Strange Fugitive Read online

  The cold air calmed him. He walked slower, drawing on his gloves. “What the hell,” he thought, “what the hell. Why did I ever go to see Julie?” Back there on the couch she sat, huge and immovable, encased in steel bands, but walking along toward Yonge Street lights, he was sorry to remember he had once thought her so mysteriously desirable, and though all feeling for her had gone, old thoughts of her weren’t very comforting. “I wonder what the hell’s the matter with me. I’m sick of everybody almost,” he thought. “I got to do something about it.” At the corner he went into the tobacco shop and got cigarettes, and talked to the man behind the counter till other customers came in and he was obliged to leave. He wouldn’t go home so early, and looked up at the clock on the fire hall — twenty minutes to ten — so he walked north on Yonge Street, standing a while in front of the moving-picture show, reading the bright posters till he said to himself, “I’m getting sick of this whole damned business, what’s the matter with me?” For the first time he thought of the possibility of being arrested. There would be a trial, the best lawyers in the city working for him, his picture in all the papers, headlines carrying his name and big lawyers getting an easy acquittal finally. Vera would cry. She would leave the city. She would leave the country and, dressed in black, go from one place to another. But why dressed in black, he thought, moving away from the theater, walking up the street. The streets were slushy, there had been a thaw, and he unbuttoned his overcoat. “I think it’s about time I made up my mind about Vera,” he thought. “I got to do it sometime.” It was just as well his mother was dead. Remembering Jimmie had said months ago that he had fallen in love with his mother, he tried to remember her face at the time they lived in Maydale when she was younger. Someday, later on, when he got out of the whole racket, he would take Vera for a weekend in Maydale, and they would talk to people who had known his mother and father and perhaps go for a long ride in the country. He was entering the underpass and looked around alertly. It was dark in the subway so he walked rapidly, very practical again. Shadows from pillars made him uneasy and he knew he had been foolish to go walking in lonely places. He wanted to run but deliberately walked slower. “Cosantino be damned,” he muttered.

  At the end of the underpass he shrugged his shoulders and leaned against an iron railing. Here at the end of the dark underpass he was alone. The underpass was at the foot of a sloping hill, car tracks climbing up the other side, a long slope of street lights. He looked up at the stars, was quite comfortable against the railing, and the solitude and darkness were pleasant. No one on the street. Deliberately he sought the thread of his thoughts of Maydale, to walk again in the town, close to his mother. He grinned to himself, imagining Vera beside him strolling very formally along the main street. A streetcar light at the other end of the underpass flashed brightly and the car rumbled noisily. He walked up the hill. In the afternoon he had felt impressive and had thought of talking pompously to Julie about Cosantino, now it seemed a faraway thought. He walked up to St. Clair and all the way home.

  He went into his own room and looked at himself in the mirror as if not accustomed to seeing his own image. He leaned forward, closer to the mirror. He grinned at himself. Afterwards, he was jovial with Anna, teasing her, pinching her, but he didn’t want to make love to her.

  In the morning he read the papers. They carried stories with pictures of Cosantino and the word of detectives that it was a bootleg feud. Later on in the afternoon reporters had more time to be diligent and the papers ran full-page stories with pictures of the Cosantino family. He looked at the picture of Mrs. Cosantino and wanted to cry. She was young and good-looking. He looked at Cosantino and felt sorry for him. “I had nothing against that guy,” he thought. “Only it had to be done.”

  He read about the plan for an elaborate funeral. Thousands of dollars for a casket. Hundreds of dollars for flowers to cover the casket. He read the paper at half-past six in the evening, sitting across from Anna at the table. The police were discouraged because Cosantino’s friends wouldn’t say whom they thought responsible, but Mike Gerrardi, Cosantino’s partner, told a reporter he would willingly meet the murderer and settle the matter hand to hand. Gerrardi’s words were impressive and read splendidly. In the paper there was a long account of Cosantino’s charities and the articles of furniture in his home and paintings he had bought for fabulous prices and a piano far-famed, the work of a master, and a picture of three of his cars — roadster, touring and family limousine — and estimated values of rugs, mirrors, suits of clothes, silverware, talking-machines, brass, and clocks.

