The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Two Page 8

  The White Pony

  It was a very beautiful white pony, and as it went round and round the stage of the village theater the two clowns would leap over its back or whistle and make it flap its ears and shake its long white mane. Tony Jarvis, like every other kid in the audience that summer afternoon, wondered if there wasn’t some way he could get close to the pony after the show and slip his arm around its neck.

  If he could persuade the owners to let him ride the pony down the street, or if he could just touch it or feed it a little sugar, that would be enough. After the show he went up the alley to the back of the theater to wait for the clowns and the pony. But the alley was jammed with kids — all the summer crowd from the city as well as the village boys — and Tony couldn’t get close to the back door of the theater. The two clowns came out, their faces still colored with bright paint; then a big red-headed man, apparently the trainer, led the pony out. It shook its head and neighed, and all the kids laughed and rushed at it.

  The big redhead, in blue overalls and an old felt hat that had the brim cut off, yelled, “Out of the way, you kids! Go on, or I’ll pull the pants off you!” He began to laugh. It was the wildest, craziest, rolling laugh Tony had ever heard. The man was huge. His red hair stuck out at all angles under the lopped-off hat. He had a scar on his left cheek and his nose looked broken. Whenever the kids came close he swung his arm and they ducked, but they weren’t frightened — only a little more excited. As he walked along, leading the white pony, a wide grin on his face, he seemed to be just the kind of giant for the job. If the pony started to prance or was frightened by the traffic, the big man would make a clucking noise and the pony would swing its head over to him and lick his hand with its rough tongue.

  Tony followed the troupe along the street to the old garage they were using as a stable. Then the redhead yelled, “All right, beat it, kids!” and led the pony inside and closed the door. The kids stood around the closed door, wondering if accidentally it mightn’t swing open. It was then that Tony left the gang and sneaked to the back of the garage. When he saw an old porch there, his heart pounded. He climbed up to the roof and crawled across the rotting shingles to the edge of a big window. At first he could see nothing. Then, with his eyes accustomed to the inner darkness, he saw the two clowns. Squatting in front of mirrors propped up on old boxes, they were scraping the paint off their faces. With a pail in his hand and singing at the top of his voice, the redhead walked over to a corner of the garage. Tony could see the pony’s tail swishing back and forth.

  He couldn’t see the pony, but he knew it was rubbing its nose in the redhead’s hand. The clowns finished cleaning their faces. One of them took a bottle out of a coat that was hanging on the wall and the redhead joined them and they all had a drink. Then the redhead began to talk. Tony couldn’t make out the words, but he heard the rich rumble of the voice and saw the wide and eloquent gestures. The clowns were listening intently and grinning. Day after day he must have talked to them like that and it must have been just as wonderful every time. The white pony’s tail kept swishing, and Tony could hear the pawing of the pony’s hoofs on the floor.

  But it was getting dark and Tony had to get home. When he tried to move, he found his legs were asleep. Pins and needles seemed to shoot through his arms. Afraid of falling, he grabbed at the window ledge and his head bumped against the pane. Before he could dodge away, the red-headed giant came over and stared up at him. “Get down out of there!” he yelled. “Get down or I’ll cut your gizzard out!”

  They were looking right at each other, and then Tony slid slowly off the roof. As he limped homeward, he felt an intimation of perfect happiness. He kept seeing the swishing white tail.

  The next afternoon he went to the theater with two lumps of sugar in his pocket. At the end of the show, he pushed his way through the crowd of kids and got right up by the door. When the clowns came out, most of the kids started to yell and there was pushing and shoving, but Tony hung back, keeping well over to one side of the door, ready to thrust the sugar at the pony’s mouth before the redhead could stop him.

  The big man appeared at the door, the pony clopping behind. In his hands the redhead was carrying two water pails, and the rein that held the pony was in his right hand also. This time, instead of going on down the alley and forcing a path through the kids, he stood still and looked around. Then he grinned at Tony. “Come here, kid,” he said.

  “What is it, Mister?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tony Jarvis.”

