Suds In Your Eye Read online

  ‘I shall do everything I can to help you under the circumstances, Mrs. Feeley. But you understand that it is the state, and not me, that makes the law and the penalty.’ He turned to the secretary and said:

  ‘Miss Hicks, will you figure out the amount of the accumulated taxes on this case, also the delinquent penalty, and let me have it?’

  The secretary got busy and the collector himself looked into some big books for added information on this difficult case. Soon the girl placed a piece of paper in front of the collector.

  ‘All right, Mrs. Feeley,’ he said. ‘Here’s the bad news! It comes to a total of three hundred and thirty-one dollars—and it must be paid on or before the last day of June. I should like to give you installments on it, but it is not possible. You have to have the money in a lump sum by the thirtieth or the property will have to be sold. That is the only safe way you can do it. If you try to have someone bid for it at the sale, you are likely to lose it as the price will probably go out of sight. Those corner lots are worth a lot as a factory site now, although they were not assessed at much when you bought them years ago. This is the fifteenth of April: you’ve got ten weeks to raise the money. I really wish you the best of luck, because it’s quite a job. Think you can do it?’

  Mrs. Feeley rose and took the proffered sheet of paper containing the fateful figures.

  ‘You’re goddam right I can do it!’ she replied with dignity. ‘Ain’t nobody goin’ to take my property away from me…not as long as my pooper points down!’

  Chapter 10

  BACK at Noah’s Ark, Mrs. Feeley sat in her platform rocker and gazed straight ahead of her at the wall. She was still dazed by the perfidy of man. Anger was mixed with the hurt…anger at herself for having been taken in. She guessed the ignorant would always be prey for the unscrupulous. But three hundred and thirty-one dollars! And ten weeks to raise it! Joke’s over, she thought.

  ‘Remember that time when Miss Tinkham told your fortune?’ Mrs. Rasmussen’s voice broke through Mrs. Feeley’s brown study. She nodded.

  ‘Yeup, I do! Break out your crystal ball an’ see if it has any suggestions for gettin’ us outa this fix!’ she said, but her voice lacked its usual ring.

  ‘Ten weeks ain’t much time to raise that money, but we sure gotta pitch in an’ do it! Why, if it wasn’t for you, Mrs. Feeley, I’d be bogged down at my daughter’s till yet!’ Mrs. Rasmussen was staunchly appreciative of past benefits.

  ‘Let us not be dismayed: remember the motto of the Three Musketeers: “One for all, and all for one”! I’ll just look up my horoscope a minute and see if there isn’t a practical help or two there!’ Miss Tinkham picked up the chart and thumbed through it until she came to April.

  ‘Here it is: let’s see, now. Mrs. Feeley, you are Aquarius, aren’t you? That’s where you get those green fingers! Just listen: “Wednesday, April fifteenth; during the morning hours business and financial matters will be under mixed influences.”’

  ‘And you ain’t just sayin’ that!’ agreed the Lady with the Watering Pot.

  ‘“Some benefits may be received, but mark time in matters that do not go smoothly. Avoid impulsive actions that may cost you money,”’ the seeress continued. ‘“Keep cool if annoyed. You may benefit in connection with a legal document or other writing or through legal procedure. You may also benefit in connection with a journey.”’

  ‘Sure! That’s us down to the ground! We sure benefited by that document that come this morn-in’!’ she said bitterly.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Mrs. Rasmussen quietly. ‘In a way we did! ‘Spose you hadn’t found it out till there wasn’t even the ten weeks left. ‘Spose it had been sold already, an’ the policeman come up the walk with a dispossess in his hand an’ says, “You don’t live here any more!”’

  ‘Gawd! That’s sure the truth…an’ I never had the wits to see it!’ Mrs. Feeley’s eyes grew round. ‘Miss Tinkham, I’m sure obliged to you for that readin’.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, Mrs. Feeley. We are bound to work this thing out somehow. After all of us being so happy here sharing your lovely home, we’ll find a way!’ she said warmly.

  ‘What we gotta do is figger a budget,’ said Mrs. Rasmussen, ‘so we knows just how much we gotta raise each week to go over the top. Then we gotta pare down the house money…maybe we’ll even have to go without beer for a while.’

  The three looked at each other pitifully. Of course, if it came to the supreme sacrifice…they supposed they could make it if they had to.

  ‘No sacrifice is too great,’ announced Miss Tinkham with dignity.

