They stopped at a nondescript doorway on Massachusetts Avenue. Victor rang the bell, then turned to Dickey. “I’d say that your chances are excellent, as long as you don’t dribble soup on your cravat or snort cider through your nose when I tell a joke at lunch.”
A Negro in a white jacket opened the door. “Good afternoon, sir.”
Victor handed the Negro his hat, and Dickey did the same.
“We have a delicious clam chowder this afternoon, sir,” said the Negro.
“The difference between you and that Irish fraud Kennedy,” Victor said to his cousin as they started up the stairs, “is that you come from fine stock.”
“Fine stock . . . yes,” said Dickey. “Grandfather always says that. Fine stock.”
“And a fine apple pan dowdy for dessert, too,” said the Negro.
ii
Jimmy Callahan kept to a routine. It was the only way for a young man of high ambition and small means to succeed at college.
He rose at five o’clock in the East Cambridge house where he lived with his parents, his grandmother, and his sister. He ate breakfast with his father, an engineer on the Boston & Maine. Then, no matter the weather, he walked down Cambridge Street, past triple-deckers and storefronts, all the way to Harvard.
At six, he would arrive at the kitchen. At nine, he would hurry for class. At noon, he ate a brown-bag lunch with friends in commons. Then there would be afternoon classes and an hour at the gymnasium, unless it was baseball season. After that, he would study until nine, then make for home and a bowl of leftover stew.
Jimmy liked the Gore Hall library. It reminded him of a medieval cathedral. And how medieval it must have felt before electricity was introduced in 1891. Until then, the library closed when the sun went down, because the fear of fire was so ingrained that neither candle nor gas mantle had ever been allowed to shed light on the books.
Jimmy was glad for electricity. He was glad to be living in the twentieth century, glad for the explosion of knowledge that had rendered this library all but obsolete, glad for the opportunities open to a young man of any background, if he was willing to work.
He reminded himself of his opportunities every night as he left the library and headed onto Massachusetts Avenue. And even there, the twentieth century was unfolding, in a trench framed with steel beams and covered at the intersections with heavy planking. When the work was completed, an electric subway would whisk riders from Cambridge to Boston in just nine minutes.
As he walked along one chilly March night, Jimmy was thinking about something the excavation had unearthed: the foundation of Peyntree House, first building at Harvard College. What would the denizens of that distant time make of the twentieth century, especially on a noisy night like this? Up ahead, a gang of students was marching through the Square, singing “Yo Ho!” Down on Plympton Street, another gang was carrying torches and singing “Ten Thousand Men of Harvard.” And voices were rising from the Yard, too, and echoing up from Mount Auburn Street.
It was club selection night, when sophomores sat in their rooms and clubmen went from dorm to dorm with flasks and invitations, gathering up inductees and marching them through the streets to their new clubs. For those who heard good news, it was a memorable night. For those who expected a knock that never came, it was a night memorable only for its misery.
Jimmy Callahan expected nothing. He just walked along the subway trench, lost in thought, until he was stopped by a voice from the shadows. “Not one, Jimmy.”
There was someone standing beneath the Porcellian Gate, which led into the Yard. It was Joe Kennedy, and he was looking up at the windows of the Porcellian Club as though looking up to the top of a mountain he had failed to conquer.
“Not one what, Joe?” asked Jimmy.
“Not one Catholic was asked to join a final club. Not one.”
And Jimmy Callahan laughed.
“What’s so funny?” growled Kennedy.
“That you’d expect otherwise.” Jimmy gestured across the trench at the windows. Within a square of golden light, two young men were touching champagne glasses. “That’s the aristocracy up there, Joe, old money screwing older money, trying to make more money.”
“You’re crude, Callahan, and cynical.”
“I’m realistic. If you want people to respect you for who you are, go to a Jesuit college. If you want to make them respect you for what you do, come to Harvard and do it. Worry about the meritocracy, Joe, not”—he gestured upward—“not that.”
Kennedy turned his eyes back to the windows, and Jimmy walked on.
