The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan: Volume One

by Morley Callaghan

  Hodgins droned rhythmically. “He went out and was beaten and stoned, and was robbed. He went out and was beaten and stoned, and was robbed.” His face, yellow in the lamplight, assumed a fierce expression, but his voice grew softer. Joe, fidgeting with his hat, thought something inside him would crack. “What would you have done?” Hodgins asked mildly. “You would have cringed,” he said suddenly. He yelled, “You would have cringed, cringed!” He bawled, “You would have cringed!”

  Joe nervously avoided Hodgins’ bulging eyes. Many people in shame bowed their heads, admitting they would have cringed. A few women, crying softly, muttered and shook their heads sadly. Joe wished Lottie would do something, move or speak, instead of sitting there motionless and tense. Hodgins was talking of hell.

  Had anyone in the barn grasped fully the significant warning and awful terror in the threat of hell to the wilful sinner whose brazen carnalities jeered at an omnipotent God who would exact a vengeance awful in its completeness and just to the smallest degree? Had anyone heard the screams of the suffering in a hospital? Had anyone beheld the skin being slowly eaten away from the flesh of a mortal afflicted with leprosy, or a corpse green and dank, eaten by worms and rotting away?

  A woman gasped, and Joe wished he was outside in the cool air. Hodgins turned quickly to Mrs. Kremer and told her to strike up a hymn. The hymn was started nervously and taken up eagerly. Between the stanzas the piano had a hollow, lonesome sound in the big barn.

  Hodgins walked back and forth on the platform, his eyes on the boards, his hand slowly brushing through his hair. “Beaten and stoned, and robbed and crucified,” he was muttering while they sang. “And yet what would they out there have done?”

  Bringing in the sheaves,

  Bringing in the sheaves . . .

  Before the hymn was over, Hodgins stopped moving restlessly on the platform and shouted, “Who will walk with me in the path of the Master? Who? Who? With me? With me?”

  Lottie was breathing heavily, shifting her weight, getting ready to stand up and go forward, her eyes rolling, and showing the whites. She stood up trembling, but Mrs. Harvey Simpson got up quickly and went forward to Hodgins, who leaned from the platform, waiting, his hand stretched out. He took her by the hand and helped her up to the platform. “A helping hand to you, sister,” he said.

  Lottie flushed angrily, jealous of Mrs. Harvey Simpson, the first to be saved, and sat down sullenly, then, recovering her composure, got up and followed Mrs. Simpson to the platform. She sat next to her on one of the chairs in the arc.

  Ellen’s face was colorless and her hands were folded in her lap. She made no effort to follow Aunt Lottie and did not look at Uncle Joe.

  A young girl with a pale face and big blue eyes went up and sat down beside Mrs. Simpson and Lottie. Hodgins kept urging all to come forward. The lamplight at the roof flickered and shadows waved over the platform. Hodgins started to sing a hymn in a loud voice and Mrs. Kremer played the piano. Everybody stood up and started singing. Joe, wondering what Hodgins would do next, heard him yell, “Who will come? Who will come?” as he stepped down from the platform.

  Harvey Simpson went up to the platform smiling weakly at Hodgins, who helped him eagerly, the first man to go forward. Joe had never liked Harvey Simpson very much.

  Hodgins stood in the aisle repeating rapidly, “I want young men, strong young men,” but there were few young men in the barn.

  The four on the platform looked straight out over the heads of the people standing up, seeing nothing, apparently hearing nothing.

  Hodgins moved along the aisle, then stood still, suddenly realizing that the hymn was over and everybody was standing up. He wheeled and stuck out his arm at a short, red-faced farmer standing near the aisle. “How about you?” he said, pointing his finger full in the man’s face. “Will you? Will you? Will you walk with me?” The farmer’s hands twitched at his side and his lips moved weakly. “I dunno,” he said hopelessly, but he shook his head twice and shuffled up to the platform and sat down nervously beside the others.

  Joe wanted to sit down, or go out and walk home and read the paper and was sorry he had come. He was afraid Hodgins would point his finger at him and Lottie would be offended, when, before all the neighbors, he refused to move. He had his mind made up to refuse to sit on the platform.

