“You’re silly,” she said. “Ethan, you’ve got your comical genius.”

“Oh say, Miss Mousie, will you marry me?”

“Did you wake up silly?”

“The year’s at the day. The day’s at the morn.”

“I guess you did. Do you remember it’s Good Friday?”

He said hollowly, “The dirty Romans are forming up for Calvary.”

“Don’t be sacrilegious. Will Marullo let you close the store at eleven?”

“Darling chicken-flower—Marullo is a Catholic and a wop. He probably won’t show up at all. I’ll close at noon till the execution’s over.”

“That’s Pilgrim talk. It’s not nice.”

“Nonsense, ladybug. That’s from my mother’s side. That’s pirate talk. It was an execution, you know.”

“They were not pirates. You said yourself, whalers, and you said they had letters of what-you-call-it from the Continental Congress.”

“The ships they fired on thought they were pirates. And those Roman G.I.’s thought it was an execution.”

“I’ve made you mad. I like you better silly.”

“I am silly. Everybody knows that.”

“You always mix me up. You’ve got every right to be proud— Pilgrim Fathers and whaling captains right in one family.”

“Have they?”

“What do you mean?”

“Would my great ancestors be proud to know they produced a goddam grocery clerk in a goddam wop store in a town they used to own?”

“You are not. You’re more like the manager, keep the books and bank the money and order the goods.”

“Sure. And I sweep out and carry garbage and kowtow to Marullo, and if I was a goddam cat, I’d be catching Marullo’s mice.”

She put her arms around him. “Let’s be silly,” she said. “Please don’t say swear words on Good Friday. I do love you.”

“Okay,” he said after a moment. “That’s what they all say. Don’t think that lets you lie jaybird naked with a married man.”

“I was going to tell you about the children.”

“They in jail?”

“Now you’re silly again. Maybe it’s better if they tell you.”

“Now why don’t you—”

“Margie Young-Hunt’s going to read me again today.”

“Like a book? Who’s Margie Young-Hunt, what is she, that all our swains—”

“You know if I was jealous—I mean they say when a man pretends he don’t notice a pretty girl—”

“Oh, that one. Girl? She’s had two husbands.”

“The second one died.”

“I want my breakfast. Do you believe that stuff?”

“Well Margie saw about Brother in the cards. Someone near and dear, she said.”

“Someone near and dear to me is going to get a kick in the pants if she doesn’t haul freight—”

“I’m going—eggs?”

“I guess so. Why do they call it Good Friday? What’s good about it?”

“Oh! You!” she said. “You always make jokes.”

“I feel good,” he said. “Why do they call it Good Friday?”

“Spring,” she said from the stove.

“Spring Friday?”

“Spring fever. Is that the children up?”

“Fat chance. Lazy little bastards. Let’s get ’em up and whip ’em.”

“You talk terrible when you’re silly. Will you come home twelve to three?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Women. Sneak ’em in. Maybe that Margie.”

“Now Ethan, don’t you talk like that. Margie’s a good friend. She’d give you the shirt off her back.”

“Yah? Where’d she get the shirt?”

“That’s Pilgrim talk again.”

“I bet you anything we’re related. She’s got pirate blood.”

“Oh! You’re just silly again. Here’s your list.” She tucked it in his breast pocket. “Seems like a lot. But it’s Easter weekend, don’t forget—and two dozen eggs, don’t forget. You’re going to be late.”

“I know. Might miss a two-bit sale for Marullo. Why two dozen?”

“For dyeing. Allen and Mary Ellen asked specially. You better go.”

“Okay, bugflower—but can’t I just go up and beat the hell out of Allen and Mary Ellen?”

“You spoil them rotten, Eth. You know you do.”

“Farewell, O ship of state,” he said, and slammed the screen door after him and went out into the green-gold morning.

He looked back at the fine old house, his father’s house and his great-grandfather’s, white-painted shiplap with a fanlight over the front door, and Adam decorations and a widow’s walk on the roof. It was deep-set in the greening garden among lilacs a hundred years old, thick as your waist, and swelling with buds. The elms of Elm Street joined their tops and yellowed out in new-coming leaf. The sun had just cleared the bank building and flashed on the silvery gas tower, starting the kelp and salt smell from the old harbor.

Only one person in early Elm Street, Mr. Baker’s red setter, the banker’s dog, Red Baker, who moved with slow dignity, pausing occasionally to sniff the passenger list on the elm trunks.

“Good morning, sir. My name is Ethan Allen Hawley. I’ve met you in pissing.”

Red Baker stopped and acknowledged the greeting, with a slow sway of his plumed tail.

Ethan said, “I was just looking at my house. They knew how to build in those days.”

Red cocked his head and reached with a hind foot to kick casually at his ribs.

“And why not? They had the money. Whale oil from the seven seas, and spermaceti. Do you know what spermaceti is?”

Red gave a whining sigh.

“I see you don’t. A light, lovely rose-smelling oil from the head cavity of the sperm whale. Read Moby-Dick, dog. That’s my advice to you.”

The setter lifted his leg on the cast-iron hitching post at the gutter.

Turning to walk away, Ethan said over his shoulder, “And make a book report. You might teach my son. He can’t even spell spermaceti, or—or anything.”

Elm Street runs at an angle into High Street two blocks from the old Ethan Allen Hawley house. Halfway down the first block a delinquent gang of English sparrows were fighting on the new-coming lawn of the Elgar house, not playing but rolling and picking and eye-gouging with such ferocity and so noisily that they didn’t see Ethan approach. He stopped to watch the battle.

