I don’t remember her very clearly, the way you don’t remember someone too close to look at. But she read the Scripture to me like a daily newspaper and I suppose that’s the way she thought of it, as something going on happening eternally but always exciting and new. Every Easter, Jesus really rose from the dead, an explosion, expected but nonetheless new. It wasn’t two thousand years ago to her; it was now. And she planted something of that in me.

I can’t remember wanting to open the store before. I think I hated every sluggish sloven of a morning. But this day I wanted to go. I love my Mary with all my heart, in some ways much better than myself, but it is also true that I do not always listen to her with complete attention. When she tells the chronicle of clothes and health and conversations which please and enlighten her, I do not listen at all, so that sometimes she exclaims, “But you should have known. I told you. I remember very clearly telling you on Thursday morning.” And there’s no doubt at all about that. She did tell me. She tells me everything in certain areas.

This morning I not only didn’t listen, I wanted to get away from it. Maybe I wanted to talk myself and I didn’t have anything to say—because, to give her fair due, she doesn’t listen to me either,and a good thing sometimes. She listens to tones and intonations and from them gathers her facts about health and how my mood is and am I tired or gay. And that’s as good a way as any. Now that I think of it, she doesn’t listen to me because I am not talking to her, but to some dark listener within myself. And she doesn’t really talk to me either. Of course when the children or some other hell-raising crises are concerned, all that changes.

I’ve thought so often how telling changes with the nature of the listener. Much of my talk is addressed to people who are dead, like my little Plymouth Rock Aunt Deborah or old Cap’n. I find myself arguing with them. I remember once in weary, dusty combat I called out to old Cap’n, “Do I have to?” And he replied very clearly, “Course you do. And don’t whisper.” He didn’t argue—never did. Just said I must, and so I did. Nothing mysterious or mystic about that. It’s asking for advice or an excuse from the inner part of you that is formed and certain.

For pure telling, which is another way of saying asking, my mute and articulate canned and bottled goods in the grocery serve very well. So does any passing animal or bird. They don’t argue and they don’t repeat.

Mary said, “You’re not going already? Why you have half an hour. That’s what comes of getting up so early.”

“Whole flock of crates to open,” I said. “Things to put on the shelves before I open. Great decisions. Should pickles and tomatoes go on the same shelf? Do canned apricots quarrel with peaches? You know how important color relations are on a dress.”

“You’d make a joke about anything,” Mary said. “But I’m glad. It’s better than grumping. So many men grump.”

And I was early. Red Baker wasn’t out yet. You can set your watch by that dog, or any dog. He’d start his stately tour in exactly half an hour. And Joey Morphy wouldn’t, didn’t show. The bank wouldn’t be open for business but that didn’t mean Joey wouldn’t be there working on the books. The town was very quiet but of course a lot of people had gone away for the Easter weekend. That and the Fourth of July and Labor Day are the biggest holidays. People go away even when they don’t want to. I believe even the sparrows on Elm Street were away.

I did see Stonewall Jackson Smith on duty. He was just coming from a cup of coffee in the Foremaster Coffee Shop. He was so lean and brittle that his pistols and handcuffs seemed outsize. He wears his officer’s cap at an angle, jaunty, and picks his teeth with a sharpened goose quill.

“Big business, Stoney. Long hard day making money.”

“Huh?” he said. “Nobody’s in town.” What he meant was that he wished he weren’t.

“Any murders, Stoney, or other grisly delights?”

“It’s pretty quiet,” he said. “Some kids wrecked a car at the bridge. But, hell, it was their own car. Judge’ll make ’em pay for repairing the bridge. You heard about the bank job at Floodhampton?”

“No.”

“Not even on television?”

“We don’t have one, yet. Did they get much?”

“Thirteen thousand, they say. Yesterday just before closing. Three fellas. Four-state alarm. Willie’s out on the highway now, bitching his head off.”

“He gets plenty of sleep.”

“I know, but I don’t. I was out all night.”

“Think they’ll catch them?”

“Oh! I guess so. If it’s money they usually do. Insurance companies keep nagging. Never let up.”

“It would be nice work if they didn’t catch you.”

“Sure would,” he said.

