The Laughing Matter Read online

  “No, May. I don’t want to hang around.”

  “You’re being silly.”

  “Maybe I am,” the man said. “Even so, will you please do something for me once in a while? Will you pack up and get the kids ready?”

  “I don’t understand,” the woman said. “What’s the matter?”

  “We’ve made awful fools of ourselves.”

  “We have?”

  “They’ve made fools of us, I mean.”

  “They have?”

  “We got ourselves all worked up about people who haven’t the slightest interest in us, who regard us as dull and boring, who think we’re amusing, who laugh at us.”

  “I had no idea,” the woman said. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s not decide one way or another for a little while. It’s early. We can always get to Yosemite in three hours. Can I have the car? I want to drive to Fresno to do a little shopping. When I get back we’ll decide.”

  “How long will you be?”

  “An hour or two.”

  “Don’t take longer. I’ll be packing.”

  “Warren,” the woman said with astonishment. “Let’s decide when I get back.”

  “O.K.”

  She looked at him strangely, and he noticed that she did.

  “May,” he said, “I just don’t like shabbiness.”

  “We’ll decide when I get back,” the woman said.

  She put on a yellow button sweater and went out, the man following her to fetch a saw for some work he wanted to do. The kids were playing under an old olive tree he meant to trim.

  “Mama’s driving to Fresno if you want to go,” he told them.

  They decided after a moment that they did.

  He was soon alone under the tree locking up for dead branches to saw off. He got up into the tree and began to saw upon the lowest of the dead branches, stopped suddenly, went into the house, and telephoned a friend in Madera, a man he had known longer than the twenty years he’d known Dade Nazarenus. He’d had a specific purpose in calling this man, but as they chatted he decided not to make this purpose known. Instead, he asked the man to come out and visit them real soon. He then went back to the olive tree to see about getting at least one of the dead branches removed.

  In the 1948 Buick the woman wondered what could have upset him so. The clatter of the children, which she usually loved, now irritated her. When she suddenly slapped the youngest one for not sitting still after she had been asked twice to do so, May Walz drew the car off the highway and stopped. She joined the child in weeping silently, and after a moment all four of them were weeping silently, as if they knew why.

  Chapter 10

  Eva Nazarenus sat between Cody Bone and Rex Nazarenus, a man on one side, a boy on the other. Another man, her father, sat in the seat behind her.

  She was alone with three men, three boys, going in a car down a hot road with irrigation ditches on each side of the road, each ditch choked with grass of all kinds, beyond each ditch vines or trees set out in perfect order, so that every time you noticed them there was a whole big design to see, and then any number of smaller designs.

  This was another place, with another way about it. The way here was sun, and early in the morning birds. The way here was uncrowded, planted with trees instead of people. The trees stayed where they were. They stayed so long that if a boy wanted to climb one all he had to do was what her brother Rex had done. Get up into it and go—go, and then far up in it, reach for ripe figs, and let them fall from his hands to hers. She didn’t catch many of them. The ones she did catch smashed a little, but she could eat them just the same, and she had eaten three. The others she had put aside for her father or her mother or for the man who’d lost his mother, in case he came by.

  She had heard of Clovis long ago, of Dade Nazarenus and Clovis. Here she was in this place, in an automobile, going to watch Red do something.

  What was Red going to do? It must be something special. The man beside her must be special, too. She didn’t know him, but she knew he was nice. Red was quiet beside her at first, and then, seeing a rabbit run across the road, stopped being quiet.

  “Rabbit, Papa!” he said. “Did you see the rabbit? Now, why is he the way he is?”

  Eva listened to her father going to the trouble of trying to answer Red’s question, the way he always did, always trying to answer Red’s questions, and hers, and Mama’s, taking every question seriously, thinking about it, trying to give the right answer. Out of a wish to comfort him, she got up and climbed over the front seat to be with him.