  ‘You got the head for figgers, Mrs. Rasmussen; you make the budget,’ Mrs. Feeley directed.

  Mrs. Rasmussen produced a stump of pencil and wrote on the back of a circular advertising a sale at the Safeway.

  ‘Lessee! Three hunert an’ thirty-one, ain’t it? How much tax money you got in the bottle?’

  Mrs. Feeley got it out from under the bed and counted it: forty-two dollars and fifty cents.

  ‘Okay: that leaves two hunert an’ eighty-eight dollars an’ fifty cents, right?’ The others nodded, taking her word for it.

  ‘Now, that comes out twenty-eight dollars an’ eighty-five cents a week we gotta raise for ten weeks. Just to be on the safe side we’ll call it twenty-nine dollars a week. That’s a lotta money!’

  ‘It sure is!’ sighed Mrs. Feeley. ‘If the worst comes to the worst, I could get it from Danny. The man said this property had went up in value, an’ I just can’t let Danny get cheated outa his inheritance!’

  ‘But only as a last desperate resort, dear Mrs. Feeley! Remember this is our opportunity to pay back in some small measure the wonderful things you have done for us,’ said Miss Tinkham, patting Mrs. Feeley’s hand.

  ‘An’ you’re forgettin’ what Miss Logan told us up to class,’ Mrs. Rasmussen reminded. ‘Remember when she told us Danny said his letters was gonna be late on account o’ he was goin’ so far away? Remember, he said he was gonna bring her a kangaroo, one o’ them jumpin’ things that looks like a big mice? She said that was only to let her know he was goin’ a awful long ways where it takes months to reach by mail!’

  In her misery Mrs. Feeley had forgotten. Ironical too, she thought, that the only time in her life that she could have used one of Danny’s frequent offers of money he should be out of reach. But then, that was always the way it went. She guessed she never would have brought herself to ask Danny for it, anyhow.

  Slim from the corner grocery was knocking at the front door.

  ‘Mrs. Feeley? Old-Timer’s went off in the truck to haul me a load o’ goods from the warehouse ’cause I’m havin’ a heap o’ trouble gettin’ deliveries. He said tell you don’t wait dinner for him, an’ to give you this. Said he figgered you’d need it.’ And he set a cardboard carton on the floor.

  ‘The damned old fool!’ said Mrs. Feeley tenderly as she opened the case of beer.

  Fortified by a few cold beers and some cheese and crackers, the ladies set about attacking the situation each from her own point of view. Mrs. Feeley went out to the junk yard and took inventory.

  ‘If I sell it for scrap, eighteen dollars a ton is the top price I can get. Said right on the radio that a feller in Indiana tried to hold out for twenty-three dollars an’ the Gov’mint took it away from him. Served him right, too! Annie Feeley! Shame on you talkin’ out loud to yourself like any loony in Bedlam!’

  True enough, if she sold the junk for scrap she would be practically out of business. She would do better selling it piece by piece. She didn’t wish anybody any hard luck, but she wished some of those people with old cars would suddenly have to buy a lot of spare parts. Well, she had more than a dozen storage batteries, and she guessed she’d hold on to them. They’d always be an ace in the hole. That copper coil would bring quite a bit of money too. With any luck at all she should be able to raise a hundred dollars out of the lot. She would have Miss Tinkham print a sign saying: ‘Hurry Up! Get Your Spar
e Parts Now! Before We Turn Them Over to the Government!’ That ought to do the trick.

  Marvelously comforted, she was about to go back to the house when a man drove up and asked to see some sinks. Mrs. Feeley wanted to know what for. He told her he was putting up some houses on speculation to rent to defense workers. He saw a sink in fairly good condition and asked, ‘How much?’

  ‘Ten dollars,’ replied Mrs. Feeley brazenly.

  ‘Ten dollars! Why, it’s not worth two dollars! It’s all rusty!’

  ‘Ain’t nothin’ on that sink a little elbow grease an’ Scourine won’t take off! You can take it or leave it. If you wait till tomorrow, I won’t be able to sell it to you at any price! Priorities!’ she whispered confidentially. Not for nothing had she been listening to talks on Miss Tinkham’s radio.

  ‘Goddamit, lady! You got me over a barrel an’ you sure as hell know it!’ cried the man, handing Mrs. Feeley a ten-dollar bill and picking up the sink.