“Stoney, I wish you’d look in on Danny Taylor. He looks awful sick.”

“Just a question of time,” Stoney said. “But I’ll go by. It’s a shame. Nice fella. Nice family.”

“It kills me. I like him.”

“Well you can’t do nothing with him. It’s going to rain, Eth. Willie hates to get wet.”

For the first time in my memory, I went into the alley with pleasure and opened the back door with excitement. The cat was by the door, waiting. I can’t remember a morning when that lean and efficient cat hasn’t been waiting to try to get in the back door and I have never failed to throw a stick at him or run him off. To the best of my knowledge, he has never got in. I call the cat “he” because his ears are torn up from fighting. Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys? Perhaps six or eight hundred times that cat has tried to get in and he has never made it.

“You’re due for a cruel surprise,” I told the cat. He was sitting in a circle of his tail, and the tip flicked up between his front feet. I went into the dark store, took a can of milk from the shelf, punched it open, and squirted it into a cup. Then I carried the cup to the storeroom and set it just inside and left the door open. He watched me gravely, looked at the milk, and then walked away and slid over the fence in back of the bank.

I was watching him go when Joey Morphy came into the alley with the key to the bank’s back door ready in his hand. He looked seedy—grainy—as though he hadn’t been to bed.

“Hi, Mr. Hawley.”

“I thought you were closed today.”

“Looks like I never close. Thirty-six-dollar mistake in the books. I worked till midnight last night.”

“Short?”

“No—over.”

“That should be good.”

“Well, it ain’t. I got to find it.”

“Are banks that honest?”

“Banks are. It’s only some men that aren’t. If I’m going to get any holiday, I’ve got to find it.”

“Wish I knew something about business.”

“I can tell you all I know in one sentence. Money gets money.”

“That doesn’t do me much good.”

“Me either. But I can sure give advice.”

“Like what?”

“Like never take the first offer, and like, if somebody wants to sell, he’s got a reason, and like, a thing is only as valuable as who wants it.”

“That the quick course?”

“That’s it, but it don’t mean nothing without the first.”

“Money gets money?”

“That cuts a lot of us out.”

“Don’t some people borrow?”

“Yeah, but you have to have credit and that’s a kind of money.”

“Guess I better stick to groceries.”

“Looks like. Hear about the Floodhampton bank?”

“Stoney told me. Funny, we were just talking about it yesterday, remember?”

“I’ve got a friend there. Three guys—one talked with an accent, one with a limp. Three guys. Sure they’ll get them. Maybe a week. Maybe two.”

“Tough!”

“Oh, I don’t know. They aren’t smart. There’s a law against not being smart.”

“I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“Forget it. I talk too much. That’s another rule—don’t talk. I’ll never learn that. Say, you look good.”

“I shouldn’t. Didn’t get much sleep.”

“Somebody sick?”

“No. Just one of those nights.”

“Don’t I know. . . .”

I swept out the store and raised the shades and didn’t know I was doing it or hating it. Joey’s rules popped around and around in my head. And I discussed matters with my friends on the shelves, perhaps aloud, perhaps not. I don’t know.

“Dear associates,” I said, “if it’s that simple, why don’t more people do it? Why does nearly everyone make the same mistakes over and over? Is there always something forgotten? Maybe the real basic weakness might be some form of kindness. Marullo said money has no heart. Wouldn’t it be true then that any kindness in a money man would be a weakness? How do you get nice ordinary Joes to slaughter people in a war? Well, it helps if the enemy looks different or talks different. But then how about civil war? Well the Yankees ate babies and the Rebs starved prisoners. That helps. I’ll get around to you, sliced beets and tinned button mushrooms, in a moment. I know you want me to talk about you. Everyone does. But I’m on the verge of it—point of reference, that’s it. If the laws of thinking are the laws of things, then morals are relative too, and manner and sin—that’s relative too in a relative universe. Has to be. No getting away from it. Point of reference.

