Short Stories by PJ

One day, when I was still employed at the bureau, I remember about four or five of us planned a long story about the welfare business. We were sitting around one of the tables in the bleak room that the county provided for our lounge and probably overstayed the fifteen minutes allotted us for a coffee break. The drama we concocted relied on an episodic structuring of the comings and goings of our clients, the forms that our agency used to give some coherency to the chaos of their lives and fortunes--forms that covered all the rites of passage from acknowledgment of paternity to cremation at county expense--and we attempted to portray the pathos which we witnessed hour by hour.

But the harder we worked to convey terror and pity the more our tried emotions frazzled and teetered toward hysteria. One of the workers--no fool, a Phi Beta Kappa, in fact--laughed so that she finally gave way to the relief of tears. Wiping her eyes, she guffawed, "I know what we'll call our story. I know a very good title."

We gave her our attention. She had always been the wit of our group.

Another paroxysm shook her. "We'll call it"--she drew a theater marquee in the air and pointed out its imaginary lettering-- "THE RETURN OF ABSENT FATHER."

We all shook her hand because THE RETURN OF ABSENT FATHER was perfect. Then we went back to our desks and filing cabinets and our telephones, knowing that the happy ending, the return of absent father, was somehow a long way in the future.

At that time I had an excellent supervisor. Her name was Mrs. Royce, a true-born American. She said to her knowledge she had white blood and Negro, American Indian and Jewish. Her skin was black, and she had the knack of making my unpleasant job bearable.

One of the ironies of my small success as a social worker in the 1960's was that I could interest many of the women aided on my file in training programs and employment. But the resultant fluidity of their stipends--seldom were their wages enough to support the families completely--became more than I could process. Because the concern with dollars and cents was a vast, omnipresent one, the welfare office was actually of little value in promoting humanitarianism. A worker was not so much expected to show awareness of a client's ego as to inspect closely the monthly assistance sent to her. Was it exactly the right amount? In short, my budgets were always in a mess--my husband had always handled our household accounts--and occasionally Mrs. Royce would petition the assistant district director that some new person entering the agency and awaiting a place in training unit be sent over to help me add and subtract for a few days. In return for the newcomer's financial advice, I would introduce the pre-trainee to some of the forms and bewilderments of investigating subsistence payments.

We never found anyone less apt with budgets than myself, and I met probably a dozen or so of the new people--housewives whose youngest child had recently entered school, new divorcées who had suddenly realized that alimony was not enough, recent graduates in philosophy, music and even the social sciences, young and not-so-young, people who felt that welfare work was really something that they wanted to do and people who could find no better employment. All of them tried to make what they could of my budgets and gladly set them aside to go off with me and have a look at field work.

Of that lot I finally liked Edwin Morris the best. And he was certainly the best looking, tall and fair, his smile disclosing perfect teeth. The smartest, too. Almost immediately he understood how to figure the rate of the stipend according to the number and age of children, make adjustments for income that the family received from sources outside the agency, such as employment or child support, and take care of deducting the costs of family members' employment, a flat rate for lunches and clothes but an amount based on time-consuming calculations of mileage for transportation. When he was helping me, three of the women on my file were working as waitresses and sent in records of daily tips that had to be added at least once a month. About such things Edwin Morris was absolutely perspicacious.

In certain other matters I must rate him rather weak. In his defense, I'll add that he was very young, in his early twenties, and did not appear to have had much experience with the world beyond the boundaries of a middle-class home and a middle-class education in the liberal arts. Of course, I consider something amiss in the semantics of the application of the term liberal arts, but it is that category to which those of us like Edwin and myself who majored in English literature at college are relegated. We can be lucid in explicating Melville's inconsistent use of Ishmael to achieve a focus of narration in Moby-Dick, but, in our analyses, whatever happened in the United States during the 1950s and what seems to have gone on in the '60s remain unclarified. Edwin, partly out of curiosity and somewhat to ease the strain of coping with my figures, would get to leafing through the pages of the long case histories attached to budgets. "You mean a man can make one-hundred dollar payments on a car and not give one cent child support?"

