Voices from the Street Read online

  With a cry, Ellen sprang from the bed and trotted toward him, arms out, hot tears dribbling down her cheeks. Uneasily, he retreated. But her vast, bulging form descended on him; her arms clutched at him fervently. “Stuart,” she wailed, “where have you been?”

  “I’m okay,” he muttered.

  “What time is it?” She broke away, looking around for the clock. “It’s morning, isn’t it? Where did you sleep? You’re all—cut!”

  “I’m okay,” he repeated irritably. “Go back to bed.”

  “Where did you sleep?”

  He grinned evasively. “In a thicket.”

  “What happened? You went downtown last night for a beer . . . and you were going to the library. But you didn’t come home . . . You got in a fight, didn’t you?”

  “With savages, yes.”

  “In a bar?”

  “In Africa.”

  “And you were in jail.”

  “They called it that,” he admitted. “But I never believed them.”

  For a time his wife was silent. Then outrage and exasperation replaced alarm. The bloated softness of her body hardened. “Stuart,” she said quietly, lips thin and pressed tight together, “what am I going to do with you?”

  “Sell me,” he said.

  “I can’t.”

  “You haven’t tried.” He wandered into the kitchen to see how his coffee water was doing. “Your heart isn’t in it.”

  Suddenly she was behind him, holding on to him desperately. “Come to bed. It’s only six thirty; you can sleep two hours.”

  “I’m coffee-oriented.”

  “Forget your coffee.” Rapidly, she reached out and shut off the gas. “Please, Stuart. Come to bed. Get some sleep.”

  “I slept.” But he was willing to go with her; his body ached with the need of sleep. Passively, he allowed her to drag him from the kitchen, into the amber-dark bedroom. Ellen crept back into bed while he stood clumsily removing his clothes. By the time he had his shorts and socks off, his body sagged with weariness.

  “Fine,” Ellen whispered as he sprawled against her. “That’s fine,” she repeated, pressing her harsh fingers against his hair, against his ear and cheek. This was what she needed: the immediate presence of him.

  With a great yawning sigh he slept. But she remained awake, gazing ahead of her, holding on to her husband, pressing him tight, feeling the minutes slip away from her one by one.

  In the absolute stillness of the bedroom, among the motionless half shadows left from night, the clock began to sing. With its tinny whirry metallic voice it hummed faintly, softly, thoughtfully to itself; then its noise picked up urgency. The noise of the clock stirred the room. The noise met the cold white morning sunlight that spilled in through the window, that filtered through the muslin curtains and spread out, pale and silent, over the icy asphalt tile of the floor, the fluffy scatter rug, the chair and dresser and bed and heaps of clothing. It was eight o’clock.

  Ellen Hadley reached out her bare tan-fleshed arm and found the clock. She made no sound, no sound at all, as she shoved down the cold little stud protruding from its brass top. The clock hushed; it ticked on, but its noise was over. Sliding her arm back, away from the cold of the room, under the covers, Ellen turned a little on her side to see if she had wakened him.

  Beside her, Stuart still slept on. He hadn’t heard the clock; the faint tinny beginning of its noise hadn’t reached him. Thank God for that. She wished he would never hear it. She wished she could keep it back until the metal wheels and springs had sagged into rust, and its dull hands were broken and gone. She wished—well, it didn’t matter. Because soon he would have to wake up.

  She had only delayed it. It would come, and nothing could be done about it.

  A few birds stirred and crept outside the window; the rim of shrubbery danced violently as birds landed in it. A milk truck roared down the deserted street. Very far off the Southern Pacific train made its way up the track, heading toward San Francisco. Ellen drew herself up, raising the covers, holding them up, a shield between him and the window. Cutting off the sounds, the bright cold sunlight. Protecting him with her body. She loved him; his indifference, his gradual drift away from her, seemed to make her own hunger greater.

  And still he slept on. In sleep, his face was blank and pale; his hair, dribbled across his forehead, was strawlike. Even his lips were colorless. The stain of gray beard around his chin had faded and blurred into the puffy whiteness of his flesh. Relaxed, mindless, he slept on, not knowing about the clock, not hearing the milk truck outside, the stirring birds. Not knowing she was risen up beside him, was hovering over him.

