“Good evening.” Liz turned to E.J. “For heaven’s sake, are you going to come in?” Her voice was low and hard.
“Sure.” Elwood reached out listlessly for the door. “I’m coming in. Goodnight, Joe.”
“Goodnight,” Hunt said. He watched the two of them go inside. The door closed, the light went off. Hunt shook his head. “Funny guy,” he murmured. “Getting funnier all the time. Like he’s in a different world. Him and his boat!”
He went indoors.
“She was just eighteen,” Jack Fredericks said, “but she sure knew what it was all about.”
“Those southern girls are that way,” Charlie said. “It’s like fruit, nice soft, ripe, slightly damp fruit.”
“There’s a passage in Hemingway like that,” Ann Pike said. “I can’t remember what it’s from. He compares a—”
“But the way they talk,” Charlie said. “Who can stand the way those southern girls talk?”
“What’s the matter with the way they talk?” Jack demanded. “They talk different, but you get used to it.”
“Why can’t they talk right?”
“What do you mean?”
“They talk like—colored people.”
“It’s because they all come from the same region,” Ann said.
“Are you saying this girl was colored?” Jack said.
“No, of course not. Finish your pie.” Charlie looked at his wristwatch. “Almost one. We have to be getting on back to the office.”
“I’m not finished eating,” Jack said. “Hold on!”
“You know, there’s a lot of colored people moving into my area,” Ann said. “There’s a real estate sign up on a house about a block from me. ‘All races welcomed.’ I almost fell over dead when I saw it.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. What can we do?”
“You know, if you work for the Government they can put a colored man or a Chinese next to you,” Jack said, “and you can’t do anything about it.”
“Except quit.”
“It interferes with your right to work,” Charlie said. “How can you work like that? Answer me.”
“There’s too many pinks in the Government,” Jack said. “That’s how they got that, about hiring people for Government jobs without looking to see what race they belong to. During WPA days, when Harry Hopkins was in.”
“You know where Harry Hopkins was born?” Ann said. “He was born in Russia.”
“That was Sidney Hillman,” Jack said.
“It’s all the same,” Charlie said. “They all ought to be sent back there.”
Ann looked curiously at Ernest Elwood. He was sitting quietly, reading his newspaper, not saying anything. The cafeteria was alive with movement and noise. Everyone was eating and talking, coming and going, back and forth.
“E.J., are you all right?” Ann said.
“Yes.”
“He’s reading about the White Sox,” Charlie said. “He has that intent look. Say, you know, I took my kids to the game the other night, and—”
“Come on,” Jack said, standing up. “We have to get back.”
They all rose. Elwood folded his newspaper up silently, putting it into his pocket.
“Say, you’re not talking much,” Charlie said to him as they went up the aisle. Elwood glanced up.
“Sorry.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Do you want to come over Saturday night for a little game? You haven’t played with us for a hell of a long time.”
“Don’t ask him,” Jack said, paying for his meal at the cash register. “He always wants to play queer games like deuces wild, baseball, spit in the ocean—”
“Straight poker for me,” Charlie said. “Come on, Elwood. The more the better. Have a couple of beers, chew the fat, get away from the wife, eh?” He grinned.
“One of these days we’re going to have a good old stag party,” Jack said, pocketing his change. He winked at Elwood. “You know the kind I mean? We get some gals together, have a little show—” He made a motion with his hand.
Elwood moved off. “Maybe. I’ll think it over.” He paid for his lunch. Then he went outside, out on to the bright pavement. The others were still inside, waiting for Ann. She had gone into the powder room.
Suddenly Elwood turned and walked hurriedly down the pavement, away from the cafeteria. He turned the corner quickly and found himself on Cedar Street, in front of a television store. Shoppers and clerks out on their lunch hour pushed and crowded past him, laughing and talking, bits of their conversations rising and falling around him like waves of the sea. He stepped into the doorway of the television shop and stood, his hands in his pockets, like a man hiding from the rain.
What was the matter with him? Maybe he should go see a doctor. The sounds, the people, everything bothered him. Noise and motion everywhere. He wasn’t sleeping enough at night. Maybe it was something in his diet. And he was working so damn hard out in the yard. By the time he went to bed at night he was exhausted. Elwood rubbed his forehead. People and sounds, talking, streaming past him, endless shapes moving in the streets and stores.
In the window of the television shop a big television set blinked and winked a soundless program, the images leaping merrily. Elwood watched passively. A woman in tights was doing acrobatics, first a series of splits, then cartwheels and spins. She walked on her hands for a moment, her legs waving above her, smiling at the audience. Then she disappeared and a brightly dressed man came on, leading a dog.
Elwood looked at his watch. Five minutes to one. He had five minutes to get back to the office. He went back to the pavement and looked around the corner. Ann and Charlie and Jack were no place to be seen. They had gone on. Elwood walked slowly along, past the stores, his hands in his pockets. He stopped for a moment in front of the ten cent store, watching the milling women pushing and shoving around the imitation jewelry counters, touching things, picking them up, examining them. In the window of a drugstore he stared at an advertisement for athlete’s foot, some kind of a powder, being sprinkled between two cracked and blistered toes. He crossed the street.
On the other side he paused to look at a display of women’s clothing, skirts and blouses and wool sweaters. In a color photograph a handsomely dressed girl was removing her blouse to show the world her elegant bra. Elwood passed on. The next window was suitcases, luggage and trunks.
Luggage. He stopped, frowning. Something wandered through his mind, some loose vague thought, too nebulous to catch. He felt, suddenly, a deep inner urgency. He examined his watch. Ten past one. He was late. He hurried to the corner and stood waiting impatiently for the light to change. A handful of men and women pressed past him, moving out to the curb to catch an oncoming bus. Elwood watched the bus. It halted, its doors opening. The people rushed on to it. Suddenly Elwood joined them, stepping up the steps of the bus. The doors closed behind him as he fished out change from his pocket.
A moment later he took his seat, next to an immense old woman with a child on her lap. Elwood sat quietly, his hands folded, staring ahead and waiting, as the bus moved off down the street, moving towards the residential district.
When he got home there was no one there. The house was dark and cool. He went to the bedroom and got his old clothes from the closet. He was just going out into the back yard when Liz appeared in the driveway, her arms loaded with groceries.
“E.J.!” she said. “What’s the matter? Why are you home?”
“I don’t know. I took some leave. It’s all right.”
Liz put her packages down on the fence. “For heaven’s sake,” she said irritably. “You frightened me.” She stared at him intently. “You took leave?”
“Yes.”
“How much does that make, this year? How much leave have you taken in all?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Well, is there any left?”
“Left for what?”
Liz stared at him. Then she picked up her packages and went inside the house, the back door banging after her. Elwood frowned. What was the matter? He went on into the garage and began to drag lumber and tools out on to the lawn, beside the boat.