  Maybe the big man remembered seeing his face at the window, Tony thought. Anyway, the big man’s grin was wide and friendly. “How would you like to carry these pails for me?” he asked.

  Tony grabbed the pails before any other kid could touch them. The big, freckled, crazy, blue-eyed face of the giant opened into a smile.

  Tony walked down the alley, carrying the pails. The big redhead walked beside him, leading the pony and grinning in such a friendly fashion Tony felt sure he understood why the pony swung his head eagerly to the giant whenever he made the soft, clucking noise with his tongue. While Tony was going down the street, his mind was filled with how it would be in the garage, making friends with the pony. Even now he might have reached out and touched the pony if he hadn’t had a pail in each hand. The pails were heavy because they were filled with water-soaked sponges, but Tony kept up with the big man all right, and he held the pail handles tight.

  “I guess the pony’s worth a lot of money,” he said timidly.

  “Uh?”

  “I guess a lot of people want to ride him.”

  “Sure.”

  “I guess a lot of kids have wanted a little ride on him, too.” Tony said. When the man nodded and looked straight ahead, Tony was so stirred up he dared not say anything more. It was understood between them now, he was sure. They would let him hang around the garage and maybe even have a ride on the pony.

  When they got to the garage he waited while the redhead opened the door and gave the pony a gentle slap on the rump and sent it on ahead. Tony was so full of pride he thought he would choke as he started to follow the pony in.

  “All right, son, I’ll take the pails,” the redhead said.

  “It’s all right. I can carry them.”

  “Give ’em to me.”

  “Can’t I go in?’ Tony asked, unbelieving.

  “No kids in here,” the redhead said brusquely, taking the pails.

  “Gee, Mister,” Tony cried. But the door had closed. Tony stood with his mouth open, sick at his stomach, still seeing the redhead’s warm, magnificent smile. He couldn’t understand. If the redhead was like that, why would the pony swing its head to him? Then he realized that that was the kind of thing men like him took for granted in the world he had wanted to grow into when he had glimpsed it from the garage window.

  “You big red-headed bum!” he screamed at the closed door. “You dirty, double-crossing, red-headed cheat!”

  Settling Down

  Burgess Morgan, of very respectable people, had long legs, big hands, heavy hips and a fresh healthy color. Everybody called him Burg. During the Christmas holidays he worked in the gents’ furnishings section of a department store, knotting ties around his forefinger. He liked sneaking away from the counter to have a soda and listen to the girl at the piano in the sheet-music circles, and then quitting in the evening, when hundreds of employees surged toward the time clock, girls pressing against him.

  The week following Christmas holidays he went twice to the Gaiety, a burlesque show. In the second balcony he ate peanuts and after the show he went around to the stage door, restless and eager for excitement. He had been quarrelling with his father, who wanted him to learn a trade, get his nose to the grindstone, anything to avoid prattling about becoming a writer. Standing outside the stage door, he did not talk to any one of the girls. He had a long conversation with the Charleston dancer from New York who wore a tight-fitting blue coat, snug at the hips, and gray ball
oon trousers. Burg was respectful and curious. They talked about bootleggers, girls, other cities, and the dancer told him how to be sure of having a good time with chorus girls. The thing was to avoid getting married. He could have been married ten times, the last chance in Brooklyn. A fat cashier in a burlesque show had said, “Get ten dollars, honey, and we’ll get married and go to Atlantic City.” But he had said, “Nothing doin’, I’m not spending any money.” They all came easy, just like that.

  After this conversation Burg walked over to Bowles’ café to have a cup of coffee. He couldn’t help thinking of the Charleston dancer, a fellow his own age who had confidence and experience. That dancer was a tough little guy. He tried reading a sporting-page. His coffee was getting cold so he drank it quickly and feeling uncomfortable and unhappy, he decided to walk home. Before going to bed he stood for a long time at his attic window looking over roof-tops to electric signs downtown, making up his mind to leave the city.

