Here Comes a Candle, page 8
“Getting out that early we can get in a lot of shooting before it gets hot. Mitch, want me to buy a gun for the kid next time I go to Chi?”
“If he’s sure what he wants by then. Let him try out some of yours meanwhile and see how he likes them.”
Dixie nodded and turned back to Joe. He said, “Look, kid, I might as well show you some stuff before we go out. I can get you used to guns and let you do a little dry shooting, give you some pointers. How about tomorrow afternoon for that? Then we won’t have to waste time on it after we’re out where we can do some real shooting?”
“Sure,” Joe said.
“I’m staying at the Wyandotte, on Cass. Room thirty-five. Suppose you drop around a little after one o’clock tomorrow. We can pick out what gun you like. Say, Mitch, could we combine it with some real hunting maybe? Open season on anything here in Wisconsin?”
Mitch shook his head. “Foxes, but you can’t hunt them without dogs, and you don’t want to make an expedition out of it. I think there’s open season on jackrabbits in some counties, but not where I’m sending you. Wait till fall and get yourself a deer.”
He grinned at Joe. “Maybe come fall the three of us will go deer hunting, huh? Meanwhile, Joe, we’ll make a gunman out of you.”
Joe grinned back at Mitch and tried to look calm and unexcited, and to act as though getting lessons in shooting from a real gunman wasn’t something to get excited about.
Mitch and Dixie left a few minutes after that and Joe discovered that, in the excitement of learning about the lessons in shooting he was going to get, he’d completely forgotten his beer. He didn’t like sitting alone in the booth so he wandered back to the bar with it and took a stool.
The party worried him, though, for two reasons. One was that Francine would be there and he’d have to see her again. And if there was a lot of drinking, she might do some damn fool thing like talking about how he’d come across her Thursday afternoon—or some still more damn fool thing like sitting on his lap or making passes at him or razzing him for not making passes at her, or—Hell, you couldn’t tell what a woman might do when she got too many drinks in her. And Mitch would be there. And the other reason was that Mitch had told him to bring a woman of his own, and he couldn’t think of one who’d fit in at a party like that.
Ellie was completely out, naturally. Too nice a kid to take to a party where anything could happen. She’d like as not never speak to him again. He knew other girls, sure, and one or two who were tough enough not to be shocked by a wild party—but they weren’t girls he’d want to show off in front of Mitch—and Francine. They were too obviously cheap little broads and next to Francine they’d look like something he’d picked up out of the gutter on his way there. They didn’t have class, like Francine had.
Well, maybe he could get out of going by not having a girl to bring. He could let Mitch think he was fixed up and then Saturday evening he could phone Mitch just before the party and say the girl he’d lined up was sick and he didn’t want to come alone.
Only, damn it, he did want to go. He didn’t want to see Francine, but then again he did want to see her. What was the matter with him, he wondered? Was he afraid of Francine? Of Mitch? Of himself? He decided ruefully that he was a little afraid of all three of them.
“Another beer, kid?”
Krasno was standing in front of him and his beer glass was empty. He saw with surprise that he and Krasno were alone in the place; he hadn’t noticed when the other customers who’d been sitting at the bar had left.
He didn’t really want one, but he was startled into saying, “Sure, Krazzy,” and then modified it by saying, “Make it a short one, though. Better get going pretty soon.”
Krazzy drew it and cut off the foam with his white celluloid stick. Joe reached for a coin but Krasno said, “On me, Joe.”
He leaned against the back bar and tamped tobacco into his pipe, staring at Joe.
Finally he said, “Joe, what’s Mitch up to?”
“What do you mean?” Joe asked.
“Are you getting dragged into anything? You’re a good kid, Joe; don’t like to see Mitch drag you down with him.” What the hell was Krazzy talking about?
“Joe, did he feed you the line that he’s going to open a gambling joint?” Krasno looked around him as though to make sure that there wasn’t anybody else in the place. “Listen, kid, it takes money to do that, big money. Mitch hasn’t got it. Mitch is broke, kid.”
That was so funny that Joe laughed. Mitch broke!
