But Danny’s scribbled papers hurt like a sorrow, and Marullo’s grateful eyes.

I had not lain awake as men are said to do on the eve of battle. Sleep came quickly, heavily, completely, and released me just as freely in the predawn, refreshed. I did not lie in the darkness as usual. My urge was to visit my life as it had been. I slipped quietly from bed, dressed in the bathroom, and went down the stairs, walking near to the wall. It did surprise me when I went to the cabinet, unlocked it, and recognized the rosy mound by touch. I put it in my pocket and closed and locked the cabinet. In my whole life I had never carried it away and I had not known I would do it this morning. Memory directed me through the dark kitchen and out the back door into the graying yard. The arching elms were fat with leaves, a true black cave. If I had then had Marullo’s Pontiac I would have driven out of New Baytown to the awakening world of my first memory. My finger traced the endless sinuous design on the flesh-warm talisman in my pocket—talisman?

That Deborah who sent me as a child to Golgotha was a precise machine with words. She took no nonsense from them nor permitted me a laxity. What power she had, that old woman! If she wanted immortality, she had it in my brain. Seeing me trace the puzzle with my finger, she said, “Ethan, that outlandish thing could well become your talisman.”

“What’s a talisman?”

“If I tell you, your half-attention will only half learn. Look it up.”

So many words are mine because Aunt Deborah first aroused my curiosity and then forced me to satisfy it by my own effort. Of course I replied, “Who cares?” But she knew I would creep to it alone and she spelled it so I could track it down. T-a-l-i-s-m-a-n. She cared deeply about words and she hated their misuse as she would hate the clumsy handling of any fine thing. Now, so many cycles later, I can see the page—can see myself misspelling “talisman.” The Arabic was only a squiggly line with a bulb on the end of it. The Greek I could pronounce because of the blade of that old woman. “A stone or other object engraved with figures or characters to which are attributed the occult powers of the planetary influences and celestial configurations under which it was made, usually worn as an amulet to avert evil from or bring fortune to the bearer.” I had then to look for “occult,” “planetary,” “celestial,” and “amulet.” It was always that way. One word set off others like a string of firecrackers.

When later I asked her, “Do you believe in talismans?” she replied, “What has my belief to do with it?”

I put it in her hands. “What does this figure or character mean?”

“It’s your talisman, not mine. It means what you want it to mean. Put it back in the cabinet. It will wait for you.”

Now, as I walked in the cavern of the elms, she was as alive as ever she had been and that’s true immortality. Over and under itself the carving went, and around and over and under, a serpent with neither head nor tail nor beginning nor ending. And I had taken it away with me for the first time—to avert evil? To bring fortune? I don’t believe in fortune-telling either, and immortality has always felt to me like a sickly promise for the disappointed.

The light-rimmed boundary of the east was July, for June had gone away in the night. July is brass where June is gold, and lead where June is silver. July leaves are heavy and fat and crowding. Birdsong of July is a flatulent refrain without passion, for the nests are empty now and dumpy fledglings teeter clumsily. No, July is not a month of promise or of fulfillment. Fruit is growing but unsweet and uncolored, corn is a limp green bundle with a young and yellow tassel. The squashes still wear umbilical crowns of dry blossom.

I walked to Porlock Street, Porlock the plump and satisfied. The gathering brass of dawn showed rosebushes heavy with middle-aged blooms, like women whose corseting no longer conceals a thickening stomach, no matter how pretty their legs may remain.

Walking slowly, I found myself not saying but feeling goodby—not farewell. Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.

I came to the Old Harbor. Good-by to what? I don’t know. I couldn’t remember. I think I wanted to go to the Place, but man commensal with the sea would know that the tide was at flood and the Place under dark water. Last night I saw the moon only four days grown like a thickened, curved surgeon’s needle, but strong enough to pull the tide into the cave mouth of the Place.

No need to visit Danny’s shack in hope. The light had come enough to see the grasses standing upright in the path where Danny’s feet had stumbled them flat.

