The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan

by Callaghan, Morley; Atwood, Margaret;

  As it hung there on the chair, it became more than a coat to Ray, it was now something that would give him back his place in Dorfman’s and he watched and tried to make a cunning plan.

  Then Harry, his drink only half finished, got up and began to go in the direction of the washroom, leaving the coat on the chair. Tightening up, Ray grinned but Harry came back and picked up the coat and went on to the washroom. Ray, watching him, had no particular plan, and as he loafed toward the washroom himself, he thought he might speak to Harry and make a joke about the coat, yet he knew the joke wouldn’t come easily.

  In the washroom, he saw the coat hanging on a wall peg. He stared at it, making no sound, wondering if Harry Lane could see his feet. His little dark face puckered up in a frown. Bright happy thoughts came to him. The coat was just there within his reach, his hand only had to go out and lift it neatly off the peg and then he could go hurrying out and home, and late that night he could go around to Mike’s place, killing himself laughing, and let Mike have the coat and keep it all that next day so he could put a lining in it, and then early the next night Mike could come sneaking back with the coat and hang it on the peg. There it would be found, and it would be a joke on Harry Lane; the boys would talk about it for weeks. Mike, then, would certainly slip him fifty dollars, and he would see too that he was the friend who had actually done something for him.

  All his life Ray had been running and ducking. When he had been a kid in Brooklyn he had heard himself called a rat of a boy. He had tried to be a fighter, and he had carried water pails around Stillman’s gym, and there he had attached himself to Waxi Rosso. He had learned how to train a fighter and do everything that was expected of him. All his life he had been able to get along by doing little things for people, jobs no one else would do, and he had shown Rosso that he could count on him.

  Grinning, he took a slow step toward the coat and reached out and unhooked it, and as soon as it fell across his arm he knew it was the thing that would reestablish him in Dorfman’s. Then there was a move behind the cubicle door. As he went to run the coat slipped off his arm and when he grabbed it, some papers fell out of the pocket. The cubicle door opened suddenly. He ran. But Lane came charging after him, shouting, “You thief, you dirty little thief.”

  When he got back to the bar he started to laugh, so everybody would see it was a joke. But Lane was right behind him, he had him by the shirt collar and jerked him and spun him around and tore his shirt.

  “Cut it out,” he said angrily.

  “Stealing my wallet, eh,” Harry shouted. Ray was surprised at the strength in the hand of so light a man and now as he looked at the white angry face with the hard blue eyes he felt scared; as scared as he had felt when he was a kid and an enormously powerful, coldly superior detective had cornered him hiding behind a counter in a bakery shop.

  “Lay off, Harry, it’s a joke,” he said, laughing. He tried to brush Lane’s hand away, while he kept on snickering. But the others had got up from the tables and Alfred Dorfman had come hurrying over.

  “What’s the matter, Harry?” Alfred asked.

  “The little bastard was trying to lift my wallet.”

  “To hell with his wallet,” Ray said. “It was just the coat. The guy’s crazy. Don’t you see, Harry, the coat. It’s a joke,” and he appealed to the others to share the joke with him.

  “Why don’t you call a cop, Alfred,” Harry said crisply. “He’s a little gangster anyway. Why do you have him around here?”

  “Jesus, you guys,” Ray said turning helplessly to the others, for it frightened him to think of the local police looking into his life. If that happened everything would go, Rosso would turn against him. Rosso knew how important it was that his trainer in Montreal should be legitimate. “Tell him, you guys,” he pleaded desperately with Ted Ogilvie and Haggerty. “It was only the coat. It’s a joke. Mike Kon said he’d give fifty dollars to have the coat for a little while. You heard him. What the hell do I want with Harry’s wallet? I’ve got friends. I’ve got connections. I’ve got a piece of Bruno. I get a cut of his purse. I’m no . . .”

  Angry and frightened he cursed, he pleaded with them, till Ogilvie started to laugh. “He’s right, Harry. It’s a joke,” he said.

  “I say the guy was after my wallet,” Harry said coldly. “You didn’t see him. I did.”

  “Harry, don’t be such a fool,” Mollie said, blurting it out as if the whole thing outraged her. “I heard Mike say he’d give fifty dollars to put a lining in the coat. And Ray heard him.”

