The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Two

by Morley Callaghan

  He was alone with Luke in the room back of the store that smelt of dog biscuits and chicken feed. Gus sat at the small table feeling good, on the whiskey. Luke sat opposite, kidding him, nodding his bald head sympathetically and stroking his hairy arms.

  “I can kick hell out of Walton,” Gus said finally.

  “Sure you can, he’s not so much.”

  “Well, stick around, I’m going to.”

  “Sid’ll be up at the park at the ball game tonight,” Luke said.

  “Damn the ball game.”

  “Don’t you want to have a go at him?”

  “I’ll get him alone when he won’t know what hit him.”

  “Mrs. Walton’ll be there too, Gus.”

  “I’d as leave have a go at her, Luke.”

  Gus drank the whiskey out of a big cup and his long mustache got wet. He left Horton’s place sucking his mustache. He hurried back past the lumberyard to his house near Walton’s place on the road by the bay. It hurt his head thinking how much he hated Walton. Let him put his hand on a gun and he’d maybe go down to the yard. He wasn’t drunk, just feeling pretty good.

  He went in the house and came out of the back door with the gun. Standing on the porch, he looked over into Walton’s place. He didn’t hurry back to the yard as he thought he would. He stood on the porch watching Mrs. Walton’s big hips and firm back. She didn’t speak to Gus because Sid had been having trouble with him, but wondered why he wasn’t working. She and her six-year-old Anna were going berry picking. He saw Mrs. Walton take a blue sweater coat from a nail in the porch and Anna brought a pail and two wooden boxes from the woodshed.

  Gus went around his side entrance to watch Mrs. Walton go down the road with the girl. He hardly thought about going back to the lumberyard. He sat on the front steps for twenty minutes, his head in his hands, spitting at a bug crawling on the picket walk and thinking about grabbing and hiding the kid that always became Mrs. Walton when he thought about it very much. “That’ll make Walton sweat all right,” he thought, and got up quickly, happy to go swinging along the road beyond the town to the berry patch in the bush. He thought about stealing the kid but liked following Mrs. Walton. She had full red lips and a lot of black hair bunched over her ears.

  Mrs. Walton passed out of sight behind a bunch of girls in automobiles on the road near the wooded picnic park. He hurried. In sight of the line of spruce trees back from the bay, he saw Mrs. Walton help the kid across the plank over the shallow Little River and follow the path into the bush.

  She kept to the path and he followed through the trees, getting excited. He didn’t think much about the kid but felt he would take her away all right.

  It was shady yet warm in the bush. The afternoon sun was strong. Brownish-green leaves were beginning to fall from the trees on the path. The berry patch was at the southwest fringe of the bush. Mrs. Walton walked slowly with a strong stride, her wide-brimmed hat flapping regularly. It was warm in the bush and small noises sounded loud but it was cooling to look back through the trees to the blue waterline of the bay. Anna at times left her mother and played among the trees, hiding behind a big rock, calling to her that she couldn’t find her. Many huge rounded rocks were in the bush. Gus followed carefully.

  The trees thinned out at the fringe of the bush and the berry patch. No one else was berry picking. Mrs. Walton quickly started to work. The berries were black and heavy and fell with a soft little thud in the bottom of the pail. Gus, his side straight against a tree, watched her working, filling the small box, then dumping it into the pail close to her right leg. He watched until the pail was nearly three-quarters full. The little girl at the bush to the left was filling her box slowly and eating the berries. Gus dropped his coat and stepped from behind a tree, leaning his weight back off his step on the twigs. He thought he wanted to grab the kid, but sneaked up behind Mrs. Walton, her shoulder dipping up and down with the picking. He was behind her, flinging his arms around her waist, pulling back heavily. The berries sprayed from the box.

  “You got to let me have the kid,” he said.

  She squealed, frightened at first, but seeing and knowing him, she got mad. “Let me go, Gus Rapp, you big fool.

  Just you wait,” she said.

  Gus said nothing and stopped thinking. He tried to trip and throw her down but she dropped to her knees, gripping hard at his belt and yelling to the girl to run. He banged her on the mouth and leaned forward and down heavily on her shoulders. The kid got as far as a big rock and stood screeching at him.

