Answer as a Man

by Taylor Caldwell

  “He can ‘no like’ himself. Did you call the police?”

  Joe held up his hands. “The po-lece? What they do with bad men and boys? They say, ‘Did you see them?’ I say no. I only heard. One poleceman, a boy, said, ‘Kill.’ He look very mad. Irish like you, Jase.”

  Jason thought of his brother’s quotation from the Bible: “The wages of sin is death.” There was only one answer to crime: dire punishment. He looked at the broken window. Joe had no money to replace it. He had had to go into debt for the last vandalized one.

  Exposed now in his dereliction in not reporting the vicious act, Joe brought out a crushed and half-torn piece of paper from one of the drawers near the till. It had obviously been wrapped about the thrown stone. On it in dark ink was a crude sketch of a hand dripping with inky blood. Beneath it was printed, “Get out, Black Hand! Go back to Wopland!”

  Jason felt the atavistic male lust to savage and to murder for the first time in his young life. He looked about the tiny shop, so immaculate, so clean and orderly. He saw the flickering yellow lamplight. Joe could not afford to use any of the gas mantles he sold, so the light was uncertain here and full of roaming shadows. To Jason every shadow concealed a grinning malicious enemy of the helpless, and the first true hatred he had ever known rushed into him with a taste of hot metal. He turned to see Joe’s large eyes looking at him imploringly. The old man shook his head and said with simplicity, “No, Jase. No.”

  Jason thought of what he had been constantly reading in the newspapers, the general public hatred and suspicion of immigrants, no matter their race. It was strange that a nation of immigrants, which had deprived the Indian inhabitants of their homeland, should so despise those who followed them. “Except,” Bernard would say, “we later ones weren’t transported because we were criminals and were crowding the Sassenagh’s jails. We came of our own will; they were yoked together like dangerous cattle. ‘The basket girls’ of Virginia were whores swept up from the streets of English cities, most of them; who speaks now of the white bondsmen—really slaves—shipped to these shores to be sold and bound to white masters until their sentences were completed?

  “And the gentlemen who signed the Declaration of Independence: many of them Catholic gentlemen, and Irish, to boot. The Carrolls of the Carolinas, who had suffered so much in England, to name but a few. Ah, and this is an evil world, boyo. It is natural, I’m thinking, for man to hate his brother, and to kill him. It says so in the Holy Bible. Cain and Abel.”

  “It is more natural for man to love his brother,” John had said with a cold affronted glance at his grandfather.

  “Such as you loving your brother so much that you put your own burdens on his back,” Bernard had replied. “A fine example, sure and it is, of brotherly love. Tell your brother you love him, and pray for him—and the poor sod can be persuaded to give you his heart’s blood out of gratitude, at no cost to you.”

  “Da,” Kate had said. “Jack’s too young to understand.”

  “The hell he is, Katie. He’s got it all figured out, haven’t you, bucko?”

  John had risen with great calm and majesty and had gone outside to vomit. That had been six months ago. Kate, wailing, had followed him. “I hope,” said Bernard, “that he throws up all his bile, too.”

  Joan had begun to cry, but Jason had smiled wryly. “Da, think of what Mum feels when this goes on.”

  “Ach,” said Bernard. “It’s wimin who muddle things up. Should live apart from us. They ruin our manhood.” But he had gone outside to bring Kate in, with his big arm about her waist and her wet face on his shoulder, though he had ignored his retching grandson. “Sure, Katie, it’s the bad tongue I have,” Bernard had assured his daughter-in-law, “and you’d best forgive me.”

  “Jackie is so delicate,” Kate had, wept.

  “Delicate as a turnip,” Bernard had hardheartedly replied. “There, there, no more tears, Katie. After all, I am an old man.”

  This had so amused Kate that she had smiled involuntarily. “As old as a newborn baby, Da.” Jason had heard this and somewhat agreed. His grandfather would never grow old. He had the lustiness of a strong child, and a wisdom beyond mere literacy. He had felt a huge melting love for Bernard then. Bernard’s invincible spirit was the wall about the house, the warmth of the stove, the shelter of the roof, the weld that soldered the family together.

