The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three

by Morley Callaghan

  “Where’s his family?” Mac said.

  “They live down the road at the end house, but there’s nobody home,” a kid answered.

  “Hold his head on your knee, Shorty, and I’ll get some water,” Mac directed.

  As Tony held the boy’s head on his knees and wiped the blood away from his eye with his handkerchief and thought maybe the kid would die, he looked up in wonder at the faces of the boys and men grouped around him, because not one of the men offered to take his place. He wanted to get up and go away and cry softly and break the magic of the long pants that held him there with the boy’s head on his knee.

  “Is he hurt bad, Mister?” one of the kids asked timidly.

  He was like an older one they expected to reassure them; so he tried to say gruffly: “Take it easy, folks, and give him a little air, and he’ll be all right . . . Much obliged, folks.” Saying it like that gave him a sense of authority that made him feel much stronger.

  Mac came with the water, and soon the boy opened his eyes and said his knee was hurt. Mac began to knead into the flesh around the knee with his big strong fingers. Whenever the kid groaned, Mac whispered, “It’s all right, pal.” There seemed to be a marvelous tenderness in his fingers, and the most comforting smile on his face. Tony began to long to be able to touch the kid with Mac’s gentle assurance, and speak to him in that soft comforting way, for the kid was trying to smile at Mac.

  Mac gave the kid’s knee a couple of hard jerks and worked it up and down. Then he grinned at him and said: “You’ll be all right. I’ll carry you down to your house for good luck.”

  With the little crowd following, he carried the kid high on his shoulder down the road to the house and put him down on a couch in the front room; and when he was leaving, the kid, looking up at him with shy admiration, said: “Thanks, Mister, I’ll be all right.”

  Back on the truck, going along the road again, Tony kept looking at the side of Mac’s rugged face, wondering how it could be that Mac didn’t even seem to realize he had been very gentle with the boy. Tony began to wish that he too, some day, would do the same kind of thing in a way that would be so simple, natural and dignified that any kid who happened to be with him, as he was with Mac, would feel very humble.

  But they were coming to the place where the two highways intersected. Mac said: “Well, Shorty, if you’re going to the city, this looks like the place where we part.”

  Putting out his hand, Tony said shyly: “This is the place I guess . . . Well, so long, Mac.” They shook hands hearti-ly.

  “Listen Shorty: take my name, will you? I got an idea,” Mac said. Taking a stub of a pencil from the pocket in his brown shirt, he wrote on a piece of paper he tore from a notebook his name, Thomas McManus, with the address, and he handed the slip to Tony. “Here’s what I’m figuring,” he said. “Someday you might get wind of a sure thing around a track, and you might want a few dollars to play it with. You get in touch with me, and I’ll put up the bucks, and we’ll split. What do you say?”

  “OK. That’s a good idea,” Tony said. “I wish you were going with me.”

  Tony got off the truck, which soon gained speed as it turned and cut along the highway to the right through the fields. Tony stood there sadly, waiting for the truck to get out of sight, because he didn’t want Mac to look back and see him turn and start to head back home. The truck was becoming a dark speck against the last of the sunlight.

  Sighing, Tony started to walk back the way he had come; but before he had gone very far, he stopped and turned and again looked across the fields. He was hungry, but it was hard for him to pull himself away. Soon it would be dark. The mist was beginning to rise way over by the woods.

  He stood watching the mist rising up like a soft wave from the edge of the woods, and the sky behind the woods was still splashed with red. He began to feel excited, because he saw that the mist seemed to be rolling toward him close to the ground, like puffs of cannon fire floating among the trees. The sun dropped lower. Soon it would be hard to see; and after the barrage was laid down, the battle would begin that would free him. It was fine to think he was watching a world being won for him, a country over there where Mac still kept going in his truck, a world of horses and men, of soft-skinned girls whispering promises, of a fine bold authority of your own, and of things like the extraordinary gentleness in Mac that had awed him.

