The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan: Volume One

by Morley Callaghan

  Slyly he looked around at the jail, though he kept on walking. Passing the crevice, he saw that there was room for his boot three feet above the ground.

  The second time he passed the crevice he turned quickly, jammed in his boot, reached up, hoisting himself to the wall top. He dropped over to the street. No one in sight. He started to run. As he ran down the street he tried to concentrate on the idea of doing something definite that would explain his feeling for Ettie, and appeal to the whole town. The idea had come to him back in the cell but it was necessary to get home first. He passed Hanson’s grocery store, then the Catholic church, and the caretaker watering the lawn yelled at him.

  He ran across the bridge and on to Corley’s house. Mrs. Corley was sitting on the veranda. Seeing her, he stopped, shaking drops of sweat from his forehead and pulling his shirt open at the throat. “Now you keep out of this, do you hear, you old bat,” he said. She stood up, remained motionless, then squealing, ran in the door, slamming it. “Scared as a rabbit,” Jim said to himself. He laughed out loud. He walked around his own house and in the back way. The evening paper was on the porch.

  No one was in the house. In the front room he sat down on the sofa, breathing deeply, fascinated by the heavy beating of his heart. He was ready to go on with the idea of getting people behind him but did not know how to go about it. He stood up angrily, rubbing his forehead. His own head was to blame. There was a way, only he couldn’t see it and make use of it.

  He stepped into the hall to the telephone and called up the sheriff. “Is that you, Ned? This is Jim Cline. You’d better keep away from me. I’m out and I’m going to stay out.”

  Jim didn’t hear what the sheriff said. Walking away from the phone he felt much better. He went upstairs to get a Mauser revolver from the bureau drawer. He put it in his back pocket. No one would bother him, but it was better to have it. Downstairs he felt helpless, wondering how it was the idea had seemed so simple back in the cell.

  A car drew up on the road. Jim heard the car and turned to run out of the back door. He rubbed his chin, assuring himself he should go out of the front door. He opened the door and stood there on the veranda. Ned Bickle jumped out of the car, pointing a gun.

  Jim half-opened his mouth, getting ready to give an explanation, then looked stupidly at the barrel of the gun. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Hunching his shoulders, he resentfully clenched his fists, leaning forward. He half-turned on one heel, his hand moving toward his hip.

  “Stick ’em up, Jim.”

  Jim straightened up and let his muscles relax. His mouth closed abruptly; there was no way of getting people behind him. Shaking his head he grinned sheepishly, holding out his hands. Ned slipped on the cuffs.

  It was getting dark and crickets were singing along the road. Jim got in the back seat between two men. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Jim,” Ned said.

  The Chiseler

  Old Poppa Tabb was never really cut out to be a manager for a fighter. He seemed too short and too fat, although he’d only got soft around the waist during the last year as Billy got a lot of work in the small clubs, fighting at the flyweight limit. If it hadn’t been for his old man, Billy would have been a chesty little bum standing at night on street corners spitting after cops when they passed. The old man and Billy were both the same size — five foot two in their bare feet — only the old man weighed one hundred and thirty-five pounds and Billy one hundred and twelve.

  Poppa Tabb had always wanted his son to amount to something and didn’t like the stories he heard about his son being chased by policemen. It hurt him when Billy was sent down for three months for tripping a cop and putting the boots to him. So he thought his son might want to be a fighter and he made an arrangement with a man named Smooth Cassidy, who was very experienced with young fighters, to act as Billy’s trainer and handler, and he himself held the contract as the manager. After Billy started fighting in the small clubs, Poppa Tabb bought two white sweaters with “Billy Tabb” on the back in black letters, one for himself and one for Smooth Cassidy. It was at this time that Poppa Tabb began to get a little fat around the waist. He used to sit over in the sunlight by the door of the fire hall and tell the firemen about Billy. He used to sit there and talk about “me and Billy,” and have a warm glowing feeling down deep inside.

