by John O'Hara
The old-rich as well as the others had to pass through the same ugly part of the town on their way to shop, to the bank, to the doctor’s office, to social engagements on the west side of the railroad tracks. It had been that way even before the railroads arrived; in the days of the Old Canal that part of town had been a section that a lady on foot did not linger in. As in every town, as in nearly every city, the railroad station area became a tough area, infested with thieves and procurers, whores and hoodlums. Gibbsville was like any other American town in that the first impression and the last impression it created was that the traveler would have been safer at home—except that in the traveler’s home town conditions were identical with the conditions in Gibbsville. Railroad Avenue was the street of the dives; the intersection of Christiana Street and Railroad Avenue was the local capital of crime and violence.
Through this district Charlotte Chapin had to pass on her way to Main Street. Her visits to Main Street were infrequent; her visits on foot were rare, since she always had a carriage or a cutter at her disposal. And her walks past Christiana and Railroad, unescorted, were rarer still. But they did occur. She never forgot either one of them, and there were only two.
She was twenty years of age and a recent bride, in the spring of 1881, and on a certain warm and bright afternoon she announced to the coachman that she would walk to Mr. Chapin’s office, and that Connelly, the coachman, could meet her there instead of following the original plan, which was for Connelly to drive her to the office, meet Mr. Chapin and from there drive to a wedding at Trinity Church.
“Will I folly you with the carriage, ma’am?” said Connelly.
“Follow me? Why? I’m not going to faint.”
“Christiana and Railroad, ma’am,” said Connelly.
“I hardly think I’m going to be accosted in broad daylight,” said Charlotte Chapin.
“I’m always prepared for the worst contingency, ma’am,” said Connelly.
“Thank you for looking out for me, Connelly, but nothing’s going to happen.” She smiled at Connelly, whom she liked.
“You’re welcome, ma’am, but you won’t mind if I do folly you. The Mister’d skin me alive if I didn’t.”
“All right,” she said.
She set out on her stroll and all went well until she came to the corner of Christiana and Railroad, the northwest corner, which was occupied by Dutch Amringen’s saloon. The swinging doors had been installed for the summer and there was a large picture of a billy goat on a weather-worn sign reading Bock Beer On Sale which was swinging at the entrance. The sidewalk on the Christiana Street side was roofed over in front of the places of business in that block, and while that was not an unusual condition in Gibbsville, it had the effect in that neighborhood of making the passerby feel he was closer to the inside of Amringen’s and places like it than he ever might venture. The cigar butts and fresh tobacco juice on the brick sidewalk were a peril to the long-skirted and dainty. It was too early in the day for the songs and loud talk that were to be heard nightly in that block on Christiana Street, but voices from the saloons could be heard, rough laughter and heavily masculine conversations. A few were in front of Dutch Amringen’s, smoking stogies and spitting tobacco juice, while comfortably seated on beer barrels. And as always the foot traffic in that block was made to seem heavier because so many men stood along the curb and the building line, and others chatting in the middle of the sidewalk made passersby walk around them. It was an atmosphere in which every respectable citizen was regarded as a trespasser.
A well-built man in his thirties, obviously half drunk, dressed in his poor best and with newly trimmed red hair and beard, came out of Rinaldo’s barber shop as Charlotte Chapin reached the entrance to Dutch Amringen’s next door. At first he seemed to be trying to make way for Charlotte, but as he moved to his right, she moved to her left, and when she moved to her right, he moved to his left.
“Girlie’s playing,” said the man. “Give us a little kiss.”
“Get out of my way, you disgusting man,” said Charlotte.
“Get outa my way, you disgusting man. You got a pretty little pussy? Have you?” Now he was deliberately blocking her way.
“Get—out!” she said.
“Me see your little pussy,” said the man.
She quickly turned and would have gone back toward home, but the loafing men had almost immediately noticed the scene and were laughing loudly. The red-bearded man was encouraged by their laughter and he reached out and grasped her arm. At that moment Connelly, who had been following Charlotte in the victoria, jumped from the box and brought the loaded end of his whip down on the red-haired man’s skull. The man sank to the sidewalk, bleeding. Charlotte ran to the carriage. Connelly, brandishing the whip, backed to the carriage, remounted the box and they drove away. They reached Main Street before the loafing men could organize an attack on Connelly, and no attack was made. For many of the loafing men there was a police deadline halfway between Railroad Avenue and Main Street, and to go beyond the deadline meant automatic arrest, thirty days in the county prison, and dreadful beatings between arrest and sentencing. Consequently the deadline was carefully observed.
“I’ll get Constable Morgan,” said Connelly.
“You’ll do no such thing,” said Charlotte. “But thank you, Connelly.”
“We better have him arrested. He won’t be hard to recognize, with that broken head o’ his.”
“You may have killed him. Do you know him?”
“Never laid eyes on him in me life before,” said Connelly.
“Don’t go to Mr. Chapin’s office just now. I want to think.”
