Voices from the Street Page 7

  “Nonsense,” Alice snapped.

  Fergesson nodded solemnly. “I know what I’m talking about; I know him. He has no self-control . . . You just think he has, because he’s so damn sweet-looking and dresses up like you damn women dress up. No, I’m not turning my store over to a lunatic. Even if he is clever with his hands—even if he can sit all day tinkering with the same TV set.” He protested: “I can’t! Understand? I just can’t turn it over to him—he’s not trustworthy.”

  “Don’t shout,” Alice said testily. “I’m not deaf.”

  Jim Fergesson lapsed into silence. He lay back against the couch, sipping unhappily at his beer, listening to the radio mutter out the symphonic syrup of Morton Gould’s orchestra. Alice continued hooking away at her rug; occasionally she glanced at her husband, raised an eyebrow questioningly, got no response, shrugged, and returned to hooking.

  If he told anybody it would be her. But he wasn’t going to tell anybody, not for a while at least. He had phrased it a number of ways, but no matter how he put it, the substance was the same. He had to buy O’Neill Appliance because if he didn’t he wouldn’t be in business much longer. He was telling the truth when he said it either grows or it shrinks. The Bel−Rex drugstore chain, with branches in Oakland, Berkeley, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, was considering buying O’Neill Appliance. Once the chain got hold of it, Jim Fergesson was finished.

  He had never been a big-time operator. Neither was Bud O’Neill: in fact O’Neill was no good at all. O’Neill was so pitiful an operator that he was selling out . . . with one of the best fronts, inventories, and locations in the business. O’Neill was a natural-born bad businessman. He had poured funds into his store; now he was finished.

  In Fergesson’s mind the life and history of his competitor lay like a stone; he couldn’t dislodge it, try as he might. The way of Bud O’Neill was always there, the open road of mediocrity and final failure.

  O’Neill was that special type of idiot who opens a little hole-in-the-wall radio repair shop with nothing more than the ability to check tubes, replace filter condensers, and wire in phonograph inputs to old radios. O’Neill had taken enthusiastically to radio in high school; he had put together a rig, a shortwave transmitter. He had got a license and gone on the air: a ham. This was back in the thirties, toward the end of the depression.

  In the early forties O’Neill got himself a job in a defense plant in Richmond, California, wiring bomber turrets. He made plenty of money; everybody in Richmond was wealthy, including the Okies and Negroes. After the war, block after block of property became worthless; Richmond shut down its plants and shipyards and became a town of federally operated multiple-housing-unit slums and flashy supermarkets. One by one the businesses set up to supply the wartime labor force dwindled and failed. About this time O’Neill opened his first store.

  It had been a shoe shop; that is, it came without fixtures of any kind, a barren single room with a filthy bathroom in the back and two flyspecked window ledges for display. The walls were water-soaked; aging nude-girl calendars sagged among cobwebs and dust. O’Neill moved in test equipment (built by hand), a pair of secondhand counters, a stool and a rubber floor mat to keep himself from being electrocuted, a fluorescent lamp, got a man to paint him a sign, and became the Richmond One-Day Radio Service. In the front part of the store he piled rusty old radio chassis, dead portable radio batteries; he set up a record player and sold for twenty-five cents stacks of ex-jukebox records. In the window he placed tall bright new cardboard display posters from Sylvania and Tungsol tubes; and later on, a few tiny personal radios, the kind that operate from 67½-volt cells, the kind that can’t be plugged in the wall and are eternally damned by Consumers Union.

  The old ladies started coming in with their Atwater Kents and decrepit Philcos, the like of which are built no more, the like of which will never be equaled. O’Neill was a fat squashy man in his thirties, with a dirty wad of a mustache above his thick lips; he wore a faded dirt-spotted quasi uniform that made him look like a filling-station mechanic. Over the pocket was stitched the word BUD in red thread, done by his wife. A Coke bottle rested at one end of his workbench. From upturned radio chassis shrieked and howled metallic cowboy music. Pimple-faced youths came in to have paper bags of dusty tubes checked free. Girls came in for phonograph needles; he got a display board of RCA chromium needles and Recoton twenty-five for a quarter. He was really in business.

