At 4.15, he had sauntered into the telegraph office. It was his day off. He had made some amusing jokes, really clever, and had invited Eldora to join him in a smoke. Since Eldora did not dare to smoke publicly-one of her father’s Baptist friends might see her-she suggested to Roger that they retire to the tiny store-room in the rear. The telegraph office was rarely visited at this hour, and if it was, the bell over the door would ring and warn Eldora.
Now it was 5.15, and Eldora was still in the store-room with Roger. She had smoked two cigarettes, and he had smoked three. Not once had the front doorbell disturbed them. They had talked, and finally he had pulled her down on his lap, rocking precariously on the old swivel chair. He had kissed her neck, and the cleft between her breasts, until she thought that she would die of ecstasy, and now he had slid his hand under her dress.
‘Wait,’ she said, ‘wait, Roger-’
She jumped off his lap, and ran to the store-room door, closed it, and bolted it from the inside. She would not be able to hear the bell, but there could be excuses if she was reported, and she did not care, anyway, At once, she returned, and settled in Roger’s lap, and closed her eyes. More boldly, his hand rubbed under her dress again, over her plump thigh, until his fingers touched the fringe of her pants.
Her eyes were still shut. ‘Roger,’ she whispered, ‘you can do that-but nothing else.’
‘Aw honey-’
She opened her eyes. ‘I mean it, Roger. I’m a lady.’
‘Okay, sweetie-’
He kissed the hollow of her neck, and she closed her eyes once more and hugged him tightly, and his hands moved slowly beneath her pants.
Neither one of them heard the front doorbell.
The front door had been opened, and the bell sounded, by Jake Binninger, the stubby, myopic, eager reporter, rewrite man, clipper of exchange newspapers, and advertising salesman of the Weekly Independent, next door.
He always appeared frenetic, but now a new dimension of enthusiastic agitation seemed to have been added. In his hand he carried a slip from the teletype machine, which was fed by a national news wire. He searched the room for Eldora, and could see her nowhere.
‘Eldora?’
There was no response. He quickly reasoned that she had run out for a cup of coffee. Nevertheless, he was determined not to leave without confirmation of the incredible dispatch in his hand. According to the dispatch, the notification had been sent to Miller’s Dam by telegram. There must be a carbon of the telegram. Jake Binninger wanted the confirmation-the story was the biggest thing that had happened to anyone in Miller’s Dam since the Pike’s Creek murder, a decade ago-and, if true, he wanted the exact contents of that wire.
He circled the desk, found Eldora’s list of deliveries-there had been only six this day, and not one the one he sought-and then, almost as an afterthought, he began to read the messages in the machine.
He found it at once, gave an exclamation of pleasure, and speedily brought out his pencil and copied the wording of the wire on the bottom of his teletype sheet.
IN RECOGNITION OF YOUR POWERFUL AND SIGNIFICANT WRITINGS IN SUPPORT OF HUMANITARIAN IDEALS AND IN ESPECIAL APPRECIATION OF YOUR EPICAL NOVELS THE PERFECT STATE AND ARMAGEDDON THE NOBEL FOUNDATION OF STOCKHOLM ON BEHALF OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY IS PLEASED TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE TODAY BEEN VOTED THIS YEARS NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE STOP THE PRIZE WILL BE A GOLD MEDALLION AND A CHEQUE FOR FIFTY THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS STOP THE AWARD CEREMONY WILL TAKE PLACE IN STOCKHOLM ON DECEMBER TENTH STOP DETAILS FOLLOW STOP HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS STOP
The message was addressed to MISTER ANDREW CRAIG SEVENTY SEVEN WHEATON ROAD MILLERS DAM WISCONSIN…
It was 5.20, and they had been conversing and playing gin rummy for two hours, when Lucius Mack realized that his companion was about to pass out.
Andrew Craig’s long fingers woodenly clamped onto the cards, fanned out erratically, in his hand. Carefully, too carefully, he laid the cards face down, fumbled for the fifth of Scotch, and emptied the last drops in his glass, hitting the rim slightly so that some of the liquor dribbled onto the table. He put the bottle down, then lifted the glass with its inch of liquor, and considered it blankly.
