The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Two Read online

  After working eight months on the paper Burg hadn’t been given a raise in pay and was still getting twenty dollars a week. It was time to do something more adventurous.

  He told Hugh about it one afternoon at five o’clock. They were walking down by the waterfront and had got as far as the white stone harbor building. The sun was hot and they lay down on the slope of the terraced lawn of the building to look across the bay at the outline of the island and the smokestacks of the boat coming through the western gap.

  “I’m going to write a story about bootlegging in this city and sell it to an American paper,” Burg said.

  “You don’t know anything about bootlegging,” Hugh said.

  Burg crossed his legs at the ankles. Hugh was good-humored. They watched the whitecaps on the bay. Hugh talked about the sun shining brilliantly on the blue water.

  “It gives a kind of sparkle,” he said.

  “Sure, a swell sparkle, it’s a beautiful sun.”

  Burg explained he was going to talk to the police reporters on all the papers and get some solid facts about bootleggers and hotelkeepers who sold hard stuff. “It’ll be a start in the right direction,” he said.

  A man, appearing from behind some warehouses, told them to move on, “It’s no place for bums,” so they walked along by the warehouse, laughing at the way Hugh had told the man the green slope was admirably adapted to the curve of a person’s back.

  Burg wrote the bootlegging story and sent it to a Buffalo paper. Dropping it into the mailbox he thought it the most important step he had taken since the trip out west. He would have shown the story to other reporters but the Advertiser was the leading prohibitionist paper in the city. There was no use looking for arguments.

  For three days he bought every edition of the Buffalo paper sold on the newsstands, always turning the pages quickly, a tightness in his throat.

  On the fourth day he saw his story featured on the inside front page, his name under the heading “Prohibition Fails in Toronto.” Hugh Grant solemnly shook hands with Burg and said: “You’ll go a long way, you’ve got the initiative.” Burg was so happy he called that night on his father and mother. His father was enthusiastic, his mother asked him to come and live at home. Looking reflectively at his own name in the paper encouraged him to start writing a short story.

  A morning paper, The Blade, next day ran an editorial commenting on the significant facts gathered by a Mr. Burgess Morgan in a survey of bootlegging in the city for a Buffalo paper. Hugh showed Burg the editorial. Sitting down to tap carelessly the keys on his typewriter, Burg listened while Hugh whispered to some of the reporters in the city room that Burg had stepped out. He felt like standing up and making a speech.

  Before covering their assignments that afternoon Burg insisted Hugh have a plate of spaghetti with him in a café. Burg wanted Hugh to eat a lot because he had received a check for twenty-five dollars from the Buffalo paper. Sitting in the café, they talked about courage, initiative, Gilbert Chesterton, girls and the Dramatic Arts Club.

  “We should go out tonight,” Burg said.

  “We should do something.”

  “I’d like to get drunk.”

  He knew he could not get drunk because he had to cover a night assignment. A big blowout was something he had often thought about, something remote, attractive, elusive. It offered such possibilities but he could not make up his mind to go and get drunk. One day he would be good and ready and he’d get drunk and get a whole flock of girls too. For the present he was happy without getting drunk.

  Two days later he had a long talk with the city editor who contemptuously explained he had no use for a man who could not get wise to a paper’s policy. The owner of the Morning Advertiser was spending money to make prohibition a success, not on a man who would work for his enemies and who was a bum reporter anyway. Burg was fired.

  He walked along the street, hesitated before crossing the car tracks and looked up at the white dome of the skyscraper glistening in the sun. If Hugh had been there he might have remarked on the sun striking the dome. Standing there on the street corner Burg made up his mind to not lose confidence. He walked over to The Blade office to see their city editor.

  With The Blad e editorial in his hand, he explained he was Burgess Morgan, and had been working on the Morning Advertiser. The editor, looking over his glasses, said nothing. Burg wanted a job on The Blade. The editor said there was nothing on his paper for Mr. Morgan, they were not familiar with him when the editorial had been written. The editor seemed resentful.

