Manhunt. Volume 4, Number 6, June, 1956

Three, Four, Out the Door by Robert S. Swenson

What made them think they could push people around, cracking a man’s skull open and everything?

The two men walked into the diner. They wore two hundred dollar suits and they were very well groomed.

The man with the fat, round face was Joey, and he was about thirty years old. It was a pink face, and it was unhealthy pink, just a shade out of purple. He was overweight and he walked around with a sucked-in potbelly. Joey was sensitive about his weight.

The other man was Al. He was about five years younger than Joey a picture of rugged, good health. Tall and tanned and with a weight-lifter’s build.

The two men stood just inside the door of the diner and they looked down the long line of occupied stools. There was only one stool open and that was down at the end of the counter. They strolled down to the end of the diner and Joey took the empty stool.

The person sitting next to Joey was a red-headed man, tall, but slightly built. He was sitting in front of a bowl of fish chowder, minding his own business. Al tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, friend, you made a mistake,” he said. “You got my seat.”

The man didn’t hear what Al said, but he knew he had been spoken to. He turned to Al. “Huh?”

Al grabbed a fistful of coat and breathed in the man’s face. “I said you got my seat. Now blow.”

The man’s mouth dropped open. He pulled away from Al and knocked Al’s hand off his coat. “Well, who the hell are you?” he said.

Then Al grabbed the man by the back of his collar and pulled him backwards off the stool. The man fell on his head on the tile floor.

“Hey, don’t forget your soup,” Joey said. He reached over and grabbed the man’s chowder and dumped the bowl of chowder on the man’s head. Then he and Al exploded with laughter, as if they’d never seen anything so funny. Three people left the diner, plainly apprehensive. The man just sat on the floor with his head hanging limp, covered with fish chowder.

Al took the empty stool and then the man behind the counter came up to them and started wiping the counter with a damp rag. Without looking at them, he told them to take it easy because he didn’t want any trouble. He said it nicely. Both Al and Joey ordered hamburgers.

Then the man with the chowder on his head got off the floor and stood up. He was groggy and he had to hold onto a booth behind him to steady himself. He wiped some of the chowder off his face and then he wiped his fingers across the front of his coat.

Al and Joey seemed to have forgotten him. They were talking and laughing and then the man shook his head clear and he got mad. “You cheap hoods! You dirty bastards!” he yelled at them. “I’ll get the cops. You can’t do that to me.”

The man behind the counter served the hamburgers. Joey picked up his hamburger and started eating. Al turned around.

“You think you can push me around?” the man yelled at Al. “You cheap crook!”

Al sat there looking at the man and Joey didn’t pay any attention to him at all, just kept on eating his hamburger.

The man took a step toward Al. “You cheap, dirty—” But that was all he had time to say. He was close enough then and Al slammed a fist into his ribs. It was the kind of blow that would have smashed a plaster wall. The man made a loud, funny sound and then he dropped onto the floor again. He started groaning and rolling on the floor.

Al watched him for a few seconds and then he turned to Joey. “Well, he ain’t doing no good on the floor,” he said. “If he’s going to call the cops, he can’t do it there.”

Al slid off the stool and grabbed the man by his ankles, and then Joey hopped down and took the man’s wrists. They began bouncing the man toward the door, slamming his head on the floor at each step. The man groaned loudly each time his head hit the tile floor.

They started a little chant to liven up their play. “One, two, button his shoe; three, four, out the door.” They pitched him out the door onto the asphalt yard. And then they went back to their hamburgers. Four more people left the diner, and except for Al and Joey and the counter man, only two other people remained. They were sitting at the other end of the counter.

They were a young couple, in their early twenties, and they were dressed in old, paint-spattered clothes. They were watching Al and Joey.

Al took a bite of his hamburger. He chewed a couple of times and then he made a face and spit it out. It went all over the counter and some of it splattered against the coffee urn four feet away. “What the hell do you call this?” he said. “This stuff’s rotten.”

Joey threw down the rest of his hamburger on the counter. “That’s what I was thinking,” he said. “It’s filthy. Who wants to eat in a filthy dump like this?” He pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket, peeled one off, and dropped it onto the counter.