  The Consuming Fire

  All the little quarrels that Julia Watson, the gift-shop owner, had with her husband she blamed on his lovable childish impulsiveness and the fact he had got drunk and lost his job. She thought she understood how he felt because she was more worried about his job than he was, and his problems had become her problems. But when she heard he was seeing a little floozy named Eva Smith, she was sick for three days. Then, when he left her and wrote that he wanted a divorce, she felt like a dead woman.

  She wrote him and said, “Alec, please don’t be stubborn. You don’t need to feel ashamed. The little girl is only playing with your vanity. I know you do crazy impulsive things, but don’t let that little powder puff ruin your life.”

  He wrote and told her he was neither ashamed nor stubborn and didn’t want to be forgiven. Unbelieving and bewildered, she tried to realize that he had put his life outside her love.

  Yet she had such a loving nature that she began to reach out furtively to touch Alec’s life. People said he was no longer seeing any of the old crowd or drinking at the old places. “The poor darling,” she said, feeling sure he was ashamed. Her heart ached for him more than ever. She asked old friends to invite him to dinner. When she found out he was broke, it gave her joy to find a friend who would loan him money. She set out to find a job for him. Day after day she went from friend to friend till she was tired out, but at night, lying awake, it seemed like when they were first married and very poor and Alec was looking for work. Then, one day she met a publisher she had gone to school with. She pleaded with him for Alec, warm and glowing with love, a handsome woman of thirty-five, her mouth open a little in expectation. “You’re such a darling, Julia,” he laughed. “What chance have I got against you?”

  The sweetest satisfaction touched her again. But that night, as she closed up her shop, the publisher phoned her.

  “Alec won’t take the job,” he said.

  “He must. He needs it terribly.”

  “He knows that.”

  “Then why?”

  “He thinks you got it for him, and he says to tell you no — absolutely no. And that’s final.”

  She wanted to cry out that it was stupid and unworthy of him. With all her love she wanted to protest that she was only trying to help as she would help one of her salesgirls.

  As she hurried along Grove Street, she was bursting with an eagerness to explain that she counted for nothing, that he should think only of his own good. But when she was opposite the house, looking up at the lighted windows, her courage failed. If the girl smirked at her, or watched her with sullen hatred, she knew she couldn’t bear it.

  She went up to the door and looked along the narrow hall and up the narrow stair with its broken tiles. It seemed incredible that he would want to live there. When she rapped on the door her face was glowing with good feeling and concern for him. But when he stood there, white-faced, tired and thin, and with no friendly smile, her mouth opened and she faltered and said timidly, “Well, you aren’t that upset just to see me, are you, Alec?”

  “I’m not upset at all,” he said.

  “I only want to talk to you for a minute.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “It’s about that job . . .” she began, but her voice trailed away, for though he was listening, he did not seem to be paying attention to her words.

  Then, distressed, he shook his head and said in a worried, impatient voice, “This is no place to come. I live here and I don’t live alone, as you know. What’s the use?” He blocked the door, his arms folded, yet not looking at her, as if he were afraid that the war
mth of her generous nature would suddenly touch him and draw him close to her. “There’s nothing to say about the job. I don’t want it. That’s final. Don’t you see?”

  “But you were going to take it,” she pleaded.

  “Sure.”

  “And when you found out I had something to with it — oh, Alec, you must hate me. Why, why? If it were just for a friend, if it were just for one of my customers, they wouldn’t snap at me like that.” Then she was suddenly short of breath, because he said nothing to help her. “Alec, you should take that job. I’m not trying to get you to come back to me. But I believe in your talent like I might believe in the talent of someone I hardly knew. Forget there was ever any love between us,” she said. “I could still believe you had talent, couldn’t I?”

  When the stubborn, boyish, unyielding expression that she had seen a thousand times on his face after they had begun one of these little struggles came into his eyes, she brightened and felt a sudden mad eagerness to persuade him as she had so often done. For the girl she felt only restless impatience.