“Birds in their little nests agree,” he said. “So why can’t we? Now there’s a bunch of horse crap for you. You kids can’t get along even on a pretty morning. And you’re the bastards Saint Francis was nice to. Screw!” He ran at them, kicking, and the sparrows rose with a whispered roar of wings, complaining bitterly in door-squeak voices. “Let me tell you this,” Ethan said after them. “At noon the sun will darken and a blackness will fall on the earth and you will be afraid.” He came back to the sidewalk and proceeded on his way.

The old Phillips house in the second block is a boarding house now. Joey Morphy, teller at the First National, came out of the front door. He picked his teeth and straightened his Tattersall waistcoat and said, “Hi,” to Ethan. “I was just going to call on you, Mr. Hawley,” he said.

“Why do they call it Good Friday?”

“It’s from the Latin,” said Joey. “Goodus, goodilius, goodum, meaning lousy.”

Joey looked like a horse and he smiled like a horse, raising a long upper lip to show big square teeth. Joseph Patrick Morphy, Joey Morphy, Joey-boy—“the Morph”—a real popular guy for one only a few years at New Baytown. A joker who got off his gags veily-eyed like a poker player, but he whinnied at other people’s jokes, whether or not he had heard them. A wise guy, the Morph, had the inside dope on everything—and everybody from Mafia to Mountbatten—but he gave it out with a rising inflection, almost like a question. That took the smartaleck tone out of it, made his listener a party to it so that he could repeat it as his own. Joey was a fascinating monkey—a gambler but no one ever saw him lay down a bet, a good book-keeper and a wonderful bank teller. Mr. Baker, First National president, trusted Joey so completely that he let the teller do most of the work. The Morph knew everyone intimately and never used a first name. Ethan was Mr. Hawley. Margie Young-Hunt was Mrs. Young-Hunt to Joey, even though it was whispered that he was laying her. He had no family, no connections, lived alone in two rooms and private bath in the old Phillips house, ate most of his meals at the Foremaster Grill and Bar. His banking past was known to Mr. Baker and the bonding company and it was immaculate, but Joey-boy had a way of telling things that had happened to someone else in a way that made you suspect they had happened to Joey, and if that was so, he had really been around. Not taking credit made people like him even more. He kept his fingernails very clean, dressed well and sharply, and always had a clean shirt and a shoeshine.

The two men strolled together down Elm Street toward High.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you. You related to Admiral Hawley ?”

“Don’t you mean Admiral Halsey?” Ethan asked. “We’ve had lots of captains but I never heard of an admiral in the family.”

“I heard your granddad was a whaling captain. Kind of connected up in my mind with the admiral, I guess.”

“Town like this has got myths,” said Ethan. “Like they say people on my dad’s side did some pirating way back and my mother’s family came over in the Mayflower.”

“Ethan Allen,” Joey said. “My God—you related to him too?”

“Might be. Must be,” said Ethan. “What a day—ever see a prettier? What was it you wanted to see me about?”

“Oh, yes. I guess you’re closing the store twelve to three. Would you make me a couple of sandwiches about half past eleven? I’ll run in and get them. And a bottle of milk.”

“Bank’s not closing?”

“Bank is. I’m not. Little Joey’ll be right in there, chained to the books. Big weekend like this—everybody and his dog cashing checks.”

“I never thought of that,” said Ethan.

“Oh, sure. Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day—any long weekend. If I wanted to stick up a bank, I’d do it just before a long weekend. The stuff’s right there all laid out, waiting.”

“You ever get stuck up, Joey?”

“No. But I had a friend that did twice.”

“What did he say about it?”

“Said he was scared. Just took orders. Laid down on the floor and let ’em have it. Said the money was better insured than he was.”

“I’ll bring you the sandwiches when I close up. I’ll knock on the back door. What kind you want?”

“Don’t bother, Mr. Hawley. I’ll slip across the alley—one ham and one cheese on rye, lettuce and mayonnaise, and maybe one bottle of milk and a Coke for later.”

“Got some nice salami—that’s Marullo.”

“No, thanks. How’s the one-man Mafia holding up?”

“All right, I guess.”

“Well, even if you don’t like guineas, you got to admire a guy can build a pushcart into all the property he owns. He’s pretty cute. People don’t know how much he’s got salted away. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. Banker’s not supposed to tell.”

“You didn’t tell.”

They had come to the corner where Elm angles into High Street. Automatically they stopped and turned to look at the pink brick and plaster mess that was the old Bay Hotel, now being wrecked to make room for the new Woolworth’s. The yellow-painted bulldozer and the big crane that swung the wrecking ball were silent like waiting predators in the early morning.

“I always wanted to do that,” Joey said. “Must be a kick to swing that steel ball and see a wall go down.”

“I saw enough go down in France,” Ethan said.

“Yeah! Your name’s on the monument down by the water-front.”

“Did they ever catch the robbers that stuck up your friend?” Ethan was sure the friend was Joey himself. Anyone would have been.

“Oh, sure. Caught ’em like mice. It’s lucky robbers aren’t smart. If Joey-boy wrote a book how to rob a bank, the cops would never catch anybody.”

Ethan laughed. “How’d you go about it?”

“I got a pipeline, Mr. Hawley. I just read the papers. And I used to know a guy pretty well was a cop. You want the two-dollar lecture?”