Old Harbor was flecked with summer craft, slim hulls with sails covered in grommeted coats of canvas, and here and there a morning man made ready, clearing boom and coiling jib- and mainsheets, unbagging his Genoa like a great white rumpled nest.

The new harbor was busier. Charter boats tied close for boarding passengers, the frantic summer fishermen who pay a price and glut the decks with fish and in the afternoon wonder vaguely what to do with them, sacks and baskets and mountains of porgies and blows and blackfish, sea robins, and even slender dog-fish, all to be torn up greedily, to die, and to be thrown back for the waiting gulls. The gulls swarm and wait, knowing the summer fishermen will sicken of their plenty. Who wants to clean and scale a sack of fish? It’s harder to give away fish than it is to catch them.

The bay was oil-smooth now and the brass light poured over it. The cans and nuns stood unswaying on the channel edge, each one with its mirror twin upside down below it in the water.

I turned at the flagpole and war memorial and found my name among the surviving heroes, the letters picked out in silver—CAPT. E. A. HAWLEY—and below in gold the names of the eighteen New Baytown men who didn’t make it home. I knew the names of most of them and once I knew the men—no different then from the rest, but different now in gold. For a brief moment I wished I could be with them in the lower files, Capt. E. A. Hawley in gold, the slobs and malingerers, the cowards and the heroes all lumped together in gold. Not only the brave get killed, but the brave have a better chance at it.

Fat Willie drove up and parked beside the monument and took the flag from the seat beside him.

“Hi, Eth,” he said. He shackled the brass grommets and raised the flag slowly to the top of the staff, where it slumped limp as a hanged man. “She barely made it,” Willie said, pantinga little. “Look at her. Two more days for her, and then the new one goes up.”

“The fifty-star?”

“You bet. We got a nylon, big devil, twice as big as this and don’t weigh no more than half.”

“How’s tricks, Willie?”

“I can’t complain—but I do. This glorious Fourth is always a mess. Coming on a Monday, there’ll be just that much more accidents and fights and drunks—out-of-town drunks. Want a lift up to the store?”

“Thanks. I’ve got to stop at the post office and I thought I’d get a cup of coffee.”

“Okay. I’ll ride you. I’d even coffee you but Stoney’s mean as a bull bitch.”

“What’s his problem?”

“God knows. Went away a couple of days and he come back mean and tough.”

“Where’d he go?”

“He didn’t say, but he come back mean. I’ll wait while you get your mail.”

“Don’t bother, Willie. I’ve got to address some things.”

“Suit yourself.” He backed out and slid away up the High Street.

The post office was still dusky and the floor newly oiled, and a sign up: DANGER. SLICK FLOOR.

We’d had Number 7 drawer since the old post office was built. I dialed G ½ R and took out a pile of plans and promises addressed to “Box-Holder.” And that’s all there was—wastebasket fodder. I strolled up the High, intending to have a cup of coffee, but at the last moment I didn’t want it, or didn’t want to talk, or—I don’t know why. I just didn’t want to go to the Foremaster coffee shop. Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is—and a woman too, I guess.

I was sweeping the sidewalk when Mr. Baker ticked out of Elm Street and went in for the ceremony of the time lock. And I was halfheartedly arranging muskmelons in the doorway stands when the old-fashioned green armored car pulled up in front of the bank. Two guards armed like commandos got out of the back and carried gray sacks of money into the bank. In about ten minutes they came out and got into the riveted fortress and it drove away. I guess they had to stand by while Morph counted it and Mr. Baker checked and gave a receipt. It’s an awful lot of trouble taking care of money. As Morph says, you could get a downright distaste for other people’s money. And by the size and weight, the bank must have anticipated a large holiday withdrawal. If I was a run-of-the-mill bank robber, now would be the time to stick it up. But I wasn’t a run-of-the-mill bank robber. I owed everything I knew to Pal Joey. He could have been a great one if he had wished. I did wonder why he didn’t want to, just to try out his theory.

