his parents.”
“Mrs. Skoglund, my dad is in a tight corner and I don’t know anybody else to ask for help.”
This was all the preliminary Pop wanted. He took over and told the widow his story about the laundry-and- cleaning business and payments overdue, and explained about the fixtures and the attachment notice, and the bailiff’s office and what they were going to do to him; and he said, “I’m a small man trying to make a living.”
“You don’t support your children,” said Mrs. Skoglund.
“That’s right,” said Hjordis.
“I haven’t got it. If I had it, wouldn’t I give it? There’s bread lines and soup lines all over town. Is it just me? What I have I divvy with. I give the kids. A bad father? You think my son would bring me if I was a bad father into your house? He loves his dad, he trusts his dad, he knows his dad is a good dad. Every time I start a little business going I get wiped out. This one is a good little business, if I could hold on to that little business. Three people work for me, I meet a payroll, and three people will be on the street, too, if I close down. Missus, I can sign a note and pay you in two months. I’m a common man, but I’m a hard worker and a fellow you can trust.”
Woody was startled when Pop used the word “trust.” It was as if from all four corners a Sousa band blew a blast to warn the entire world: “Crook! This is a crook!” But Mrs. Skoglund, on account of her religious preoccupations, was remote. She heard nothing. Although everybody in this part of the world, unless he was crazy, led a practical life, and you’d have nothing to say to anyone, your neighbors would have nothing to say to you, if communications were not of a practical sort, Mrs. Skoglund, with all her money, was unworldly—two-thirds out of this world.
“Give me a chance to show what’s in me,” said Pop, “and you’ll see what I do for my kids.”
So Mrs. Skoglund hesitated, and then she said she’d have to go upstairs, she’d have to go to her room and pray on it and ask for guidance—would they sit down and wait. There were two rocking chairs by the stove. Hjordis gave Pop a grim look (a dangerous person) and Woody a blaming one (he brought a dangerous stranger and disrupter to injure two kind Christian ladies). Then she went out with Mrs. Skoglund.
As soon as they left, Pop jumped up from the rocker and said in anger, “What’s this with the praying? She has to ask God to lend me fifty bucks?”
Woody said, “It’s not you, Pop, it’s the way these religious people do.”
“No,” said Pop. “She’ll come back and say that God wouldn’t let her.”
Woody didn’t like that; he thought Pop was being gross and he said, “No, she’s sincere. Pop, try to understand: she’s emotional, nervous, and sincere, and tries to do right by everybody.”
And Pop said, “That servant will talk her out of it. She’s a toughie. It’s all over her face that we’re a couple of chiselers.”
“What’s the use of us arguing,” said Woody. He drew the rocker closer to the stove. His shoes were wet through and would never dry. The blue flames fluttered like a school of fishes in the coal fire. But Pop went over to the Chinese-style cabinet or etagere and tried the handle, and then opened the blade of his penknife and in a second had forced the lock of the curved glass door. He took out a silver dish.
“Pop, what is this?” said Woody.
Pop, cool and level, knew exactly what this was. He relocked the etagere, crossed the carpet, listened. He stuffed the dish under his belt and pushed it down into his trousers. He put the side of his short thick finger to his mouth.
So Woody kept his voice down, but he was all shook up. He went to Pop and took him by the edge of his hand. As he looked into Pop’s face, he felt his eyes growing smaller and smaller, as if something were contracting all the skin on his head. They call it hyperventilation when everything feels tight and light and close and dizzy. Hardly breathing, he said, “Put it back, Pop.”
Pop said, “It’s solid silver; it’s worth dough.”
“Pop, you said you wouldn’t get me in Dutch.”
“It’s only insurance in case she comes back from praying and tells me no. If she says yes, I’ll put it back.”
“How?”
“It’ll get back. If I don’t put it back, you will.”
“You picked the lock. I couldn’t. I don’t know how.”
“There’s nothing to it.”
“We’re going to put it back now. Give it here.”
Woody, it’s under my fly, inside my underpants. Don’t make such a noise about nothing.”
‘Pop, I can’t believe this.”
For cry-ninety-nine, shut your mouth. If I didn’t trust you I wouldn’t have let you watch me do it. You don’t understand a thing. What’s with you?”
Before they come down, Pop, will you dig that dish out of your long Johns.”
Pop turned stiff on him. He became absolutely military. He said, “Look, I order you!”
Before he knew it, Woody had jumped his father and begun to wrestle with him. It was outrageous to clutch your own father, to put a heel behind him, to force him to the wall. Pop was taken by surprise and said loudly, “You want Halina killed? Kill her! Go on, you be responsible.” He began to resist, angry, and they turned about several times, when Woody, with a trick he had learned in a Western movie and used once on the playground, tripped him and they fell to the ground. Woody, who already outweighed the old man by twenty pounds, was on top. They landed on the floor beside the stove, which stood on a tray of decorated tin to protect the carpet. In this position, pressing Pop’s hard belly, Woody recognized that to have wrestled him to the floor counted for nothing. It was impossible to thrust his hand under Pop’s belt to recover the dish. And now Pop had turned furious, as a father has every right to be when his son is violent with him, and he freed his hand and hit Woody in the face. He hit him three or four times in midface. Then Woody dug his head into Pop’s shoulder and held tight only to keep from being struck and began to say in his ear, “Jesus, Pop, for Christ’s sake remember where you are. Those women will be back!” But Pop brought up his short knee and fought and butted him with his chin and rattled Woodys teeth. Woody thought the old man was about to bite him. And because he was a seminarian, he thought: Like an unclean spirit. And held tight. Gradually Pop stopped thrashing and struggling. His eyes stuck out and his mouth was open, sullen. Like a stout fish. Woody released him and gave him a hand up. He was then overcome with many many bad feelings of a sort he knew the old man never suffered. Never, never. Pop never had these groveling emotions. There was his whole superiority. Pop had no such feelings. He was like a horseman from Central Asia, a bandit from China. It was Mother, from Liverpool, who had the refinement, the English manners. It was the preaching Reverend Doctor in his black suit. You have refinements, and all they do is oppress you? The hell with that.
The long door opened and Mrs. Skoglund stepped in, saying, “Did I imagine, or did something shake the house?”
“I was lifting the scuttle to put coal on the fire and it fell out of my hand. I’m sorry I was so clumsy,” said Woody.
Pop was too huffy to speak. With his eyes big and sore and the thin hair down over his forehead, you could see by the tightness of his belly how angrily he was fetching his breath, though his mouth was shut.
“I prayed,” said Mrs. Skoglund.
“I hope it came out well,” said Woody.
“Well, I don’t do anything without guidance, but the answer was yes, and I feel right about it now. So if you’ll wait, I’ll go to my office and write a check. I asked Hjordis to bring you a cup of coffee. Coming in such a storm.”
And Pop, consistently a terrible little man, as soon as she shut the door, said, “A check? Hell with a check. Get me the greenbacks.”
“They don’t keep money in the house. You can cash it in her bank tomorrow. But if they miss that dish, Pop, they’ll stop the check, and then where are you?”
As Pop was reaching below the belt, Hjordis brought in the tray. She was very sharp with him. She said, “Is this a place to adjust clothing, Mister? A men’s washroom?”
“Well, which way is the toilet, then?” said Pop.
She had served the coffee in the seamiest mugs in the pantry, and she bumped down the tray and led Pop along the corridor, standing guard at the bathroom door so that he shouldn’t wander about the house.
Mrs. Skoglund called Woody to her office and after she had given him the folded check said that they should