  Late at night he used to wait for Billy to come home from drinking parties with fast white women. He waited, walking up and down the narrow hall of their flat, and he shook his head and imagined that Billy had gotten into an accident. When Billy came in and started to take off his shoes, Poppa Tabb, sitting opposite him, was so worried he said: “I don’t want you strolling your stuff so late, Billy.”

  Billy looked at him. Standing up and coming closer, he said to his old man: “You tryin’ to get on me?”

  “No, only I know what’s good for you, son.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I know what’s good for me. Maybe I know you ain’t so good for me.”

  “There some things you got to do, Billy.”

  Billy raised his fist. “You want something? You want some of this?”

  “You don’t go hitting me, Billy.”

  “Say you want some and I smack you. Or get off me.”

  After that, when Billy came in late Poppa Tabb just looked at his bright sharp eyes and smelled the cologne on his clothes and couldn’t say anything to him. He only wished that Billy would tell him everything. He wanted to share the exciting times of his life and have the same feeling, talking to him, that he got when he held up the water pail and handed the sponge to Smooth Cassidy when he was ringside.

  Billy did so well in the small clubs that bigger promoters offered him work. But they always talked business with Smooth Cassidy, and Poppa Tabb felt they were trying to leave him out. Just before Billy fought Frankie Genaro, the flyweight champion, who was willing to fight almost anyone in town because the purses for flyweights were so small, Poppa Tabb heard stories that Dick Hallam, who liked owning pieces of fighters, was getting interested in Billy and taking him out to parties. At nights now Billy hardly ever talked to his old man, but still expected him to wait on him like a servant.

  Old Poppa Tabb was thinking about it the afternoon of the Genaro fight and he was so worried he went downtown looking for Billy, asking the newsboys at the corner, old friends of Billy’s, if they had seen him. In the afternoon, Billy usually passed by the newsstand and talked with the boys till smaller kids came along and whispered, staring at him. Poppa Tabb found Billy in a diner looking to see if his name had gotten into the papers, thrusting big forkfuls of chocolate cake into his wide mouth. The old man looked at him and wanted to rebuke him for eating the chocolate cake but was afraid, so he said: “What’s happening Billy?”

  “Uh,” Billy said.

  The old man said carefully: “I don’t like this here talk about you stepping around too much with that Hallam guy.”

  “You don’t?” Billy said, pushing his fine brown felt hat back on his narrow brow and wrinkling his forehead. “What you going do ’bout it?”

  “Well, nothing, I guess, Billy.”

  “You damn right,” Billy said flatly. Without looking up again he went on eating cake and reading the papers intently as if his old man hadn’t spoken to him at all.

  The Genaro fight was an extraordinary success for Billy. Of course, he didn’t win. Genaro, who was in his late thirties, went into a kind of short waltz and then clutched and held on when he was tired, and when he was fresh and strong he used a swift pecking left hand that cut the eyes. But Billy liked a man to come in close and hold on, for he put his head on Genaro’s chest and flailed with both hands, and no one could hold his arms. Once he got in close, his arms worked with a beautiful tireless precision, and the crowd, liking a great body-puncher, began to roar, and Poppa Tabb put his head down and jumped around, and then he looked up at Billy, whose eye was cut and whose lips were thick and swollen. It didn’t matter whether he won the flyweight title, for soon he would
be a bantamweight, and then a featherweight, the way he was growing.

  Everybody was shouting when Billy left the ring, holding his bandaged hands up high over his head, and he rushed up the aisle to the dressing room, the crowd still roaring as he passed through the seats and the people who tried to touch him with their hands. His gown had fallen off his shoulders. His seconds were running on ahead shouting: “Out of the way! Out of the way!” and Billy, his face puffed, his brown body glistening under the lights, followed, looking straight ahead, his wild eyes bulging. The crowd closed in behind him at the door of the dressing room.

