Mr. Wilson and the Gulls

A STORY

by ALMA STONE

WHAT you called it didn’t matter. If you couldn’t think of anything else to call it, said Gladys, call it brotherly love.

Brotherly love! said Ethel, slinging the silver on the tables. She’d never noticed any Brotherly Lovers knocking themselves out doing things for Gladys. She’d never noticed any Friends of Jesus throwing a thousand-dollar bill in Gladys’s lap. How’d Little Miss Sunshine explain that?

No, said Gladys, straightening the silver, she wasn’t rich, nobody had ever dashed up with a mink coat and a Packard car and said “Come with me, Gladys dear, I want you to be Queen of the Wholesale Grocers’ Convention”; Mr. Free-and-Easy had never come to Kelcy’s Kitchen in Houston, where Gladys worked in the winter, and said “See here, good-looking, are you going to accept this fourteencarat diamond breastpin peaceable or am I going to have to pin it right on your two snowy-whites?”, and as per usual, Ethel had missed the whole point of the discussion. As for being Little Miss Sunshine, Gladys thanked her for the compliment (not intended, of course; Ethel would have beat her brains out against the sea wall before she would have given you a compliment) and said o.k., forget the brotherly love if it was going to put Ethel in the heat. Just call it plain old common sense — giving people a helping hand along the rocky road of life, being honestly interested in people and their problems, like say, Mr. Wilson and the gulls.

Why did Mr. Wilson come to the café day after day and just sit there drinking beer and feeding the gulls?

The café was long and narrow and jutted out like a greasy old peninsula into the big hot water of the Gulf. On one side was Convention Pier, cutting off the view, but on the other side were the wide open beach and the gulls. Gladys’s tables were all on the open side near the gulls, and Mr, Wilson would not go to any table but hers. Gladys was Over Thirty-five (but with good, natural brown hair) and had to watch her hips and those little lines under her chin that were a dead giveaway. Once when she first found herself cracking Gladys had gone through a period of trying not to smile so her skin wouldn’t stretch, but it had been too hard to remember (Gladys was a born smiler) and the way her customers had responded to the sudden change, looking at her in a very cynical way like oh, well, having a nice, smiling waitress had been too good to last, anyway, had got her goat. If you were going to be Miss Sour Puss get out of the game, thought Gladys. Get in funeral work if you were going to be Miss Sour Puss. People didn’t want to look up and see Miss Sour Puss waiting on ‘em.

People were one of Gladys’s main interests in life, in fact if you said the main interest you’d hit it closer. She figured she’d seen ‘em at their worst, eating and tipping and—this was the test—at conventions, and she had come up still thinking people were pretty fine. Ethel, though, just to show how different people reacted, had come up despising not only people but gulls, and did everything she could to discourage both.

Mr. Wilson had his first date with the gulls on the fifteenth of June. The following two weeks the sweet Gulf breeze swept like a huge fan over the Fair City of Conventions. Visitors jammed the boardwalk and the piers; bathers splashed briskly in the shimmering sea. Even the natives came out at night. Then one morning, suddenly, mercilessly, the breeze stopped. A heat that was almost alive struck one fantastic blow at the city and dumped it, a dead, wet duck, into the sweltering embrace of the sea wall. By noon the boardwalk was deserted, the sea a silent pond. The convention crowds parked in the cool, dark bars of the big hotels on Ocean Avenue. The natives lay low. Now and then in the ghastly quiet of the Avenue there was the sound of heat slowly frizzing the tar of the bulging asphalt street.

In the café the smell of old fry hung heavy as fog. Gladys wiped the sweat from under her knees, hung her handkerchief in the hot air of the fan to dry, and eyed Mr. Wilson and the pothellied old gulls coasting lazily past his window. Now look, Mr. Wilson, she thought, personally I admire a man that’s kind to dumb animals. But Mr. Ben, the manager, is a squirt, He can’t stand the way you waste bread, He’s too little to see that all the beer makes up for it; all he’s big enough to see is the bread bill. And frankly I don’t want to sweat out another uniform today getting all worked up over it, Mr. Wilson. So why don’t you just give your pals a rest for once and go on back over to the hotel like everybody else and get quietly drunk under air conditioning? Have one for me, too.