Business piled up that morning. It was worse than I had thought it might be. The sun turned hot and fierce and very little wind moved, the kind of weather that drives people on their vacations whether they want to go or not. I had a line of customers waiting to be served. One thing I knew, come hell or high water, I had to get some help. If Allen didn’t work out, I’d fire him and get someone else.

When Mr. Baker came in about eleven, he was in a hurry. I had to stand off some customers and go into the storeroom with him.

He put a big envelope and a small one in my hands, and he was so rushed that he barked a kind of shorthand. “Tom Watson says the deed’s okay. He doesn’t know whether it’s papered. He doesn’t think so. Here are conveyances. Get signatures where I’ve checked. The money’s marked and the numbers noted. Here’s a check all made out. Just sign it. Sorry I have to rush, Ethan. I hate doing business like this.”

“You really think I should go ahead?”

“Goddammit, Ethan, after all the trouble I’ve gone to—”

“Sorry, sir. Sorry. I know you’re right.” I put the check on a canned-milk carton and signed it with my indelible pencil.

Mr. Baker wasn’t too rushed to inspect the check. “Offer two thousand at first. And raise your offer two hundred at a time. You realize, of course, you’ve only got a five-hundred balance in the bank. God help you if you run short.”

“If it’s clear, can’t I borrow on the store?”

“Sure you can if you want interest to eat you up.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Don’t go soft, Ethan. Don’t let him poor-mouth you. He can be a spellbinder. All dagos can. Just remember number one.”

“I am sure grateful.”

“Got to go,” he said. “Want to hit the highway before the noon traffic.” And out he went and nearly knocked Mrs. Willow down in the doorway where she had been over every cantaloupe twice.

The day didn’t get any less frantic. I guess the heat that splashed the streets made people edgy and downright quarrelsome. Instead of a holiday, you’d have thought they were stocking up for a catastrophe. I couldn’t have got a sandwich over to the Morph if I’d wanted to.

I not only had to wait on people, I had to keep my eyes open. A lot of the customers were summer people, strangers in town, and they steal if you don’t watch them. They can’t seem to help it. And it’s not always stuff they need either. The little jars of luxuries take the worst beating, foie gras and caviar and button mushrooms. That’s why Marullo had me keep such stuff back of the counter, where the customers aren’t supposed to go. He taught me it’s not good business to catch a shoplifter. Makes everyone restless, maybe because—well, in his thoughts anyway—everyone is guilty. About the only way is to charge the loss off to somebody else. But if I saw someone drifting too close to certain shelves, I could forestall the impulse by saying, “Those cocktail onions are a bargain.” I’ve seen the customer jump as though I’d read his mind. What I hate worst about it is the suspicion. It’s unpleasant to be suspicious. Makes me angry, as though one person were injuring many.

The day wore on to a kind of sadness, and time slowed down. After five Chief Stoney came in, lean and grim and ulcerish. He bought a TV dinner—country steak, carrots, mashed potatoes, cooked and frozen in a kind of aluminum tray.

I said, “You look like you had a touch of sun, Chief.”

“Well, I ain’t. I feel fine.” He looked miserable.

“Want two of those?”

“Just one. My wife’s gone visiting. A cop don’t get holidays.”

“Too bad.”

“Maybe it’s just as well. With this mob hanging around, I don’t get home much.”

“I heard you were away.”

“Who told you?”

“Willie.”

“He better learn to keep his big mouth shut.”

“He didn’t mean harm.”

“Hasn’t got brains enough to mean harm. Maybe not brains enough to stay out of jail.”

“Who has?” I said it on purpose and I got even more response than I had anticipated.

“Just what do you mean by that, Ethan?”

“I mean we’ve got so many laws you can’t breathe without breaking something.”

“That’s the truth. Gets so you don’t really know.”

“I was going to ask you, Chief—cleaning up, I found an old revolver, all dirty and rusty. Marullo says it’s not his, and it sure isn’t mine. What do I do with it?”