"For a while. The D. A. usually catches up with him."

"But this has been going on for almost two years."

"Uh huh."

"You mean that a landlord...."

"Uh huh."

"I haven't finished what I was saying."

"I know what you're going to say. You're looking at the Ramirez case. The second floor is really collapsing. I'll call the health department if she doesn't move, but right now she has to have someplace to stay."

"But all those children. Surely...."

"The housing projects are having a terrible time with drug usage among the teenagers, and Mrs. Ramirez has three teenagers. She's looking."

Or.... "You mean this oldest girl on the Lawson case won't sign Failure to Provide against this guy? Maybe he isn't the father of her baby. After all, he's a married man, she says. She won't file papers against him, because he just isn't the baby's father. What do you think?"

"Well, the fact that he's a married man doesn't mean that he's not the baby's father, in the first place. And, in the second place, I tend to believe her story. She seems scared to death of him, but, of course, until she signs Failure to Provide this agency can't give either her or the baby one penny, and the whole mess is putting Mrs. Lawson in a position where she can scarcely feed the family."

"But a married man...."

"Forget it. Did you remember to jot down the income the family received from John's paper route last month? He's been doing fairly well lately."

He said coldly, "I remembered."

"That kind of thing is important with the agency."

While he was adding a column of figures, I heard him mutter, "My God in heaven."

And I envied him his continued faith. About that time I had one of the nastiest instances of child molestation occur that I encountered during my two years with the bureau. When the child's mother called, I was on my coffee break and Edwin answered the phone. He came and got me out of the lounge although any worker who has been two days with the agency should understand that the worker's coffee break is sacrosanct and the lounge sanctuary from clients' starvation, rapine and suicide, which problems are as likely, or more so, to precipitate during a worker's coffee break as at any other time.

He drew me aside. "It's Mrs. Star. Would you talk to her? She says this boy friend of hers has done something to her little girl. I think she said the little girl was only nine years old."

"That's Sally. She has lovely red pigtails," I remembered. "What did he do?"

I thought he might cry. "I think you'd better talk to her."

I took my coffee back to my desk and, of course, it cooled before I was through talking with Mrs. Star, Sergeant Sweetwater at Juvenile and the best Child Welfare worker I could locate.

I didn't trust Edwin Morris with the phone after that, but we had two uncovered files in our unit and simply had to use him. Shortly before lunch a mother brought her daughter down--the girl had recently been released by California Youth Authority-- so that we could restore aid. The eye tattooed on the girl's forearm was probably the badge of some girl gang. It seemed improbable that she would remain out of custody long though she manifested an almost gentle shyness. When I returned from the interviewing booth, Edwin met me with a phone message that I considered rather sloppily written. "I couldn't understand this woman very well. She mumbled very badly. I think she said her name was Martha Washington." Edwin and I weren't getting along well at all then. He'd simply been asking more questions than I could possibly find time to answer. When he said "Martha Washington," He appeared to await some rebuke from me.

"Oh, that's her name all right. And I know what you mean. She does mumble. Martha Washington." I wanted him to think everything was all right, that I did appreciate his trying. He had been very good with the budgets. "Thanks. Could you figure out what she wanted?"

"Something about somebody being released from the TB sanitarium and a request for a high-protein diet allowance."

"Oh hell," I replied without thinking, "that means I have to get the case dictated up and send a new budget in to the assistant district director for his approval. If it goes through, it will mean an extra eight-fifty a month for the family. Big deal."

He gave me what I interpreted as a hostile look, but with the uncovered files and his phone services I'd begun to feel rather paranoid anyway. Mrs. Royce smiled at me and asked whether anything was wrong. "Oh, no more than usual," I assured her. She shrugged her shoulders.

After lunch I took the Washington case out of the file and brought it back to my desk. When I cried aloud, I was talking to myself, "This is worse than I thought! There's an affirmation due on this Washington case next month. I'll have to get all the papers signed, write all those damned absent father letters and interview all the kids before I can get any paperwork across Mr. McGregor's desk." I hated Mr. McGregor, passionately, illogically, without remittance.