  Burg had money for two weeks’ rent. He decided more stories could be sent to American papers. The American papers sent the stories back in envelopes addressed in Burg’s handwriting. It made him feel like living at home, but he still had some rent money. At nights he was able to see Hugh, who had been transferred to the paper’s circulation department. Burg didn’t feel so much like talking about writing.

  “The trouble is I’m writing too much,” he said to Hugh.

  For two weeks he looked for a job, then got so tired of tramping around the street he went to live at home. Burg’s mother was glad to see him but his father, though not discouraged, advised him to try and get into something solid; he had little faith in newspapers. Harvesting would do a man good; newspapers catered to a man’s shiftless tenden-cies. Burg didn’t want to think about harvesting.

  Living without money was depressing but there was no use thinking too much about it. For a month he lived at home, avoiding arguments with his father, being nice to his mother and renewing his friendly feeling for Mildred Baker. Mildred was consoling.

  In the afternoon he went down to the City Hall press room to have a chat with some of the fellows on the paper. The fellows in the press room knew Burg was looking for a job and sometimes one of them would tell of an editor who might possibly do something for him. Some of the boys advised him to go out selling magazines, not exactly a job for a writer, but better than harvesting. Burg agreed it would be a good experience, but having been out of a job so long and living at home, he found himself unhurried, accustomed to doing nothing.

  An argument over nothing with his father made Burg indignant. He went to see the sales manager of the National Review and explained emphatically that he loved selling magazines. The red-headed sales manager took off his glasses and told Burg how his magazine was developing a national literature. All the women in the province ought to have the magazine in their homes, he said. Burg got the point and talked to him about books and his ambition to write stories that would come right out of the soil. The sales manager shook hands with him and said it was a humdinger of a sales talk, one of the best he had ever heard.

  Burg took a train to a small town fifty miles from Toronto. Hugh shook hands with him at the station and they promised to exchange letters. “I hope I get in with a good bunch of guys,” Burg said.

  In three days he sold three magazine subscriptions, working the rural routes, talking to farm women who thought him a decent young man even if they did not want his magazine. The farm people talked about work or crops. The women looked tired, the men were suspicious. Sometimes a farmer gave him a meal. Driving along the roads he felt pessimistic and anxious to be back in the city. He preferred to eat a bag of biscuits under a tree rather than ask a farmer for dinner. The crew manager advised him to look into the women’s eyes, and tell how he was working his way through college until he got them eating out of his hand. Burg was convinced that people along rural routes weren’t interested in developing a national literature.

  In the towns Burg was more successful because he felt at home with the women who came cheerfully to screen doors. He didn’t have to talk about crops, and the men were never there to watch him suspiciously. He was still slightly ashamed of his job, though he liked most of the fellows in the crew, who were eager to hear his stories of well-imagined adventures in the West. He liked driving into towns in the middle of the night, six of them in the automobile, singing songs and waking up th
e hotelkeeper. Sometimes the crew slept three in a bed when there was only one vacant room in a hotel.

  In a month’s time he developed a successful sales talk and secretly thought he had the smoothest line of anyone in the crew, including the crew manager. He used to walk along the street until he saw some women sitting on a veranda enjoying conversation. Concealing the magazine in his hip pocket he went up to the veranda to talk with the women who usually admired his acquired English accent. They understood readily that he was not really a salesman but a young man trying to develop not just a national market but a national culture, and everybody on the veranda was happy. Sometimes Burg read examples of his own prose to the women and they liked the prose so much they asked him to have a cup of tea. These were good moments for Burg. After the tea they bought the magazine, if they had the money.

  Burg wrote to Hugh that shack-tapping was all right if you were distinctive and people could tell at a glance you were distinctive. He wrote to his father that he was quite successful and could become a crew manager if he wanted to. He was acquiring the slang of magazine men, though he never used it when selling, and now wore smart clothes and low-cut, doozy-hicker collars. In the city for the weekend he took Mildred out on Saturday night, and she saw no reason why he shouldn’t become a crew manager and then work into the circulation department of the magazine. Burg liked the idea of becoming a first-class circulation man. It might be the thing he was cut out for.