  But Jason knew that Bernard was right: man was the enemy of his brother. All the pious homilies were only pleading cries in the darkness, protesting the truth in its red rawness, its primeval savagery, its irrefutable verity. Cain had far more sympathizers than did Abel.

  Jason knew all this by instinct, but tonight he only wanted to know the identity of those who had injured his old friend. He wanted to kill. The thought did not horrify him, It exhilarated him, for he understood that the wicked were deliberately so and must be punished severely, even with death.

  Joe Maggiotti watched Jason as the boy silently left the shop. There was fear in the old man’s eyes. There was something about Jason which had upset him. Jason emerged into the dark cold; little snow devils were whirling up from the walks. The arc lamp on the corner of the street was spitting and hissing out a strong bluish light. Otherwise the street was dark, except for the yellow streetlamp on the next corner. Jason walked to that corner and encountered a young policeman on his beat, bent before the gale. “Mr. Clancy,” he said. The policeman turned up the collar of his inadequate uniform coat and peered wet-eyed at Jason.

  Jason said, “Somebody broke Mr. Maggiotti’s window this morning. Again.”

  “Sure, and I know,” said the policeman, who was all of twenty-one years old. “I heard the crash. I ran to the shop, and three big bastards were running off, laughing.” He paused and stared at the distant arc lamp as if in thought.

  “You didn’t catch any?”

  “Well, then, it was this way, Jase, boyo. I did, and then I did not.” By the flickering light he saw Jason’s eyes, and to him they were like the points of gray-steel knives. He shrugged, rubbed his hands together. “There’s justice, and there’s justice,” said the young policeman. “I got one. The others made off. Now, then. If I had taken the one big brute, a man about sixteen, to the station, what then? Like as not he’s brought before a magistrate of the same mind as himself, and he’s on the street again, laughing his bloody head off.” Mr. Clancy himself had arrived from Ireland only six years ago with his parents.

  He fumbled for his club and regarded it reflectively and with appreciation. “Sad, that. The bastard will not be on the street for a long time, I’m thinking. Perhaps never. They must have dragged him off after I tucked his cap over his head. Of course I didn’t see anything. He must have fallen. A bad gash, and in Christian mercy I pulled that cap over the cut. Bleeding very hard, you understand, and he wasn’t … awake just then. Wound might have been touched by frost.”

  Mr. Clancy shook his head in commiseration. He tossed his stick in the air very skillfully. It whirled in the darkness, then descended to his hand. “Yes, boyo,” he sighed. “There’s justice and there’s justice. A man has to choose. A good night to you, Jase, and you’d best be getting home. Streets not safe any longer. And my regards to your grandda.”

  Something tight and almost unbearable relaxed in Jason. He smiled as he watched Mr. Clancy walk off with a perceptible swagger, whistling to himself. Jason ran home, oblivious of the wind tearing at his face.

  He entered the big warm kitchen, comforting with its color and lamplight. Bernard and John and Joan were sitting at the table, Bernard reading his newspaper, his two younger grandchildren playing dominoes amicably together. Kate stood at the hot stove and the air was thick and delicious with the odor of boiling corned beef and cabbage. She gave Jason her usual anxious sweet smile and said, “You’re late, love.” Jason went to her and kissed her on the cheek, and she patted his broad shoulder. Bernard looked up from his paper, but John and Joan pretended to be absorbed in their game.

  “What
’s up?” asked Bernard on seeing Jason’s face.

  “Someone broke Mr. Maggiotti’s window this morning.”

  Bernard took off his glasses and regarded Jason thoughtfully. “I know, then. I saw it.”

  “Mr. Clancy heard the crash and—”

  Bernard suddenly had a gust of coughing. He looked at Jason intently and then led the boy’s eyes to John, who was now listening. “Too bad Mr. Clancy didn’t catch them,” said Bernard.

  “Perhaps it was some poor soul who was hungry,” said John in his censorious voice. “Such should be fed, not put into jail.”

  “Seems to me,” said Bernard, “that there’s the Salvation Army and the Church feeding the ‘poor,’ as you call them. And there’s public charity here, too.”

  John said, “Punishment is only revenge, Da.”

  “And where did you pick up that damned idea, Jackie, bucko? Best read your Bible. Best remember penance, too. It’s not educated you are.”

