Let's go For Broke Page 6

  “Let’s tell him.” Mrs. Feeley swung the screen door open.

  “She’s yours for two hunnert an’ fifty a month,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  Tom continued to look solemn. After a pause he said, “I couldn’t do it. First of all, you’ve had the two units vacant for a long time yourself. It might take me a while to rent ’em. Might even have to redecorate ’em.”

  The ladies communicated silently.

  “Take me a month or two to build the parking franchise up and I wouldn’t be able to give full time to it taking care of my wife,” he said. “Lots of competition around here. I’d have to throw in a quick-wash job or something extra to attract more trade.”

  “What can you pay?” Mrs. Feeley said at last, as he stood up as if to go.

  “A hundred and fifty would be my rock-bottom figure,” he said, “I’m not going to bite off more than I can chew.”

  “Would it be possible,” Miss Tinkham said, “to have an agreement that you would pay Mrs. Feeley ten per cent of the gross if it’s over the hundred and fifty that you promise to pay each month?”

  Tom did some mental arithmetic.

  “If I took in two hundred and fifty one month, I’d pay one hundred and seventy-five instead of one fifty? How would you know how much I took in?” He smiled.

  “We’d know by how much you paid us,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  Tom sat down with the props knocked out from under him.

  “You make it so a fellow couldn’t cheat you if he wanted to,” he said. “That’s fair enough, if you’d accept the hundred and fifty as base pay, so to speak. But I’ve got to tell you: I couldn’t pay in advance. The treatments and test have flat broke me.”

  The three friends looked at each other solemnly.

  “It’s a deal,” Mrs. Feeley stuck out her hand. “Time passes so fast for us, ’specially movin’ an’ all, that the month’ll be over before we know it. When do you want to take over?”

  “I couldn’t start before tomorrow morning.” He laughed for the first time. Warmly he shook hands with the other two ladies and strode off down the driveway.

  “Better’n a poke in the eye with a burnt stick,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “As dear Katy taught us in Spanish class: ‘It is better to light half a candle than to curse the darkness.’” Miss Tinkham drifted in to gather up her precious Aphrodite, the reading lamp made from an almost-alabaster statue, and her beloved books.

  “Better cook up a batch o’ stuff an’ have somethin’ ready to hold us without cookin’ while we move in.” Mrs. Rasmussen looked over the kitchen shelves with an eye to the future.

  Old-Timer walked in and handed Miss Tinkham a slip of paper.

  “Two hundred and ninety-five dollars for the bodywork and paint job on the truck! Plus seven hundred to Fikes…” She sat down weakly.

  “Almost a thousand dollars.” Mrs. Rasmussen was awed.

  “They ain’t nothin’ to do but get the most good we can out of it,” Mrs. Feeley said as she snapped off a beer cap. “Save us the price of a movin’ van, long as it still runs. We’ll have to use it, dents an’ all, to get out to the country. Reckon you can find your way back to the bodyworks?”

  Old-Timer nodded over the big French roll he had crammed in his mouth. Mrs. Rasmussen heated up a casserole full of meatballs and highly seasoned tomato sauce that had been stored back in the icebox.

  “Put you together somethin’ right quick,” she said. “No tellin’ when we’ll get to eat again.”

  “The three great stupidities of man,” Miss Tinkham split a roll down the middle and put a sliced meatball in it: “To go by sea when he can go by land, to accept money without counting it, and to start out on a journey without eating well beforehand.”

  Mrs. Feeley looked at Mrs. Rasmussen: “An’ after all these years, she’s still got some we ain’t heard.”

  “Proverbs fascinate me,” Miss Tinkham said. “They are the double-distilled wisdom of the ages.”

  “The wisdom of the ages tells me we’re gonna have to fork over a deposit for them light an’ water meters,” Mrs. Feeley said. “We can’t do without the water. Might burn candles and lamps if we had to.”

  “We need the ’lectric,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Food’ll spoil. I got a whole bundle o’ candles here we oughta take anyway. We’ll need the blankets, some towels, sheets, an’ cookin’ pots an’ dishes. I saved a big bunch o’ cardboard cartoons, be nice for the packin’.”

  Otho Fikes rapped on the door.

