— You talk about adequate notice Mister Cohen, this went up right under our noses. The holy name of something or other, they play there every Wednesday night and park their cars right up in our hedge.
— I see yes because if he is that would indicate he is still a minor though I, I trust he’s not disabled?
— We’d better be thankful to still have the hedge. It deadens the noise from the road, James says.
— You might tell Mister Cohen about those two women who came pounding on the door last week, staring in through these living room windows they thought it would make a nice teen center.
— I see yes you see your nephew ladies, your nephew Edward, in the event he is still a minor, he…
— Looking in from the road they said it looked empty. Just what were they doing looking in from the road?
— To protect his interests as well as your own re, recalling Egnaczyk versus Rowland where the infant sought to recover his car and disaffirm the repair contract the infant lost out in this case ladies, the defense of infancy in this case ladies, in this case the court refused to permit it, using infancy as a sword instead of a shield… there! I heard something. Don’t I hear him now? your nephew coming downstairs at last?
— Edward?
— Hammering, Julia.
— Yes, it couldn’t be Edward. He left long ago, didn’t he Anne?
— I think I heard him leave when I was sewing that button on. He has class today you know, Mister Cohen. At the Jewish temple, rehearsing Wagner…
— He’s… left? You mean, while I’ve been waiting, you just let him go? He… I don’t understand…
— We don’t interfere with his comings and goings but don’t think we haven’t wondered ourselves. Why he wants to teach at the Jewish temple.
— And what’s got into them, doing Wagner.
— That table Mister Cohen, do be careful…
— You’re not leaving us?
— I’m, yes, leaving… leaving this waiver for him, for you… somebody to sign, and your, I mean his birth certificate, here is his card, if you will give it to me, I mean if you will give him my card Miss Bast and urge him to get in touch with me so I won’t have to… to inconvenience you further…
— Our counterfeit quarter, Julia, we wanted to show it to Mister Cohen. It was such a crude job, Mister Cohen, the copper showing right through at the edges, and one of our own tradesmen passed it on us. Can you see it, there on the mantel?
— I don’t think he can see a thing, Anne. But it wasn’t on the mantel this morning.
— That one sticks, Mister Cohen. You’d best use the side.
— It’s the side that sticks, Julia. He’d better use the back. Out through the kitchen Mister Cohen…
— And Mister Cohen…? Once you’re out there if you’ll just take a look? in the back? for the trees?
— And he might listen, Julia… pursued him through the presence of potatoes and green beans with strings like packing thread disintegrating with a smoked pork butt on the kitchen stove since near dawn, followed him as far as the corner of the house where a hanging gutter streaked clapboards and glass whenever it rained.
— I don’t think he’s paid us any attention. Just see him out there, my! He is in a hurry.
Avoiding an apple tree, its entire top blown out the year before, which redeemed itself now with a bumper crop of tasteless fruit in brave colors and curious shapes, — he looks like someone’s chasing him.
— He was certainly full of gossip, for a perfect stranger.
— I do wonder what James will have to say.
— James will say what he’s always said. He knows I’ve never believed it, for one.
— But even if you are right, Julia. If they weren’t married till Edward was born, he’s been Edward’s father all these years.
— You remember what Father used to say, the devil paying the piper for all the good tunes.
— Yes. There he goes now… The car crept up the drive past trees which appeared to stagger without even provocation of a breeze, rearing their splintered amputations in all directions, an atmosphere of calamity tempered, to the south, by a brooding bank of oak, by several high locusts serenely distinct against the sky in the west. — It was naughty of James.
— I hope he gets out through the hedge all right.
— Did you hear that crash last night? and the sirens? It’s a wonder they aren’t all killed.
— Listen…!
To the squeal of brakes, the car burst out into the world trailing a festoon of privet, swerved at the immediate prospect of open acres flowered in funereal abundance to regain the pavement and lose it again in a brief threat to the candy wrappers and beer cans nestled along the hedge line up the highway, that quickly out of sight to the windows’ half-shaded stare from the roof pitches frowning over the hedge to where it ended, and a yellow barn took up, and was gone in a swerving miss for the pepperidge tree towering ahead, past shadeless windows in a naked farmhouse sprawl at the corner where the road trimmed neatly into the suburban labyrinth and things came scaled down to wieldy size, dogwood, then barberry, becomingly streaked blood-red for fall.
Past the firehouse, where once black crêpe had been laboriously strung in such commemoration as that advertised today on the sign OUR DEAR DEPARTED MEMBER easy to hang and store as a soft drink poster, past the crumbling eyesore dedicated within recent memory as the Marine Memorial, past the graveled vacancy of a parking lot where a house, ravined by gingerbread, had held out till scarcely a week before, and through the center of town where all allusion to permanence had disappeared or was being slain within earshot by shrieking electric saws, and the glint of chrome that streaked the glass bank front across the resident image of bank furniture itself apparently designed to pick up and flee at a moment’s notice doors or no doors, opened, as they were now, to dispense the soft music hovering aimlessly about a man pasteled to match the furniture, crowding the high-bosomed brunette at the curb with — something, Mrs Joubert, something I’d meant to ask you but, oh wait a moment, there’s Mister Best, or Bast is it? Mister Bast…? He’s music appreciation, you know.
— He?
— What? Oh there, coming out? No, no that’s Vogel. Coach Vogel. You know him, the coach? Coach? Good morning…
— Good what? Oh, Whiteback. Good morning, didn’t see you. I just robbed your bank.
— I didn’t see you, called Mister Whiteback, and waved. — He what did he do? The sun in my eyes… It caught him flat across the lenses, erasing any life behind them in a flash of inner vacancy as he returned to — here, this young man coming here is Bast, you could probably tell he’s in the arts, can’t you. Mister Bast? I was just telling Mrs Joubert here, if she thinks she’s pressed for space you’ve had to rehearse all the way over to the Jewish temple since we had to take the cafeteria over for the driver training, right? Mister Bast is helping out Miss Flesch on her Ring to have it ready for Friday, the Foundation is sending out a team to give our whole in-school television program the once over and giving them a look at Miss Flesch’s Ring will give a real boost to the cultural aspect of, things. Not to slight your efforts Mrs Joubert. She has the new television course in, is it sixth grade social studies Miss Joubert? What’s in the paper bag, you haven’t robbed the bank, Mrs Joubert?
— This? No, it’s just money, she said, and shook the paper sack. — Not mine, my class. It’s what they’ve saved to buy a share in America. We’re taking a field trip in to the Stock Exchange to buy a share of stock. The boys and girls will follow its ups and downs and learn how our system works, that’s why we call it our share…
— In what.
— In America, yes, because actually owning it themselves they’ll feel…