  “Let me come in and talk to you, Alec.”

  “All right, all right,” he said, stepping aside.

  The room, with its old red-covered plush furniture, its little kitchen cabinet with the figured curtain drawn across it, and the faint but pervading smell of gas, gave her fresh confidence. All she had to do, she thought eagerly as she sat down, was to keep on talking reasonably with him and she could suddenly lift him right out of the squalid place. His generous nature would open up to her, she would hear again the shy laughing apology.

  “I don’t think you’ll go till you’ve said your piece, so go ahead,” he said sighing.

  “It’s not just what your life is now,” she began, looking around the room. “Even if I’m dead you’ll want something better than this.”

  “I’m not taking that job,” he said calmly.

  “But why? Alec, tell me why.”

  “It’s a free country,” he said stubbornly. “A job comes my way and I don’t choose to take it. What’s the matter with that?”

  “Why, nothing at all,” she said. Then she couldn’t help it, she burst out indignantly, “That’s not you talking, Alec.”

  “No?”

  “No, indeed. You’re not a petty man,” she said. “It’s the — well, it’s Eva, isn’t it? Why can’t you both see that I’m not plotting anything? You’ve listened to her, haven’t you? If you love her you should. But she shouldn’t make you do a thing that will hurt you just for the sake of taking a crack at me.”

  “Eva,” he called out suddenly.

  “All right,” the girl called from the bedroom. “I’m coming.”

  While they waited, and Julia trembled with eagerness to face the girl, every gesture Alec made seemed harsh and unyielding and yet a little desperate: she felt a tug between them and it gave her joy.

  Eva came out of the bedroom powdering her nose laconically. She had her hat on and was dressed to go out. “I heard you talking, Mrs. Watson,” she said carelessly. As Eva took a last look at herself in her little hand mirror, rubbed her lips together, and then put the mirror in her purse, Julia was shocked. There was going to be no struggle between them. Eva was like a soft feathery little milk-white doll, and as she crossed the room she seemed confident that her soft shapeliness would be looked after by someone no matter what happened. Julia couldn’t understand why he did not see the sluttishness in the girl.

  “I knew you’d be around sooner or later, Mrs. Watson,” Eva said. “I’m sorry I’m on my way out.”

  “Then you knew more than I did,” Julia said, reddening.

  “Maybe I do.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t misunderstand why I’m here,” Julia said quickly. “I’m not trying to—”

  “You’re here about that job, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “I mean you’re not — I mean I’m not trying to get in your way,” Julia insisted.

  “You’re not getting in my way, lady,” Eva said.

  “You don’t resent my interest?”

  “Not that. I wanted Alec to take the job.” Then, while Julia waited, feeling dreadfully insecure, as if she were touching something in Alec she had never known, Eva turned to him and said impatiently, “For heaven’s sake, why don’t you take the job? It sounds like a decent job to me. What do you care where it came from?”

  To Julia, it seemed the girl was pleading her case for her and she was sure Alec, looking at Eva’s soft shapeliness, would give her anything she wanted, and she couldn’t bear it: she lowered her head, she was so ashamed to be there. But Alec said harshly, “You keep out of this, Eva.”

  “Suit yourself,” Eva said. She smiled at Alec. There was acquiescence in her full red mouth. Julia could see she always yielded. Then, looking shrewdly at Julia, and finding nothing dangerously seductive in her aggressive eagerness, she said, “You won’t mind if I run along, will you?” She went out.

  Humiliated, Julia stared timidly at Alec, and when he only waited, unmoved, she whispered, “Can’t you see she’s indifferent to you?”

  “Maybe she is,” he said, shrugging.

  “But she doesn’t love you.”

  “I like it that way. Just that way,” he said.

