The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three

by Morley Callaghan

Smiling calmly, she said, “You’ve been very friendly, Red, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t explain to you. I haven’t seen my husband for eight years, what do you think of that?”

  “Where in the world is he?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds a little funny, doesn’t it. Yet I love my husband. I love him more than anyone else. I love all my thoughts of him and the clear bright picture I always have of him in my mind.”

  Her blue eyes were moist, and she began to tell him that her husband had gone away a few months after they married. “I’ll show you a picture of him,” she said, and got up to look into a bureau drawer. Then she showed him a small picture of a young man with remarkable eyes and a sneering lip. He was in uniform. “We were married when he came back from the war. We only lived together six months,” she said.

  “He’s a nice-looking guy all right,” Henry said.

  “Red, if I tell you something will you promise never to tell . . . because I like you so much.”

  “Sure, I promise. Honest to God.”

  “Weren’t you wondering why he went away?”

  “I didn’t like to ask.”

  “He was going to be arrested for embezzlement. He stole money, quite a bit I think. He left me a note saying that no one would ever bother me about it and someday he’d pay back every cent and come back. Of course he will come back . . . if he can. That was eight years ago.”

  “And you haven’t heard from him?”

  “No. But I believe there’s a good reason for it. I prefer to think that,” she said, looking at him steadily.

  “You won’t mind me saying that it sounds just a bit too simple?”

  “I don’t mind what you say. But that’s how I think about it.”

  They sat on the old-fashioned sofa. Her forehead was puckered into a frown, though she smiled confidently as she told him how she had gone once to Detroit and once to Chicago to attempt to identify the body of a man who was reported to have come from this city, and who, from the brief description, might have been her husband. “I really knew before I set out each time that it would not be Jack but I felt I ought to go,” she said. A sudden admiration and sympathy prompted Henry to put his arm around her shoulder, and they were silent.

  “How old are you?” he said suddenly.

  “About forty.”

  “Honestly, you look about thirty.”

  “I know. It makes me quite happy to know it. It’s sweet of you to remind me. Listen, Red, kiss me. That’s it. Now kiss me once again the same way. Now promise me you’ll never kiss me except like that and whenever I ask you to, then we can go on being good friends and see a lot of each other.”

  When he left her, he walked slowly to the house where he roomed, and felt intensely alive and good humored. It was such a fine clear starlit evening in the late spring. The leaves were much thicker in the chestnut trees. The warm summer nights were coming on.

  Often, in the late evening, he walked home with Irene from the store. She told him she had had many jobs and liked the newsstand because so many people talked to her. The proprietor, a married man with eight children, never bothered her. One evening Henry gave her three bottles of red wine and some Saint André cheese, and they had a happy evening together, though her kisses were guarded and carefully given. That evening, she showed him the short note her husband had left before he went away, written in a round bold hand. By this time it seemed that he had known her husband a long time. Henry was sure he would recognize him if he came walking into the room.

  His feeling for her had become so complicated that he began to make inquiries about her husband, who had worked in the city eight years ago as a credit manager for a large publishing firm. There was no difficulty about a few simple inquiries at police headquarters, where, as a lawyer, he had access to the records. Then he talked to the manager of the publishing firm who said quite definitely that the man had never stolen anything that he could have gotten arrested for, and they didn’t know why he had left so suddenly. The police department hadn’t a thing against him either. “Probably restless after the war,” the manager said. “Maybe there was another woman, but he wanted to leave it open for himself to come back.”

  Henry did not tell Irene he had made any inquiries about her husband. In the afternoon, when he had finished the last of the examinations and was feeling free and lighthearted he hurried over to the store to explain the matter, and then, looking at her, knew that he could not tell her.

  “What is bothering you now?” she said.

  “Nothing at all. Nothing,” he said, “I think I’m a bit of a fool.”