  She had nothing to say while doing this, but he was there, as she knew he’d be, ready to help her across the seat. He was still giving Red the answer, but as he went on talking, he looked into her eyes, then drew her to him. She put her arms around him and squeezed with all her might because he was the one, he was the best, better than all the rest of them put together, he was the one who truly understood and loved her, the one who smelled the way she knew a man should smell, the one who had the face and hands and way of her own man. She squeezed, and then scrambled away to sit quietly beside him, her hands folded on her lap, sitting all the way back in the seat, being there but no longer listening to anything.

  Cody Bone had known Dade Nazarenus from the time, twenty years ago, he’d come to Clovis in a Ford roadster with the top down and driven around, looking for a vineyard. At last he’d decided on Orvall Albee’s extra vineyard, the sixty acres Orvall had picked up for almost nothing. Dade had come from a town in New Jersey. He knew nothing about vineyards, nothing about land values, but he wanted a place on which to put a house, he liked Clovis, he liked the countryside, and he liked Albee’s sixty acres. He bought the place—got robbed, of course—put a fine house on it, fooled around a couple of years at running the place alone except for the usual help at crop time, and then went off somewhere for a month. When he came back he had a girl with him who was small and dark and seemed to be in love with him. She was a city girl with intelligent eyes and a swift and impatient eagerness to get to the point of things, or to have fun forsaking the point if something wasn’t interesting. Everybody who saw her felt glad to see her. She could be nicer than any other woman in Clovis one minute, and the next be bored to death with everybody. She loved flowers and had Dade call in a nurseryman to set out a whole garden of them, all kinds of roses, lilac trees, oleanders, and a lot of other stuff. Her name was Beatrice, but Dade called her Trix. Cody had heard long ago that Dade had a younger brother teaching at a university somewhere, but both times this brother, years ago, had come to visit Dade, Cody had missed him. He’d seen Dade and Trix, the two boys and the little girl, together for years, and he’d believed nothing in the world could ever break up what Dade and Trix had together. The next thing he knew, though, Dade was living on the vineyard alone. Trix and the kids were gone, and Dade didn’t want to talk about it.

  And then Cody had seen Dade’s brother at last, standing in front of the station with Warren Walz, and he’d instantly recognized him. His son stood beside him, looking like his father and like his father’s older brother. Cody had gone home and he had told his youngest son, Bart, about Dade’s brother, and his son, called Red.

  “The brothers look alike, stand alike, walk alike, talk alike,” he said. “He’s a professor at Stanford. I’m going to give his boy a ride in the locomotive. He’s got the watch-ingest eyes I’ve ever seen. I know he’s scared, but I know he wants to ride, too.”

  Bart had gotten back from Fresno just as Cody was getting to bed, the man and boy occupying the house alone, the boy’s mother dead ten years, his brothers and his sister married and living in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

  “Well,” the boy said, “I met him, too.”

  “Who?” Cody said.

  “Dade’s brother,” Bart said. “On my way in I saw somebody crossing a vineyard. I drove around, came back, saw him stumble and fall, get up, stumble and fall again, and not get up. I had no idea who it was. I drove up, stopped, and went to see wh
o it was. I drove him to Fresno. He seemed in a bad way.”

  “Drunk?”

  “I don’t think it was from drink. He’d been drinking, though.”

  “Where’d you leave him?”

  “Outside the Public Library. He went to the bar on the corner.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Said he didn’t want to talk.”

  “He seemed all right this afternoon. Didn’t he say anything?”

  “Said his name when we stopped,” Bart said. “Said it to thank me for the ride.”

  “Fight, I guess,” Cody said. “Dade and Trix were always fighting. They’re quick to fight. The whole thing’ll be forgotten in the morning.”

  “I never saw anybody in such a bad way,” Bart said. “I was scared.”

  “Nothing,” Cody said. “They’re swift, that’s all.”

  “I guess so,” Bart said. “Seemed like a lot, though.”

  “I’ll drive past in the morning and stop for a moment,” Cody said.

