Voices from the Street Read online

  The image of Theodore Beckheim seemed more and more familiar the longer he examined it. For a while it reminded him of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; then it was like his father, as he dimly remembered him, big and deep-voiced, strong. And somewhere in the heavy black brow was the stern gaze of a high school physics teacher, a man who had strode down the hall with firm step and steady gait, in a long white robe that billowed behind him like Saint Paul’s. The image gave Hadley the same nervous, uneasy feeling as the Army recruiting posters. One part of his mind told him they had made it that way on purpose and the whole thing was high-pressure salesmanship. And another part quavered and glowed, and down inside his chest his heart turned soft like mushy bacon fat melting in the pan.

  It was strange that a man he’d never seen or heard could make him feel that way. But it had happened before. At least, parts of his feeling had come before. That was the strange thing—his feeling was all the previous feelings rolled into one, as if all the men who had attracted him were present now. And for another thing, he was convinced that Beckheim was a Negro. He had never liked Negroes . . . It didn’t make sense. And he was convinced that most of Beckheim’s followers were metallic, chattering old women, like the ones who munched salad and tapioca pudding at the counter inside the Health Food Store. He hated women like that.

  The clock read four. Right now the Health Food Store was almost empty. The women had all skittered back to their offices and homes. Betty was heavily clearing the dirty counter of dishes and cigarette ashes and half-empty coffee cups crammed with wadded paper napkins. At one of the tables a drab little man in a striped suit, steel-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, a wisp of a mustache above his thin mouth, was quietly spooning up tapioca pudding and reading an article in a magazine.

  Hadley entered the Health Food Store and sat down at one of the counter stools, hands clasped before him on the moist oilcloth surface of the counter.

  “What is it, Stuart?” Betty asked wearily, with the faint trace of a smile.

  “Give me a bottle of fizz water and one of those little jars of celery extract. So I can make a celery phosphate.”

  At his table the man in the pin-striped suit pushed aside his magazine. “Stuart!” he called in a thin friendly voice. “By golly, how’s the boy?”

  “Hi, Wakefield,” Hadley answered noncommittally.

  “Come on over and join me.” Wakefield waved his spoon invitingly and grinned a gold-toothed jovial grin. Hadley got to his feet dully and moved listlessly over to the table. “I’m reading an interesting article on vaccination,” the little dried-up prune of a man asserted proudly. “By Bernard Shaw, the great English playwright. You might be interested.”

  “I have to get back to the shop,” Hadley said vaguely. “How are things in the flower business?”

  “Can’t complain.” Wakefield nodded, solemn and dignified when his flower shop was mentioned. “Drop in sometime and I’ll fix you up with a nice bright purple carnation for your buttonhole.” He scanned Hadley’s suit critically. “Hmm, with that suit maybe a white gardenia would be better. The purple would clash. Something white, I think . . . yes, a gardenia.” He leaned close to Hadley and grated in his ear: “It’s like pumping arsenic in a child’s bloodstream. Billions of corpses of dead germs. Ground up and pumped into the child. Diabolical! Read this article.” He pushed the magazine insistently against Hadley’s wrist. “They spread disease all over the world. The only real way to health, as any sane person knows, is through proper eating. Remember, what you put in your stomach comes out of your soul. Isn’t that right?” He raised his voice. “Isn’t that right, Betty?”

  “Yes, Horace,” Betty answered wearily as she lugged the two bottles to the counter and sank down on her stool. “That will be a dollar forty, Stuart.”

  Wakefield caught Hadley’s wrist with his thin, cold fingers. “You know what causes cancer? Eating meat. Pork and beef fat, especially pork. Lamb fat is the most difficult substance known to digest. It lodges in the lower gastrointestinal tract and putrefies. Sometimes a lump of lamb fat lodges for weeks, rotting and stinking.” His lips drew back from his gold teeth in a grimace of disgust; behind his steel-rimmed glasses his enlarged eyes danced excitedly. “A man turns himself into a garbage dump. Stinking mounds of filth and rubbish, flies and worms buzzing around. There’s those trichinosis worms in pork. They burrow into your muscles, all through your body. Big soft white worms burrowing, burrowing . . .” He shuddered and returned to his tapioca pudding. “Remember, Stuart,” he said quietly as he intently spooned up the last of the pudding. “What you put in your stomach comes out of your soul.”