  “Wants his money, I reckon,” Mrs. Feeley said. She got down the picture of Saint Anthony again.

  Mrs. Rasmussen let Fikes in and he sat down.

  “Lady,” he said to Miss Tinkham, “I gotta have hunnert an’ seventy-five dollars to give to that man settin’ out there in the pickup.”

  “What for?” Miss Tinkham said. “We can only give you one hundred.”

  “Dad burn sich as that, lady! I never said I’d take it! I’m afoot, an’ gotta have that pickup to make a livin’. I’ll be payin’ that feller off outa what you-uns pays me.”

  “A feller’s got to have transportation,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “There goes the Famine Chest,” Mrs. Rasmussen sighed.

  “Four dollars and eighty cents left,” Miss Tinkham said. She looked at her companions. They accepted the inevitable. “You’ve really been very considerate through the whole business, Mr. Fikes.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen counted out the hundred and seventy-five dollars and handed it to him. “We want a receipt,” she said.

  “You-uns write it and I’ll touch the pen.”

  “Can’t you write your name?” Mrs. Feeley felt set up to think she didn’t have to make her X any more, even though her signature involved much tongue-chewing.

  “I’m larnin’,” he said, “but I useta X all my checks.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen folded the receipt and put it with the tax money.

  “There is no need to put it away,” Mrs. Tinkham said. “While the packing is being done, I am sure Mr. Fikes and his friend would not mind running me over to the Civic Center to pay the half year’s taxes. We had better do that before some other demand is made upon us.”

  “Truer words was never spoke,” Mrs. Feeley said fervently. She turned the holy picture right side up and looked at Saint Anthony. “Boy,” she addressed him, “this here infullation that Miss Tinkham talks about has done overtook us. Don’t you start jackin’ your price up on us for findin’ things we lost! No use to hang him back up. He can go in the truck right now.” She handed the four dollars and eighty cents to Mrs. Rasmussen.

  “I won’t get round-shouldered carryin’ that.” The keeper of cash and documents put it in her purse.

  Miss Tinkham went out the door with Mr. Fikes. “I’ll be back in a very short while,” she said. “My things are already packed and I’ll help you load the truck.”

  Otho Fikes almost danced as he walked, as though he had never expected such a quick and easy triumph.

  “Open me up a can o’ simon, Mrs. Rasmussen,” Mrs. Feeley heaved herself up out of her chair as the chef opened the cheap red salmon. “Time for me to start sackin’ up them cats.”

  Chapter 6

  “WE’LL JUST have to leave the piano,” Miss Tinkham moaned. “If the parking lot man’s wife is recovering from surgery, it isn’t likely they’ll be having wild parties! I couldn’t bear to have anything to happen to my piano that the boys gave me, or Mrs. Rasmussen’s beautiful electric stove!”

  Mrs. Feeley nodded: “I hate to holler ‘Uncle,’ but we’d need help to h’ist it aboard the truck, even if they was room. So heavy we can’t even haul ’em down to Jasper and Oscar’s place at the end o’ the row and leave ’em.”

  “We just have to have faith,” Miss Tinkham said. The mashed-up truck looked like the Grapes of Wrath gang crossed with the Swiss Family Robinson.

  “Take everythin’ that ain’t nailed down, that’s what we’d oughta do,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Big ol’
rough place like that, they ain’t anythin’ you can’t use!”

  “’Cept for the pie-anna an’ the stove, place is about gutted.” Mrs. Feeley looked around with satisfaction. “Ain’t nothin’ like pullin’ up stakes an’ startin’ over to keep you young.” The cats in the grass sacks started yowling and fighting, bumping up and down on the bottom of the truck. Mrs. Feeley had put them in first for safekeeping.

  “All aboard,” Mrs. Feeley shouted. “Kinda fun to start out facin’ the world with four dollars an’ eighty cents in your pocket.” She grinned toothlessly.

  “Yea?” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Lookit the gas gauge. Take three dollars almost to get it half full. It ain’t the first time we started out with four bits apiece. Two days o’ the week I never worry about: yestiday an’ tomorra.”

  One sack of cats had worked itself to the top of the load by dint of bouncing and jumping.

  “Suppose they get loose?” Miss Tinkham said nervously.