  “You damn kid, shut up,” he yelled.

  The woman kicked and scratched so he flopped down, smothering her, jerking her hands from his belt, getting her between his legs. She yelled, “Anna, Anna,” but one big hand was on her throat, squeezing. Her clothes ripped and she rolled, but he held, hard pressing, bending her stiff back until the kid ran up and got hold of his ankle just above the thick boot, pulling; his arm swung free and caught the kid by the throat, slamming her down hard, choking her. He tugged and the woman’s sweater came away. Twisting around and holding her arm, he grunted, “You got to lie there,” three times. His legs were thick and heavy and she got weaker. His arms were hard and heavy but she bit deep into his forearm and he hollered, “God damn it.” He could hardly hold on. She was a big strong woman and the kid was yelling. Snarling, he jerked loose, spinning around and pulling at his gun. He felt crazy and didn’t know why he was doing it. He jumped up shooting, three shots; and one grazed her forehead, gashing her cheek, and one went into a log. Then he ran at the kid to stop her yelling, taking her by the neck. Mrs. Walton said not very loud, “Don’t kill my little girl,” so he shot at the woman to kill, but missed.

  The kid got up and started to run. Gus took a jump at the woman, knocking her over easily, but didn’t know what he wanted. He couldn’t help thinking what his boss, Sid Walton, would do about it. Mrs. Walton got up slowly. He was scared, and said, “You better lie there.” Her skirt was torn and blood was on her leg. He wanted to run away. She zigzagged through the trees after her girl, pushing the hair out of her eyes and crying softly as she ran. Gus hesitated, watching her, then ran the other way, through the bush away from the town.

  He ran and stumbled through the bush, quite sober and scared, his heart pounding heavily as he banged into little trees, his shaky legs hardly knowing where to go. He wanted to get through the bush to the bay and along the road to the rifle ranges where he could maybe swipe a boat. After running until he was tired, he stopped suddenly and thought it was no use trying. He looked around the bush and down to the bay. Between him and the lakeshore road was a line of trees, branches and tops covered with thick old vines that kids used for tree tag. He climbed a tree to the vines, his feet slashing through green shoots, but the thick, springy wood held him. He twined the vines round his legs, resting most of his weight on a branch near the top. The branch swayed and he sweated and cursed and shivered, waiting for the dark. He looked through the leaves up the road and away over the town at the orange sky on the blue mountains, and at the still waters of the bay and the fading skyline.

  It got dark and no one came near the tree. He felt better but very stiff and still shaky. It would fool everybody to go back to the town, he muttered. He slid down the vines and started running, his feet thudding steadily, his breath whistling.

  Where the road went back from the shoreline he left it, going down by the waterworks and back of Harvey’s fishing-station. The big shadow of the wooded picnic park was ahead and he was glad to go because they’d think it a silly place to look. The streetlights seemed bright and gave him a funny feeling over his stomach. Maybe he should have gone looking for a boxcar down at the station, but he ran on to the lumberyard. There was no moon and he was sure the lumber was piled too high. He went through the lumberyard and over to the elevator. The Mississippi, with a cargo of grain, was docked. He crawled along the pier but boards were rotten farther out and missing in places. The moon came out and the lapping water under
neath the pier scared him so much he lay flat on his belly, breathing drunkenly, trying to pray. “Holy Mary, Holy Mary, Holy Mary, you can do it. I used to go to church, I used to go with the old lady.” A light was lit on the Mississippi and then two more. A pain was in his side but he went slinking back along the pier and out again to the lakeshore road. It was a shame having to pass his own house, and he thought of the old man sleeping in there.

  Gus was surprised to feel hungry. He went along the side entrance of a house with a big veranda and crept into the garden where he pulled carrots and onions, stuffing them into his pockets. The back door opened and in the light he hugged the ground and shivered and puked and lay very still. But the door closed.

  He took the road again, running along trying to eat the carrot, and puffing hard. The carrot had a bad taste. He wanted to get around the town and up to the hills. A night bird screeched and his teeth chattered so much he had to drop the carrot. He slowed to a walk.