"Why, it was Mr. McGregor who sent me over here to help you," Edwin Morris told me.

"He's always been my friend," I remarked in what I hoped was a non-committal statement.

"He told me you were a very good worker."

"Sure I am. It's because I keep my emotions under such tight control." I haven't sworn at Mr. McGregor out loud since I've been with the agency I congratulated myself.

I could read Edwin's mind. "You're wondering," I informed him, "if I'm a good worker what a bad one's like. Well, I'll tell you. He mopes over his coffee most of the day and doesn't see or do anything he doesn't have to. He stays here year after year and draws a check and in five years he gets three weeks' vacation. He's sick a lot. Or a bad worker can get so excited that he complains more than he functions. At first, he never stops for coffee and lunch and wants to work overtime and figure it all out, and he finally really gets sick and isn't good for much of anything. Or he begins to say and do things that, to put it the best I can, are madness. A good worker knows his own limitations and does what he can. And he doesn't plan to stay here year after year, because this agency is never going to solve any problems. A good worker goes back to school or works for promotion so he's making some decisions or gets into more rewarding work where the experience he's had here will always be invaluable. You look around this office and how many white young men like yourself do you see? What the hell are you doing here? Even if you did major in English, some insurance company would be glad to train you and provide you with a new automobile and pay you lots of money every month. This kind of work is for women and minorities, don't you know that?"

He said, "You sound just like my folks."

After my outburst, we didn't speak for most of the afternoon. By three-thirty I had been able to direct at least ten cases to clerks for form typing, and it looked as if there would be no emergency to hold me from field work the following morning. I resolved to go to visit Martha and make home calls on three other clients who lived in he same housing project as soon as my phone hour from eight to nine had ended. At my left elbow Edwin quietly continued to compile rows of figures. He had put on my desk a neat pile of manila folders of cases in which the budgets were ready for my approval and dictation, and, at last, I began to look over them one by one. Each was correctly done and projected figures that would, barring unusual circumstances, rectify the stipend for the next three months. Apparently my assistant had not taken a moment to look into the histories that were bound up with those budgets. Without emotion he handed me the last of the weighty stack I had piled upon his desk. For the first time in my two years with the agency my budgets were absolutely up to date.

"You've finished every one?"

"Finished."

"It's a miracle. You don't know what you've accomplished."

He was grim. "You've simply had other things on your mind."

"That's awfully nice of you. Honestly, with nothing else on my mind I can manage to muddle all my budgets. I'll get these into dictation and feel for once I've accomplished something when I leave tonight."

"What should I do now?"

"Tell you what...the way things look we can go to the field tomorrow--that is, if you want to go with me--and you might as well spend the rest of the time before we leave reading the histories on the people we'll be seeing. Besides the Washington case, I must look in at the Hoovers'. The last time I visited I suspected there was something under her muu muu she didn't want me to know about. Uh...if you don't mind, it would help if you fill out two or three affirmation forms. I'll show you what I mean and then we'll put everything in my briefcase and off we'll go after my phone time tomorrow. How does that sound?"

"Questionable."

"You don't want to go? You're angry?"

"Suspicious."

"I'm sorry about what I said."

"It was the truth."

"Well, I'm sorry I spoke the truth."

"How do I know you're not taking me out to the field to show me lots of people hanging by their thumbs? I have a picture of your reaction. That bit of smile you bring to all these sorry occasions--desertion, molestation, desperation. You've been marvelous through any situation."

"It's difficult to cry when you work with carbon paper." Then I suggested, "We could sign out for the field and go to the library. Find out what's new in PMLA. Let's."

"It wouldn't be the same."

I passed him Martha's case history and began explaining how to set up the affirmation forms. The case was so old that there was little new information we'd be getting from her during our visit. It would literally be a matter of affirming her and her predicament.

"It's what we call a simple case."

