The Cat's Pajamas

“Now you,” whispered the president.

Thunder rolled again and the small Indian said, “You win.”

“How can you tell?” said the president, “if you don’t turn your cards over? Perhaps you have twenty, or twenty-one.”

The weather changed high in the room and the little Indian said, “You win. The country is yours. But, one last small item.”

He handed the president a piece of paper.

The paper was inscribed: Twenty-six dollars and ninety cents.

“That,” said the small Indian, “is the same amount of money paid for Manhattan many moons ago.”

The president took out his billfold.

A voice rumbled from on high.

“He says, small bills only,” said the interpreter.

The president handed over the money and the redwood’s huge hand reached out and took it.

Up toward the ceiling the voice rumbled again.

“What now?” asked the president.

The interpreter translated. “He says he hopes you will build many ships and he will come to the harbor to bid you farewell on your journey back to wherever you came from.”

“He said that, did he?”

The president of the United States stared at the cards, still untouched, on the table.

“Don’t I get to see, to make sure I haven’t gypped you?”

The small Indian shook his head.

The president went to the door, turned, and said, “What’s this about sailing? I’m not going anywhere.”

A voice whispered from above.

“Oh no?”

And the president of the United States snuck out, followed by his senators.

WE’LL JUST A CT NATURAL

1948–1949

IT WAS ABOUT SEVEN in the evening. Susan kept getting up and looking out the porch window, down off the hill at the railroad tracks, the trains running in, the smoke rising. The red and green lights were reflected in her wide brown eyes. In the darkness, her plump hand was a darker darkness. She kept pressing her mouth and looking at the clock. “That old clock must be fast,” she said. “That crazy old tin clock.”

“Ain’t no crazy clock,” said Linda, in the corner, a stack of phonograph records in her black hands, scuffling them through. She picked one out, eyed it, put it on the Grafanola, and cranked the machine. “Why’nt you just sit down and unworry yourself, Mom?”

“My feet is still in good shape,” said Susan. “I’m not so old.”

“He comin’, he comin’, that’s all. An’ if he ain’t comin’, he ain’t,” said Linda. “You can’t push that train any faster or flop them signals up and down. What time he say he comin’?”

“Seven-fifteen he said the train was, here for half an hour, on his way to New York, and he’d stop, said he’d just take that taxi right here, said not to try to meet him at the station.”

“He ashamed, that’s why,” sneered Linda.