Strange Fugitive Page 6

  “You’ll never get another foreman’s job. No, I didn’t mean that, I mean there aren’t many places in the city. Don’t get sore, Harry, come here, I’m sorry.”

  She put her arm around his neck. He shook his head jerkily, feeling a little sick. He waited for her to become sympathetic. She started to cry, then he felt sympathetic. They could hear a train coming along the tracks up over the hill across the river on the other side of the ravine. They could not see it, only sparks shooting into the sky, then a line of car tops and lighted windows pale in the half-light, swung into view.

  “It’s going pretty fast,” he said.

  “It’s out of sight now,” she said, vaguely interested.

  “You should have told me before. You know I love you more than anything else in the world and that the main thing is we’ll get along anyhow.”

  She began to talk rapidly, caressingly, excited, till he wanted her to shut up. He was not a ten-year-old kid needing to be mothered. At the moment he wanted to encounter something stubborn and unyielding that would test his strength. He did not want to listen to her talking like that.

  “It’s kinda dark down here,” he said. “Maybe we’d better go. I’ll tell you all about it on the way up.”

  They took a shortcut up the hill to the tracks. Halfway she insisted on sitting on a fallen tree where they had sat a year ago, making love and writing their names on fungus. He explained very quickly why he had quarrelled with Hohnsburger. He tried to settle it, give an air of finality to his explanation of the matter. He said definitely there was no room for argument.

  The wire fence was low at the top of the hill. Harry put his foot on the top wire and Vera stepped over and they went down the embankment and along the tracks. They hardly spoke to each other, having their own thoughts.

  Harry heard voices on the bank above the tracks. A young fellow and a girl had come up from the ravine and were climbing the wire fence. Harry wondered vaguely what they had been doing down in the ravine so late. The young fellow tossed a coat and leather bag and book over the fence before helping her over. The girl had riding breeches under a long coat and black band around her head. They didn’t see Harry and Vera. Harry saw that the fellow was very mad about something. He was swinging the bag at the tall weeds. The girl kept looking over her shoulder at the boy. She tried to put her arm across his back and when she couldn’t, started to tease him. It was dark and there were no stars in the sky.

  It started to rain a little. The girl up on the embankment had snatched the fellow’s peak cap and put it on her head, the peak to one side. Harry let his arm rest on Vera’s shoulder, then draped a coat around her. They didn’t mind the rain.

  Up on the embankment the fellow had chased the girl and catching her, was trying to put her over his knee.

  “Those kids are having a lot of fun,” he said to Vera. He was determined to avoid talking about the job. The Kingston Road radial car away to the south-east hooted mournfully. The track became a ridge on the level ground.

  By a cow-guard on the track, a path went down the bank to the end of a street. “Listen, Vera, let’s not talk about the damn thing any more,” he said.

  “Of course we won’t.”

  “That ain’t what I mean. I mean I don’t need to be cheered up, see? I don’t need sympathy.”

  Vera, slightly hurt, went down the path. Harry stood for a few seconds looking at the fellow and girl going along the track in the rain, the girl with the fellow’s hat pulled over her ear. Harry turned up his coat collar and found himself thinking of Farrel and his self-satisfied good-nature. Things were getting rotten. Then he thought of the fellow and the girl trudging along the tracks. He was disappointed about something, slight weary. Vera called, “Come on.” He ran down the path. It was raining hard.

  8

  It was tiresome hanging around the house for days, and always going downtown in the morning for a paper as soon as it came out, to look down the column of “Male Help Wanted.” In a week he had tried three lumberyards in the city and could have had a job without authority but would not take it. Every time he tried to get one of the good jobs, he imagined himself going home and telling Vera he had been successful.

  Days passed and he couldn’t get a decent job in the city lumberyards. No matter, he was determined never to take another job under three or four managers. For a time, to get over a difficult period, he might take such a job, but finally he would become his own boss. Vera advised him to be practical and pointed out that he had had no training for a difficult position. He got sore; was there one man sitting pretty in the industrial world who had had a college training, shorthand, a correspondence school course in big business? He said. She insisted she was simply being sensible; he wasn’t a professional man. He yelled at her, thanking God he wasn’t a professional man, so she reminded him of responsibilities till he sullenly answered hardly at all, looking at her moodily, his hands in his pockets.