"Look at the size of that case history. Wonder what her records with the agency weigh? I see it takes two volumes to contain the paper work. And this is a simple case? You have a way with words, Mrs. Vogler."

"All right, be an English major. Simple is a euphemism for hopeless. Eligibility is fairly straight forward. This woman has few resources insofar as I can ascertain. There is little likelihood of case movement. Mrs. Washington will continue to receive aid for her children until the last one is eighteen. Then she'll be carried on another program. Rehabilitation efforts appear unwarranted. She has innumerable health problems. Plus," I pointed out, "motivation to become independent is not foreseen. And there you are. A simple case. I've spent almost two years on it. The case history reflects in good faith my analysis of her problems. I like for my recording to show some depth."

"I'll read it."

That name of hers, Martha Washington.... It's almost impossible for a new worker to associate all the names that cluster about one welfare case. I showed Edwin Morris the face sheet of the case where all genealogical matters are indelibly recorded. "You have to understand this page. It gives you a picture of who is in the home and who is out of it for one reason and another and the face sheet clears up the various relationships of family members. You see Martha Smith is the client's maiden name. That's why the first child, Edmund--you see his name--was Edmund Smith. He didn't live. She was only fourteen at the time of his birth."

"Fourteen years old?"

"I've seen younger than that.... Why on my file right now...."

"Please."

"Anyway, after Edmund died, Martha had two other children born out of wedlock but she did give them their father's name. One of them is still alive, Roger Jackson. He's...let's see, in his early twenties."

"Not in the home." Edwin was beginning to understand how to interpret the information that the face sheet reveals.

"Oh, he's been in prison ever since I got the case. Must be due for release pretty soon. Mmmm...no. This isn't just narcotics. The present charge, I mean. I never met Roger, but from the history I know he's had his problems. I guess he's been known to Probation since he was in his early teens."

"Narcotics?"

"Yes. And finally armed robbery."

"Now I see how Washington came into the family." He held up a hand against my further digressions concerning Roger. "Here it is. Jesse Washington and she were married shortly after the birth of the first Washington girl. Right?"

"Yes. Ellen and Sally are both his children."

"Whatever happened to him?"

"Oh, he drank, and she came out here to be with a sister. Mr. Washington still lives in Texas. With his mother. He gets some kind of veteran's disability. Doesn't contribute. By now the girls are off the case, of course, and I don't have to pay any attention to him. Ellen has had her own case for several years. It will kill her if she gets pregnant again. She's not much over twenty-one and has four children. Has a kidney problem."

Edwin held up his hand again.

And I said no more about Ellen. "With Albert out of the home--he's one of the Story children--there've been only Dwight and Mrs. W. left in the home and the Charles twins. Horace and Leonardo Charles were the twins that Martha had after she came to California. They're in high school now, and both of them are rather good students. I just saw them last month so that it won't be necessary to interview them when we sign papers. You will see Dwight and Albert. Albert is re-entering the home from the sanitarium, and we'll restore aid on him. Dwight attends school irregularly. He's in a wheel chair. Cerebral Palsy. But lately he's developed some kind of digestive problem. I imagine Albert and he will both have a home teacher for the next few months."

The face sheet was attached to the over one hundred pages of case history by an especially stout brad. Edwin Morris began to read that first entry aloud.

And so her years with the bureau began. It was a curious experience to read the case through the comings and goings of numerous social workers, at least twenty, many of whom would re-explore the social background. The recital of happenings, thus, and their many retellings became ballad-like in tone, one of those endless, lugubrious narratives with the words changing and varying even though the monotony of the tribulations remains.

Before I began to dictate my budget changes, I dialed Martha's phone number. A child's voice answered. Very loudly, "Hello!"

"Hello, is this Albert?" It hadn't sounded like him.

"Nooo. This here's Hughie," he shouted. "Here's my Gramma." The phone rattled against the table.

Then there was a mumbled greeting, and I knew that Martha had picked up the phone. "Mrs. Washington? This is Mrs. Vogler. I'd like to have you sign papers tomorrow if you're going to be at home."

