The Big Hunger Read online

  The brother beside you said,” Grandmas crying.”

  You said, “I’m not deaf. I hear her.”

  Your brother who was six said to his sister, who slept beside him: “Hey Jo, Grandma’s crying.”

  Your sister said, “Well, you’d cry too, I bet, if you was her.”

  Your brother said, “Aw, how can I be her?”

  The brother beside you said, “Listen to Tommy.”

  Your father asked in the darkness, “Who’s crying?”

  “Grandma’s crying.”

  Your mother said, “His own mother.”

  Your brother Tommy said, “Papa, why’s Grandma crying?”

  Your father said, “You go to sleep, Tommy. It’s awful late.”

  The brother beside you said, “Tommy sure asks questions.”

  Your mother got out of bed and put on her kimono. You heard her scrape through the room in her raggedy red slippers with the holey toes.

  Your father said, “Where you going now?”

  Your mother said, “Don’t talk to me.”

  The moon was shining through the dining room windows, and you saw your mother pass them by. You heard the creak of the good rocking chair, and you knew your mother had seated herself by the stove. The embers in the stove were going out now, but she would not pour in coal because it made a kind of desecrating noise. The chair purred sweetly as your mother rocked to and fro, and pretty soon all was very quiet, and your mother was asleep in the dining room.

  In the yard next door you heard the tumble of boxes, behind the grocery store. It was the neighborhood cats looking for meat scraps.

  Your grandmother was asleep now. There were no sounds from her room.

  Your father sighed. The springs in his bed whined angrily. Your father was fighting for sleep.

  The brother at your side snored in the fresh sleep of boys.

  Your little brother Tommy and your sister Josephine were soundless.

  And after a little while, you heard your father whisper to your sister.

  He called softly, “Jo, Jo…Josephine.”

  She did not answer, and your father got up from his bed and went to the room where she slept.

  Your father shook your sister until she woke up.

  He whispered to her, “Josephine, will you be Papa’s nice little girl and go sleep with Grandma?”

  She said, “Oh, I like to sleep with Grandma.”

  “All right, you go. Just tell Grandma you wanna sleep with her.”

  Your little brother Tommy was awake now, and he said, “I wanna sleep with somebody. I’m scared to sleep alone.”

  Your sister said, “Scaredy cat.”

  Your father said, “You come and sleep with Papa, Tommy. Just you and Papa all alone.”

  And before they went to their different beds, you too were asleep.

  Charge It

  THE GROCERY BILL—I can never forget it. Like a tireless ghost it haunts me, though boyhood is gone and those days are no more. We lived in a small town in northern Colorado. Our red brick house was my mother’s wedding gift from my father. Brick for brick he had built it himself, working evenings and on Sundays.

  It took a year to build that house, and on the first anniversary of their marriage my mother and father took possession. I was the first son and the only child not born in the red brick house. In the first year in the new house my brother was born. The following year another brother was born. And then another. And another. And another. My mother gave birth to sons with such rapidity that my bricklaying father was sent spinning into a daze from which he never entirely recovered. There were nine of us.

  Next door to the red brick house was Mr. Craik’s grocery store. Shortly after moving into the new house my father opened a credit account with Mr. Craik. In the first years he managed to keep the bills paid. But the children grew older and hungrier, more children arrived, and still more, and the grocery bill whizzed into crazy figures. Worse, every time we had a birth in our house, it seemed to bring my father bad luck. His worries and his brood moved up a notch, and his income moved down. He was sure that God had a powerful grudge against him for earlier excesses. Money! When I was twelve my father had so many bills that even I knew he had no intention or opportunity to pay them.

  But the grocery bill harassed him. Owing Mr. Craik a hundred dollars, he paid fifty. Owing two hundred, he paid seventy-five. Owing three hundred, he somehow managed to pay a hundred. And so it was with all his debts. There was no mystery about them. There were no hidden motives in their non-payment. No budget could solve them. No planned economy could alter them. It was very simple—his family ate more than he earned. He knew his only escape lay in a streak of good luck. His tireless presumption that such good luck was coming had stalled his desertion and kept him from blowing out his brains. He constantly threatened both, but did neither.