Krasno said, “I don’t mean he’s down to cigarette money, but I mean he’s down to his last ten thousand bucks or so. And, Joe, that’s broke—for Mitch. He’s used to having it and throwing it away. And he’s been going broke ever since his racket folded on him over a month ago. This place doesn’t make money; it’s a front. You know that. He hasn’t had any source of income since numbers dried up. Some capital, yeah, but he’s been gambling heavy, kid, and the way I heard it, he’s been losing his shirt. He’s got as much chance opening a swank joint in Waukesha County as I have of starting a department store.”
Joe stared at him, wondering what to say, how to shut him up. The old guy was cracked. Mitch broke! Mitch owned half of Milwaukee.
Krasno did it for him. He shrugged. “Oh, hell, what difference does it make? Joe, you might as well have a good time while you got a chance. It’s not going to last long. Maybe you’re smart at that. How long do you expect to live, Joe?”
Krasno must be cracked.
He asked, “What do you mean, how long do I expect to live?”
“Don’t you read the papers, Joe? Don’t you know what’s going on? I mean, we’re heading for the blowup to end all blowups. And not many years more.”
“You mean war with Russia? Hell, we can lick them.”
Krasno shrugged. “Joe, every war up to now has been a war, but the next one won’t be; it’ll be something you can’t picture. It’ll end up with the few of you who are left living in caves and fighting wild dogs—if all the dogs aren’t eaten before it gets that far. And it’s going to happen, Joe. It could happen next week. Just read the papers.”
It made Joe uncomfortable, Krasno talking that way. But it was better than having him talk against Mitch, when they were both working for Mitch. That was disloyalty, and he didn’t like it a damn bit.
He said, “Maybe it won’t be that bad.”
“Worse than you can imagine it, Joe. Don’t you realize how our civilization is centralized? Ten or twelve atom bombs on our ten or twelve biggest cities and the whole thing falls apart like a house of cards. Our whole economy goes up in smoke. The only ones that have a chance to keep eating are the farmers and they’ll be too busy shooting starving people heading out from the cities—or getting shot themselves. It’s going to be a mess, Joe.”
Krasno’s pipe had gone out; he put it down without trying to relight it. He said, “I’m glad I’m old, Joe. I’ve had a life. But damn if I don’t feel sorry for people that haven’t had. That’s why I say I guess it doesn’t matter a damn what you do. You haven’t got long to do it anyway.”
“My God but you sound cheerful, Krazzy.”
“It’s inevitable, Joe. We and Russia—we’re just too different to live side by side. I don’t know which of us will start it first; maybe us because we’re afraid of them. We know they want the whole world or nothing. They got a lot of Europe already. They’re going to get China. And then they’re stymied until they lick us.”
“That’s easier said than done. We got A-bombs.”
“Oh, sure. They’ll lose, too. Everybody’ll lose. Who won the San Francisco earthquake? But they’re going to try. And don’t think they haven’t got A-bombs, too. And maybe radioactive dust and God knows what else. Bacteriological warfare, too. Joe, can you shoot a gun?”
Joe looked at him, wondering whether Krasno could have overheard any of the conversation back in the booth. But he couldn’t have.
“If I was young and wanted to have a chance of keeping on living, I’d get myself one and learn how to shoot it. And have a big stock of bullets for it, too; you won’t be able to get any more after it starts. Everybody isn’t going to get killed off—or, hell, maybe everybody will be killed off if they start using bacteria. But if they come through, they’re going to be ones who have guns when things start. You’ll need a gun to get a loaf of bread. Money won’t mean anything. And if you got a gun you might be able to make it a little easier for yourself if you get too bad radiation burns—or maybe the plagues will be something you’d just as soon not die from after you get it. Not that you’ll need to be an expert marksman for that.”
Joe gave a mock shudder. “Anything else you can think of to cheer me up?”