"Oh...." She garbled my name. "Trynto getchyou 'day. Man say...."

"I know you called. Albert's home now?"

"Carry'm home yes'day."

"Well, I guess you're glad to have him home. How is he feeling now?"

"Oh...dunno. Sick boy. Look be'er."

"Looks lots better than he did? Well, can I see both of you tomorrow?"

I interpreted affirmation. "Mmmm."

"Fine. Is Dwight able to go back to school?"

"Oh...no. No. Dwigh...'heah."

"I'll see him tomorrow then. I'll try to be there in the morning."

Before we said our good-byes, she seemed to express favor at seeing me again.

I thought to tell Edwin. "She'll be at home tomorrow. Be sure to bring a lunch, will you?" I remembered that sometimes he preferred to buy lunch at noon. "There's no place over by the project that gives me much appetite. I'll bring a jug of punch for us. It's going to be hot."

He regarded me with a steady gaze. "Spike the punch. I'm at the part where the worker is urging her to return to domestic work that would take her away from three children under five years of age for ten hours a day. Seems Martha has excellent work references."

"Yes. She worked right up to the birth of the twins. Did heavy cleaning."

"Did you ever ask her much about her early life in Mississippi?"

"She never says much if I do."

"It sounds as if there were no school attendance laws."

"Or, if there were, they were ignored. I don't think she can read and write. She works hard to sign her name."

"And she had no medical care that I can find out about all the time she was in Mississippi and Texas."

"As far as I can tell, she learned about having babies in hospitals here in California. And she never did accept pre-natal care."

"Birth control?"

"Workers scarcely mentioned referrals to clients until recently. I don't think a lot of the people in this agency knew about the old Mother's Clinic though occasionally I find it named in some case history from the 40s. Martha had an obstetrical problem that involved delivering prematurely. We don't know exactly how many children she's had that died at birth. She doesn't give us any information that she doesn't have to. When General performed a hysterectomy on her several years ago, she almost died hemorrhaging."

"And all these men. How many have there been? Do you think it's because she's Negro?"

"Don't let Mrs. Royce hear you ask that! She's as black as Martha. You know that. Her dad's a Baptist minister, and she's a perfect prude about our clients' sex lives. I mean she doesn't close her eyes to the way things are. But listen to her scream if anyone suggests that a black woman is excused from providing a father for her children." I recalled, "One of our very liberal workers made the remark in her presence once that it couldn't be expected of a colored woman that she work out a legal arrangement with a man. Why, Mrs. Royce carried on so that it was worse than the day she upset the file cabinet. She gets awfully excited."

"You like her?"

"Very much. After years of professors and the library stacks and my share of pediatricians, parties with aerospace engineers and PTA, I like her. That wild woman.... She took her master's in social work in California, I know. But I think she already had degrees in political science and French and German. She translates, you know. Published some things on contemporary German poetry, studies in paradox." I looked back at her, bulging above her desk, big busted and wide browed. "She knows where to check out bail bonds, the price of second-hand bunk beds and how many reconditioned mattresses Good Will has on hand. Ask her how to prepare a tasty dish of rice, beans and chicken backs, if you want to know. Or ask her about the economic development of any country in Latin America." But I had other work to do. "In summary, a hundred more such as Mrs. Royce in this agency, and we'll begin to understand the problem."

When Edwin smiled at me, I began to think we'd put aside out precipitous quarrel. "She's lending me her library. No poetry." He pointed wryly to those gems of contemporary literature that constitute the reading of an apprentice welfare worker--expositions of venereal disease, epilepsy, planned parenthood, vocational rehabilitation, nutrition and mental health. "Then she said perhaps I could spend my spare time with that medical dictionary she keeps beside her desk. Spare time?"

We laughed together.

"But," he continued, "don't think you and I are going to get along. What about you? why are you here? Your husband is a well-paid engineer. He didn't major in English. You have a family. The PTA still meets at least once a month. What about your own children? What about the years you spent in school and all that research you spent hours on? In short, Mrs. Vogler, what's your problem?"

