Old Mr. Flood Read online

  “It’s the truth, Tom,” said Mr. Flood. “They weren’t always and eternally thinking of the almighty dollar.”

  “I was doing business in the old days,” said Mrs. Treppel, “and that’s something I never noticed.”

  “You always remember the bad, Birdy,” said Mr. Flood. “You never remember the good.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mrs. Treppel. “Take for example, were you acquainted with A. C. Lowry that they called the finnan-haddie king?”

  “I was,” said Mr. Flood. “Old Gus Lowry.” He nodded his head. “Gus was a fine man,” he said, “a fine man.”

  “He was like hell,” said Mrs. Treppel. “He was the meanest man ever did business in this market. He was the lowest of the low.”

  “He was,” said Mr. Flood, reversing his judgment without batting an eye. “He was indeed.”

  “What form did his meanness take?” asked Mr. Bethea.

  “Well, to begin with,” Mrs. Treppel said, “you couldn’t trust him. You couldn’t trust his weights or his invoices or the condition of his fish, not that that was so highly unusual down here and not that people necessarily looked down on him for that. After all, this isn’t the New York Stock Exchange, where everybody is upright and honest and trustworthy, or so I have been told—this is the Fulton Fish Market. No, it wasn’t his crookedness, it was the way he conducted himself in general that turned people against him. He was stingy. He believed everybody was stealing from him. He treated his help in such a way they didn’t know if they were going or coming. And he grumbled about this and he complained about that from morning to night; everything he et disagreed with him. I worked for him once—he had a fresh-water branch on the Slip around 1916 and I had charge of it. I worked for him a year and a half and it aged me before my time; when I took that job I was just a girl and when I gave it up I was an old, old woman. Gus was into everything. He did a general salt-water business. He owned a trawler. He handled Staten Island oysters and guaranteed they came from Norfolk, Virginia. And he had the biggest smoking loft in the market—eels, haddies, kippers, and bloaters. He was an old bachelor. He had a nephew keeping books for him, Charlie Titus, his sister’s son, and everybody was sorry for Charlie. It was understood that Charlie was to inherit the business, and God knows it was a good sound business, but the beating he took, we wondered if it was worth it. Charlie was real polite, Uncle this and Uncle that, but it didn’t do no good. Three or four times a year, at least, Gus would get it in his head that Charlie was falsifying the books. He’d see something in Charlie’s figures that didn’t look just right and it’d make him happy. ‘I’ve caught you now!’ he’d say. ‘I’ve caught you now!’ Then he’d grab the telephone and call in a firm of certified public accountants. Those damned C.P.A.s were in and out of the office all the time. They’d go over Charlie’s books and they’d try their best, but they couldn’t ever find anything wrong, and it’d make Gus so mad he’d put his head down on the desk and cry. ‘You low-down thief,’ he’d say to Charlie, ‘you’re stealing from me, and I know you are. You got some secret way of doing it. My own flesh and blood, and you’re stealing every cent I got.’ Charlie would say, ‘Now, Uncle Gus, that’s just not so,’ and Gus would say, ‘Shut up!’ And Charlie would shut up. I remember one morning Gus was having his coffee at the round table in Sweet’s, and there was a crowd of us sitting there, four or five fishmongers and some of the shellfish gang, and Charlie came running up the stairs and asked Gus a question about a bill of lading, and Gus hauled off and shied a plate at him. ‘Get out of here, you embezzler!’ he said. ‘When I want you,’ he said, ‘I’ll send for you.’ Right before everybody.

  “Another thing about Gus, he tried to look poor. He tried to look like he didn’t have a dime to his name. There’s an old notion in Fulton Market: if you want to know a fishmonger’s financial standing, don’t bother Dun & Bradstreet, just look at him—if he looks like he’s been rolling around in some gutter, his credit is good; if he’s all dolled up, stay away from him. Gus Lowry carried that to an extreme. As soon as he got to his office in the morning, he’d hang his good suit in a locker and he’d put on a greasy old raggedy suit that was out at the elbow and patched in the seat and a coupla sizes too small for him to begin with, and he used a piece of rope he’d picked up somewhere for a belt, and he’d put on a pair of knee boots that always had fish scales sticking to them, and he’d slap on a hat that was so dirty you wouldn’t carry bait in it. He wouldn’t wear a necktie; some days he wouldn’t even wear a shirt. He’d light a cigar, one of those cheap Italian cigars that they call rattails. He’d spit on the floor. Then he’d sit down at his desk, looking like something the cat dragged in, the King of the Bums, and he’d be ready for business.