  In the morning Bart said, “It was something. I don’t know what, but it was something. I think the reason I was scared is that I felt he might fall dead or even kill somebody, from anger.”

  “Anger?”

  “Well, rage would be more like it. It wasn’t funny. It was a man in a killing rage.”

  Now, driving with the man and his kids to the depot and freight yards of Clovis, Cody Bone listened to the talk of the father and the son, and knew from the man’s way of speech that Bart had not been far from the truth. Cody didn’t want to pry, but when his car was almost struck by one that had not stopped at a stop sign and Cody had had to slam on the brakes, throwing everybody around a little, he said, “Well, life is full of surprises, isn’t it?”

  He had not, as a matter of fact, meant the remark to start anything, but after it had been made and Evan Nazarenus did not treat it insignificantly by saying quickly almost anything at all, Cody knew that Evan had been in a bad way, and was still.

  “I mean,” Cody went on quickly, “there’s no telling when the unexpected is liable to happen, like that fool boy back there nearly smashing into us. Well, he didn’t make it, so we’re all set for the locomotive ride, after all.”

  He turned to glance at the boy beside him, the boy’s eyes enormous and searching. They were still excited, but no longer frightened.

  “Where will I sit?” Red said.

  “Right beside me.”

  “Can I sit where you sit and lean out the way you do?”

  “I think so.”

  “Can I make it go?”

  “I think so.”

  “Eva,” Red said, “you watch from the depot. Watch me run the locomotive.”

  “All right,” the girl said.

  Cody Bone parked the car in front of the depot.

  “I’ll get into my work clothes,” he said. “I’ll be back with the big black baby in five minutes.”

  “We’ll be out front,” Evan said.

  Chapter 11

  Across the street, over Harry’s Pool Room, was a hall, six rooms, a kitchen, and two baths. The door on the street was locked, had been since four in the morning. Susie and the two girls were having coffee and cigarettes. The enormous Negress had invited the girls to the front room to sit at the window and look down at the depot and the railroad tracks.

  “There’s Cody Bone,” she said.

  “Was he ever here?” a girl called Peggy said.

  “Cody?” the Negress said. “Lord, no. We been friends the whole time I rent this place. He remember my birthday every year. Just because I tole him one day it was my birthday. I was all dressed up, but it wasn’t no more my birthday than today is. There’s some others. That man there, that boy and girl.”

  “That one last night,” the other girl said, a girl called Toy, half Japanese, half Mexican-Indian. “Warren Walz. Was he ever here before?”

  “Juss a minute,” Susie said. “My girls don’t know who comes here. All right here to say the name. Nowhere else. A man come here, nobody ever hear about it.”

  “I know,” Toy said. “I just want to know if he ever came here before.”

  “There they go,” Susie said. “They standing out front there, the man holding hands with the boy and girl.” She turned to the girl. “He never come here before. Why?”

  “I’ve seen boys cry.”

  “Look over there now,” Susie said. “Here comes Cody with the big black baby. That’s what he call the engine. He doan mean no kind of discrimination by it, though. He love that big black baby. Look now, Toy. You, Peggy. There’s Cody getting down. There he go back up with the boy. He been my friend the whole time. That time of trouble, Cody help me. There he go. There’s the boy sitting in Cody’s place. Look at that.”

  The three women watched the locomotive pump and go, the small boy waving to the man and the girl.

  “Everybody cry sometime or other,” Susie said when the locomotive was out of sight and the man and the girl had walked down the tracks after it. “They hold it back, then they let it go. You just doan say the name any time you go sit or stand somewhere. You, too, Peggy.”

  “What do I care what his name is?” Peggy said.

  She was always a little on the defensive because, even though she was blonde and had the better figure, most of the men who came to the place, especially the interesting ones, chose Toy, and she got the Mexicans, the half-breeds, the Filipinos, the Negroes, all the ones who were like dumb animals. She’d never had one who’d cried. They were men at least, she thought.