When Victor Wedge ate breakfast at all, he ate it in Memorial Hall commons.
He liked to remind his friends that the magnificent structure had been built by men like his grandfather to honor men like his great-uncle.
So, on a Wednesday about a week after club selection night, Victor and Jimmy crossed paths. They paid little attention to each other at first. Jimmy was stopping to pour himself a cup of coffee from the urn in the corner before he left for a nine o’clock class. Victor and his friends were lounging at table because they did not have a class until ten.
“I wish you’d give us lessons, Victor,” said Dickey, who seemed to be standing a little taller now that he was a member of the Porcellian. “Skirts flock to you.”
“I thought you had your cap set for Barbara Abbott,” said Bram Haddon.
“She’s a lady,” said Victor. “She defends her virtue, which pleases me—”
“But doesn’t satisfy you?” Dickey had also grown bolder.
Victor shifted his eyes to his cousin and said, “Precisely,” in a tone that suggested he did not appreciate Dickey’s newfound attitude.
Jimmy, who was standing nearby, did not appreciate what Victor said next.
“So where do you find . . . satisfaction?” asked Bram Haddon.
Victor grinned. “Have you ever seen the East Cambridge girls who troll through the Yard for Harvard men on a Sunday afternoon?”
“The Irish girls?” asked Haddon.
“Some are Irish,” said Victor. “Or have Irish parents.”
Jimmy Callahan leaned over him. “Excuse me, sir, but could you pass the cream?”
Victor flashed the phony smile and slid the cream along the tabletop. Then he turned back to his friends and dropped his grin back into place. “If you snag one on a Sunday afternoon, you can have yourself a fine time. A little stroll, a ride in your motorcar, a little tip from the flask, and who knows how much satisfaction you can get before you send her back to her dreary little life?”
Jimmy Callahan calmly set down the cream, spooned two sugars, and spilled his coffee right into Victor’s lap.
“Good God!” Victor jumped up. “Could you be any clumsier, man?”
“Oh, excuse me, sir,” said Jimmy without a trace of apology.
“Stupid bastard.” Victor grabbed Dickey’s napkin and began to wipe off the coffee.
“He’s not stupid,” said Dickey. “He did that on purpose.”
“Look at my trousers. . . . Ruined,” said Victor. “This comes out of your pay.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Jimmy. And without changing tone, he added, “And you’ll be sorry, too, if I ever hear you say anything bad about East Cambridge girls again.”
Victor straightened up and looked Callahan in the eye. “They’re all whores.”
Anyone who hadn’t been watching when the coffee went over was watching now, and the clatter of cups and conversation receded across the dining hall.
Jimmy stepped back and began to unbutton his jacket.
Then someone whispered in his ear, “Not here. You’ll lose your job.” It was Joe Kennedy.
“Yes,” said Victor. “Then you might have to carry a hod for a living.”
“Hemenway Gymnasium,” said Kennedy. “Boxing ring. Three o’clock. Are you man enough, Wedge?”
Wedge did not hesitate. He might act the dandy, but they had all seen him on the football field. “Three o’clock.”
“I’ll second you,” Dickey told his cousin.
“Don’t back down,” said Jimmy.
“Fourteen-ounce gloves. Marquess of Queensberry rules,” answered Victor Wedge.
They went at it in Hemenway at three o’clock sharp. Sunlight poured through the Gothic arched window. Ropes and rings and swings, all part of Dr. Dudley Sargent’s strength apparatus, hung above them. And students crowded the balcony.
Drawn by the commotion, Dr. Sargent came out of his office and looked at the two boxers and the gang of students above. “What goes on here?”
“A dispute to be settled, sir,” said Kennedy.
Victor Wedge raised a glove to his forehead as a gesture of respect to Sargent. Jimmy Callahan kept his eyes on Victor, as if to concentrate his anger.
Victor was wearing trunks and a crimson T-shirt. Jimmy, who could not afford gymnasium clothes, had stripped to his union suit and trousers.
Dr. Sargent stroked his beard, looked them both up and down, and said, “Three rounds, three minutes a round. No more. How heavy are the gloves?”
