The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown (the reader ebook TXT) đ
- Author: Fredric Brown
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âWallace Hunter,â said one of the coppers. His voice was rumbly like an el car a long way off. âWallace Hunter live here?â
I could hear Mom start breathing faster; I guess that was enough of an answer, and I guess the look on her face must have answered his âYouâuhâMrs. Wallace Hunter?â because he went right on. ââFraid itâs bad news, maâam. He wasâuhââ
âAn accident? Heâs hurtâorââ
âHeâs dead, maâam. He was dead when we found him. That isâwe think itâs your husband. We want you to come and identiâthat is, as soon as youâre able. Thereâs no hurry, maâam. We can come in and wait till youâre over the shock ofââ
âHow?â Momâs voice wasnât hysterical. It was flat, dead. âHow?â
âWellâuhââ
The other copperâs voice spoke. The voice that had asked me what floor fifteen was on.
âRobbery, maâam,â he said. âSlugged and rolled in an alley. About two oâclock last night, but his wallet was gone so it wasnât till this morning we found out whoâ_Catch her, Hank!â_
Hank must not have been fast enough. There was a hell of a loud thud. I heard Gardieâs voice, excited, then, and the coppers going on in. I donât know why, but I started for the door, my shoes still in my hand.
It closed in my face.
I went back to the stairs and sat down again. I put my shoes on, and then I just sat there. After awhile someone started down the stairs from the floor above. It was Mr. Fink, the upholsterer, who lived in the flat directly over ours. I moved close against the wall to give him plenty of room to pass me.
At the bottom of the flight, he stopped, one hand on the banister post and looked back at me. I didnât look at him; I watched his hand. It was a flabby hand, with dirty nails.
He said, âSomething wrong, Ed?â
âNo,â I told him.
He took his hand off the post and then put it on again. âWhy you sitting there, huh? Lost your job or something?â
âNo,â I said. âNothingâs wrong.â
âHell there ainât. You wouldnât be sitting there. Your old man get drunk and kick you out orââ
âLet me alone,â I said. âBeat it. Let me alone.â
âOkay, if you want to get snotty about it. I was just trying to be nice to you. You could be a good kid, Ed. You oughta break away from that drunken bum of a father of yoursââ
I got up and started down the steps toward him. I think I was going to kill him; I donât know. He took a look at my face and his face changed. I never saw a guy get so scared so quick. He turned around and walked off fast. I stayed standing there until I heard him going down the next flight.
Then I sat down again and put my head in my hands.
After awhile I heard the door of our flat open. I didnât move or look around through the banister, but I could tell by voices and footsteps that all four of them were leaving.
After all the sound had died away downstairs, I let myself in with my key. I turned on the fire under the kettle again. This time I put coffee in the dripolator and got everything ready, Then I went over to the window and stood looking out across the cement courtyard.
I thought about Pop, and I wished Iâd known him better.
Oh, weâd got along all right, weâd got along swell, but it came to me now that it was too late, how little I really knew him.
But it was as though I was standing a long way off looking at him, the little I really knew of him, and it seemed now that Iâd been wrong about a lot of things.
His drinking, mostly. I could see now that that didnât matter. I didnât know why he drank, but there must have been a reason. Maybe I was beginning to see the reason, looking out the window there. And he was a quiet drinker and a quiet man. Iâd seen him angry only a few times, and every one of those times heâd been sober.
I thought, you sit at a linotype all day and set type for A & P handbills and a magazine on asphalt road surfacing and tabular matter for a church council report on finances, and then you come home to a wife whoâs a bitch and whoâs been drinking most of the afternoon and wants to quarrel, and a stepdaughter whoâs an apprentice bitch.
And a son who thinks heâs a little bit better than you are because heâs a smart-aleck young punk who got honor grades in school and thinks he knows more than you do, and that heâs better.
And youâre too decent to walk out on a mess like that, and so what do you do? You go down for a few beers and you donât intend to get drunk, but you do. Or maybe you did intend to, and so what?
I remembered that there was a picture of Pop in their bedroom, and I went in and stood looking at it. It was taken about ten years ago, about the time they were married.
I stood looking at it. I didnât know him. He was a stranger to me. And now he was dead and Iâd never really know him at all.
*
When it was half-past ten and Mom and Gardie hadnât come back yet, I left. The flat had been an oven by then, and the streets, with the sun coming almost straight down, were baking hot too. It was a scorcher all right.
