The Listener Read Online Free PDF

I’m sixteen. I got a paper route, and I wash cars at the gas station. And there’s this chick.
     
    Dad’s a factory bum too, but she’s got lipstick and jeans and a big fat can. I met her when I was seventeen and she’s fifteen. Same class together, with Sister Mary Dominic, and is she tired! No wonder, all those kids. Oh, we ain’t hungry. Who goes hungry, with the Welfare and all that stuff? We got our orange juice and vitamins and hot lunches and milk. We’re big as horses; make our folks look like midgets. Sister Mary Dominic’s half our size. Guess she never had a chance, neither.”
     
    Tab paused, and his big tanned face darkened and became more uneasy. He shifted impatiently on the marble chair. “Nobody’s ever got a chance,” he muttered. “Hey, you, behind that curtain, what chance did you have? Your folks had money, eh? Sent you to college? Sure! So you can sit there and listen to jerks like me and smile to yourself. We ain’t nothin’ to you. Anyway, you’re paid to listen, ain’t you? All the time in the world!
     
    “About my folks. Mom keeps up the laundry, then all at once she dies. I’m seventeen. Never did know why she died. Eight of us, some younger than me, some older. Who cares? We get the hell out. I’ve got this job, and it pays me fifteen dollars a week, spare time. Not enough to live on. Then I go into this factory. New war’s on. Make big money. All the money there is. War’s going to last forever. That’s what the foreman says. Then they pull me out for the Army. What chance does a guy have?
     
    “I don’t know what the hell I’m doin’ here talkin’ to you. But Fran — she’s my wife, she’s the one with the jeans and the lipstick and the big fat can — she tells me to go talk to you. What’ve I got to lose, shootin’ off my mouth? At least you listen. What’re you doin’ behind that curtain, anyways? Listenin’! What d’you know about jerks like me who never had a chance?
     
    “So I’m in the Army. What’s the Korean war about? Who cares? Had a hell of a good time. Tokyo. All those places. If I’d had an education I could’ve stayed there in one of these houses, with maids and everything, and big pay from the gov’mint. But I never had a chance, and they shipped me back, and there’s this chick, waitin’ for me. Oh, we fooled around. She’s kind of pretty, if you like a kid who shows all of her upper teeth and her tongue and squints her eyes and tries to look like Hollywood and the movies. First thing you know, there’s a kid comin’ along. I wanted to duck the whole thing, but she brings around a priest, not the young, sick kind I used to know, but a big guy, and he won’t stand for no foolin’. Big hams on him; like to break your neck if you say anythin’. Well, anyway, we got to get married. And then this priest says, ‘What about the G. I. Bill?’ Well, what about it? Here I am, married, though I don’t want to be, and a kid comin’, and my dad had three of us at my age. Who wants to get educated and sit around in an office drawin’ maybe thirty bucks a week? I can go in a factory and get three times that, with fringe benefits. So I go, and Fran howls, and I slam her in the jaw, and the cops come and I get a suspended sentence. Nobody made a big noise when Dad slammed Mom around, except us kids. Jesus, how we howled! I remember I bit Dad in the leg, and I was only four then.”
     
    Tab grinned, then scowled. “Why’d he hit her, anyway? She was doin’ her best, wasn’t she? And she half his size. Wonder what makes people do the lousy things they do. Maybe they never had a chance.”
     
    Tab looked belligerently around the room, one hand clenched on his knee. But there was no one there. The light flowed down upon him, warm and soft. “Hell,” he muttered.
     
    “Well, now I got three kids, and they want everythin’. Fran says they can’t have it. She’s got this budget. Baby-sits, too, as if she ain’t got enough work to