The Friends of Meager Fortune by David Adams Richards Read Free Book Online Page B

upon by everyone in town as a failure.
    As he saw respect for himself draining away, and Will’s name relegated to the actions of a youth, he became bitter.
    So over time Reggie Glidden’s desire to celebrate Owen Jameson’s bravery soured and became unnatural to him, while his own death and his young wife’s freedom from him becamemore and more paramount. He suspected her, and others exacerbated suspicion.
    “Oh, I know she loves me deep down in her heart,” he said.
    “Go on—the Browers wanted rid of her, and you would do,” his acquaintance said.
    Both were friendless now. Yet her pity for his friendlessness was new. And he could not stand this pity. Sometimes she would just stare at him, from across the room, and in that look he saw what he had not before, a disappointment at who he really was. She smiled at him and took his hand when they went out. But Reggie, plagued by the incident in the war, did nothing but drink by himself. Or if he had money he would drink with others, hoping to find his youth and his joy.
    He got into fights like Will Jameson before him. And his young wife would often go in the middle of the night to bail him out with the little bit of money that they had. They were soon two forlorn creatures, and she, without one good skirt or slacks, walking two steps behind him while he cursed the world, imploring him not to make a scene.
    Onward he would go, and onward he would curse, and onward she would implore—and onward he would curse her for imploring, and onward she would implore he not curse at her imploring.
    Some wondered if their marriage was even consummated.
    But drunk Reggie would lay with his face to the wall, wanting no one or nothing for days. “It wasn’t like that—I didn’t freeze in no battle—me gun jammed—and that was that—”
    And though this was true, and though others knew it to be true, none cared at all.
    The idea that failed men lose their wives is partially true—many drive them away, feeling unworthy.
    They said he had frozen in the war—nothing more could be said.
    He wanted to drive her away desperately because he saw how little she had and how much she had hoped for that day they were married, when everything seemed so artificial. And he had also seen the look on her face when she realized Owen Jameson was not staying in Europe but was coming home. It was not the elation in her look, as one might think, that disheartened him, but her eventual sadness—as something terrible began to sink into her consciousness. For hours she could say nothing.
    She would go and clean for Mary Jameson, and earn fifteen dollars a week, her young body smelling of Lysol and clothes detergent. From that money she would try to put enough away for groceries and heat, and give a dollar to her uncle Sterling. But ashamed in his heart, Reggie would take the money to get drunk.
    Once when drunk, he told a crowd of men that it was he who had saved Jameson—but because of Jameson’s name, Owen got the credit. This was the worst lie he could imagine.
    So here is what he did to pay himself back.
    He had some men chain his left arm to a tying pole in the lumberyard, and he bet them that they could throw pulp sticks at him and he would bat them all down with his right hand. And if not one touched his head, they would owe him a bottle of wine, and if one did touch his head—well, he might be dead, mightn’t he, and might he not be better off? He laughed at his own macabre joke.
    It spread around town that this was what Reggie Glidden was doing, and a crowd gathered.
    Reggie Glidden like an old bear, hunched over, waiting for the pulp sticks. Each one thrown in the late afternoon, he swatted away with his right arm. The men, at first reluctant,became more incensed at his prowess and threw them harder, and with better accuracy, as rain started to pelt down over the red muck, making it seem as if the world was being spotted with blood.
    Still he batted them away, even as they came so close