  Hadley paid for the two bottles and started out of the Health Food Store into the blazing sun. In the back of his mind was a vague idea he had mulled over the last few weeks; he hugged the bottles carefully as he made his way down the sidewalk. He plunged into the cool gloom of the TV shop, his eyes on his feet.

  Fergesson was surrounded by customers at the front counter. Olsen, the huge bent-over serviceman, had come up from the basement to help him. He was resentfully finding a needle for a dumpy colored woman and at the same time answering the phone. Fergesson shot Hadley a look of wild fury, but Hadley was intent on his two bottles. He carried them carefully through the store and up the narrow back stairs to the office.

  Sitting at the desk making out his pickup tags was young Joe Tampini, the handsome black-haired Italian boy who managed the deliveries. Tampini smiled up shyly as Hadley seated himself by the typewriter table and painstakingly laid down his bottles.

  “What you got there, Mister Hadley?” Tampini asked, curious and polite, a sensitive youth lingering hopefully on the periphery of the store’s social life.

  Hadley began searching in the debris-littered desk. He found a stained tumbler and finally a bottle opener. “Something to drink,” he muttered. “What’s it look like?”

  “Do I get some?” Tampini smiled wistfully, but Hadley promptly turned his back and ignored him.

  “You wouldn’t like it,” Hadley said. Surrounded by filing cabinets, piles of invoices and bills, dusty photos of nude girls, pens and pencils, the old Royal typewriter, Hadley cautiously opened the two bottles and began fixing the celery phosphate.

  “Drink it,” Hadley urged Fergesson good-naturedly.

  “What in the name of God is it?” Fergesson demanded.

  “A celery phosphate. It’s good for you . . . Try it. It’s got an unusual taste but once you get used to it it’s really fine.”

  Fergesson snorted with disgust. The store was finally empty; rows of TV sets bellowed to themselves below the office. Olsen had escaped back down to his service department. Tampini was out in the truck for the final deliveries of the day. “Where the hell were you?” Fergesson demanded. “You took an hour and a half for your damn lunch—I ought to dock you.”

  Indignation rose up in Hadley. He angrily withdrew the tempting glass of celery phosphate. “That’s not so—I got stopped by a streetlight, that’s all. Maybe a couple of minutes.” The whole thing had become indistinct to him; he couldn’t see any use in talking about it. Hadn’t he just bought over a dollar’s worth of celery extract for Fergesson? “Sure,” he said hotly. “Take it out of my pay.”

  “What’s the use,” Fergesson muttered to himself. “I’m going out on a prospect. I’ll be back in half an hour . . . It’s probably stone dead by now.” He disappeared down the steps to the main floor, and then rapidly out the front door.

  Hadley sighed and lit a cigarette. He knew he should go downstairs; there were three new Philco TV combinations to be adjusted and set up. The job was his; he had the patience and dexterity to sit tinkering endlessly, day after day. But instead of going down he remained at the office desk, the cigarette between his fingers, idly touching the side of the celery phosphate glass. He absently sipped a little of it, but the fizz had already begun to go, and what remained was stale and vegetable and not exciting.

  An old woman dragged her way into th
e store and stood puffing and sagging before the front counter, her vast lumpy shopping bag resting on the floor. Hadley gazed down at her mildly as she panted and muttered and darted quick suspicious glances around the deserted store, impatient for the salesman to make his appearance.

  A dull, numbing tiredness crept through Hadley’s bones. Lazily, the miasma drifted up like gray cigarette smoke, into all parts of his body. First his feet, then his legs and hips, his shoulders, finally his arms and hands drifted off to sleep. His chin wobbled and sank as he continued to gaze blankly at the old woman. She reminded him of his grandmother whom he had visited in Baltimore. Only, her face was too hard and mean. Her eyes darted restlessly. And she was smaller and older. He wondered what this old woman wanted. Maybe there was a broken Atwater Kent radio in the dumpy shopping bag. Maybe there was a paper sack of dusty old radio tubes to be checked, each one wrapped in newspaper. Maybe she had a radio downstairs in the service department, an immense floor model combination it would take three men and a donkey to haul up. Maybe she wanted a package of Kacti needles for her windup phonograph.