“Fourteen ounces,” said Kennedy.
Sargent went into his office and brought out two pairs of twenty-ounce gloves. “Use these.” He pulled a watch from his pocket. “I’ll keep time.” Then he looked up at the balcony. “And the rest of you, outside. This is between two men, not the whole college.”
A few of the students in the balcony protested, but they all did as they were told.
As Dickey tied on the big gloves, he whispered to Victor, “Sargent’s on your side. Your arms are thicker. It’s plain you’re more powerful. He made us use heavier gloves because you’ll be able to hold them up longer. He wants you to beat this mick.”
“How do you know that?”
“Haven’t you read Sargent’s book? He believes that all these rings and swings and parallel bars are the way to build strong circulatory systems to purify us of all that foreign blood that’s flooding into the country.”
“He wrote that?” asked Victor.
“I think he meant the Irish micks.” Dickey laughed.
In the other corner, Joe Kennedy was telling Jimmy, “On the football field, he comes straight at you. I suspect he’ll come straight at you with his fists, too. He’s a fullback. You’re a skinny outfielder, so dodge and feint, pick your spot.”
“I plan to hit him in the face,” said Jimmy.
“Then what?”
“Hit him again.”
And that was how it went.
The one who should have boxed was a puncher, and he hit Victor Wedge right in the nose straightaway.
The one who should have punched was a boxer, and after he recovered from Jimmy Callahan’s first blow, he circled to his left, started flicking jabs. And . . .
Jimmy ducked a jab and hit him again, right in the nose with the big glove that looked like a pillow but knocked Wedge onto his rear end.
Sargent jumped in, and round one closed with a standing eight count for Wedge.
In Victor’s corner, Dickey said, “You’re doing fine. He’s wilting. Keep—”
“Shut up.”
In Jimmy’s corner, Kennedy said, “You knocked him down. Now he’s mad. So be ready. Box more. And watch that jab. His hands are fast.”
“Right.”
Jimmy went in punching again, but this round, he boxed more.
Victor boxed but punched more, and those quick hands produced jab after jab.
After two minutes, blood was dripping from Jimmy’s nose, splattering on the canvas. After three minutes, both of them were tiring.
“Time!” shouted Dr. Sargent. End of round two.
Dickey whispered, “You showed him. He’ll never spill coffee on you again.”
Victor said, “I’ve shown him nothing.”
Joe Kennedy said to Jimmy, “Now, go after him. He’s tired.”
“I’m tired, too.” Jimmy took two or three deep breaths through his mouth because Kennedy had stuffed a roll of cotton up his nose.
“Well, stay on your feet, whatever you do,” said Kennedy. “Close with him. Hit him in the belly a few times, then hang on. I bet fifty bucks.”
“That I’d win?”
“That you’d stay on your feet.”
Jimmy stayed on his feet. So did Victor. They stood for the final three minutes and pounded. The gym echoed with the sound of the gloves expelling air as they struck. Both men felt their arms start to burn, then their lungs, and both were staggering when Sargent shouted, “Time!” And both collapsed onto their stools.
Sargent stepped into the ring, looked at them both, and said, “You’re a disgrace to Harvard . . . a pair of quivering jelly bowls. Where’s the stamina? You’re supposed to be athletes, but you’re so busy with your games—hitting balls and running into people—you aren’t prepared for manly combat. Games are for boys. Conditioning is for men.”
Then Dickey Drake looked at Kennedy. “A draw?”
Kennedy looked at the boxers. Both nodded, so he said, “A draw.”
Sargent said, “Shake hands and report to me tomorrow for conditioning.”
Victor and Jimmy walked to the middle of the ring and touched gloves.
And Jimmy spoke first. “Say nothing bad about my mother or my sister or any other woman in East Cambridge, and I won’t spill coffee on you.”
“I suppose that’s as close to an apology as I get for my trousers,” said Victor. “Don’t spill coffee on me, and I won’t call your women . . . I won’t insult your women.”