  “Not less’n they chew their way out through the sack,” Mrs. Feeley said. “As the feller said when he sewed the cat’s behind up with wire: it ain’t purty, but it’s strong.”

  Old-Timer climbed into the driver’s seat and the ladies looked for a place to sit.

  “Dear God,” Miss Tinkham clapped her hand to her forehead, “we’re forgetting the Cadillac!”

  “Them damn plates!” Mrs. Feeley sighed. “An’ I sure hate to leave it. Somebody could back into it in the parkin’ lot. No tellin’ when we’ll get back thisaway.” She handed her friends each a stirrup cup of one cold beer.

  “Leave nothin’,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We’ll tow it.” She went into Old-Timer’s old trailer room and brought out a thick rope. “Back her up, Ol’-Timer.”

  He got down and tied the Cadillac securely to the rear of the truck. Mrs. Rasmussen walked over and picked up the topmost sack of cats and dropped it into the back seat of the limousine.

  “C’mon, Miss Tinkham,” she said as Mrs. Feeley climbed up onto the front seat of the truck with Old-Timer, “you and me’ll steer.”

  Out the driveway the caravan lurched until they got into step. “Long as we ain’t got the engine runnin’,” Mrs. Rasmussen said, “they can’t rightly say we was drivin’ it. Let’s dump these here beer bottles quick, even though we ain’t legally drivin’, it don’t look good.”

  “Such a pity to drink beer quickly, but I quite agree.” Miss Tinkham hit a corner trash can with an effortless aim that would make a basketball player green. “Cats in the Cadillac,” she laughed and began to sing a song to the tune of “Do Y’Ken John Peel”:

  Cats on the rooftops,

  Cats on the stiles…

  “I do so admire the British and their subtle hew-mor!”

  At the last filling station before Five Points, Mrs. Feeley’s pudgy hand signaled for a stop.

  “Bet she’s gonna gas up,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Ain’t no use to put none in the Caddy ’cause we better not drive it no more.” She braked the car and got out with her purse ready. “Tell him two dollars an’ eighty cents is all we can buy.”

  Mrs. Feeley took advantage of the stop to straighten up some odd lengths of new planks that were sticking up in the back of the truck, blocking the rear view mirror. “Sure glad we had them to fix that kitchen floor,” she said. “Better do that first thing, ’cause one of us is bound to go bum over beak into that hole!”

  Steering the blue Cadillac carefully, Mrs. Rasmussen bumped along in the wake of the truck under the overhanging vines and branches until Old-Timer towed her neatly under a porte-cochere at the west side of the house. Mrs. Feeley got out and untied the rope. Old-Timer drove the truck around to the other side of the house near the kitchen.

  “Might’s well get at it.” Mrs. Rasmussen climbed out of the limousine and Miss Tinkham followed. “Let’s leave the cats lay for a while. Only be in the way while we’re unpackin’.”

  “I don’t see any possibility of getting the meter deposits down today. It’s too late,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “An’ we ain’t got the price,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “No tellin’ when we’ll get things like light turned on at this rate…nothin’ to sell or hock.”

  “But there isn’t any water,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “Water? There ain’t hardly any beer!” Mrs. Feeley announced.

  “Let’s get them single beds up,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Somepin’ tells me we’re gonna be lookin’ for ’em ’fore too long.”

  Miss Tinkham looked into each of the little rooms along the hall and wondered how any sane individual could have chopped good lumber into so many little dinky rooms with one window each.

  “But it won’t take so much to make them cozy,” she said.

  “Not a clothescloset nowheres,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We’ll drive nails till I can put up a curtain. Anything I hate is clothes hainging out naked on pegs. If it’s just the same to you all, I’ll take this one. Lotsa nice shelves in it an’ it’s right next to the kitchen.”

  “Me an’ Miss Tinkham will bunk right next to each other here.” Mrs. Feeley took the little room next to Mrs. Rasmussen and Miss Tinkham took one that had for ventilation a small round bay window with a turret top.

  “It just occurs to me,” she said as she set down her small suitcase that contained all her possessions, “that you, Mrs. Feeley, should take this room on account of the bay window. It faces south and would be lovely for you in case you wanted it for plants.”