  They were all standing up, a self-conscious, hesitant audience. Hodgins walked back to the platform and impatiently waited for someone to go forward. He stood there with his arms stretched out, silent. Three women walked up to the platform.

  “A helping hand to you, sister, and you, and you, too.”

  Joe wanted to sit down. Women were muttering, crying and sniffling, and he looked around at the hard, empty benches. Beside him a thin woman, gripping and twisting her fingers, muttered incoherently, could not bring herself to go up. “Oh Lord, dear Lord,” she said, trying, but unable to move toward the platform. The thin woman, so miserable, and Lottie sitting on the platform in the depressing silence, made Joe unhappy. In the barn there were over a hundred people and he wondered why only ten had gone up to the platform. Some men were pale and some women were crying, but they would not answer Hodgins’ insistent appeal.

  After singing and exhorting and praying for three quarters of an hour, Hodgins had twenty people on the platform, filling most of the chairs in the arc. One of the women was humming audibly. “We will be saved, we will be saved.”

  The restless excitement had gone out of Joe’s thoughts, and he knew everybody in the barn felt more comfortable because Hodgins was apparently satisfied and interested mainly in the twenty willing souls. He walked across the platform counting slowly, the eyes of the twenty following him closely.

  Leaning over to Ellen, Joe whispered jokingly, “It ain’t too late yet, Ellen.” He wanted to be funny so she would not be too seriously interested, but Ellen shook her head doggedly, watching Aunt Lottie intently. Then she glanced at Hodgins moving across the platform. Joe felt silly and out of place, sitting there on the bench when everybody else appeared to be interested. He had been interested earlier in the evening when something inside had been moved by music and words and Hodgins’ arm beating time, but it was all gone now and he was losing interest.

  The twenty on the platform were told to move close to the edge, and all knelt down together. Hodgins knelt down too, and they prayed, repeating slowly Hodgins’ words, but Joe, feeling suddenly lonely and unhappy, wished he could have taken Lottie home away from the platform and the people in the arc. But he knew she was pleased to be there and had looked forward to it.

  “It’s no good now, it’s all over,” he said to Ellen.

  “Sh, sh, sh,” Ellen whispered.

  The prayer finished, Hodgins arose and the others arose and sat on their chairs. Hodgins called for a certain hymn. Mrs. Kremer struck the piano keys twice and everybody was ready. On the platform and on the floor they stood up and sang.

  They came out of the barn quietly. The twenty men and women on the platform hardly spoke to each other until they had stepped down and were outside. Hodgins was tired but satisfied. Joe and Ellen, standing together at the door, waited for Lottie to come down from the platform. Lottie looked tired but smiled happily at Joe and Ellen.

  Joe took Lottie’s arm to comfort her, then noticed that Ellen had moved away.

  She was a few yards up the path, talking to Doris Kremer, who had not been to church. Doris was coaxing Ellen to do something, pulling her sleeve, explaining impatiently. Ellen hesitated and would have followed Aunt Lottie and Uncle Joe, who were passing, but Doris held her arm. Lottie, passing, reminded Ellen that it looked like rain.

  As they walked slowly he could see up the hill a pale haze of light hanging over the city of Toronto. Someone was coming down the road, footfalls sounding loud, and he did not feel like meeting anybody. He noticed the Anglican church steeple sticking up over the crescent curve of the hill. The hooting of the ten o’clock train curving along the lake-front irritated him. He re
membered vaguely that his father was buried somewhere on the hill, a good Anglican who had not wanted him to marry Lottie, a Methodist. Nobody in the village now cared very much about religion at marriage unless it was Mrs. Moore, who never forgot she was a Catholic.

  He was holding Lottie’s arm firmly, aware that she was making some inconsequential remark, but was experiencing a weary feeling of disgust, something like he had felt years ago when, a young man, he had been sitting on his bed reading of three trials he had been following closely. Three girls escaping from a city jail had accidentally strangled the matron. He had sympathized with the girls until the trial, when the papers told they were diseased. In the same paper he read of the trial in Windsor of a pretty young wife who had shot her illicit lover on account of becoming diseased. In another part of the paper was the story of a young man who had killed his wife rather than have her bear a child who too would have inherited the taint, and his head had felt queer, and then he had got very dizzy.