  Poppa Tabb had a hard time getting through the crowd for he couldn’t go up the aisle as fast as Billy and the seconds. He was holding his cap tightly in his hands. He had put on a coat over his white ‘Billy Tabb’ sweater. His thin hair was wet as he lurched forward. The neckband of his shirt stuck up from under the sweater and a yellow collar button shone in the lamplight. “Let me in, let me in,” he kept saying, almost hysterical with excitement. “It’s my kid, that’s my kid.” The policeman at the door, who recognized him, said: “Come on in, Pop.”

  Billy Tabb was stretched out on the rubbing-table and his handlers were gently working over him. The room smelled of liniment. Everybody was talking. Smooth Cassidy was sitting at the end of the table, whispering with Dick Hallam, a tall thin man wearing well-pressed trousers. Old Poppa Tabb stood there blinking and then moved closer to Billy. He did not like Hallam’s gold rings and his pearl-gray felt hat and his sharp nose. Old Poppa Tabb was afraid of Hallam and stood fingering the yellow collar button.

  “What’s happening, Pop?” Hallam said, smiling expansively.

  “Nothing,” Pop said, hunching his shoulders and wishing Billy would look at him. They were working on Billy’s back muscles and his face was flat against the board. His back rose and fell as he breathed deeply.

  “Have a cigar, Pop!” Hallam said.

  “No thanks.”

  “No? My man, I got some good news for you,” he said, flicking the end of his nose with his forefinger,

  “You got no good news for me,” Poppa Tabb said, still wishing Billy would look up at him.

  “Sure I do. Billy gonna be big in a few months and I’m gonna take his contract over — most of it, anyway — and have Cassidy look after him. So he won’t be needing you no more.”

  “What you say?” Old Poppa Tabb said to Cassidy.

  “It’s entirely up to you, Poppa Tabb,” Cassidy said, looking down at the floor.

  “Yes sir, Billy made good tonight and I’m going to take a piece of him,” Hallam said, glancing down at the shiny toes of his shoes. “The boy’ll get on when I start looking after him. I’ll get stuff for him you couldn’t touch. He needs my influence. A guy like you can’t expect to go on taking a big cut on Billy.”

  “So you going to butt in?” Poppa Tabb said.

  “Me butt in? That’s ripe, seeing you never did nothing but butt in on Billy.”

  “I’m sticking with Billy,” Poppa Tabb said. “You ain’t taking no piece of him.”

  “Shut your face,” Billy said, looking up suddenly.

  “Shut your face is right,” Hallam said. “You’re through buttin’ in.”

  “You don’t fool me none, Hallam. You just after a cut on Billy.”

  “You just another old guy trying to chisel on his son,” Hallam said scornfully.

  Billy was sitting up listening, his hands held loosely in his lap. The room was hot and smelled of sweat. Old Poppa Tabb, turning, went to put his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Tell him to beat it, Billy,” he said.

  “Keep your hands off. You know you been buttin’ in all my life.”

  “Sure I have, Billy. I been there ’cause I’m your pop, Billy. You know how it’s always been with me. I don’t take nothing from you. I don’t take a red cent. I just stick with you, Billy. See? We been big together.”

  “You never went so big with me,” Billy said.

  “Ain’t nothing bigger with me than you, Billy. Tell this hustler to run.” Again, he reached to touch Billy’s shoulder.

  “You insult my friend, you got no call,” Billy said. He swung a short right to his father’s chin. Poppa Tabb sat down on the floor. He was ready to cry but kept on looking at Billy, who was glaring at him.

  “Goddamn, he your old man,” Hallam said.

  “He can get out. I done with him.”

  “Sure you are. He’ll get out.”

  They watched Smooth Cassidy help Poppa Tabb get up. “What you going to do about this?” Smooth Cassidy was muttering to him. “You ought to be able to do something, Poppa.”

  Old Poppa Tabb shook his head awkwardly. “No, there’s nothing, Smooth.”

  “But he your boy, and it’s up to you.”

  “Nothing’s up to me.”

  “It all right with you, Poppa, then it all right with me,” Cassidy said, stepping back.

  Old Poppa Tabb, standing there, seemed to be waiting for something. His jaw fell open. He did not move.