“Turn it over to me, if you don’t want to apply for a license.”

“I’ll bring it down from home tomorrow. I stuck it in a can of oil. What do you do with things like that, Stoney?”

“Oh, check to see if they’re hot and then throw them in the ocean.” He seemed to be feeling better, but it had been a long, hot day. I couldn’t let him be.

“Remember a couple of years ago there was a case somewhere upstate? Police were selling confiscated guns.”

Stoney smiled the sweet smile of an alligator and with the same gay innocence. “I had one hell of a week, Eth. One hell of a week. If you’re going about needling me, why, don’t do it, because I’ve had one hell of a week.”

“Sorry, Chief. Anything a sober citizen can do to help, like getting drunk with you?”

“I wish to Christ I could. I’d rather get drunk than anything I can think of.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Do you know? No, how could you? If I only knew what it’s for and where it’s from.”

“What you talking about?”

“Forget it, Eth. No—don’t forget it. You’re a friend of Mr. Baker. Has he got any deals on?”

“I’m not that good a friend, Chief.”

“How about Marullo? Where is Marullo?”

“Went in to New York. He wants to get his arthritis checked over.”

“God almighty. I don’t know. I just don’t know. If there was just a line, why, I’d know where to jump.”

“You’re not talking sense, Stoney.”

“No, I’m not. I talked too much already.”

“I’m not too bright but if you want to unload—”

“I don’t. No, I don’t. They’re not going to pin a leak on me even if I knew who they were. Forget it, Eth. I’m just a worried man.”

“You couldn’t leak to me, Stoney. What was it—grand jury?”

“Then you do know?”

“A little.”

“What’s behind it?”

“Progress.”

Stoney came close to me and his iron hand grasped my upper arm so tightly that it hurt. “Ethan,” he said fiercely, “do you think I’m a good cop?”

“The best.”

“I aim to be. I want to be. Eth—do you think it’s right to make a man tell on his friends to save himself?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Neither do I. I can’t admire such a government. What scares me, Eth, is—I won’t be such a good cop any more because I won’t admire what I’m doing.”

“Did they catch you out, Chief?”

“It’s like you said. So many laws you can’t take a deep breath without you break one. But Jesus Christ! The guys were my friends. You won’t leak, Ethan?”

“No I won’t. You forgot your TV dinner, Chief.”

“Yeah!” he said. “I’ll go home and take off my shoes and watch how those television cops do it. You know, sometimes an empty house is a nice rest. See you, Eth.”

I liked Stoney. I guess he is a good officer. I wonder where the line falls.

I was closing up shop, drawing in the fruit bins from the doorway, when Joey Morphy sauntered in.

“Quick!” I said, and I closed the double front doors and drew the dark green shades. “Speak in a whisper.”

“What’s got into you?”

“Someone might want to buy something.”

“Yeah! I know what you mean. God! I hate long holidays. Brings out the worst in everybody. They start out mad and come home pooped and broke.”

“Want a cold drink while I draw the coverlets over my darlings?”

“I don’t mind. Got some cold beer?”

“To take out only.”

“I’ll take it out. Just open the can.”

I punched two triangular holes in the tin and he upended it, opened his throat, and drained it into him. “Ah!” he said and set the can on the counter.

“We’re going on a trip.”

“You poor devil. Where?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t fought over that yet.”

“Something’s going on. Do you know what it is?”

“Give me a clue.”

“I can’t. I just feel it. Hair on the back of my neck kind of itches. That’s a sure sign. Everybody’s a little out of synch.”

“Maybe you just imagine it.”

“Maybe. But Mr. Baker doesn’t take holidays. He was in one hell of a hurry to get out of town.”

I laughed. “Have you checked the books?”

“Know something? I did.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Once I knew a postmaster, little town. Had a punk kid working there, name of Ralph—pale hair, glasses, little tiny chin, adenoids big as goiters. Ralph got tagged for stealing stamps—lots of stamps, like maybe eighteen hundred dollars’ worth. Couldn’t do a thing. He was a punk.”