  He held Lottie’s arm much tighter, and, noticing it, she smiled. They were at their front porch. They went through the kitchen. Joe lit the lamp. Lottie put her hat on the table and sat on a chair. Joe, looking at her, decided to be agreeable.

  “I think I’d like a nice cup of tea,” she said thoughtfully.

  “All right. Maybe you got some cake, too?”

  “Look in the pantry, eh Joe.”

  He went out to the pantry and returned with a big piece of layer cake left over from supper.

  “I’m kind of hungry,” he said.

  “Not all that, Joe.”

  “No use saving it.”

  “It might do tomorrow. Put a little back.”

  He cut the big piece in two and put one half back in the pantry. Lottie did not want any cake.

  “How would you like to light the heater and put the water on?” she said.

  He filled the big copper kettle with water, lit the oil stove and took the teapot, shook it and poured a little water in to remove the dregs from the bottom, and went to shake the pot in the sink.

  “Go outside, Joe,” Lottie said.

  So he went out through the woodshed to the doorstep and shook the pot to throw the tea leaves in the yard.

  They sat down at the table and drank tea, but Joe didn’t feel hungry and couldn’t eat the cake. She talked about the Harvey Simpsons and Joe listened patiently.

  “I thought I heard rain on the windows,” she said, looking up peacefully.

  He said suddenly, “Ellen should be in. You know she should be.”

  They heard the front door open and Ellen came along the hall into the kitchen. Without looking directly at her he knew she had been hurrying, for she was puffing. A few drops of rain had fallen on her fawn dress. The toes of her canvas shoes were wet.

  “Where you been, girlie?”

  “Over at the barn. Doris and I, we took a walk. It’s not ten yet.”

  She went over to the window and pressed her face against the pane. “It’s sure raining hard, we just missed it,” she said.

  Lottie asked casually where Doris and Ellen had gone walking and Ellen, still looking out the window, answered evasively. Joe was disappointed, a little excited because she had answered evasively.

  The rain came down hard. It pattered against the windows and drummed on the woodshed. A wind had come up from the lake.

  “You better see all the windows are closed, Joe,” Lottie said.

  He got up slowly. “I’ll have to light another lamp,”

  He lit the lamp and closed all the windows, and the three of them sat near the stove, as they did in the cold winter. He began to feel uncomfortable because Ellen didn’t look happy or have much to say. He would have liked to talk to her but could think of nothing interesting and she wouldn’t look at him. Three of them sitting together around the stove and Lottie the only one at all comfortable. Everything had been satisfactory until Ellen came in; the tea had been good; Lottie had been agreeable and contented. He had wanted Ellen to come in but now he was disappointed and sure Hodgins, who had no business talking that way, was responsible for Ellen’s unhappiness. It was all right for old women, but a young girl had to live and enjoy life.

  Lottie yawned, stretched lazily in her chair, very tired, then got up abruptly and said a good sleep was just what she needed. Joe thought suddenly that he would be alone in the kitchen with Ellen and would have a long talk with her, but she said casually that she might as well go to bed too.

  Lottie and Ellen went upstairs together. Joe sat there stroking his cheek with his right hand, and decided that if he were only hungry he would feel better, so he went into the pantry to cut a big slice of cake, then lit the oil stove again. Restless and tired of waiting, he poured tea and some milk in a cup and put in sugar. The water was starting to boil. “That stove’s no good,” he thought. “Lottie should have a new stove to cook on, a big oil stove.” He poured the water in the cup and sipped it. Too much sugar. He threw it in the sink and made another cup of tea to suit him, and sat down at the table and ate the cake slowly, for he was not really hungry. The tea tasted good. Lottie always had good tea. He was a long time eating the piece of cake.

  So he could get into bed quickly, he took off his shirt in the kitchen and put his foot on the stove damper to unlace his boot. One of his shoelaces was knotted, and he swore quietly. The knot bothered him but he got it. Carrying his shirt in his arm, and in his stocking feet, he went upstairs. Lottie was asleep.