  After the day’s work he enjoyed returning to the small-town hotel to eat with the rest of the crew who appreciated his cultural air. They knew he was willing to have fun in the towns if it came his way. Once or twice he got quite drunk on beer and tried to have affairs with several waitresses and was partially successful with a tall bony girl who shivered when he made love to her, and forgot to give back to him a ring of his mother’s.

  After supper in the hotel the salesmen went upstairs to get dressed, all in one room so they could talk and laugh and tell smutty jokes and sing sentimental songs. Burg was putting on a sporty suit and a fancy shirt after a successful afternoon, getting read to walk up and down the street in front of the hotel with some of the men, trying to pick up town hussies. Burg tightened the knot in his bow tie and said to the manager, “I sold ten today, Mose.”

  The crew manager was rubbing powder on his face. “You’re getting to be a swell sheet-writer, Burg. I wish I had your education,” he said.

  Burg was pleased. He liked Mose and knew he could have his job any time he wanted it.

  “I oughtn’t really to go out tonight,” he said.

  “Why stay in, Burg?”

  “I should do some writing tonight, Mose,” Burg said, moving over to the window. He stood there buttoning his vest, looking out over the roofs of barns and houses at the red sunset. It was a fine sunset. If Hugh had been there he would have said something about the declining sun. Burg thought of the writing he would do when he got time; then he thought of Mildred. In two years he would be on his feet, they could be married. The red sun made him feel that way. That afternoon a woman had said his writing was awfully good and had taken the magazine for two years for three dollars. It was like building up your own public. He turned from the window and took his coat off the back of a chair. Going downstairs with the men he felt sorry for Hugh working away and getting nowhere.

  Loppy Phelan’s Double Shoot

  In those days when grain boats from Chicago, Cleveland and cities at the head of the Lakes came regularly to the Georgian Bay port of Collingwood, and the shipyard there worked overtime, two boys sat on the rotting stumps at the end of the dock dreaming of lives for themselves far beyond the town.

  One of the boys, Sam Crowther, whose father owned the flour-and-feed store on the main street, was fair-haired, had eager blue eyes, a mild manner, and he dreamed of going to the university and then getting a job in the diplomatic service which would give him a chance to live in Brazil or Chile or Mexico.

  The other boy, Hal McGibbney, who had straight black hair, wild and restless narrow brown eyes, and a skin that was always tanned a dark brown, had been living in town about two years. He had come from north of the lakes. His mother and father were dead and he lived with his uncle, Henry Bryant, who worked in the shipyard. He dreamed of living with trappers and fishermen, of remaining alone and untouched by the tame life of the shipyard workers and the town storekeepers.

  When they sat together on the dock that summer, looking out beyond the rim of the bay, the two boys talked about baseball. The town had a good team that played against teams made up from the crews of ships loading grain in the harbor. These ships had names like the City of Cleveland, Garden City, Missouri, and these names taken by the crew teams made the games with the town seem important.

  On an evening when there was to be a big game at the fairground, Sam would go down by the railroad station and across the tracks to Henry Bryant’s frame cottage, then give a long whistle for Hal, who came out wearing his first-baseman’s glove. He would pound the pocket of the glove three or four times, spit in it, then pound it again, frown, then smile a little. He never laughed out loud. “Come on, let’s go, Sam,” he would say, and then walk rapidly, as if he were in a hurry to get far away from the cottage. He didn’t get along with his uncle, who wanted to beat him but was afraid of him now that he was fourteen and big-boned.

  Getting close to the fairground, they started to talk about baseball, and soon they were talking about the stories of Burt L. Standish, which all the boys read, and about his fabulous pitcher, Frank Merriwell, and his bewildering curve ball.