  In the evenings he stayed at home a good deal, though he occasionally saw Jimmie Nash. Sometimes he thought of phoning Julie Roberts, but he had lost confidence in himself, and didn’t want to talk to her. She was interesting to him as long as he was strong and assertive beside her, and even then it had been difficult, when she smiled. The idea of meeting her again became embarrassing. Instead of going out by himself he expected Vera to amuse him. He said to her, “Well, what are we going to do tonight?” and when she suggested a show he invariably said, “I don’t want to go to a show,” so she shrugged her shoulders and said she couldn’t be expected to please him all the time.

  He told her about the thought of his mother, that afternoon he had left the yard for the last time, and explained she was an exception to all women, who should have interested him long ago. In an easy chair in the sitting-room he was comfortable and with eyes half-closed, talked of incidents he remembered from years ago, illustrating his mother’s ability and energy. “She would have been a remarkable woman, if she had had a little more education.” Vera didn’t appear interested in the stories about his mother, so he spoke sharply to her, and got up and left the room.

  He sat alone in the kitchen, sullen and discontented, feeling that he had quarrelled violently with Vera. Afterward he went down to see Farrel and in a roundabout way got from him Anna’s phone number. He phoned her. She was sweet, and he went around to her apartment for two or three drinks and told her about losing his job and feeling on the rocks, but she was so cheerful it was hard to remain sad, so he made love to her, his difficulties becoming unimportant, till he was beyond them, husky and laughing, untouched by any single job. The visit to Anna’s apartment so impressed him he was eager to tell someone she was the most remarkable woman he had met in a long time. He couldn’t tell it to Farrel, who, out of envy, would have tried to make it unpleasant. He talked about her to Jimmie Nash, who was like her in many ways. She was the most natural woman he had ever met. She liked eating, drinking and loving in a splendid good-natured way, never thinking twice, going ahead, and talking about it as she would talk about a bottle of good whiskey. She had absolutely no idea of morals, but was straightforward, and he couldn’t imagine her playing him a dirty trick. Lovemaking with her was free from most of the complications usually attached to it. All she asked for was a good time, although he didn’t like the cheerful way she talked about other fellows who had loved her, because she related all the intimate details that had appealed to her. Nash was eager to meet her but Harry was indefinite about it.

  He liked thinking of Anna, and all day held aloof from Vera, feeling lonely, restless, cut off from days he had enjoyed. Sometimes, watching Vera working around the house, he felt close to her and worried about getting another job. She was urging him to take even a teamster’s job till he got something else, for they hadn’t saved money. He agreed. She had always helped him. They talked pleasantly and seriously and afterward he was sure he wouldn’t see Anna any more, but next day he was irritable after being out all morning looking for work, and he didn’t
want to be agreeable. He phoned Anna from the corner drugstore.

  Weeks passed, and thinking too often of the yard and Tony’s big back bending over the tap, he seemed to have lost a part of his life. Vera was sympathetic and patient and so anxious to avoid a quarrel that he tried to irritate her simply to disturb her, to find himself aroused and passionately insistent upon attaining something far beyond his reach. Walking along the street in the evenings he imagined neighbours, sitting on verandas, stared at him, aware that he was no longer of any importance. Every morning he dressed carefully, standing before the mirror, shaving, pausing a long time, his thoughts drifting easily.

