‘How come I’m s’pposed to – form’lly?’
‘How come you ain’t s’ppose to, what I want to know,’ she insisted, feeling the whisky move. When she put it that way Sparrow realized he was supposed to meet Old Husband all along. It seemed then that Old Husband had been waiting politely to meet Solly Saltskin a long time and now was his big chance to give the old man the break he deserved. Old Man worked too hard, he deserved something to happen to him in his declining years. All the people worked too hard, all the people deserved something nice in their declining years. He ought to do more for the people, they had such a hard way to go.
‘That’s right,’ he agreed at length, ‘form’l obligation.’
‘Shamed myself, you never met Old Man,’ Vi confessed, taking the key and opening the door herself.
Inside she threw off her coat, unmindful that she wore only a sheer nightgown underneath; but then it was so warm and everyone was such old friends. From the bedroom came a low warning rumbling as if the Garfield Park Express were running straight through the house.
‘Change cars in there!’ she called good-naturedly. Yet something about Old Husband sleeping in there like a child, so alone, filled her with such a rush of tenderness for him as she had never before felt. As soon as she had finished making a sandwich for Sparrow she made one for Stash out of the crusts, so that it would look like a big bargain. He had to wake up pretty soon anyhow if he were ever to meet Sparrow.
‘Look, it’s Christmas awready!’ she cheered Old Husband awake. ‘We got Sparrow for comp’ny ’stead of Santa Claus – ain’t that wonderful?’
He wasn’t yet sufficiently wide awake to tell how wonderful it all was. Just poked his frightened old eyes about the room, so suddenly filled with light and harsh cries that had been so dark and still with sleep but one moment before.
‘Where you gone?’ he asked at last.
‘Ain’t gone, been awready,’ she saw him start at something over her shoulder, then droop one eyelid to see the apparition better. ‘What is?’ Old Husband wanted to know.
‘That’s him, that’s Sparrow, honey – didn’t I ever tell you about Sparrow? Sparrow! I never even to-old him a thingg.’ Her giggle alone would have betrayed more than whisky to anyone but Old Creep Stash.
While Sparrow, with the light from the night-bulb against his glasses making his face strangely featureless, was saying something real nice, anyone could see. It wasn’t clear just what because his mug was stuffed with Polish sausage and its string was dangling from the corner of his mouth. A fellow could choke that way, just saying something nice.
‘Shall I make you another, lover?’ Violet wanted to know.
Under the night light’s pale green glow Lover nodded. ‘Yup. Two more. Wit’ little ginny pigs ’n ketchup all togedder.’
‘Dronk t’ings,’ Old Creep disapproved, scraping his toes about the carpet in a vague hope of finding slippers there. ‘Is bad, not drassed,’ he added, reddening at the spectacle of his own wife cavorting about before a stranger in nothing but a sheer nightgown. What kind of big bargain was that?
‘You boys talk over old times together,’ Violet suggested lightly, making another dash for the kitchen.
Sparrow sat on the bed’s edge beside this Stash, feeling remotely troubled. Then realized where his trouble lay and removed one slice of bread off the sandwich, wiped the mustard off carefully upon Stash’s sheet, gave the opposing slice the same treatment and resumed chewing. ‘Don’t like mustard,’ he explained.
‘I got hard day,’ Stash asserted, eying the string dangling so unevenly from the corner of the punk’s mouth; as if that held some solution for the peculiar way in which things were being run by Stash Koskozka’s house this night.
‘You like mustard?’ Sparrow asked, to keep the conversation sprightly.
‘Don’t like mustard, don’t like sandrich, don’t like comp’ny,’ Stash challenged him boldly, ‘all too t’in.’
Sparrow shifted the string a bit to show he was thinking that over. Then let it down and rolled it neatly back up to show he was shrugging, sustaining this yo-yo-like indifference until Violet returned with his second sandwich.
‘Don’t want sandrich,’ Stash persisted, growing petulant – then saw it hadn’t ever been intended for him and, perversely as a child, just to keep Sparrow from having it, grabbed at it so abruptly that the sausage slid out and slipped down his winter underwear to lodge loosely into the top of his heavy winter socks, making a bulge there the size of an ankle and leaving a light trail, like an insect’s trail, down the underwear.
‘Goofy t’ing, you make clomsy by me,’ Stash scolded the spot Sparrow had left on the sheet. It was, he perceived, Polish sausage that was to blame for everything tonight.
‘You shouldn’t wear your underwear to bed anyhow,’ Violet reproached the old man, ‘you’d sleep better in pajamas.’
‘After all,’ Sparrow mocked him, ‘he ain’t so young you should wake him four o’clock by morning, he should make glad for you because pretty soon is Christmas, ain’t it?’
Stash chose to overlook the mockery. With unruffled poise he fitted his upper plate into place and shuffled it loosely about a moment to make it fit securely. The sucking sounds he made to get it into place irritated Violet like fingernails screeching down a blackboard.
‘After all the work I went to,’ she mourned her marriage tardily now, ‘gettin’ out of bed in the middle of the night to make my husband a snack ’n what does he do but slap it out of my hand ’n call me “goofy t’ing” – I got a good Polish education ’n I married the biggest dummy ever walked in shoeleather’ – she turned on Stash – ‘get up ’n wash the peanuts off! Get up ’n take last mont’s bat’!’
Yes, it had been just about the finest sandwich a loyal little wife could make her man but instead of thanking a person he just sat sucking his teeth in front of the first real company she’d had in days.
‘No-good t’ing,’ Stash insisted, distressed by the mild itching of the mustard drying between his toes, and brought his knee up to investigate that itch at the precise moment that Vi bent to retrieve the sandwich. The bone caught her over the eye.
That did it. That was all she had, subconsciously, been waiting for since her unconsummated honeymoon.
‘You done that a-purpose!’ she gasped, and cracked him across the upper plate with the flat of the carpet slipper. ‘Let’s see who’s the clumsy t’ing,’ she challenged him, feeling the whisky rise in her throat with her rage, and Sparrow shifted a bit to give Stash room enough to fling the retrieved sandwich, mustard, ketchup, pickles and all straight into Violet’s face and down the shadowed hollow of her gown.
Sparrow looked so sorry. He didn’t like to see food wasted that way. Before he could recover even a small section of the sausage Vi gave the old man the slipper again, the upper plate popped out and he yelped like a lashed pup expecting more. You could see Stash’s lip beginning to swell, he put a hand to it tentatively but she slapped the hand down. He clasped the pillow about his ears protectively. You couldn’t treat a hard-working man this way.
‘Work all day, seven days, no days off, buy nize t’ings by howz,’ he sobbed brokenly, ‘pay grocernia, pay buczernia, pay mens I don’t even know what’s for, comes time to sleep everyt’ing all paid ’n nize clean howz so ever’body sleep – who comes by howz from whisky tavern?’ A drop of blood mixed with sweat and tears dropped down the point of his tiny chin. ‘Mrs No-good wit’ dronk pocket-picker! Should be in bed by hoosband, hits by hoosband instead on head ’n makes funny: “Is Christmas, now we fight all night!” Is somethin’ got to happen, is all.’