“ ’Bout six bits’ worth. I’ve got to open the store.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Joey, “I am here this morning—No, look! How do they catch bank robbers? Number one—record, got caught before. Number two—get fighting over the profits and someone blows it. Number three—dames. Can’t let dames alone, and that ties into number four—they got to spend that money. Watch new spenders and you got them.”

“So what’s your method, professor, sir?”

“Simple as socks. Everything opposite. Never rob a bank if you ever got caught or booked for anything. No confederates— do it alone and don’t tell a soul, nobody. Forget dames. And don’t spend it. Put it away, maybe for years. Then, when you’ve got some excuse for having some money, bring it out a little at a time and invest. Don’t spend.”

“How about if the robber got recognized?”

“If he covers his face and don’t talk, who’s going to recognize him? You ever read descriptions by eyewitnesses? They’re nuts. My cop friend says sometimes when they’d plant him in the line-up, he got picked out over and over again. People swore their eyes out he did whatever it was. That’ll be six bits, please.”

Ethan put his hand in his pocket. “I’ll have to owe you.”

“I’ll take it out in sandwiches,” said Joey.

The two crossed High Street and entered the alley that right-angled from the other side. Joey went in the back door of the First National Bank on his side of the alley, and Ethan unlocked the alley door of Marullo’s Fruit and Fancy Groceries on his side. “Ham and cheese?” he called.

“On rye—lettuce and mayonnaise.”

A little light, grayed by the dusty iron-barred window, came into the storeroom from the narrow alley. Ethan paused in the twilight place shelved to the ceiling and stacked with the cartons and wooden cases of canned fruits, vegetables, fish, processed meats, and cheese. He sniffed for mice among the seminal smells of flour and dried beans and peas, the paper-and-ink odor of boxed cereals, thick rich sourness of cheeses, and sausage, reek of hams and bacon, ferment of cabbage trimmings, lettuce, and beet tops from the silvery garbage cans beside the back door. Perceiving no rusty must of mouse, he opened the alley door again and rolled the covered garbage cans into the alley. A gray cat darted to get in, but he drove it away.

“No you don’t,” he remarked to the cat. “Mice and rats are feed for cats, but you’re a sausage nibbler. Aroint! You hear me—aroint!” The seated cat was licking a curled pink paw but at the second “aroint” he hightailed away and scrambled over the board fence behind the bank. “That must be a magic word,” Ethan said aloud. He returned to the storeroom and closed the door after him.

Now through the dusty room to the swinging door of the grocery—but at the cubicle of the toilet he heard the whispering of seeping water. He opened the plywood door, switched on the light, and flushed the toilet. Then he pushed open the wide door with wire-netted glass peekhole and wedged it open, kicking the wood block firmly in with his toe.

The store was greeny from the drawn shades over the big front windows. Again shelves to the ceiling, filled neatly with gleaming canned and glassed foods, a library for the stomach. On one side—counter, cash register, bags, string, and that glory in stainless steel and white enamel, the cold cabinet, in which the compressor whispered to itself. Ethan flipped a switch and flooded the cold cuts, cheeses, sausage, chops, steaks, and fish with a cold bluish neon glare. A reflected cathedral light filled the store, a diffused cathedral light like that of Chartres. Ethan paused to admire it, the organ pipes of canned tomatoes, the chapels of mustard and olives, the hundred oval tombs of sardines.

“Unimum et unimorum,” he intoned in a nasal litanic tone. “Uni unimouse quod unibug in omnem unim, domine— ahhhhhmen,” he sang. And he could hear his wife commenting, “That’s silly and besides it might hurt somebody’s feelings. You can’t go around hurting feelings.”

A clerk in a grocery store—Marullo’s grocery store—a man with a wife and two darling children. When is he alone, when can he be alone? Customers in the daytime, wife and kiddies in the evening; wife at night, customers in the daytime, wife and kiddies in the evening. “Bathroom—that’s when,” Ethan said loudly, and right now, before I open the sluice. Oh! the dusky, musky, smelly-welly, silly-billy time—the slovenly-lovely time. “Now whose feelings can I hurt, sugarfoot?” he said to his wife. “There ain’t nobody nor nobody’s feelings here. Just me and my unimum unimorum until—until I open that goddam front door.”

From a drawer behind the counter by the cash register he took a clean apron and unfolded it and straightened the tapes, put it around his thin middle, brought the tapes around and back again. He reached behind his back with both hands and fumbled a bowknot.

The apron was long, halfway down his shins. He raised his right hand, cupped loosely, palm upward, and he declaimed, “Hear me O ye canned pears, ye pickles and ye piccalilli—‘As soon as it was day, the elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes came together and led Him into their council—’ as soon as it was day. The buggers went to work early, didn’t they? They didn’t waste no time nohow. Let’s see now. ‘And it was about the sixth hour’—that’s maybe twelve o’clock—‘and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened.’ Now how do I remember that? Good God, it took Him a long time to die—a dreadful long time.” He dropped his hand and looked wondering at the crowded shelves as though they might answer him. “You don’t speak to me now, Mary, my dumpling. Are you one of the Daughters of Jerusalem? ‘Weep not for me,’ He said. ‘Weep for yourselves and for your children. . . . For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?’ Still breaks me up. Aunt Deborah wrought better than she knew. It’s not the sixth hour yet—not yet.”

