When we went home on the train he didn’t talk much, and his hands were shaky and his eyes were red. Before we got to Arland he looked at me and said, like he was asking me for something, “You had a good time, Gevan boy. Remember that. You had a good time.”
I said, “Yes, I had a good time, Uncle Al.”
He leaned back and looked contented. I could remember that, the way he looked, and the way he always smelled of cigars and barber shops, and had a fresh flower in his lapel every day.
“Does Mr. Karch think he can vote Mottling out of there?”
Uncle Al seemed to come back from a distant place. I wondered how far his memory had ranged. “Oh, he says with my four thousand shares and what he had lined up among the old crowd, he can get Mottling out provided you don’t vote, Gevan. You vote with us and it’s a landslide. You vote with Mottling’s crowd and we lose. I don’t like that man. Guess that isn’t much of a reason.”
“Maybe it’s as good as any other, Uncle Al.”
His hand trembled visibly as he set his empty glass on the table. He said, indistinctly, “It hit me hard, Gevan, about Kenny. He was like me.”
There was a resentment in me as he repeated that. When Ken and I had been kids, Uncle Al had been one of our favorite people. He had talked to us as though we were people, never talking down to us. I remember a time at the lake when Ken and I got sore at each other. Uncle Al was very grave about it. He got the gloves and laced them neatly and timed the rounds. I know it must have amused him to see us flailing away at each other with such deadly seriousness — and so little damage. We had to shake hands after it was over, and he announced it was a draw.
Later we began to see Uncle Al in a different focus. Though my father never spoke of it directly, we learned he resented the idleness of his brother, resented that Uncle Al got an income due to Dad’s efforts. Ken and I began to see him as a sort of dapper and ridiculous grasshopper, a man of no true dignity whom we could no longer respect. He sensed the change in us, and we were never close to him again.
I sat and listened to his ramblings. I suddenly saw myself in a cruel, clear light. It often happens that way, I guess. A sudden analogy, a sudden and shocking increment of objectivity. I could no longer feel superior to Uncle Al. Though our reasons had been quite different, he and I had done precisely the same thing. Each of us had left our brother with the entire burden. There could be no dignity in us, and no self-respect. The world takes little cognizance of motivation. It is concerned with action. And what difference was there between an aimless and lonely old man and an aimless and lonely young man — both of them supported by the labor of others.
I had done to Ken precisely what Uncle Al had done to my father, and given Ken every reason for resentment. Yet I had no proof that he had resented my action in leaving him with the burden, a burden I was better qualified to handle. In that moment of realization I knew I had lost the chance to tell Ken this was the first time I had ever thought of myself in this way, ever seen exactly what I had done to him, and to myself. Someone had robbed me of my chance to tell Ken. I wanted whoever it was within reach of my hands, at that moment.
The old man talked on. I could no longer look at him with mild tolerance. He and I were one. He was what I could become once all sense of responsibility was deadened.
“I think of Kenny a lot,” he was saying. “It’s a damn shame, you know. He was a nice boy. Quiet. You were the noisy one. You were the one always getting the pair of you in scrapes. Always thought both of you would outlive me. I changed my will again yesterday, Gevan. I hadn’t thought about my will for years, until Kenny died. Had Sam Higbee fix it up again. You get everything I’ve got, Gevan. The stock and some property and there’ll be enough cash to take care of estate taxes. You were named after my dad, you know. Tough old man. Gevan Dean. You ought to go back, Gevan. You ought to go back to work, boy. You’ve taken four years off, I’ve — taken sixty.”
I looked toward the bar to give him a chance to get himself under control.
After long seconds he spoke again and his voice was more brisk. “From a practical point of view it would work, Gevan. Karch and Walter Granby would go along with it. I know there was trouble between you two boys, about that woman. With Kenny dead, that’s over. You’ve got no reason to stay away now, Gevan.”
“It’s still a reason, Uncle Al.”
“Nonsense! Good Lord, while you other Deans were running the business I got myself a liberal education in females. A woman like that is nothing to make a damn fool of yourself over. They had me to the house a lot of times. She’s one of the greedy ones.”
“What do you mean?”
“I shouldn’t talk about Kenny’s widow this way. But it’s between you and me. She’s one of those women who make the backs of your hands tingle. Like she wore a sandwich sign around with one word printed on it in big red letters. Sex. There are some like that who aren’t after anything, and those are the best kind. But she uses it like a lever to pry loose what she wants, and those are the dangerous ones. I don’t know what she wants. Money, security, position. She got all that when she married Kenny. But it didn’t relax her. She’s after more than that, and I don’t know what it is. Don’t think I’m just an old man rambling on and on and saying nothing. She isn’t obvious about it. The clever ones never are. You and Kenny were overmatched with that one. Out of your league. She pried on Kenny until she finally broke his mainspring. I don’t know how. Kenny gave up. He acted like there wasn’t anything left to live for. You watch out for her, Gevan, because I don’t know what she’s after...” His voice trailed off. He sat for a time, his lips moving in key with unspoken thoughts. He straightened up and looked at his watch.
“Gevan, it’s nice to see you. Charles, give this boy another drink on my tab.” He stood up and looked at his watch. “Got to get back into that game and get some of my money back.” For a moment he looked troubled. “I never seem to win any more. Funny thing. Must be a bad run of cards. Come around for dinner here some night. Any night.”
He went off, and it was a jaunty imitation of the brisk way he used to walk. The barman brought me another drink. The club was quiet, smelling of oiled wood, cigars, dust. Somebody was running a vacuum cleaner in one of the other rooms. The barman stood, heavy lidded, polishing a glass.
Kenny was the quiet one. The time mother went to California, Dad used to bring us here for dinner every night. It made us feel special to know women were never permitted in the club except once a year at a special party. We watched beefy men play handball, and we swam in the pool. Those were good years, in a safe world. I remembered we had played tag around the pool and Ken had fallen and cracked his head on the tile. The bump was on the back of his head and within minutes it was the size of an English walnut. Dad’s friends had examined it with awe, and complimented Ken on not crying. I remembered standing aside and wishing it had been me, and wondering if I would have cried.
I finished the drink and walked into the April sunlight of Thursday afternoon. The day had grown much warmer. Seeing Uncle Al had depressed me. My mind operated on two levels. On the deeper level was the Granby-Mottling problem, the choice that had to be made. Uppermost in my mind was the problem of Ken. Who had killed him with such devious care? Who had fired a lead slug into the back of his head? The same head had gone crack on the tile, and he had stood there in the long ago, his mouth rigid with the effort of repressing the tears, for we were in a place where there were men, and men of course did not cry. Ever.