  When spring came he told his father he was going north to see the country. His father placed his hands on Burg’s shoulders and said wearily: “Burg, I don’t know what’s got into you these last few months but come home and settle down when you’re willing to be a man.” His father had plump white hands, a small round face, and a clipped little mustache. His father had been a lifelong prohibitionist, a free-thinker and had written a little poetry, which he preserved carefully. Mrs. Morgan cried but was stubbornly sure Burg would amount to something.

  Burg went north. Sitting in the train, his arms folded across his chest, he looked out the window watching the sweep of farmland. Every gray telegraph post flashing by brought him nearer to something he had wanted for a long time. He felt fine until sundown when the red sun racing behind low hills dipped out of sight, and the shadowed farmland seemed austerely forbidding.

  Burg got off the train at North Bay and stood on the station platform, hesitantly polite to a ticket agent, unaccustomed to the initiative that had taken him so far north. He got hungry and went into a corner restaurant. He asked the Greek for a hot roast beef sandwich with lots of gravy and a cup of coffee. The Greek, grinning, poured the coffee and told him to stick around a few weeks for the celebration — the town had become a city. “She’ll be wide, wide open,” he said. Burg, drinking the hot coffee and feeling friendly, said, “Everybody on the bandwagon, eh?”

  “Sure Mike, we’ll blow the lid off, zip,” the Greek said.

  Walking along a street, looking for a rooming house, he was disappointed that the houses were so much like houses in towns near Toronto. He got a room and could have had a job at the station but it was not quite what he wanted.

  After two weeks Burg decided to go west for the harvesting.

  It was exciting having a tough job, seeing strange faces, the new landscape, new smells, horses, machines and grim, stolid farmers, but in the long harvesting the landscape grew monotonous, his hands heavy and beefy. Every day he thought of becoming a writer back in his own city.

  As soon as it was over he got a train going east. In the smoking-car he told a traveler the west was hencoops and lumberyards, but he was glad to have seen the prairies and met men from far-off places — Scots, Swedes, down-at-the-heels Englishmen. He had stayed awake in his bunk at night listening to talk about girls. Some of the men had been raw and others, tough guys, the scum of cities, who became strong harvesters. He had got along all right with them. It had been a rotten job.

  Burg felt experienced walking along his own street, the sight of clean verandas of semi-detached houses and neat lawns making him happy. Mr. and Mrs. Morgan were glad he had been sensible enough to come home. Mr. Morgan, impressed by Burg’s heavy hands, was anxious to be generous, for Burg was his only son and, after all, a decent son. At the supper table Burg said he would be glad to stay at home for a few weeks, resting and reading, getting ready to write about fields and men.

  During the weeks at home Burg felt that neighbors were treating him more respectfully. The Bakers, who lived next door, invited him in to tea one night. Burg, who had known the daughter Mildred for ten years, discovered she was rather nice, and willing to be very friendly. She had soft plump shoulders and full lips. She wasn’t much, but he visited her many times, finding out about her. Mildred seemed a part of his experience of the last few months. He felt himself growing older, more detached from people around him. During these days, looking for a job, and sifting his thoughts, he tried to discover if it was important that he write something, or was it having a girl that worried him.

  He got a job reporting on the Morning Advertise r and at once moved to a respectable rooming house. Living at home would have meant obligations and responsibilities.

  The older men on the staff would not take Burg seriously because he tried so hard to be so self-possessed. But one young fellow was friendly. Burg often had supper with this fellow, Hugh Grant, who liked him because he was shy and well-read and had big, sleepy brown eyes. Burg liked Hugh because he was big and good-looking and belonged to the Dramatic Arts Club. Hugh wore no tie, his white shirt open at the throat. Burg, one night in his room, looked at his image in the small mirror and decided his chin was not sufficiently pronounced and his mouth too wide for a sport shirt open at the throat, without a tie. He sat down on the bed, vaguely jealous of Hugh, unhappy because a sport shirt open at the throat represented something unconventional and assertive. Stretching himself on the bed he let his thoughts drift, imagining the publicity that would follow the publication of a novel, or a play, and the respectful way the city editor would talk to him.