  “And if you had to do business with him, you just took it for granted you’d be skinned. He’d skin you alive and then he’d shake your hand and inquire about your family. Up on his office wall he had a sign which said, “KEEP SMILING”, but he never smiled. And he had a sign which said, ‘All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother.’ And he had poems about the flag stuck up there and friendship and only God can make a tree and let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man. He’d recite you one of those poems—you couldn’t stop him—and he’d begin to cry. Gus liked to cry. He really enjoyed it. Next to doing something mean to somebody, he liked to cry. I went to his office many a time and found him sitting there with tears in his eyes. People said it was second childhood, but when it came to a dollar he wasn’t in his second childhood. The strangest thing, when he was close to eighty he started going to see a woman that lived in a hotel up on Union Square, and everybody hoped and prayed she’d get him into a lot of trouble. She was an old busted-down actress of some kind, a singer. She’d sing and he’d cry; that was his idea of a high old time. He took me up there with him once to call on her. He wanted me to look her over and tell him what I thought of her, about like he’d ask my opinion on a consignment of jack shad. We hadn’t hardly got in the door before she commenced to bang on the piano and sing. Oh, she was a noisy one. Gus asked her to sing ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,’ and by the time she got to ‘the ocean wild and wide’ he was crying. He hung around her a year or more and then he quit. I guess maybe the poor old thing tried to borrow a dollar and seventy-five cents off him and it broke his heart.

  “The summer of 1921, Gus took a trip to Havana, Cuba, doctor’s orders, and one morning there came a cable he was dead. Bright’s disease. As soon as the news got out it put everybody in a good humor. Some tried to act like they were sorry, but they couldn’t keep a straight face, and pretty soon the fellows all over the market were slapping each other on the back and laughing and old Mr. Unger that kept the stall next to mine shouted out, ‘Hooray for the Bright’s disease!’ Everybody was so glad for Charlie. Captain Oscar Doxsee had worked for Gus off and on for thirty years—he was captain of Gus’s trawler—and I remember what he said when they told him Gus was dead. ‘God is good,’ he said. It was prohibition, but little Archie Ennis the scallop dealer had a quart of whiskey in his safe, bourbon, and he got it out and him and I and Captain Oscar and several others went over to Charlie’s office to congratulate him. We figured a little celebration was in order. Well, what do you know? Charlie was sitting in there with his head in his hands. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said to us, ‘this is the saddest day of my life.’ Oh, oh, oh, we were disgusted! I’ve seen many and many a disgusting thing in my time, but that took the prize. ‘Young man,’ I thought to myself, ‘the opinion your uncle had of you, he was right.’”

  Mr. Bethea grunted. “Blood is thicker than water,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Treppel, “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

  MR. CUSACK CAME SHUFFLING into the room. He’d finally made it.

  “Well, look who’s here,” said Mrs. Treppel. “Old Drop-Dead Matty himself. Hello, Matty. Didn’t you drop dead yet?”

  Mr. Cusack
disregarded her. “Happy birthday, Hugh,” he said.

  “Why, thank you, Matty,” said Mr. Flood. “Matty, this is Tom Bethea. Tom’s an embalmer.”

  “A what?” asked Mr. Cusack.

  “I’m an embalmer,” said Mr. Bethea. “I’m a trade embalmer.”

  Mr. Cusack stared at Mr. Bethea for a few moments. “How do you do, sir?” he said respectfully.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Mr. Bethea. “I’ve heard Hugh speak of you. Sing us a song.”

  “Oh, no!” said Mr. Cusack. “I ain’t in a singing mood.”

  “It was good of you to come, Matty,” said Mr. Flood.

  “Yes, it was,” said Mr. Cusack. “I guess this is the last time I’ll ever come. I can’t stand those stairs no more. I’ve had some bad news. I was to the doctor for a checkup last Thursday and the way he diagnosed it, my heart’s some better but I got the high blood pressure.”

  “I got the high blood pressure, too,” said Mr. Fass.

  “I got it, too,” said Mr. Bethea. “Had it for years.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” said Mrs. Treppel. She got to her feet and began to hop about the room. As she hopped, she sang a children’s street song, a rope-skipping song—“Oh, I hurt, I hurt, I hurt all over. I got a toothache, a gum boil, a bellyache, a pain in my right side, a pain in my left side, a pimple on my nose.”

  “Shut up, Birdy, and behave yourself,” said Mr. Flood. “Come over here, Matty, and sit down. What can I get you?”