“Here comes Little Brother, Gladys. Watch him,”

Little Brother so-called (Gladys couldn’t tell Little Brother from Little Sister Sue but took Mr. Wilson’s word for it) got the nod and his orange legs held back straight against the gray-white feathers, his eyes black with greed, he swooped like a hawk for the bread, catching it on the fly. Smiling, interested in spite of the heat, Gladys watched him, trying with all her might to get as much out of it as Mr. Wilson did. She gave it all her attention like people did the ocean, watching the waves and the tides and seeing them as Life, or Time Marching On, or maybe a Big Ideal or Stuff, never just water. She watched the gulls like they were more than gulls, like she was seeing more than she saw, but mostly she watched Mr. Wilson, watched his large, flushed face grow redder and redder as the beer took effect, watched the wet patches slowly gather under the arms of his coat (Mr. Wilson would have drowned in his own sweat before he would have worn his shirt sleeves in front of ladies) and thought my, Mr. Wilson is a dignifiedlooking somebody, just her type, if she didn’t have Mr. Birnbaum in Houston.

Abruptly she turned toward the kitchen; she could hear the hurried little tracks of Mr. Ben behind her but she went on.

“ Don’t take that big bastard any more bread.”

“He’s a customer, ain’t he?” She fought back the heat and the anger, feeling her uniform go wet. High, deliberately, she stacked the bread on the plate. Take it out of my salary, she dared him, let me see you take it out of my salary. He was too big a coward to follow her back to Mr. Wilson’s table.

“For Little Brother.” She set the bread down handy to Mr. Wilson and made a joke. “Mr. Ben’s compliments.” But Mr. Wilson, a quick look of expectancy on his fine, dignified fare, was watching ihe boardwalk. A big man like Mr. Wilson should sit facing the sea, thought Gladys. A man of Mr. Wilson’s large character should regard the surf and the changing tides, not the watermelon stands and the Live Bait signs. It was plain enough by now, though, that whoever he was expecting would arrive by foot and not by sea.

From the big tips he left, Gladys picked Mr. Wilson for an oilman, not knowing a thing about it. really. Mr. Wilson was hardly what you would call a talker, confining most of his remarks to gulls and beer, and even with her genuine interest in people, Gladys never butted in on their private affairs. (Smite, all right, be ready, but don’t butt.) Harry, Gladys’s husband, had been in oil and every time he went to work he said “ Here goes nothing, babe.” He capped the wells when they came in, which was dangerous as anything, but good pay, the reason he did it, naturally, and one morning after ten years of happy married life he had said “ Well, sweetheart, here goes nothing,” and they hadn’t even brought Gladys home the little pieces. It was years afterwards that she had met Mr. Birnbaum at the Retail Furniture Dealers’ Convention.

“Mr. Wilson is a nut,” said Ethel.

Gladys prided herself she was pretty good at telling nuts; she could tell a nut as easy as Ethel could tell a fairy. (Ethel could tell a fairy a mile off.) Mr. W ilson was a drunk, maybe; a gentleman, yes, but a nut, no. Ethel’s trouble was she couldn’t stand big people like Mr. Wilson; Ethel was little and here was a good one, she not only couldn’t stand big people like Mr. Wilson, she couldn’t stand little people either, like Mr. Ben. Ethel had to whittle people down to her own size before she could handle ‘em. She was blonde and busty and in business strictly for the tips (“What else is there, for God’s sake?”), not that Gladys had ever broken an arm trying to return any, of course (only to Mr. Wilson once when she thought he was too tight to tell how much he was leaving, and the look he gav e her fixed that once and for all). Gladys wasn’t, kidding herself, she was making a living same as everybody else, but she did try to leave people a little dignity to fall back on in this old world; she didn’t try to kill non-tippers with a mere look the way Ethel did, even people who came from nontipping little country towns and weren’t used to the custom, Gladys herself had been a grown girl, working, before she’d known about tips. “What’s this for?” she’d asked the first man who’d left her a tip — an oilman from Wichita Falls who kind of reminded her now of Mr. Wilson. “What’s these two quarters under the plate for?”

Sometimes after she went home to the tourist cottage up the beach where she and Ethel roomed together, Gladys would lie in bed thinking about Mr. Wilson and the gulls. All during the day while she was smiling her friendly smile, all the time she was doing special little things for people, extra butter behind Mr. Ben’s back, a simple little word that might buck up their spirits or make their load lighter, she worked on Mr. Wilson’s problem.

2

THE summer wore on. The Double Petunia Growers of Southeast. Texas, the Latin Teachers of America, the Amalgamated Salesmen of Deep Sea Fishing Tackle drank their way through their annual banquets, pooled their sweat with their fellow convention-men’s, and surrendered the hacked old cafe to the next invasion. Still Mr. Wilson came on, feeding the gulls and waiting — for who? Gladys couldn’t figure it out and a crick she got in her neck from twisting around quick to see if whoever was coming up the steps of the cafe was who Mr. W ilson was waiting for began to worry her a lot. It was a scorcher at the end of August before she finally found out the answer to the problem — maybe not the right answer, but one that suited her fine.

