Let's go For Broke Read online

  “Free,” Mrs. Rasmussen reminded.

  The little den was cozy with its own fireplace with a mirror over it.

  “Look!” Miss Tinkham went over and pushed down hard on an old black leather-tufted sofa. The head sloped upward gently and the springs seemed to be in perfect condition. “We had one of these when I was a girl. They are most comfortable.”

  “Better’n that ol’ canvas army cot that Ol’-Timer’s married to,” Mrs. Feeley said. “He’d be a fool not to sleep on that. It ain’t no good for sittin’ on, without no back. Put a blanket on it an’ it’d be fine.”

  “Let’s go get him.” Mrs. Rasmussen started down the hall after him. He had unloaded the many boxes and packages from the truck and was sitting on the planks catching his breath. He followed Mrs. Rasmussen, and when he saw the sofa he lay down on it at once, pulled out his red bandanna and covered his face with it.

  “Through for the day!” Mrs. Feeley said. “Wonder what’s in here?” She pulled open a door revealing a small lavatory. “Some class to that,” she said. “Just remember, the water ain’t turned on.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen and Miss Tinkham were back trying to find something to sit on. “We can empty them two orange boxes an’ they’ll do for now,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Let’s put up Ol’-Timer’s cot in the little room next me. Keep it from seemin’ so empty-like. Then I’ll go spread up his bed for him, if I can pry him off that couch long enough. We got plenty o’ beddin’, that’s one good thing. This here pad on the cot is foam rubber.” She made the bed up neatly and put an extra blanket folded up at the foot of the cot.

  Miss Tinkham came in after making up her own bed and Mrs. Feeley’s. There was no need to inquire as to that worthy matron’s whereabouts. The conservatory was making her green fingers itch and she was likely dreaming up great pots full of gloxinias and tuberous begonias.

  “I hope she doesn’t go in for big purple orchids,” Miss Tinkham said to Mrs. Rasmussen, “there are so many pretty kinds.”

  “So much to be did before we can get anythin’ like that,” Mrs. Rasmussen said, “no money an’ hardly no time. I gotta see about that hole in the kitchen floor. An’ find out if the old range works.”

  In a few moments after she had picked up some old shingles and used crumpled newspaper for kindling, Mrs. Rasmussen had a fire in the stove. It seemed to draw perfectly after she adjusted the various dampers.

  “There’s nothing in the world like a living flame.” Miss Tinkham held her hands out to it, even though she was not cold.

  The edge of the hole where the lawyer, Elmo Gates, had fallen through was jagged and worm-eaten. Mrs. Rasmussen kept breaking off pieces of the old wood with her bare hands.

  “Hand me one o’ them empty cartoons, Miss Tinkham. We’ll use it for a woodbox. This is good kindlin’…we dassent throw nothin’ away. Everythin’ can go in here an’ be burned. Soon as Mrs. Feeley gets out the tool kit, we can saw back on this hole till we come to solid wood, an’ then nail in the new, good planks.”

  Mrs. Feeley came in with such a faraway gaze that she looked cross-eyed.

  “Walkin’ three feet off’n the floor,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “It’s bewruful,” Mrs. Feeley sighed. “They ain’t got nothin’ that gorgiss down in Balboa Park. Man, when I git that thing goin’, our financial troubles is over. Right now I ain’t got a single thing to stock it with…not anythin’ worth while back at the Ark. We just got to git some money, even if we haveta work for it.”

  “Where’s your tool kit?” Mrs. Rasmussen asked. “We gotta fix that floor. Somebody’ll be takin’ a bath in that cistern whether they need it or not.”

  Mrs. Feeley looked at the yawning gap without interest: “Less jus’ lay the planks acrost the hole for t’night, huh? That greenhouse has got me so lazy-daisycal that I jus’ wanna dream a little bit. There ain’t no virtue in me for sawin’ today.”

  “It has been a hectic day,” Miss Tinkham agreed, “and we mustn’t forget that our supper preparations must all be made before dark. We have only the candles for light.”

  “That’s right.” Mrs. Rasmussen snapped to action. “No counter to work on. Flat nothin’,” she said as she took the orange crates she had intended to use for bedroom chairs and laid two planks across them for a counter. “Better’n nothing’. Let’s bring in the table. We’re gonna miss them nice built-in seats like booths we had in the bus-house.”