“You’ll excuse me, ma’am, but maybe you’ve got too much spunk.”
“I don’t want you to say a word to Mr. Chapin, not a single word. Do you hear? I’ll be very, very cross, do you hear, Connelly?”
“I hear, ma’am.”
“You hear, but I want you to heed as well as hear. Now we can drive to Mr. Chapin’s office.”
Connelly did not report the episode until later in the evening, first extracting a near-promise from Ben Chapin that he would say nothing to Charlotte. Neither Ben nor Charlotte ever discussed the incident, but Connelly from that day on was never without a pistol, and the bearded man, a mule-skinner at one of the mines, was arrested and sent to the county prison for being drunk and disorderly. His absence cost him his job, although in time he was able to find employment elsewhere in the coal region. Connelly, too, moved away after a few years. He was a sober man, not given to frequenting saloons, but he and his wife found that many of their friends stopped speaking to them, and would not sit in the same pew at Mass if they saw the Connellys first. Connelly became known as a spy, a vague term but the worst thing an Irishman could call another Irishman.
Six years passed before Charlotte again walked beneath the wooden awning in front of Dutch Amringen’s. In 1888 she was boarding the Gibbsville train at Philadelphia, and a car’s length ahead of her on the platform she could see—and instantly recognize—the red-bearded man, carrying a satchel and apparently about to take the same train. The next day she walked past Amringen’s saloon on her way to Main Street and on her way home from Main Street, but the man was nowhere to be seen. She was unable to admit to herself the real reason for her curiosity about the man. She was, however, able to deny that the real reason was deeper than curiosity. In the long run the denial amounted to the admission, for Charlotte Chapin was not a stupid woman.
She was a far from stupid woman. From among her numerous suitors she had selected the man who, besides all the obvious eligibilities of family and money, offered the least likelihood of opposition to what she wanted out of life. Ben Chapin was not likely to make demands on her person (and her guess proved correct), but he was physically fit to reveal to her the mysteries of the bed. She was the purest of virgins, but she could not accept the conventional belief that lo
ve-making was enjoyed by the man alone, a distasteful preliminary to the holy joy of motherhood. She believed in God, and it did not seem to be a part of the divine kindness to give the male sex all of the pleasure and the female sex all of the pain. More mundanely, she had been stimulated by touches of a young man’s hand on her own hand, and when she relived the experience in her active mind, she conceded that the excitement was not confined to the hand. The desire to be touched again was something she felt in her body, between her shoulders and her knees. She was not given to exchanges of confidences with her contemporaries, and as a consequence she took in less misinformation than she might have. The logic of sexual apparatus was apparent to her in her girlhood, and the only major surprise she received from Ben was in the difference between a passionate living man and pictures of soft cherubim.
It was Ben’s bad luck to be the father of the stillborn babies, and thus to become associated with the tragedies as wholly or partly to blame. It made little difference to Charlotte whether she blamed Ben or the act of love-making; the man and the act became the one thing, and it was an abhorrent thing. What was worse for their relationship, she cared not at all whether Ben’s needs were satisfied with another woman, so long as no scandal was involved. In the first years of their marriage she had been possessively jealous when Ben would innocently flirt with another girl. She never quite loved him with the great finality of love, but there was in the beginning enough pleasure in his company and in the state of wifehood to make the relationship live. The mess and the pain of the second stillbirth likewise killed the relationship for her, and she had sufficient excuse to make her announcement.
Things had not turned out quite as she had planned when selecting Ben to be her husband, but now, after the second dead baby, she gave up her husband and devoted herself to her son. It was a new start, but she was getting what she wanted. She had her home, her position in relation to her fellow man, and she had her son. She had a husband who would complacently supply an official parenthood, without interfering in the upbringing of the son. She had picked very well indeed when she picked Ben Chapin, for in this houseful of good manners she encountered no resistance to her acts and methods. And just as though she had done it deliberately (which she had not), she destroyed any love between the boy and his father. The father was made to seem just short of a fool; the son was made to seem just short of sacred.
The years went by. Christmases would come and presents would be exchanged at a most elaborately festooned fireplace, and Ben instituted, but after two tries dropped, the custom of reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. On the Fourth of July they would go to Ben’s office to watch the parade of the Grand Army of the Republic, and Joe would be taken to a children’s picnic at The Run. Foley, the coachman who succeeded Connelly, instructed the boy in the arts of riding and driving and introduced him to strong language. The father helped the son with his arithmetic and algebra and first-year Latin, but the mother supervised the rest of his scholastic work. She would hear his spelling and listen to his reading, making him repeat the readings so that she could correct the Pennsylvania Dutchisms that occurred in his speech. Her own accent was refined and precise as a result of the influence of an English nanny, and she was determined to protect Joe as much as possible from the sing-song delivery that was more or less common to Gibbsville children who were not Irish. Ben’s speech was plain, closer to New England-Yankee than any other influence, although he pronounced his r’s. On such matters as the knotting of a cravat and gentlemanly jewelry Ben was allowed authority, but the only thing he ever really taught the boy was how to swim.