“My dog eats better,” Al said. He slapped his hand on the bill on the counter and crumpled the bill up in his fist. Then he threw it on the floor in front of the man behind the counter. “Bend down, friend,” he said.

This time the counter man was mildly defiant. He put his fists on the counter and glared at Al. Al didn’t like it.

“I said bend down,” Al said, and he reached over the counter and shoved the man. The man went backwards and up against a stack of dishes. The dishes went crashing onto the floor and the man grabbed at a shelf to keep his balance.

And then the young girl at the end of the counter said something. She seemed very angry and she started to stand up, but the young man held her arm and pulled her back down onto the seat. He spoke to her in a low voice.

“I don’t care,” she said out loud. “Somebody should do something or say something. Who do they think they are? They can’t treat people that way.”

“You talking to me, lady?” Al yelled down at her.

She hopped off the stool and again the young man said something to her and tried to hold her back. She shrugged him off.

“Yes, I am talking to you!” she said loudly. “Just who do you think you are? — What makes you think you can push people around like you’re... you’re God or something?”

Al looked at Joey and smiled faintly and then he began walking down to the other end of the counter. He walked right up to the girl and stood in front of her with his feet wide apart. He was still smiling faintly. “You mind saying that again, lady,” he said. “I don’t think I heard you right.”

The young man slid off his stool and put his arms around the girl’s waist. He started walking her to the door. “Come on, Dot,” he said quietly. “This is none of our business. Let’s go home.”

With only a little resistance, she let him take her to the door, and then Al laughed and said in a loud voice, “That’s right, lady, take your boy friend out of here before he gets hurt.”

Immediately, she spun away from the young man and marched back to Al. “You’re nothing but a... a cheap, vicious gangster!” Almost before the words were out of her mouth, Al smashed her across the face with the flat of his hand. She twisted around and fell into a heap on the floor in front of the young man.

The young man didn’t move. He went rigid. He took a deep breath and doubled up his fists and he stared at Al. Al and Joey stepped up to him.

“You got any ideas?” Al said to him.

The young man just held his breath.

“That’s what I thought,” Al said.

“He ain’t got no ideas,” Joey said. “He just wants to mind his own business and go on home. Right, kid?”

The young man began breathing again.

“All right. Pick up your girl friend,” Al said.

The young man didn’t move. His tongue licked his dry lips. His fists were balled in tight lumps inside his pockets.

“Do like he says,” Joey said. “Pick her up!”

The young man bent toward the girl. A shoe hit his buttocks and knocked him sprawling over the girl. The closing of the diner door as they left shut out their laughter.

The young man helped the girl to her feet. Through the door-window, only a few yards away, the red-headed man was lying on his back on the asphalt. He had a jacket bundled up under his head and another man was kneeling down beside him blotting the injured head with a handkerchief. Joey and Al had paused to gaze unconcernedly down at the man.

The counter man came over and looked through the window, too. He said, “I called the police. But by the time they get here...”

The young man sucked in his breath and nodded.

In silent outrage, people bunched up closer to where the red-headed man lay. Al and Joey stood there and looked at them. Maybe eight or ten of them, maybe twelve. Then Al and Joey walked away. They got into a long black car and drove off.

The young man watched the car go, kept looking after it.

“There was nothing you could do, Phil. Nothing.”

“Right,” the counter man said. “Hell, you don’t fool around with monkeys like that. You just do what they say.”

The girl and the young man went down the steps. His eyes saw the scarlet of the red-headed man’s blood. The hot sunshine was getting into the blood now, thickening it. The young man could still hear the crack, crack, crack of the skull against the tile floor. “He just wants to mind his own business and go on home. Right, hid?” He felt suddenly sick.

“Come on, Phil,” the girl said, leading him away.

Everything was set, undisturbed, as before: the wedding, the honeymoon spot, where they’d live when they came back, his new and better job...

“Stop it,” the girl said. “Stop looking that way, Phil. There was nothing you could do. Nothing anyone could do.”

“That’s right,” he agreed.

He walked along, her hand on his arm, and he wondered how other guys became heroes. He wasn’t one, he knew. He hoped he’d be able to forget all of it, soon.