The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Two

by Morley Callaghan

  “The train didn’t stop,” she said abruptly.

  He looked up quickly and said: “It never does.”

  “It should have stopped. I was sure it was going to stop.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t want to go any place, but I expected the train to stop.”

  “Sorry, that one never stops. Won’t be one that stops for three hours.” He looked at her curiously and bending over his instruments added sarcastically: “Come around in the morning; a lot of them stop then.”

  She put her hands on her hips, ready to answer him sharply, but became confused and walked back to the waiting room and picked up her coat. She sat on the bench, her head hanging to one side. Idly she laid the coat across her knees, stroking the cloth with the palm of her hand and could not think of anything. She caressed the cloth. Her stockings and underwear felt damp from perspiration.

  She muttered: “I’ve been a bad, bad woman.” The room was so quiet she could hear faintly the click of the telegraph instruments. She had been thinking only of finding Bill, but knew of no place to look and found it easier at the moment to think of herself. He had needed attention, and she had let things get to a point where she had laughed at him, and had got so mean she couldn’t stand him touching her. Now she knew if she could only find him she could make a simple explanation and they both would be very happy. Listening eagerly, she got up, still believing everything that she might have done would be forgiven if she could talk to him. He had gone away and was hiding from her but if she found him before he talked to anyone else he would go home with her.

  Slowly she walked away from the station toward the shipyard. The road from the station curves up to Pine Street and Pine runs down to the dock. The yard beams were dark across the sky. The steady wash of waves against the dock and along the beach she heard before she got to the pier. All along the shore for miles the waves broke and lapped the sand. The wash of waves was too monotonous a sound and she put her hands over her ears. A light was in the timekeeper’s office; the night watchman, Mr. Gilchrist, would be there, but she was afraid to question him, because she knew him, and he would tell his wife she had been wandering around the docks at midnight looking for her husband. In the shadow of the fence she stopped, looking out along the pier past the tall elevator, all the way out to the end, and beyond to the stars in the sky. “I don’t need to go out there,” she thought. “I could see him from here, if he was out there.” Sometimes he walked late at night out to the end of the pier and sat there listening to the lapping water, having his own fine thoughts. Leaning against the fence, she was certain he wasn’t out there tonight, so she rested, finding words and making sentences to use when she found him, sentences that would never hold Pete’s name, for Bill would understand, by the way she held him, he was the only man in the world who could ever interest her.

  She heard someone moving in the yard on the other side of the fence and, frightened, moved away, taking short, rapid steps. No longer could she pretend she was talking to Bill, as she hurried, aimlessly going along the streets, stopping whenever she heard a footfall. She met no one. She was tired, but determined not to go back to the house.

  As far west as the Catholic church she remembered she ought to be avoiding Bill, for she was afraid of him and had forgotten how he had been acting the last month. On her father’s farm she would be much happier. Main Street was around the curve, and brighter lights. The road crossed Main Street and went north far beyond the town limits to the rural routes and her father’s place, three hours’ walk away. Beyond Main Street, and walking slower, she was no longer tired.

  Some good houses were in this section of the town, new brick homes with well-kept lawns. Farther on, where two streets crossed, was a new cement bridge. She sat on the bridge to rest her feet. The street was dark and quiet, but the moon shone on the cement bridge. She rested peacefully a moment, then took off her shoes, rubbing the soles of her feet, looking back furtively along the road. Someone might be following her, and she would have to turn back and go home. The soles of her feet no longer ached, and she walked with an easier stride. Houses along the road were fewer now and smaller. The fields were bigger and in patches of light in the shadow she saw the shapes of cows stretched out on the grass. Some cows stood motionless in the field. The last house was at the beginning of the dirt road. She walked on the footpath close to a barbed-wire fence.