  At first Harry resented so much talk of Cosantino’s life and said, “Hmm, humph,” but the feeling passed away and he wondered at the Italian’s influence. He was impressed. He made up his mind to attend the funeral.

  It was a big elaborate funeral. Harry spoke gently to the widow, who fainted when the casket was carried out. Thousands of people were on the street. Simon Asche, one of the pallbearers, wouldn’t speak to Harry at first, but later on he said quietly: “What are you doing in this house, you son of a bitch?” Harry said: “What’s it to you, ya little kike?”

  Weinreb and O’Reilly were at the funeral and shook their heads sadly looking for the last time at the face in the coffin. It was hard to get close to the coffin because of the flowers.

  Police formed a cordon around the house. From flat roofs and leaning out of attic windows, people watched the hearse go slowly along the street, a long line of cars following it to the cemetery. Jimmie and Harry were in one of the cars. There wasn’t much to say. The cemetery was up Yonge Street, at the city limit, a sloping hill and a long valley. The snow had all gone from the side of the hill and the valley, but the warm sun melted the frost in the ground and the hill was slippery underfoot. The long line of mourners followed the casket around the crescent curve of the cinder path, and passing the tombstones, Harry read the Irish Catholic names, O’Donnelly, Fitzpatrick, O’Neil, McDonagh, and a few Italian names on newer tombstones. At the open grave he shuddered and wouldn’t look at the casket. Standing there bareheaded, he kept his thoughts on the old Irish names on tombstones, but the softly weeping women elbowing him annoyed him and he looked down the long valley at aristocratic vaults like Greek temples and the whole world seemed to become quietly unimportant, and he felt sad and sorry for Cosantino and himself.

  The crowd moved slowly away from the grave. He walked with Jimmie, his head still uncovered. A reporter from the Star touched his arm and said: “Well, how’s it all going to turn out?”

  “I don’t know,” Harry said.

  “You had nothing against him, did you, Mr. Trotter?”

  “Not a thing in the world.”

  “I’ve been watching to see who didn’t come out to the funeral.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Harry said, and the reporter went away.

  On the way back from the cemetery he was depressed and exchanged only small talk with Jimmie. He leaned over to one side in the taxi and closed his eyes. He thought of the crowd in the cemetery and longed to surround himself with people who would respect him and look up to him, more influential and stronger than Cosantino, himself in the centre of a crowd, at the head of a long table, a political banquet, a party, the biggest party ever thrown in the city, everybody there, ward heelers, big guys, Johnston, the dukes in politics, women and wine and whiskey and food, slabs of it, gobs of it, truckloads of beer, champagne. He opened his eyes and sat up straight. The idea excited him. Later on he would explain it to Jim.

  PART FOUR

  1

  The tombstones in the cemetery where Cosantino had been buried impressed him so that for days after, in idle moments, he remembered standing on the cinder path, looking at the crowd around the grave. Tall granite stones, polished and carved, were beautiful but one large, uncut granite cross, towering over smaller stones, seemed remarkable for dignity and strength. He remembered the time he had thought of going to Maydale where his mother was buried and longed to see a hu
ge cross over her grave. It was an exciting notion and he thought of going there at once and was happy and not at all sentimental, for it was advisable in any event, to go away for a week. It astonished him to find so much pleasure in such a simple thought, and he determined not to tell anybody, but later on, talking to Jimmie Nash, it was necessary to tell him he would be gone for three days, looking up some of his mother’s people in Maydale. He told the same story to Anna.