Krasno’s yellow teeth showed as he grinned. Then he was serious again. He said, “Only this, Joe. It just might not be quite as bad as I drew it for you. But don’t kid yourself about one thing—it is going to happen. Maybe next week—maybe it’ll start from the Berlin Blockade and the air lift. They shoot down one of our planes on that air lift, and there it is. Or maybe it’ll be a few years. But God help me, Joe, it’s going to happen. You might as well face it. And it’s the end of civilization as we know it.”
Joe slid himself off the stool. He said, “Thanks, Krazzy, for both the beer and the sunshine to brighten my life. I better go and lay myself in a stock of hand grenades.”
But as he strolled in to town he couldn’t get what Krasno had been telling him off his mind; he couldn’t think of anything else, in fact. He decided, finally, that he was getting hungry enough to eat and he’d go around to the Dinner Gong. He didn’t realize that he wanted to talk to Ellie to get his mind on other things, but there it was.
He sat down at Ellie’s section of the counter; she came over to him right away.
“Good news, Joe,” she said. “I found a room. A light housekeeping room, I mean.”
“Fine. Where?”
“On State Street, near Seventeenth. Just a few blocks from here. Are you going to be busy tomorrow morning?”
“No. Why? Want me to help you move your stuff over?”
“If you wouldn’t mind. I’ve got two suitcases and a small trunk, so I’ll have to take a cab anyway. But the trunk isn’t heavy, just clothes, and the two of us could carry it down the stairs one place and up the stairs at the other. It’s second floor at the new place too. I’m paid at Mrs. Gettleman’s through Wednesday, but I had to pay for the housekeeping room starting right away in order to get it, so I might as well move tomorrow.”
“Sure, Ellie. What time?”
“Oh, about nine o’clock, if that isn’t too early for you.”
“That’s okay,” he said. He’d have to get up at half past five Wednesday morning anyway; if he got up a little earlier than usual tomorrow morning he’d have a better chance of getting to sleep early Tuesday evening. “Even earlier than that, if you want.”
“No, that’ll be early enough, Joe. And thanks a lot.”
“Good thing you decided on tomorrow morning and not Wednesday. I’m going hunting early Wednesday morning.” He remembered he’d told her, truthfully, that he didn’t have a gun and added, “Friend of mine’s lending me an extra gun of his.”
“Oh. What are you hunting?”
He had to think fast. Ellie might know that not much was in season now. She probably wouldn’t know much about hunting foxes and anyway she wouldn’t know they didn’t have dogs. “Foxes,” he said.
“Oh, Joe, don’t shoot foxes. They’re cute. I like them.”
He laughed. “I probably won’t get one. But, look, if I do, I’ll have it made into a fox scarf for you. How’s that?” She laughed, too. “Don’t bother, Joe; I’ve got a fox scarf, red fox. And that’s what struck me as funny; my telling you not to shoot a poor little fox, and when I got that neckpiece—and I saved up for months to get it—I never thought that somebody had to shoot a fox for it. Two foxes, in fact. All right, I’ll shut up and let you look at the menu.”
The next morning he helped her move. The room on State Street wasn’t much bigger than the one on Wells, but it did have a kitchenette with a few dishes and cooking utensils.
Ellie was checking possibilities of the kitchenette before she even thought of unpacking her belongings. She called back over her shoulder, “Joe, have you had any breakfast yet? Did you eat before you knocked on my door this morning?”
He said, “No, Ellie. Shall I cut come strips from the curtain here, so you can fry them?”
“I don’t have to get to work till twelve, Joe; I fixed it with Uncle Mike so I could get in an hour late. And I’m going to have to stock this kitchenette and it’s going to be a lot to carry, the first time. If you’ll go shopping with me and help carry it back, I can make us a brunch.”
“Brunch?”
“Cross between breakfast and lunch.”
Joe grinned at her. “Been eating ’em all my life and never knew what they were. Sure, Ellie. Why not?”
There was a grocery only a block and a half away. Having to start from scratch with everything from salt and sugar on up the list, Ellie did quite a bit of buying and they both had plenty to carry on the way back. And when they got back, Ellie insisted on washing all the dishes and utensils before she’d use any of them. Also she looked back under the sink and stove and said, “Knew I’d forget something. Roach powder.”