  Mr. Craik complained unceasingly. He never really trusted my father. If our family had not lived next door to his store, where he could keep an eye on us, and if he had not felt that ultimately he would receive at least part of the money owed him, he would not have allowed further credit. He sympathized with my mother, and pitied her with that quasi-sympathy and cold pity that businessmen show the poor as a class, and with that frigid apathy toward individual members of it. Now that the bill was so high, he abused my mother and even insulted her. He knew that she herself was honest to the point of childish innocence, but that did not seem relevant when she came to his store to make additional increases on the account. He was a man who dealt in merchandise and not feelings. Money was owed him and he was allowing her additional credit. His demands for money were in vain. Under the circumstances, his attitude was the best he could possibly muster.

  It took courage for my mother to go in and face him day after day. She had to coax herself to a pitch of inspired audacity. My father didn’t pay much attention to her mortifications at the hands of Mr. Craik. Beyond expressing her dismay at again confronting the grocer she did not tell my father of Mr. Craik’s cruelty in detail. It was too humiliating. And so my father was not fully aware of it. He suspected it, but that was the sort of suspicion one hated verifying. He naturally expected some trouble in obtaining additional credit. As his wife, that was her obligation. To his way of thinking, it wasn’t his fault that there were so many children. He looked upon that part of it as a deliberate conspiracy between her and God. He was merely a man who worked for a living. He loved his children of course—but after all! And so she had to do her part, which he thought was awfully easy, since it had nothing to do with the sweat and toil of his trade.

  All afternoon and until an hour before dinner, my mother would wait for the valiant and desperate inspiration so necessary for a trip to the store. She sat with hands in her apron pockets—waiting. But her courage slept from overuse and would not rise.

  This winter afternoon was typical. I remember: it was late. From the window she could see me across the street with a gang of neighborhood kids. We were having a snowball fight. She opened the door.

  “Arturo!”

  I saw her standing at the edge of the porch. She called me because I was the oldest. It was almost darkness. Deep shadows crept fast across the milky snow. The streetlamps burned coldly, a cold glow in a colder haze. An automobile passed, its tire chains clanging dismally.

  “Arturo!”

  I knew what she wanted. In disgust I snapped my fingers. I just knew she wanted me to go to the store. Her voice had that peculiar, desperate tremor that came with grocery-store time. I tried to get out of it by pretending I hadn’t heard, but she kept calling until I was ready to scream and the rest of the kids stopped throwing snowballs.

  I tossed one more snowball, watched it splatter, and then trudged through the snow and across the icy pavement. Now I could see her plainly. Her jaws quivered from the twilight cold. She stood with folded arms, tapping her toes to keep them warm.

  “Whaddya want?” I said

  “It’s cold,” she said. “Co
me inside and I’ll tell you.

  “What is it, Ma? I’m in a hurry.”

  “I want you to go to the store.”

  “The store? No. I’m not going. I know why you want me to go—because you’re afraid on account of the bill. Well, I ain’t going.”

  “Please go,” she said. “You’re big enough to understand. You know how Mr. Craik is.”

  I did know. I hated him. He was always asking me if my father was drunk or sober, and what the hell did my father do with his money, and how do you wops live without a cent, and how does it happen your old man never stays home at night? I knew Mr. Craik, and hated him.

  “Why can’t August go?” I said. “Heck sakes, I do all the work around here.”

  “But August is too young. He wouldn’t know what to buy.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m not going.”

  I turned and tramped back to the boys. The snowball fight resumed. She called. I didn’t answer. She called again. I shouted that her voice might be drowned out. Now it was darkness, and Mr. Craik’s windows bloomed in the night. My mother stood looking at the store door.