  “Yeah, I did say it,” Mike confessed.

  “So you put the little bastard up to stealing the coat.”

  “You’re off your rocker, Harry. Sit down. It’s a joke. What are you beefing about?” Ogilvie said. “Take it easy, man.” Ray, taking his cue from them, laughed and then they all laughed heartily.

  The laughter, the unbelief turning to laughter, seemed to be frighteningly new to Harry. With courage and dignity, some months ago, he had accepted that vague uneasy resentment in his friends, when he’d tried to explain his case. Now it seemed to him that they found relief in laughing at him.

  “Is this all part of the big practical joke? Am I supposed to be a clown now?”

  Facing them at bay, his eyes still blazing, he turned first to Mike, wanting to strike at him, then baffled, because he could prove nothing against him, he whirled around on Ray. “Okay,” he whispered. “Laugh yourself out of this, Conlin,” and he swung his right; it caught Ray high on the temple and he spun and fell.

  Jumping up, Ray danced around, his narrow little eyes glittering with hate. Thrusting his finger out, he whispered, “Just wait, I’ll fix you. You’ll get it, but good!”

  “Why wait?”

  “I’ve got friends, you haven’t. Nobody slaps me around. You’ll see.”

  “Get out of here, Conlin. What kind of a place do you think this is?” Alfred suddenly shouted. “Look what you’re doing. Is this a cheap little dive where I phone for the cops every hour?”

  “You ask for it, Alfred,” Harry said angrily, “if you have these little hatchet men for gangsters and cheap suit-and-cloak men here trying to palm off rotten goods — look at the coat, Alfred.”

  “Stop insulting me,” Mike said, going closer. “You came in here with that coat looking for trouble. You came in here to disgrace me. Your mind’s all twisted. You don’t want me fix that coat. You want to flaunt it around and try and ruin me.”

  “You came in here making the whole thing public property, holding me up to ridicule,” Harry said, disgusted. “You’re as phony as a three-dollar bill.”

  “I’m no phony,” Mike said, fiercely. “It was your little tramp who came at me about it.” Then, with all the scornful resentment of Harry he was sure the others shared with him, he blurted out, “I know a guy who has disgraced himself is apt to take it out on anybody. But I’m not Scotty Bowman. You’re not going to ruin me.”

  “To throw that up at me . . .” Harry whispered. For the first time he heard himself accused publicly, with the others, silent, uncomfortable and embarrassed, standing behind the morally outraged tailor. Looking beaten he turned to the door; he wanted to go, and then, as if this seemed cowardly, he turned again, very pale, and faced them with his old courage, struggling to find words to express his contempt. “You accuse me of these things with fine moral courage, thinking you have the good conscience of everybody behind you. Well, never mind, I know that over this little thing like a coat lining, you’re hiding behind your friend Scotty. I think you thought you had a right to take advantage of me, and could get away with it in the eyes of everybody. That’s what you’re doing now. Could anything be more shameful for everybody?” Suddenly he laughed. “Well, if that’s the way you want it, anybody who comes around here is going to see a lot of this coat.”

  ✧ XVI ✧

  Harry knew now that all his hopes of the Bowman business being forgotten had blown up on him, and that he had been mocked by his own goodwi
ll, by the innocence of heart that had led him to go to Mike Kon. It seemed to him that Scotty’s ghost was using Mike Kon to pursue him and drive him out of town again, or force him to go on defending himself against his accuser, to nag away, protesting till the boring insistence of his innocence finally destroyed him. All he had to defend himself with was the coat, he thought, but it could tell his story. Others now could do the explaining and interpreting.

  He began to wear the coat everywhere, and when he had it on his back it looked like a well-cut handsome garment, but the story of what had happened in Dorfman’s got around town much faster that he did, and people who used to be embarrassed by his presence and prefer to hold aloof would smile, seeing him wearing this coat they had heard about, and out of curiosity, ask to see the lining. When they tried to question him he kept his untroubled dignity and refused to give an explanation. As the story spread more people laughed at him and wanted to see the coat, and in Dorfman’s especially he became a figure of fun. People, clowning with him, tried to get him to talk about the coat and defend himself. He would not. Unprovoked by their amusement, he hung onto his unruffled good humor. When really pressed for an explanation by someone who didn’t know the story, all he would say was, “Why don’t you ask Mike Kon?” and let it go at that, smiling when a questioner who had been laughing grew reflective.

