Mary And The Giant

Joseph Schilling, exercising his legs and rubbing his hands, began walking around. The air smelled good; hot as it was it lacked the stuffy closeness of the car. He got out a cigar, clipped off the end, and lit up. He was breathing dark blue smoke here and there when the Negro approached.

"He working on it right now," the Negro said. The Dodge, pushed bodily into the wash, had half-disappeared into the billows of soap and hot water.

"Don't you do it?" Schilling asked. "Oh, I see; you're the engineer."

"I'm in charge. I own the car wash."

The door of the men's room was open; inside, Max was gratefully urinating and muttering.

"How far is San Francisco from here?" Schilling asked the Negro.

"Oh, fifty miles, sir."

"Too far to commute."

"Oh, they commute, some of them. But this no suburb; this a complete town." He indicated the hills. "A lot of retired people, they come here because of the climate. They settle; they stay." He tapped his chest. "Nice dry air."

Clouds of high school students roamed along the sidewalks, across the lawn of the fire station, gathering at the windows of the drive-in on the far side of the street. One pretty little girl in a red sweater held Schilling's attention as she stood sipping from a pasteboard cup, her eyes large and vacant, her black hair fluttering. He watched until she noticed him and ducked defensively away.

"Are those all high school children?" he asked Bill. "Some of them look older."

"They high school students," the Negro assured him with civic authority. "It just three o'clock."

"The sun," Schilling said, making a small joke. "You have sun most of the year ... it ripens everything faster."

"Yes, crops here all year round. Apricots, walnuts, pears, rice. It nice here."

"Is it? You like it?"

"Very much." The Negro nodded. "During the war I live down in Los Angeles. I work in a airplane factory. I ride to work on the bus." He grimaced. "Shee-oot."

"And now you're in business for yourself."

"I got tired. I live a lot of different places and then I come here. All during the war I save for the car wash. It make me feel good. Living here make me feel good. can sort of rest."

"You're accepted here?"

"There a colored section. But that good enough; that about all you can expect. At least nobody ever say I can't come and live. You know."

"I know," Schilling said, deep in thought.

"So it better here."

"Yes," Schilling agreed. "It is. Much better."

Across the street the girl had finished her soft drink; crumpling the cup, she dropped it into the gutter and then strolled off with friends. Joseph Schilling was looking after her when Max emerged from the men's room, blinking in the sunlight and buttoning his trousers.

"Hey, hey," Max said warningly, seeing the expression on his face. "I know that look."

With a guilty start, Schilling said, "That's an exceptionally lovely girl."

"But none of your business."

Returning to the Negro, Schilling said, "What's a good place to walk? Up toward the hills?"

"There a couple of parks. One of them just down there; you could walk over. It small, but it shady." He pointed the direction, glad to be helpful, glad to be of service to the large, well-dressed white gentleman.

The large, well-dressed white gentleman looked about him, his cigar between his fingers. His eyes moved in such a way that the Negro knew he was seeing past the car wash and the Foster's Freeze drive-in; he was seeing out over the town. He was seeing the residential section of estates and mansions. He was seeing the slum section, the tumbledown hotel and cigar store. He was seeing the fire station and high school and modern shops. In his eyes it was all there, as if he had caught hold of it just by looking at it.

And it seemed to the Negro that the white gentleman had traveled a long way to reach this one town. He had not come from nearby; he had not even come from the East. Perhaps he had come all across the world; perhaps he had always been coming, moving along, from place to place. It was his cigar: it smelled foreign. It wasn't made in America; it came from outside. The white gentleman stood there, giving off a foreign smell, from his cigar, his tired tweed suit, his English shoes, his French cuffs made of gold and linen. Probably his silver cigar cutter came from Sweden. Probably he drank Spanish sherry. He was a man of and from the world.

When he came, when he drove his big black Dodge up onto the lot, it was not merely himself that he brought. He was much bigger than that. He was so immense that he towered over everything, even as he stood bending and listening, even as he stood smoking his cigar. The Negro had never seen a face so far up; it was so far that it had no look, no expression. It had neither kindness nor meanness; it was simply a face, an endless face high above him, with its smoking, billowing cigar, spreading out the whole world around him and his assistant. Bringing the whole outside universe into the little California town of Pacific Park.