Mary And The Giant

"I'm sorry," Mary Anne said. "But it's so stupid and mixed up. There's Jake out there hating his job-if he doesn't like his job he should quit. And your husband wants to fire him because his work is sloppy." She gazed up intently at Mrs. Bolden, distressing her even more. "Why doesn't somebody do something? It was like this a year and a half ago. What's the matter with everybody?"

"Just do your work," Mrs. Bolden said. "Would you do that? Would you turn around and finish your letters?"

"You didn't answer me." Mary Anne continued to scrutinize her, without compassion. "I asked if I could leave early."

"Finish your work and then we'll discuss it."

Mary Anne considered a moment and then turned back to her desk. It would take fifteen minutes to get to the cleaners, if she walked from the factory directly into town. She would have to leave at four-thirty to be sure of arriving in time.

As far as she was concerned the matter was settled. She had settled it herself.

In the tired brilliance of late afternoon she walked along Empory Avenue, a small, rather thin girl with short-cropped brown hair, walking very straight-backed, head up, her brown coat slung carelessly over her arm. She walked because she hated to ride on buses, and because, on foot, she could stop when and wherever she wished.

Traffic in two streams moved along the street. Merchants were beginning to emerge and roll up their awnings; the stores of Pacific Park were shutting for the day.

To her right were the stucco buildings that made up Pacific Park High School. Three years ago, in 1950, she had graduated from that school. Cooking, civics, and American history; that was what they had taught her. She had been able to use the cooking. In 1951 she had got her first job: receptionist at the Ace Loan Company on Pine Street. In late 1951, bored, she had quit and gone to work for Tom Bolden.

Some job that was-typing letters to department stores about chrome kitchen chairs. And the chairs weren't very well built, either; she had tried them out.

She was twenty years old, and she had lived in Pacific Park all her life. She did not dislike the town; it seemed too frail to survive dislike. It, and its people, played odd little games, and the games were taken seriously, as were the games of her childhood: rules that could not be broken, rituals that involved life and death. And she, with curiosity, asking why this rule, why that custom, and playing anyhow ... until boredom came, and, after it, a wondering contempt that left her cut off and alone.

At the Rexall drugstore she halted a moment and inspected the rack of paperbound books. Bypassing the novels-they were too full of nonsense-she selected a volume entitled Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. That, and a copy of the Pacific Park Leader, cost her thirty-seven cents.

She was coming out of the drugstore when two shapes encountered her. "Hi," one said, a young man, well-dressed. A salesman from Frug's Menswear; his companion was unknown to her. "Seen Gordon today? He's looking for you."

"I'll telephone him," she said, starting away. She disliked the odor of flowers that hung over Eddie Tate. Some men's cologne smelled all right; Tweany's was like the smell of wood. But not this ... she had no respect for this.

"Whatcha reading?" Tate asked, peering. "One of those sexy books?"

She appraised him in her fashion: calmly, with no intention to do harm, merely wanting to know. "I wish I was sure about you.

"What do you mean?" Tate said uneasily.

"One day I saw you standing around the Greyhound terminal with a couple of sailors. Are you a fairy?"

"My cousin!"

"Gordon isn't a fairy. But he's too stupid to tell the difference; he thinks you've got class." Her eyes widened; the sight of poor Eddie Tate's dismay amused her. "You know how you smell?

You smell like a woman."

The man's companion, interested in a girl who would speak so, waited close by, listening.

"Is Gordon at the gas station?" she asked Tate. "I-wouldn't know."

"Weren't you hanging around there today?" She didn't let him go; she had the creature stuck.

"I was by for a minute. He said maybe he'd drop over to your house tonight. He said he came around Wednesday and you weren't home."

Tate's voice diminished as she, collecting her coat, started off, not looking back at either of them. Not caring, really, about either of them. She was thinking about home. Discouragement set in, and she felt her pleasure, the lift that fairy-baiting gave her, fade.

The front door was unlocked; her mother was in the kitchen fixing dinner. Noise clanged in the six units of the building: television sets and kids playing.

She entered, and faced her father.