The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three Page 3

  Inside the house now, Mrs. Lount was crying quietly and saying, “Henry, we’ll kill each other. We seem to bring out the very worst qualities in each other. I do all I can and yet you both make me feel like an intruder.”

  “It’s just your imagination, Martha. Now stop worrying.”

  “I’m an unhappy woman. But I try to be patient. I try so hard, don’t I, Henry?”

  “You’re very patient, dear, but you shouldn’t be so suspicious of everybody, don’t you see?” Mr. Lount was saying the voice of a man trying to pacify an angry, hysterical wife.

  Then Michael heard footsteps on the cinder path, and then he saw two long shadows: two women were approaching, and one tall, slender girl. When Michael saw this girl, Helen Murray, he tried to duck behind the veranda post, for he had always wanted her for his girl. He had gone to school with her. At night he used to lie awake planning remarkable feats that would so impress her she would never want to be far away from him. Now the girl’s mother was calling, “Hello there, Michael,” in a very jolly voice.

  “Hello, Mrs. Murray,” he said glumly, sure his father’s or his mother’s voice would rise again.

  “Come on and walk home with us, Michael,” Helen called. Her voice sounded so soft and her face in the dusk light seemed so round, white and mysteriously far away that Michael began to ache with eagerness. Yet he said hurriedly, “I can’t. I can’t tonight,” speaking almost rudely as if he believed they only wanted to tease him.

  As they went along the path and he watched them, he was really longing for that one bright moment when Helen would pass under the high corner light, though he was thinking with bitterness that he could already hear them talking, hear Mrs. Murray saying, “He’s a peculiar boy, but it’s not to be wondered at since his father and mother don’t get along at all.” And inside one of the houses someone had stopped playing a piano, maybe to hear one of the fellows who had been in the lumberyard that afternoon laughing and telling that young Lount was scared to jump off the roof.

  Watching the corner, Michael felt that the twisting and pulling in the life in the house was twisting and choking him. “I’ll get out of here. I’ll go away.” And he began to think of going to the city. He began to long for freedom in strange places where everything was new and fresh and mysterious. He began to breathe heavily at the thought of freedom. In the city he had an uncle D’Arcy who sailed the lake boats in the summer months and in the winter went all over the south from one racetrack to another following the horses. “I ought to go down to the city tonight and get a job,” he thought: but he did not move; he was still waiting for Helen Murray to pass under the light.

  For most of the next day, too, Michael kept to himself. He was uptown once on a message, and he felt like running on the way home. With long sweeping strides he ran steadily on the paths past the shipyard, the church, the railway tracks, his face serious with determination.

  But in the late afternoon when he was sitting on the veranda reading, Sammy Schwartz and Ike Hershfield came around to see him.

  “Hello Mike, what’s new with you?” they said, sitting on the steps.

  “Sammy, hello, Ike. What’s new with you?”

  They began to talk to Michael about the colored family that had moved into the old roughcast shack down by the tracks. “The big coon kid thinks he’s tough,” Sammy said. “He offered to beat up any of us so we said he wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance with you.”

  “What did the nigger say?”

  “He said he’d pop you one right on the nose if you came over his way.”

  “Let’s go over,” Michael said. “I’ll tear his guts out for you.”

  They went out to the street, fell in step very solemnly, and walked over to the field by the tracks without saying a word. When they were about fifty paces away from the shack, Sammy said, “Wait here. I’ll go get the coon,” and he ran to the unpainted door of the white-washed house calling, “Art, Art, come on out.” A big colored boy with closely cropped hair came out and put hand up, shading his eyes from the sun. Then he went back into the house and came out again with a straw hat on his head. He was in his bare feet. The way he came walking across the field with Sammy was always easy to remember because he hung back a little, talking rapidly, shrugging his shoulders. When he came close to Michael he grinned, flashing his teeth, and said, “What’s the matter with you white boys? I don’t want to do no fighting.” He looked scared.

  “I’m going to do a nice job on you,” Michael said.

  The colored boy took off his straw hat and with great care laid it on the ground while all the time he was looking mournfully across the field and at his house, hoping maybe that somebody would come out. Then they started to fight, and Michael knocked him down four times, but he, himself, got a black eye and a cut lip. The colored boy had been so brave and he seemed so alone, licked and lying on the ground, that they sat down around him, praising him and making friends with him. Finding out that Art was a good ball player, a left-handed pitcher who specialized in a curve ball, they agreed they could use him, maybe, on the town team.

  Lying there in the field, flat on his back, Michael liked it so much that he almost did not want to go away. Art was telling how he had always wanted to be a jockey but had got too big; he had a brother who could make the weight. Michael began to boast about his Uncle D’Arcy who went around to all the tracks in the winter making and losing money at places like Saratoga, Blue Bonnets and Tia Juana. It was a fine, friendly, eager discussion about faraway places.

  It was nearly dinnertime when Michael got home; he went in the house sucking his cut lip and hoping his mother would not notice his black eye. But he heard no movement in the house. In the kitchen he saw his stepmother kneeling down in the middle of the floor with her hands clasped and her lips moving.

  “What’s the matter, Mother?” he asked.

