Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [17]
Yeah, said Loving Cup, and he don t sound like Christmas to me.
Sore, eh? Al hurried to the telephone. Merry Christmas, boss, he said. Yeah. Same to you, said Ed, in a dull voice. Listen, Al, my kid got his arm broke
Jesus, tough! How d he do that?
Oh, he fell off some God damn wagon I bought him. So anyhow I m staying here till he gets the arm set and all, and I won’t be down till I don t know when. Annie is all hysterical and yelling her head off shut up, for Christ s sake, can t you see I m phoning. So I m staying here. Now listen, Al. Do you have a date for tonight?
Nothing I can t break, said Al, who had no date. I had a sort of a date, but it can wait if you want me to do anything.
Well, I hate to ask you, but this is what I want you should do. Drive up to the Stage Coach and stay there till they close up and keep an eye on things, see what I mean? And tell Helene I ll be there if I can make it, but you stay there anyhow, will you kid? There s fifty bucks in it for you on account of lousing up your date. Okay?
Kay, said Al. Only too glad, Ed.
Okay, said Ed. Just stick around and keep an eye on everything. He hung up. Al knew what he meant. Helene was not a teetotaler by any means. In fact Ed encouraged her to drink. She was more fun when she drank. But she was liable to get drunk tonight, because it was Christmas, and Ed didn’t want her to become reckless with the spirit of giving.
CHAPTER 3
ANYONE in Gibbsville who had any important money made it in coal; anthracite. Gibbsville people, when they went away, always had trouble explaining where they lived. They would say: I live in the coal regions, and people would say, Oh, yes, near Pittsburgh. Then Gibbsvillians would have to go into detail. People outside of Pennsylvania do not know that there is all the difference in the world between the two kinds of coal, and in the conditions under which anthracite and bituminous are mined. The anthracite region lies roughly between Scranton on the north and Gibbsville on the south. In fact Point Mountain, upon which Gibbsville s earliest settlement was made, is the delight of geologists, who come from as far away as Germany to examine Gibbsville Conglomerate, a stone formation found nowhere else in the world. When that geological squeeze, or whatever it was that produced veins of coal, occurred, it did not go south of Point Mountain, and coal is found on the north slope of Point Mountain, but not on the south side, and at the eastern face of Point Mountain is found Gibbsville Conglomerate. The richest veins of anthracite in the world are within a thirty-mile sector from Gibbsville, and when those veins are being worked, Gibbsville prospers. When the mines are idle, Gibbsville puts on a long face and begins to think in terms of soup kitchens. The anthracite region, unlike the bituminous, is a strong hold of union labor. The United Mine Workers of America is the strongest single force in the anthracite region, and under it the anthracite miner lives a civilized life compared with that of the miner in the soft coal regions about Pittsburgh, West Virginia, and the western states. The coal and iron police in the anthracite region have been so unimportant since the unionization of the mines that they seldom are mentioned. A candidate for governor of Pennsylvania cannot be elected without the support of the U.M.W.A., and the Pennsylvania State Police never are called black cossacks in the anthracite region. A candidate for any political office in the anthracite counties would not think of having anything printed without getting the typesetters union label on his cards and billboards. The union is responsible for the Pennsylvania mining laws, which are the best in the world (although not yet the best there could be), and labor conditions, so far as labor strife was concerned, were all right in 1930, and had been all right since the disastrous strike of 1925. At that time the union called a strike which lasted 110 days, the longest strike in anthracite history. There was no violence beyond the small squabble, and there was no starvation among the miners. But anthracite markets disappeared. Domestic sales were hurt permanently; the oil burner was installed in thousands of homes. Anthracite is practically smokeless, and was satisfactory to home owners, but they could not get anthracite during the strike, and when the oil burner was installed there was no point in going back to coal. And so, as a result of the 1925 strike, the anthracite industry went back to work without nearly the demand for the product that there had been when the strike was called 110 days before. There had been another long strike in 1922, and the two strikes taught consumers that the industry was not dependable. The feeling was that any time the union felt like it, it would call a strike, shutting off the supply of anthracite. Thus what were boom times for the rest of the country were something less for Gibbsville. The year of Our Lord 1929 saw many of the mines near Gibbsville working on a three-day-a-week basis. The blasts of the giant whistles at the collieries, more powerful than those of any steamship, were not heard rolling down the valleys as they had been before the 1925 strike, every morning at five and six o clock. The anthracite industry was just about licked. Still there were a great many people in Gibbsville who had money in 1930. The very rich, who always had money, still had a lot of money. And the merchants and bankers, doctors and lawyers and dentists who had money to play the market continued to spend their principal. Mr. Hoover was an engineer, and