“Good,” answered Jimmy. “And if you ever want to meet the woman whose husband saved your grandfather at Antietam, you’ll have to come to East Cambridge.”
Victor had heard the story of Antietam at his grandfather’s knee, the missing knee. He knew that an Irishman had carried Grandfather from the field that day and served as family footman until his death in the Great Fire. While Victor may have heard the name Callahan, he had never put the footman together with the Greasy Grind.
Now Victor was faced with a dilemma. Would he go through Sargent’s exercise regimen at Hemenway and say nothing to Callahan, learn nothing from him, teach him nothing, either? Or would he do the surprising thing and accept Callahan’s invitation?
Usually, Victor preferred to do the surprising thing, whether he was running a football or changing the way people thought about him. And there might be some benefit in meeting members of the Callahan family.
After all, Professor Baker urged his students to absorb experience wherever they could, because experience was the raw material from which the playwright fashioned his drama. If his play about the Civil War was going to electrify New York, or get an A from Professor Baker, Victor should take the opportunity to talk to a footsoldier’s widow.
So, on a beautiful Sunday in May, he donned a seersucker suit and straw boater, went to Boston and borrowed his grandfather’s motorcar, then drove over to East Cambridge, the neighborhood that had grown up around the New England Glass Company in the 1840s. Smoke from local factories still stained the sky, and the rumbling of trains in the freight yards could be heard night and day, and the men went off to work with lunch pails in their hands and came home with dirt under their nails.
Victor could not imagine that anyone around here would ever have seen a 1910 Stevens-Duryea six-cylinder touring car parked at the curb. So he gave a boy five cents to watch over it. Then he took the bouquet of flowers he’d bought, went up the stoop of the two-family house, and knocked on the door.
As it opened, he believed that he was looking at the face of an angel.
“Yes?” Her auburn hair fell to her shoulders, her eyes had an ethereal greenish hue, and while she seemed suspicious at the sight of a stranger bearing flowers from a car worth more than any house on the block, there was curiosity beneath her suspicion and beneath that, a layer of warmth so beguiling that Victor thrust the flowers into her hand.
“I’m a friend of your brother’s,” he said. “Jimmy told me how beautiful you w
ere, but I didn’t believe it until now.”
Emily Callahan laughed and told him that her brother was playing baseball and their parents were at the game. Then she invited him into the parlor.
The house smelled of onions and herbs and braised lamb, because someone was cooking a stew. Antimacassars covered stains on the furniture and well-placed tables covered holes in the rug. There was an upright piano in the corner and—Victor almost laughed—lace curtains on the windows.
As he took a seat, Emily’s grandmother, Alice Callahan, came in from the kitchen. She was a heavy old woman wearing a gingham bib apron over her Sunday dress, a gold locket around her neck, and slippers with the insteps cut out so that there would be room for her bunions.
She seemed suspicious, too. What did a Wedge want with her? She had left their service nine months after her husband’s death, when her only child was born.
Victor explained that he wanted to meet the woman whose husband had saved Heywood Wedge. “I’ve come just to say thank you.”
And the old woman’s suspicions melted.
In the next hour, Victor heard Alice Callahan’s tale of Dan, son of a Harvard goody, who courted her on long walks through the Yard and marched off to war because he believed it was the right thing to do. When he came home, he proposed to her. But instead of a ring, which he couldn’t afford, he gave her a gold locket with his picture in it.
“It’s inscribed,” she said, holding it up under her chin. “‘From D. to A.’—Dan to Alice—‘With All My Love, May God Keep You.’ And never’s the time I’ve took it off.”
Looking at the oval photograph of the man in his soldier’s forage cap, he told her that her husband was as handsome as her story was beautiful, and her smile told him that his charm could work even on an old Irish woman with bunions.
And she kept talking . . . of the Great Fire, the birth of her son, and her return to Fay House in Cambridge. “Once the Fays gave the house over to the woman’s college, I took over the food service. Served meals there for twenty-five years. And now, I have a Harvard grandson. My Dan would be so proud.”
Harvard Yard (Peter Fallon) Page 45