"Well, I didn't know. You've been in there so long."
He was a neat old man, but there was likely to be a spot or so on his
vest or his coat lapel, or his tie. Ma used to remove these, on or off
him, as the occasion demanded, rubbing carefully and scolding a little,
making a chiding sound between tongue and teeth indicative of great
impatience of his carelessness. He had rather enjoyed these sounds, and
this rubbing and scratching on the cloth with the fingernail and a
moistened rag. They indicated that someone cared. Cared about the way he
looked. Had pride in him. Loved him. Nettie never removed spots. Though
infrequently she said, "Father, just leave that suit out, will you? I'll
send it to the cleaner's with George's. The man's coming to-morrow
morning." He would look down at himself, hastily, and attack a spot here
and there with a futile fingernail.
His morning toilette completed, he would make for the Fifty-first Street
L. Seated in the train he would assume an air of importance and testy
haste; glance out of the window; look at his watch. You got the
impression of a handsome and well-preserved old gentleman on his way
downtown to consummate a shrewd business deal. He had been familiar with
Chicago's downtown for fifty years and he could remember when State
Street was a tree-shaded cottage district. The noise and rush and
clangour of the Loop had long been familiar to him. But now he seemed to
find the downtown trip arduous, even hazardous. The roar of the elevated
trains, the hoarse hoots of the motor horns, the clang of the street
cars, the bedlam that is Chicago's downtown district bewildered him,
frightened him almost. He would skip across the street like a harried
hare, just missing a motor truck's nose and all unconscious of the
stream of invective directed at him by its charioteer. "Heh! Whatcha!...
Look!"--Sometimes a policeman came to his aid, or attempted to, but he
resented this proffered help.
"Say, look here, my lad," he would say to the tall, tired, and not at
all burly (standing on one's feet directing traffic at Wabash and
Madison for eight hours a day does not make for burliness) policeman,
"I've been coming downtown since long before you were born. You don't
need to help me. I'm no jay from the country."
He visited the Stock Exchange. This depressed him. Stocks were lower
than ever and still going down. His five hundred a year was safe, but
the rest seemed doomed for his lifetime, at least. He would drop in at
George's office. George's office was pleasantly filled with dapper, neat
young men and (surprisingly enough) dapper, slim young women, seated at
desks in the big light-flooded room. At one corner of each desk stood a
polished metal placard on a little standard, and bearing the name of the
desk's occupant. Mr. Owens. Mr. Satterlee. Mr. James. Miss Rauch. Mr.
Minick.
"Hello, Father," Mr. Minick would say, looking annoyed. "What's bringing
you down?"
"Oh, nothing. Nothing. Just had a little business to tend to over at the
Exchange. Thought I'd drop in. How's business?"
"Rotten."
"I should think it was!" Old man Minick would agree.
"I--should--think--it--was! Hm."
George wished he wouldn't. He couldn't have it, that's all. Old man
Minick would stroll over to the desk marked Satterlee, or Owens, or
James. These brisk young men would toss an upward glance at him and
concentrate again on the sheets and files before them. Old man Minick
would stand, balancing from heel to toe and blowing out his breath a
little. He looked a bit yellow and granulated and wavering, there in the
cruel morning light of the big plate glass windows. Or perhaps it was
the contrast he presented with these slim, slick young salesmen.
"Well, h'are you to-day, Mr.--uh--Satterlee? What's the good word?"
Mr. Satterlee would not glance up this time. "I'm pretty well. Can't
complain."
"Good. Good."
"Anything I can do for you?"
"No-o-o. No. Not a thing. Just dropped in to see my son a minute."
"I see." Not unkindly. Then, as old man Minick still stood there,
balancing, Mr. Satterlee would glance up again, frowning a little. "Your
son's desk is over there, I believe. Yes."
George and Nettie had a bedtime conference about these visits and Nettie
told him, gently, that the bond house head objected to friends and
relatives dropping in. It was against office rules. It had been so when
she was employed there. Strictly business. She herself had gone there
only once since her marriage.
