After work and on Sundays they took a look at the places they had heard about in the city. One Sunday they got up in good time and took the boat to Niagara. Their father had written asking if they had seen the Falls and would they send some souvenirs. That day they had as nice a time as a man would want to have. Standing near the pipe-rail a little way from the hotel that overlooks the Falls they watched the waterline just before the drop, smooth as a long strip of beveled glass, and Harry compared it favorably with a cataract in the Himalayas and a giant waterfall in Africa, just above the Congo. They took a car along the gorge and getting off near the whirlpool, picked out a little hollow near a big rock at the top of the embankment where the grass was lush and green. They stretched themselves out with hats tilted over their eyes for sunshades. The river whirled below. They talked about the funny ways of Mr. Brownson and his short fat legs and about the crazy women who fainted at the lifted hand of the faith healer who was in the city for a week. They liked the distant rumble of the Falls. They agreed to try and save a lot of money and go west to the Pacific in a year’s time. They never mentioned trying to get a raise in pay.
Afterwards they each wrote home about the trip, sending the souvenirs.
Neither one was doing well on the paper. Harry wasn’t much good because he hated writing the plain copy and it was hard for him to be strictly accurate. He liked telling a good tale but it never occurred to him that he was deliberately lying. He imagined a thing and felt it to be true. But it never occurred to Alfred to depart from the truth. He was accurate but lazy, never knowing when he was really working. He was taken off night police and for two weeks helped a man do courts at the City Hall. He got to know the boys at the press gallery, who smiled at his naïve sincerity and thought him a decent chap, without making up their minds about him. Every noon hour Harry came to the press gallery and the brothers, sitting at typewriters, wrote long letters about the country and the people, anything interesting, and after exchanging letters, tilted back in their swivel chairs, laughing out loud. Neither, when in the press gallery, seemed to write anything for the paper.
Some of the men tried kidding Alfred, teasing him about women, asking if he found the girls in this country to his liking; but he seemed to enjoy it more than they did. Seriously he explained that he had never met a girl in this country, but they looked very nice. Once Alfred and Bun Brophy, a red-headed fellow with a sharp tongue who did City Hall for the paper, were alone in the gallery. Brophy had in his hands a big picture of five girls in masquerade costumes. Without explaining that he loved one of the girls Brophy asked Bowles which of the lot was the prettiest.
“You want me to settle that,” said Alfred, grinning and waving his pipe. He very deliberately selected a demure little girl with a shy smile.
Brophy was disappointed. “Don’t you think this one is pretty?” – a colorful, bold-looking girl.
“Well, she’s all right in her way, but she’s too vivacious. I’ll take this one. I like them kittenish,” Alfred said.
Brophy wanted to start an argument but Alfred said it was neither here nor there. He really didn’t like women.
“You mean to say you never step out?” Brophy said.
“I’ve never seemed to mix with them,” he said, adding that the whole business didn’t matter because he liked men much better.
The men in the press room heard about it and some suggested nasty things to Alfred. It was hard to tease him when he wouldn’t be serious. Sometimes they asked if he took Harry out walking in the evenings. Brophy called them the heavy lovers. The brothers didn’t mind because they thought the fellows were having a little fun.
In the fall Harry was fired. The editor in a nice note said that he was satisfied Mr. H.W. Bowles could not adapt himself to their methods. But everybody wondered why he hadn’t been fired sooner. He was no good on the paper.
The brothers smiled, shrugged their shoulders and went on living together. Alfred still had his job. Every noon hour in the City Hall press room they were together, writing letters.
Time passed and the weather got cold. Alfred’s heavy coat came from the Old Country and he gave his vest and a thin sweater to Harry, who had only a light spring coat. As the weather got colder Harry buttoned his coat higher up on his throat and even though he looked cold he was neat as a pin with his derby and cane.
Then Alfred lost his job. The editor, disgusted, called him a fool. For the first time since coming over last spring he felt hurt, something inside him was hurt and he told his brother about it, wanting to know why people acted in such a way. He said he had been doing night police. On the way over to No. 1 station very late Thursday night he had met two men from other papers. They told him about a big fire earlier in the evening just about the time when Alfred was accustomed to going to the hotel to have a drink with his brother. They were willing to give all the details and Alfred thankfully shook hands with them and hurried back to the office to write the story. Next morning the assistant city editor phoned Alfred and asked how it was the morning papers missed the story. Alfred tried to explain but Mr. Brownson said he was a damn fool for not phoning the police and making sure instead of trying to make the paper look like a pack of fools printing a fake story. The fellows who had kidded him said that too. Alfred kept asking his brother why the fellows had to do it. He seemed to be losing a good feeling for people.
