“Yes, what about it?” John said, looking at him suspiciously, almost expecting to be treated with contempt because he was a friend of the Thompson family.
“Nothing at all,” Mr. Errington said. “I just mentioned it.”
“Is there anything wrong with it?”
“No. No. Not at al . I don’t believe in capital punishment myself. I don’t believe that the State should expose itself to the feeling of degradation, and every citizen gets it when he reads the papers about it.” He went on talking strongly, offering many familiar opinions, talking judicially, moving his fork carefully on the white tablecloth to illustrate all the points, till Mrs. Errington said: “The poor young man. It’s his family that will feel it.”
“That is it. That’s it,” John said quickly.
“Don’t you want to listen to me?” Mr. Errington said indignantly, though not really angry, for he knew both John and his wife had heard the same opinions many times; he simply wanted to go on talking, and when they were not paying attention, he shrugged his shoulders and began using his fork on his food instead of marking the tablecloth in neat lines.
On the way to work on the streetcar, John pressed his face against the windowpane, passing the jail in the corner of the park.
In the store, moving easily in the aisles, he was polite at first to all the customers, but later in the morning he hardly answered them, leaning idly against a counter, thinking of Fred’s sister, Isabelle, and of his mother and the funeral and all the words he ought to use speaking to them, and it was not easy to find any combination of words. The pictures in his mind of Isabelle and the man with his face pressed against the barred window became too blurred and he tried to blot them out with happy thoughts of his own girl, but it was difficult, so he looked around suddenly at other salesmen whose faces were like those he had seen in the crowd last night, only now without tension or excitement in them. The street doors opened and bargain-hunters rushed along the aisles; he saw all the faces again and was first uneasy, then ready to vomit, and severely critical of any plan that had ever induced him to work in the store, for he could at least live on the money he got singing in the churches. He began to laugh to himself and kept on laughing when the manager passed along the aisle. The whole department seemed to amuse him suddenly, now he knew he was quitting the job at the end of the week. At noon, punching his card at the time-clock in the basement, he was happier than he had been all morning, a few minutes of a happy feeling, thinking mainly of leaving behind most of the thoughts of the last few months. He was smiling, walking along the street to Martin’s Cafeteria. He walked erectly, leaning back on his heels, raised with a cork insole to add an inch to his height, because his music teacher had said that a man with such a good bass voice ought to be a little taller. It was warm on the streets at noontime, one of the last warm days in September, and in two weeks everybody would be wearing light overcoats. The bright colors of the girls’ dresses on the street and glossy tinted silks draped in big store windows helped him hold this simple feeling of happiness.
After lunch he walked over to the small square at the old gray church of St. James, with the iron chains on the concrete walls around it, and taking a newspaper from his pocket, spread it out on the grass and lay down to wait for Lillian. The grass was thick and green and the sunlight was on his face. His hat was tilted over his eyes and he was feeling peaceful and the grass was cool and everything quiet: all the usual downtown noises were there but belonging to the peacefulness of the moment. There were no strange, sharp noises. Out of one eye, from underneath the hat, he was looking across the street at the ochre front of a store and the red side of a bread wagon, waiting for Lillian to come through the gate.
He saw her and got up and sat on the bench, smiling. She was a small, slim woman with very fair hair; her face fresh and cool, but her eyes, a little too big, expressing every fugitive feeling easily. As soon as she was beside him she sat down quickly and started to tremble, her face pale, her eyes blinking. She was Isabelle Thompson’s friend and had walked in the evenings with Fred and had gone to the theater with him before she had come to love John Hughes.
“I’m going to quit my job,” he said at once.
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to quit my job.”
“Yes, I know.”
“At the end of the week.”
“Yes.”
“Because it’s ridiculous of me to be working in that store. I hate the place. Why do I need to do it?” He tried to go on talking about the store, working himself up slowly, ready to be violently angry, but was only staring at her. She said suddenly, “Poor Fred. Poor Fred. They killed him this morning.”
They had been trying to avoid mentioning it, and vaguely it occurred to him that possibly he was talking about the job so they would not have to talk about Fred Thompson. For a few minutes he had been happy and away from it, lying on the grass, and now he was drawn back again, and they sat close together on the bench, each waiting for the other to start talking. Lillian began to speak of Isabelle and then cried quietly, trying to put her head down on John’s shoulder. He didn’t answer her. First he thought it was beautiful that Lillian should be so sympathetic for Isabelle, and loved her for her nervous, fine feeling, but suddenly he resented so much sympathy for Isabelle alone. Lillian was powdering her nose, pushing her fair hair back under her hat. Two of the bums, who were always stretched out on the grass at noontime, stared at them lazily. Farther up the street, a block away, in the Methodist church the carillon bells began to ring out rapidly. John got up from the bench, for it was time to go back to work. They walked up Yonge Street together as far as the department store.