The unexpectedness of what he pointed out hurt me, as if I had run against a wall in the dark. Steadying my voice, I replied, "All right, Mr. Morris. Now we're even." I offered him the Hoover case and the records of two other clients that we would visit the next day.

Driving to the housing project the next morning, we began to talk about the kind of work we had done in college literature courses. He had been drawn to Coleridge and Unitarianism, and I'd veered toward Melville and Calvinism. While I watched the freeway markings, he discoursed on fancy and imagination. Fancy, of course, is not going to get anybody to the right side of the San Bernardino freeway at the Fourth Street exit.

Regarding his two hands, he depicted fancy with the right one and the other, spinning, I assumed represented the workings of imagination. He meandered on, "It is primarily in the principles of association that...."

I told him rather firmly, "You know you'd better pay some attention to how we're getting to the housing project. You'll be driving over here by yourself any day now. I've known lots of scholars who simply can't cope with this freeway, and you may find yourself among their number."

He looked up from his portrayal of fancy. "I'm no scholar. And I've been perfectly satisfied with your driving."

I countered. "You're taking your life in your hands. My husband says he won't drive with me. He hates to see me start off with the children in the back of this station wagon. But he can't find his way over in this part of the city. For pity's sake, one wrong turn and you're in a railroad yard or a truck-loading depot."

He gripped the window on his side of the car. "I suppose you're wondering why I didn't stay in graduate school."

"No," I told him. "I guess I understand. Even with scholarships graduate work in the humanities is a long, expensive undertaking."

"And I'd never held a job. I don't want to teach in the secondary schools. I have to do something."

"So you happened into social work?"

"No. Believe me, I gave lots of thought to this. Toward the end of last semester I looked into all kinds of civil service positions open to liberal arts graduates, and I thought this kind of work sounded the most interesting. I had some opportunities in other fields, if you must know. My father is an accountant, and that's probably why I'm good at figures. I could have gone with the assessor's office, in fact."

"Congratulations."

"But this way I'm going to learn about the community, don't you think? I do want to go back to school. Possibly law. I might want to do graduate work in social welfare. There are opportunities in the field. And then...."

"There's always an insurance company."

"Or technical writing. Or...what I want to do, go back to graduate school and Coleridge."

"I see." I pointed out the window. "You notice that yellow building over there? It makes a kind of landmark. The next exit is ours."

He promised to remember. "What about you, Mrs. Vogler? Are you going back to school?"

"Please call me Leah. No...I doubt whether I'll get back to school. When I leave the house, I have to replace myself, you know. That's expensive. I make the best possible arrangements I can for my children, better than if I were with them full time myself. I had to face the fact that I couldn't be with them all day. It wasn't pleasant to have to accept that. It's more or less felt that if women have babies they should know that to do next."

He was kinder than most people are about my shortcomings. "I guess your feelings give you some kind of compassion for mothers who...aren't successful."

"Well, I hope so. I read a lot, of course, and pass on what information I can. And I'm a pretty good listener."

"At first I thought you really didn't care about much of anything, your own family or all these people on your file."

"It's not like that. I care a great deal."

"All right, then what is the problem?"

"Let's say I spent too long in the library stacks."

He laughed. "It's the easiest thing to say about both of us. The work I've put in on Coleridge. And Wordsworth, too! Those damned "Lucy" poems. Now I can go whole days without caring who Lucy was."

I parked in front of the housing project and copied down the mileage off my speedometer. It was getting warm. "Well, that's the way it goes. There are days when Ishmael could have drowned for all I care. Leave your window rolled down. I never bother to lock up."

There was a fly that buzzed the length and breadth of Martha's small living room, and its drone provided a fine melody for the periodic recital of her calamities.

"Have you had any contact with any of the absent fathers of your children this year, Mrs. Washington?"

"Nooo. You know how 'tis."