Well, that was all right. Business was like that nowdays. Rush and grab
and no time for anything.
The winter was a hard one, with a record snowfall and intense cold. He
stayed indoors for days together. A woman of his own age in like
position could have occupied herself usefully and happily. She could
have hemmed a sash-curtain; knitted or crocheted; tidied a room; taken a
hand in the cooking or preparing of food; ripped an old gown; made over
a new one; indulged in an occasional afternoon festivity with women of
her own years. But for old man Minick there were no small tasks. There
was nothing he could do to make his place in the household justifiable.
He wasn't even particularly good at those small jobs of hammering, or
painting, or general "fixing." Nettie could drive a nail more swiftly,
more surely than he. "Now, Father, don't you bother. I'll do it. Just
you go and sit down. Isn't it time for your afternoon nap?"
He waxed a little surly. "Nap! I just got up. I don't want to sleep my
life away."
George and Nettie frequently had guests in the evening. They played
bridge, or poker, or talked.
"Come in, Father," George would say. "Come in. You all know Dad, don't
you, folks?" He would sit down, uncertainly. At first he had attempted
to expound, as had been his wont in the old house on Ellis. "I want to
say, here and now, that this country's got to ..." But they went on,
heedless of him. They interrupted or refused, politely, to listen. So he
sat in the room, yet no part of it. The young people's talk swirled and
eddied all about him. He was utterly lost in it. Now and then Nettie or
George would turn to him and with raised voice (he was not at all deaf
and prided himself on it) would shout, "It's about this or that, Father.
He was saying ..."
When the group roared with laughter at a sally from one of them he would
smile uncertainly but amiably, glancing from one to the other in
complete ignorance of what had passed, but not resenting it. He took to
sitting more and more in his kitchen bedroom, smoking a comforting pipe
and reading and re-reading the evening paper. During that winter he and
Canary, the negro washwoman, became quite good friends. She washed down
in the basement once a week but came up to the kitchen for her massive
lunch. A walrus-waisted black woman, with a rich throaty voice, a
rolling eye, and a kindly heart. He actually waited for her appearance
above the laundry stairs.
"Weh, how's Mist' Minick to-day! Ah nev' did see a gemun spry's you ah
fo' yo' age. No, suh! nev' did."
At this rare praise he would straighten his shoulders and waggle his
head. "I'm worth any ten of these young sprats to-day." Canary would
throw back her head in a loud and companionable guffaw.
Nettie would appear at the kitchen swinging door. "Canary's having her
lunch, Father. Don't you want to come into the front room with me? We'll
have our lunch in another half-hour." He followed her obediently
enough. Nettie thought of him as a troublesome and rather pathetic
child--a child who would never grow up. If she attributed any thoughts
to that fine old head they were ambling thoughts, bordering, perhaps, on
senility. Little did she know how expertly this old one surveyed her and
how ruthlessly he passed judgment. She never suspected the thoughts that
formed in the active brain.
He knew about women. He had married a woman. He had had children by her.
He looked at this woman--his son's wife--moving about her little
five-room flat. She had theories about children. He had heard her
expound them. You didn't have them except under such and such
circumstances. It wasn't fair otherwise. Plenty of money for their
education. Well. He and his wife had had three children. Paul, the
second, had died at thirteen. A blow, that had been. They had not always
planned for the coming of the three but they always had found a way,
afterward. You managed, somehow, once the little wrinkled red ball had
fought its way into the world. You managed. You managed. Look at George!
Yet when he was born, thirty-nine years ago, Pa and Ma Minick had been
hard put to it.
Sitting there, while Nettie dismissed him as negligible, he saw her
clearly, grimly. He looked at her. She was plump, but not too short,
with a generous width between the hips; a broad full bosom, but firm;
round arms and quick slim legs; a fine sturdy throat. The curve between
arm and breast made a graceful gracious line ... Working in a bond
office ... Working in a bond office ... There was nothing in the Bible
about working in a bond office. Here was a woman built for
child-bearing.
