Negro. To make Crib feel at home, Stern howled with laughter as his father's friend made such remarks as "It too cold for ole Crib out here."

When Crib had cleaned his plate of eggs, Stern asked if he wanted some milk to wash them down and Crib, with a wink, said, "That ain't what I want." Catching on, Stern filled up a tumbler with rye and Crib drained it, smacking his lips. "That what I want," said Crib slyly, and Stern howled with laughter once again. "Now ole Crib fix you up," said the Negro, rising and going to the tile. He rolled his sleeves back over his great wrists, and Stern felt that even though tremendous power would not be needed to lay the tiles, it was comforting to have it on tap anyway. Crib spent the morning on his knees, measuring and arranging and muttering, "Ole Crib forgot his tile cutter." Stern silently placed a variety of sandwiches and another tumblerful of rye on a loose tile near Crib, and in the evening, when the job was finished, Stern's wife had a roast ready. Later, Crib went back to inspect his work, shaking his head and saying, "Crib wish he bring his tile cutter." Stern gave him twenty-five dollars, hugged him tightly, and saw him off, thinking for a moment how wonderful it would be if he could have Crib out there with him, using his great wrists to fight Stern's[Pg 36] enemies, police in rimless glasses and short, powerful-legged firemen. "You made too much of a fuss over him," said Stern's wife, and Stern replied, "He's a saint. We were lucky to get him." A day later, the tiles buckled, and Stern had to put books, A Treasury of the World's Great Classics, about the room to hold them down. When the Treasury was removed, great crevasses remained between the tiles and Stern's wife said, "We really needed him."

[Pg 36]

"We got him for nothing," said Stern. "It's not a bad job. Nobody gets tile exactly right."

But the crevasses made them suddenly lose interest in fixing up the house. They left the paint cans in the corner of the living room. The floors remained bare of carpeting, the windows without drapes. They took to ducking down when passing open windows in the nude, to avoid being spotted by cars. Upstairs, in Stern's bedroom, the color scheme remained Mr. Spenser's winter-green selection, and inferior artwork whipped up by the golden Spenser children still hung about the walls.

At this point, all of the sweetness seemed to drain out of Stern, a man who had once played a thousand inventive games with his son, Donald. There were no young children in the neighborhood for the boy to 

 Prev. P 18/130 next