in a mining country engineers are respected. Gibbsville men and women who were in the market trusted that cold fat pinched face as they had trusted the cold thin pinched face of Mr. Coolidge, and in 1930 the good day s work of October 29, 1929, continued to be known as a strong technical reaction. II William Dilworth English (B.S., Lafayette College; M.D., University of Pennsylvania), father of Julian McHenry English, had a salary of $12,000 a year as chief of staff of the Gibbsville Hospital. He lived within that salary, almost to the dollar. His income from private practice was about $10,000, and this totaled up to more than he could spend in a year, without being foolish. In addition to that his wife, Elizabeth McHenry English, had an income which in 1930 was about $6,000. In other years it had been more than that, but Dr. English, in investing his wife s money, had been no wiser than a lot of other men whose wives had money to invest. Dr. English came from one of the oldest families in Gibbsville. He was of Revolutionary stock. He wore a ring with an indistinguishable crest (he took it off when he operated). Adam English, one of his ancestors, had come to Gibbsville in 1804, two years after Gibbsville was refounded (Gibbsville was founded by Swedes in 1750, as nearly anyone could make out; the Swedes had been massacred by the Leni Lenape Indians, and the Swedish name of the original settlement has been lost). Old Adam English, as Dr. English called him, who certainly would have been old if he had lived till 1930, was a Philadelphian. It was not old Adam s father, but his father who had fought in the Revolution. The Englishes were not exactly coal people. They were more in the railroad, the Philadelphia & Reading. But of course the railroad and the coal and iron once had been all one company. It was much better in those days, Dr. English said, because you could get passes on the railroad if someone in your family happened to be connected with either the railroad or the coal company. But Dr. English did not desire a return to those days, the days when he was in college and at The University (whenever a Gibbsvillian speaks of The University he means Pennsylvania and nowhere else). He rarely spoke of those days, for, as he said, a dark and bitter cloud had been drawn over what should have been remembered as the happiest days of his life. He referred, of course, to the fact that the summer after he got his M.D., his father, George English, stuck a shotgun in his mouth and blew his head all over the hayloft of the English stable. Dr. English thought of his father as a coward. Two or three times in their married life the doctor had said to his wife: If George English had been anything but a coward he would have gone to the directors like a man and said, Gentlemen, I have been using the bank s funds for my own uses. I am willing to work hard and make it up. And I know the directors would have admired that stand, and they would have given him a chance to make good. But ... And his wife would sympathize with him and try to comfort him, although she knew that her father, for one, would have tried to send George English to jail. As it was, he opposed her marriage to Billy English. Her father had said: He may be all right. I don t know. But his education was paid for out of stolen money. That s enough for me. But how was Billy to know that? she argued. He knows it now, said her father. Yes, he knew it, she went on, and he was anxious to start private practice so he could make good every penny. And he had. Within ten years of his graduation Billy English had paid off the money his father had taken from the bank. It had been a struggle, in a way; what with young Julian s arrival in the world. Still, Julian had not been deprived of anything, thanks to her own income. Despite the dark, bitter cloud that hung over Dr. English s college days, Julian, who wanted to go to Yale, was sent to Lafayette. And, probably out of spite, Julian did not accept the invitation to join Phi Delta Theta, his father s fraternity, but had joined Delta Kappa Epsilon. By that time his father had given up hope that Julian would study medicine. He had pointed out to Julian that when I die, you ll have this practice that I ve been years building up. I don t understand it. Plenty of boys in this town would give their right arm for just this chance. Poor Dr. English, people would say; starting out that way, with that handicap, and then his only son not taking advantage of that wonderful opportunity. No wonder the doctor was such a stern-looking man. He d had his troubles. He represented the best things in the community. He was a member of the County Medical Society, the Medical Club of Philadelphia, the Gibbsville Chamber of Commerce, the Gibbsville Community Chest (director), the Children s Home Association (life subscriber), the Y.M.C.A. (director), Lantenengo County Historical Society, the Gibbsville Club (board of governors), the Lantenengo Country Club (board of governors), the Gibbsville Assembly (membership committee), the Union League of Philadelphia, the Ancient and Arabic Order-Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, the Scottish Rite Masons (32?), and the Liberty (formerly Germania) Hook & Ladder Company Number 1 (honorary). He also was a director of the Gibbsville National Bank & Trust Company, the Gibbsville Building & Loan Company, the Gibbsville-Cadillac Motor Car Company, the Lantenengo Lumber Company, and the Gibbsville Tap & Reamer Company. Episcopalian. Republican. Hobbies: golf, trapshooting. All that in addition to his work at the hospital and his private practice. Of course he didn