  John’s pale face reddened. “It was Father Sweeney’s own saying.”

  Bernard shook his crest of white hair, and it seemed to rise. “It’s not his sister he saw hanged in a public square in Dublin by the Sassenagh,” he said, and now his small gray eyes seemed to shoot sparks. “He’d change his damn tune if it had been. Or perhaps he’d get on his knees and kiss the Sassenagh’s arse and thank him. Wouldn’t surprise me what could happen in this damned stupid world.”

  “Da,” said Katie, speaking in a voice of entreaty.

  Bernard shrugged. “It’s not your poor fault, Katie, that you gave birth to a fool. His father was one, too.”

  “I remember my dada,” said John, his hard color deepening. “I hope I will be like him.”

  Bernard lifted a fork and pointed it at him. “No worry, Jackie. You already are, God help you.” He paused. “Well, not entirely, perhaps. There’s a stone in your heart, and that may be the saving of you after all.”

  “It’s Jason’s birthday,” Kate pleaded as she watched Jason shake out his snowy coat and hang it up. “Fourteen years old.”

  “And not yet confirmed!” said John. “Not even approaching confirmation.”

  “So he’s still innocent, which is more than you are,” said Bernard. Then he relented. “Well, God made us all as he designed, so perhaps you aren’t entirely to blame for what you are, Jackie. Well, then, let’s not talk any more about it.”

  He looked at his newspaper. “McKinley! As strong as weak tea. Glad I didn’t cast my first vote for him. Now, there’s his vice-president, Roosevelt. A man after my own heart. Tells the Russian czar, outright, to stop the pogrom just started, and damned if the czar doesn’t stop it! And the man’s not even president! And here’s the silly wimin screaming for the vote again, in Washington. Think their votes will change the world. Nothing will, except maybe a holocaust from heaven. Listen to the wimin. If they get the vote, there’ll be no more wars, no more poverty, no more child labor, no more injustice, no more drunkenness, no more riots, no more exploitation of labor—nothing but paradise on earth. Katie, your sex is no brighter than mine.”

  Jason sat down at his place near the table and saw a little heap of packages awaiting him. Everyone became silent as he took one up and unwrapped the brown paper. It was a red woolen scarf his mother had knitted for him, and a woolen cap to match. When had she done this, she who worked every moment of the day? At night, Jason thought, his eyes smarting, when we were asleep. He opened another little parcel. It contained a penwiper made by Joan, his sister, composed of layers of pinked wool scraps. In silence he opened another package. It was a new missal from his brother, John, a well-bound one to replace his ragged one, and Jason was moved. Then came his grandfather’s gift, a fine jackknife, which he had long coveted. It had cost all of a dollar, a fortune.

  He looked about the room, and even John and Joan were smiling at him. “Thank you,” he mumbled. “Thank you a lot.” He got up, kissed his mother again, kissed his grandfather, hesitated, bent and kissed John’s rigid cheek, then kissed his beautiful adored sister, who shrank only slightly.

  But John always ruined such occasions. He said, “Had you kept that gold piece from Mr. Mulligan, Jase, you could have bought a new window for Mr. Maggiotti. But you just thought of yourself, as usual, and of no one else. The sin of pride, too.”

  “Holy Mother of God!” Bernard roared, and threw down his fork. Kate cried out, and so did Joan, and John turned away with horror. “Even for a poor man like old Joe, a man doesn’t sell his soul!”

  Jason, seeing his mother’s face, was distressed. He said, “Had I known, I would have kept it, Da, and given it to Mr. Maggiotti.”

  “Well, it’s too late now,” said Joan spitefully, and there was a pleased smile on her angelic face.

  “I did mention the poor box,” said John.

  Bernard was too angry to speak. Jason said, “Never mind. I’ve thought of going around and collecting a few cents here and there to help Mr. Maggiotti get his new window.”

  Bernard silently plunged his hands into his trousers pocket and brought out a handful of coins, which he noisily spilled on the tablecloth. “Nearly two dollars,” he said finally. “We need only four more. We’ll get it, sure and we will!”

  “Yes,” said Jason, who was less than hopeful, but he wanted peace tonight for his mother’s sake. Bernard had often remarked that Irish families find their greatest enjoyment whetting their tongues, like knives, on each other. But Jason did not enjoy it, and neither did his mother. He said, “Where did you get that money, Da?”