Still the brothers appeared at noontime in the press room. They didn’t write so many letters. They were agreeable, cheerful, on good terms with everybody. Bun Brophy every day asked how they were doing and they felt at home there. Harry would stand for a while watching the checker game always in progress, knowing that if he stood staring intently at the black and red squares, watching every deliberate move, he would be asked to sit in when it was necessary that one of the players make the rounds in the hall. Once Brophy gave Harry his place and walked over to the window where Alfred stood watching the fleet of automobiles arranged in a square in the courtyard. The police wagon with a load of drunks was backing toward the cells.
“Alfie, I often wonder how you guys manage,” he said.
“Oh, first rate.”
“Well, you ought to be in a bad way by now.”
“Oh, no, we have solved the problem,” said Alfie in a grand way, grinning. There was a store in their block, he said, where a package of tobacco could be got for five cents; they did their own cooking and were able to live on five dollars a week. “What about coming over and having tea with us sometimes?” Alfred said.
Brophy, abashed, suggested the three of them go over to the café and have a little toast. Harry talked volubly on the way over and while having coffee. He was really a better talker than his brother. They sat in an armchair lunch, gripped the handles of their thick mugs, and talked about religion. The brothers were sons of a Baptist minister but never thought of going to church. It seemed that Brophy had traveled a lot during wartime and afterward in Asia Minor and India. He was telling them about a great golden temple of the Sikhs at Amritsar and Harry listened carefully, asking many questions. Then they talked about newspapers until Harry started talking about the East, slowly feeling his way. All of a sudden he told about standing on a height of land near Amritsar, looking down at a temple. It couldn’t have been so but he would have it that Brophy and he had seen the same temple and he described the country in the words Brophy had used.
Alfred liked listening to his brother but he said: “Religion is a funny business. I tell you it’s a funny business.” Alfred had a casual way of making a cherished belief or opinion seem unimportant, a way of dismissing even the bright yarns of his brother.
After that afternoon in the café Brophy never saw Harry. Alfred came often to the City Hall but never mentioned his brother. Someone said maybe Harry had a job but Alfred laughed and said no such luck in this country, explaining casually that Harry had a bit of a cold and was resting up. In the passing days Alfred came only once in a while to the City Hall, writing his letter without enthus
iasm.
The press men would have tried to help the brothers if they had heard Harry was sick. They were entirely ignorant of the matter. On a Friday afternoon at three-thirty Alfred came into the gallery and, smiling apologetically, told Brophy that his brother was dead; the funeral was to be in three-quarters of an hour; would he mind coming? It was pneumonia, he added. Brophy, looking hard at Alfred, put on his hat and coat and they went out.
It was a poor funeral. The hearse went on before along the way to the Anglican cemetery that overlooks the ravine. One old cab followed behind. There had been a heavy snow in the morning, and the slush on the pavement was thick. Alfred and Brophy sat in the old cab, silent. Alfred was leaning forward, his chin resting on his hands, the cane acting as a support, and the heavy pimples stood out on the lower part of his white face. Brophy was uncomfortable and chilly but he mopped his shining forehead with a big handkerchief. The window was open and the air was cold and damp.
Alfred politely asked how Mrs. Brophy was doing. Then he asked about Mr. Brownson.
“Oh, he’s fine,” Brophy said. He wanted to close the window but it would have been necessary to move Alfred so he sat huddled in the corner, shivering.
Alfred asked suddenly if funerals didn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth and Brophy, surprised, started talking absently about that golden temple of the Sikhs in India. Alfred appeared interested until they got to the cemetery. He said suddenly he would have to take a look at the temple one fine day.
They buried Harry Bowles in a grave in the paupers’ section on a slippery slope of the hill. The earth was hard and chunky and it thumped down on the coffin case. It snowed a little near the end.
On the way along the narrow, slippery footpath up the hill Alfred thanked Brophy for being thoughtful enough to come to the funeral. There was little to say. They shook hands and went different ways.
After a day or two Alfred again appeared in the press room. He watched the checker game, congratulated the winner and then wrote home. The men were sympathetic and said it was too bad about his brother. He smiled cheerfully and said they were good fellows. In a little while he seemed to have convinced them that nothing important had really happened.