  O’Neill was stupid, slow, and hardworking. The combination got him nowhere; he made nothing. Most of the sets he worked on broke down within the thirty-day guarantee period. He spent hours arguing with some penniless kid over GE variable-reluctance cartridges. He spent weeks smoothing out crumpled old invoices, trying to find out where fifty 35Z5 tubes had come from, and why. He sat hunched at his workbench until four in the morning, trying to use up consignments of parts that bulged around him in quarter-pint bottles. All day he studied Rider’s Serviceman’s Manual, trying to discover the secret of keeping Webster 56 record changers from turning off in the middle of the last record. After a year and a half he folded.

  The expensive, gaudy store south of Cedar Groves along Bayshore Highway was not bought with funds earned wiring bomber turrets in a defense plant . . . and it was not bought with the proceeds from the sale of Richmond One-Day. It was handled by his wife’s family, who had money to invest. One thing about O’Neill, he had talked to enough old ladies, checked enough tubes, argued with enough pimple-faced kids, to spout a good line. He sold his wife’s family a bill of goods, got himself staked to thirty thousand dollars, and set up O’Neill Appliance. New stores were going up along Bayshore like fruit stands in summer. A hundred yards to his right was a piano shop that lit on and off all night, seven nights a week. Across from him was a gigantic dime store, as large as a movie theater. Even the bar down the road looked like a Spanish mansion. He had a good location, selected by the San Mateo branch of the Bank of America. He had a good front, designed by a San Francisco architect picked out by his father-in-law. His inventory was a housewife’s dream, a bulging cavern stuffed to bursting by the enterprising salesmen of the San Francisco supply houses.

  In three years O’Neill was up to his neck. In five, he was dead. Drowned.

  O’Neill had no sense. He was an ex-ham, with a meager ability to handle a soldering iron and oscillator, no organizational ability, no sense of how to spend money, and when it came down to it, too honest to be a good salesman. He was ready to throw in the towel; all he needed was a buyer to take the place off his hands.

  O’Neill Appliance was the only real competitor for Jim Fergesson’s shop. And O’Neill was a dud, without sense. Even his ads were duds; he forgot to trim off the instructions, left words like your store where his own plate should have appeared. O’Neill Appliance hadn’t cut into Fergesson’s gross; the highway shop had been rather a come-on for him, drawing cars to a stop, getting people out on their feet, failing to close them, sending them finally into Cedar Groves at ten miles an hour, wanting to be sold, money hanging out, ready to take any obsolete dog pushed on them by somebody with a carnation in his neatly pressed suit, a sales book and fountain pen in his hands.

  Fergesson had got the town’s sidewalk trade, its old families, and its highway traffic. He had handled it well: bought close to the belt, not got himself stuck with obsolete radio-phonographs and ten-inch TV sets. Everything was fine; he was well ahead of the game. Except, simply, that if Bel−Rex came in, Fergesson was finished. In six months, by Christmas, Bel−Rex would have O’Neill Appliance high-powered, drawing from a statewide inventory, with unlimited funds for investment and advertising.

  Sitting in his pleasant living room, listening to the radio mutter Morton Gould, Jim Fergesson was scared. Inside his plump, muscular body, he was trembling. His soul was weak with’ sweat. He couldn’t compete against Bel−Rex; he was finished. Big deals, advertised by throwaways, radio, newspapers . . . Famous name brands (we can’t tell you what it is but you’d recog
nize it instantly), fifty bucks under fair trade. Free gardenias to the ladies. Free TV lamp with each set sold. We buy in carload lots. Our buyer has gone crazy . . . come in and rob us. Searchlights at night. Twenty-five salesmen, all on commission and draw—sharp as starving ferrets. Delivery anywhere in the state without charge. Immediate repair service.

  “I’m no hotshot,” Fergesson croaked aloud.

  Alice glanced up. “What, dear?”

  Fergesson cleared his throat nervously and went on: “I’ve never done hotshot business. I can’t pressure; I can only sell what I believe in.”

  Gazing at him intently, Alice said: “I know that, dear.”