  “Went around,” grunted Bernard. “Not everybody’s got a heart like a stone.”

  Jason involuntarily glanced at his brother. For the first time he noticed how John’s gray eyes had a curious fixed glare in them, like the colorless shining of glass, oddly dilated and intent, and disturbing. The thin black brows lay almost on top of the eyelids. It was a truly immobile and merciless face the boy possessed, the face of a fanatic. Why didn’t I see that before? Jason thought, and was uneasy. Had he ever seen his brother smile, heard him laugh? Jason could not quite remember. There was something like violence in John’s very stillness, which was rarely shaken, a violence which had never burst into honest rage or uncontrolled gesture.

  Then Jason looked at his sister. He saw that she was watching him with a strange intensity, and he recalled that often she would do this. But never had it shaken him as it did now, and he did not know why. It was as if she were trying to hear all his thoughts, not with affection and concern, but out of an imperative necessity, and with some secret design.

  Kate said, with a pleading look at Jason, “Jase, love, would you mind if I returned that dollar Mr. Maggiotti gave you this morning for your birthday, so you can help with his window?”

  Jason said nothing. Bernard loudly cleared his throat. “No, Katie. Joe gave it to Jason, and Jason gave it to you. We’ll find the money, dear colleen. That we will.”

  “You always know, Da,” said Kate with such absolute trust in her voice that Jason, for some reason, wanted to cry.

  Bernard said, “Don’t elevate me, Katie. I’m a bad old bucko and always was.”

  Jason wondered how long it had taken his mother to save up pennies to buy that considerable piece of corned beef for his birthday. He felt sick with love, rebellion, and pity. She sat there at the table, her hands wrapped in her apron, and Jason saw their rough redness, the cracks in them which appeared filled with her blood. She had caught cold two weeks ago and her cough was heavy and racking and drops of sweat would burst out over her anxious face. Mr. Maggiotti had sent her a mixture of thyme, honey, and lemon juice, which she gratefully declared had helped her, but Jason could often hear her cough in the night. She hardly touched the food on her plate, but John, Jason noticed, had eaten at least one-third of the meat and two of the large potatoes and a huge wedge of cabbage. But then, he thought with bitterness, he has a “weak stomach.”

  When the dinner was finished, Kate stood up with a proud smile
and went to the cupboard and brought out a seed cake in which had been embedded one large candle. She held it up triumphantly. “Jason’s birthday cake!”

  Bernard clapped; after a moment or two Joan and John clapped. Kate set the cake before Jason and kissed him soundly. “Happy birthday, love,” she said, and her voice broke. He took her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. “Oh, Mum.” She leaned her cheek on the top of his head and closed her eyes.

  “Cut it, what are you waiting for?” demanded Bernard in a very husky voice. “Now, then, I’ll light the candle, and you must blow it out and make a wish, and it’s said it will come true.”

  He struck a wooden match against the sole of his patched shoe. The candle made a brave blaze in the lamplight. Jason leaned forward and said fiercely to himself, “Money, money, money!”

  He drew a deep breath and blew it out, and the candle flame guttered and disappeared. “Good,” said Bernard, “you’ll get your wish, and I hope it was a good one.”

  Kate had not been able to put enough eggs in the cake to make it moist, but it was sweet and palatable. Bernard said, “That minds me. I’ll take a wedge to old Joe, and I’ve got a little of the creature left. It’ll warm his heart this bad cold night.” He looked at Jason, and the many clefts on his face turned into an astonishingly gentle smile. “Fourteen years old, eh? It’ll do ye no harm, boyo, to have a drop of the creature with Joe and me tonight. You’re a man.”

  Kate thought of her husband, Peter, who had, on too many occasions, taken the last copper in the house to the local saloon. “A man’s got to soothe his misery at times, Katie,” he would say to her, and she would never tell Bernard. She suspected Bernard knew, and that he, in turn, was hiding the truth from her as she was hiding it from him. She looked at Bernard and he said, “Niver you mind, now, Katie, he’ll niver be one for the bottle.” When he was very touched his brogue became unusually strong.