“We could try radioactive dust,” Joe suggested.
“What’s that, Joe? Something new?”
“According to a friend of mine, Capitalists use it on Communists and vice versa.”
“Oh. You think it would work on roaches?”
He looked at her to see if she was serious and saw that she wasn’t. He rather wished he could tell her about that horrible guff old Krasno had fed him yesterday. She’d laugh at it and he’d feel better. And yet he knew that, underneath, it would be as unpleasant to her as it had been to him. And the horrible part of it was that Krasno might be completely right—probably was at least partly right. Why worry Ellie talking about it?
He watched Ellie getting brunch for them, but his mind wasn’t on eating; it kept going back to the things Krasno had said. Not that any of them—except the silly things Krasno had said about Mitch which had led up to the other things—had been new to him. He’d been reading science fiction stories for years—stories about the coming blowup, about the human race being obliterated or reverting to some form or other of savagery. Science fiction had been doing that even before the atom bomb had really been invented. Nuclear fission was old stuff in science fiction long before Los Alamos. But those were stories, fiction.
Krasno had been talking casual fact. That was the horrible thing; Krasno had probably never read a science fiction story in his life. And yet he was as sure of what was coming as he was sure that the sun was going to come up tomorrow.
It was one thing to think of something as fiction or as an abstraction, something else to think of it as something that was going to happen to him, maybe next week, maybe next year.
He saw himself in ragged clothes walking along the side of a road, hungry; there was no one in sight. Behind him—
“Will you bring the chairs, Joe?” Ellie said. “Guess it’s ready—such as it is. I’m afraid I kind of botched it.”
She had, a little. She’d cooked bacon and eggs and the bacon was a little overdone, not quite burned but close to it. And the eggs had started out to be sunny-side up, but the yolks had broken and they were more nearly scrambled.
Ellie apologized and blamed the fact that one had to get used to a new stove and new cooking equipment. Joe insisted that it tasted swell, and found he wasn’t exaggerating too much at that. It was quite different and quite pleasant to be eating home cooking for a change from restaurants. There was a difference somehow, somewhere, that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. Like when he was a kid and he and other kids had built a fire in a vacant lot down near the canal and had baked potatoes. The potatoes had been underdone in the middle and overdone near the outside and they’d had only salt, no butter, to put on them, but they’d tasted wonderful. This was like that, somehow.
He said, “This is swell, Ellie. Honestly.”
“You’re lying, Joe Bailey. It’s awful. But give me time to get used to that darned stove—”
“That damn stove.”
“All right, that damn stove. And wait till Sunday evening. I’ll have things ready by then and I’ll cook you some spaghetti that’s out of this world. And not because I’m trying to get at your heart through your stomach, either. Just that I’m so ashamed of this that I’ve got to show you I can cook to save my own pride.”
“It’s wonderful, Ellie.”
And it was.
She tried not to let him help with the dishes but he insisted on it. And by the time they’d finished with the dishes Ellie had to rush to get to the Dinner Gong by twelve o’clock. She still hadn’t had time to unpack her clothes.
There wasn’t time to do anything else because of his appointment at Dixie’s room on Cass Street at one or a little after, so Joe dropped in at Shorty’s and played a game of pool. For some reason he couldn’t get his mind on it and got badly licked.
9
Dixie Ehlers was in love. Not with a woman or women, but with guns. He had a harem of them.
They—or most of them—were in a Gladstone bag in the closet of his room. He got it out and opened it as soon as Joe got there, and the bed sagged under its weight. Each gun was in a fine leather holster of its own and was wrapped carefully and separately in a piece of cloth. Each one was loaded.
“Don’t go pulling triggers, kid,” he told Joe. “I wouldn’t have an unloaded gun around me, unless I unloaded it to do some dry shooting. You have an unloaded gun around and you get to count on it being unloaded and some day it isn’t; you’ve loaded it and forgotten about it, and that’s how accidents happen. Remember that, kid; not only about these guns but about any you have yourself. Keep ’em loaded, always know they’re loaded. Besides, then you know they’re ready to use.”