“You dry cereal with the Mickey Mouse mask on the box and a ventriloquism gadget for the label and ten cents. I’ll have to take you home, but right now you sit up and listen. What I told dear Mary as a joke is true. My ancestors, those highly revered ship-owners and captains, surely had commissions to raid commerce in the Revolution and again in 1812. Very patriotic and virtuous. But to the British they were pirates, and what they took they kept. That’s how the family fortune started that was lost by my father. That’s where the money that makes money came from. We can be proud of it.”

I brought in a carton of tomato paste, slashed it open, and stacked the charming slender little cans on their depleted shelf. “Maybe you don’t know, because you’re kind of foreigners. Money not only has no heart but no honor nor any memory. Money is respectable automatically if you keep it a while. You must not think I am denouncing money. I admire it very much. Gentlemen, may I introduce some newcomers to our community. Let’s see, I’ll put them here beside you catsups. Make these bread-and-butter pickles welcome in their new home. New Yorkers, born and sliced and bottled. I was discussing money with my friends here. One of your finest families—oh, you’d know the name! Everybody in the world does, I guess. Well, they got their big start selling beef to the British when our country was at war with the British, and their money is as admired as any and so is the family. And another dynasty, probably the greatest bankers of them all. The founder bought three hundred rifles from the Army. The Army had rejected them as dangerously defective and so he got them very cheap, maybe fifty cents apiece. Pretty soon General Frémont was ready to start his heroic trek to the West, and he bought the rifles, sight unseen, for twenty dollars apiece. No one ever heard whether they blew up in the troopers’ hands. And that was the money that makes money. It doesn’t matter how you get it just as long as you get it and use it to make more. I’m not being cynical. Our lord and master, Marullo of the ancient Roman name, is quite right. Where money is concerned, the ordinary rules of conduct take a holiday. Why do I talk to groceries? Perhaps because you are discreet. You do not repeat my words, or gossip. Money is a crass and ungracious subject only when you have it. The poor find it fascinating. But don’t you agree that if one becomes actively interested in money, he should know something of its nature and character and tendencies? I’m afraid that very few men, and they great artists or misers, are interested in money for itself. And you can kick out those misers who are conditioned by fear.”

By now there was a large pile of empty cartons on the floor. I carried them to the storeroom to be trimmed and kept. Lots of people carry supplies home in them and, as Marullo would say, “It saves bags, kid.”

There’s that “kid” again. I don’t mind it any more. I want him to call me “kid,” even to think of me as “kid.” While I was stacking the cartons, there came a battering on the front door. I looked at my big old silver railroad watch, and do you know for the first time in my life I had not opened on the moment of nine. Here it was plainly quarter after nine. All that discussion with the groceries had thrown me. Through the glass-and-iron screen of the door I could see it was Margie Young-Hunt. I had never really looked at her, had never inspected her. Maybe that’s why she did the fortune—just to make sure I knew she existed. I shouldn’t change too quickly.

I threw open the doors.

“Didn’t mean to rout you out.”

“But I’m late.”

“Are you?”

“Sure. It’s after nine.”

She sauntered in. Her behind stuck out nice and round and bounced slowly, one up and one down with each step. She was well enough stacked in front so she didn’t have to emphasize them. They were there. Margie is what Joey-boy would call a “dish,” and my own son Allen too, maybe. Perhaps I was seeing her for the first time. Her features regular, nose a little long, lips outlined fuller than they were, the lower particularly. Her hair dyed a rich chestnut brown that doesn’t occur in nature, but pretty. Her chin was fragile and deep-cut but there was plenty of muscle in the cheeks and very wide cheekbones. Margie’s eyes had had care. They were that hazel to blue to steel color that changes with the light. It was a durable face that had taken it and could take it, even violence, even punching. Her eyes flicked about, to me, to the groceries, and back to me. I imagined she was a very close observer and a good rememberer too.

“I hope you don’t have the same problem as yesterday.”

She laughed. “No—no. I don’t get a drummer every day. This time I really ran out of coffee.”

“Most people do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the first ten people every morning ran out of coffee.”

“Is that true?”

“Sure. Say, I want to thank you for sending your drummer in.”

“It was his idea.”

“But you did it. What kind of coffee?”

“Doesn’t matter. I make lousy coffee no matter what kind I get.”

“Do you measure?”