Ben came home from the office one July day when Joe was six years old. It was noon, time for dinner. “Good morning, Father,” said the boy. “Mother has a headache.”
“Oh,” said Ben.
Foley’s sister, Martha, entered the sitting room and announced that Mrs. Chapin had a headache and would not be down for dinner.
“So I understand,” said Ben. “Tell your brother to put Blackie in the cut-under and bring him around to the front door. Right away, please, Martha.”
“Will you be having your dinner now, sir?”
“No. Just do as I tell you, please.”
“Where are you going, Father?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Is your mother asleep?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“Well, tiptoe upstairs and see, and come right down and tell me.”
The boy was unaccustomed to orders, but he did as directed and returned to report that his mother was asleep. “We’re going for a drive, you and I.”
“You and I, Father?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t ask Mummy.”
“I’ll leave word. I’ll write her a note. She won’t be worried.”
“Yes she will, Father.”
“Not after I’ve written this note.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
Ben was writing the note to Charlotte.
“What kind of a surprise?”
“A nice one,” said Ben. “Now don’t ask me any more questions till I’ve finished this note.”
“Are we going away somewhere?”
“Hmm?”
“Where are we going?”
“A place you like to go to,” said Ben.
“The carriage is out front, sir,” said Martha.
“Give this to Mrs. Chapin when she wakes up. Come on, son.”
The father and son drove away in the cut-under and Ben refused to vouchsafe any information until it was unmistakable that they were driving to The Run.
“Are we going to The Run?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“A surprise.”
“A picnic, Father?”
“You’ll see.”
The Run was the name for a large reservoir owned by the coal company. The shores were lined with boathouses, elaborate and simple. The Chapin boathouse was not one of the simple places. Ben got out and lowered the horse’s checkrein and knotted the tie-strap.
“What are we going to do?” said Joe.
“We’re going for a swim.”
“I can’t swim, Father, you know that.”
“Now’s the time to learn.” They entered the boathouse and went downstairs to the men’s dressing room. Ben took off his clothes and put on his bathing suit. “Well, get undressed, son.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want to learn to swim.”
“Now, just take off your clothes and hang them up over there.”
“I want to go home!”
“All in good season. Shall I undress you, or can you undress yourself?”
“I don’t want to get undressed. I don’t want to learn to swim! I want Mummy!”
“She can’t hear you, son. Now do as I say, or I’ll do it for you.”
The boy took off his clothes and laid them in a pile and stood waiting for the next move.
“That’s a good boy. Now for a dip.”
The water was eight feet deep in front of the Chapin boathouse. Into it Ben suddenly threw his son, then after a few seconds he lowered himself into the water and took hold of the screaming, thrashing child.
“See? Now you can swim.”
In half an hour the boy actually could swim. When Ben said it was time to go home the boy asked to go in once more and Ben granted the permission. They dried themselves and got into their street clothes.
“See? Now you can swim. Isn’t that splendid? Did you like it? Do you like being able to swim?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. Wait till I tell Mummy I can swim.”
“It’s the only way to learn. It’s the way I learned. Sorry I had to take you by surprise, but that’s the only way. And you’ll never forget it. Once you learn to swim, you never forget. Isn’
t that splendid?”
They drove to the stable and went through the yard to the house together, the father with his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I hope Mummy’s awake so I can tell her.”
“She is. I see her at the window.”
The boy looked up and waved and his mother waved back. “Come up and see me, dear,” she called to him.
“I have a surprise for you,” said the boy. He and his father went to Charlotte’s room.
“Tell me all about it,” said Charlotte. “I want to know everything you did.”
The boy gave an accurate, excited account of the swimming lesson. When he finished his mother said, “Have you had any dinner?”
“No, Mummy.”
“I thought not. Well, run downstairs now. Your father will be down in a minute or two.”
The boy left the bedroom. When the door was closed they sat until they heard his rapid footsteps on the stairs, then Charlotte got up and crossed the room and slapped Ben’s face three times, four times. “I could kill you,” she said.
“I understand that, Charlotte.”
“You are a pig, a coward, a beast. Do you realize what could have happened? Hit his head on a stone? Heart attack from that freezing water? You are the worst son of a bitch that ever lived. Do you hear me? You are the worst son of a bitch that ever lived. You are a son of a bitch, a son of a bitch. You are a fucking son of a bitch, do you hear me? You son of a bitch. Oh, I’d like to kill you. I’d love to kill you so that you’d die in horrible pain, and I could watch you.”
“I know that, Charlotte.”
“And you did it to torture me.”
“No,” said Ben. “I wanted to teach your boy to swim, and I did.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“You can’t swim,” said Ben. “Now you can go to The Run with him and he won’t drown. Before this you couldn’t save him. Now he can swim. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
