Free The Collected Stories Of Saul Bellow by Saul Bellow

Rebecca would be furious, and Woody was afraid, but he couldn’t help it.
    Morris had come and said, “Son, I’m in trouble. It’s bad.”
    “What’s bad, Pop?”
    “Halina took money from her husband for me and has to put it back before old Bujak misses it. He could kill her.”
    “What did she do it for?”
    “Son, you know how the bookies collect? They send a goon. They’ll break my head open.”
    “Pop! You know I can’t take you to Mrs. Skoglund.”
    “Why not? You’re my kid, aren’t you? The old broad wants to adopt you, doesn’t she? Shouldn’t I get something out of it for my trouble? What am I—outside? And what about Halina? She puts her life on the line, but my own kid says no.”
    “Oh, Bujak wouldn’t hurt her.”
    “Woody, he’d beat her to death.”
    Bujak? Uniform in color with his dark-gray work clothes, short in the legs, his whole strength in his tool-and-die-maker’s forearms and black fingers; and beat-looking—there was Bujak for you. But, according to Pop, there was big, big violence in Bujak, a regular boiling Bessemer inside his narrow chest. Woody could never see the violence in him. Bujak wanted no trouble. If anything, maybe he was afraid that Morris and Halina would gang up on him and kill him, screaming. But Pop was no desperado murderer. And Halina was a calm, serious woman. Bujak kept his savings in the cellar (banks were going out of business). The worst they did was to take some of his money, intending to put it back. As Woody saw him, Bujak was trying to be sensible. He accepted his sorrow. He set minimum requirements for Halina: cook the meals, clean the house, show respect. But at stealing Bujak might have drawn the line, for money was different, money was vital substance. If they stole his savings he might have had to take action, out of respect for the substance, for himself—self-respect. But you couldn’t be sure that Pop hadn’t invented the bookie, the goon, the theft—the whole thing. He was capable of it, and you’d be a fool not to suspect him. Morris knew that Mother and Aunt Rebecca had told Mrs. Skoglund how wicked he was. They had painted him for her in poster colors—purple for vice, black for his soul, red for hell flames: a gambler, smoker, drinker, deserter, screwer of women, and atheist. So Pop was determined to reach her. It was risky for everybody. The Reverend Doctor’s operating costs were met by Skoglund Dairies. The widow paid Woodys seminary tuition; she bought dresses for the little sisters.
    Woody, now sixty, fleshy and big, like a figure for the victory of American materialism, sunk in his lounge chair, the leather of its armrests softer to his fingertips than a woman’s skin, was puzzled and, in his depths, disturbed by certain blots within him, blots of light in his brain, a blot combining pain and amusement in his breast (how did that get _ there?). Intense thought puckered the skin between his eyes with a strain bordering on headache. Why had he let Pop have his way? Why did he agree to meet him that day, in the dim rear of the poolroom?
    “But what will you tell Mrs. Skoglund?”
    “The old broad? Don’t worry, there’s plenty to tell her, and it’s all true. Ain’t I trying to save my little laundry-and-cleaning shop? Isn’t the bailiff coming for the fixtures next week?” And Pop rehearsed his pitch on the Western Avenue car. He counted on Woody’s health and his freshness. Such a straightforward-looking body was perfect for a con.
    Did they still have such winter storms in Chicago as they used to have? Now they somehow seemed less fierce. Blizzards used to come straight down from Ontario, from the Arctic, and drop five feet of snow in an afternoon. Then the rusty green platform cars, with revolving brushes at both ends, came out of the barns to sweep the tracks. Ten or twelve streetcars followed in slow processions, or waited, block after block.
    There was a long delay at the gates of Riverview Park, all the