Clarkton by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

come into the kitchen?”
    They went into the kitchen and sat down around the white enamel table. There was a big platter of ham-and liverwurst sandwiches, and a plate of cake. Sawyer, hungry and appreciative, wondered whether Ruth Abbott had made the sandwiches in the short time she was gone. She pointed, and he began to eat; when Abbott asked him where he was staying, he nodded at Danny Ryan. A strange expression came over the doctor’s face, and Ruth Abbott explained:
    â€œElliott balks at hospitality, that’s all. I mean Ryan’s hospitality. He has five kids and a pregnant wife in a four-room house. You’d better stay here.”
    â€œWhen I broke with the church,” Ryan told Ruth apologetically, “I broke wide and clean. But so help me God and the Mother of God, I got more children than any Irishman who ever lived.”
    â€œThat can be controlled,” the doctor laughed.
    â€œBut I can’t. I get a load on and come home, and afterward I want to rub my face in the mud.”
    â€œThat’s neither here nor there,” Ruth said. “We’ll talk about your psychopathic sex life some other time, Danny. What about this Gelb? Why couldn’t Joey Raye be mistaken?”
    â€œHe’s got a mind like a camera. I was in Boston with him is couple of years ago to a convention, and it was like having a book with you. He makes no mistakes. He never forgets a name or a face.”
    â€œWhat does he think it means?”
    â€œWhat it means here is one thing,” Ryan said, his mouth full of food. “What it means in general is something else. In general, Hamilton. Gelb means trouble.”
    â€œI don’t know,” Mike Sawyer said. “I don’t see that. I’m willing to hang around on Ryan’s say-so, but I don’t see that.”
    â€œWe can handle it,” Ryan shot at him suddenly.
    Ruth told him, quietly, “Shut up, Danny.”
    â€œI’m sorry. The Irish.”
    â€œEverything you’ve done in the past twenty years,” Ruth said to him, “that was pig-headed, wrong, stupid, and just plain ordinary, you’ve blamed on the accident of birth that made you Irish.”
    â€œIt’s true,” Ryan whispered.
    â€œLike hell it’s true,” Ruth Abbott said evenly, and now Mike Sawyer was lost and the woman in Ruth Abbott was gone. “You’ll go out of here tonight and over to McCormick’s bar and make a lush out of yourself because this Gelb is here in town and because you haven’t got enough guts to think it through after living off the fat of the land for so long, and you’ll tell yourself it’s because you’re Irish.”
    â€œRub it in,” Ryan said sadly. “I got it coming. Only, I tell you, this isn’t a town for trouble, and this isn’t a time to have trouble. That ain’t my doing; that’s an objective fact, unfortunately. Everything’s been too good in this town. For five years everything’s been good. It’s going to be awful bad if we have trouble. I don’t know what the people’ll do.”

13. E lliott Abbott sat on the edge of their bed , one shoe in his hand, playing with it, pulling at the strings, trying to frame something he wanted to say to his wife, and telling her finally:
    â€œWhat it builds up to is the same damn thing, only I don’t buy it now. I know George Lowell. I like him. There is the essential decency of a human being. I know his faults and I know his weaknesses.”
    â€œI’m sure you do,” his wife answered, under the blankets, lying on her stomach, her face buried in the pillow, already drifting into sleep with that ease he could never comprehend, an ease that angered him sometimes and brought him up with an envious sort of wonder at other times.
    â€œWhy don’t you say what you think?” Abbott asked.
    â€œBecause I don’t think it yet. I don’t want to think about