He raised the green shades on the big windows, saying, “Come in, day!” And then he unlocked the front doors. “Enter, world.” He swung the iron-barred doors open and latched them open. And the morning sun lay softly on the pavement as it should, for in April the sun arose right where the High Street ran into the bay. Ethan went back to the toilet for a broom to sweep the sidewalk.

A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cats, dogs, butterflies and people.

Ethan Allen Hawley’s quiet, dim, and inward day was done. The man who swept the morning pavement with metronomic strokes was not the man who could sermonize to canned goods, not a unimum unimorum man, not even a silly-billy man. He gathered cigarette ends and gum wrappers, bud cases from the pollenizing trees, and simple plain dust in the sweep of his broom and moved the windrow of derelict toward the gutter, to await the town men with their silver truck.

Mr. Baker took his measured decent way from his house on Maple Street toward the red brick basilica of a First National Bank. And if his steps were not of equal length, who was to know that out of ancient habit he avoided breaking his mother’s back?

“Good morning, Mr. Baker,” Ethan said and held his stroke to save the banker’s neat serge pants from dust.

“Morning, Ethan. Fine morning.”

“Fine,” said Ethan. “Spring’s in, Mr. Baker. Groundhog was right again.”

“He was, he was.” Mr. Baker paused. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, Ethan. That money your wife got by her brother’s will—over five thousand, isn’t it?”

“Sixty-five hundred after taxes,” Ethan said.

“Well, it’s just lying in the bank. Ought to be invested. Like to talk to you about that. Your money should be working.”

“Sixty-five hundred dollars can’t do much work, sir. It can only stand by for emergencies.”

“I’m not a believer in idle money, Ethan.”

“Well, this also serves—just standing and waiting.”

The banker’s voice became frosty. “I don’t understand.” His inflection said he did understand and found it stupid, and his tone twisted a bitterness in Ethan, and the bitterness spawned a lie.

The broom traced a delicate curve against the pavement. “It’s this way, sir. That money is Mary’s temporary security if anything should happen to me.”

“Then you should use part of it to insure your life.”

“But it’s only temporary, sir. That money was Mary’s brother’s estate. Her mother is still living. She may live many years.”

“I understand. Old people can be a burden.”

“They can also sit on their money.” Ethan glanced at Mr. Baker’s face as he said his lie, and he saw a trace of color rise out of the banker’s collar. “You see, sir, if I invested Mary’s money I might lose it, the way I lost my own, the way my father lost the pot.”

“Water under the bridge, Ethan—water under the bridge. I know you got burned. But times are changing, new opportunities opening up.”

“I had my opportunity, Mr. Baker, more opportunity than good sense. Don’t forget I owned this store right after the war. Had to sell half a block of real estate to stock it—the last of our business property.”

“I know, Ethan. I’m your banker. Know your business the way your doctor knows your pulse.”

“Sure you know. Took me less than two years to damn near go bankrupt. Had to sell everything but my house to pay my debts.”

“You can’t take all the blame for that. Fresh out of the Army— no business experience. And don’t forget you ran smack into a depression, only we called it recession. Some pretty seasoned businessmen went under.”

“I went under all right. It’s the first time in history a Hawley was ever a clerk in a guinea grocery.”

“Now that’s what I don’t understand, Ethan. Anybody can go broke. What I don’t see is why you stay broke, a man of your family and background and education. It doesn’t have to be permanent unless your blood has lost its guts. What knocked you out, Ethan? What kept you knocked out?”

Ethan started an angry retort—Course you don’t understand; you’ve never had it—and then he swept a small circle of gum wrappers and cigarette butts into a pyramid and moved the pyramid toward the gutter. “Men don’t get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared. I’m scared. Long Island Lighting Company might turn off the lights. My wife needs clothes. My children—shoes and fun. And suppose they can’t get an education? And the monthly bills and the doctor and teeth and a tonsillectomy, and beyond that suppose I get sick and can’t sweep this goddam sidewalk? Course you don’t understand. It’s slow. It rots out your guts. I can’t think beyond next month’s payment on the refrigerator. I hate my job and I’m scared I’ll lose it. How could you understand that?”

“How about Mary’s mother?”

“I told you. She sits on it. She’ll die sitting on it.”

“I didn’t know. I thought Mary came from a poor family. But I know when you’re sick you need medicine or maybe an operationor maybe a shock. Our people were daring men. You know it. They didn’t let themselves get nibbled to death. And now times are changing. There are opportunities our ancestors never dreamed of. And they’re being picked up by foreigners. Foreigners are taking us over. Wake up, Ethan.”

“And how about the refrigerator?”

“Let it go if you have to.”

“And how about Mary and the children?”

“Forget them for a while. They’ll like you better if you climb out of the hole. You’re not helping them by worrying about them.”

“And Mary’s money?”

“Lose it if you have to but risk it. With care and good advice you don’t have to lose it. Risk isn’t loss. Our people have always been calculated-risk people and they didn’t lose. I’m going to shock you, Ethan. You’re letting down the memory of old Cap’n Hawley. You owe his memory something. Why, he and my daddy owned the Belle-Adair together, one of the last built and finest of all whaling bottoms. Get off your ass, Ethan. You owe the Belle-Adair something you haven’t paid in guts. The hell with the finance company.”

Ethan coaxed a reluctant piece of cellophane over the gutter’s edge with his broom tip. He said softly, “The Belle-Adair burned to the waterline, sir.”

“I know she did, but did that stop us? It did not.”

“She was insured.”

“Of course she was.”