  The grocer was whacking a bone with a cleaver on the chopping-block when she entered. As the door squealed he looked up and saw her—a small, insignificant figure in an old black coat with a high fur collar, most of the fur having been shed so that white hide-spots appeared in the dark mass. One of her stockings, always the left, hung loose and wrinkled at the ankle. You knew a safety pin supported a garter of worn elastic. The faded gloss from her rayon hose made them a yellowish tan, accentuating the small bones and white skin under them and making her old shoes seem even more damp and ancient. She walked like a woman in a cathedral, fearfully on tiptoe, to that familiar place from which she invariably made her purchases, where the counter met the wall. She smiled, as though at herself for being what she was: a mother, a prolific mother, and not a society lady.

  In earlier years she used to greet him with a “howdydo.” But now she felt that perhaps he wouldn’t like such familiarity, and she stood quietly in her corner, waiting until he was ready to wait on her.

  Seeing who it was, he paid no attention, and she tried to be an interested and smiling spectator while he swung his cleaver. He was of middle-height, partly bald, wearing celluloid glasses—a man of forty-five. A thick pencil rested behind one ear and a cigarette behind the other. His white apron hung to his shoe tops, a blue string wound many times around his waist. He was hacking a bone inside a red and juicy rump.

  “My!” she said. “It looks good, doesn’t it?”

  He flipped the steak up and over, swished a square of paper from the roll, spread it over the scales, and tossed the steak upon it. His quick, soft fingers wrapped it expertly. She estimated that it was close to ninety cents, and she wondered who had purchased it.

  Mr. Craik heaved the rest of the rump upon his shoulder and disappeared inside the icebox, closing the door behind him. She wondered why butchers always closed icebox doors behind them; and she guessed that, assuming you locked yourself in and couldn’t get out, you wouldn’t starve to death at least—you could always eat the wieners. It seemed he stayed a long time in the icebox. Then he emerged, clearing his throat, clicked the icebox door shut, padlocked it for the night, and disappeared into the back room.

  She supposed he was going to the washroom to wash his hands and that made her wonder if she was out of Gold Dust Cleanser; and then, all at once, she realized she was out of everything.

  He appeared with a broom and began to sweep the sawdust around the chopping-block. She lifted her eyes to the clock. Ten minutes to six. Poor Mr. Craik! He looked so tired. He was like all men, probably starved for a hot meal, and she thought how nice to be the wife of a grocer; but even if she were a grocer’s wife she wouldn’t allow anything but homemade bread on her table. That made her think again of how much money you could make if you had a little store downtown and sold good homemade bread, the big loaves like the ones she herself baked. She was sure she could handle such a business, and she couldn’t help thinking how mad her husband would be if she went out and earned her living like so many of these women were doing nowadays. She could see herself in that little bakery store, with cakes and cookies and loaves of bread in the window, herself behind the counter in a white apron, society ladies from University Hill coming in and saying, “Oh, Mrs. Bandini! You bake such wonderful things!” And of course she would have a delivery route, too, and Frederick and August and Arturo would be the delivery boys, and later their brothers would follow; she wondered how much she would pay them as a start; and since Arturo was the oldest and needed most coaxing she would pay him six dollars a week, and August three, and little Frederick one. They would put their money in a savings bank and after that first store was a success she would…

  Mr. Craik finished his sweeping and paused to light a cigarette.

  She said, “Cold weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

  But he coughed, and she supposed he hadn’t heard, for he disappeared into the back room and returned with a dustpan and a paper box. Bending down, he swept the sawdust into the pan and threw it into the box.

  “I don’t like cold weather at all,” she said.

  He coughed again, and before she knew it he was carrying the box back to the rear. She heard the splash of running water. He returned, drying his hands on his apron, that nice white apron. She smiled sympathetically, but he wasn’t looking in her direction. At the cash register, very loudly he rang up NO SALE. She changed her position, moving her weight from one foot to the other. The big clock ticked away. Now it was exactly six o’clock.

