Read Online Voices of a Summer Day by Irwin Shaw - Free Book Online Page A

shivering, but wide awake. Suddenly, he realized that he was famished. He had to have something to eat or faint from hunger. Then he remembered the old lady’s key. She had left it in the door of her office next to the kitchen when she had turned angrily on Cunningham as he started to sing “The Wearing of the Green.”
    Benjamin put on his shoes, tried the door. It still held. He looked around the room for something to break the door down with. There was an old putter with a broken handle lying in the corner of the room, left there by some caddy or athletic waiter the summer before. Benjamin picked up the putter and began hacking at the top panel of the door, unmindful of the noise. He banged crazily at the thin wood and soon it began to splinter and holes began to open up. With his bare hands, Benjamin ripped out sections of the panel. A jagged, sharp piece of wood ripped his hand and there was blood on the door and on his clothes, but he didn’t stop.
    Nobody seemed to have heard the noise. All the boys were so exhausted you could have shot cannons off in their ears without waking them. Besides, the howl of the wind around the eaves and through cracks in the walls kept the whole floor in a turmoil of creaks and haunted whistles. Soon there was a hole in the door big enough to crawl through. Benjamin lowered his small bag through the hole, put on his jacket and overcoat and climbed out.
    He went down through the darkened building. On the floor below, where there were several guest rooms that were locked for the winter, there was no sound. As he descended the stairway, the smell of spilled whiskey, dancers’ sweat, stale food assailed him from the dining room. He found the kitchen and turned on the light. He left blood on the switch.
    The key was in the door to the small office. He turned it, went in. He saw the old lady’s apron hanging on the hook. He reached into the apron pocket. The ring of keys was there. He took them, leaving a stain of blood on the cloth, and tried the icebox padlock. On the third try, the key worked. The icebox was enormous and crammed with food. He left the door open, then went to the little room where the liquor was locked away. He found the key for that, too, and opened the door. There were at least ten cases of whiskey there and dozens of half-full bottles. A wild smile contorted his face as he looked at the treasure. He took an opened bottle of whiskey and put it on the big table. Then he went to the icebox and took out a platter of turkey, a large can of caviar, a slab of butter, a pound loaf of pâté de foie gras. He arranged them with crazy precision in a row next to the whiskey bottle, then went to the bread bin, which was unlocked, and took out six rolls. He found a fork and a knife and a mug and sat down, making himself move slowly for maximum enjoyment of the meal, and began to eat. He ate four large helpings of caviar on rolls, spread with a mixture of blood and butter. He ate half the loaf of pâté, washing down each mouthful with raw whiskey. It was the first time he had ever eaten pâté de foie gras and he didn’t know what the delicious black slivers embedded in it were called. The next day Cunningham told him they were called truffles. He made three sandwiches piled with slices of breast of turkey and ate them. He made another sandwich and munched on it as he climbed up to the top floor again and woke up all the boys one by one, shaking them and making sure they were awake enough to understand him when he told them what he proposed to do. In all the mean, bare rooms of the top floor the boys got out of bed, dressed, took their bags with them and stole down to the kitchen.
    “No food to be taken along,” Benjamin warned them. “Only liquor. It’s all bootleg and they can’t go to the police about it.”
    So the boys ate pâté, caviar, turkey, ice cream, lobster, potato salad, in any order that was convenient as they reached into the icebox and rifled the whiskey cases