Lucius Mack saw that Craig was too intoxicated to bring the glass to his lips.
‘I think I’ve had about enough, Andrew,’ said Mack tactfully. ‘Let’s pick up this game tomorrow. I’ve got to get back to the shop.’
Craig lifted his head with effort and tried to focus his glazed eyes on his friend. ‘Somebody’s got to keep-to keep-wheels of industry turning,’ he said thickly. He managed to swallow the last dregs of his bottle.
Mack pushed back his chair, and rose. ‘Like to lie down a bit?’
‘Like nothing better, Florence Nightingale,’ said Craig. ‘No games. I’m stoned, and we both know it, an’-and I like it.’
Mack came around the table to Craig, prepared to assist him out of the chair, but in a gesture of self-respect, Craig set his hands on the table and heaved himself upright. Standing, he swayed precariously, and flattened his hand against the wall to stop himself from falling.
He narrowed his eyes, to find Mack, and then smiled. ‘You’re good, Lucius-good guy.’ He remembered his duties as a host. ‘Sure you had enough to drink?’
‘Too much, with a night’s work ahead.’
‘Someday I’d like to say jus’-just that-“Too much, with a night’s work ahead.” ’
‘You will, Andrew, believe me.’
Craig removed his steadying hand from the wall, and tried to take a step toward the bed, but he staggered. Mack caught his arm firmly, supporting him. Craig conceded defeat. ‘Got the dizzies. All the juice gone down to my pins.’
Mack slowly led the author to the bed, then helped lower him to a sitting position. The instant that he made contact with the mattress, Craig fell back on a portion of the pillow. Easily, efficiently, as he had done so many times in the past, Mack lifted his friend’s long legs from the floor and settled them on the bed. Then he removed Craig’s leather moccasins and placed them neatly under the night table.
Briefly, he stood over Craig and examined him. The prostrated figure, rangy and surprisingly muscular for one so committed to self-destruction, was clothed in an old, grey T-shirt and soft corduroy slacks. Mack decided that his friend would be more comfortable this way than in pyjamas. Despite the heat blowing in from the floor furnace vent, the autumn chill crept through the window cracks, and Craig would require warmth.
Lucius Mack returned to the table, and set about cleaning it up-Leah, Craig’s sister-in-law, downstairs, could not tolerate a mess. Mack gathered the playing cards into a deck and stuffed them into the box. He dropped the empty Scotch bottle beside the other one in the waste-paper basket. He took the two glasses into the bathroom, rinsed and dried them, and then placed them on top of Craig’s green file cabinet.
This done, Lucius Mack stood in the centre of the room and surveyed it. He liked the narrow, brown, cosy room, beneath the house’s gable, and it was as much his own as the rooms he kept in the Perkins boarding-house. His eyes took in the rolltop desk, and covered typewriter, so long unused, and the five shelves of books, mostly reference and history, with the uppermost shelf reserved for Craig’s own four novels, in the American, English, and odd foreign editions.
Lucius Mack had known the Craigs, or Craig, more than five years, and for more than two of them he had known Craig intimately. It hardly seemed eight years ago when Andrew and Harriet Craig-he so boyish, with only two novels published and a third one planned-had arrived to make their residence in Miller’s Dam. They had bought the Hartog place, this place, on ‘ Wheaton Road, and renovated it, and in the beginning had kept to themselves, rather like honeymooners. Lucius Mack had met Harriet Craig one morning in the first month of their residence, when she had visited the newspaper to place a classified advertisement for a daily help. Memory usually dimmed with the years, but Mack still retained what had impressed him then: a dark blonde, quiet and self-possessed, with a pleasing, almost gay Slavic face, all features broad but regular-he had guessed that her antecedents were Lithuanian. She had been of medium height, perhaps more, and only seemed smaller side by side with Craig, whose lanky body went up six feet. She had been generously endowed, the full figure of a woman in every way, with a certain solidity that seemed to settle well against the Wisconsin landscape.