She thought him senile, negligible.
In March Nettie had in a sewing woman for a week. She had her two or
three times a year. A hawk-faced woman of about forty-nine, with a
blue-bottle figure and a rapacious eye. She sewed in the dining room and
there was a pleasant hum of machine and snip of scissors and murmur of
conversation and rustle of silky stuff; and hot savoury dishes for
lunch. She and old man Minick became great friends. She even let him
take out bastings. This when Nettie had gone out from two to four,
between fittings.
He chuckled and waggled his head. "I expect to be paid regular
assistant's wages for this," he said.
"I guess you don't need any wages, Mr. Minick," the woman said. "I guess
you're pretty well fixed."
"Oh, well, I can't complain." (Five hundred a year.)
"Complain! I should say not! If I was to complain it'd be different.
Work all day to keep myself; and nobody to come home to at night."
"Widow, ma'am?"
"Since I was twenty. Work, work, that's all I've had. And lonesome! I
suppose you don't know what lonesome is."
"Oh, don't I!" slipped from him. He had dropped the bastings.
The sewing woman flashed a look at him from the cold hard eye. "Well,
maybe you do. I suppose living here like this, with sons and daughters,
ain't so grand, for all your money. Now me, I've always managed to keep
my own little place that I could call home, to come back to. It's only
two rooms, and nothing to rave about, but it's home. Evenings I just
cook and fuss around. Nobody to fuss for, but I fuss, anyway. Cooking,
that's what I love to do. Plenty of good food, that's what folks need to
keep their strength up." Nettie's lunch that day had been rather scant.
She was there a week. In Nettie's absence she talked against her. He
protested, but weakly. Did she give him egg-nogs? Milk? Hot toddy? Soup?
Plenty of good rich gravy and meat and puddings? Well! That's what folks
needed when they weren't so young any more. Not that he looked old. My,
no. Sprier than many young boys, and handsomer than his own son if she
did say so.
He fed on it, hungrily. The third day she was flashing meaning glances
at him across the luncheon table. The fourth she pressed his foot
beneath the table. The fifth, during Nettie's afternoon absence, she got
up, ostensibly to look for a bit of cloth which she needed for sewing,
and, passing him, laid a caressing hand on his shoulder. Laid it there
and pressed his shoulder ever so little. He looked up, startled. The
glances across the luncheon had largely passed over his head; the foot
beneath the table might have been an accident. But this--this was
unmistakable. He stood up, a little shakily. She caught his hand. The
hawk-like face was close to his.
"You need somebody to love you," she said. "Somebody to do for you, and
love you." The hawk face came nearer. He leaned a little toward it. But
between it and his face was Ma Minick's face, plump, patient, quizzical,
kindly. His head came back sharply. He threw the woman's hot hand from
him.
"Woman!" he cried. "Jezebel!"
The front door slammed. Nettie. The woman flew to her sewing. Old man
Minick, shaking, went into his kitchen bedroom.
"Well," said Nettie, depositing her bundles on the dining room table,
"did you finish that faggoting? Why, you haven't done so very much, have
you!"
"I ain't feeling so good," said the woman. "That lunch didn't agree with
me."
"Why, it was a good plain lunch. I don't see----"
"Oh, it was plain enough, all right."
Next day she did not come to finish her work. Sick, she telephoned.
Nettie called it an outrage. She finished the sewing herself, though she
hated sewing. Pa Minick said nothing, but there was a light in his eye.
Now and then he chuckled, to Nettie's infinite annoyance, though she
said nothing.
"Wanted to marry me!" he said to himself, chuckling. "Wanted to marry
me! The old rip!"
At the end of April, Pa Minick discovered Washington Park, and the Club,
and his whole life was from that day transformed.
He had taken advantage of the early spring sunshine to take a walk, at
Nettie's suggestion.
"Why don't you go into the Park, Father? It's really warm out. And the
sun's lovely. Do you good."