  He yawned, and the sound attracted the woman’s attention. Guiltily, Hadley moved into motion. He stubbed out his cigarette and clumped stiffly down the stairs to the main floor. His legs wobbled under him; he could hardly push behind the counter. The old woman, the store, the booming TV sets, were lost in a drifting haze of sleepiness. He had got up too suddenly this morning. He should have got up slowly, breathed deeply with each motion. Opened the window and done a few of his special chest exercises. Maybe taken an ice-cold shower. At least had a methodical breakfast. The whole day had started off wrong . . . Now that it was ending, his last energy was dwindling away.

  “Can I help you?” he asked the old woman.

  Two tired, crafty eyes, ancient and faded, gleamed up at him. “You work here?” the old woman demanded.

  “Yes,” Hadley said.

  “That’s funny,” the old woman said. There was bright suspicion on her seamed face. “I’ve never seen you before.” Firm conviction entered her voice and hardened there. “You’re not the man who waits on me when I come in.”

  Hadley could find no words of protest.

  “No,” the old woman said, with a half-plaintive, half-weary shake of her head. “You’re not the man who waits on me. The man who waits on me is much older. You’re just a boy.”

  “I’ve worked here for years,” Hadley said, stunned.

  “The man who waits on me is darker and shorter. He has a good face. He is a kind, helpful man. He understands my radio. He’s waited on me for thirteen years. Ever since I came to California and took my room at the National Hotel.”

  “I have a wife,” Hadley said helplessly. “I’m not a boy.”

  “This man owns this store. He fixed my radio when nobody else would even look at it. He has a way with radios. There’s a wise kindness in his face. There’s no kindness in your face. Your face is empty and cruel. It’s a bad face. It’s pretty and blond, but it’s a bad face.”

  “You want Mr. Fergesson,” Hadley managed. “He’s not here. He’s out somewhere.”

  “Mr. Fergesson is the man who waits on me,” the old woman said emphatically. “You say he’s out somewhere? Well, don’t you know where? When will he be back? I have my radio here in my bag. I want him to look at it. He can tell me what’s wrong. Nobody else can.”

  “He’ll be back in half an hour,” Hadley mumbled. “Maybe you want to wait for him. Or maybe you want to leave the radio.”

  “No,” the old woman said with finality. “I can’t leave my radio.”

  “You can wait, then.”

  “Do you think I could wait half an hour? An old person like me can’t stand on her feet that long.”

  “I’ll find you a chair,” Hadley suggested.

  “No,” the old woman said. She moved toward the door, her heavy shopping bag dragging after her. “I’ll come back some other time.” She searched Hadley’s face with her tired, disappointed eyes. “Are you sure you work here, young man? I’ve never seen you before. Are you sure you’re not just waiting?”

  “I belong here,” Hadley said thickly. “I’m not just waiting.”

  “You’re waiting here for the man to come back. The man who owns the store. No, you don’t belong here. I can tell. I don’t know where you belong, but it isn’t here.”

  She wandered heavily away.

  Hadley stalked numbly over and snapped off the row of blaring TV sets. They sank into sudden silence, and at once the dim emptiness of the store rose up around him and suffocated him. He turned one set back on and then convulsively made his way out of the store, onto the front sidewalk.

  The old woman was crossing the street with a knot of drab shoppers. He watched her go until she was lost from sight. What did the old woman mean? Who was she? Inside the dim store the TV muttered to itself; its single eye flickered fitfully in the murky shadows. Shapes came and went, diffuse figures of men and things that hovered temporarily and then passed on.

  Hadley turned his back to the store and the television set. He persuaded his ears to fill up with the honk of car horns, the staccato stamp of human feet on the hot late-afternoon sidewalk; he managed to exclude the dead sounds exhausted of color and life, the sullen cry and fuming from inside the store. Standing against the plate-glass window, his hands forced deep in his trouser pockets, he fervently inhaled the warmth of sun and people, the flow of bright activity.

  But still the old woman’s words whined in his head.