  In sleep, he was ageless. Very young, perhaps, not quite a man, not even an adolescent. And certainly not a child; perhaps a very old man, so old that he was no longer a man, a thing left over from some archaic world, primordial, but cold and chaste as ivory. Something carved from bone, a tusk, shaped from passionless calcium: without rancor or excitement or knowledge. An innocent thing too old to care, alive but not yet wanting. Perfectly content to lie, attainment of something beyond activity . . . She wished he could always be like this, utterly peaceful, not needing, not suffering, not driven by any knowing of things. But even as he slept, the corners of his pale mouth twisted up into a tight, childish frown. A sullen, uneasy distaste; and with it a growing terror.

  Perhaps he was dreaming out his fight, his shadowy ordeal with the enemy. The mist-dripping battlefield where dim shapes struggled, he and vague antagonists. Grappling with opponents he barely understood . . . She had seen it before. She knew the blind, dazed, head-downward fight he put up. Mindless brawling for goals too tenuous to comprehend, or put into words.

  He twisted; his head turned on one side. A tiny ooze of saliva slithered down his chin, onto his throat. There it glistened, thick and moist, a body fluid escaping from him, leaking from his relaxed mouth. Perhaps he was sleeping again on the hard cot of the jail. Perhaps he was dreaming of unconsciousness. One scratched hand came futilely up, batted and struck at an invisible presence. He was still dreaming of the fight. And of defeat.

  “Stuart,” she said sharply.

  Beside her, he grunted. His eyelids fluttered; all at once his quiet, guileless blue eyes gazed up at her, wondering, baffled, a little frightened, startled to find her there. Not knowing where he was—he never knew where he was—and not understanding what had happened to him.

  “Hi,” she said softly. Bending down, she gently touched her lips against his timid, anxious mouth. “Good morning.”

  Color entered his eyes; he smiled weakly. “You awake?” He dragged himself up. “What time is it?”

  “Eight.”

  Hunched over, scowling, he sat rubbing his stubbled jaw. “Time to get up, I guess.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. Far off, a car honked. A front door opened and a neighbor came striding down his concrete steps. The muffled sounds of people . . . cold breath shimmering in the morning air. “It looks like a nice day,” she said presently.

  “Day. Nuts to day.” With bewilderment, he examined his damaged hand.

  “What do you want for breakfast?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head irritably. The whole episode of the bar, the fight, the police . . . it was all indistinct, dreamlike. Already, it was slipping away from him. “I’ve got a hangover,” he muttered. “Christ.”

  “I’ll fix coffee,” Ellen said gently.

  “No, the doctor says you can’t.” Dully, he groped for the covers, trying to get to his feet. “God,” he muttered as his feet reached the floor. For a moment he stood by the bed, eyeing it with weary longing. Aimlessly, he began to scratch at his naked furry chest. Then, turning, he laboriously tottered out of the bedroom, down the icy hall, into the bathroom. There, pushing the door half shut, he stood slouched over the toilet, urinating. Finally he grunted, flushed the toilet, and somberly padded back into the bedroom. At the door, he stood.

  “I lost some money,” he told her wanly.

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nbsp; “That’s all right.” She smiled up briefly at him. “Forget about it and go wash.”

  Obediently, he got his razor and blades from the dresser drawer, and disappeared into the bathroom. Hot water roared in the shower, and he climbed gratefully into it. After that he systematically brushed his teeth, shaved, combed his hair, and came wandering out to look for clean clothes.

  “Thirty dollars,” he told her.

  “We can talk about it later.”

  Nodding, he belched. “I’m sorry. Can I take something from the household money?”

  “I guess so,” she said reluctantly.

  From the dresser Hadley took a starched white shirt. The smell of it cheered him up. Next came clean shorts, and then his carefully pressed and hung-up blue slacks from the closet. A kind of eagerness filled him; the joy of fresh fabrics and clean smells took away the staleness of night. But behind him in the dark, moist bed, Ellen lay watching; he could feel her avid eyes on him. Brown hair spilling over her shoulders, the swollen globes of her breasts. Her vast bulging middle stuck up grotesquely: not many more weeks now. The baby—ultimate burden. He would never get away then, and it was already oppressively close.