“You mean he didn’t take them?”

“If he didn’t it was just the same as if he did. I’m jumpy. I’m never going to get tagged if I can help it.”

“Is that why you never married?”

“Come to think of it, by God, that’s one of the reasons.”

I folded my apron and put it in the drawer under the cash register. “Takes too much time and effort to be suspicious, Joey. I couldn’t take the time.”

“Have to in a bank. You only lose once. All it needs is a whisper.”

“Don’t tell me you’re suspicious.”

“It’s an instinct. If anything’s just a little bit out of norm, my alarm goes off.”

“What a way to live! You don’t really mean that.”

“I guess I don’t. I just thought if you’d heard something, you’d tell me—that is, if it was any of my business.”

“I think I’d tell anybody anything I know. Maybe that’s why nobody ever tells me anything. Going home?”

“No, I think I’ll go eat across the street.”

I switched the front lights off. “Mind coming out through the alley? Look, I’ll make sandwiches in the morning before the rush. One ham, one cheese on rye bread, lettuce and mayonnaise, right? And a quart of milk.”

“You ought to work in a bank,” he said.

I guess he wasn’t any lonelier than anybody else just because he lived alone. He left me at the door of the Foremaster and for a moment I wished I could go with him. I thought home might be a mess.

And it was. Mary had planned the trip. Out near Montauk Point there’s a dude ranch with all the fancy fixings you see in what they call adult Westerns. The joke is that it’s the oldest working cattle ranch in America. It was a cattle ranch before Texas was discovered. First charter came from Charles II. Originally the herds that supplied New York grazed there and the herdsmen were drawn by lot, like jurors, for limited service. Of course now it’s all silver spurs and cowboy stuff, but the red cattle still graze on the moors. Mary thought it would be nice to spend Sunday night in one of the guest houses.

Ellen wanted to go into New York, stay at a hotel, and spend two days in Times Square. Allen didn’t want to go at all, any place. That’s one of his ways of getting attention and proving that he exists.

The house boiled with emotion—Ellen in slow, dripping, juicy tears, Mary tired and flushed with frustration, Allen sitting sullen and withdrawn with his little radio blasting in his ear, a thumping whining song of love and loss in a voice of sub-hysteria. “You promised to be true, and then you took and threw, my lovin’ lonely heart right on the floor.”

“I’m about ready to give up,” Mary said.

“They’re just trying to help.”

“They seem to go out of their way to be difficult.”

“I never get to do anything.” Ellen sniffled.

In the living room Allen turned up the volume. “. . . my lovin’ lonely heart right on the floor.”

“Couldn’t we lock them in the cellar and go off by ourselves, carotene, dear.”

“You know, at this point I wish we could.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the pounding roar of the lovin’ lonely heart.

Without warning a rage came up in me. I turned and strode toward the living room to tear my son to shreds and throw his lonely lovin’ corpse on the floor and trample it. As I went loping through the door the music stopped. “We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin. Officials of New Baytown and Wessex County were this afternoon subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury to answer charges ranging from fixing traffic tickets to taking bribes and kickbacks on town and county contracts. . . .”

There it came—the Town Manager, the council, the magistrates, the works. I listened without hearing—sad and heavy. Maybe they had been doing what they were charged with, but they’d been doing it so long they didn’t think it was wrong. And even if they were innocent they couldn’t be cleared before the local election, and even if a man is cleared the charge is remembered.They were surrounded. They must have known it. I listened for a mention of Stoney and it didn’t come so I guess he had traded them for immunity. No wonder he felt so raw and alone.

Mary was listening at the door. “Well!” she said. “We haven’t had so much excitement in a long time. Do you think it’s true, Ethan?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “That’s not what it’s for.”

“I wonder what Mr. Baker thinks.”

“He went on a holiday. Yes, I wonder what he feels.”