  “I can’t carry all lines! Christ, I have Emerson and GE and Westinghouse and Philco and Zenith—isn’t that enough? What more do they want? A man can stock only so much.” Bel−Rex carried everything, he knew bitterly. Right down the line, to Sentinel and Crosley and Trav−Ler. The works. And complete lines, not just leaders.

  “Price cutting,” Fergesson muttered. “Buy a TV, get a free toaster. Free twin-lead and rabbit ears. Christ, I couldn’t give away a ten-amp fuse!”

  “I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong,” Alice said, eyeing him uneasily. “Have you been reading ads of those big San Francisco department stores?”

  “They’re not so bad; they have class. It’s these hotshot chains that get me. These lit-up joints that cater to Okies and coons. Christ, they’re wholesalers doing retail! They buy direct from the factory—it’s true. They buy more in a day than I buy in a year. When stuff gets obsolete they dump it in the river . . . I’ve got some old Hoffmans down in the basement, the first they made. By God, I’ll sell them yet.”

  He got to his feet and paced miserably around. You either get bigger or get smaller. He didn’t have a choice; if he wanted to stay alive he had to buy O’Neill Appliance. Goddamn O’Neill—why had he built the place? Why hadn’t he left it a grassy lot of beer cans and moldy newspapers?

  “You know,” he said hoarsely, “maybe I shouldn’t have gone in the radio business. Look how it’s changed—it isn’t anything like it used to be. Now it’s TV, nothing but big screen and color, black tube, ultrahigh frequency . . . Back in the old days we had five-tube superhets and that was all. And this hi-fi stuff, these custom-built things. Fifteen thousand cycles-music for the birds. Reluctance cartridges, tape recorders—it’s a madhouse. FM tuners—nothing but grief.”

  “It’ll level off,” Alice said patiently. “Be glad you’re not in the record business; you’d have those different speeds, those long plays and those little RCA forty-five doughnuts with the big hole.”

  Fergesson made his way into the kitchen and got a second beer from the refrigerator. His hands were shaking, his knobby, stubby, calloused hands, with their grimy burn-scars up and down the wrists, from reaching into backs of radios . . .

  “That fool O’Neill,” he said bitterly. “He’ll sell out and get his money. Probably open up a big neon-sign tilted-glass-front whorehouse.”

  “What did you say, dear?” Alice called.

  Fergesson grunted a reply and reentered the living room. He hadn’t anybody’s family to stake him; he had gone up the hard way, hand over hand, on his own power. He had worked every inch of it . . . and overnight Bel−Rex could slaughter him.

  “My dad was right,” Fergesson said wretchedly. “He said I was making a mistake.”

  “Your father didn’t approve of any kind of business,” Alice reminded him.

  “Sure, he was a lawyer. A professional man. He was an educated man.”

  “He was also an oil speculator who lost everything he had, and came to you and died right here in this house without a cent. And your mother and I cared for him eight years before he finally passed on.” Alice’s voice rose angrily. “And all that time he never got tired of telling you that business was unworthy of a son of his. Lying there flat on his back insulting you day after day—” Her voice broke. “Why do you always bring him up? Why can’t you forget about him?”

  “He was right.” In his vest pocket Fergesson’s fingers closed around the ancient gold watch, elaborately engraved, with its fine, thin, black hands and spidery numbers. That was all the tall, dignified old man had left, that and a heavy silver ring bought from an Indian in Utah. And an old leather briefcase full of worthless drilling-rights certificates.

  “In a way I can understand how Hadley feels,” Fergesson said bitterly. “I wandered into the radio business by accident, like he did. I wasn’t going to be a businessman—I was going to be a lawyer, like my father. Maybe that’s all that’s wrong with Hadley; maybe he wants to be something better than a TV salesman. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be a TV salesman; I’d rather wash dishes. If he had any sense he’d wander back out again.”

  “And do what?”

  “Anything. Join the Army. I was in the National Guard and it didn’t hurt me. A year of that would make a man out of him, give him a spinal column. If he wasn’t so weak and shilly-shallying he’d quit.” Fergesson waved his finger at Alice. “If he was any good he’d walk out! I’ll tell you something: his father was a doctor. Dead, now. I can tell you what he’d say if he were alive . . . The same thing my dad said.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Hadley was raised by women. He’s like those fellows in the State Department, like that Dean Acheson. A whole generation of them. Sissy-kissers . . . no spine.” His voice sank into baffled gloom. “No wonder America’s prestige is going down. No wonder the Commies are winning, with mama’s boys running the show. It isn’t like the old days.”