  “I don’t think I’ll go to work,” he said gloomily.

  “Why not?” Anxiously, she asked: “Don’t you feel better? After you’ve had something to eat—”

  “It’s too nice a day. I’m going down and sit in the park.” His body stirred restlessly. “Maybe I’ll play football with the kids.”

  “They’re still in school. And it isn’t football season.”

  “Then I’ll play baseball. Or pitch horseshoes.” He turned to her. “You want to go out in the country this weekend? Let’s get out of here; let’s get out where we can roam around.”

  Ellen touched her middle. “I shouldn’t, you know.”

  “That’s right.” The great fragile tub of flesh . . . center of the universe.

  “Darling,” Ellen said, “do you want to tell me about last night?”

  He didn’t; but the firmness of her voice meant the time had come. “There wasn’t much,” he answered. “What I said already.”

  “Did you get—hurt?”

  “It wasn’t a real fight. We were too drunk . . . We just sort of swung and cussed at each other.” Reflectively, he murmured: “I think I got one of the bastards, though. A big one. The cops think I’m a Communist . . . As they hauled me in I was yelling, ‘Come on, you fascist bastards, I’ll take care of all of you.’ ”

  “Were there just two?”

  “Four cops, two fascist bastards.”

  “It happened in a bar?”

  “Outside a bar. It started in a bar. Or at the public library. Maybe it was a couple of librarians.”

  “Stuart,” she said, “why did it happen? What’s wrong with you?”

  He got into his powder blue coat and halted at the mirror to examine his face, his hair, his teeth, his swollen eyes. Scowling, he plucked at a pimple on his smooth-shaven chin.

  “It’s Sally, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You’re tense.”

  “You bet your goddamn life I’m tense.” It was today he had to pick her up.

  “Do—you want me to go with you?”

  “I’ll pick her up alone,” he said, starting toward the door. The last thing he wanted was to have Ellen tagging along, getting in the way, making the situation even worse. “Maybe you can clean up the apartment.”

  “Aren’t you having any breakfast?”

  “I’ll catch it downtown.” From the teapot in the kitchen he got all the money there was, ten or fifteen dollars, and crammed it into his pocket. The living room, as he strode through it, was still messy and still smelled of overripe pears. He didn’t really expect Ellen to clean it up; she would start, perhaps empty the ashtrays, and then, exhausted, return to bed. It would still be this way tonight, when he brought his sister home. He was resigned.

  “Wish me luck,” he said at the door to the hall.

  She had got out of bed; now she was tying on her heavy blue dressing robe. “Will you be home first? Or will you go directly up?”

  “Depends whether I get the truck,” he said. “I’ll call you.” Without kissing her good-bye he waved, grinned, and stepped out into the hall. In a moment he was outside on the sidewalk, on his way downtown.

  Unless it rained he walked to work. But today the jogging bounce of his shoes against the pavement made his head ache. By the time he had turned onto Mason Avenue his vision danced with nausea; he wondered if he was going to make it. The hell with breakfast; in his condition he couldn’t keep down a glass of tomato juice.

  At the Lucky Market the Italian greengrocer was putting out his long trays of grapefruits and oranges. The greengrocer waved at Hadley, and he waved mechanically back. Out of habit, he nodded to the clerk in the jewelry store and to the little dried-up old lady in Wetherby’s Stationery.

  In the doorway of the Golden State Cafe the petite black-haired waitress stood lounging in her trim uniform, red skirt and blouse, pert hat buried in her dark curls. “Hi,” she called shyly.

  The sight of her revived him briefly. “How are you?” he asked, pausing.

  “It’s a nice day,” she said, smiling coquettishly; Hadley was handsome and well groomed, a good catch for a girl . . . especially for one who didn’t know he was married and about to be presented with a son.

  Lighting a cigarette, Hadley said: “When are you dropping in?” He indicated Modern TV Sales and Service, which lay just ahead. “Come in and I’ll give you a free TV demonstration.”

  The girl laughed cunningly. “A free what demonstration?”

  Grinning, Hadley continued on down the sidewalk and into the dark shadows of the store. Into the familiar interior of silence and darkness, the place where he had worked since college.