  He refused to go to parties with Stan Farrel for fear of meeting people who knew him. He wanted to be alone, taking long walks, thinking always of himself, at times walking rapidly, his hands clenched. One Sunday evening he wandered into the Labour Temple and was at first amused at the meeting, then imagined himself making a speech on the platform. Most of the fellows in the audience were the kind of working men he could control and direct. He knew how to handle these men. He could become important among them, and the idea pleased him, and he mentioned it to Vera, but she was not interested. She suggested she would be willing to go out working to make it easier during the hard time. He spoke sharply to her and shook her, calling her a stubborn woman. She looked so surprised he was bewildered, wondering what had enraged him. He cursed himself and tried petting her, till she cried in relief and they went upstairs to bed. Lying on the bed, he told her stories of himself as a child. His father believed that a boy should work hard and have very few opinions, and rarely, if ever, go to parties with the fellows at school. When his father got religious he had to feel it too. He had been allowed none of the freedom of other kids. If he had been happier at home he would have got along much better later on; by this time would have achieved some distinction. Vera agreed that his life had probably been misshapen by childhood experiences, and in the evenings, when there was nothing to say and he was sulky, she led him on to talk about himself. He saw that it was a good story and told it to Jimmie Nash, elaborating upon some of the details. “I was different from other kids,” he insisted. Nash encouraged him to talk, half interested, half believing, a little embarrassed.

  Finally he took a temporary job driving a milk wagon. He knew nothing about horses but liked driving to the route from the dairy, making the horse go as fast as he could without tiring it. The milk route was in the east end of the city, over the river on the other side of the park. He got used to the route and cultivated the milkman’s habit of knowing which of his women customers stayed up very late at night. There was a basement apartment where a light burned nearly all night. Usually dark blinds were drawn over the windows but on some nights he could peep through the blind into the front room. A plump, kittenish lady of thirty-five had a different man in the apartment nearly every night. He got accustomed to going up the alleyway quietly. He heard the woman laughing. The woman, handling herself well, always two jumps ahead of the man. After peeping a few minutes, he rattled the bottles loudly. The startled look on the man’s face amused him.

  Twice he drove to Anna’s apartment which was on a street off the route and on the way back to the dairy, and stayed with her an hour.

  None of his acquaintances saw him going to work. He wore old clothes on the job, but in the evening, when going out with Vera or Jimmie Nash, he had on the form-fitting coat, tan shoes, his fingers manicured and nimble. He got up at two o’clock in the afternoon and went downtown. Sometimes he played pool, trying earnestly to win, very disappointed when he lost. He got into the habit of going to cheap movie shows in the afternoon until bored. Feeling disappointed, or unhappy, he went into one of these shows to forget it by watching the picture closely, his thoughts carried away. After looking around carefully, he sometimes rubbed his knee against the knee of a strange woman a few feet away from him. He did not want to know the woman. He never even tried to see her face. His knee rubbed against her dress and his thoughts raced eagerly. He was almost disinterested as far as any particular woman was concerned.

  The milk route was only a temporary job and he was laid off in three weeks. It was the early fall and the nights were getting cooler and Vera was saving up to take her fur coat out of storage at the furrier’s. Harry went to the Labour Temple on Sunday evening. The Sunday evening meetings in the Temple were not crowded because it was too early in the year and street meetings were being held, but he was interested in the lively way speakers talked of direct action, solidarity, mass action, good strong words that aroused him. He walked home after the meeting, feeling stronger and more confident. He imagined himself lining up forces within the Temple. He thought of himself, a leader, striking out, supported by a militant working class.

  The following Sunday he went to the Temple and sat near a white-haired old man, who mumbled to himself during speeches, waiting eagerly for the fifteen-minute period for questions. A man could get up and ask a speaker a question. The old man tried to turn a question into a speech. The crowd applauded him eagerly when he spoke during the discussion period, and the fierce way he snapped out big words excited Harry, who clapped vigorously. Listening to the man speaking and other fellows yelling, “Go on, Pimblett, give it to ’em,” he felt that his restlessness had come to a point where it could be turned into energy. He wasn’t interested in what Isaac Pimblett was saying but the words sounded good and made him feel alone and attacked. After the speech he felt aggressive.