“Sure, and it’s still lousy. Coffee just isn’t—I nearly said ‘my cup of tea.’ ”

“You did say it. Try this blend.” I picked a can from the shelf and as she reached to take it from me—just that little gesture— every part of her body moved, shifted, announced itself quietly. I’m here, the leg. Me, the thigh. Not better than me, the soft belly. Everything was new, newly seen. I caught my breath. Mary says a woman can put out signals or not, just as she wishes. And if that’s so, Margie had a communications system that ran from her pointed patent-leather toe to her curving soft chestnut hair.

“You seem to have got over your mullygrubs.”

“I had ’em bad yesterday. Don’t know where they come from.”

“Don’t I know! Sometimes with me not for the usual reason.”

“You did quite a job with that fortune.”

“Sore about it?”

“No. I’d just like to know how you did it.”

“You don’t believe in that stuff.”

“It’s not belief. You hit some things right on the nose. Things I’d been thinking and things I’ve been doing.”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s time for a change.”

“You think I rigged the cards, don’t you?”

“Doesn’t matter. If you did—what made you? Have you thought of that?”

She looked me full in the eyes, suspicious, probing, questioning. “Yeah!” she said softly. “I mean no, I never thought of that. If I rigged them, what made me? That would be like un-rigging the rig.”

Mr. Baker looked in the door. “Morning, Margie,” he said. “Ethan, have you given any thought to my suggestion?”

“I sure have. And I’d like to talk to you.”

“Any time at all, Ethan.”

“Well, I can’t get out during the week. You know, Marullo’s hardly ever here. Going to be home tomorrow?”

“After church, sure. That’s an idea. You bring Mary about four. While the ladies jaw about Easter hats, we’ll slip off and—”

“I’ve got a hundred things I want to ask. Guess I better write them down.”

“Anything I know, you’re welcome to. See you then. Morning, Margie.”

When he went out, Margie said, “You’re beginning fast.”

“Maybe just limbering up. Say—know what would be interesting? How about if you turned the cards blindfolded or something and see how close they come to yesterday.”

“No!” she said. “That wouldn’t work. You kidding me, or do you really go for it?”

“Way I look at it, it doesn’t matter about believing. I don’t believe in extrasensory perception, or lightning or the hydrogen bomb, or even violets or schools of fish—but I know they exist. I don’t believe in ghosts but I’ve seen them.”

“Now you’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t seem like the same man.”

“I’m not. Maybe nobody is, for long.”

“What caused it, Eth?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m sick of being a grocery clerk.”

“It’s about time.”

“Do you really like Mary?”

“Sure I do. Why would you ask that?”

“You just don’t seem to be the same kind of—well, you’re so different from her.”

“I see what you mean. But I do like her. I love her.”

“So do I.”

“Lucky.”

“I know I am.”

“I meant her. Well, I’ll go make my lousy coffee. I’ll think about that card deal.”

“Sooner the better, before it cools.”

She tapped out, her neat buttocks jumping like live rubber. I had never seen her before. I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen. It’s scary to think about. Point of reference again. When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you’ve got two new people. Maybe that means— hell, it’s complicated. I agreed with myself to think about such things at night when I couldn’t sleep. Forgetting to open on time scared me. That’s like dropping your handkerchief at the scene of the murder, or your glasses like those what-you-callems in Chicago. What does that mean? What crime? What murder?

At noon I made four sandwiches, cheese and ham, with lettuce and mayonnaise. Ham and cheese, ham and cheese—when a man marries, he lives in the trees. I took two of the sandwiches and a bottle of Coke to the back door of the bank and handed them in to Joey-boy. “Find the mistake?”

“Not yet. You know, I’m so close to it, I’m blind.”

“Why not lay off till Monday?”

“Can’t. Banks are a screwy lot.”

“Sometimes if you don’t think about something, it comes to you.”

“I know. Thanks for the sandwiches.” He looked inside to make sure there was lettuce and mayonnaise.

Saturday afternoon before Easter in the grocery business is what my august and illiterate son would call “for the birds.” But two things did happen that proved to me at least that some deep-down underwater change was going on in me. I mean that yesterday, or any yesterday before that, I wouldn’t have done what I did. It’s like looking at wallpaper samples. I guess I had unrolled a new pattern.