Allen grew restive because his music was interrupted.

The news and dinner and dishes put off our trip problems until it was too late for a decision or for further tears and quarreling.

In bed I got to shivering all over. The cold, passionless savagery of the attack chilled right through the warm summer night.

Mary said, “You’re all goose lumps, dear. Do you think you have a virus?”

“No, my fancy, I guess I was just feeling what those men must feel. They must feel awful.”

“Stop it, Ethan. You can’t take other people’s troubles on your shoulders.”

“I can because I do.”

“I wonder if you’ll ever be a businessman. You’re too sensitive, Ethan. It’s not your crime.”

“I was thinking maybe it is—everybody’s crime.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t much either, sweetheart.”

“If there was only someone who could stay with them.”

“Repeat, please, Columbine!”

“How I would love to take a holiday just with you. It’s been forever.”

“We’re short on unattached elderly female relatives. Put your mind to it. If only we could can them or salt or pickle them for a little while. Mary, madonna, put your mind to it. I ache to be alone with you in a strange place. We could walk the dunes and swim naked at night and I would tousle you in a fern bed.”

“Darling, I know, darling. I know it’s been hard on you. Don’t think I don’t know.”

“Well, hold me close. Let’s think of some way.”

“You’re still shivering. Do you feel cold?”

“Cold and hot, full and empty—and tired.”

“I’ll try to think of something. I really will. Of course I love them but—”

“I know, and I could wear my bow tie—”

“Will they put them in jail?”

“I wish we could—”

“Those men?”

“No. It won’t be necessary. They can’t even appear before next Tuesday, and Thursday is election. That’s what it’s for.”

“Ethan, that’s cynical. You aren’t like that. We’ll have to go away if you’re getting cynical because—that wasn’t a joke, the way you said it. I know your jokes. You meant that.”

A fear struck me. I was showing through. I couldn’t let myself show through. “Oh say, Miss Mousie, will you marry me?”

And Mary said, “Oho! Oho!”

My sudden fear that I might be showing through was very great. I had made myself believe that the eyes are not the mirror of the soul. Some of the deadliest little female contraptions I ever saw had the faces and the eyes of angels. There is a breed that can read through skin and through bone right into the center, but they are rare. For the most part people are not curious except about themselves. Once a Canadian girl of Scottish blood told me a story that had bitten her and the telling bit me. She said that in the age of growing up when she felt that all eyes were on her and not favorably, so that she went from blushes to tears and back again, her Highland grandfather, observing her pain, said sharply, “Ye wouldna be sae worrit wi’ what folk think about ye if ye kenned how seldom they do.” It cured her and the telling reassured me of privacy, because it’s true. But Mary, who ordinarily lives in a house of flowers of her own growing, had heard a tone, or felt a cutting wind. This was a danger, until tomorrow should be over.

If my plan had leaped up full-grown and deadly I would have rejected it as nonsense. People don’t do such things, but people play secret games. Mine began with Joey’s rules for robbing a bank. Against the boredom of my job I played with it and everything along the way fell into it—Allen and his mouse mask, leaking toilet, rusty pistol, holiday coming up, Joey wadding paper in the lock of the alley door. As a game I timed the process, enacted it, tested it. But gunmen shooting it out with cops— aren’t they the little boys who practiced quick draws with cap pistols until they got so good they had to use the skill?

I don’t know when my game stopped being a game. Perhaps when I knew I might buy the store and would need money to run it. For one thing, it is hard to throw away a perfect structure without testing it. And as for the dishonesty, the crime—it was not a crime against men, only against money. No one would get hurt. Money is insured. The real crimes were against men, against Danny and against Marullo. If I could do what I had done, theft was nothing. And all of it was temporary. None of it would ever have to be repeated. Actually, before I knew it was not a game, my procedure and equipment and timing were as near perfection as possible. The cap-pistol boy found a .45 in his hand.