"I must ask you. I'm required to ask. Have you received any contributions from either Mr. Charles or Mr. Story for the support of children?"

She smiled hugely. "Lord, no." Negatively she rocked her big body back and forth. Dwight sipped a soft drink that she confided was good for his little stomach. She boasted that he read well and that his home teacher was proud of him. He had lovely brown eyes, alert and intelligent, that regarded our every movement. I tiptoed upstairs to look at Albert who still required extensive bedrest after his stay at the sanitarium. He was sleeping soundly in one of the stifling upstairs bedrooms, his little body seeming to take up most of the space he shared with Dwight. I noted that the sheets on the beds were clean and the floor well swept. There was a small pitcher of what must have once been ice water on an overturned apple box beside the bed.

When I came back downstairs, I lied to Martha. "He looks fine."

She wanted us to have coffee and brought out cups for each of us. "Washed 'em way tha' nurse say."

The cup smelled like disinfectant, but I drank half a cup of the coffee. Edwin drank, too. He hadn't said much. "How are you old man?" was all he could muster for little Dwight. And there was something about Dwight's infirmities that did suggest an old man.

Edwin's courtesy was so ingrained that he'd left his suit jacket on, and his forehead was damp with perspiration. I feared for his health. "Thank you, Mrs. Washington. We really must go."

Shakily, Edwin rose. "Thank you for the coffee, Mrs. Washington. I enjoyed meeting you." He patted little Dwight's shaved head. "You be a good boy."

When he smiled, Dwight had an almost pretty face.

Back in the car I said, "We have another call to make in this project, but it's a couple of blocks and in this heat we might as well drive."

While I recorded the time of departure from Mrs. Washington's on my mileage record, Edwin took out his handkerchief and ran it along his hairline. "She's awfully good with the children, don't you think? I didn't realize why Albert and Dwight's father left. He walked out on them because of Dwight, I gather."

"She might have put Dwight out at the state hospital. Mr. Story couldn't stand the sight of a crippled baby. We've managed to interview him once or twice. Martha did what she thought was best, but...." I attempted to change the subject. "Next we'll call on Mrs. Hooper. The housing manager says if she doesn't clean out the vent above her stove, she'll have to move. She'd have a time finding another place for sixty-five a month. And the last time I saw her I suspected there was another youngster on the way."

Stubbornly he returned to the place we had left. "Mrs. Washington's place was as clean as could be. That cup she gave us coffee in...."

"Martha tried, Edwin. You may, to my way of thinking, get to be acceptable in this kind of work. I thought Dwight took to you."

"Poor little guy. His dad never comes to see him?"

"No. Don't know that Dwight has any idea what his daddy looks like. The last record we had of Mr. Story he was in Northern California somewhere."

We parked in front of Mrs. Hooper's, and again I worked at my mileage forms, attached in triplicate to my clip board. "Now this Mrs. Hooper is another matter. I don't know what's going on in her household, but whatever it is she doesn't have much time left for housework and child care. The agency sent out the Special Investigator when the case was in another file and found a man in the home. That was two years ago, and aid was discontinued for a while. If she's pregnant again, I'll be obligated to hold her check. Knowing her, I can imagine she'll concoct a marvelous tale for us to ponder. You may work on the plot analysis. She has overtaxed my credulity. We'll see."

I expected him to exhort me to a "willing suspension of disbelief" and, thus, invoke Coleridge against my failures to appreciate what might well be labeled a contribution to the folk literature of the Twentieth Century.

Edwin Morris spoke in a low voice. "You'd better take a look here. There's a man skulking off around the side of that building. Does Mrs. Hooper live in L-1?"

I groaned. To me, a fraud referral was anathema. "I'm afraid she does." But before I looked up I jotted down my exact speedometer reading. The county paid thirteen cents a mile.

"Do you think," my companion wanted to know, "that I've discovered an absent father?"

Adjusting my prescription sunglasses I directed my myopic scrutiny to the left corner of the building designated L-1. What could I say? "Only God knows," I reminded him.

Short Stories by PJ