  Henry remained in the city another week. Whenever he could, he kissed her eagerly, and she laughed and was charming, thinking he was becoming more ardent because he was going away. At the end of the week, when he went into the cigar store, Irene was not there. The Greek proprietor, who looked very unhappy, said she had told him to tell Henry to come and see her as soon as he could.

  Henry hurried to her home and found her sitting at the front window crying and holding the morning newspaper in her hand. She jumped up quickly, ran to Henry and, trembling nervously, showed him a paragraph about a man who had been killed by an automobile the night before, and who had died on the way to the hospital. The ambulance attendant had heard him mutter that his name was “Ayers,” “Airth,” “Airus,” or a name like that. The man had been drunk but had whispered that he had a wife in the city.

  “It’s my husband all right. It’s Jack,” she said. “What will I do? That’s a description of him.” She was holding her hands together and shaking her head from side to side.

  “We’ll go right down to the morgue,” Henry said. “I’ll get a taxi.” They sat very close together as she cried softly, “After all these years, after all these years.”

  At the morgue the officials agreed to show her the body. They asked Henry if he would care to see a notebook found in the dead man’s coat. Henry stood beside Irene, looking at the body on the slab, and then he examined the entries in the notebook while Irene peered at the dead man’s drooping mouth, the hollow cheeks and the partially bald head. Twice she shook her head. She was trembling with excitement and yet dazed; she hardly seemed to see anything as she rubbed her eyes, and then she began to cry quietly while Henry lowered his head, looking again at the notebook, and he saw that the entries written in a round bold hand were a record of bets placed on horses.

  Suddenly she cried out, “That’s not Jack. That couldn’t be Jack. Why, we were about the same age. He’s years older than me, this man.”

  “Do you want to see this notebook? There’s no name in it,” Henry said.

  “Why would I want to see it?” she said, moving toward the door. “Don’t you think I know my husband? I could tell him any place in the world.”

  They walked down the stone steps from the morgue as she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and tried to laugh happily. “Thank God this wasn’t Jack,” she said. “Please don’t look so sober, Red. I feel grand.” But her face was white. He was frowning. “I’m definitely going away at the end of the week, you know,” he said.

  “I’ll miss you terribly, Red,” she said. “How will I ever get along? You’ve been such a sweetheart.”

  She kissed him. He watched her hurry across the wide pavement. A puff of wind held back her open coat showing a flash of the green dress. It was nearly noon and the sun was shining brilliantly.

  A Pair of Long Pants

  For a long time Tony Powers sat in his bedroom, looking at a pair of long pants his brother had discarded. At last he decided to put them on. They were too long for him, so he turned them up at the cuff. The coat that went with the suit was also far too big, but he knew he could carry it under his arm the way the big fellows in town did on hot days. All he needed now was his father’s old felt hat that was hanging on the hall rack. He got the hat, tilted it at a bold angle over his right eye, and went out.

  On the way up to the main street in town, the highway along wh
ich all traffic passed on the way to the city, Tony felt a little like a stranger, because the long pants made him feel he was walking in a new world; and when he stood in the bright late afternoon sunlight looking at the big red truck parked in front of White’s tobacco store, it was easy for him to imagine he had just stepped down from the truck to rest a moment, and soon would be on his way again through the other little towns and the country to the city.

  A big fair ruddy-faced fellow in a brown shirt came out of the cigar store tucking a package of cigarettes in his shirt pocket; and when he saw Tony looking at the truck, he said: “Going my way, Shorty?”

  “You going west?” Tony said, making his voice sound brisk.

  “Twenty miles, if that’ll help. Come on,” the truck driver said.

  It had happened so easily that Tony didn’t feel shy at all when he got up on the seat. Taking one of the cigarettes the driver offered him, he began to feel big with excitement. As he looked along the familiar main street, he felt the elation of suddenly being free. With the truck going along a little faster, the driver was asking, “How old are you, Shorty?”

  “Eighteen,” Tony lied.

  “They don’t grow very big in your neck of the woods, eh?”