  “Now if that ain’t thoughty, I don’t know what is! Been layin’ off to have a go at them Afghan varlets and this’d be the spot for ’em. Sure you don’t mind givin’ it up?”

  “Not in the least! There are two shelves here for my books, so I am perfectly content. Shall we put the radio in the kitchen where we can all enjoy it?”

  “Can’t hook it up,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “No juice.”

  “And I can’t light Aphrodite,” Miss Tinkham sighed. “We’ll be without music for a while, but we’ll survive I suppose.”

  Mrs. Feeley appeared with the ends of a small metal bed. Miss Tinkham snapped out of her reverie and Mrs. Rasmussen followed her to bring in the rest of the bedding.

  “No need to worry about shades or curtains,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Nobody around.”

  “Nor no light to turn on,” Mrs. Rasmussen reminded. “Good I got them candles out there among the plunder. We can stick ’em in empty bottles.”

  “Yeah!” Mrs. Feeley perked up. “How about emptyin’ a bottle or two right now?”

  “Where are you going to install Old-Timer?” Miss Tinkham asked when the beds were up.

  Mrs. Feeley grinned: “Far away as possible. When he starts that snorin’…I hope these walls is thick!”

  Mrs. Rasmussen looked at the small empty room next to hers and wondered if she could stand the buzz-bombing that dear Old-Timer was just bound to do.

  “What about that little room up towards the front, with the colored glass windows?” Miss Tinkham said. “It looks as if it might have been a little den or something of the sort. I didn’t look too closely the other day…come to think of it, we haven’t explored the front of the house at all!”

  “We ain’t none of us looked.” Mrs. Feeley was amazed. “Ain’t never been upstairs yet! C’mon!”

  The three went cautiously to the end of the hall and opened the big carved doors that led to the living room and the domelike glass conservatory just off it.

  Heavy cobwebs and long curls of dust hung like moss from the elaborate gaslight fixtures, modernized for electricity too. The fireplace was large, outlined in glazed, highly colored ornamental tiles. The floors were elaborate parquet in astonishingly good condition.

  “Practically the size of the Pennsylvania Station,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “They sure didn’t spare the horses,” Mrs. Feeley said. She wandered out into the conservatory. “Looky here,” she whispered. “I’m dumbfoundered.” The glass was intact. At the curved top it was tinted green
. There were a few panes of amethyst glass, with here and there some amber ones and a few ruby-colored ones.

  “Allah be praised!” Miss Tinkham sighed, “not a single pane of eye-cup blue!” She hated the shade of blue that was used for milk of magnesia bottles as nearly as she could come to hating anything, animate or inanimate. As she looked at the concrete floor, the raised, fancy flower beds filled with gravel and the hooks where hanging baskets had once hung, she smiled at Mrs. Feeley:

  “Well, dear lady, I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing much of you except at mealtimes! Do you feel as though you had died and gone to heaven?”

  “When we get water in them fassets with the lion heads, I’ll just bring a beer in here with me. Maybe I’ll move my bed in!” she laughed.

  “Let’s look some more,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. She put her hand on the stair railing that led to the upper story. The whole stairway was closed in by a kind of fretwork screen made of rungs of varnished wooden fans, ornamented with many small wooden balls about two inches apart.

  “It’s supposed to look like a mosque,” Miss Tinkham said.

  Upstairs there were seven bedrooms, all small and cut up. They were built in a U-shape around the large central hall. Miss Tinkham opened a door at the end of the hall and walked into a huge bathroom that had once been white. It had a tiled floor. The wash basin was oval and stood upon a large, elaborate marble pedestal.

  “I knew that one downstairs was the servants’ bath,” Miss Tinkham said. “Isn’t this sumptuous?”

  “Lookit the swimmin’ pool.” Mrs. Feeley pointed to the immense square tub that sat up on elaborate claw feet. “We can all git in it at oncet.”

  “Handier downstairs,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We still ain’t decided about Ol’-Timer.”

  “There’s so much to it, I can’t rightly take it in all at one time,” Mrs. Feeley said. “They was chairs an’ stuff in one o’ them rooms that I opened.”

  “And just to think that all this splendor is ours!” Miss Tinkham said.