The lumberyard had looked reasonably prosperous. The retail hardware
store was not what I expected. From talks with Timmy I had expected
a big place with five or six clerks and a stock that ranged from
appliances and cocktail trays to deep-well pumps and pipe wrenches.
It was a narrow, dingy store, poorly lighted. There was an air of dust
and defeat about it. It was on a side street off the less prosperous
looking end of Delaware Street. A clerk in a soiled shirt came to help
me. I said I wanted to see Mr. Warden. The clerk pointed back toward a
small office in the rear where through glass I could see a man hunched
over a desk.
He looked up as I walked back to the office. The door was open. I
could see the resemblance to Timmy. But Timmy just before and for a
short time after we were taken, had a look of bouncing vitality, good
spirits. This man looked far older than the six years difference Timmy
had told me about. He was a big man, as Timmy had been. The wide, high
forehead was the same, and the slightly beaked nose and the strong,
square jaw. But George Warden looked as though he had been sick for a
long time. His color was bad. The stubble on the unshaven jaw was gray.
His eyes were vague and troubled, and there was a raw smell of whisky
in the small office.
"Something I can do for you?"
"My name is Tal Howard, Mr. Warden. I was a friend of Timmy's."
"You were a friend of Timmy's." He repeated it in an odd way. Apathetic
and yet somehow cynical.
"I was with him when he died."
"So was Fitz. Sit down, Mr. Howard. Drink?"
I said I would have a drink. He pushed by my chair and went out to a
sink. I heard him rinsing out a glass. He came back and picked a bottle
off the floor in the corner and put a generous drink in each glass.
"Here's to Timmy," he said.
"To Timmy."
"Fitz got out of it. You got out of it. But Timmy didn't make it."
"I almost didn't make it."
"What did he actually die of? Fitz couldn't say."
I shrugged. "It's hard to tell. We didn't have medical care. He lost a
lot of weight and his resistance was down. He had a bad cold. He ran a
fever and his legs got swollen. He began to have trouble breathing. It
hurt him to breathe. A lot of them went like that. Nothing specific.
Just a lot of things. There wasn't much you could do."
He turned the dirty glass around and around. "He should have come back.
He would have known what to do."
"About what?"
"I guess he told you about how we were doing before he left."
"He said you had a pretty good business."
"This store used to be over on Delaware. We moved about six months ago.
Sold the lease. Sold my house too. Still got the yard and this. The
rest of it is gone."