  “My father was just a little guy. He’s no bigger than I am,” Tony said. The ease with which he had uttered this bold lie gave him courage. “Yeah, we’re all little guys in our family,” he said. “But the trouble is we get fatter later on.” As they passed beyond the town and climbed the hill they could see the blue lake to the left and the little town ahead in the mist at the end of the lake. Tony went on talking eagerly. “My brother’s five years older than I am, and he’s not as tall as me. And the funny part of it is, our mother’s a big woman, maybe nearly five foot ten. What do you make of that?” He was thinking it was such a beautiful country seen like this, the casual glance of an independent and unrestricted man who could stop if he wanted to at any likely looking spot, or keep on going for miles beyond.

  “They call me Mac . . . How about a beer at the next hotel?” the driver said.

  “Tony’s my name; but I haven’t got any money with me.”

  “If you’d like a beer, I’ll stand you one.”

  “OK. There’s nothing I’d like better,” Tony said.

  But when they were in the next town and crossing the road to the hotel with Tony lagging behind a little, they saw that a group of men, mainly town idlers, were blocking the way to the hotel entrance. Mac simply elbowed his way through, but they closed in behind him, and Tony was left a little scared, feeling sure if he pushed one of them would give him a boot in the pants and tell him to go home, and leave him hovering like a scared kid on the fringe of the crowd. He had a sudden eagerness to retreat to the security of his own boy’s world. But he said gruffly in the voice Mac had used: “All right, guys.” Without noticing, they let him pass among them.

  He was beaming with delight when he swaggered over to the table where Mac had already ordered two beers, for the way the men at the door had stepped aside had made him feel there was surely something magical in his long pants, and that while he wore them, he would never be pushed around again. Mac raised his glass. “Here’s mud in your eye, Tony,” he said; and Tony, drinking slowly with him, tasted beer for the first time. It lay fresh and cool in his stomach. Feeling flushed and reckless, he looked around at the others who were drinking there, and it no longer seemed like a mean and gloomy drinking room. The shaft of sunlight from the window was streaming on what seemed suddenly the most beautiful sight in the world: men sitting together in all contentment while they drank and smoked and laughed, and the room was filled with murmur of their animated voices. Tony wanted to boast, and he began: “You know where I’m going?”

  “As far as the city, I thought you said.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s too bad I’m only going as far as the next town, because I’d like to have you stick with me.”

  “There’s nothing I’d like better than sticking with you; but I’ve got to get down to the racetrack.”

  “Say, kid, just a minute, let me guess,” Mac said, his face full of delight. “Maybe you’re a jockey. It that right?”

  “That’s about it. My father was a jockey, but he’s too heavy now, so he’s a trainer. He’s taught me nearly all he ever knew.”

  “Lord, I might have known a little guy like you’d be a jockey. I guess you love it. I’d give my soul to be something like that instead of riding that old red truck.”

  “Of course I just got started,” Tony said, and then he added: “I sort of liked riding in that big red truck.”

  They left the hotel, and when they were crossing the road, the truck driver did not go on ahead this time, but walked respectfully beside Tony as he talked eagerly about a system he had figured out for beating the bookies. “You know this horse Beau Geste?” he asked.

  “It’s a mighty good animal,” Tony said solemnly.

  “A good animal is right, I suppose,” Mac said. “But no one can tell what it’s going to do. They must be shooting it up to the eyes with dope. Such an animal!” As he used the word “animal,” he cocked his head on one side, trying to use it as Tony had used it, so it would have that mysterious professional connotation. “Say, let’s have a cup of coffee in this joint down the street a bit, and we’ll talk about that animal,” he said, pointing to a little restaurant that was freshly painted in green. “I got a dame in there that’s nuts about me.”