  Away from the town it was much lighter; the sky seemed clearer, and the air warmer. The September moon was large and round, and she saw farmhouses back a way from the road. Stooping, she brushed her hand in the cool, moist grass. A dog howled near a farmhouse. She was not frightened. Walking steadily in the dark on the footpath, she began to sympathize with herself, for she hardly believed that Pete had been in the house or that Bill had gone running away. She sympathized with her life of the last few months, and knew she might have left him long ago, for only a good but foolish woman would have put up with him so long.

  Her thoughts remained clear, though her legs got very tired. For a few minutes she sat down on a flat rock near the path. Her hips ached when she moved, and her whole body was heavy. Her eyelids were heavy. Shaking her head to keep awake, she got up and went on walking, concentrating on moving her legs, steadily, evenly. But she stumbled and knew her eyes had closed while walking.

  The road dipped down across a small stream and her eyes, accustomed to darkness, made out shapes of low, rounded hills covered with spruce trees. The next mile would be through low hills and clumps of bushes. Huge, smooth rocks were close to the road. Where the bushes grew close to the road were many stumps, small rocks, and shadows. She looked directly ahead, feeling that she was watching one stump out of the corner of her eye. In the moonlight the shadow seemed to move slowly; she stopped suddenly, peering at the stump, thinking it was a man humped down, or a bear; then began to run forward, her thoughts coming swiftly. Last spring Joe Boyle, driving his automobile down from his farm one night, had bumped into something, and it turned out that he had killed a bear. Bears hadn’t been seen in this section of the country for years, though farther east, around the bay, and beyond Wiarton, a man had killed fourteen last winter. She stumbled on the path but kept on going, though hardly able to breathe. The country had flattened out, but ahead were fields on gentle slopes. There was more moonlight. She walked slower, breathing easier.

  She could go no farther. She had to lie down. The farmland now sloped upward. Over the zigzag fence was a cornfield, and at the slope of a hill three jack pines. The pines were too isolated on the curve of the hill, too gaunt against the skyline, and she would have been uneasy, she knew, sleeping under them. She climbed over the wooden fence, her skirt catching on a nail and holding, though she attempted to lift it carefully. She tugged until it tore loose.

  A few feet away from the fence, between two rows of corn, she spread her coat. There had been no rain all week and the ground was not damp. Lying down slowly, she stretched her legs, waited, expecting to be frightened. Leaves of corn stirred and rustled, and she listened to small sounds, but was not scared. The corn was clean and friendly. The corn grew in backyards of many houses on the streets in the town. Her fingers reached out and held loosely to a stalk. Drowsily she realized that the night air was good and the smell of the cornfield fresh and pleasant. Heavy-eyed, she tried to look up at the stars and wished vaguely someone was with her to make love to her. Pete had wanted to go fishing up the lakes and sleep out-of-doors. They would fish in the stream farther east. Sometimes they might go up streams at night, fishing for suckers, Pete walking a few paces ahead of her, the suckers in the streams banging against her legs. But it was too late in the year for good suckers, she remembered. In the spring, when the water was colder, they were fresh and firm, but later on the water got warm and they became wormy and no good for eating. She would let Pete do the fishing for trout and follow him all day, cooking his meals and they would lie down together in the evenings, and hear the night birds. Th
e nights would be warm; she would stretch out with few clothes on.

  A night bird in the jack pines screeched. She shivered a little and tried to find pleasant thoughts again before going to sleep. She opened her eyes a last time and saw cornstalks, and moved her body slightly to one side, off a pebble, then went to sleep.

  It was early when she woke up. The sun was low. Tips of white corn cobs gleamed through green pods. Golden tassels brushed against her face as she got up on her knees and peered through the stalks at the road. She raised her head to look for the farmhouse, evidently on the other slope of the hills. Stiff and tired, she crawled toward the fence, not wanting to be seen. Standing up, to get over the fence, she discovered a bad pain in her hip. Strands of hair fell on her shoulder. She was anxious to get over the fence.