  He used to come into Dorfman’s with his easy opulent manner. He didn’t care who laughed at him. The only one who bothered him was Annie Laurie and he had found that he could never locate her at the hours when he went to Dorfman’s.

  On his way there late one afternoon he went into the hotel barbershop for a haircut and coming out he saw Annie Laurie in a yellow dress talking to a well-dressed gray-haired man who was buying some magazines at the newsstand. Feeling lonely, he turned away. But she had seen him, and caught up to him at the hotel entrance.

  “What’s the matter with you, Harry? You saw me,” she said.

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “Oh, him. I used to work for him ten years ago when I was a model. An utterly harmless man. He always sends me a Christmas card.”

  “Oh,” he said, relieved.

  “I know a girl has to live, Harry, but I don’t want any guy near me while you’re around, don’t you believe me?”

  “I do,” and smiling, he took her arm and said, “Come on into Dorfman’s with me.”

  “No, Harry,” she said. “I’m not going into Dorfman’s with you, I don’t like it in there when you’re wearing that damned coat. I can’t bear the clowning that goes on in there, people looking at the lining and you refusing to say anything. I feel lonely, Harry, all the loneliness in the world seems to hit me right on the head.” He looked worried for he could not bear hurting people who had all his affection, and he couldn’t clown with Annie Laurie about the coat. “I respect you, Annie Laurie,” he said, turning her toward him. “But can’t you see I’m trapped around here. Scotty Bowman is on my back again. Old Mike Kon put him there. I didn’t want it. I’m trapped around here because I won’t go away again. I won’t. This is my town. They think I can’t get up off the floor. Annie Laurie,” he said, quietly, “there’s the principle of the thing. This coat,” and he touched his shoulder, “this is the Scotty Bowman coat. Mike Kon put it on me when he accused me.”

  “Oh, Harry, now nobody has a chance to forget.”

  “So much the better,” and he shrugged. “They’ll laugh the pair of them, the ghost and his friend, right out of this town.” But the way she was looking at him made him falter a little and he waited, ready to resist her stubbornly. Her dark head and the yellow dress suddenly looked lovely to him. “You’re a stubborn man, Harry. But God knows, about the right things. I wish I could have been as stubborn myself,” she said with a hurt and strange respect. “You’ve a right to fight in your own way, Harry. I don’t care as long as you know I’m with you,” and he laughed a little, satisfied.

  “Coming with me?” he said.

  “Not this time. Some other time,” and she watched him go up the street alone and turn into Dorfman’s.

  ✧ XVII ✧

  He always sat at the bar joking and paying no attention to Mike at all. At first Mike didn’t mind being questioned about the coat even with Harry at the bar only twenty feet away. He was sure he had public support; he was sure public opinion had long ago condemned Harry Lane, so he explained patiently that he had offered to fix the coat lining and that Harry had insulted him. “But why did you have Conlin try to steal the coat?” someone would ask, and with patience and dignity he would explain that he hadn’t offered to pay Conlin fifty dollars to get the coat. It had been only a joking remark. They always laughed knowingly when he repeated Conlin hadn’t been acting for him. They enjoyed hearing him defending himself. In a few days he began to see that they didn’t believe him, or at least they pretended not to believe him; he wasn’t sure, and he could not understand it.

  Late one afternoon Ray Conlin, who had met Eddie Adams on the street, and had attached himself to him so he could get back into Dorfman’s, came in, hoping Alfred would not notice. Even the cigars smell better in Dorfman’s, Ray thought as he looked around. Mike was sitting by himself near the window, the shaft of late sunlight touching his ear and heavy jaw as he watched people passing on the street with a very affected untroubled air. Anyone could see that he was determinedly there at that hour.

  At the end of the bar, Harry Lane was wearing the coat and smiling peacefully, with his back to the table where Mollie Morris was sitting with Ted Ogilvie. People who came in glanced at the coat, smiled, made little jokes with him while he laughed good-naturedly, and then these same people would look over at Mike and smile.