“Well, I wasn’t. I saved my house and nothing else.”

“You’ll have to forget that. You’re brooding on something past. You’ve got to scrape up some courage, some daring. That’s why I said you should invest Mary’s money. I’m trying to help you, Ethan.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“We’ll get that apron off you. You owe that to old Cap’n Hawley. He wouldn’t believe it.”

“I guess he wouldn’t.”

“That’s the way to talk. We’ll get that apron off.”

“If it wasn’t for Mary and the children—”

“Forget them, I tell you—for their own good. There’s some interesting things going to happen here in New Baytown. You can be part of it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Just let me think about it.”

“Mr. Morphy says he’s going to work when you close at noon. I’m making him some sandwiches. Want me to make you some?”

“No thanks. I’m letting Joey do the work. He’s a good man. There’s some property I want to look up. In the County Clerk’s office, that is. Nice and private there from twelve till three. Might be something in that for you. We’ll talk soon. So long.” He took a long first step to miss a crack and crossed the alley entrance to the front door of the First National Bank, and Ethan smiled at his retreating back.

He finished his sweeping quickly, for people were trickling and fresheting to work now. He set the stands of fresh fruit at the entrance of the store. Then, making sure no one was passing, he removed three stacked cans of dog food and, reaching behind, brought out the grim little bag of currency, replaced the dog food, and, ringing “no sale” on the cash register, distributed the twenties, tens, fives, and one-dollar bills in their places under the small retaining wheels. And in the oaken cups at the front of the cash drawer he segregated the halves, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, and slammed the drawer shut. Only a few customers showed up, children sent for a loaf of bread or a carton of milk or a pound of forgotten coffee, little girls with sleep-messy hair.

Margie Young-Hunt came in, pert-breasted in a salmon sweater. Her tweed skirt clung lovingly in against her thighs and tucked up under her proud fanny, but it was in her eyes, her brown myopic eyes, that Ethan saw what his wife could never see because it wasn’t there when wives were about. This was a predator, a huntress, Artemis for pants. Old Cap’n Hawley called it a “roving eye.” It was in her voice too, a velvet growl that changed to a thin, mellow confidence for wives.

“Morning, Eth,” Margie said. “What a day for a picnic!”

“Morning. Want to take a bet you ran out of coffee?”

“If you guess I ran out of Alka-Seltzer, I’m going to avoid you.”

“Big night?”

“In a small way. Traveling-salesman story. A divorced woman’s safe. Brief case of free samples. Guess you’d call him a drummer. Maybe you know him. Name of Bigger or Bogger, travels for B. B. D. and D. Reason I mention it is he said he was coming in to see you.”

“We buy from Waylands mostly.”

“Well, maybe Mr. Bugger’s just drumming up business, if he feels better than I do this morning. Say, could you give me a glass of water? I’ll take a couple of fizzers now.”

Ethan went to the storeroom and brought back a Dixie cup of water from the tap. She dropped three of the flat tablets in and let them fizz. Then, “Mud in your eye,” she said and tossed it back. “Get to work, you devils,” she said.

“I hear you’re going to read Mary’s fortune today.”

“Oh, Lord! I nearly forgot. I should go in the business. I could made my own fortune.”

“Mary loves it. Are you good at it?”

“Nothing to be good at. You let people—women, that is— talk about themselves and then tell it back to them and they think you’ve got second sight.”

“And tall dark strangers?”

“There’s that, sure. If I could read men, I wouldn’t have pulled the bellywhoppers I have. Brother! did I misread a couple of characters.”

“Didn’t your first husband die?”

“No, my second, peace be to his ashes, the son of a— No, let it ride. Peace be to his ashes.”

Ethan greeted the entering elderly Mrs. Ezyzinski solicitously and lingered over the transference of a quarter of a pound of butter, even passed a complimentary word or two about the weather, but Margie Young-Hunt, relaxed and smiling, inspected the gold-sealed cans of pâté de foie gras and the minuscule jewel-cases of caviar in back of the counter by the cash register.

“Now,” said Margie when the old lady tottered out, muttering to herself in Polish.

“Now—what?”

“I was just thinking—if I knew as much about men as I do about women, I’d put out my shingle. Why don’t you teach me about men, Ethan?”

“You know enough. Maybe too much.”

“Oh, come on! Don’t you have a silly bone in your body?”

“Want to start now?”

“Maybe some evening.”

“Good,” he said. “A group. Mary and you and the two kids. Subject: men—their weakness and stupidity and how to use them.”

Margie ignored his tone. “Don’t you ever work late— accounts first of the month, that stuff?”

“Sure. I take the work home.”

She raised her arms over her head and her fingers moused in her hair.

“Why?” she asked.

“Cat’s why to make kittens’ britches.”

“See what you could teach me if you would?”

Ethan said, “ ‘And after that they had mocked Him, they took the robe off from Him and put His own raiment on Him and led Him away to crucify Him. And as they came out they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear His cross. And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha—that is to say, a place of a skull—’ ”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

“Yes—yes—that is correct. . . .”

“Do you know what a son of a bitch you are?”

“Yes, O Daughter of Jerusalem.”

Suddenly she smiled. “Know what I’m going to do? I’m going to read one hell of a fortune this morning. You’re going to be a big shot, did you know? Everything you touch will turn to gold—a leader of men.” She walked quickly to the door and then turned back, grinning. “I dare you to live up to it and I dare you not to. So long, Savior!” How strange the sound of heeltaps on pavement, striking in anger.