I walked west on Grand Avenue, under the el.
I passed a drugstore and I thought, I ought to go in and phone the Elwood Press and tell them I wasnât going to be in today. And that Pop wouldnât be there either. And then I thought the hell with it; I should have phoned at eight oâclock and they know by now weâre not coming.
And I didnât know yet what to tell them about when Iâd be back. But mostly I just didnât want to talk to anybody yet. It wasnât completely real, like it would begin to be when Iâd have to start telling people, âPopâs dead.â
It was the same with the police and thinking and talking about the funeral thereâd have to be, and everything. Iâd waited for Mom and Gardie to come back, but I was glad they hadnât. I didnât want to see them, either.
Iâd left a note for Mom telling her I was going to Janesville to tell Uncle Ambrose. Now that Pop was dead, she couldnât say anything about my telling his only brother.
It wasnât so much that I wanted Uncle Ambrose; going to Janesville was mostly an excuse for getting away, I guess.
On Orleans Street I cut down to Kinzie and across the bridge, and down Canal to the C&NW Madison Street Station. The next St. Paul train that went through Janesville was at eleven-twenty. I bought a ticket and sat down in the station and waited.
I bought early afternoon editions of a couple of papers and looked through them. There wasnât any mention of Pop, not even a few lines on an inside page.
Things like that must happen a dozen times a day in Chicago, I thought. They donât rate ink unless itâs a big-shot gangster or somebody important. A drunk rolled in an alley, and the guy who slugged him was muggled up and hit too hard or didnât care how hard he hit.
It didnât rate ink. No gang angle. No love nest.
The morgue gets them by the hundred. Not all murders, of course. Bums who go to sleep on a bench in Bughouse Square and donât wake up. Guys who take tencent beds or two-bit partitioned rooms in flophouses and in the morning somebody shakes them to wake them up, and the guyâs stiff, and the clerk quickly goes through his pockets to see if heâs got two bits or four bits or a dollar left, and then he phones for the city to come and get him out. Thatâs Chicago.
And thereâs the jig found carved with a shiv in an areaway on South Halsted Street and the girl who took laudanum in a cheap hotel room. And the printer who had too much to drink and had probably been followed out of the tavern because thereâd been green in his wallet and yesterday was payday.
If they put things like that in the paper, people would get a bad impression of Chicago, but that wasnât the reason they didnât put them in. They left them out because there were too many of them. Unless it was somebody important or somebody died in a spectacular way or there was a sex angle.
Like the percentage girl who probably took the laudanum somewhere last nightâor maybe it was iodine or an overdose of morphine or, if she was desperate enough, even rat poisonâshe could have had a day of glory in the press. She could have jumped out of a high window into a busy street, waiting on a ledge until she got an audience gathered, and the cops trying to get her back in, and until the newspapers had time to get cameramen there. Then she could have jumped and landed in a bloody mess but with her skirts up around her waist as she lay dead on the sidewalk for a good pic for the photographers.
I left the newspapers on the bench and walked out the front door and stood there watching the people walk by on Madison Street.
It isnât the fault of the newspapers, I thought. The papers just give these people what they want. Itâs the whole goddam town, I thought; I hate it.
I watched the people go by, and I hated them. When they looked smug or cheerful, like some of them did, I hated them worse. They donât give a damn, I thought, what happens to anybody else, and thatâs why this is a town in which a man canât walk home with a few drinks under his belt without getting killed for a few lousy bucks.
Maybe it isnât the town, even, I thought. Maybe most people are like that, everywhere. Maybe this town is worse just because itâs bigger.
I was watching a jewelerâs clock across the street and when it got to be seven minutes after eleven, I went back through the station. The St. Paul train was loading, and I got on and got a seat.
It was as hot as hell in the train. The car filled quickly and a fat woman sat beside me and crowded me against the window. People were standing in the aisles. It wasnât going to be a good trip. Funny, no matter how far down you are mentally, physical discomforts can make you feel worse.
I wondered, what am I doing this for anyway? I should get off, go home, and face the music. Iâm just running away. I can send Uncle Ambrose a telegram.
I started to get up, but the train began to move.
The carnival lot was mechanized noise. The merry-go-roundâs calliope fought with the loudspeakers on the freak show platform, with the thunder of an amplified bass drum booming out a call to bally for the jig show. Under the
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