Mr. Wilson noticed the decorations as soon as he came in that day — tables pulled together and made into one long banquet, spread, red and white paper trimmings all over the place, paper lanterns swinging in the breeze of the noisy fans, favors little hats and cigarette holders — at each plate.

“Fourth of July, Gladys?” He already had a load on, Gladys saw at once. Grabbing a bottle of beer she hurried to stand in front of his table, hiding him from Mr. Ben with her serving tray.

“It’s just another convention banquet, .Mr. Wilson,” she said. “Don’t fall out the window now.” She left him with the gulls and was feeling low and miserable, kind ot thinking what’s the good ol anything, when the band started playing, You’d seen a million, they were all alike, but you never got so used to them, the bands, the parades, and above all, the people, thought Gladys, hurrying to the door, that you didn’t look.

Four abreast, banners streaming, two hundred Benign Sisters of the Southern USA marched out of the Hotel Gulfstream across Ocean Avenue. Magnificently in step they crossed the plaza in front of the hotel; in full regalia they passed the bordering palms and the oleanders. At the Monument to Flood Victims, 1900, 1915, 1938, they parted. Half circled to the left, half to the right, and Gladys knew at once with a little thrill of recognition (they all did it, it was a pattern) that when they reached the middle of Ocean Avenue each member of each section would pass in front of the opposing member of the ot her section, and so march up and down the Avenue, like in a rodeo, thought Gladys, when the horses all cross in the Grand Opening, switching their tails and prancing like peacocks.

“Benign Sisters Ever" they sang and marched on to the middle of Ocean Avenue. First came the band, in white uniforms like the Waves used to wear on Saturday night when they came in for a beer, hoping to meet some men officers. (Gladys had felt sorry for them, looking so cute, but acting so proper — Relax, Gladys had wanted to tell them, relax.) Behind the band came the Dallas Dames, Civil War ladies in hooped skirts, Southern as all got out. (The leader of each group marched a step ahead carrying a banner, giving the cue.) Next came assorted sizes in cowboy suits and boots and the inevitable ten-gallon hats — these were the bort Worth Funsters, and this group Gladys thought was the snappiest, though most of their pants were too tight; “Fort Worth Fannies” a rough element in the watching crowd yelled. Somebody whistled. Then came the Houston Honeys, each one disguised as a bluebonnet, the state flower; “Houston Horrors” the rough element shouted, but Gladys, standing on tiptoe to see above the crowd, clapped for her home tow n.

As the other groups drew nearer it seemed to Gladys that there were three requisites for joining this club — a two-dollar corsage, a big behind, and a new permanent. Seeing the eager old girls so proud and peppy, so sure they were out on a riproaring spree, sort of put the punch back in her. Good luck, old sisters, she thought, and smiled and nodded like old times, good luck to you.

The ladies marched on. Heads high, banners flashing like jewels in the late afternoon sun, they came on. In the middle of Ocean Avenue the two sections met. They faced each other dramatically. Now, like the rodeo, thought Gladys, a real thrill running up her spine, now the prancing, and the clapping in the crowd. Now the climax.

Left, right. Arms swinging rhythmically, the ladies prepared to advance. Then a little gasp ran through the ranks. The ladies fell back, stunned. No one moved. There was no place to go. East and west, the boardwalk and the sidewalk were jammed with onlookers. North and south, on Ocean Avenue, was five o’clock traffic, hot, urgent, honking. Boxed in on all sides, the sun hearing down, the tar pushing up, the Benign Sisters marked time. They could not turn and march back the way they had come and just forget the whole thing till next year because the plaza was packed with spectators. They could not even turn and march straight into the sea because the sea wall would stop them.

Nose to nose, the two section leaders stared it out. All at once the older one began to cry.

“Mrs. Hadnot,” said the younger woman to the waiting world, “forgot to tell the police to clear traffic for our parade!”

The crowd hooted and Mrs. Hadnot plainly wished she were back in Waco under her ceiling fan. Her corsage drooped; her crisp white curls began to unravel. The crowd began to kid her. “How about it, grandma? Let’s get going.” The ears honked. The band played another chorus of “Benign Sisters Ever.” The paraders marked time. The minutes passed. Down beat the relentless sun. Closer and closer inched traflic. Mrs. Hadnot shot an appealing glance toward the crowd, then sank deeper and deeper into the melting tar. Across the sea wall the gulls circled hungrily.