  “It never is,” Alice said realistically.

  Fergesson wandered over to the couch, threw himself down, gazed vacantly at the heap of brightly colored rug his wife was tirelessly hooking. “The trouble with Hadley,” he said, “is he doesn’t have any moral standards. He doesn’t know right from wrong; nobody taught him the things to live by.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as going to church. Such as faith in God and faith in his country.” Fergesson doggedly sipped his beer. “This is a wonderful country, Alice. Don’t ever forget that. If a man works hard he can go a long way. Look at me—when I started out I didn’t have a thing. I built it all up with my own hands.” He indicated the hardwood floor. “I put in that floor—remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” Alice said tartly. “I helped you.”

  “The foundation, I hauled out all that dirt and sank the foundation myself. And the tile in the kitchen. The whole damn sink. This house, the store, everything . . . I built it all up from nothing. I never pulled a dumb deal in my life—if I’d owned Richmond One-Day I’d have made a go of it. If I bought out O’Neill right this minute I’d have that place of his humming!”

  “Please don’t shout at me,” Alice said apprehensively. “What on earth is the matter with you?”

  “Nothing,” Fergesson muttered. He sipped his beer. “Nothing at all.”

  Later in the evening he did something that he only partly understood. He put on his coat, went out to the garage, and started up the Pontiac. A few moments later he was gliding down the dark night streets, toward the deserted business section and Modern TV.

  It was when he was worried; he knew that. When he was bothered and uncertain: that was when he left his home late at night and came alone to the store. The dark, silent, cold store, with its ghostly shapes. All its lights turned off, except the flickering blue night-light over the safe. Down in the damp concrete vault that was the basement, an occasional beetle fluttered and squeaked and flopped across Olsen’s deserted bench: that was the only sound.

  As he drove he kept thinking about Bud O’Neill. The failure. The incompetent, without talent of any kind. Harmless, good-natured, full of talk and easy plans. Dazed by the collapse of his gaudy store, not really understanding why it had folded.

  Probably constructing an elaborate mythology: ruined because of secret conspiracies. Combines of his competitors.

 
Fergesson examined his hands, clamped around the wheel of the Pontiac. Competent hands; he wasn’t anything like Bud O’Neill. Or was he? Modern TV had once been a place like Richmond One-Day; behind the counter he had hunched much like Bud O’Neill. The old ladies had crept in with their Atwater Kents; he had put in new filters, checked tubes, wired the old sets for phono jacks. In the old days, the early days back in the thirties, when he had taken the store over, there were dead batteries stacked in his windows, too. Tubes and tube displays, secondhand counters, test equipment. The yowl of sets upturned on the bench, protesting against investigation.

  All the elements were there, in a fashion. To some old lady, to some young punk, to almost anyone who entered the store, there was no fundamental difference. During the war he had been behind the counter, not working in a defense plant. He had taken over the shop when the previous owner hadn’t been able to pay his wages, had owed him a salary covering 1930, 1931, and the first part of 1932. He had been smart enough to get in merchandise to sell; repair wasn’t enough. A frugal, close-to-the-chest line of vacuums and washers and radios . . . O’Neill had gone on talking and testing tubes free of charge; he’d be testing tubes again, soon. O’Neill would wind up a heavyset perspiring salesman in a cheap suit, standing in front of some potted palm in another man’s gaudy store.

  Fergesson parked the Pontiac and snapped off the lights and motor. He got out and walked down the dark sidewalk to Modern TV. Old crumpled newspapers were blown up in the entrance; he stooped down to make a handful of them. While he was carrying them to the gutter he saw the light on in the shop, coming from the back television display room.

  He got the door opened and entered. Ellen Hadley, immense and grotesquely pregnant in her blue maternity dress and heavy overcoat, sat gazing at an elaborate RCA television combination. Fergesson had closed the front door and come into the display room before she noticed him and turned her head.