  “You can get me a glass of cold water,” said Mr. Cusack. “I asked the doctor what about whiskey and he said it was the better part of wisdom to leave it alone. I haven’t had a drink for six days. All I drink is water.”

  “If you was to drink a glass of water, Matty,” said Mrs. Treppel, “it’d be weeks and weeks before your stomach got over the shock.”

  “Now look here, Birdy,” Mr. Flood said, “don’t talk to Matty that way. I won’t have it. The high blood pressure is a serious matter.” He got up from his wicker rocking chair. “Here, Matty,” he said, “take this chair. How do you feel tonight? Do you feel any worse than usual?”

  “I feel irritable,” said Mr. Cusack. He slapped the pillow in the chair a time or two and sat down. “It makes me irritable to see people drinking and enjoying themselves,” he said. “If I can’t drink it, I don’t want nobody to drink it. I wish they’d bring prohibition back and I wish they’d enforce it. I got so I don’t approve of whiskey.”

  Mr. Flood fixed himself a drink—half Scotch, half water, no ice—and went over and stood with an elbow on the mantelpiece. “I’m the same,” he said. “I love it and I depend on it, but I don’t approve of it. When I think of all the trouble it’s caused me, I feel like I ought to pick some distillery at random and sue it for sixty-five million dollars. Still and all, there’ve been times if it hadn’t been for whiskey, I don’t know what would’ve become of me. It was either get drunk or throw the rope over the rafter. I’ve thought a lot about this matter over the years and I’ve come to the conclusion there’s two ways of looking at whiskey—it gives and it takes away, it lifts you up and it knocks you down, it hurts and it heals, it kills and it resurrects—but whichever way you look at it, I’m glad I’m not the man that invented it. That’s one thing I wouldn’t want on my soul.” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “He’s the one!” he said. “I was lying in bed the other night, couldn’t go to sleep, and I got to thinking about death and sin and hell and God, the way you do, and a question occurred to me, ‘I wonder what man committed the worst sin in the entire history of the human race.’ The man that invented whiskey, he’s the one. When you stop and think of the mess and the monkey business and the fractured skulls and the commotion and the calamity and the stomach distress and the wife beating and the poor little children without any shoes and the howling and the hell raising he’s been responsible for down through the centuries—why, good God A’mighty ! Whoever he was, they’ve probably got him put away in a special brimstone pit, the deepest, red-hottest pit in hell, the one the preachers tell about, the one without any bottom.” He took a long drink. “And then again,” he continued, “just as likely, he might’ve gone to heaven.”

  “The man that invented cellophane,” said Mr. Fass. “He’s the one.”

  Mr. Cusack sighed. “I got to be careful what I eat, too,” he said.

  “Oh, Matty, Matty,” said Mrs. Treppel, “please take a drink and cheer up.”

  “Leave me alone,” said Mr. Cusack. He glanced at his wristwatch, and then he peered into every corner of the room. “Where’s your radio, Hugh?” he asked. “There’s a program coming on in five minutes I don’t want to miss.”

  “I got no radio,” said Mr. Flood.

  Mr. Cusack looked disappointed. “You should get one,” he said. “It’d do you a world of good. It’d be a comfort to you.”

  “It wouldn’t be no comfort to me,” said Mr. Flood. “I despise the radio. I can’t endure it. All that idiotic talk and noise, it goes right through me; it jars my nerves. Son,” he said to me, “you sit on the bed and let me have your chair. I’ll open up some sea urchins and we’ll have a snack.”

  He got out a fish knife he carries in a holster and began preparing the sea urchins. He had three or four dozen full-grown ones, the biggest of which was about the size of a man’s clenched fist. Urchins are green, hemispherical marine animals. They are echinoderms; they are thickly covered with bristly prickles. They are gathered at low tide off rocky ledges on the southern Maine coast and shipped in bushel baskets. Fulton Market handles two hundred thousand pounds a summer, but they are rarely seen in restaurants. They are eaten in the home by Italians and Chinese; Italians call them rizzi, or sea eggs. Mr. Flood cut the tops off ten. He had trouble knifing through the leathery rinds and he muttered to himself as he worked. “Sorry damned knife,” he muttered. “Stainless steel. They don’t care if it’s sharp or not, just so it’s stainless, as if anybody gave a hoot about stains on a knife blade. I wish they’d leave knives alone, quit improving them. Look at it. Shiny. Stainless. Plastic handle. Only one thing wrong with it. It won’t cut.” Each urchin had a pocket of orange roe, from two to five tablespoonfuls. Mr. Flood spooned the roe out and spread it on slices of bread. Urchins are inexpensive, around fifty cents a dozen, but in Mr. Flood’s opinion their roe is superior to caviar. He sprinkled lemon juice on the roe. Then he fixed six plates. On each he placed three open-faced roe sandwiches, a slice of eel, a herring, and a mound of pickled mussels. Mr. Fass refused his plate. “Drinking makes me hungry,” he said, “but it don’t make me that hungry.”