  ‘You hurry back, mister!’ she shouted, waving the saw-buck. That was practically a third of this week’s quota.

  She returned to the house in triumph to show off the fruits of her endeavor. They were duly impressed and Miss Tinkham set about printing the sign.

  ‘When I think of the stuff I’ve practically give away in that yard!’ Mrs. Feeley lamented. ‘But from here out, I’m gonna squeeze ’em for every cent they got! All it takes is a little nerve.’

  They had a beer to celebrate the first deposit in the jar that was to free the old homestead. As they rocked and sipped, Miss Tinkham gazed fixedly at an object suspended from the wall above the piano. Suddenly she jumped up.

  ‘May I pick some sweet peas and four-o’-clocks, Mrs. Feeley? I’ve just had a brilliant idea!’

  ‘Sure! What you aimin’ to do?’

  ‘You’ll see! You’ll see!’ said Miss Tinkham coyly.

  Later she went to her room and spent the rest of the afternoon doing things to the tray of flowers she had gathered. She emerged only in time to set the table for supper, which she did with a great deal of mysterious humming and smiling to herself.

  Mrs. Rasmussen had dug a large mess of dandelions in the back yard. Evidently the time had come for her to show her true prowess as a cutter of corners. The dandelions were cooked with a piece of bacon rind and seasoned tartly with vinegar. On each dish floated several slices of hard-cooked egg.

  ‘Just what we needs for a little spring tonic this time o’ year,’ she said. ‘An’ they don’t cost nothin’ neither!’

  She also served them a platter of beef liver and onions. Her method of dipping the liver into boiling water for a second or two before frying it made it as tender and tasty as calf’s liver. A large earthen casserole of macaroni and cheese accompanied the liver. Mrs. Rasmussen found a macaroni factory on G Street that sold broken and imperfect pieces of macaroni in all shapes and sizes for three cents a pound. She was glad, now that things were tightening up, that she had bought ten pounds. And before it slipped her mind, she must find out what day Old-Timer could drive her out in the truck to the groves for free grapefruit. She left no stone unturned, and knew from years of pinching pennies that the fruit-growers would give you all the fruit you could haul off during those last few days before the law required them to bury the surplus fruit in order not to leave it on the trees to breed fruit flies. She had often kept grapefruit from one year to the next by lining them up on the kitchen shelves, not touching each other.

  If you put a drop of wax in the stem end, they would keep indefinitely.

  ‘If I’d only do as good every day as I done today,’ Mrs. Feeley was saying, a dandelion dripping from the corner of her mouth, ‘it wouldn’t be long till we’d be outa the woods!’

  ‘We’ll make it!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said confidently. ‘I ain’t tippin’ my hand, but I ain’t gonna sit by an’ see a friend lose her home.’

  ‘I should say not!’ added Miss Tinkham. ‘Why, life just wouldn’t be the same anywhere else! I am only beginning to learn what it means to really live. If only they would rent my house! I would gladly turn every cent of the money over to the fund, Mrs. Feeley!’

  ‘I know you would. An’ don’t think I don’t appreciate you all standin’ by me like this. We ain’t never starved a winter yet. We may have to dig an’ grub a little bit this time, but they ain’t nothin’ got in this world without pains but dirt an’ long nails!’

  ‘That’s the Gawd’s truth,’ agreed Mrs. Rasmussen, looking a little regretfully at her own long, burgundy-tinted nails.

  The dinner dishes had been done and the three were rocking slowly, digesting their meal. From time to time, one of them would toss out a remark that showed they were all busy planning how to raise the money and still make ends meet about the house.

  ‘You know, I been figgerin’, it’s a hunert an’ twenty a month we gotta raise, besides our keep. Twenty-nine or thirty a week don’t sound like so much but when you look at it by the month, it sure comes high!’ Mrs. Rasmussen was still wrestling with the problem. ‘Now, I figger we can all live on my thirty-dollars-a-month pension money; then it’s up to us to scrape up somehow a hunert an’ twenty on top o’ that…for two months an’ a half!’

  ‘I expect to hear from my lawyer any day now and whatever he sends me, I’ll turn right over to you as treasurer, Mrs. Rasmussen.’ Miss Tinkham thought the will if not the deed ought to count for something.

  ‘Never thought I’d see the day I’d be lettin’ my friends support me,’ Mrs. Feeley said with a sigh. ‘But I’d sure be up Bitch Creek without you! We’re sure gonna miss our beer!’