  She was right; he didn’t belong in the store. He wasn’t really a television salesman. Longingly, he watched the people pass. He should be out there with them, a part of them. Hurrying by, not cut off and isolated in the stagnant backwater of a little dried-up store.

  Along the sidewalk came a well-dressed young man. He was somewhat plump, but immaculately groomed. A soft-bodied man in an expensive English suit, shoes obviously hand-fashioned. His hair was thin, black, faintly shiny. A rich aliveness glowed in his brown eyes as he glanced briefly at Hadley. His nails, his cuffs, his bearing, everything about him, spoke his breeding, a Continental background.

  Avidly, Hadley watched him pass. This might have been Hadley. Under other circumstances, it would be he, Stuart Hadley, carrying a gray topcoat over his arm, tall and dark and dignified. A faint aroma of men’s cologne hung about him. Hadley could imagine his apartment: modern prints on the walls, cushions on the floor, Chinese mats, Bartók playing in the background on a custom-built phonograph, French novels in French paperback editions. Gide, Proust, Celine . . .

  He watched the man turn into a parking lot and approach a tiny European sports car. The man climbed in, started up the motor, and zoomed from the lot, out onto the street. In a moment the car and its driver were gone, lost behind a bulging GM truck. Hadley turned away. Alas, he didn’t even know what kind of car it was. Slowly, unhappily, he left the sidewalk and reentered the store.

  For a time he stood in black gloom as his eyes adjusted. The chill of the old woman, the gray smell of age and death, had finally begun to drift away. Hadley picked up the heavy-duty staple gun from the counter and fired staples here and there. The gun had always comforted him; he loved to operate it. Fiercely, staples clicked against the walls, the display racks, onto the floor, behind the television sets; gripping the gun like a serious weapon, Hadley advanced on the muttering, flickering TV set in the center of the row and fired point-blank in its face. The staple bounced back gratifyingly and he wandered away. As often before, he now fired staples at random, but no more satisfaction remained: he had exhausted the gun’s possibilities. He tossed it back on the counter and stationed himself in the doorway, gazing moodily out at the passing people and plucking at his coat pocket for his cigarettes.

  The old woman was right. He had to leave the store.

  He thought about the dog, the puppy he had plucked from the box in Pop Michelson’s garage. Death, dropped in a rain barrel, discarded like debris. Useless
waste, old papers and tin cans. Rescued by accident . . . passed from hand to hand. And that was his life; that was how he lived. Wandering aimlessly, drifting, passed here and there at random. Without purpose. Saved by accident, condemned by other accidents. In a meaningless world.

  Across the street glowed a neat attractive neon sign. The Peninsula Travel Agency. Huge letters described a trip to Mexico; a brightly colored poster showed a brown-skinned woman with white teeth and black hair and magnificent half-bare loins. Welcome to Mexico. Land of warmth and sunshine. Song and laughter. Come to sunny Mexico. One hundred forty dollars.

  He got out his wallet and examined the bills wadded and stuffed inside it. Ten dollars, the remains of his wife’s household money. He shook out eighty-four cents in change from his coat pocket, along with match folders, paper clips, slips of dirty paper with customers’ names, pencil stubs, and the remains of a paper napkin.

  That was all he had in the world. That was the bones, teeth, and dust of Stuart Hadley. That was what would lie in a little pile in his coffin through all the ages. A pocketful of trash and ten dollars and eighty-four cents. He threw the match folders in the waste-box under the counter and stuffed the money away. This was the manifestation of the inexpressible entity Stuart Hadley . . . this, and a swollen sleep-drugged wife lying in a messy bed; a drawer of unpaid bills; eight or ten expensive suits; endless shirts and socks and handkerchiefs and hand-painted neckties.

  He examined the calendar pasted on the cash register. Ten days before the next paycheck came; and in the middle of the month there were no sales commissions. It was June 6, the fly-soaked middle of summer. An expiring procession of empty afternoons lay stretched out ahead of him, and nothing else. He couldn’t go to Mexico on ten dollars; he was stuck fast, glued tight.

  But on June 6 Theodore Beckheim arrived from Los Angeles and spoke. Nervous hunger twitched through Hadley. That was something, perhaps. Anything to break the monotony. Any hope, any straw.