Strange Fugitive

by Morley Callaghan

  Callaghan in Strange Fugitive is showing the Toronto bootleg world as he sees it and, as a result, Trotter is not a sophisticated or educated man. His literary antecedent might be Melville’s 1856 Bartleby, a character who is inarticulate and whose inability to communicate rationally has similarly fatal consequence. Trotter is just such a primitive, instinctive man. It is a characteristic that Joseph Conrad — as if he were describing Trotter — noted in a 1916 letter about the Irish nationalist, Sir Roger Casement, when he described him as “a man, properly speaking, of no mind at all. I don’t mean stupid. I mean he was all emotion . . . and sheer emotionalism has undone him, a creature of sheer temperament . . .” The implications of, and justification for this inarticulateness in Trotter and his immaturity, was commented on by Maxwell Perkins in a letter to Morley in 1931: “In almost all of your writing your characters were the common run of people who have not had the chance to develop much intellectually or emotionally. That has led many readers . . . to regard you as a hard-boiled writer. Some say a delicacy of perception was one of your marked and most distinguishing qualities, and that it was expressed with corresponding subtlety in your writing. They should have seen that even in your first novel about a bootlegger. But you were writing about a bootlegger and you naturally dealt in what I call realism. Many unpleasant details had a significance in that narrative and you put them in, and quite rightly.”

  Morley Callaghan’s stark description of Trotter’s killing of his rival in Part III of the novel reveals a lot about Callaghan’s technique:

  One of the men coming out the side door was Cosantino, short and dark. The two men with him were taller and wore caps. Cosantino’s overcoat was open, a white scarf flapping loosely over the blue coat. They were on the sidewalk. They were crossing the road. The car passed, moving very slowly. Harry fired three times at Cosantino. Eddie [Trotter’s hired gun] fired twice . . . Cosantino and one of his men fell on the road . . . At the first corner Eddie spun the wheel,the car swung around, coming back along the street. The woman who had come out of the store screamed and ran, the car passed within a few feet of Cosantino who was sprawled in the middle of the road, his face down, one knee hunched up. The white scarf had gotten tangled around his neck. His hat had fallen off. The car passed over the hat and close to Cosantino and Harry fired two more shots into the body, and the car leapt forward swinging around the corner . . . People running along the road were yelling. A cop on a bicycle came along and he blew his whistle. They turned north. “We got the wop,” Harry said, “we got the wop.” The blood seemed to be surging into his head. He heard the whistle again and laughed out loud . . .

  The American poet William Carlos Williams, who read the book in proofs, told Callaghan in a long letter in early 1928 that he stayed up all night reading the novel and found that the book “frightened” him:

  “There is a truth or a principle which governs the book . . . it is the tragic principle of classical drama . . . the book is a play of studied moves. It does not grow. It is made by terrifying rules from which the characters do not escape, but they do live. Thus the truth of the writing is outside the story. There is much of the starkness of the tragic drama in Callaghan’s book. It may be Greek; it may be Racine; it may be Ibsen . . . My own interest is in asking what is this thing? It is the Vera of the story. Harry wavers around it like a moth. Its failure in Harry is his death, his inherent inability to realize it and to hold it under any circumstances is his tragedy.”

  Writing about crime in such realistic fashion as Morley does can provide remarkable insight into society. For example, in the bootlegging world of the 20’s, it is clear that there are a lot of respectable people who were otherwise known as legitimate distillers and yet were hypocritically involved in the criminal export of booze. Also, there was rampant police corruption as a major part of the bootleg trade (as there is today in the drug trade), and at one point in the novel Trotter complains about how much of his profits he has to pay to corrupt cops to keep his illicit operation unmolested. He also notes how easy it was (and still is) to recruit cops for protection: “These policemen [the first four he put on the payroll] had been useful in getting others who were easier because not many wanted to miss anything.”