  On Friday morning he took the train, and as it moved out he wondered why he hadn’t asked Vera to come with him as he had at first intended, but he preferred to be alone, for the feeling he looked forward to couldn’t be shared with anyone, and besides, he wasn’t quite ready for Vera. Still there were complications in all his thoughts of her. He sat back in the seat, half-closing his eyes, avoiding any kind of thoughts. The train, in the yard, moved slowly and the whole movement of his life seemed to have slowed down, and there was a new pleasure in enjoying the vaguest sensations. Maydale was an hour’s ride from the city, but he didn’t read, though he had two new mystery stories in his bag. He went into the smoking-car and was alone for half an hour, looking out of the window, occasionally counting telegraph poles, contented until two cattle dealers, who had got on at the last stop, came into the smoking-car. He went back to the parlour-car and amused himself remembering that his people had come to the city over this road. Ten years ago he had gone to Maydale for his mother’s burial, but he couldn’t remember the station or the village, so through the window he followed the bare fields, dun-coloured after winter’s snow, and isolated farmhouses appeared too lonely and remote from life. He saw a woman standing at a farmhouse door and a young man walking up a lane, and leaned forward eagerly, glad to see a figure breaking the desolation of the country, and followed the woman with his eyes till the train swung him round a bend.

  The conductor called out: “Stouffville Junction. Change here for Maydale.” At twenty minutes to twelve, irresolute, he got off the train. He asked a man in the ticket office how to get to Maydale and the man told him to wait for the jitney, or hire a buggy. No trains stopped at Maydale. So he walked down the dusty road to a frame hotel and said good-morning to an old man hunched in a chair on a freshly painted veranda. The man regarded him suspiciously, muttering vaguely. Inside the hotel he pounded on the desk and asked a man in a blue shirt if there was a hotel in Maydale. There was a small hotel in Maydale, the man said, and he recommended one of his own buggies and a horse in the stable.

  On the front steps Harry waited till they hitched up the horse. Stouffville was discouraging, no one on the road, only the old man in the chair, wagging his beard. Harry didn’t like the road or the colour of the houses. He smelled the fresh paint and liked it, and cheerfully noticed marks of raking on the lawn across the road. The horse and buggy stopped at the curb. The stable-hand said: “She don’t need much attention. She ain’t as young as she used to be, but she gets there just the same, and that’s all you want.”

  Harry gave him a quarter. Uncertain of himself, he sat in the buggy and said “Geedap.” Maydale was fourteen miles away, it wasn’t the first time he had ever driven a horse and he liked having the reins in his hands. Carelessly, he tilted his hat back on his head, to show indifference, for he knew the man was noticing him, leaning forward alertly. Out of the town, he drove along the main road, the horse jogging evenly, the reins held loosely. He was in no hurry and though all along the road there was only the monotony of irregular wooden fences to interest him, he drove slowly, for the air was good, and it was a holiday. This road, at a time when he was very young, he must have known well, and he wished there were green summer fields and leaves on the bare trees. For no reason he became very happy and, jerking out the whip from its place, tickled the hindquarters of the beast till it leaped forward angrily, a swinging, swaying gait suggesting its annoyance, and he clicked his tongue on his teeth. The road dipped down between low hills. A line of trees on top of the hills interested him, so he stopped the horse on a bridge over a small stream, wishing the branches were covered with green leaves. Moving the horse to the middle of the bridge he tried spitting into the stream, following with his eyes a piece of white paper on slow-moving water till it was carried out of sight around a bend. He grinned, wanting the horse to jump forward, go charging into the village, down the main street, panting and steaming; instead, they loafed along and he leaned back in the seat, the warm sun and the clip-clop of the hoofs making him drowsy, all the way into Maydale.

  The village surprised him. So many houses were of limestone. Then he remembered it was a limestone district. The horse slowed down to a walk on the main street and he looked at the Anglican church and the town hall, and many stone houses. There was more sun than in Stouffville and some people were on the street. The horse stopped mechanically near a small stone hotel. He got down, and in the hotel asked the man behind the desk if he could get a good meal, and a stable for the horse. The man, who had been reading the paper, smiling, kept a finger on the line, pointing at the dining room door. He said the horse and buggy could be left in the livery stable as long as he pleased.

  In the dining room he was alone. It was late for dinner and a boy with a clean apron brought him some pork chops. He ate the pork chops and some cake and drank a glass of milk, and went out to look at the village.