He had put on his heaviest shirt, and a muffler, and George's old red
sweater with the great white "C" on its front, emblem of George's
athletic prowess at the University of Chicago; and over all, his
greatcoat. He had taken warm mittens and his cane with the greyhound's
head handle, carved. So equipped he had ambled uninterestedly over to
the Park across the way. And there he had found new life.
New life in old life. For the park was full of old men. Old men like
himself, with greyhound's-head canes, and mufflers and somebody's
sweater worn beneath their greatcoats. They wore arctics, though the
weather was fine. The skin of their hands and cheek-bones was glazed and
had a tight look though it lay in fine little folds. There were
splotches of brown on the backs of their hands, and on the temples and
forehead. Their heavy grey or brown socks made comfortable folds above
their ankles. From that April morning until winter drew on the Park saw
old man Minick daily. Not only daily but by the day. Except for his
meals, and a brief hour for his after-luncheon nap, he spent all his
time there.
For in the park old man Minick and all the old men gathered there found
a Forum--a safety valve--a means of expression. It did not take him long
to discover that the Park was divided into two distinct sets of old men.
There were the old men who lived with their married sons and
daughters-in-law or married daughters and sons-in-law. Then there were
the old men who lived in the Grant Home for Aged Gentlemen. You saw its
fine red-brick façade through the trees at the edge of the Park.
And the slogan of these first was:
"My son and my da'ter they wouldn't want me to live in any public Home.
No, sirree! They want me right there with them. In their own home.
That's the kind of son and daughter I've got!"
The slogan of the second was:
"I wouldn't live with any son or daughter. Independent. That's me. My
own boss. Nobody to tell me what I can do and what I can't. Treat you
like a child. I'm my own boss! Pay my own good money and get my keep for
it."
The first group, strangely enough, was likely to be spotted of vest and
a little frayed as to collar. You saw them going on errands for their
daughters-in-law. A loaf of bread. Spool of white No. 100. They took
their small grandchildren to the duck pond and between the two toddlers
hand in hand--the old and infirm and the infantile and infirm--it was
hard to tell which led which.
The second group was shiny as to shoes, spotless as to linen, dapper as
to clothes. They had no small errands. Theirs was a magnificent leisure.
And theirs was magnificent conversation. The questions they discussed
and settled there in the Park--these old men--were not international
merely. They were cosmic in scope.
The War? Peace? Disarmament? China? Free love? Mere conversational
bubbles to be tossed in the air and disposed of in a burst of foam.
Strong meat for old man Minick who had so long been fed on pap. But he
soon got used to it. Between four and five in the afternoon, in a spot
known as Under The Willows, the meeting took the form of a club--an open
forum. A certain group made up of Socialists, Free Thinkers, parlour
anarchists, bolshevists, had for years drifted there for talk. Old man
Minick learned high-sounding phrases. "The Masters ... democracy ...
toil of the many for the good of the few ... the ruling class ... free
speech ... the People...."
The strong-minded ones held forth. The weaker ones drifted about on the
outskirts, sometimes clinging to the moist and sticky paw of a
round-eyed grandchild. Earlier in the day--at eleven o'clock, say--the
talk was not so general nor so inclusive. The old men were likely to
drift into groups of two or three or four. They sat on sun-bathed
benches and their conversation was likely to be rather smutty at times,
for all they looked so mild and patriarchal and desiccated. They paid
scant heed to the white-haired old women who, like themselves, were
sunning in the park. They watched the young women switch by, with
appreciative glances at their trim figures and slim ankles. The day of
the short skirt was a grand time for them. They chuckled among
themselves and made wicked comment. One saw only white-haired, placid,
tremulous old men, but their minds still worked with belated masculinity
like naughty small boys talking behind the barn.
Old man Minick early achieved a certain leadership in the common talk.
He had always liked to hold forth. This last year had been one of almost
unendurable bottling up. At first he had timidly sought the less
assertive ones of his kind. Mild old men who sat in rockers in the
pavilion waiting for lunch time. Their conversation irritated him. They
remarked everything that passed before their eyes.
"There's a boat. Fella with a boat."