Of course an accident was possible but that is so in crossing the street or walking under a tree. I don’t think I had any fear. I had rehearsed that out of me, but I did have a breathlessness, like the stage fright of an actor standing in the wings on his opening night. And it was like a play in that every conceivable mischance had been inspected and eliminated.

In my worry that I would not sleep, I slept, deeply and as far as I know without dreams, and overslept. I had planned to use the dark pre-day for the calming medicine of contemplation. Instead, when my eyes jerked open, the tail of the cow in the lake had been visible at least half an hour. I awakened with a jar like the blow of driven air from high explosive. Sometimes such an awakening sprains muscles. Mine shook the bed so that Mary awakened, saying, “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve overslept.”

“Nonsense. It’s early.”

“No, my ablative absolute. This is a monster day for me. The world will be grocery-happy today. Don’t you get up.”

“You’ll need a good breakfast.”

“Know what I’ll do? I’ll get a carton of coffee at the Foremaster and I’ll raven Marullo’s shelves like a wolf.”

“You will?”

“Rest, little mouse of a mouseness, and try to find a way for us to escape from our darling children. We need that. I mean it.”

“I know we do. I’ll try to think.”

I was dressed and gone before she could suggest any of the seasonal things for my protection and comfort.

Joey was in the coffee shop and he patted the stool beside him.

“Can’t, Morph. I’m late. Annie, could you give me a quart of coffee in a carton?”

“It’ll have to be two pints, Eth.”

“Good. Even gooder.”

She filled and covered the little paper buckets and put them in a bag.

Joey finished and walked across with me.

“You’ll have to say mass without the bishop this morning.”

“Guess so. Say, how about that news?”

“I can’t take it in.”

“You remember I said I smelled something.”

“I thought about that when I heard it. You’ve got quite a nose.”

“It’s part of the trade. Baker can come back now. Wonder if he will.”

“Come back?”

“You get no smell there?”

I looked at him helplessly. “I’m missing something and I don’t even know what it is.”

“Jesus God.”

“You mean I should see something?”

“That’s what I mean. The law of the fang is not repealed.”

“Oh, Lord! There must be a whole world I miss. I was trying to remember whether it’s both lettuce and mayonnaise you like.”

“Both.” He stripped the cellophane cover from his pack of Camels and wadded it to push in the lock.

“Got to go,” I said. “We’ve got a special sale on tea. Send in a box top, you get a baby! Know any ladies?”

“I sure do, and that’s about the last prize they want. Don’t bother to bring them, I’ll come for the sandwiches.” He went in his door and there was no click of the spring lock. I did hope that Joey never discovered that he was the best teacher I had ever had. He not only informed, he demonstrated and, without knowing it, prepared a way for me.

Everyone who knew about such things, the experts, agreed that only money gets money. The best way is always the simplest. The shocking simplicity of the thing was its greatest strength. But I really believe it was only a detailed daydream until Marullo through none of his fault walked in his own darkness over a cliff. Once it seemed almost certain that I could get the store for my own, only then did the high-flown dreaming come down to earth. A good but ill-informed question might be: If I could get the store, why did I need money? Mr. Baker would understand, so would Joey—so, for that matter, would Marullo. The store without running capital was worse than no store at all. The Appian Way of bankruptcy is lined with the graves of unprotected ventures. I have one grave there already. The silliest soldier would not throw his whole strength at a break-through without mortars or reserves or replacements, but many a borning business does just that. Mary’s money in marked bills bulged against my bottom in my hip pocket, but Marullo would take as much of that as he could get. Then the first of the month. The wholesale houses are not openhanded with credit for unproved organizations. Therefore I would still need money, and that money was waiting for me behind ticking steel doors. The process of getting it, designed as daydreams, stood up remarkably when inspected. That robbery was unlawful troubled me very little. Marullo was no problem. If he were not the victim he might have planned it himself. Danny was troubling, even though I could with perfect truth assume that he was finished anyway. Mr. Baker’s ineffectual attempt to do the same thing to Danny gave me more justification than most men need. But Danny remained a burning in my guts and I had to accept that as one accepts a wound in successful combat. I had to live with that, but maybe it would heal in time or be walled off with forgetfulness the way a shell fragment gets walled off with cartilage.