  ALL THE TIME MR. FLOOD had been preparing the urchins, Mr. Cusack had been staring at Mr. Bethea. Finally he spoke up. “I hope you won’t think I’m prying into your affairs, Mr. Bethea,” he said, “but there’s two questions I’d like to ask you.”

  Mr. Bethea stopped eating for a moment. “It’ll be a privilege to answer them, Mr. Cusack,” he said, “if they ain’t too personal.”

  “What I was wondering about is your line of work,” Mr. Cusack said. “How in the world does a man ever come to take up that particular line of work?”

  “Well, I tell you,” said Mr. Bethea, “most of the embalmers of my generation started out as something else. Some were barbers and some were carpenters. I was a carpenter myself, a carpenter and cabinetmaker, and back in 1908 I took a job with Cantrell Brothers & Bishop, on Little West Twelfth Street. That was a coffin factory—what we call a casket factory. I built high-quality caskets for a year and a half, and you know how it is—an up-and-coming young man, you want to make something out of yourself. Every casket factory has a staff of embalmers, and I kept my eyes open when our staff was working and I asked questions and naturally I was handy with tools and the upshot was, I became an embalmer. I’m a trade embalmer, a free lance. We’re the aristocrats of the trade—that is, the profession. All the overhead we have is a telephone. There’s a multitude of undertaking parlors, little neighborhood affairs,
that don’t get enough cases to employ a steady embalmer. They just have a parlor with a desk and a pot of palms and a statue of an angel and a casket catalogue. Oh, some will have a sample casket or two on the premises. And there’s seven or eight of these parlors, when they get a case, they telephone me. Wherever I go, I have to leave a number where I can be reached. And I get on the subway and I go and attend to the case and I collect my seventeen dollars—we got a union and that’s the union rate—and I go on home. That’s the end of the matter. I don’t have to console the bereaved and I don’t have to listen to the weeping and the wailing and I don’t have to fuss with the floral offerings. Of course, these days, like everybody else, embalmers go to college. I went to college myself some years back, just to brush up on the latest scientific advances. There’s two big colleges, the American Academy of Embalming and Mortuary Research on Lexington Avenue and the New York School of Embalming and Restorative Art on Fourth Avenue. They’re the Harvard and the Yale of the embalming world. The past few years women have been flocking into the profession. You take the American Academy—a third of their students are women. I don’t know. I may be old-timey, but the way I look at it, I just wouldn’t have no confidence in a lady embalmer.” He paused and glanced at Mrs. Treppel. “Present company excepted,” he said.

  Mrs. Treppel snorted. “If she puts her mind to it and works hard,” she said, “I bet a woman can embalm as good as a man.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” said Mr. Bethea. He took the Scotch bottle by the neck and poured a big gollop in his glass. “I’m a disappointed man, Mr. Cusack,” he continued. “If I had it to do all over again, I don’t know as I’d choose embalming as my life’s work. You don’t get the respect that’s due you. A doctor gets respect, a dentist gets respect, a veterinarian gets respect, but the average man, if he’s introduced to an embalmer, he giggles or he shudders, one or the other. Some of my brother embalmers don’t like to tell their profession to strangers. They’re close-mouthed. They keep to themselves. Not me. Deep down inside, I’m proud of my profession. I carry a kit, a satchel, my professional satchel, and it’s always been my dream to have my name printed on it. I can just see it—‘THOMAS FOSTER BETHEA, LICENSED EMBALMER.’ But I can’t do it. If I got on the subway, the people would edge away. I’d have the whole car to myself. The public don’t like to be reminded of death. It’s going on all around them—like the fellow said, it looks like it’s here to stay—but they want to keep it hid. We have to work like a thief in the night. I daresay there’s not a one of you that’s ever seen a deceased moved out of a New York apartment house or hotel. No, and you never will. We got ways.” He smiled. “Oh, well,” he said, “no matter how the public feels about embalmers, in the end some embalmer gets them all.”