  On the road she walked slowly, limping a little. The road reached the top of the slope and she looked far ahead at the hills and farms on the slopes. To the left the hills farther away were very blue in the early morning, but hills ahead were tinted brown and green. Years ago her father, or the hired man, had driven her from high school in the buggy, and she had loved watching the blue hills losing their color as they got closer. The pain in her hip, as she walked, relaxed, and her body lost its stiffness. A stream trickled under logs at the side of the road. She bent down to wash her face and hands, the water on her face refreshing her. When she knelt down first she had felt like crying; straightening up, she was prepared to go on walking, no longer sorry for herself. It was time to think of talking to her mother and father. Her father would be out in the fields. Her mother would talk very rapidly, worrying while asking questions.

  The sun was halfway up when she reached the concession route leading to her father’s farm. She swung open the long wooden gate and, though stiff, walked briskly all the way up to the house, as someone might be watching from the window.

  She opened the kitchen door and her mother, preserving fruit, said: “Is that you, Flora; what made you come in the morning?” Her mother was a small woman with a wiry body and a tired, lined face. The kitchen smelt of stewed raspberries. Flora sat down and told her mother how Bill had been acting queerly, and how last night he had run out of the house and she had been scared to stay there alone.

  8

  Two days after her return to the farm her father drove into town to see Bill. Afterwards, he told Flora that he had been unable to find him and no one knew where he had gone. Her father believed, before going into town, that she had been foolish to leave her husband. When he came back he said it was best she had left him; strange talk was in town about his behavior the last month.

  In the early fall her father worked hard with the harvesting, and she helped her mother in the house. It was hard getting up so early in the morning. Her father and the hired man went out to the fields, when only light streaks of dawn were in the sky, and she fed the chickens. An hour later they had a heavy breakfast, too heavy for her, accustomed to a light meal at that hour. Later on the early morning air exhilarated her; with a bowl of chicken feed in her arm she stood, watching the light striking the hilltops, the valleys in shadow. The hills sloped gently, rounded and cultivated, but farther back the hills were higher, more rugged and wooded and blue in the morning. There were blue hills, farther back, only in the early morning. Her mother suggested that Flora should drive into town and do some shopping. Always she refused, surprising herself once by shuddering. Alone afterward, she was slightly ashamed that she had shuddered, giving an impression that meeting Bill, or even walking in town, would be too terrifying. But in time she got to believe that shuddering expressed the proper attitude of a badly abused woman. She had long talks with her mother, working together in the kitchen, and explained how Bill had sometimes shaken her till she had cried like a child. Her mother had always worked hard and had never had time to think of other women’s husbands, so she encouraged Flora to talk, and they agreed that if she had remained with Bill another day life would have been unbearable.

  For years she had known that her mother had peculiar faults, always secretive, evasive, telling white lies to her husband. After working with her for weeks Flora realized that her mother had always been afraid of her husband. He had forced her to become very guarded and careful in her way of living, and rarely gave her enough money for the house. He never gave her any spending money. Eagerly she explained to Flora that she kept a few pigs herself, fattened them, sold them, and kept the money. She called it her “pig money” and had a hiding place for it.

  Flora insisted that she could never live with Bill again.

  Bill’s mother came to the farm to have a talk with Flora. From the window Flora saw one of Jameson’s livery cars coming up the lane, the old lady sitting alone in the back seat, wearing a black bonnet with a flash of red silk, and black ribbons knotted in a bow under her chin. The day was cloudy and cool and it looked like rain. The driver opened the door and helped her out. Flora stood on the side-porch steps, waiting.

  Bill’s mother said determinedly: “I’d like to have a talk, Flora. Not here, but in the house.”

  “Come into the front room, Mrs. Lawson.”

  The man in the livery car took out his pipe and crossed his legs.

  They sat down in two wide mahogany rocking chairs on the thin, tan-colored carpet. “Where’s Bill?” the old woman said quickly.

  “I don’t know; really, I don’t; that is what I’d like to know.”

