The Last Supper: And Other Stories by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

the two kids to have a few things that those who owned cars couldn’t afford.
    It also did him good to stretch his legs and breathe deeply of fresh, clean air after spending a whole day at a lathe, where the air stank of the smell of oil and hot metal and men’s sweat, and where his leg muscles cramped up and got tighter and tighter as the day went on. Eight blocks were just right, not too long a distance, not too short a distance; it gave him time with his own thoughts, a chance to think through matters that could never be to reflect, to see himself and examine himself, an opunraveled in the clank and turmoil of the plant, a chance portunity to arrange the incidents of the day, so that those incidents would be amusing to Alice and the kids.
    By and large, when he was home, he stayed home. He had given up drinking two years ago, and the high cost of baby sitters confined evenings out to one or at the most two nights on the weekend, and more important, he liked his family. He looked forward all day to the few hours before the kids’ bedtime, and at least three nights a week, there were television programs he really enjoyed. He had just passed his thirty-sixth year, and sometimes he felt that he was becoming stodgy and sedentary as he moved into middle-age; but this feeling was not accompanied by any resentment.
    He had other resentments, but not on the score of his wife and kids, and each evening as he left the plant, he felt a specific sense of pleasure at the fact that he would soon be with them, and that the simple, daily incidents of the evening would then unfold, playing with the kids, eating dinner, helping Alice with the dishes, being called in on this or that problem of the day, and so forth and so on, and he was thinking of this and nothing more tonight, as he left the plant and noticed, in the cold, gathering twilight, the pink-orange band of the setting sun across the housetops, its clean, cold beauty. It mixed in his thoughts, cleansed them with cold color as he passed through the gates and waved goodnight to some of his friends. He almost did not notice as the two men fell in step with him, one on either side of him.
    And then he did notice and was a little afraid, because they walked regularly and purposefully on either side of him, but not for any other reason. Anderson had few physical fears; he was a large man with broad, sloping shoulders, and his appearance commanded respect. The two men who had fallen in step with him were both smaller than he was; they were just youngsters; they were no more than twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. They were well dressed in neat gray worsted topcoats, gray sharkskin suits and black shoes. They had round, slightly-overfed faces, snub noses and blue eyes. They looked like they might be brothers. They looked sure of themselves, but not too sure of themselves.
    Anderson continued to walk. The only thought in his mind at that moment was that he had eight blocks to walk home. One of the two men said,
    â€œHello, Marty.”
    â€œNice evening, isn’t it, Marty?” the other said.
    â€œWhat do you want?” Anderson demanded.
    â€œYou’re Martin Anderson, aren’t you?”
    â€œSuppose I am?”
    â€œWhy don’t you take it easy, Marty? This is just a routine thing. We’re from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Here are our credentials, all straight and above board.”
    Each in turn took out his wallet and showed Anderson his credentials. Anderson barely looked at the badges and papers; the truth of the matter was that he had known when they fell in step with him; he didn’t have to look. In the whole world, no one falls in step with you like that but a couple of cops. You don’t have to look. He stepped down into the gutter, and thought fleetingly that there were seven more blocks home, seven blocks that he knew like the, back of his hand, past the auto graveyard, past the block of taxpayers, past the muddy field