  Crime writing however has seldom been considered worthy literature — even today — by most critics, academics and intellectuals. Thus many belittle Morley for writing about crime as he saw it. For example, the New York Times critic in 1928 said that “when Trotter participates in a cold-blooded murder with sawed-off shotguns he goes about it as calmly and unemotionally as though he were kicking a dog which barred his path. In this last fact lies the weakness of the novel. It is interesting to read of a murderer only when the murder has a decided effect upon his character . . . Our interest in Trotter the murderer is sustained by the expertness with which the story is told, not the story itself . . .”

  More recently, the critic George Woodcock, in the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, wrote that the novel is “gauche and tentative in manner and implausible and melodramatic in plot.” And Edmund Wilson lamented the lack of a moral life in Harry Trotter. But I would say that very few successful gangsters — from the fictional Little Caesar and Tony Soprano to the many real gangsters I have known well over the years — have any moral life to speak of. Trotter is no different — he is an armed robber and killer — a psychopath with no conscience — and Callaghan would have been remiss in his portrayal of Trotter — a nasty brutish thug — to give him any moral life of substance. What inner life there is in Trotter is only hinted at (the book is only from Trotter’s point of view) in his reflections over his treatment of Vera, his long-suffering wife, and his brooding over his mother and the loss of his Eden — his childhood home in the horse-and-buggy town of Maydale (Maydale may very well be Markham — with its long history of gang violence), an hour north of Toronto where Trotter visits after he kills Cosantino. (As a feeble act of atonement he puts up an enormous garish stone for his parents.) There is a hint of guilt over his treatment of Vera — a glimmer of a moral awareness which WIlliam Carlos Williams thought gave a “tragic” sense to the novel and Harry’s fate. But in such a criminal a developed moral life or conscience would be highly unusual, to say nothing of it being counterproductive.

  Strange Fugitive is unique in Morley Callaghan’s opus — a gritty, innovative story dealing with something Callaghan knew about — the underside of a big city, Toronto. In this, his first novel, he became an important modern writer who broke significant new literary ground establishing the gangster novel in North America and the urban novel in Canadian literature.

  James Dubro

  PART ONE

  1

  Harry Trotter, who had a good job as foreman in Pape’s lumberyard, was determined everybody should understand he loved his wife. After they had been married three years he felt it necessary to show contrition every time he thoughtlessly spoke harshly to Vera, and when in the company of other people, she pouted, making it clear he had in some way offended her, he was eager to pet her, and talk baby talk to convince her he was awfully sorry. She was rather small and neat, and his big hands covered her cheeks when she cried, her head just reaching his shoulder. Afterward there was a temporary impetus to his passion.

  He lay in bed one night, listening to Vera breathing and thinking he had loved her so much no other woman could ever give such satisfaction. He felt almost like crying, and wished he had encouraged her to have children. He was sure his increasing interest in other women had a direct relation to Vera, and that he would always be in love with her. It was a hot night and bedclothes were tight against his throat or he might have dealt more successfully with such a complicated problem. Then Vera moved beside him. She was awake. She began talking of an argument they had had before going to bed. She said sullenly that he thought more of his job than of anything else on earth. The thought startled him, and before falling asleep he decided she had been close to the truth. He was unhappy all next day, and in the
evening he took a long walk by himself, and sitting on a park bench had many thoughts till he felt absolutely alone, and even thought of going away but couldn’t seriously consider leaving such a good job. In the daytime, in the yard, he was ugly-tempered with the men and worked them savagely.

  2

  The nape of Trotter’s neck caught the sun’s stinging heat. He leaned back and looked up at the sun, then moved a step into the boxcar’s shadow.

  A plank swung out over the cross-bar on the car door into Trotter’s hands. Glancing at it quickly, he called “Twenty-two common” to the tally-boy on the stool a few feet away, then swung it into the hands of one of the hunkies, waiting their turn in single file on the narrow shadow, who carried it on his hip, slowly out into the sun, piling it on the sawhorses.