  While they sat at the counter in the restaurant, a plump, dark-haired girl of about nineteen years waited on them, and she whispered to the truck driver: “I was thinking it was time for you to show up, Mac.” With a sly smile she looked at Tony, and then she put her elbows down on the counter, leaning close to Mac, and began to whisper in a hesitant, earnest manner. Tony, knowing that she didn’t want him to listen, turned his head away. While the mysterious, important, hesitant whispering went on, he felt terribly shy; for he knew that the whispering was becoming a reluctant promise.

  Then the girl, straightening up, said suddenly: “Who’s the kid with you, Mac?”

  “He’s a jockey. Didn’t you notice his size?”

  “Big or small, he’s a nice-looking kid, eh?”

  “So he is,” Mac said, getting up to go back to the men’s room.

  The dark girl kept staring at Tony and smiling, and when he looked up at her boldly, her gray eyes seemed to grow wise and beyond all his experience in a terrifying way. As she bent over him, bringing her thick black hair, her perfume, the smell of her skin close to him, the strong beating of his heart rose into his throat.

  “You come this way often, Mr. Jockey Boy?” she said.

  “Not often.”

  “How old did you say you were?”

  “Eighteen,” he said, his face burning.

  “You don’t look no more than fourteen at the most to me. Kind of young for a jockey, I’d say.”

  “My brother’s a jockey down at the track. I exercise the horses. Maybe I’ll be in the saddle next year.”

  “You’re a sweet-looking kid. Come in again when you pass this way.” When she smiled and whispered, “I kind of wish you were eighteen,” he flushed again.

  But when he was with Mac and when they were beyond the town and the road was steadily downhill through wooded valleys and farmland with the sky red and the sun going down, he was thinking he was under a spell that scared and exalted him, some magic that made this secret ecstasy free to him.

  “Do you know her very well?” he said shyly.

  “The dame back in the joint? Didn’t I tell you she was crazy about me?”

  “She looked pretty hot to me.”

  “She’s a willing kid, but they got to be more than willing to make the grade in my league. She’s a little weak on class. She can’t hold a candle to the baby I’ve got in the city,” Mac said.

  The elation in Tony as he listened to Mac talking about his girl in the city became a restless i
ntoxication; his head was full of whispering and the flash of soft white faces.

  “What’re you dreaming about, Shorty?” Mac asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Aren’t you feeling good?”

  “I feel swell. I don’t know why.”

  “Listen, Shorty: Do you ever get tipped off in advance if anything’s going to be pulled off around a track – like a sure thing in a race?”

  “Oh, sure. I hear that stuff all the time. My old man’s a guy it would be worth a lot of money for you to know.” But Tony felt a little scared when he said this, because his father was really a respectable doctor back there in the town.

  When they were passing through the next village, which was only a short line of stores, a post office and two service stations, three boys of Tony’s age chased after the truck to hang on behind.

  “Chase those kids, pal,” Mac said. “Can you see them?”

  Tony yelled back at the kids, “Go on, beat it,” and he enjoyed the scared expressions on their faces as they slowed down and ran over to the curb. Then one who was bolder than the others, a short curly-haired kid, ran after the truck and hung on again, his face full of mockery as Tony shouted back at him: “Get off, you little squirt or I’ll pin your ears back for you.” It felt pretty fine to be sitting in the truck in comfort and scaring the kids with stern words. But the boy, who jumped off as Tony yelled, saw that the truck wasn’t actually going to stop, and he jumped on again.

  “I’ve the same trouble with kids in nearly all the towns,” Mac grumbled. “I haven’t got time to be stopping the truck every ten minutes.”

  “Kids like that get to be pretty much of a nuisance,” Tony agreed. “Watch me fix this one.”

  Opening the door, he put one foot down on the running-board, and just as the kid leaped at the truck, he swung his body out as if he were jumping off, and his face was as fierce and cruel as he could make it. The frightened kid, hesitating as he jumped, missed the back of the truck and screamed and rolled on the road.

  They stopped the truck and ran back, and when Mac lifted the kid up, they saw that blood was running from a scrape over his eye, and his body hung limp. They put him down on the grass at the side of the road, and the other kids, running up, huddled around.