  She produced a plastic tablecloth from a carton and spread it over the table. “Two pairs old curtains in there, didn’t even know we had ’em. Take a piece o’ string an’ some nails, Miss Tinkham, they’ll be fine for the bedrooms.”

  “I’m going upstairs for those chairs,” Miss Tinkham said. “It will only take me a minute.” She glanced at the once energetic Mrs. Feeley, the bulldozer type, sitting on a box, her chin in her hands, gazing blissfully at the ceiling. No use to expect help from that quarter!

  She came down with two fairly stout straight chairs, the upholstery frayed, but otherwise usable.

  “A real contribution,” she said. Mrs. Rasmussen sat down in one of them and pointed to the big carton full of wood she had picked up in the yard. “What are we goin’ to eat for supper?” she said.

  “Something easy,” Miss Tinkham advised. “What have we got?”

  “Long as the stove’s goin’, I’ll bake some of them Spudniks I invented. Got five o’ them big Idaho potatoes. Got them mustard greens all washed an’ there’s salt pork in that can. They ain’t gonna keep without no ice less I cook ’em tonight. Them weenies, neither.”

  “That will be a fine combination,” Miss Tinkham said. “We are going to have to go on an austerity program until the first of the month…we must make no expenditure of any kind, absolutely immobilize our spending.”

  “Two dollars all we got for eats,” Mrs. Rasmussen reminded. “I brought all we had on hand, but it wasn’t hardly nothin’. I was lettin’ things run out a-purpose so’s not to have to haul a lotta stuff out here. Thought we’d stock up fresh, but we’ll not do much stockin’ up now.”

  She got out a pot for the greens, and added a mere sliver of salt pork. Mrs. Rasmussen had been through tight places before. She turned from the stove to the sink in a kind of daze.

  “Say!” Her tone even brought Mrs. Feeley back to earth. “There ain’t a drop o’ water on the place! Not to cook with or wash with! Not any!”

  “Sometimes you cook with beer,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “Can’t waste that!” Mrs. Feeley said. “Gotta go get some, that’s all. Somebody might wanta wash their feet. Go wake up Ol’-Timer, Miss Tinkham. We’ll find some buckets.”

  When Miss Tinkham returned with their chauffeur, Mrs. Rasmussen and Mrs. Feeley had an assortment of tubs and buckets lined up.

  “Better take a clean sheet to cover ’em with,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  When they got into the truck, the sacks full of cats set up a wild yowling.

  “Gawd, we plumb forgot ’em. You had one sack in the Cadillac.”

  “Might’s well leave ’em up till we get back,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  She and Miss Tinkham sat on two boxes in the back of the truck.

  “I seen a supermarket right next to that fillin’ station where we stopped,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Once you get the hang o’ these little byways, our place ain’t so far from everythin’ after all, just kinda cut-off like, an’ hid.”

  “The service station will let us fill up with water,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “But we sure better spend that two dollars for beans an’ rice ’fore somethin’ happens to it,” Mrs. Rasmussen warned.

  While Old-Timer filled the tubs and buckets from the faucet at the station, the ladies went toward the supermarket next door.

  Outside it, Mrs. Rasmussen spotted a pile of empty wooden boxes, fruit crates and lugs, piled up for anyone who wanted them.

  “Firewood. Shelves.” She grabbed as many as she could carry and went back to the truck with t
hem. Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Feeley followed her with two more loads.

  Back of the hamburger stand next to the station, Mrs. Feeley saw a pile of empty gallon cans and gallon glass jars. The ladies looted that pile.

  “We really should found a club called Pack Rats Anonymous. Other people’s garbage, our treasures!” Miss Tinkham said.

  “Lots o’ prog.” Mrs. Feeley grinned. “Can’t get poor takin’ things.”

  “Now,” Mrs. Rasmussen said as they entered the supermarket, “keep your eyes peeled for real buys…Last week they had five pounds o’ bacon scraps in a package for a dollar five cents. That stuff can be used dozens o’ ways. Lots o’ real meat in it, an’ it keeps good in the cooler.”

  “Here’s one,” Miss Tinkham said and put it in the basket. “That leaves ninety-five cents.”