The immediate was the money, and that move was as carefully prepared and timed as an electric circuit.

The Morphy laws stood up well and I remembered them and had even added one. First law: Have no past record. Well, I had none. Number two: No accomplices or confidants. I certainly had none. Number three: No dames. Well, Margie Young-Hunt was the only person I knew who could be called a dame, and I was not about to drink champagne out of her slipper. Number four: Don’t splurge. Well, I wouldn’t. Gradually I would use it to pay bills to wholesalers. I had a place for it. In my Knight Templar’s hatbox there was a support of velvet-covered cardboard, the size and shape of my head. This was already lifted free and the edges coated with contact cement so it could be restored in an instant.

Recognition—a Mickey Mouse mask. No one would see anything else. An old cotton raincoat of Marullo’s—all tan cotton raincoats look alike—and a pair of those tear-off cellophane gloves that come on a roll. The mask had been cut several days ago and the box and cereal flushed down the toilet, as the mask and gloves would be. The old silvered Iver Johnson pistol was smoked with lampblack and in the toilet was a can of crankcase oil to throw it in for delivery to Chief Stoney at the first opportunity.

I had added my own final law: Don’t be a pig. Don’t take too much and avoid large bills. If somewhere about six to ten thousand in tens and twenties were available, that would be enough and easy to handle and to hide. A cardboard cakebox on the cold counter would be the swap bag and when next seen it would have a cake in it. I had tried that terrible reedy ventriloquism thing to change my voice and had given it up for silence and gestures. Everything in place and ready.

I was almost sorry Mr. Baker wasn’t here. There would be only Morph and Harry Robbit and Edith Alden. It was planned to the split second. At five minutes to nine I would place the broom in the entrance. I’d practiced over and over. Apron tucked up, scale weight on the toilet chain to keep it flushing. Anyone who came in would hear the water and draw his own conclusion. Coat, mask, cakebox, gun, gloves. Cross the alley on the stroke of nine, shove open the back door, put on mask, enter just after timeclock buzzes and Joey swings open the door. Motion the three to lie down, with the gun. They’d give no trouble. As Joey said, the money was insured, he wasn’t. Pick up the money, put it in cakebox, cross alley, flush gloves and mask down toilet, put gun in can of oil, coat off. Apron down, money in hatbox, cake in cakebox, pick up broom, and go on sweeping sidewalk, available and visible when the alarm came. The whole thing one minute and forty seconds, timed, checked, and rechecked. But carefully as I had planned and timed, I still felt a little breathless and I swept out the store prior to opening the two front doors. I wore yesterday’s apron so that new wrinkles would not be noticeable.

And would you believe it, time stood still as though a Joshua in a wing collar had shot the sun in its course. The minute hand of my father’s big watch had set its heels and resisted morning.

It was long since I had addressed my flock aloud, but this morning I did, perhaps out of nervousness.

“My friends,” I said, “what you are about to witness is a mystery. I know I can depend on you to keep silent. If any of you have any feeling about the moral issue involved, I challenge you and will ask you to leave.” I paused. “No objections? Very well. If I ever hear of an oyster or a cabbage discussing this with strangers, the sentence is death by dinner fork.

“And I want to thank you all. We have been together, humble workers in the vineyard, and I a servant as you are. But now a change is coming. I will be master here henceforth, but I promise I will be a good and kind and understanding master. The time approaches, my friends, the curtain rises—farewell.” And as I moved to the front doors with the broom, I heard my own voice cry, “Danny—Danny! Get out of my guts.” A great shudder shook me so that I had to lean on the broom a moment before I opened up the doors.

My father’s watch said nine with its black, stumpy hour hand and minus six with its long, thin minute hand. I could feel its heart beat against my palm as I looked at it.