The Alcoholics by Jim Thompson Page A

Jutht wait and thee what he does …"
    But it was impossible to wait for that. She had to do something now . Right this minute. If she didn't find some way-someone-to. "Yee-ow! Whooo-eee!" The cry, the yell, rather, came from the kitchen, and it was followed by sundry other wild yells and grunts and shrieks, all mingled with the clamor of crashing cookware and crockery.
    Miss Baker's eyes sparkled. Head erect, back straight as a ramrod, she stepped softly out of the office areaway and across the dining room and through the swinging doors to the kitchen.
    The peak-tide of cook Josephine's hysteria had passed. Now it was at an ebb, leaving her slumped down on a stool, quaking, shivering and chuckling, her head buried on one arm, the other slowly raising and dropping a frying pan against a shattered mass of one-time plates.
    Miss Baker stepped up to her side.
    "Jutht what," she said, "ith going on here?"
    For a moment, the cook's body was completely motionless. Then, slowly, she looked up, her eyes still red with laughter even as they widened with apprehension.
    "I will not put up with thth, Jothephine! Will not, do you underthand? It hath got to thtop!"
    "Well, it stopped, ain't it?" Josephine muttered with sullen courage. "I ain't doin' nothin'. You the one that's makin' all the noise."
    Miss Baker stiffened. "Look at me, Jothephine!"
    Josephine looked; unwillingly, shiftily, at first; then steadily. She looked down into the heart-shaped face, into the wide and clear gray eyes with their silk-soft lashes… into gentleness and innocence. And, for the moment, her unreasoning instinctive fear of the nurse gave way to puzzlement.
    "How come?" she said-and she so far forgot herself as to scratch her head. "How come you so… so mean?"

8
    Mean!
    But she wasn't! Never, ever-no matter what anyone said. What they might say now . It was a lie, foolish, ridiculous, deliberately hurtful: for the truth was not here in the now of life… She had been less than three years old when her father died, and he did not exist in her memory as a man; or, more specifically, as man . He was protection; he was shelter; he was warmth and comfort and soothing words. But he was not man. Man was Mr. Leemy. It was a little more than a year after Your Dear Father's death when she and Mama had gone to live with Mr. Leemy. Mama had explained that the move was necessary - how often she had used that word, a kind of Close Sesame: above definition and argument. And then Mama had gone on, in violation of all precedent, to say that they were really very fortunate, to repeat-almost stubbornly, it seemed- that Mr. Leemy was really a very fine man, a splendid man… regardless of what people say.
    And the next day-they moved the next day for Mama had delayed telling her until the last moment-she met Mr. Leemy. And so great was her disappointment that she almost burst out crying.
    She did not cry, of course. One didn't cry over things that were necessary . She only stood paralyzed, shocked and confused, trying to reconcile splendid and fine and all the rest with this-with man.
    He sat in the dimly-lit library of the house, his two canes hooked over either arm of his chair, the chair drawn up before the stingy coals of the fireplace. He sat crouched, like a spider, it seemed: something that was all bulging torso and puffed fish-white face; his thin pipe stem legs tapering spiderishly into shoes that were little larger than her own.
    And Mama had dragged her forward, then pushed her a little to the front. And Mr. Leemy had put out one of his puffed, decay- smelling hands and pinched her on the arm.
    Involuntarily, she jerked away. "Don'th!" she said.
    " Don'th?" Mr. Leemy decided to be amused. "You must be a little boy. That's the way little boys talk."
    "No-yeth, thir," she said, taking another step backward, trying to reach Mama's hand.
    "Oh, you are a little boy, then? That's too bad. I hoped you were a little girl. I like little girls, don't I, Ma-Mrs. Baker? I