  “All right,” she said. “Only you should take the job unless you hate even the thought of me.” She was pleading with him not to destroy all she had left, the memory of the years when they had loved each other. “I’m mixed up,” she said. “I don’t know why you have this terrible feeling about me.”

  “Julia, I don’t hate you,” he said, looking miserable. “I’m not trying to hurt you.” Then he seemed to lose his breath. All the love she had given for so long seemed to touch him suddenly and make him mute. But he shook his head, pulling away resolutely. Looking around the mean room with the old furniture and the long faded window drapes as if it were a new life that he had to guard desperately against her, he whispered, “Sure, I’ve treated you terribly. But, my God, Julia, you’ve run my life for years. I was smothered. I’m not a child. And even now when I leave you, you keep coming in and out of my life arranging it for me. You can’t stop. This job — it’s nothing. But it gives me a chance to say no to you.” Then he shouted, “I’m saying no, no, no. Stop.”

  “No to what?” she asked, bewildered.

  “Your care for me. Your love,” he said.

  “My love?”

  “There’s hardly anything left of me.”

  “I only wanted you to be happy,” she whispered. But she looked so powerless and frightened that he cried out, “There hasn’t been anything that’s me for years. It’s been all you. Every little thing, day after day.”

  He came close to her and she went to put her arms around him and cry out that he should tell her everything he hoped for and she would share it, but with his eyes he seemed to be begging her to keep away, so she drew back, scared to touch him. She was suddenly frightened by her own eagerness, and her whole life seemed to be full of people she had pushed around, consumed because they liked her. Terrified, she put her trembling hands over her face.

  “Julia, don’t cry,” he said. When she didn’t answer he went closer and bent over her.

  “Don’t touch me,” she begged him. “Keep away from me.”

  “If you think I’m refusing the job just to hurt you . . .” he began.

  “No. Don’t take it, don’t let it touch you,” she cried, so self-effacing and so suddenly humble that he stared at her. “I didn’t understand,” she whispered, but he was shy with her, bending over her, touching her as if she were still the eager Julia, yet a woman he had never known.

  Father and Son

  The old stone farmhouse stood out sharp and clear against the dark hill in the moonlight. He walked up the path a little, then realized that he was walking into the flood of light from the window. This scared him and he stopped. “Why did I feel that I had to come?” he tho
ught. “After waiting four years why do I come now? What am I doing here?” He looked around the little valley, at the huge old barn shadowing all the hill and at the little garden beside the house. He heard the old car that had picked him up rumbling back through the ruts on the road. There was a heavy mist in the valley. The soft Pennsylvanian hills rose up clear above the floating mist and were rounded against the sky.

  He was so afraid of his own uneasiness and the valley’s silence that he darted forward through the shaft of window light and rapped firmly on the door. When the door opened Mona was there with her hand still on the knob and her little body leaning forward. While all the light was falling on his bewildered shy face he could do nothing but stare at her and wait. “Oh, it’s you, Greg. We were expecting you sometime soon,” she said. “We heard the car coming up and going away and wondered who it was.”

  She could not help looking for a long time at Greg Henderson, wondering what had happened in his life to drive him back here after four years. He was hesitating at the door, tall and dark, in his fine expensive city clothes, but really much older, and the light was on his worried face: it was puzzling to Mona to see him so reticent and lonely looking because she knew he had always been full of eagerness, giving all of himself first to one thing and then to another, full of love, and then getting hurt, and then hard and unyielding and never consenting to go anyone else’s way. As he blinked his eyes in the light he had none of the plausible flow of easy words he had had in the old days. He said, haltingly, “I was walking up from the station. They picked me up on the road.” He followed her into the big lamplit room with the great open hearth, and for the first time he was able to look at her, her body enveloped in a large white apron. Her long black hair fell soft and thick around her oval face, and she was looking at him steadily with her peaceful dark eyes in a way that made him more uneasy. “I got your letter, Greg, and so you must have got mine.”