The first thing was Marullo coming in. His arthritis was hurting him pretty bad. He kept flexing his arms like a weight-lifter.

“How it goes?”

“Slow, Alfio.” I had never called him by his first name before.

“Nobody in town—”

“I like it better when you call me ‘kid.’ ”

“I thought you don’t like it.”

“I find I do, Alfio.”

“Everybody gone away.” His shoulders must have been burning as though there were hot sand in the joints.

“How long ago did you come from Sicily?”

“Forty-seven years. Long time.”

“Ever been back?”

“No.”

“Why don’t you go on a visit?”

“What for? Everything changed.”

“Don’t you get curious about it?”

“Not much.”

“Any relatives alive?”

“Sure, my brother and his kids and they got kids.”

“I’d think you’d want to see them.”

He looked at me, I guess, as I’d looked at Margie, saw me for the first time.

“What you got on your mind, kid?”

“Hurts me to see your arthritis. I thought how it’s warm in Sicily. Might knock the pain out.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “What’s with you?”

“How do you mean?”

“You look different.”

“Oh! I got a little bit of good news.”

“Not going to quit?”

“Not right away. If you wanted to make a trip to Italy, I could promise I’d be here.”

“What’s good news?”

“Can’t tell you yet. It’s like this. . . .” I balanced my palm back and forth.

“Money?”

“Could be. Look, you’re rich enough. Why don’t you go back to Sicily and show ’em what a rich American looks like? Soak up some sun. I can take care of the store. You know that.”

“You ain’t quitting?”

“Hell, no. You know me well enough to know I wouldn’t run out on you.”

“You changed, kid. Why?”

“I told you. Go bounce the bambinos.”

“I don’t belong there,” he said, but I knew I’d planted something—really something. And I knew he’d come in late that night and go over the books. He’s a suspicious bastard.

He’d hardly left when—well, it was like yesterday—the B. B. D. and D. drummer came in.

“Not on business,” he said. “I’m staying the weekend out at Montauk. Thought I’d drop in.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said. “I want to give you this.” I held out the billfold with the twenty sticking out.

“Hell, that’s good will. I told you I’m not on business.”

“Take it!”

“What you getting at?”

“It constitutes a contract where I come from.”

“What’s the matter, you sore?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then why?”

“Take it! The bids aren’t all in.”

“Jesus—did Waylands make a better offer?”

“No.”

“Who, then—them damn discount houses?”

I pushed the twenty-dollar bill into his breast pocket behind his peaked handkerchief. “I’ll keep the billfold,” I said. “It’s nice.”

“Look I can’t make an offer without I talk to the head office. Don’t close till maybe Tuesday. I’ll telephone you. If I say it’s Hugh, you’ll know who it is.”

“It’s your money in the pay phone.”

“Well, hold it open, will you?”

“It’s open,” I said. “Doing any fishing?”

“Only for dames. I tried to take that dish Margie out there. She wouldn’t go. Damn near snapped my head off. I don’t get dames.”

“They’re curiouser and curiouser.”

“You can say that again,” he said, and I haven’t heard that expression in fifteen years. He looked worried. “Don’t do anything till you hear from me,” he said. “Jesus, I thought I was conning a country boy.”

“I will not sell my master short.”

“Nuts. You just raised the ante.”

“I just refused a bribe if you feel the urge to talk about it.”

I guess that proves I was different. The guy began to look at me with respect and I liked it. I loved it. The bugger thought I was like him, only better at it.

Just before I was ready to close up Mary telephoned. “Ethan,” she said, “now don’t get mad—”

“At what, flower feet?”

“Well, she’s so lonely and I thought—well, I asked Margie to dinner.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not mad?”

“Hell, no.”

“Don’t swear. Tomorrow’s Easter.”

“That reminds me, press your prettiest. We’re going to Baker’s at four o’clock.”

“At their house?”

“Yes, for tea.”

“I’ll have to wear my Easter church outfit.”

“Good stuff, fern tip.”

“You’re not mad about Margie?”

“I love you,” I said. And I do. I really do. And I remember thinking what a hell of a man a man could become.