His last cent must have gone to the undertaker, for he was particular about paying bills, but he seemed to get along all right. Occasionally he did a little work for the paper, a story from a night assignment when the editor thought the staff was being overworked.
One afternoon at two-thirty in the press gallery Brophy saw the last of Alfred, who was sucking his pipe, his feet up on a desk, wanting to be amused. Brophy asked if anything had turned up. In a playful, resigned tone, his eye on the big clock, Alfred said he had until three to join the Air Force. They wouldn’t take him, he said, unless he let them know by three.
Brophy said, “How will you like that?”
“I don’t fancy it.”
“But you’re going through.”
“Well, I’m not sure. Something else may come along.”
No one saw him after that, but he didn’t join the Air Force. Someone in the gallery said that wherever he went he probably wrote home as soon as he got there.
1927
AMUCK IN THE BUSH
Gus Rapp, who worked in Howard’s lumberyard near the Spruceport dock on Georgian Bay, lived with his old man in a rough-cast cottage two doors along the road from the boss’s house. The road faced the yard and the bay. He had worked in the lumberyard as a laborer for five years, loafing a lot when the sun was hot. The boss didn’t fire him because he looked after his old man. Gus didn’t like the boss, Sid Walton, but liked watching Mrs. Walton, who often brought her husband a jug of iced tea on a hot day.
One day Gus was unloading planks from a boxcar on the siding at the board platform near the general office. The sun was hot on the platform and burned through the boots of the men piling lumber.
The lumberyard was on an inlet at the southern pier below the shipyard and the old tinned and weathered brown grain elevator. The inlet’s waterline at the lumberyard had gone back fifty feet, and smooth flat rock and small rocks baked in the sun. Piles of lumber with sloping tops were back from the shoreline. The low brick buildings of the milling plant were at the foot of the pier. On the water side of the plant sawdust was heaped up and packed down. Farther back from the lumberyard the long road, curving down from the station, followed the shoreline south beyond the town and the wooded picnic park, farther along skirting the bush at Little River, all the way to the rifle ranges.
Gus Rapp, sweating a lot and chewing his mustache, could stand in the boxcar door, looking up the street to the station and over the town to the blue mountains, where a red sun always set brilliantly.
Gus was working in the boxcar, kneeling on the lumber close to the roof. The boxcar had a stuffy smell of damp fresh wood. He was on his knees swinging the eight-by-two planks loose, shoving them down to the door where they slid into the hands and close to the hips of two men, who trudged across the platform, piling the planks on two sawhorses. By craning his neck to one side Gus could see through the door the wide-brimmed straw hat, the strong neck, and the thick shoulders of Sid Walton, who kept telling the men to show a little life. Gus didn’t feel much like working. The planks slid down slowly. He wanted to lie flat on his belly and look out through a wide crack in the car to the milling plant, where little kids in bathing suits were jumping down from the roof into the sawdust.
Walton yelled to get to work. Gus swore to himself. It was hot and he was sleepy and it would have been fine to sit with his back against the side of the car. Walton yelled and Gus yelled back. Sid told Gus to trade places with one of the men. Gus made sure where Walton stood on the platform and swung a plank loose, sliding it far down, swinging it in a wide curve. A man yelled and Walton ducked. Gus stood sullenly in the boxcar door, his brown arm wiping his brown face, his hair and forehead damp. He jumped down to the platform.
“You damn hunkie,” Walton yelled, running at Gus. He picked up an axe handle and whacked him hard three times across the back. Gus went down on his knees and hollered but got up kicking out. He tried to pick up a plank but the men grabbed him. They held him and he yelled, “You big son of a bitch.” Sid was bigger than Gus and stood there laughing, legs wide apart, his big hands on his hips. Gus’s back hurt and he rubbed his shoulder.
The boss said seriously, “All right, Rapp, you can clear out for good.”
Gus picked up his coat and cursed some more on the way over to the time office. He left the yard and went down past the station, cutting across the tracks north of the water tower, intending to drink squirrel whiskey in Luke Horton’s flour-and-feed store at the end of Main Street. His brown sweater was tucked in at his belt, he carried his coat, and his overalls were rolled four inches above his heavy boots.
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 d
oor 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.
Ancient Lineage and Other Stories Page 3
