Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [15]
“I saw that.”
“I can fix you up with some wood crates you’re desperate.”
“We’re desperate.”
“What line a work you in?” The old man takes his position behind the counter, ready to fetch whatever Sexton might ask for.
“I’m a typewriter salesman.”
“You don’t say.”
“That’s right.” Sexton steps outside to crush his cigarette with his foot.
“You go around in that car of yours and sell typewriters?” the old man asks when Sexton has come back through the screen door.
“I do.”
“Don’t reckon I have any use for a typewriter,” the old man says, pronouncing the word as if it had four syllables.
“Don’t reckon you do. Though one might be a help with the bills. And the orders.”
“Easier just to write ‘em down.”
Sexton laughs.
“Who you sell ‘em to?”
“Pretty girls,” Sexton says.
The old man grins, revealing yellowed teeth.
“You want to go for a ride?” Sexton asks the man.
“In your Buick?”
“You could show me around.”
“Don’t want to keep you from your errands.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Don’t want to keep you from your wife. She mind if you take your time?”
“Don’t know,” Sexton says. “I’ve only been married a day.”
“Oh, Lord,” the old man says, and takes a step toward the door.
Jack Hess sits with his legs splayed. Either his belly has simply grown too big or he has lost the use of the muscles in his thighs. “You should try the mills over to the Falls you want to get rid of them typewriters,” he says.
“Your store do a good business?” Sexton asks.
“In the summer it does. Duller than a preacher’s sermon in winter. That there’s the Highland Hotel. They do a dandy rice pudding.”
The Buick rounds a rocky point. To one side of the road is an inhospitable stretch of coastline; to the other are some of the largest houses Sexton has ever seen. He whistles appreciatively.
“More money than sense,” Jack Hess says. “That one belongs to Gordon Hale. He owns one of the mills over to Ely Falls. That one there is George Walker’s house. His grandfather started the Walker Hotel chain, don’t you know. That one there, that’s Alice Beam’s house. Her father made his money in shipping. She’ll stay on over the winter. About fifty of ‘em do. You got heat?”
“I think so,” Sexton says. “I hope so.”
“Well, they had to for the home, didn’t they?”
“The home?”
“Folks you’re rentin’ from, they didn’t tell you much, did they?”
“Not much,” Sexton says.
“There was a woman came here when she was a girl — oh, thirty years ago now — and she got herself involved with a doctor, and, well, that’s a long story for another day, but she went away and then came back and started a home for other girls who had gotten themselves in the family way, don’t you know. Marvelous enterprise too. Never a complaint from anyone on the beach, even though the place was full of what you would call high-spirited girls. Closed down four years ago.”
Sexton pulls to the side of the road to let a beach wagon pass. “The home was a convent?”
“Years ago. French nuns from Quebec.”
Beyond the wild growth of beach roses, the ocean spreads to the horizon. A deep twitchy blue with whitecaps. Sexton reaches for a new pack of Luckies from his pocket and expertly tears it open even as he drives. “You want one?” he asks Jack Hess.
The old man sighs and shakes his head. “Under doctor’s orders now. Had to give it all up — this, that, and the other thing.”
Sexton puts the cigarettes back in his pocket.
“My wife died in twenty-four,” Hess says. “Haven’t been the same since. I don’t eat right, and I don’t sleep right. A good marriage, Mr. Beecher, that’s all you need in life. I envy you just startin’ out. I do. Some fun to be had you keep your head on straight. And times is good now, aren’t they? Boom times, so they say.”
“We’re trying to save up for a place of our own,” Sexton says.
“What do you get for them typewriting machines of yours?”
“Depends. Sixty-five dollars for the Number Seven.”
“And how much of that do you get to keep?”
“Eight percent, five dollars and twenty cents for the Seven.”
“Gonna take you a while, Mr. Beecher.”
Sexton smiles.