“And the lawyer said, ‘Where would you get it?’ and Danny said, ‘Just set me down back home for ten minutes. I’ll show you.’ ‘Seventy-five bucks,’ he says, telling me that was all of it.
Then the lawyer says that was neither here nor there and so I telephoned to Mrs. Zilich and told her to tell Sister to go to Mr. Pinckski and ask him to let her take back some of the coffin money; he could put the name plate back on the coffin she had last year or maybe the year before, and as soon as I could get some money on my insurance policy I would pay Mr. Pinckski back and some interest too. I telephoned from the jail, but I didn’t say where I was telephoning from; I just said we would need some money quick.”
“What was he in for this time?” the young man said.
“He wasn’t in jail the other time, about them clothes off that line. That woman was lying about him. After we paid the money, she admitted she was probably mistaken.”
“All right,” the young man said. “What was he in for?”
“They called it grand larceny and killing a policeman. They framed him, them others did that didn’t like him. He was just wild. That was all. He was a good boy. When Sister died he couldn’t come to the funeral. But he sent a wreath that must have cost $200 if it cost a cent. By air mail, with the high postage in the . . .”
His voice died away; he looked at the young man with a kind of pleased astonishment. “I’ll declare I made a joke. But I didn’t mean—”
“Sure. I know you didn’t mean to make a joke. What about the jail?”
“The lawyer was already there when I got there. Some friends had sent the lawyer to help him. And he swore to me on his mother’s name that he wasn’t even there when the cop got shot. He was in Orlando at the time. He showed me a ticket from Orlando to Waycross that he had bought and missed the train; that was how he happened to have it with him. It had the date punched in it, the same night the policeman got killed, showing that Danny wasn’t even there and that them other boys had framed him.
He was mad. The lawyer said how he would see the friends that had sent him to help Danny and get them to help. ‘By God, they better,’ Danny said. ‘If they think I’m going to take this laying down they better—’
“Then the lawyer got him quiet again, like he did when Danny was talking about that money the man he worked for or something had held out on him back in New York. And so I telephoned Mrs. Zilich, so as not to worry Sister, and told her to go to Mr. Pinckski.
Two days later I got the telegram from Mrs. Zilich. I guess Mrs. Zilich hadn’t never sent a telegram before and so she didn’t know she had ten words without counting the address because it just said You and Danny come home quick Mrs. Sophie Zilich New York.
“I couldn’t make nothing out of it and we talked it over and the lawyer said I better go and see, that he would take care of Danny till I got back. So we fixed up a letter from Danny to Sister, for Mrs. Zilich to read to her, about how Danny was all right and getting along fine—”
V
At that moment there entered the room a man in the uniform of the railway company. As he entered, from about him somewhere — behind, above — a voice came. Though it spoke human speech it did not sound like a human voice, since it was too big to have emerged from known man and it had a quality at once booming, cold, and forlorn, as though it were not interested in nor listening to what it said.
“There,” the old man said.
He and the young man turned and looked back across the benches, as most of the other heads had done, as though they were all dummies moved by a single wire. The man in uniform advanced slowly into the room, moving along the first bench. As he did so the men on that bench and on the others began to rise and depart, passing the man in uniform as though he were not there; he too moving on into the room as if it were empty. “I guess we’ll have to move.”
“Hell,” the young man said. “Let him come in and ask for them. They pay him to do it.”
“He caught me the other night. The second time, too.”
“What about that? This time won’t make but three. What did you do then?”
“Oh, yes,” the old man said. “I knew that was the only thing to do, after that telegram. Mrs. Zilich wouldn’t have spent the money to telegraph without good reason. I didn’t know what she had told Sister.
I just knew that Mrs. Zilich thought there wasn’t time to write a letter and that she was trying to save money on the telegram, not knowing she had ten words and the man at the telegraph office not telling her better. So I didn’t know what was wrong. I never suspicioned it at all. That was what confused me, you see.”
He turned and looked back again toward the man in uniform moving from bench to bench while just before him the men in mismated garments, with that identical neatness of indigence, with that identical air of patient and indomitable forlornness, rose and moved toward the exit in a monstrous and outrageous analogy to flying fish before the advancing prow of a ship.
“What confused you?” the young man said.
“Mrs. Zilich told me. I left Danny in the jail. (Them friends that sent him the lawyer got him out the next day. When I heard from him again, he was already in Chicago, with a good job; he sent that wreath. I didn’t know he was even gone from the jail until I tried to get word to him about Sister), and I come on to New York. I had just enough money for that, and Mrs. Zilich met me at the station and told me. At this station right here. It was snowing that night, too. She was waiting at the top of the steps.
“‘Where’s Sister?’ I said. ‘She didn’t come with you?’
“‘What is it now?’ Mrs. Zilich said. ‘You don’t need to tell me he is just sick.’
“‘Did you tell Sister he ain’t just sick?’ I said. ‘I didn’t have to,’ Mrs. Zilich said. ‘I didn’t have time to, even if I would have.’ She told about how it was cold that night and so she waited up for Sister, keeping the fire going and a pot of coffee ready, and how she waited till Sister had took off her coat and shawl and was beginning to get warm, setting there with a cup of coffee; then Mrs. Zilich said, ‘Your brother telephoned from Florida.’ That’s all she had time to say. She never even had to tell Sister how I said for her to go to Mr. Pinckski, because Sister said right off, ‘He will want that money.’ Just what I had said, you see.
“Mrs. Zilich noticed it too. ‘Maybe it’s because you are kin, both kin to that—’ Then she stopped and said, ‘Oh, I ain’t going to say anything about him. Don’t worry. The time to do that is past now.’ Then she told me how she said to Sister, ‘You can stop there on the way down this afternoon and see Mr. Pinckski.’ But Sister was already putting on her coat and shawl again and her not an hour home from work and it snowing. She wouldn’t wait.”
“She had to take back the coffin money, did she?” the young man said.
“Yes. Mrs. Zilich said that her and Sister went to Mr. Pinckski and woke him up. And he told them that Sister had already taken the money back.”
“What?” the young man said. “Already?”
“Yes. He said how Danny had come to him about a year back, with a note from Sister saying to give Danny the money that she had paid in to Mr. Pinckski and that Mr. Pinckski did it. And Sister standing there with her hands inside her shawl, not looking at anything until Mrs. Zilich said, ‘A note? Mrs. Gihon never sent you a note because she can’t write,’ and Mr. Pinckski said, ‘Should I know if she can’t write or not when her own son brings me a note signed with her name?’ and Mrs. Zilich says, ‘Let’s see it.’
“Sister hadn’t said anything at all, like she wasn’t even there, and Mr. Pinckski showed them the note. I saw it too. It said, ‘Received of Mr. Pinckski a hundred and thirty dollars being the full amount deposited with him less interest. Mrs. Margaret N. Gihon.’
And Mrs. Zilich said how she thought about that hundred and thirty dollars and she thought how Sister had paid twenty-six dollars a year for five years and seven months, and she said, ‘Interest? What interest?’ and Mr. Pinckski said, ‘For taking the name off the coffin,’ because that made the coffin second-handed. And Mrs. Zilich said that Sister turned and went toward the door. ‘Wait,’ Mrs. Zilich said. ‘We’re going to stay right here until you get that money. There’s something funny about this because you can’t write to sign a