At ten o’clock everything changed. The big glass doors of the bank folded open and a river of people dipped in for money and brought the money to Marullo’s and took away the fancy foods Easter calls for. Ethan was busy as a water skater until the sixth hour struck.

The angry firebell from its cupola on the town hall clanged the sixth hour. The customers drifted away with their bags of baked meats. Ethan brought in the fruit stands and closed the front doors, and then for no reason except that a darkness fell on the world and on him, he pulled down the thick green shades and the darkness fell on the store. Only the neon in the cold counter glared a ghostly blue.

Behind the counter he cut four fat slices of rye bread and buttered them liberally. He slid open the cold doors and picked out two slices of processed Swiss cheese and three slices of ham. “Lettuce and cheese,” he said, “lettuce and cheese. When a man marries he lives in the trees.” He mortared the top slices of bread with mayonnaise from a jar, pressed the lids down on the sandwiches, and trimmed the bits of lettuce and ham fat from the edges. Now a carton of milk and a square of waxed paper for wrapping. He was folding the ends of the paper neatly when a key rattled in the front door and Marullo came in, wide as a bear and sack-chested so that his arms seemed short and stood out from his body. His hat was on the back of his head so that his stiff iron-gray bangs showed like a cap. Marullo’s eyes were wet and sly and sleepy, but the gold caps on his front teeth shone in the light from the cold counter. Two top buttons of his pants were open, showing his heavy gray underwear. He hooked little fat thumbs in the roll of his pants under his stomach and blinked in the half-darkness.

“Morning, Mr. Marullo. I guess it’s afternoon.”

“Hi, kid. You shut up good and quick.”

“Whole town’s shut. I thought you’d be at mass.”

“No mass today. Only day in the year with no mass.”

“That so? I didn’t know that. Anything I can do for you?”

The short fat arms stretched and rocked back and forth on the elbows. “My arms hurt, kid. Arthritis. . . . Gets worse.”

“Nothing you can do?”

“I do everything—hot pads, shark oil, pills—still hurts. All nice and shut up. Maybe we can have a talk, eh, kid?” His teeth flashed.

“Anything wrong?”

“Wrong? What’s wrong?”

“Well, if you’ll wait a minute, I’ll just take these sandwiches to the bank. Mr. Morphy asked for them.”

“You’re a smart kid. You give service. That’s good.”

Ethan went through the storeroom, crossed the alley, and knocked on the back door of the bank. He passed the milk and sandwiches in to Joey.

“Thanks. You didn’t need to.”

“It’s service. Marullo told me.”

“Keep a couple of Cokes cold, will you? I got dry zeros in my mouth.”

When Ethan returned, he found Marullo peering into a garbage can.

“Where do you want to talk, Mr. Marullo?”

“Start here, kid.” He picked cauliflower leaves from the can. “You cutting off too much.”

“Just to make them neat.”

“Cauliflower is by weight. You throwing money in the garbage. I know a smart Greek fella owns maybe twenty restaurants. He says the big secret is watch the garbage cans. What you throw out, you don’t sell. He’s a smart fella.”

“Yes, Mr. Marullo.” Ethan moved restlessly toward the front of the store with Marullo behind him bending his elbows back and forth.

“You sprinkling good the vegetables like I said?”

“Sure.”

The boss lifted a head of lettuce. “Feels dry.”

“Well, hell, Marullo, I don’t want to waterlog them—they’re one-third water now.”

“Makes them look crisp, nice and fresh. You think I don’t know? I start with one pushcart—just one. I know. You got to learn the tricks, kid, or you go broke. Meat, now—you paying too much.”

“Well, we advertise Grade A beef.”

“A, B, C—who knows? It’s on the card, ain’t it? Now, we going to have a nice talk. We got dead wood on our bills. Anybody don’t pay by the fifteenth—off the books.”

“We can’t do that. Some of these people have been trading here for twenty years.”

“Listen, kid. Chain stores won’t let John D. Rockefeller charge a nickel.”

“Yes, but these people are good for it, most of them.”

“What’s ‘good for it’? It ties up money. Chain stores buy car-loads. We can’t do that. You got to learn, kid. Sure—nice people! Money is nice too. You got too much meat scraps in the box.”

“That was fat and crust.”

“Okay if you weigh before you trim. You got to look after number one. You don’t look after number one, whose’ll do it? You got to learn, kid.” The gold teeth did not glitter now, for the lips were tight little traps.

Anger splashed up in Ethan before he knew it and he was surprised. “I’m not a chiseler, Marullo.”

“Who’s a chiseler? That’s good business, and good business is the only kind of business that stays in business. You think Mr. Baker is giving away free samples, kid?”

Ethan’s top blew off with a bang. “You listen to me,” he shouted. “Hawleys have been living here since the middle seventeen hundreds. You’re a foreigner. You wouldn’t know about that. We’ve been getting along with our neighbors and being decent all that time. If you think you can barge in from Sicily and change that, you’re wrong. If you want my job, you can have it—right here, right now. And don’t call me kid or I’ll punch you in the nose—”

All Marullo’s teeth gleamed now. “Okay, okay. Don’t get mad. I just try to do you a good turn.”

“Don’t call me kid. My family’s been here two hundred years.” In his own ears it sounded childish, and his rage petered out.

“I don’t talk very good English. You think Marullo is guinea name, wop name, dago name. My genitori, my name, is maybe two, three thousand years old. Marullus is from Rome, Valerius Maximus tells about it. What’s two hundred years?”