  He was unloading a boxcar on a siding in Pape’s lumberyard. From the milling plant came the sound of saw-teeth tearing through wood. The hot sun in a cloudless sky, shining for hours on the wooden platform, burned through heavy boot soles. When Trotter leaned forward he caught the stuffy smell of fresh pines from the boxcar door. A puff of hot air came along the platform. One of the men mopped his forehead with a big bandana handkerchief, and fanned himself with an old discoloured straw hat. The men went on slugging the lumber steadily. Trotter, checking the planks mechanically, let his eye wander beyond the limits of the yard to the jutting tower of a flour elevator. He was not thinking of anything in particular, watching big white letters on the red tower, and he called, “Twenty-three common; twenty-three good!” but kept his eye on the men. A big fellow in the line scratched his head, staring across the yard to the tracks where an engine was shunting a boxcar. “Hey, you big bum, snap out of it!” Harry yelled. “It’s hot, but we got to get this done in a hurry . . . twenty-three common,” he chanted, “twenty-three fair. Keep them stepping lively.” He worked briskly. He liked knowing lumber so well. Only a few old-timers in the yard knew lumber better than he did.

  In the gang were three Italians, an old, thick-set Scotchman, a Swede, and a fellow working in the yard temporarily. A squat, long-armed, leather-faced Italian in a torn blue shirt, darkly blotched with sweat at the armpit, wiped his forehead with his hairy arm, and stepped out of the line to get a drink. Harry stopped marking planks for a few seconds, scowling at the broad back bending over the tap.

  “Hey, big fellow, now you’re over there, help Charlie put the chain around the pile,” he said quietly.

  Standing still, he watched Charlie drive the horse along the platform and throw the clanking chain around planks piled on sawhorses. The big fellow and Charlie buckled the chain tight, the Italian kicked away one of the sawhorses. Charlie backed the horse in and got on top of the pile. Harry, watching the horse move slowly along the platform, was thinking how the wop had stepped out of line, holding up the parade. If he didn’t shake a leg he’d show him. But it was hard doing anything to old wops like that. They got into easy ways of doing things and you couldn’t budge them. The men were working smoothly again. They didn’t know how to feel important. You could get them under your thumb, and they wanted to hold the job.

  He could inspect lumber, call to the tally-boy, and go on having his own thoughts. When his thoughts drifted into places beyond the lumberyard he worked slower, but afterward took it out of the men. He watched Jimmie Nash, the new man, too awkward to be effective at heavy work in the yard, carrying lumber patiently, piling planks clumsily. Harry noticed the tired droop of his shoulders, and the skin peeling from his sunburnt face. He liked Nash. At first he had wondered why a university man had ever taken a hunkie’s job in a lumberyard, then had learned Jimmie was making some money, waiting for a job on a newspaper. They had had many interesting talks together, and had gone drinking in the evenings, and sometimes to see a friend of Jimmie’s, Julie Roberts. Jimmie was quiet, but his mouth drooped a little from sneering, and he had a poor opinion of the yard superintendent, Hohnsburger, and the mayor of the city, the university, the police force, prohibition, ministers, thin women, so Harry felt flattered to discover Jimmie really liked him. Jimmie, carrying a plank, passed by, sweating a lot, but very indifferent.

  “Don’t fight the plank, Jimmie,” Harry said.

  “All right, I intended to ask you at noon time. Are you going up to Julie’s tonight?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, why look so sad about it?”

  “I’m not sad, Jimmie..”

  “I believe women bother you.”

  “Listen, Jimmie, you’ll get sunstroke with that cap on.”

  “It’s not so bad,” he said, standing up straight, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. The hunkies in line stared across the yard, thankful for the delay, indifferent to Harry and Nash.

  “There’s a big straw hat hanging in a closet in the warehouse just as you go in,” Harry said, gruffly agreeable.

  As soon as Nash moved off down the platform Harry started making the men work very fast.

  Factory whistles sounded five o’clock. The men working in the yard quit promptly. Harry went over to the warehouse to change his clothes.