  3

  Joe stretched himself flat on the sloping roofs, heels against a scantling rest. The sun was not shining on this north side of the roof and it was cool lying on the shingles where the roof caved from age. Joe had reshingled a good section of that side of the roof, the new shingles standing out like an ochre blotch on the dark brown of the old shingles. Lying on the roof, he liked the fresh cedar smell from the new wood.

  He had done a good four hours’ work for Milburn, two in the morning, two in the afternoon, and was in no hurry to go down from the roof. If Hen Milburn had been at home he would have gone to talk to him, but he didn’t feel like talking to Mrs. Milburn, who never had much to say. Joe looked down into MacIntyre’s backyard next door; a queer family, one of the queerest in Eastmount, but nobody bothered about them. It occurred to Joe that a man could go on doing anything he wanted to do in Eastmount, providing he had been doing it for some time.

  Rose MacIntyre came into the yard to hang clothes on the line. She’d pin a part of a garment on the line, holding a clothespin in her mouth for another part. In her big apron, with uncombed dun-colored hair, her indefinite features and freckled cheeks twisted out of shape by clothespins in her mouth, Rose was not much to look at.

  Joe wondered could Rose see him lying there on the roof. She was interesting, in a disreputable way, of course. Everybody knew she had been taken down to the beach, up in the hills, and in her own parlor by most men in the village, but never nasty, never charging a cent, she rarely offended even religious people in the village. Rose was no good, but everybody had long ago decided she was no good; there could be no difficulty or fuss about her. And she didn’t look so bad with her face powdered and hair tidied.

  Rose, looking up at the sun, the clothespins in her mouth, saw Joe Harding on Milburn’s roof. She took the clothespins from her mouth, used one on the line, and waved her hand at him. “Having a rest, Mr. Harding?” she asked.

  Joe sat up. “Hello, Rose, how are you?”

  “Why don’t you come down if you’re through?” she said.

  “It’s nice up here, it’s comfortable.”

  Rose moved over from the clothesline to the apple tree. “Do you want an apple?” she said, reaching up to a branch.

  “They’re too green, ain’t they, Rose?”

  She picked an apple from the tree and tossed it up to the roof but it rolled in a wide arc beyond his reach, falling off the front of the roof. Rose tossed up another apple that bounced over Joe’s head, but he caught it rolling down. He did
n’t want to sink his teeth too quickly in the hard green apple; his plate might come loose. Sitting up, he took a small bite. It had a sour, unpleasant taste, but he didn’t like to throw it away because Rose was watching him.

  “You ain’t got any salt down there, eh Rose?” he said jokingly.

  “How’d you like me to go in and get the salt shaker and toss it up?” she said willingly.

  “Naw, don’t be crazy, Rose. I don’t need to eat the apple,” Joe said.

  “I got to go in now anyway.” She grinned going in the house, and attempted to kick her leg suggestively, but her long, flowing apron spoiled the effect. Joe grinned to himself, sliding along the roof to the left, going down to the ground. On the ladder he was thinking of Rose. She was tough but friendly.

  Picking up his tools, he thought of people saying Rose had always been immoral. No one seemed to remember a time when she had not been loose and eager for it, though only about four years older than Ellen. Her mother hadn’t been much good; her two older brothers had used Rose for a good time as soon as she was old enough. No one knew why Rose had never had a baby. Some men in the village appreciated Rose’s discretion.

  Joe rapped at Milburn’s back door to tell Mrs. Milburn the job was done. Mrs. Milburn, a tired solemn-faced, gray woman, said Henry would pay Mr. Harding when he came home. Henry would take it over to Mr. Harding, or maybe send over one of the children.

  On the way home, Joe found himself again thinking of Rose MacIntyre, a few years older than his niece, yet much harder, much tougher. Zip Foster had a few stories to tell about Rose and hadn’t he seen Zip and Ellen walking over to the orchard? It mightn’t have been Zip, but it looked like him under the light. What was there to prevent Ellen turning out like Rose, Joe thought. The MacIntyre brothers were good-for-nothings but he was respectable—that was the difference. Joe felt like meeting Zip Foster, who had gone off to the city, and taking him by the neck to find out if he had gone into the orchard with Ellen. If it hadn’t been Zip he would feel silly. Joe was sweating. He picked up a stick and knocked it impatiently against his boot as he walked.