  “Now, you both go along to Doc Rocha’s,” Susie said. “You got a hour. Go bathe now, dress up, I see you back here about noon. They’ll be those working boys coming in during lunch hour.”

  Chapter 12

  Every time Dade Nazarenus planned to leave his home on the vineyard in Clovis he telephoned his brother Evan and urged him to pick up his family and stay in the house during his absence.

  Once before, early in December, Evan had wanted to go, but Swan had come down with the flu. By the time she’d been better it was almost Christmas, so they didn’t go because they wanted to spend Christmas in their own home.

  It wasn’t much of a house, a Veteran Loan proposition, $500 down, $72 a month against a mortgage of $10,950, payable in twenty years, or 240 months. Fifteen of the 240 months had gone by. It was theirs, though. At any rate, they liked to think it was. The house was detached, but the neighbors were near and the yard was small. Still, it wasn’t bad. It wouldn’t do for a large family, though, and that was what Evan believed they would become.

  His salary at the university was enough to meet the payments on the house, buy groceries, and pay the bills of plain living.

  They couldn’t afford a car. When the offer came from the University of Nebraska for Evan to go there for eight weeks during the summer, he talked it over with Swan, accepted the offer, planning on his return to make a down payment on a new Chevrolet. He brought home $900. He was about to buy the car when Swan suggested they wait a while longer, or pay cash for a secondhand car. The matter had rested there, and early in August, only a few days after Evan’s return from Nebraska, Dade telephoned and made the invitation again.

  “I’ve had a woman come in and get the place ready,” he said. “I’ve put the key in the mail. You’ll get it this afternoon. I’ve got the icebox full of stuff, and the deep freezer. You’ll find all kinds of meat in there. The figs are ripe on the tree. They get ripe by the hour. I’d like to see all of you, but I won’t be able to just now. Come down and stay as long as you like. I’ve got to go to San Francisco. It’s for a week at least, possibly two. It may be three. When do you have to be back at the university?”

  “I’ve got a month,” Evan said, “but we wouldn’t stay that long.”

  “Come on down and decide when you get here how long you want to stay. I know Swan and the kids are going to have fun. It’s very hot.”

  “Can’t you stop here on your way to San Francisco?”
/>   “I’m flying up,” Dade said. “My car’s being overhauled. The boy will bring it to the house in three or four days. When he does, take Swan and the kids for a picnic. There are some nice places around.”

  “We’ll take the train in the morning,” Evan said. “Wish you were going to be there, though. The kids ought to know their father’s brother.”

  “We’ll make it sometime,” Dade said. “Christmas maybe.”

  In Paterson, as a boy, Dade had worked at a variety of jobs, anything that came along, but once he’d got his pay at the end of the week he was another man. He put on expensive clothes and went out to look around. He found things that Evan might not have found in a lifetime. At seventeen he knew a side of the Jersey towns that neither Evan nor the old man knew. He began to take trips, after which he would visit Evan and the old man for a week or two, sometimes a month. Then he would be gone for another four or five months.

  “He is gambler,” the old man told Evan. “He go to gamble. I want my boy to work for money. Gamble is bad. When I was young man I was gambler. I know my Dade.”

  The years went by. Dade and the old man talked quietly by the hour when Dade came home. The old man was not angry with Dade, but Evan knew he wanted Dade to take a job, like everybody else.

  When Dade was twenty-five and Evan was at Princeton, the old man telephoned early one morning and told Evan in their own language to come home right away.

  When he got home he saw Dade in bed, the old man trying to do something about Dade’s left arm and shoulder.

  “I’ll call a doctor,” Evan said.

  “No,” Dade said. “I don’t want anybody to know about this. Dig in there and see if you can get the slug out.”

  “I can’t do that,” Evan said. “A surgeon’s got to do it, Dade.”

  “In the top drawer there I’ve got some instruments in a box,” Dade said. “Put them in boiling water. Then dig in there and get the slug out. Get it out and let me sleep. I’ve been driving all night.”