  “Beans! Pintos…all they got. Three pounds for twenty-three cents!” Mrs. Rasmussen was excited. “What we’d oughta get is a big box o’ pancake mix an’ some cornmeal. Can’t buy what-all’s in the pancakes yourself that cheap…eggs, milk, bakin’ powders, shortnin’ an’ sich. Just about make it.”

  Miss Tinkham looked around for Mrs. Feeley. She stood over in a far corner spellbound in front of a huge metal revolving rack full of packets of flower seeds with gorgeous colored pictures printed on them.

  “Like a child in front of the window of a candy shop,” Miss Tinkham said. The two came up and joined their friend, filled with great regret that the baser needs of man must be met first.

  “How does it go?” Miss Tinkham searched for her quotation:

  If there remain to thee but two loaves of thy poor dole,

  Sell one, and buy hyacinths to feed thy soul!

  Mrs. Feeley was about to reply when the shrill of a police whistle and the sound of running feet put an end to thought. The ladies froze where they were.

  “There she is,” a man in a white apron shouted and ran behind the revolving seed case. “There’s the thief! Time she was caught, in here robbing and stealing! I been suspicious of her all along!” The manager had taken rude hold of a tiny, cowering Mexican woman in her late fifties. She pulled back but her slight weight was no use against brute force. She had graying hair parted in the middle, done up in braids wound into tight knots over her ears. The fall evening was chilly, but she wore a low-cut white cotton blouse and full skirt. She had old tennis shoes on her feet. The only wrap visible was a thin cotton rebozo in which she had her hands tightly wrapped. Her light copper skin had turned ashen with fright.

  The policeman took hold of her shoulders: “He caught you red-handed! You come along with me!”

  The two men started to drag her towards the front of the building.

  “You take your hands off her, I don’t care what she done,” Mrs. Feeley shouted.

  “What did she do?” Miss Tinkham buttonholed the policeman.

  “What did she do?” the manager cried, “she comes in here and maybe spends a dollar a week and hangs around this seed rack. I been watching her and I’ll tell you what she did!” He reached over to the rack and picked up several flower packets. “See what she done? She tore the ends off of ’em, and helped herself to some of the seeds out of the good kind, the twenty-five cent packets! Then she rolls the tore corner closed again and puts ’em back! How’s that for thievin’?”

  “What you got in your hands?” the policeman said. “Show me.”

  “No es-speek Inglis,” the woman murmured.

  “They never speak English when they’ve done something,” the cop said.

  “Las manos,” Miss Tinkham hoped she had that gender right.

  The sparrowlike woman looked at her in fright, but pulled her hands from under the rebozo, uncurled her small fists. In a scrap of cloth she had what amounted to perhaps a teaspoonful of assorted seeds.

  “I mekky grow. Sell flowers. Pay back the mawney.”

  “How do you like that?” the manager sneered. “Cold day in July when she pays me!”

  “July is the coldest month of the year in San Francisco,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “You’ll get your money,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “You can’t book her on a tiny bit of pilfering like that,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “I can’t, can’t I?” the manager snapped. “How do I know what all else she took under that shawl? This is what I caught her with! Eight packages. Two dollars.”

  “I’ll have to take her in,” the policeman said.

  “You won’t dare do it!” Mrs. Feeley snapped.

  “And why not, my fine lady? Long as you’ve made it your business!”

  “Because we’re gonna pay your stinkin’ two dollars—much good may it do you!” Mrs. Rasmussen already had the two frayed dollar bills in her hand.

  The manager hesitated, eager to make an example of his victim:

  “I don’t think she oughta get off that easy…you don’t even know her and it ain’t your business nohow.” He eyed the money steadily.

  “Who are you to say what’s our business and what is not?” Miss Tinkham questioned. “We read about that poor hungry old schoolteacher, almost ready to retire, who slipped a little slice of ham into her shopping bag and lost her job over it, lost her retirement, and the honors of a long life of hard work! This is just the kind of establishment it could have happened in!”

  Mrs. Feeley reached out and snapped the eight seed packages out of the manager’s hand:

  “She took the nicest kinds—and long as we’re payin’ for ’em, we’ll take ’em. You’d be the kind to sell ’em over again.”