  The two boys had a regular place just back of the third-base bag, but they stayed there only about twenty-five minutes. “Let’s watch Loppy for a while now,” Hal said. “Yeah, let’s see what he’s got tonight,” Sam agreed, and they withdrew to where Loppy Phelan, the town’s relief pitcher, was warming up. They had never seen Loppy pitch in a real game, and they used to wonder why the manager of the town team kept him warming up game after game without ever using him.

  Loppy worked in the shipyard. He was tall, gangling and his mouth seemed to hang open with a surprised innocence whenever anybody spoke to him. He had large, sad brown eyes and wore a strange, faded pinkish ball shirt. Word had gone around among the boys that the shirt was part of the uniform of the Cincinnati Reds in the National League.

  The two boys stood behind Loppy and watched every pitch he made with a rapt interest, and one night Hal said, “I wonder if Loppy can throw a double shoot.”

  “I think he’s got all kinds of stuff,” Sam said. “Maybe he could throw a double shoot.”

  It was a curve ball of their hero, Frank Merriwell, of Yale. Only Merriwell could throw a double shoot, which was a ball that curved out sharply, and then, as it got close to the batter, suddenly curved in at him. It was the greatest curve of all time.

  “Hey, Loppy,” Hal called eagerly.

  “Eh?” Loppy grunted and he hardly paused in his lackadaisical wind-up.

  “Can you throw a double shoot, Loppy?”

  Looking a little puzzled, Loppy stopped, put his hand on his hips, grinned, then started his wind-up again. As the ball sped to his catcher, the boys, standing behind him, leaned forward expectantly.

  “You see it, Hal?” Sam asked. “What was on it?”

  “Boy, oh boy,” Hal said softly.

  “Did you see it?”

  “Sure,” Hal said excitedly.

  “Maybe it went too fast for me.”

  “Throw it again, Loppy.”

  Hardly heeding them, Loppy let go another fast ball.

  “There!” Hal said excitedly.

  “Sure,” Sam said.

  “Holy cow,” Hal said. “Loppy Phelan’s got a double shoot. Imagine a guy in this town having a double shoot.”

  After that night, Loppy had his audience whenever the town team played. They brought all the boys to where Loppy warmed up, telling them about the double shoot and making them watch each pitch Loppy made. One b
y one the kids who lined up behind Loppy agreed they saw the ball take a twist. Loppy became their hero. When the kids trooped over to line up behind him, he scratched his head and grinned happily.

  One night, in a game with the City of Cleveland, the town’s regular pitcher weakened. Everything he threw was knocked out of the lot, but he stayed on the mound; the manager acted as if he didn’t have another pitcher. But Hal McGibbney, rushing to the third-base line followed by all the kids, began to shout, “Put in Loppy. Use Loppy. Let him throw his double shoot.”

  Loppy stopped warming up and waited, but the players on the town team only looked mystified. They put their hands on their hips, then shrugged and grinned, and the manager, too, smiled a little. Loppy wasn’t called to the pitcher’s mound. On other occasions the same thing happened. Then, toward the end of the summer, Loppy Phelan got a job on one of the lake boats and sailed away and never returned. It seemed right to Hal that Loppy sailed away.

  With other kids, Hal lay in the thick grass under the corner light by Johnson’s grocery store and talked about the great pitcher who had been among them and who had never been able to show his class. One by one the boys began to doubt that Loppy Phelan could throw the double shoot, but they were too afraid to argue with Hal. He was too bright, too quick, too intelligent for them.

  Then, one night when Hal and Sam had gone down to the dock for a swim and afterward were sitting on the stumps at the end of the pier, Hal said dreamily, “I wonder where Loppy is now?”

  “Maybe he’s in Cleveland,” Sam said. “Maybe he’s in Chicago.”

  “Maybe he’s in the big leagues, Sammy, really pitching that double shoot.”

  “Say,” Sam began hesitantly, “I don’t think any of the ballplayers around here believed Loppy could throw the old double shoot.”