“What confused me was I thought all the time that the burying money was all right. As soon as I found out about Danny’s trouble I come right back to New York.”
“Who is this Danny, anyway?” the young man said.
“Didn’t I tell you? He’s Sister’s boy. There wasn’t any of us left but Sister and Danny and me. Yet I was the weakly one. The one they all thought wouldn’t live. I was give up to die twice before I was fifteen, yet I outlived them all. Outlived all eight of them when Sister died three years ago. That was why I went to Florida to live. Because I thought I couldn’t stand the winters here. Yet I have stood three of them now since Sister died. But sometimes it looks like a man can stand just about anything if he don’t believe he can stand it. Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know,” the young man said. “Which trouble was this?”
“Which?”
“Which trouble was Danny in now?”
“Don’t get me wrong about Danny. He wasn’t bad; just wild, like any young fellow. But not bad.”
“All right,” the young man said. “It wasn’t any trouble then.”
“No. He’s a good boy. He’s in Chicago now. Got a good job now. The lawyer in Jacksonville got it for him right after I come back to New York. I didn’t know he had it until I tried to wire him that Sister was dead. Then I found that he was in Chicago, with a good job. He sent Sister a wreath of flowers that must have cost two hundred dollars.
Sent it by air; that cost something, too. He couldn’t come himself because he had just got the job and his boss was out of town and he couldn’t get away. He was a good boy. That was why when that trouble come up about that woman on the floor below that accused him of stealing the clothes off her clothes-line, that I told Sister I would send him the railroad fare to Jacksonville, where I could look after him. Get him clean away from them low-life boys around the saloons and such. I come all the way from Florida to see about him.
That was how I happened to go with Sister to see Mr. Pinckski, before she ever begun to pay on the coffin. She wanted me to go with her. Because you know how an old woman is. Only she wasn’t old, even if her and me had outlived all the other seven. But you know how an old woman seems to get comfort out of knowing she will be buried right in case there isn’t any of her kin there to ’tend to it. I guess maybe that keeps a lot of them going.”
“And especially with Danny already too busy to see if she was buried at all, himself.”
The old man, his mouth already shaped for further speech, paused and looked at the young man. “What?”
“I say, if getting into the ground at last don’t keep some of them going, I don’t know what it is that does.”
“Oh. Maybe so. That ain’t never worried me. I guess because I was already give up to die twice before I was fifteen. Like now every time a winter gets through, I just say to myself, ‘Well, I’ll declare. Here I am again.’ That was why I went to Florida: because of the winters here. I hadn’t been back until I got Sister’s letter about Danny, and I didn’t stay long then. And if I hadn’t got the letter about Danny, maybe I wouldn’t ever have come back. But I come back, and that was when she took me with her to see Mr. Pinckski before she begun to pay on the coffin, for me to see if it was all right like Mr. Pinckski said. He told her how the insurance companies would charge her interest all the time. He showed us with the pencil and paper how if she paid her money to the insurance companies it would be the same as if she worked six minutes longer every night and give the money for the extra six minutes to the insurance company.
But Sister said she wouldn’t mind that, just six minutes, because at three or four o’clock in the morning six minutes wouldn’t…”
“Three or four o’clock in the morning?”
“She scrubbed in them tall buildings down about Wall Street somewhere. Her and some other ladies. They would help one another night about, so they could get done at the same time and come home on the subway together. So Mr. Pinckski showed us with the pencil and paper how if she lived fifteen years longer say for instance Mr. Pinckski said, it would be the same as if she worked three years and eighty-five days without getting any pay for it. Like for three years and eighty-five days she would be working for the insurance companies for nothing. Like instead of living fifteen years, she would actually live only eleven years and two hundred and eight days. Sister stood there for a while, holding her purse under her shawl. Then she said, ‘If I was paying the insurance companies to bury me instead of you, I would have to live three years and eighty-five days more before I could afford to die?’
“‘Well,’ Mr. Pinckski said, like he didn’t know what to say. ‘Why, yes. Put it that way, then. You would work for the insurance companies three years and eighty-five days and not get any pay for it.’
“‘It ain’t the work I mind,’ Sister said. ‘It ain’t the working.’ Then she took the first half a dollar out of her purse and put it down on Mr. Pinckski’s desk.”
II
NOW AND THEN, with a long and fading reverberation, a subway train passed under their feet. Perhaps they thought momentarily of two green eyes tunneling violently through the earth without apparent propulsion or guidance, as though of their own unparalleled violence creating, like spaced beads on a string, lighted niches in whose wan and fleeting glare human figures like corpses set momentarily on end in a violated grave yard leaned in one streaming and rigid direction and flicked away.
“Because I was a weak child. They give me up to die twice before I was fifteen. There was an insurance agent sold me a policy once, worried at me until I said all right, I would take it. Then they examined me and the only policy they would give me was a thousand dollars at the rate of fifty years old. And me just twenty-seven then. I was the third one of eight, yet when Sister died three years ago I had outlived them all. So when we got that trouble of Danny’s about the woman that said he stole the clothes fixed up, Sister could… ”
“How did you get it fixed up?”
“We paid the money to the man that his job was to look after the boys that Danny run with. The alderman knew Danny and the other boys. It was all right then. So Sister could go on paying the fifty cents to Mr. Pinckski every week. Because we fixed it up for me to send the railroad fare for Danny as soon as I could, so he could be in Florida where I could look out for him. And I went back to Jacksonville and Sister could pay Mr. Pinckski the fifty cents without worrying. Each Sunday morning when her and the other ladies got through, they would go home by Mr, Pinckski’s and wake him up and Sister would give him the fifty cents.
“He never minded what time it was because Sister was a good customer. He told her it would be all right, whatever time she got there, to wake him up and pay him. So sometimes it would be as late as four o’clock, especially if they had had a parade or something and the buildings messed up with confetti and maybe flags. Maybe four times a year the lady that lived next door to Sister would write me a letter telling me how much Sister had paid to Mr. Pinckski and that Danny was getting along fine, behaving and not running around with them tough boys any more. So when I could I sent Danny the railroad fare to Florida. I never expected to hear about the money.
“That was what confused me. Sister could read some. She could read the church weekly fine that the priest gave her, but she never was much for writing. She said if she could just happen to find a pencil the size of a broom handle that she could use both hands on, that she could write fine. But regular pencils were too small for her. She said she couldn’t feel like she had anything in her hand. So I never expected to hear about the money. I just sent it and then I fixed up with the landlady where I was living for a place for Danny, just thinking that some day soon Danny would just come walking in with his suit-case. The landlady kept the room a week for me, and then a man come in to rent it, so there wasn’t anything she could do but give me the refusal of it.
“That wasn’t no more than fair, after she had already kept it open a week for me. So I begun to pay for the room and when Danny didn’t come I thought maybe something had come up, with the hard winter and all, and Sister needed the money worse than to send Danny to Florida on it, or maybe she thought he was too young yet. So after three months I let the room go. Every three or four months I would get the letter from the lady next door to Sister, about how every Sunday morning Sister and the other ladies would go to Mr. Pinckski and pay him the