  At a bend in the road near Bell’s grocery store he saw a shadow humped at the foot of a lamppost and the hump became a man getting up from the gutter. Two other men came at him and Gus took three jumps forward. “Oh, I thought you was a bear,” he said. He didn’t have a chance to run. One of the men was Walton with his big hands, and John Woods got ready to slug him, but he slumped loosely in their arms. He said hoarsely, “I don’t want to die, Mr. Walton. Please, Mr. Walton, for Christ sake.” Sid put his hand over Gus’s mouth and squeezed until he spluttered and shut up. “Truss the skunk up, boys,” he said. They bound his hands and put three ropes around his waist and shoulders, the ropes five feet long, a man at the end of each rope. They twisted the ropes around Gus and the lamppost while Joel Hurst went in the grocery store to phone for the police car. Gus couldn’t cry, he was so scared of Walton. There was a gray streak of light in the sky across the bay.

  The Bells and their four kids came out half dressed, forming a circle around Gus. Lights appeared in the windows of other houses. People were hearing that Gus was caught. Leaning his weight forward on the ropes, he stared hard at the bat that swooped and darted around the light overhead. The police car came along and they had no trouble with him. As Gus got in, the kids yelled and threw stones and sticks at him.

  Sister Bernadette

  When Sister Bernadette, who had charge of the maternity ward in the hospital, wasn’t rebuking a nurse in training for some petty fault, she was having a sharp disagreement with a doctor. She was a tall woman with a pale face; she looked very handsome in her starched white head-piece. To her, the notion that her nun’s habit might be protecting her from sharp retorts from the nurses was intolerable. But she simply couldn’t hold a grudge against anybody, and if she had a tiff with a nurse she would wait till she saw the girl passing in the corridor and say innocently, “I hear you’re offended with me,” as she offered the warmest, jolliest smile. When young nurses in training, who were having a bit of idle gossip, saw the sister’s tall, gaunt form, so formidable in the black robes, coming toward them they often felt like a lot of half-guilty schoolgirls as they smiled good-naturedly. Of course Sister Bernadette had sympathy for all the women who were suffering and bearing children and she was like a mother to them, but it was the small things in the ward that were most important to her. If she saw a man in the corridor carrying a parcel carefully, she would watch him go into a patient’s room, wait till he had departed, then rush into the room and look around to try and guess at once what might have been in the parcel. It was not hard for her to guess correctly, for she seemed to know every object in each private room. All the mothers liked her but were a bit afraid of her. Sometimes forgetting that women were paying expensive doctors to look after them, she would give her own instructions and insist they be carried out completely, as if she knew more about the patients than the doctors did. There was a Doctor Mallory, a short dark fellow with a broad face, a shifting, far-away expression in his eyes, and a kind of warm, earthy tenderness in his manner, who often quarreled bitterly with Sister Bernadette because she ordered a patient of his to take a medicine he had not recommended. He did not know that Sister Bernadette loved him for quarrelling openly with her instead of being just cuttingly polite because she was a nun.

  One day Doctor Mallory, looking very worried, waited in the corridor, watching Sister Bernadette’s tall form with the dark robes coming toward him. When he looked into her face he couldn’t help smiling, there was so much fresh, girlish contentment in her expression. But this time he spoke with a certain diffidence as he said, “Sister, I’d like to talk with you a minute.”

  “Please do, Doctor,” she said. “You’re not offended again, surely?”

  “Oh no, not this time,” he said, smiling warmly. “I wanted to tell you about a patient of mine I’d like to bring to the hospital to have her baby.”

  “Now, don’t tell me you’re so afraid of me you have to ask my permission to bring a patient here?” she said, laughing.

  “Not at all. Only this girl doesn’t want to come. She’s ashamed. She’s of a good family. I know all about her. But she’s not married and won’t come here under her own name. I said I’d speak to you and you’d fix it up, Sister. Won’t you?”

  Sister Bernadette frowned. The doctor was smiling at her, as if he couldn’t be fooled by a harsh refusal. It gave her pleasure to think that he was so sure of her sympathetic nature. But she said sharply, “It’s against the rules to register anybody under a false name, you know that, Doctor.”

  “I know it, that’s why I wanted to speak to you, Sister.”