“You don’t come from here.”

“Two hundred years ago you don’t neither.”

Now Ethan, his rage all leaked away, saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. He saw the immigrant, guinea, fruit-peddler change under his eyes, saw the dome of forehead, the strong beak nose, deep-set fierce and fearless eyes, saw the head supported on pillared muscles, saw pride so deep and sure that it could play at humility. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder: If I’ve missed this, what else have I failed to see?

“You don’t have to talk dago talk,” he said softly.

“Good business. I teach you business. Sixty-eight years I got. Wife she’s died. Arthritis! I hurt. I try to show you business. Maybe you don’t learn. Most people they don’t learn. Go broke.”

“You don’t have to rub it in because I went broke.”

“No. You got wrong. I’m try to learn you good business so you don’t go broke no more.”

“Fat chance. I haven’t got a business.”

“You’re still a kid.”

Ethan said, “You look here, Marullo. I practically run this store for you. I keep the books, bank the money, order the supplies. Keep customers. They come back. Isn’t that good business?”

“Sure—you learned something. You’re not no kid no more. You get mad when I call you kid. What I’m going to call you? I call everybody kid.”

“Try using my name.”

“Don’t sound friendly. Kid is friendly.”

“It’s not dignified.”

“Dignified is not friendly.”

Ethan laughed. “If you’re a clerk in a guinea store, you’ve got to have dignity—for your wife, for your kids. You understand?”

“Is a fake.”

“Course it is. If I had any real dignity, I wouldn’t think about it. I nearly forgot something my old father told me not long before he died. He said the threshold of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security. He said the words ‘son of a bitch’ are only an insult to a man who isn’t quite sure of his mother, but how would you go about insulting Albert Einstein? He was alive then. So you go right on calling me kid if you want to.”

“You see, kid? More friendly.”

“All right then. What were you going to tell me about business that I’m not doing?”

“Business is money. Money is not friendly. Kid, maybe you too friendly—too nice. Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.”

“That’s nonsense, Marullo. I know plenty of nice, friendly, honorable businessmen.”

“When not doing business, kid, yes. You going to find out. When you find out is too late. You keep store nice, kid, but if it’s your store you maybe go friendly broke. I’m teaching true lesson like school. Goo-by, kid.” Marullo flexed his arms and went quickly out the front door and snapped it after him, and Ethan felt darkness on the world.

A sharp metallic rapping came on the front door. Ethan pushed aside the curtain and called, “We’re closed till three.”

“Let me in. I want to talk to you.”

The stranger came in—a spare man, a perpetually young man who had never been young, a smart dresser, hair gleaming thinly against his scalp, eyes merry and restless.

“Sorry to bother you. Got to blow town. Wanted to see you alone. Thought the old man’d never go.”

“Marullo?”

“Yeah. I was across the street.”

Ethan glanced at the immaculate hands. On the third finger of the left hand he saw a big cat’s eye set in a gold ring.

The stranger saw the glance. “Not a stick-up,” he said. “I met a friend of yours last night.”

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Young-Hunt. Margie Young-Hunt.”

“Oh?”

Ethan could feel the restless sniffing of the stranger’s mind, searching for an opening, for a bond on which to build an association.

“Nice kid. She gave you a big build-up. That’s why I thought— My name’s Biggers. I cover this territory for B. B. D. and D.”

“We buy from Waylands.”

“I know you do. That’s why I’m here. Thought you might like to spread it out a little. We’re new in this district. Building up fast. Have to make some concessions to get a foot in the door. It would pay you to take advantage of that.”

“You’d have to see Mr. Marullo about that. He’s always had a deal with Waylands.”

The voice didn’t lower but its tone became confidential. “You do the ordering?”

“Well, yes. You see Marullo has arthritis, and besides he has other interests.”

“We could shave prices a little.”

“I guess Marullo’s got them shaved as close as they’ll shave. You’d better see him.”

“That’s what I didn’t want to do. I want the man that does the ordering, and that’s you.”

“I’m just a clerk.”

“You do the ordering, Mr. Hawley. I can cut you in for five per cent.”

“Marullo might go for a discount like that if the quality was the same.”

“You don’t get it. I don’t want Marullo. This five per cent would be in cash—no checks, no records, no trouble with the tax boys, just nice clean green cabbage from my hand to your hand and from your hand to your pocket.”

“Why can’t Marullo get the discount?”

“Price agreements.”

“All right. Suppose I took the five per cent and turned it over to Marullo?”

“I guess you don’t know them like I do. You turn it over to him, he’ll wonder how much more you aren’t turning over. That’s perfectly natural.”

Ethan lowered his voice. “You want me to double-cross the man I work for?”

“Who’s double-crossed? He don’t lose anything and you make a buck. Everybody’s got a right to make a buck. Margie said you were a smart cooky.”

“It’s a dark day,” Ethan said.

“No, it’s not. You got the shades pulled down.” The sniffing mind smelled danger—a mouse confused between the odor of trap wire and the aroma of cheese. “Tell you what,” Biggers said, “you think about it. See if you can throw some business our way. I’ll drop in to see you when I’m in the district. I make it every two weeks. Here’s my card.”

Ethan’s hand remained at his side. Biggers laid the card on top of the cold counter. “And here’s a little memento we got out for new friends.” From his side pocket he brought a billfold, a rich and beautiful affair of pin seal. He placed it beside the card on the white porcelain. “Nice little item. Place for your driver’s license, lodge cards.”