  Everybody was smiling at Mike and Harry, and Harry didn’t mind, but Mike couldn’t stand it.

  Ray was afraid to follow Eddie to the bar and invite attention from Harry, who hadn’t noticed him come in, so he hurried over to Mike’s table. When Mike paid no attention to him he said sympathetically, “You see the item in Mallon’s column, ‘The Man with the Coat?’ You see it?”

  “I saw it,” he said bitterly. “And tomorrow my lawyer’ll see it too.”

  “So what do you do, Mike?”

  “I have rights, and I know what that item means. People read that item and then they ask Lane about it and he laughs and refuses to say anything. I get slandered.” His face white, he looked over at Harry who didn’t seem to be aware that he was in the room; reaching out with his eyes to the coat, he longed to get his hands on it for only a few minutes. “No. How can I sue?” he said, half to himself, with an embarrassing despair. “I think he’d like to get it in the papers.” Then as Ray eased himself into the chair beside him, he said quickly, “No, Ray. Not here with me. There’s been trouble with you here. Alfred told you to keep away. Please.”

  Just then Alfred Dorfman passed by Ray and looked right through him. I’m not here, Ray thought resentfully. I’m a ghost. He and his waiters walk right through me. Staring at Harry shrewdly, Ray thought he saw something, a real weakness in him; the man had too much imagination. Any fighter he had ever known who had too much imagination was no good, and what he liked about his own boy Bruno was that he had no imagination at all.

  It seemed to him to be such a shrewd and interesting observation that he leaned closer to the next table where Ogilvie and Miss Morris were sitting, but he had to wait to get a word in.

  “For Harry to sit there and take it,” she was saying, her voice breaking. “No shame at all left. Not a scrap.”

  “If he’s able to keep on laughing long enough,” Ted said, “he’s apt to laugh the ghost of Scotty Bowman right out of town. Why should you feel ashamed now, Mollie?”

  “Because . . . because . . .” and her voice was low and resentful. “I’m sure he thinks that somehow he’s humiliating me. I’m not crazy, Ted. I know it’s so. Why do you think he’s always bringing that pushover, Annie Laurie, around?”

  “Ah, now there, that’s interesting,�
� Ted said philosophically. “I’ve thought about that. Any guy who stays with Annie Laurie knows his number’s up.” When they both became reflective, Ray, leaning closer and putting his hand on the back of Ted’s chair with professional firmness, said, “Look, I get paid to watch for a fighter’s weakness. I spot it in Harry. It’s his big imagination.”

  “Shut up, Conlin,” Ogilvie said sourly.

  “Run along, little man, you’re annoying me,” Miss Morris said, looking around impatiently for Alfred.

  “Excuse me,” Ray said, getting up quickly and hurrying out. Little man. I annoy them, he thought fiercely, as he went on gloomily down the hill to his hotel opposite the railroad station.

  With all his heart he wanted to get back to Dorfman’s, and he sighed and wiped his forehead and cursed his luck. Maybe he wasn’t very high-toned, he thought, but he was a human being and he had a right to some justice. His only crime was in trying to show he had a sense of humor. He had had no ill will toward Harry. Yet he was the one who was now the outcast. The injustice of it made tears come to his eyes. No one cared about Harry knocking him down; the only thing that registered on them was that he had taken it. That was it, he thought, pondering. He had done nothing and so people despised him. Mike Kon was making the same mistake, sitting by the window and trying to tell his silly tiresome story with dignity. I won’t go on making that stupid mistake, he thought grimly.

  ✧ XVIII ✧

  Even when Ray was doing road work with Bruno next day, pedaling slowly on the bicycle while Bruno, in beautiful condition, his breathing rhythmical and effortless, his eyes clear and happy, trotted along beside him, he went on making his plan. He was sure he could afford to show a little audacity in dealing with Harry; public opinion was so much against Harry that everybody would see the justice of having him slapped down and view it with an amused and vast satisfaction. The thing to do, he thought, would be to have him punished so everybody in Dorfman’s, where he still hung on the ropes, could see it and make their enjoyment of the rightness of it so plain that Lane might never want to put his nose in the place again.