  ‘Ain’t no use crossin’ no bridges till you come to ’em,’ Mrs. Rasmussen advised. ‘Besides, you never can tell when we’ll get a little windfall…like that case today.’

  ‘Wouldn’t a bottle taste good right now! Kinda takes your mind off your troubles!’

  They grinned at each other and Mrs. Rasmussen went to get the beer. After a bit Mrs. Feeley said:

  ‘Play us a piece, Miss Tinkham! Music is cheery-like! Might as well enjoy our home while we got it!’

  Miss Tinkham obliged, selecting only the gayest and jolliest tunes she knew. Mrs. Feeley felt lots better and finally sang a few verses of ‘Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie.’ The other two were delighted.

  ‘I never knew you could sing, Mrs. Feeley! You have a fine, robust voice!’ Miss Tinkham exclaimed.

  ‘Ain’t sung in years! Do you know “Dear Old Girl, the Robin Sings Above You”?’

  It appeared that Miss Tinkham did.

  After singing it through once, Mrs. Feeley wanted to know why they couldn’t ‘chord it’ a little.

  Mrs. Rasmussen sang what she called ‘second,’ a rather monotonous alto. Miss Tinkham supplied the tenor, good and high.

  ‘Now, ladies: all together! One, two—sing!’ Miss Tinkham was in her glory. Why couldn’t she have thought of this? After all, it was her own field.

  Mrs. Feeley gave out strong and loud with the tune and the others struggled along as best they could with the ‘harmony.’ They had just taken up the repeat when the back door opened and Old-Timer came in and sat down, attracted by the sounds of revelry by night. Mrs. Feeley waved her beer glass at him as a signal to help himself: she couldn’t stop now!

  ‘Mister always favored “Dear Old Pal o’ Mine,”’ Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  ‘Swell!’ cried Mrs. Feeley enthusiastically.

  They bore down hard on that, time after time, in love with the sound of their own voices.

  ‘My throat’s dry!’ Mrs. Feeley complained.

  They all decided that they needed to wet their whistles, too. So Old-Timer attended to the beer.

  Next they attacked ‘My Buddy,’ until Mrs. Rasmussen became all choked up with emotion and couldn’t sing, on account of Mister, him a veteran and all!

  ‘Never mind, my dear!’ consoled Mrs. Feeley. ‘We’ll sing somethin’ cheerful! How about “You Made Me What I Am Today, I Hope You’re Satisfied”?’
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  The intricacies of the harmony required full concentration from Mrs. Rasmussen and she soon recovered her composure.

  ‘Now to finish up good in honor of the President, let’s sing “Home on the Range.”’ A great theatrical director was lost in Mrs. Feeley.

  When they reached the chorus, they all turned round at once, attracted by a loud booming bass coming from the back of the room. It was Old-Timer lifting up his voice in song.

  ‘Well, now, it sure looks like the old sayin’ ’bout every cloud havin’ a silver linin’ is true! Who’d a said we’d a ended up this day singin’?’ The friends nodded at each other in agreement.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Mrs. Feeley mused. ‘We might as well finish the beer!’

  Chapter 11

  SATURDAY night finally rolled around. That was Miss Tinkham’s night to sell the corsages. All day she had been in her room doing mysterious things to the baskets of flowers she had picked early that morning.

  The gardenias were full of tight, green buds, but there were no open blooms. They had been blooming gallantly for weeks, but Miss Tinkham realized they could not stay in bloom indefinitely, so she hit upon a new scheme.

  Mrs. Rasmussen and Mrs. Feeley were counting the tax money on the kitchen table. They had not done as well as they expected to.

  ‘The junk sure don’t move fast when you want it to,’ Mrs. Feeley said. ‘We’re gonna have to do better’n this or we’ll never make it! All I’ve took in since that feller gimme ten dollars for the sink is twelve dollars.’

  ‘We’re eight dollars short for this week,’ the treasurer announced. ‘Say, if we was to have mush an’ milk for supper we could take today’s dollar an’ put it in the kitty! You know I ‘low a dollar a day for eats, an’ I ain’t touched today’s money. I was figgerin’ to get some cube steaks for supper, but they’ll taste all the better for Sunday dinner! What say?’

  Mrs. Feeley looked a trifle crestfallen, but she agreed.