  “I’m praying,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “For your father. Get down and pray with me.”

  “I don’t want to pray.”

  “You’ve got to,” she said.

  “My lip’s all cut. It’s bleeding. I can’t do it,” he said.

  Late afternoon sunshine coming through the kitchen window shone on his stepmother’s graying hair, on her soft smooth skin and on the gentle, patient expression that was on her face. At that moment Michael thought that she was desperately uneasy and terribly alone, and he felt sorry for her even while he was rushing out of the back door.

  He saw his father walking toward the woodshed, walking slow and upright with his hands held straight at his side and with the same afternoon sunlight shining so brightly on the high dome of his forehead. He went into the woodshed without looking back. Michael sat down on the steps and waited. He was afraid to follow. Maybe it was because of the way his father was walking with his head held up and his hands straight at his sides. Michael began to make a small desperate prayer that his father should suddenly appear at the woodshed door.

  Time dragged slowly. A few doors away Mrs. McCutcheon was feeding her hens who were clucking as she called them. “I can’t sit here till it gets dark,” Michael was thinking, but he was afraid to go into the woodshed and afraid to think of what he feared.

  “What’s he doing in here, what’s he doing?” Michael said out loud, and he jumped up and rushed to the shed and flung the door wide.

  His father was sitting on a pile of wood with his head on his hands and a kind of beaten look on his face. Still scared, Michael called out, “Dad, Dad,” and then he felt such relief he sank down on the pile of wood beside his father and looked up at him.

  “What’s the matter with you, son?”

  “Nothing. I guess I just wondered where you were.”

  “What are you upset about?”

  “I’ve been running. I feel all right.”

  So they sat there quietly till it seemed time to go into the house. No one said anything. No one noticed Michael’s black eye or his cut lip.

>   Even after they had eaten Michael could not get rid of the fear within him, a fear of something impending. In a way he felt that he ought to do something at once, but he seemed unable to move; it was like sitting on the edge of the roof yesterday, afraid to make the jump. So he went back of the house and sat on the stoop and for a long time looked at the shed till he grew even more uneasy. He heard the angry drilling of a woodpecker and the quiet rippling of the little water flowing under the street bridge and flowing on down over the rocks into the glen. Heavy clouds were sweeping up from the horizon.

  He knew now that he wanted to run away, that he could not stay there any longer, only he couldn’t make up his mind to go. Within him was the same breathless feeling he had had when he sat on the roof staring down, trying to move. Now he walked around to the front of the house and kept going along the path as far as Helen Murray’s house. After going around to the back door, he stood for a long time staring at the lighted window, hoping to see Helen’s shadow or her body moving against the light. He was breathing deeply and smelling the rich heavy odors from the flower garden. With his head thrust forward he whistled softly.

  “Is that you, Michael?” Helen called from the door.

  “Come on out.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Come on for a walk?”

  For a moment she hesitated at the door, then she came toward him, floating in her white organdie party dress over the grass toward him. She was saying, “I’m dressed to go out. I can’t go with you. I’m going down to the dance hall.”

  “Who with?”

  “Charlie Delaney.”

  “All right,” he said. “I just thought you might be doing nothing.” As he walked away he called back to her, “So long, Helen.”

  It was then, on the way back to the house, that he felt he had to go away at once. “I’ve got to go. I’ll die here. I’ll write to Dad from the city.”

  No one paid any attention to him when he returned to the house. His father and stepmother were sitting quietly in the living room reading the paper. In his own room he took a little wooden box from the bottom drawer of his dresser and emptied it of twenty dollars and seventy cents, all that he had saved. He listened solemnly for sounds in the house, then he folded a clean shirt and stuffed a comb and a tooth-brush into his pocket.

  Outside he hurried along with his great swinging strides, going past the corner house, on past the long fence and the bridge and the church, and the shipyard, and past the last of the town lights to the highway. He was walking stubbornly, looking solemn and dogged. Then he saw the moonlight shining on the hay stacked in the fields, and when he smelled the oats and the richer smell of sweet clover he suddenly felt alive and free. Headlights from cars kept sweeping by and already he was imagining he could see the haze of bright light hanging over the city. His heart began to thump with eagerness. He put out his hand for a lift, feeling full of hope. He looked across the fields at the dark humps, cows standing motionless in the night. Soon someone would stop and pick him up. They would take him among a million new faces, rumbling sounds and strange smells. He got more excited. His Uncle D’Arcy might get him a job on the boats for the rest of the summer, maybe, too, he might be able to move around with him in the winter. Over and over he kept thinking of places with beautiful names, places like Tia Juana, Woodbine, Saratoga and Blue Bonnets.

  Silk Stockings

  Dave Monroe went into a department store to buy silk stockings as a birthday present for his landlady’s daughter, Anne. Many times he hesitated as he walked the length of the hosiery counter, and he smiled shyly at the salesgirl who was trying to help him. He was a rather stout young man, dressed conservatively in a dark overcoat with a plain white scarf, but he had such a round, smiling face that he looked more boyish than he actually was. He blushed and kept on smiling as he tried to look at many pairs of stockings very critically. He wondered whether it would help if he explained to the lady that he was getting the stockings for a girl who was very dainty and stylish, as smart as any girl anyone ever saw hurrying along the street in the evening. But all he said was: “I wonder if these mesh hose would look good with a black seal jacket and a little black muff? She has so many different dresses that you can’t go by them. I want something good. I don’t care whether they’re expensive.”

