Whipple's Castle by Thomas Williams Page A

added. “And just now, hell. Susie Davis. I guess it’s not my day.”
    â€œThat was Susie Davis?”
    â€œShe’s learning buttonhole machine. Al sent her down for some tape.”
    â€œI didn’t know she’d quit high school.”
    â€œShe’s only seventeen, but man, oh, man!” Beady said reverently.
    â€œIt’s too bad,” Wood said, and was aware that Beady looked at him strangely.
    â€œYou mean that?” Beady said. “You think she ought to join the Rainbow Girls or something?” He giggled nervously.
    â€œI like her,” Wood said.
    â€œI saw her standing there looking at you. I was going to throw some Gre-solvent at you through the elevator shaft. You really pissed me off for a minute. I’m a jealous son of a bitch. T.S. for old Beady. You and the whole Leah football team, God damn it, and she turns me down flat.”
    â€œYou don’t know about all that,” Wood said.
    â€œI know you probably never, but I’m pretty sure about the football team. After the Northlee game, in October sometime. They got her high on rum and took her out back of…”
    â€œYou don’t really know what happened,” Wood said, hearing a familiar steadiness enter his voice. Always unbidden, that sound of authority came between him and Beady now, and Beady shrugged his shoulders defensively.
    â€œNo, I’m not absolutely one hundred percent sure. I wasn’t there. But I’ve heard some pretty convincing stories about it. Anyway, I’ve got a feeling she’d hand it to you on a platter. Here.” He handed Wood a little square of paper, folded small like a secret high-school note. “She asked me to give you this.”
    Wood took it and put it in his shirt pocket.
    â€œYou going to read it?” Beady said.
    â€œSure.”
    â€œWell, don’t worry about me, because I read it already.”
    Wood opened the thick little square and read the round, neat handwriting:
    Â 
    Dear Wood,
    Don’t believe everything you hear. Please.
    Sincerely,
    Susie D.
    P.S.
    Can I meet you after work today by the side door on Pleasant St. I want to tell you something.
    S.D.
    Â 
    â€œYou want to borrow a couple rubbers?” Beady asked.
    â€œNo.”
    Beady looked a little exasperated. “Why don’t you get mad at me? You trying to insult me to death? At least you could get slightly peed off. Don’t you ever get mad?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œSure,” Beady said, imitating him. “Jesus H. Baldheaded Christ, Woodie. You got to be seen to be believed.”
    Then Beady turned, shaking his head as hard as a dog with something stuck on his nose, and went back to the shipping room.
    The afternoon went on; occasional flashes of the winter day, seen across the busy rooms, seemed at once more real and yet dead against the warm yellow lights on dark beams. The metal shafts and wheels seemed alive in their thin oil, almost as if they had skin. The pale sewing girls bent to their machines. Wood fixed another flat belt, the slim lines of a girl’s legs in the corner of his eye, and later a V belt. On this one he didn’t dare snap the belt on until he took a hammer and chisel and cut out a finger-deep notch in the wooden floor; the pulley came too close to the wood, and if his fingers slipped along with the belt they would have been crushed. Al saw him do this, and merely nodded.
    Then back to the basement to fix the wobbly push trucks that really couldn’t be fixed, and soon the old building began to sigh—a turning down of breath, little by little, as the machines slowed down and stopped. Above him he heard the small taps of heels as the girls left their tables to check out at the time clocks-dainty taps through the thick floor that no longer hummed. He washed with Beady at the shipping-room sink, Gre-solvent like cold Cream of Wheat between his fingers.
    â€œYou going to see her?” Beady