  In the three-by-four compartment he had erected for himself in the corner of the warehouse he started to clean up. He got the pail from a corner and went back to the tap for water. He took off his khaki shirt, his undershirt, and, bare-bodied, dipped the soap in water, making lather for his face and rubbing well down his shoulders and hairy chest. Scooping water in his palms he splashed his face, blowing out through his mouth and nose, and getting soap out of his eye with the thumb-joint. He stood up well-rubbed with the towel, peeled off his overalls, and kicked off his heavy boots. He remembered that tonight one of the ball teams practiced in the park near his place, and, standing in his underwear, putting on a clean shirt, wished he had time to make a place on one of the teams. The soft collar he circled with a sky-blue tie, snappy, conservative, the knot tied fastidiously. He looked squarely and seriously at his image in the jagged piece of looking-glass hanging on the wall, and wondered if Vera would want to do anything after supper that would prevent him from going over to the park. Slowly he brushed his thick hair, took a straw sailor from a nail and adjusted it at a sporty angle on his head. He handled carefully his shining, tan low shoes. He emerged from the warehouse, altogether aloof from the yard, no bum, not just a hunky boss, no cheapskate from a lumberyard. He walked confidently along the platform, the flash of thick blond hair under the hat brim well cut, his tanned, high-cheekboned face free from stubble, his stylish tweed suit with a high waist-line, well cut and form-fitting.

  He nodded to Hohnsburger, the superintendent, whom he passed turning into the alley behind the office to punch the time clock. Hohnsburger nodded civilly but unsmilingly. They rarely spoke to each other after business hours. At first it had been all right working under Hohnsburger, but recently he had been looking at Harry as if unable to make up his mind about him. Nothing definite had ever happened. Harry simply had no use for the superintendent, and without trying to explain it to himself, he disliked uneasily Hohnsburger’s solid, six-foot, double-chinned importance. Harry reached for his time-card in the rack. Neat men from the office were punching the clock. He was like them only better and stronger, neat as a pin, but could smash them if he wanted to. He carried no lunch-pail, and they knew it.

  3

  The Trotters lived in a duplex house on a street not far from the lake. A young lawyer and his wife lived on the ground floor. The Trotters lived upstairs. Vera Trotter had known Harry at high school, but had gone away to Chicago, and when she came back had met him at one of those Old Boy dances high schools have once a year. He had liked her sensuous ways, and the steady, wistful look in her dark eyes. She was two years older than he, and becoming aware that she should have her own life and not live in the way of her mother and father. Her mother, who did illustrating for magazines and a few book jackets, did not think much of Harry, who was working in the office of Pape’s lumberyard.

  In Chicago Vera had an
affair with a man who had been expelled from college for his unnatural habits. He wrote soft, sticky poetry, but made love roughly and energetically. After an automobile ride one night he asked Vera to go to Paris with him. She thought him boyishly wayward, and hoped if they went away he would develop into a decent, respectable fellow. She thought she was in love, and wanted to go away with him. They talked of Paris, and the drop in the franc, but he was arrested on a criminal seduction charge, and sent down for a year.

  Vera told Harry all about the man in Chicago, and showed him some of the poetry, and cried when she came to the last part of the story. Some of the feeling she had had for the young man who had been expelled from college came to her when talking to Harry, and she was eager to get married and have him become successful and amount to something. She imagined him growing strong and dominant while remaining close to her, and very faithful to her. There were mental qualities he lacked, and she was at first discontented, but liked his hard, lean legs and the deep wave in his fair hair, and the fierce eagerness inside him, and the strength of his arms, all of it becoming more important to her as she knew him better. And they got married.

  Vera suggested that he leave the lumberyard and get into something requiring more character and more ability than a knowledge of lumber, but he got the foreman’s job in the yard and a salary of fifty dollars a week, so she decided she could be happier if they remained practical. She got into the way of thinking it would be cruel to Harry to suggest for a single moment that he leave the yard, he was so strong in his own importance. Though making certain positive reservations she felt herself becoming a part of his world in which he was a boss, hard and firm, and confident. It pleased her at times to be sentimental and think of him as a man who in other days on barbaric islands would have been a tribal chief. The first time she thought of it, and had developed it, she told him the story and was glad he took it all so seriously.