  Stuart Wilson Hadley sat hunched over his food in the back of the Health Food Store, picking irritably at his plate of tossed green salad and creamed chipped beef on toast. The clock over the counter read twelve thirty. He had twenty minutes left on his lunch hour. He had been sitting there forty minutes and he hadn’t eaten a thing.

  The Health Food Store was full of chattering women. They annoyed him; everything annoyed him. His stomach was queasy and his head ached dully. He began aimlessly ripping his napkin up and wadding it into a ball. Ellen was probably still asleep in bed. Sometimes she stayed in bed until three or four in the afternoon. He wished he were with her; this ceaseless shrill laughter was too much to stand. He should have eaten at Jack’s Steakhouse; he could have got a plate of red beans and pork and rice and hot coffee.

  His stomach gurgled sickishly. There’d be the smell of grease and dripping French fries oozing from the walls at Jack’s Steakhouse. Drops of shiny fat like perspiration squeezed from the plaster, ignited by the fry cook at his sizzling grill. Clouds of cigar smoke manufactured from the dirty jokes of businessmen who squashed themselves together in booths like juries of vegetables. Jack’s Steakhouse was a grotto of jukebox noise, an outhouse of smoke and bathroom grunts, a steam bath of Chronicle sporting-greens and toothpicks and spilled ketchup. Stuart Hadley didn’t belong in its gymnasium of sweat and oniony hamburger smoke; could a sensitive man eat dinner in a locker room, surrounded by dirty underwear and athlete’s foot?

  Eating at Jack’s Steakhouse was squatting in junior high school, in the perspiration and fatigue of his earlier youth. The fat, successful men in Jack’s Steakhouse had belly-shoved their way directly there from gray shorts and tennis shoes and shower taking, had brought along Bicycle athletic supporters that had become dark strings of rot. The torment of Jack’s Steakhouse maintained Stuart Hadley at the moment of climbing the rope suspended from the ceiling of the Cedar Groves Junior High School gym, the moment in which he had hung in agony, jeered by upturned faces, clinging piteously still not up to the knot—mark of accomplishment—and then falling exhausted, drained, to the polished floor. Stuart Ha
dley, swinging from the ceiling, a fly above mouths of many spiders . . . and after him the skinny little Jew boy Ira Silberman had swarmed up, Asiatic, competent, grinning. Jack, of Jack’s Steakhouse, was Greek. Grinning over the cash register he palmed change with competent fingers; hand over hand it was taken in, the eternal ritual.

  He wondered where the people hurrying past him were going. So fast . . . no doubt it was somewhere important. Somewhere momentous, to do something vital. It was incredible that so many people could be abroad, all with significant errands, all gripped by purposeful goals. Involved in complex schemes and projects . . . cosmic doings.

  Reluctantly, he turned and crossed the street. His steps dragged; he didn’t want to return to the miserable little store. Anything to delay it. He could hide for a moment down in the crapper . . . but then—upstairs. Upstairs to the dull-faced customers.

  In the window of the Health Food Store was a big glossy photograph of Theodore Beckheim, set in the middle of the date and nut display. He stopped before it for the hundredth time; it had been there since May. Beckheim was coming up the coast from Los Angeles, where he and his people made their headquarters.

  The man’s heavy dark face glared back at Hadley; vaguely, he felt uncomfortable. The man was incredibly commanding, powerful. His great black eyes and massive-ridged brow made him look like some primordial giant, a legend from the distant past. Under the photograph of Theodore Beckheim were the words:

  Will speak at the Watchmen Hall at

  8 o’clock June 6, 7, 8. Admission free.

  Donations gratefully received.

  “Purity—he Bible Tells the

  World Order of Tomorrow.” Lecture followed by discussion.

  Everybody invited!

  Society of the Watchmen of Jesus

  Hadley gazed vacantly at the words and then back at the impressive face. The picture had been there so long he knew every line and circle of it. It was as if Beckheim were really someone he knew and not a remote public individual, a leader of a religious sect. There was its name on the poster: the Society of the Watchmen of Jesus. A worldwide society . . . pamphlets, a weekly newspaper sold on street corners. Followers in South America, Africa, in Iceland and Iran. Power of the Bible . . . healing by the Word.