  At last he paid for a pair of gun-metal mesh stockings that were so fine he could squeeze them into a ball and conceal them in his hand. When he went out to the lighted streets that were crowded with people who were hurrying home, he began to scrutinize all the well-dressed women to see if one of them had on a pair of stockings as nice as those he had in his pocket for Anne. He was anxious about the way the stockings would look on her because he had been wondering for a week what he could give her that would suggest his intimate interest in her, that would indicate he didn’t want to be just a friend. He hurried, wanting to get home to the boarding house before Anne did.

  His house was like most of the other boarding houses in the quiet neighborhood except that the woodwork always looked clean and freshly painted. As soon as he opened the door he bumped into Anne’s mother, Mrs. Greenleaf, a steady-eyed widow who had always been motherly and patient with Dave. They spoke cheerfully, as if they liked each other. The only time Dave ever saw a harsh, stern expression on Mrs. Greenleaf’s face was in the evenings at eleven-thirty when she was walking up and down in the hall waiting for Anne to come home. If Anne happened to be only a few minutes late, her mother argued with her bitterly, as if she alone understood there was a blemish in the girl’s nature. The trouble was that Mrs. Greenleaf was a prude and didn’t want Anne to go out with men at all, and every time Dave heard her arguing with her daughter in the hall, he thought: “What does she think the girl’s doing?”

  “Is Anne home yet, Mrs. Greenleaf?”

  “Not yet, but she’ll be here in a minute. I’ve got something nice to eat because it’s her birthday. Goodness, it must be crisp out; you’re just bursting with good health. And here I am driven to bed with my neuralgia all down the side of my face!”

  “It’s nippy out, but it makes you feel good. It’s a shame about that neuralgia,” he said. When Mrs. Greenleaf suffered from neuralgia she took many aspirins to try to sleep. As Dave went upstairs he wondered why it was that two people like Anne and her mother, who were so sympathetic in many ways, were never able to understand each other. In his own room he put the stockings carefully under his pillow and sat down on the bed to wait. But he couldn’t help thinking of the stockings on Anne’s legs; in his head he was making little pictures of her hurrying along the street, a slim, stylish girl with tiny feet wearing expensive fashionable hose that anyone ought to notice, especially when she passed under a streetlight. Then he heard Anne coming upstairs. He could imagine her running with her coat open and billowing back, her toes hardly touching the steps. She seemed to be in a great hurry, as if she wanted to get dressed before dinner so she could go out right after eating. Dave, standing at his open door, said: “Just a minute, Anne, here’s something for your birthday. And Anne, would you ever go out with me some night?”

  Pulling off her hat, she held it in her left hand. Her black hair was parted in the middle and pulled back tight across her ears. She dangled the silk stockings in one hand, her expression quite serious. Then her face lit up eagerly and she said: “Oh, aren’t they lovely! They’re just what I wanted. Would I go out with you? I certainly would!”

  “They’re yours. I hoped you’d like them.”

  “You’re a dear, Dave. I’m crazy about them. I’ll wear them tonight. I could kiss you.” She almost seemed ready to laugh, but her eyes were soft as she looked away bashfully. Then she crimsoned, hesitated, stood up on her tiptoes, took his head in her hands and kissed him, and then ran along the hall, leaving him standing there with a wide grin on his face.

  Before she went out that night she called to him: “How do you like them, Dave?” She was standing under the hall light, holding her dress up a few inches
so he could see the stockings. She was wearing her seal jacket and carrying her little black muff in one hand, and she looked so smart he said: “You look like a million dollars, Anne.”

  “Don’t the stockings look great?” she said. “Bye-bye, Dave.”

  He would have liked to ask her where she was going, but the main thing was that wherever she went that night, she would be wearing silk stockings that were his, and for the first time, as he thought of her, he had a feeling of possession.

  That night he went to the armory to see the fights. On his way home he went into the corner store to get a package of cigarettes. When he came out he stood on the sidewalk, lit a cigarette, and as he looked across the street he thought he recognized the girl with the little black muff who was talking to a fellow wearing one of those long, straight dark overcoats with wide padded shoulders. A small light-grey hat was pulled down over one eye. He looked like a tough guy who had made good and bought himself some sharp clothes. “What’s Anne doing with a mug like that?” Dave thought. He felt like going across the street and pushing the man away. Anne and the man moved under the light by the newsstand and he could see the man’s swarthy, bluish cheek. Anne was holding his arm loosely as they argued with each other. Twice she turned to leave and each time went back and said something to him. Dave didn’t actually feel angry till he saw the light shining on her silk stockings, and then he remembered the way she had kissed him and he wanted to shout across the street at her and insult her. But Anne was leaving the man, who was patting her shoulder. Instead of going away himself, the man turned, bought a morning paper at the news-stand, put a cigar in his mouth, and leaned against the post.