  Mr. Craik scooped the coins from the cashbox and laid them on the counter. He tore a slip of paper from the roll and reached for his pencil. Then he leaned over and counted the day’s receipts. She coughed. Was it possible he didn’t know she was in the store? He wet the pencil on the end of his pink tongue and began to add figures. Patting her hair, she raised her eyebrows and strolled to the front window to look at the fruits and vegetables.

  “‘Strawberries!” she said. “And in the winter too! Are they California strawberries, Mr. Craik?”

  He swept the coins into a bank sack and went to the safe, where he squatted and fingered the combination lock. The big clock ticked like the beat of a small hammer. It was ten minutes after six when he closed the safe.

  She was no longer facing him. Her feet had tired, and with hands clasped in her lap she sat on a box and stared at the frosted front windows. Mr. Craik took off his apron and threw it over the chopping-block. He threw his cigarette on the floor, stepped on it, and went after his coat in the back room. As he straightened his collar, he spoke to her for the first time.

  “Come on, Mrs. Bandini. Make up your mind. I can’t hang around here all night long.”

  At the sound of his voice she lost her balance and nearly fell off the box. She smiled to conceal her embarrassment, but her face was very red and her eyes lowered. Her hands fluttered at her throat like disturbed leaves.

  “Oh!” she said. “And here I was, waiting for you! I’m awfully sorry. I never thought…”

  “What’ll it be, Mrs. Bandini—shoulder steak?”

  She stood at the counter, her lips pursed.

  “How much is shoulder steak today?”

  “Same price. Same price.”

  “That’s nice. I’ll take fifty cents’ worth.”

  He tossed his head grimly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” he said. “Here I went and put all that meat in the icebox.”

  “Oh. I’m awfully sorry. Let it go then.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll get it this time. But after this, come early. I got to get home some time tonight.”

  He brought out a cut of shoulder and stood sharpening his knife.

  “Say,” he said. “What’s Svevo doing these days?”

  In twelve years the two men had rarely spoken to one another, but the grocer always referred to her husband by his first
name. She always felt that Mr. Craik was afraid of him. It was a belief that secretly made her very proud. Now they talked of Svevo, and she told again the monotonous tale of a bricklayer’s misfortunes in the wintertime. She was anxious to get away; it was so painful to give Mr. Craik the same report day after day, year after year.

  “Oh, yes!” she said, gathering her packages. “I almost forgot! I want some fruit, too—a dozen apples.”

  It was a bombshell. Mr. Craik swore under his breath as he whipped a sack open and dropped apples into it.

  “Good God!” he said. “This charging business has got to stop, Mrs. Bandini. I tell you it can’t go on like this.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll tell him, Mr. Craik.”

  “Ach. A lot of good that does. I’m not running a charity.”

  She gathered her packages and fled for the door.

  “I’ll tell him, Mr. Craik. I’ll tell him. Good night, Mr. Craik. Good night, sir!”

  Such a relief to step into the street! How tired she was! Every cell in her body ached. But once more, and for another day, the problem of food was solved. She smiled as she breathed the cold night air, and she hugged her packages lovingly, as though they were life itself.

  The Criminal

  THAT SUMMER we lived on Madden Street, down near the high school. It was the best house we ever had, with a bathtub and jets for a kitchen range. A gas range was one of the big dreams of Mama’s life. The jets brought it nearer realization. Now, all she had to do was get a range.

  The rent for the Madden house was twenty-five a month, five more than we ever had paid before. It was a three-bedroom house of red brick with a real lawn in front. At last we had room to spare. Mama and Papa slept in the main bedroom, Grandma had the one off the kitchen, and my two brothers and I slept in the middle bedroom. Everybody had a bedroom, which was quite a development in our family.

  Not many Italians down on Madden Street. Besides our family, there was only Fred Bestoli, who was more bootlegger than Italian. Once Fred had been a friend of the family, but now that he was a lawbreaker my mother didn’t want him around. Grandma too had been fond of Fred Bestoli before he sold booze. Like herself, he was from the province of Abruzzi and they had people and places in common. But now she hated him because he persisted in getting arrested and not caring for the reputation of other Italians.