punk: ‘I’ll be waiting, lover.’

In a minute she was back: ‘It’s too small for a double bed so I put it on your side – I got so much meat on me I could sleep on the floor ’n it’d feel like plush – but your poor little bones, the way they stick out-’

‘Ess,’ Old Man agreed with a malicious glee, ‘is good enough for Mrs No-good, on floor.’ He pointed commandingly to the sports section wadded into a hole in the battered couch. ‘Mr No- good there.’ He got a good grip on the truss and stood right up to Sparrow. ‘Stash boss by howz now. Stash sleep on bed.’

‘If you don’t stop tryin’ to make trouble around here you can’t tear no more days off my calendar,’ Violet told him, and went into the kitchen to see to the one small bottle of beer remaining there. Sparrow heard the tinkle of glass against the icebox door and followed. ‘We can’t afford to have you drinkin’ up our good beer on us, the way you’re actin’,’ he warned Stash, ‘you stay out.’

When Sparrow passed the bedroom door on the way downstairs for more beer he saw Stash stretched comfortably on the new mattress, working on a fresh cigar and with a half gallon all his own beside the bed. There was something wrong, Sparrow sensed, in the old man’s very posture. If he felt that relaxed today how could anyone be sure he’d feel like getting up at 5 A.M. to go to work tomorrow?

Stash got up in time to go to work the next morning – but Vi had to roll out first and get the coffee perking before he did it. ‘We can’t go on this way,’ Violet told him in the cold little kitchen, afraid to return to bed lest he return there too. ‘There got to be some changes made.’

‘Is right,’ Old Man agreed. ‘You go by job instead.’

Sure enough, he returned that same afternoon with his rusted ice tongs over his shoulder.

‘Did you quit or was you fired?’ she wanted to know before he had hung up his coat.

Stash made no reply. But he stayed home drinking beer the whole afternoon and in the evening Violet and Sparrow held an anxious conference in the kitchen.

‘He says he ain’t gonna do nothin’ but set around ’n read the temper’ture the rest of his life. Then he looks at the calendar like he wishes it was time awready to pull the date off for tomorrow.’

‘He’ll get tired of settin’ ’n settin’. He’ll go back to work just to have somethin’ to do,’ Sparrow hoped vaguely.

Old Man never wore pants or shoes or shirt about the house. When ready to eat he simply thrust knife and fork into the truss and sat wiggling his toes, in their heavy socks, till food was put before him. He broke in upon the conference, shuffled his upper plate into position and said, ‘Ready.’

‘Ready for what?’ Violet wanted to know in alarm. She had set plates for only two. Stash reached over and placed Sparrow’s plate in front of himself.

‘This stuff ain’t for you, Old Man,’ Sparrow pointed out, ‘this is fresh stuff. You couldn’t digest it. It’ll be ripe for you tomorrow, there’ll be lots left over.’

‘I digest awright,’ Stash assured him. ‘Now I’m eat. Ever’tin’ frash. Tomorrow you eat, little bits left all over.’

Sparrow and Violet watched the old man spreading creamery butter upon fresh rolls with something akin to horror. He helped himself to her dollar-twenty-a-pound ham.

‘Pick the strorberries,’ she commanded Sparrow, ‘I got to see how far this thing is going to go.’ But her voice faltered.

It went as far as the ‘strorberries.’ Stash poured half a pint of whipping cream over them and lit a tailor-made cigarette out of Sparrow’s pack, left lying carelessly beside the sugar bowl.

‘Why don’t you finish the cream, Old Man?’ Sparrow asked. ‘It might go sour.’

‘Is for coffee,’ Stash explained regally, shoving his cup toward the perking Silex. Violet filled it with a strange docility.

‘Now Stash gone by bed some more – ever’tin’ be nice, quiet,’ he warned them both after the very last of the cream had gone into his coffee and the last of the coffee had gone down his throat.

The fact that the right-hand button of the underwear’s trap had now loosened didn’t in the least detract from the dignity of the old man’s exit. They heard the closing of the bedroom door, the sighing of the new mattress giving surcease to his brittle old bones and the first gentle snore before either dared to speak.

‘It looks like our move,’ Violet said dismally, after the dishes were washed and they had returned to the front- room couch; there was scarcely room for both of them to lie comfortably on its worn springs.

‘Don’t say “our,”’ Sparrow reminded her, ‘say “yours.” You married him.’

‘Yeh, but I wouldn’t have had to hang onto him this long if you went out ’n got a steady job,’ she pointed out. ‘You could make it on the legit if you really wanted.’

‘Sure. I could get a Number Two shovel ’n get on a blast-furnace shift in Indiana Harbor ’n come home nights in the same shape as Stash is now ’n be snorin’ here on the front-room couch while you’re-’ He stopped himself.

‘Go ahead – finish what you started to say.’ Her eyes had darkened dangerously. ‘I s’ppose I’m in heat every time I see a pair of pants hangin’ on the line? All I think about, I guess, is that velvet-lined meat grinder?’

‘That about sizes it up,’ Sparrow thought discreetly. But all he said aloud was, ‘All I meant was if I had a full- time job I couldn’t do my fam’ly duty so good.’

‘You’re not breakin’ no records as it is,’ she assured him, ‘’n anyhow I’m not tellin’ you to start swingin’ no shovel. You could be a Western Union messenger ’n drop in to see me between messages.’

‘I’d never get back to the office on time,’ he predicted, ‘I’d be fallin’ off the bike. Why don’t you go by Western Union yourself?’ And added silently, ‘Then I could rest up between messages.’

‘Fat chance I got of goin’ to work,’ Violet complained as might anyone unjustly deprived of the inalienable right to work for a living. ‘Who’d take care of Zosh ’n that oversize fart hound you palmed off on Frankie? If I didn’t get down there ’n sweep the floor the bottles’d be overflowin’, they’d be up to the sink.’

‘So long as they don’t go no higher,’ Sparrow philosophized, ‘if they did they’d get in the way of the dishes.’

‘Frankie’s got her so spoiled she won’t even put the dishes on the sink, she waits for me to pick them up now, just like she’s tryin’ to see how much I can take off her. I’m glad they only got one room ’cause she eats all over the place. I find dishes in the drawer, they must of been there since Frankie was in the army.’

‘It don’t look like you’ll have time to be cleanin’ up down there any more,’ Sparrow reminded her, ‘the way Old Man is actin’ you’ll have to start in up here first.’

‘He’ll come to his senses when I won’t let him tear the days off the calendar ’r read the temper’ture.’

‘How you gonna stop him?’

‘I’ll put the calendar up where he can’t reach it ’n lock the window so he can’t lean out. He can’t open it by hisself, the lock gets stuck. He has to holler for me to come unlock it.’

‘Don’t let him lean out too far.’

‘That’s what scares me, he leans out too damned far.’

‘Hold his legs.’

‘That’s the part that scares me, it’s when I’m holdin’ his legs. What if I let go?’

‘You won’t let go.’

‘I know I won’t.’

‘But you might forget to lock the window – well, I’m glad tearin’ days off the calendar is all he wants to tear off.’ Sparrow spoke with an uneasy gratitude. He wasn’t as certain, as he once had been, that Violet was an unmixed blessing.

‘Hurry up, honey,’ she panted in his ear, ‘we got to get dressed pretty soon ’n get down to the hall. I got to get Old Man dressed ’n shaved ’n clean socks on him. After all, the New Year’s party is for him.’