Gladys started forward. At least she could go stand by the old lady; she could say to her, buck up, dear, you have one friend left in this old world. But Gladys never got to Mrs. Hadnot; she saw Mr. Wilson and stopped. Stumbling a little on the boardwalk, lifting his fine, large hands, clean as a woman’s, he marked time to the music. And though ordinarily Gladys thought men who did this were pretty silly, she shushed vigorously when somebody in the crowd giggled. Pausing solemnly in front of Mrs. Hadnot, Mr. Wilson bowed low and took her arm. Gladys knew he was steadying himself a little on the old lady but Mrs. Hadnot never knew it. Turning his back on the ladies, but beckoning them to follow, leading them on through the opening he had made in the crowd, he escorted Mrs. Hadnot up the steps of the café. In the doorway Mr. Ben threw himself frantically in front of him. Mr. Ben spread out both hands and shrieked like a stuck pig. But in a large, grand manner Mr. Wilson shoved the little squirt aside.

At first the ladies in the street stared at each other. Then slowly they too turned, found their partners in the opposing sections, and covering their embarrassment with an unseasonable haste, marched two by two up the steps. Deposed, her nose considerably out of joint by now, the other section leader brought up the rear. In the street below, the crowd clapped thunderously. Traffic roared on. The slot machines clicked again. Gladys hurried inside.

Mr. Wilson had seated Mrs. Hadnot at the head of the table and gone back to the gulls. The ladies marched in — Benign Sisters Ever. In front of Mr. Wilson’s table each one as she passed curtseyed (Fort Worth with some difficulty) and did the cutest thing Gladys had ever seen. Each one threw a little petal from her corsage at Mr. Wilson’s feet. As Gladys watched, fascinated, the band drew up at his table. Every lady in the house stood up. “Oh Loyal Friend of BSE” they sang. Too great a gentleman to sit while ladies stood, Mr. Wilson stood also, swaying dangerously and singing a little, too, when he could catch the words, in a full, rich baritone Gladys loved. Then the ladies broke ranks and found seats at the long table. Mr. Wilson turned back to Little Brother.

Gladys hurried to the kitchen for the seafood cocktails. When she came back Mr. Wilson was doing the honors; Mr. Ben had dashed into the kitchen. “ Throw it, sister.”Mr. Wilson picked out a lady at random — Old Mexico. “Hast a manana, sister.” The woman looked startled, adjusted her mantilla, and with a self-conscious giggle flung a few bread crumbs out the window’ nearest her. “Everybody,” called Mr. Wilson. “All together now, girls.” The girls beamed. A frisky Fort Worth Funster hurled out a wadded piece of roll; a Dallas Dame immediately took up the challenge, throwing a bigger piece, better and farther. The gulls widened the arc to include all the windows; the bread flew fast and furiously. By the time Gladys returned from the kitchen with the steak and French fries, the ladies had forgot ton the recent indignities, the howling heat, the cruel, callous crowd. They had donned the little paper hats at a rakish angle, and as they tossed out the bread with one hand they used their favors, the little cigarette holders, in a bold, Continental way with the other. The Benign Sisters of the Southern USA, but a few moments before stomping hopelessly up and down in the tar of Ocean Avenue, were having the times of their lives.

“More bread, Gladys. Whole wheat.”

The whole wheat was out. Gladys took him rye and Mr. Wilson was too happy to notice. He lifted a bottle of beer toward Mrs. Hadnot. The old lady grinned and waved back at him with a celery stalk. Watching them, Gladys thought she would burst.

“Crap,” said Ethel, reading her mind,

“Crap yourself,” said Gladys. Then she looked up and saw Mr. Ben. The man was literally on the verge of a fit. “Get the big drunk bastard out of here or I’ll call the police.”

“Throw’ it, sisters. Here comes Little Brother.”

Mr. Ben started for the telephone. Halfway across the room he suddenly froze in his tracks, listening.

“Beer all round for the girls, Gladys.”

But before Gladys could get the beer she heard it, too, the parade, the band, dimly at first as it pounded down Ocean Avenue past the Pleasure Pier, then louder and louder as it roared on past the Bingo Palace and Convention Pier. She hurried back to Mr. Wilson’s table. Clutching a bottle of beer, wielding her large tray as though it were a shield, she planted her hips resolutely in front of Mr. Wilson’s booth. Then the floor trembled and the marchers stormed into the café—the United Truck Drivers of America, Inc., come to devour their banquet of steak and French fries ordered from Mr. Ben six weeks ago.

Smiling, steadfast, Gladys waited.