  Isaac Pimblett noticed how attentively Harry listened and how enthusiastically he applauded. They walked together for a few blocks after the meeting, developing a friendship. The old man was hard and caustic and happy to be an outsider. He attacked the life around him, and Harry, eager to agree, was glad to talk to him, though he was not really interested in politics.

  He left Pimblett on the corner opposite the cathedral. He phoned Anna from a soda-fountain parlour down the street a block. He walked out east to her apartment and made love to her. They had a good time, and she made some coffee, and they danced to the phonograph, and on the way home he had a feeling he was determinedly going his own way.

  He told Jimmie Nash about the Labour Temple, but Jimmie would consider only the political side of it and was cynical of Harry’s talk of strength. Vera was not even interested. Harry quarrelled with her because she would not promise to go with him to the Temple. Respectable people did not go there, she said. They quarrelled and he said she was preventing him from living in his own way. She said that if he would be happier alone she would go out and work and he could please himself.

  Then he was sorry he had provoked her and wanted to love her, for he couldn’t think of her changing her life and becoming strange to him. He wanted to be sure of her at least, he said. Her ankles and hands and hair were always there for him, something unchanging, and feeling lonely, he said that everything he wanted, everything that pleased him, the strength of life, and wind, and trees, and streets deserted in the night were all inside her. It took a long while to tell it to her and at times he was embarrassed for she cried after the quarrel, but he fumbled for words and she seemed to become more important to him. He could not express his feelings satisfactorily but felt that at all costs he must keep her.

  He tried next day to get a job in one of the big department stores but there was much unemployment in the city and he was unsuccessful. Jimmie, who had quit the lumberyard, though he hadn’t got the job on the paper, advised him to go out canvassing. A man could always earn a living selling magazines, he said, and offered to go out on the road with him. Harry agreed that if something did not turn up in a week he might just as well sell magazines as do anything else. Magazine salesmen went out in crews and had a swell time drifting from town to town flirting with old women and daughters, or getting arrested and given twelve hours to leave town. It sounded adventurous and they talked as if they had made up their minds to go through with it, but Harry had an idea something else would turn up.

  He
stayed at home a good deal in the evenings. They were not spending much money. They had paid a month’s rent but had to spend carefully for they were drawing money from the bank. Harry played checkers a lot with Vera. He got into the habit of looking for the checkerboard immediately after supper. Vera played well but by concentrating he could beat her.

  PART TWO

  1

  On Sunday evening at half-past seven o’clock he walked down Yonge to Albert Street. He had on his straw sailor and no coat though the nights got cooler in the middle of September. At corners, streets with no traffic, intersecting Yonge, evangelists talked to small crowds. The evangelists had chalked huge squares on the pavement and scrawled gospel words. Some evangelists talking on corners where there was a steady flow of traffic got much bigger crowds. He walked down the street wondering how Vera would get along by herself if he went out on the road selling magazines for three weeks, just to get some money. It was possible to make sixty or seventy dollars a week at it, if you had the goods. He might stay at it longer, all fall, and watching his step, be ready to go ahead with something important in the Spring. In the crowd across the street a high-pitched voice grew louder and more powerful and became a wail of despair. Slightly startled, Harry stopped but did not cross the street. He had walked as far as Albert Street and stood at the corner, looking along the street. He hoped to find old Isaac Pimblett in one of the crowds. It was nearly dark. The city hall tower stuck up over the roof of the big department store. An electric furniture sign flared on Yonge Street opposite Albert. On Sunday night the city was quiet but many loud voices cried out on Albert Street.

  He stood on the corner, his hands in his pockets, his straw hat tilted back on his head. He put one thumb in the armpit of his vest. He stood there, feeling important but not thinking of anything, though listening to the Salvation Army man making a speech to the meeting on the corner. He was looking directly at the speaker but wasn’t hearing a word. He took out his watch, twenty minutes to eight, a little late to get Anna on the phone on Sunday evening. Someone else would be there. He wondered if she told other fellows, too, about his efforts to arouse her. The Salvation Army man’s voice sounded far away. Anna might be willing to go out on the road with him selling magazines just for the sport of it.