Stairway to Paradise, a short story by StevenHunley. Date added: 2010-12-02. Times viewed: 1181.
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- Intro: A world War One veteran returns home and becomes a gangster
Stairway to Paradise
by
Steven Hunley
“How much for a ham sandwich and a cup of Joe?”
The counterman sized him up and decided to give him a discount.
“Thirty-five cents.”
He fumbled in his pockets. No coins. What he thought was a folded-up dollar, wasn’t. It was his veteran’s Bonus Certificate, useless until nineteen forty-five. His stomach growled to announced it couldn’t wait twelve years. Saying nothing, he turned back to the mean streets.
Georgy had been out of work for ages. Standing in bread lines was getting old. He’d fought for his country and won the war with the Germans. Nobody dared say Georgy hadn’t done his bit. He'd given Uncle Sam the best years of his life. Before that he was a farmer but while he was fighting overseas the First National Bank foreclosed on his family’s farm in Ohio. Bankers were only new-fangled robbers that wore suits and sported fancy shoes to his way of thinking.
The stock market crashed ten years after that. Now he was out in the cold, looking for work every day. He’d been a lieutenant and a leader. Now he followed the soup kitchens around instead. The hero of Bellow woods turned into the bum of Central Park. How dramatic was that? How much more like tragic-comedy could life be?
Finally he’d had enough. He walked by the Rialto. They were playing a Gloria Swanson flick, Sadie Thompson. He’d always like Somerset Maugham.
He looked up at the marquee. Then down at the six-sheet. Swanson had more jewels than King Solomon’s Mines, more beads than an Indian trader, and more feathers than a peacock. Her eyes were beautiful and yet hardened. They were the eyes of Miss Sadie Thompson. They seemed to mock him.
“Still, Gloria is my kind of gal,” he mused, “She’s a regular peach.”
A block later he was home. He opened the door to his cold-water walk-up apartment he shared with his old army buddy. No one was home. There was nothing to do. It was as freezing inside the apartment as it was outside. He'd never felt so desperately cold. He felt ill-treated by nature itself. The weather had it in for him. The thought was driving him over the edge.
“What can I do to make money if there isn’t any work?”
Next door the neighbors were listening to the radio, Fibber McGee and Molly. The Ajax Radio hour promised a concert of Gershwin after that.
“I like Gershwin,” he thought. “Always have.”
He found a box of cornflakes in the trash barrel outside. He looked at the wrapper that read, "Kellogg’s of Battle Creek”.
“I was in Bellow Woods and Chateau-Thierry with Pershing,” he mused, “I must have missed Battle Creek.” The picture of Gloria flashed back to his mind. She looked at him with eyes that pierced his heart easily and seemed to say,
"Big boy, you used to have fiber. Now all you've got is corn flakes."
Fibber McGee was about to open his closet door.
“Uh-oh.”
The sounds that poured out of the radio only echoed the number of things that poured from his mind as he imagined what made all the clatter. He realized his closet was as empty as his stomach. At times it growled like a monster, driving him on like an eight cylinder Buick.
Then came the Gershwin. It was An American in Paris.
“Shit,” he thought, “I prefer Rhapsody in Blue. But I guess I’m in no position to prefer anything.”
After American in Paris it was a specialty number, Stairway to Paradise.
I'll build a Stairway to Paradise,
With a new Step ev'ry day.
I'm going to get there at any price;
Stand aside, I'm on my way!
I got the blues
And up above it's so fair;
Shoes,
Go on and carry me there!
I'll build a Stairway to Paradise
With a new Step ev'ry day.
With a new Step ev'ry day.
His toes started tapping. His mood changed immediately. A thought occurred over his head like a light bulb over the head of Felix the Cat. But this thought wasn't as warm and glowing.
He went out to the hall and searched for a loose board on the stairs. When one moved he found what he wanted. Out came his black bandana.
“If they catch me, that’s later. I’m a hero, not a victim. Uncle Sam trained me how to use a gun. I’ve got my sharpshooter’s medal to prove it.”
His growling stomach reminded him,
“But right now this man’s got to eat.”
Three more steps found the next board exactly as he had left it. Out came an envelope with nine forty-five caliber bullets and clip.
“They’re right where I left them years ago,” he considered. “Now I’m going to put them to good use. These bullets will serve me just like I served my country.”
He crawled up three more steps to the last one he needed. Now he was humming the tune to himself quite distinctly.
Out came the board and behind it his heavy Browning Forty-five. It was issued to him when he’d been an officer and a gentleman. Now he was a gangster instead.
“It’s funny how being hungry can change a fellow.”
He returned to his room and his wood table and loaded the clip carefully with precision as if he was filling out a withdrawal slip. He slammed it into the forty-five violently using the palm of his hand with an audible “click”. He tied his bandana around his neck and buttoned up the collar of his shabby coat just right. He retied his scuffed-up shoes. Then he straightened the brim of his hat.
“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Time to put the squeeze on the bankers for a change. It’s time to get mine...in spades.”
He closed the door and walked down the stairway and out the entrance turning left, knowing full well the First National was only a block away. Walking down the street he heard the Italians who lived over their grocery store were listening to the Ajax Radio Hour too.
“Maybe they like Gershwin as much as I do.”
The lovely strains of music floated out of their grimy tentament windows and contributed a certain confident rhythm to his stride.
I'll build a Stairway to Paradise,
With a new Step ev'ry day.
I'm going to get there at any price;
Stand aside, I'm on my way!
I got the blues
And up above it's so fair;
Shoes,
Go on and carry me there!
I'll build a Stairway to Paradise
With a new Step ev'ry day
It was one straight shot from there to the city morgue.
“Funny thing about this stiff,” remarked the undertaker to his assistant. “All he had on him when the cops shot him outside of the bank was thirty-five cents. That and this worthless bonus certificate.”
“He didn’t get away with the money?”
“That’s just it, he did. The thirty-five cents. And another thing. He was singing Gershwin almost all the way here. Until he kicked that is.”
“All red-blooded Americans like Gershwin, even crazy vets. There’s nothing unusual about that.”
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