Ethan did not reply.

“I’ll drop by in a couple of weeks,” Biggers said. “You think about it. I’ll sure be here. Got a date with Margie. There’s quite a kid.” With no reply, he said, “I’ll let myself out. See you soon.” Then suddenly he came close to Ethan. “Don’t be a fool. Everybody does it,” he said. “Everybody!” And he went rapidly out the door and closed it quietly after him.

In the darkened silence Ethan could hear the low hum of the transformer for the neon light in the cold counter. He turned slowly to the piled and tiered audience on the shelves.

“I thought you were my friends! You didn’t raise a hand for me. Fair-weather oysters, fair-weather pickles, fair-weather cake-mix. No more unimus for you. Wonder what Saint Francis would say if a dog bit him, or a bird crapped on him. Would he say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Dog, grazie tanto, Signora Bird’?” He turned his head toward a rattling and a knocking and a pounding on the alley door, went quickly through the storeroom, muttering, “More customers than if we were open.”

Joey Morphy staggered in, clutching his throat. “For God’s sake,” he groaned. “Succor—or at least Pepsi-Cola, for I dieth of dryth. Why is it so dark in here? Are mine eyes failething too?”

“Shades pulled down. Trying to discourage thirsty bankers.”

He led the way to the cold counter and dug out a frosted bottle, uncapped it, and reached for another. “Guess I’ll have one too.”

Joey-boy leaned against the lighted glass and poured down half the bottle before he lowered it. “Hey!” he said. “Somebody’s lost Fort Knox.” He picked up the billfold.

“That’s a little gift from the B. B. D. and D. drummer. He’s trying to hustle some of our business.”

“Well, he ain’t hustling peanuts. This here’s quality, son. Got your initials on it, too, in gold.”

“It has?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“He just left a minute ago.”

Joey flipped open the folded leather and rustled the clear plastic identification envelopes. “You better start joining something,” he said. He opened the back. “Now here’s what I call real thoughtful.” Between first and second fingers he extracted a new twenty-dollar bill. “I knew they were moving in but didn’t know with tanks. That’s a remembrance worth remembering.”

“Was that in there?”

“You think I planted it?”

“Joey, I want to talk to you. The guy offered me five per cent of any business I threw their way.”

“Well, bully-bully! Prosperity at last. And it wasn’t no idle promise. You should set up the Cokes. This is your day.”

“You don’t mean I should take it—”

“Why not, if they don’t add it on the cost? Who loses?”

“He said I shouldn’t tell Marullo or he’d think I was getting more.”

“He would. What’s the matter with you, Hawley? You nuts? I guess it’s that light. You look green. Do I look green? You weren’t thinking of turning it down?”

“I had trouble enough not kicking him in the ass.”

“Oh! It’s like that—you and the dinosaurs.”

“He said everybody does it.”

“Not everybody can get it. You’re just one of the lucky ones.”

“It’s not honest.”

“How not? Who gets hurt? Is it against the law?”

“You mean you’d take it?”

“Take it—I’d sit up and beg for it. In my business they got all the loopholes closed. Practically everything you can do in a bank is against the law—unless you’re president. I don’t get you. What are you hoggle-boggling about? If you were taking it away from Alfio lad, I’d say it wasn’t quite straight—but you’re not. You do them a favor, they do you a favor—a nice crisp green favor. Don’t be crazy. You’ve got a wife and kids to think of. Raising kids ain’t going to get any cheaper.”

“I wish you’d go away now.”

Joey Morphy put his unemptied bottle down hard on the counter. “Mr. Hawley—no, Mr. Ethan Allen Hawley,” he said coldly, “if you think I would do anything dishonest or suggest that you do—why you can go and screw yourself.”

Joey stalked toward the storeroom.

“I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean it. Honest to God I didn’t, Joey. I just had a couple of shocks today and besides—this is a dreadful holiday—dreadful.”

Morphy paused. “How do you mean? Oh! yes, I know. Yes, I do know. You believe I know?”

“And every year, ever since I was a kid, only it gets worse because—maybe because I know more what it means, I hear those lonely ‘lama sabach thani’ words.”

“I do know, Ethan, I do. It’s nearly over—nearly over now, Ethan. Just forget I stomped out, will you?”

And the iron firebell clanged—one single stroke.

“It’s over now,” said Joey-boy. “It’s all over—for a year.” He drifted quietly out through the storeroom and eased the alley door shut.

Ethan raised the shades and opened the store again, but there wasn’t much trade—a few bottle-of-milk and loaf-of-bread kids, a small lamb chop and can of peas for Miss Borcher for her hot-plate supper. People were just not moving about in the street. During the half-hour before six o’clock, while Ethan was getting things ready to close up, not a soul came in. And he locked up and started away before he remembered the groceries for home—had to go back and assemble them in two big bags and lock up over again. He had wanted to walk down to the bayside and watch the gray waves among the pilings of the dock and smell the sea water and speak to a seagull standing beak into the wind on a mooring float. He remembered a lady-poem written long ago by someone whipped to frenzy by the gliding spiral of a gull’s flight. The poem began: “Oh! happy fowl— what thrills thee so?” And the lady poet had never found out, probably didn’t want to know.

The heavy bags of groceries for the holidays discouraged the walk. Ethan moved wearily across the High Street and took his way slowly along Elm toward the old Hawley house.