  “Well, that be that,” Hallam said. He took a cigar out of his pocket, looked at it and suddenly thrust it into Poppa Tabb’s open mouth. “Have a cigar,” he said.

  Poppa Tabb’s teeth closed down on the cigar. It was sticking straight out of his mouth as he went out, without looking back. The crowd had gone and the big building was empty. It was dark down by the ring. He didn’t look at anything. The unlighted cigar stuck out of his mouth as he went out the big door to the street.

  Watching and Waiting

  Whenever Thomas Hilliard, the lawyer, watched his young wife dancing with men of her own age, he was very sad, for she seemed to glow with a laughter and elation that didn’t touch her life with him at all. He was jealous, he knew; but his jealousy at that time made him feel humble. It gave him the fumbling tenderness of a young boy. But as time passed and he saw that his humility only added to her feeling of security, he grew sullen and furtive and began to spy on her.

  At times he realized that he was making her life wretched, and in his great shame he struggled hard against the distrust of her that was breaking the peace of his soul. In his longing to be alone with her, so that he would be free to offer her whatever goodness there was in him, he insisted that they move out to the country and renovate the old farmhouse on the lake where he had been born. There they lived like two scared prisoners in the house that was screened from the lane by three old oak trees. He went into the city only three days a week and his business was soon ruined by such neglect.

  One evening Thomas Hilliard was putting his bag in the car, getting ready to return to the city. He was in a hurry, for the sky was darkening; the wind had broken the surface of the lake into choppy little waves with the whitecaps, and soon it would rain. A gust of wind slammed an open window. Above the noise of the water on the beach, he heard his wife’s voice calling, rising eagerly as it went farther away from the house.

  She was calling, “Just a minute, Joe,” and she was running down to the gate by the lane, with the wind blowing her short fair hair back from her head as she ran.

  At the gate a young man was getting out of a car, waving his hand to her like an old friend, and calling: “Did you want to speak to me, Mrs. Hilliard?”

  “I wanted to ask you to do something for me,” she said.

  The young man, laughing, lifted a large green bass from a pail in the back of his car, and he said: “I caught it not more than half an hour ago. Will you take it, Mrs. Hilliard?”

  “Isn’t it a beauty!” she said, holding it out at arm’s length on the stick he had thrust through the jaws. “You shouldn’t be giving such a beauty away.” And she laughed, a free careless laugh that was carried up to the house on the wind.

  For a while there was nothing Thomas Hilliard could hear but the murmur of his wife’s voice mixed with the murmur of the young man’s voice; but the way the laughter had poured out of her, and the look of pleasure on the young man’s face, made him tense with resentme
nt. He began to feel sure he had been actually thinking of that one man for months without ever naming him, that he had even been wondering about him while he was packing his bag and thinking of the drive into the city. Why was the young man so friendly that first time he had stopped them, on the main street of the town, when they were doing their weekend shopping, to explain that his name was Joe Whaley and he was their neighbor? That was something he had been wondering about for a long time. And every afternoon when Joe Whaley was offshore in his motorboat, he used to stand up and wave to them, the length of his lean young body outlined against the sky. It was as though all these things had been laid aside in Thomas Hilliard’s head, to be given a sudden meaning now in the eager laughter of his wife, in her voice calling, and the pleasure on the young man’s face.

  He became so excited that he started to run down to the gate; and as he ran, his face was full of yearning and despair. They watched him coming, looking at each other doubtfully. When his wife saw how old and broken he looked, she suddenly dropped the fish in the dust of the road.

  “Hey, there! Wait a minute,” he was calling to the young man, who had turned away awkwardly.

  “Did you want to speak to me, Mr. Hilliard?” Joe Whaley said.

  “Is there something you want?” Hilliard asked.

  “I just stopped a moment to give you people the fish.”

  “I’d like to know, that’s all,” Hilliard said, and he smiled foolishly.

  The young man, who was astonished, mumbled some kind of an apology and got into his car. He drove up the lane with the engine racing, and the strong wind from the lake whirling the dust in a cloud across the fields.