“Paul,” he said gently, “you’ve got to realize that people can’t understand why you act the way you do. Just like the big boss at the mine not understanding me when I spoke up for all the miners not getting enough time off. I understand you, yes, but no one else does, and so you’ve got to act the way they expect you to.”
“But I’m glad Cousin Newfry is dead,” I said. “Aren’t you glad, too?”
His eyes watered more than ever. “Newfry was a guest in my house. He was my sister’s son. How can I be glad?”
“You got another vacation and—”
He clapped a hand over my mouth and looked around. “Leave us not say what our hearts feel,” he said solemnly, sounding just like the minister. “It is possible to rejoice within and mourn without. Do you follow me, Paul?”
“Sure, Uncle Phil,” I whispered when he took his hand away, awed by all his wisdom. “I follow you...”
By being kind and reasonable he taught me a lesson I never forgot. Uncle Phil had a way about him with children, and it’s too bad he never had any of his own, although I heard Mother often say thank God for that. I have to disagree with her, however. All she and Father thought was necessary to teach me something was with the back of a hand or the front of a stick. Uncle Phil was different. He used psychology, which is why I’ve never forgotten the things he taught me. That is why I say my Uncle Phil was a great man, with some shortcomings.
Anyway, I learned how to behave when people were dead, and that came in handy the following summer, when, in a period of perfect weather in July, Aunt Donora died.
Now, Aunt Donora was Uncle Phil’s wife. They seemed to get along real good, though Uncle Phil let his hair down with me a few times, but to everyone else he pretended everything was just fine between him and Aunt Donora. He would say, “Yes, dear” and “Right away, dear” and “Certainly, dear” and “You’re ever so right, dear.” But that was for public consumption. To me, his only confident, he related the miserable life he was living.
“It isn’t that I don’t love Donora. Paul,” he said, “but if she’d only quit nagging. She’s always finding fault. I don’t know why, because I never do anything wrong. Yet she nags me for putting ketchup in my soup and gravy on my salad. She nags me for picking between my toes. All I’m trying to do is have perfectly clean feet. I sleep better then.” He sighed deeply, and my heart went out to him. “I have a cross to bear, Paul, I really have.”
Well, anyway, that July he had just bought a car, one of those Model T’s with the shift pedals in the floor. I could never figure out which pedal was which. I only knew they made the car go. They sure were confusing. You had to have the emergency on, I think, to get it in low, and then leave the pedal out for it to go into high, or something like that. It really was confusing, and that was how Aunt Donora was killed.
Uncle Phil really wasn’t used to the shift pedals yet, having just bought the car. I know he was having trouble with the pedals, mixing up the low-and-high one with the reverse, and that’s how it happened. He took Aunt Donora for a ride out in the country, and the car got stuck or something, and Aunt Donora got out to push, with Uncle Phil driving, and he accidentally stepped on the wrong pedal, putting the car in reverse and running over poor Aunt Donora.
Of course, Uncle Phil got to have another vacation, no argument at all from the big boss down at the mine, since Aunt Donora was Uncle Phil’s wife. Uncle Phil even cried real tears, he was so broken up. I remembered what he had taught me, about how to act when people are dead, and I tell you, I didn’t do any smiling or laughing, and I behaved very well all through the services and afterwards at the cemetery. When it was all over, Uncle Phil patted me on the head and said I had learned real well.
“I sure hate to think of going back to work in the morning,” he told me when we were alone. “But I suppose, under the circumstances, it will be good for me to get out of the house for a few hours. Too many memories here. Poor Donora.” And he sniffled for real again.
By now I was starting to catch on, and so I began to play a little game, trying to figure out who it would be the next time Uncle Phil got the urge to have a vacation from the mine. The summer wore on, and autumn came. I figured that Uncle Phil would wait until next spring, at the earliest, because he liked his vacations when the weather was nice. But he fooled me. He picked the fall, bird season.
Uncle Jarvis — he was my uncle because he was Aunt Donora’s brother and Uncle Phil’s brother-in-law — anyway, Uncle Jarvis brought up something about some insurance Aunt Donora had that peeved Uncle Phil a little. But Uncle Phil wasn’t one to quarrel with anybody. I don’t think he spoke a single word in anger in all his life. He was gentle that way. He sure believed in live and let live. Anyway, he listened to what Uncle Jarvis had to say, and then they had a long discussion, and everything got patched up so that Uncle Phil and Uncle Jarvis were the best of friends that day late in October when they went hunting partridge.
The way this one happened was that somehow the barrel of Uncle Jarvis’s twelve-gauge got plugged up with mud, and when the went to shoot a partridge, the twelve-gauge exploded in Uncle Jarvis’ face. That didn’t surprise me at all. The surprise came when the sheriff interrupted Uncle Phil’s vacation and arrested him.
I don’t care what they say, but I’ll bet they gave poor Uncle Phil the third degree to make him talk. They say they found the same kind of mud that had exploded the twelve-gauge on Uncle Phil’s clothes and under his fingernails. Maybe, but how come Uncle Phil confessed to killing Cousin Newfry and Aunt Donora, too, just so he could have vacations from the mine? Don’t tell me they didn’t give Uncle Phil the third degree.
Anyway, just because Uncle Phil said he killed those people to get time off from his job, they sent him away to the state hospital at Winnebago. All the Smedleys thought this was something terrible, and none of them ever spoke Uncle Phil’s name again. I did a few times, at first, and promptly got licked each time.
I’ll never forget Uncle Phil. Like I said, he was a pioneer. He was the first in these parts to feel that a working man is entitled to some time off from his job and to do something about it. I’ll admit he was a little selfish, thinking mainly about a vacation for himself, but none of us are perfect.
Anyway, the unions finally came to the mines, and now that the miners are organized, they have their vacations every year, and with pay besides. But there are still some stubborn people who don’t think that it’s right for anyone to get time off from a job and be paid for it. Mr. Self, who owned the hardware and appliance store where I work, was one of these.
Mr. Self never did give in to our demands for a union. He fought it all along, because he wanted us to work six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. We had to like it or lose our jobs. Well, we finally got a few days off, because when me and Mr. Self were delivering a refrigerator to a second-floor apartment, the dolly to which the refrigerator was strapped slipped from my grip, and the refrigerator fell smack on top of Mr. Self and killed him.
72
One Down
Ed McBain
She leaned back against the cushions of the bed, and there was that lazy, contented smile on her face as she took a drag on her cigarette. The smoke spiralled around her face, and she closed her eyes sleepily. I remembered how I had once liked that sleepy look of hers. I did not like it now.