  People on the short main street were friendly and he nodded agreeably. He had a long talk with the livery-stable man, who directed him to the Anglican cemetery, after insisting he remembered Harry’s father and mother from twenty-five years ago. He was a skinny old man with yellow teeth and a habit of listening with his mouth held wide open. He became very positive, as he talked, that he remembered the Trotters. Putting a hand on Harry’s shoulder, he stood on the sidewalk, pointing the way to the cemetery — two blocks south and walk down opposite the brown frame house. The Trotters, he said, used to live down the road and three blocks to the left, only a brick cottage was there now, with the lilac bushes on one side.

  Harry walked to the cottage and sat on the wide stump of a poplar tree close to the curb, looking at the neat brick house where once had been the old rough-cast two-storied one. Vaguely he remembered the lilac bushes, leafless now and thick at the roots, well trimmed, older than the brick cottage. As a kid he had run around the house, chased by his cousin and a black dog, dodging among the lilac bushes. At twilight three or four kids played around the big poplar, a stump now. With his eyes closed, he imagined the old house was there, but when he opened them the neat brick cottage was an irritating sight; so he got up and walked back to the main street and the road to the cemetery.

  The Anglican cemetery was at the edge of the village and beyond the cemetery were a few houses and barns, and then a long stretch of bare field to the horizon. In the afternoon sun the cemetery, after winter snows, was dirty, and a poor place for graves. It was dry on the path, but walking on sod, looking for the family plot, his shoes sank into soft mud. The sod was faded, and some of last year’s flowers lay dry and dead on remembered tombstones. Pretentious stones on well-kept graves offended him, and he was indignant, as though it had become necessary to defend his parents; for he knew he would find a poor stone on the family plot. Two small stones about a foot high were on the family plot — “James Trotter in his fifty-second year,” and “Amelia Trotter, beloved wife of James Trotter.” The stones were square and dirty. He looked down at the sod, strangely embarrassed before the small stones and last year’s grass, and wanting to kneel down and mumble some prayers, his mouth opened a little; he moistened his lips, scraped one foot in the mud then looked around wildly, alone in the desolate place of stones and dried grass and rotten twigs. He looked up at the sky, then at the sod, and walked away quickly, out of the cemetery. He saw no one, there were no sounds; there was sun, but no breeze, and nothing moved.

  A little way down the road from the cemetery was a stone cutter who displayed his stones on his front lawn. Small tombstones without inscriptions were planted on the lawn, not
far from the street. From the sidewalk Harry looked at the stones critically, shrugged his shoulders, took two steps away, then came back and walked up the path to rap on the door. A tidy woman with gray hair came to the door.

  “I’d like to talk about a stone,” Harry said.

  “Oh, just one minute,” she said, and called, “Tom, Tom.” A man in a brown sweatercoat, smoking a pipe, came along the hall. He had a long red moustache, faded at the tips. “Was it a stone?” he said.

  “I want to see a very big stone,” Harry said.

  “Well, you can’t do better than some of those out there,” he said. “Those stones are good enough for anyone in town.”

  “Listen, you don’t get me. I want something big, grand.”

  The man was offended. The woman said, “Every stone there is pretty enough for anyone.”

  “You don’t get me. I want something big and I’ll pay for it and I want it at once, see? Raw stone. A standout. My God man, this ain’t all the stone there is in the country, is it?”

  “Who said it was? Sure, I got some stone. I got stone in the backyard, but a lot of good it’ll do us, unless I make you something.”

  “Lemme see the stone first.”

  “There’s nothing to see. It’s just stone.”

  “Let the gentleman see what you have, Tom,” the woman said.

  So they went around to the backyard and looked at two pieces of solid granite, each about seven feet long and two-and-a-half by two, rough-hewn and massive, and Tom said it had been there since last fall. They sat on the stone, without speaking, till Harry slapped the man on the back and said what was it worth to make a pillar with the two pieces.

  “Don’t be silly,” the man said.

  “Go easy and don’t be so damn fresh. I’ll pay you money for this. I mean it.”