  She handed him the two dollars which he took in a daze. Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Feeley got on either side of the little shivering woman and propelled her ahead of them. Mrs. Rasmussen shoved the wagon, bacon, beans, and all, into the limbo of rejected merchandise and followed the three.

  “Where you taking her?” the policeman tried to look busy.

  “None o’ your damn business,” Mrs. Feeley said. “C’mon, hon.”

  Unprotesting, quivering to hold back her tears, the gnomelike little woman shuddered along between the two ladies.

  Out at the truck, Old-Timer leaned against a shattered fender and smoked. When he saw the Mexican woman, he tipped his cap politely. She looked down at the ground silently, not knowing what to expect.

  “What is your name, dear?” Miss Tinkham asked.

  “Cummer see yammy?” Mrs. Feeley translated.

  “Encarnación, mees.”

  “Incarnation! What a lovely name.”

  “N. Carnation! That’s a flower,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “Where you live?” Mrs. Rasmussen asked.

  Encarnación hung her head.

  “You can tell us,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “Ceety dahmp,” she whispered.

  “The city dump!” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “I gotty one piano box for house. I don’ ess-teel nawtheeng. Debo, no niego. Pago, no tengo! From the flowers, I pay back the mawney. He don’ want belief me,” she sobbed.

  “We believe you, N. Carnation,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Gawd, stony broke an’ the only beer we got clear out to Five Points!”

  “She says she doesn’t deny that she owes the debt, but the payment she hasn’t got. Trabajar?” Miss Tinkham asked, wishing she had taken the trouble to learn more than just the infinitives in Spanish class.

  Encarnación held up her thumb and forefinger just a quarter of an inch apart: “Muy poco trabajo!” She sighed. “Say no ceetizen. No ess-peek Inglis. No givvy Welfare no mawney to me. Say no ceetizen.”

  Miss Tinkham began to feel leary, thinking of the immigration officers:

  “You’re not a wetback, dear?”

  “Her back’s as dry as a chip,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “Illegal entry into the country,” Miss Tinkham said. “Alien.”

  “Mojada, no!” Encarnación spread her fingers wide apart and swept them fanlike into a negative gesture. “No gotty paper. Mi Heinz gotty paper. Mi Heinz American soldier.
Marry with heem, with the padre.”

  “She says she’s not a wetback. She’s married to somebody she calls ‘her Heinz.’ Says she hasn’t got her papers, but I think she’s trying to say he is a U.S. citizen, since he was an American soldier.”

  “What’ll we do?” Mrs. Rasmussen asked. “Give her a lift home?”

  “Least we kin do,” Mrs. Feeley said. “C’mon, N. Carnation. We’ll give you a lift. You show us where. Casa. Casa!” Loudness might make up for lack of verbs.

  Encarnación pointed to herself.

  Miss Tinkham nodded: “I think she’s ashamed for us to see it.”

  Mrs. Feeley patted her on the shoulder: “Wayno! Wayno! Vamoose.”

  Wrapping her rebozo about her, Encarnación climbed into the front seat by Old-Timer. By dint of much gesturing, she directed him to a smoke-laden district, foul smelling and swampy, north of Five Points. Near the edge of the dumping grounds she stopped him, and pointed to a hut made of a piano box, the roof covered over with flattened-out tin cans.

  “No!” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “SÍ, Sí.” Encarnación insisted on getting out. Mrs. Feeley followed and then Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen got down. Old-Timer did not bother to turn off the lights of the truck and the ladies could see that every discarded chamber pot and enamel slop jar had been put to a more poetic use, filled with flowering plants: begonias, roses, geraniums, and carnations, and herbs.

  At the “front door” of the residence, Encarnación had nailed up a white-enameled irrigation can, with the flat side nailed to the wall. The rubber tube dangled unwanted to the ground.

  “The mailbox,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “Maybe she’s waiting for a letter from ‘mee Heinz.’” Mrs. Rasmussen said softly, thinking of “Mister,” wounded at “Saint My Heel.”

  “Pásele,” Encarnación said, holding aside the grass sack that was the door.

  “Much-oh serve-aces,” Mrs. Feeley patted her own tummy to let her know she couldn’t get inside the house for the size of her beer-belly.

  Miss Tinkham was too tall.

  The ladies looked in politely.