  With ridiculous sternness Sister Bernadette said, “What do I care? Do what you want to do. Register the woman as Mrs. Macsorley, or anything else, it’s all the same to me,” and she turned and walked away as though greatly offended. The doctor, chuckling, watched her hurrying along the corridor without looking back.

  Sister Bernadette could hardly wait to see Doctor Mallory’s new patient. Five minutes after the woman was brought to the hospital, Sister Bernadette was in the room looking at her with eager curiosity and speaking in a soft reassuring voice. The patient was only a girl with big scared blue eyes and fluffy blond hair whose confidence had been completely destroyed by her predicament. Sister Bernadette was desperately afraid that the young girl, who had been such a sinner and who was now suffering and disgraced, would be afraid of a woman like herself, a nun, who had given her life entirely to God. For some reason she wanted this scared girl to love her. That night, while the baby was being born, Sister Bernadette was in the corridor many times.

  During the two weeks the girl remained at the hospital she was treated with a special attention by the nurses who thought she was an old friend of Sister Bernadette. No one suspected that Mrs. Macsorley wasn’t married. Sister Bernadette got a good deal of pleasure realizing that she and the doctor were the only ones who shared the secret. Every morning she paid a visit to Mrs. Macsorley’s room talking about everything on earth, praised the baby, and tried to make the girl feel at home by strutting about like a blunt, good-natured farm woman. The fair-haired, blue-eyed girl, who was really a self-possessed, competent person, was so impressed by the sister’s frank, good-natured simplicity, she sent word out to the baby’s father that there was no reason why he shouldn’t come to see her.

  When Sister Bernadette was introduced to the father, a well-dressed soft-spoken, tall man, she shook hands warmly, called him Mr. Macsorley and showed the baby to him. His embarrassment disappeared at once. He felt so much at ease with Sister Bernadette during that first visit that he decided to come every day at noontime. At first Sister Bernadette was delighted by the whole affair; it seemed so much like the kind of thing that was always going on in her ward, making her world seem so rich with experience that she didn’t care whether she ever went outside the hospital. But when she heard that the girl’s lover was a married man, it bothered her to see that he was still so attentive. Though she honestly liked the man and liked the girl too, she said to Doctor Mallory with awk
ward sincerity, “I don’t like to see that man coming to see the girl so much. Evidently they’re still in love.”

  “Does he come often?”

  “Every day. And they are both so sure of themselves.”

  “It isn’t very nice. It isn’t fair to you,” the doctor said.

  “No, no, I don’t mean that,” Sister Bernadette said. “But you know that man is married and has two children. I just mean that the girl at least ought to respect his wife and children and not let him be so devoted to her.” Then Sister Bernadette began to feel self-conscious as though the doctor was misunderstanding her. “Don’t misinterpret me,” she said at once. “The girl can run around with single men as much as she likes and come here as often as she likes as far as I’m concerned . . .”

  “I’ll tell them about it,” the doctor said.

  “No. Please don’t. You’d better not say anything,” she said.

  Then it was time for Mrs. Macsorley to leave the hospital. Doctor Mallory came to Sister Bernadette and explained that he, himself, was going to find someone to adopt the baby. Coaxing and pleading, he asked if it wouldn’t be all right to leave the baby in the hospital nursery for two days at the most.

  Such a request didn’t actually worry Sister Bernadette, but she snapped at the doctor, “It’s absolutely against the rules of the hospital to leave a baby who’s in good health in that nursery after the mother has gone.” In the brief argument that followed she was short-and hot-tempered, and in the end she said, “All right, have your way, but only for one day, mind.”

  She didn’t think it necessary to worry till the baby had been left in the nursery for a week. Doctor Mallory was trying very hard to get someone to adopt the baby girl. Sister Bernadette began to think that the child would remain in her nursery till she, herself, did something about it. Every time she looked at the brown-eyed baby she was reminded that she had done wrong in letting the mother register at the hospital under another name. After all, it was just vanity, her eagerness to have the doctor believe her a good-natured person, that was not causing trouble. Perhaps she ought to reveal the whole matter to the Mother Superior, she thought. In her prayers in the morning and in her evening prayers she asked that someone be found who would take the baby at once.