  “What was the matter between you, then?”

  “Nothing. He ran away, and he was ill-treating me and acting funny, that’s all.”

  “Bill never ill-treated anybody. There wasn’t a bad bone in his body.”

  “I don’t think you ought to contradict me.”

  “Hmmmmmm. It’s an odd thing his going away didn’t worry you more.”

  “It did. It worried and worried me till I couldn’t stand up straight.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “I say he was ill-treating me and acting like he had a wind in his head, and the Lord knows what he’s up to now.”

  The old lady sucked her lips, having trouble with her teeth. Her head was swaying; the lids of her eyes got red and moist. She whispered: “If you go traipsing around telling people Bill was bad to you and beat you, I’ll wring your neck.” She leaned forward, her jaws moving up and down, and Flora tilted back in the chair, eager to answer her sharply. The old lady’s eyes were bloodshot, her whole body trembled, and Flora suddenly felt scared and yelled, “Mother, come here,” and leaned far back in the chair.

  Her mother came into the room at once. Without asking a single question she said: “Now, now, Mrs. Lawson; that’ll about do, won’t it? That’ll be about all from you.” Bill’s mother glared at her, raised her hands abruptly, and began to cry. Rocking back and forth, crying and muttering: “To think I’d ever live to see the day when anybody’d say my Bill had a wind in his head.”

  She never expected to see Bill again, she said. Flora’s mother, talking quietly and gently, suggested many abuses Flora might have suffered, and hinted that if she remained with Bill she too might have been driven out of her mind. Mrs. Lawson, who was not interested in Flora, simply wanted to talk about Bill. Flora listened till it became embarrassing, sitting there saying nothing, and she left the room quietly. Bill’s mother never called on them again.

  The nights were long in October, and sometimes Flora wandered along the road long after it got dark. A declivity, a couchlike slope with dried grass, just back from the road, suggested to her a place where a girl might sit down with a lover. The hired man on her father’s farm was leather-skinned and tired, much older than she, and not interested in women. She accompanied her father into town in the Ford, hoping to see Pete Hastings on the main street. The night before the drive she lay awake in bed, imagining herself sitting in the car on Main Street, her father in a store making some purchases. Pete would come walking lazily along the street, see her, saunter over. Before her father came out of the store they could have two
minutes together and she could tell him about the quiet road near the farm after dark and the hollow in the slope with the dried grass. But the day they went into town it rained hard. In the morning the sky was clear, but at two o’clock in the afternoon, halfway to town, dark clouds passed over the sun, and it rained. She didn’t see Pete.

  Neighboring farm people, hearing her mother’s stories of Bill’s strange behavior, were sympathetic, treating her as a good woman who had suffered with fortitude. The Maloneys, on the next farm, who had been poor until two years ago, invited her to come over in the evening. No one ever knew how they became prosperous so suddenly, and got the new barn, electric rods on all the buildings, and three fine horses. Mr. Maloney’s wife had been dead for years and his housekeeper, a dark, thin woman with splendid legs, looked after him. Irene Maloney was Flora’s age, and her sister Katie three years younger and much prettier. Irene talked eagerly to Flora about her father’s hired man, who wanted her to go away and live in the city with him, but she was too lazy to leave the farm. She talked guardedly to Flora about Bill, hoping to surprise her into revealing something startling.

  Flora believed now that she had really suffered, so every Sunday she drove in to the Anglican church with her father and mother. She wore black on Sundays and shook her head sadly when anyone mentioned Bill’s name. After church town people stood on the sidewalk under the trees and farmers got into their cars at once, to be home in time for dinner. Flora never gossiped, but she knew people were watching her sympathetically, a woman in black who was unhappy and had been close to a great tragedy. After church one Sunday she saw Dolly Knox on the street and her father stopped the car. Dolly talked very rapidly, and Flora, embarrassed, said she would go and see her some afternoon, but did not ask her to come up to the farm.