  Burg got along well with the city editor, who thought him an eager young man, a bit too prim with his copy, who enjoyed his assignments, the meetings of the young men’s Board of Trade, suburban councils and the Optimist Club. He was happy in being cynical and after a club dinner he liked hurrying back to the office humming the businessmen’s song, “There’s a crust on the old apple pie and there’s something for you and for I.”

  When Hugh discovered Burg was so interested in writing, he offered to exchange their work. He was writing a play. Burg read snatches of the dialogue and allowed it was witty after the fashion of Oscar Wilde. Hugh said Burg’s writing showed a sensitivity to color and feeling. That made Burg very happy.

  They had a favorite walk around Queen’s Park and across the university campus shadowed by the old stone buildings. Walking across the campus arm in arm one night, Burg seriously told Hugh about a girl he had seen coming out of the post office on Adelaide Street the other night. He had watched her turn east a block, then turn south.

  “I saw her at the same time the next night,” he said.

  “Hanging around just to see her, Burg?”

  “I was, honest to heaven I was. I felt I had to meet her. I know I don’t knock women dead but I was going to meet her.”

  “This is interesting, Burg, really interesting.”

  “It really is. I stuck around the third night and watched her go east and ran around a side street to come up so I could meet her coming down. I didn’t meet her. It seemed so dirty rotten I shook my fist at the sky and said: ‘Listen, Lord, you’re not so much.’”

  Hugh snickered. “Holy smoke,” he said. “Holy smoke, it’s funny.”

  “You don’t see how it was,” Burg said, dignified.

  “Honestly I do, Burg, but, oh well—” he giggled until Burg started to snicker.

  Lights were in the windows of Knox College.

  “See the way the moonlight comes through the trees over there between the buildings?” Hugh said.

  “The tall trees along the walk?”

  “Yes, the tall trees.”

  “Let’s go over there,” Burg said.

  He talked about the comforting feeling he got from reading Schopenhauer, but he was feeling glad they had thought of walking by the tall trees, the thing one would expect of a sensitive fellow. They talked about going to the States and about Masefield and the city editor and the rich flavor of Rabelais. They talked respectfu
lly to each other.

  The friendly feeling for Hugh made working on the paper agreeable until the editor said Burg was getting lazy and wasting too much time with Hugh Grant. It left Burg feeling self-conscious. He began to watch himself carefully. When introduced to three men he found himself repeating, “I’m very glad to have met you, I think we have met once or twice before, I’m very glad to have met you, I think we have met once or twice before.” One of the men embarrassed him by saying, “No, we have never met before.”

  He got discontented. “I’m not really getting along,” he said to Hugh. He wondered if his father and mother were missing him. The editor wasn’t giving him a decent chance to do much writing. The deskmen cut out the parts in his copy he intended to be distinctive.

  He wasn’t doing the things he wanted to do, nor getting close enough to life. He didn’t know enough about women. From a police reporter he had got the address of a house in the center of the city, a rough-cast cottage with window shutters banging at a crazy angle. Burg and Hugh walked on the other side of the street, a little nervous about each other, then they walked up and down in front of the house, trying to get a glimpse of what was going on behind the drawn blinds. They stood underneath a streetlight wondering if the women would be really worthwhile. It was something to talk about, whether the women would be really worthwhile, and they hesitated to go in because it mightn’t be safe. Girls were in that house, but Hugh and Burg looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and Burg said, “How would you like a cup of coffee right now?”

  “I’d like a coffee and a sandwich,” Hugh said.

  They went over to Bowles’ and had a chopped-steak sandwich and coffee. They talked about women.

  When he got home he had a hard time getting to sleep, thinking about the house. He was unhappy, he thought, because he wasn’t writing, and hesitated to finish anything he started. Hugh had said his description of their walk across the campus in the shadows of the tall trees was successful, but Burg was losing faith in Hugh’s critical ability. He envied Hugh his amateur acting.