“Will you do some radio work?” she said.
“I hope so. Stanton, at the church, will get me more.”
“I thought you didn’t like it.”
“I don’t. I’d rather do some concert work in the small towns with you.”
“I’d like it, doing it together, in the towns.”
“You’re so good at the piano it helps me out.”
“No. I have only facility; you’ve got something else. You must go on, whatever happens.”
“I’m going on. I’ve got to go on.”
“As a pianist I’m not much better than Isabelle.”
“You are indeed.”
“No. When she used to play for you she did it so sympathetically it sounded beautiful.”
“I guess so.”
“She hardly plays at all now, hardly touches the piano.”
“Please let us stop talking about her.”
“We ought to. It seems recently we’ve always been talking about Isabelle.”
At home in the evening, Mrs. Errington handed him a letter he read going slowly upstairs. It was from Mrs. Thompson, though in Isabelle’s handwriting, and she wanted him to sing at the requiem high mass she was having for Fred at the church. It was a dignified letter, but she was eager that someone who had been friendly with Fred should have a part in the service. She said it would be necessary for him to see Father Brody at the parish church and say he would help to sing the mass. They were burying Fred in the morning at nine o’clock and expected only a few friends would come to the house and then to the church. The old lady was determined to make it a decent honorable burial, but John was confused, because he hadn’t been in a Catholic church for ten years and had almost forgotten the music; then he remembered that after all Fred had probably died a good Catholic death, so it didn’t matter much how he died. It was a splendid idea and splendid of the mother to go through with it, so he was ready to phone the Thompsons’ house and agree to sing at the service. The old lady had been fond of his voice years ago before it had become full bass and had resented him singing in Protestant churches, though agreeing he was entitled to be paid as highly as possible for his work.
He looked through his trunk, among his books, for a Catholic prayer book, but couldn’t find one. He thought he ought to read about the service.
Chapter Three
The Thompsons lived in a three-storied red-brick house, with a few feet of lawn and a flower garden for a backyard. The house was always freshly painted and the front lawn well watered and carefully trimmed. A small wire fence was around the lawn at the sidewalk.
Three people, standing on the sidewalk staring at the crepe on the door, turned away and three kids crouched in the alleyway, hiding, when John went up the steps to the front door. He walked into the front room, where the coffin with one tall, thick candle burning at the head was across the corner of the room. The front window shade was down, the candle was the only light, and the room was all shadowed. Three people were sitting on chairs at the curtained door leading into the other room and one, Fred Thompson’s mother, a short, plump woman with white hair knotted on the top of her head, came over and shook hands with John. He hardly knew how to answer her for the candlelight flickered and it was hard getting used to the shadows, so he held her hand tightly to express an intimate sympathy, looking at her somberly. Her face was absolutely calm as she looked at him directly and openly, her eyes narrowing a little, seeking for some expression in his face, which might offend her. Her face was pale but calm, and he would rather have done anything in the world at the moment than suggest he did not think her son was being buried just as if he died naturally. She did not expect this attitude from all people, just the few in the room who would be close to her during the day.
Isabelle was sitting with Lillian in the other room. It was almost a week since he had seen her, and he could hardly help hesitating before speaking, her face was so pallid and her hands, fingering a rosary, so thin, and he wondered why he noticed her hands particularly. She always had been a plump girl, standing erect, her back arched, her face highly colored, her thick, black hair combed straight back from her forehead, and she was like that in the days when they had gone riding in the groves in High Park, or gone to the Island to see the ball games and had sat on the rocking chairs on the back lawn under the grapevine in the evening, when all the flowers were blooming and there was a strong scent from rose bushes near the fence. Now she stood up a little too brusquely. All her movements were too jerky now, as though she didn’t know whether to be resentfully dignified and aloof from everybody in the room or calm in her acceptance of her brother’s death. Standing there, hardly having an opportunity to touch her hand before she withdrew it, he felt that sorrow was too mixed up with other feelings.
“Dear Isabelle,” he said.
“It was good of you to come, John.”
“Why do you say that? It was not good of me.”
“Only one of our relatives came.”
He looked around, but could see no one else in the room but Lillian.
“An aunt. She’s in the kitchen talking to Ed.”
“Who is Ed?”
“A friend of mine. But Aunty, the good woman, oughtn’t to have come. She is sitting in there crying, and she’s not crying for Fred, but she’s crying because she’s related to us and doesn’t know what to do about it. She just had to come, she said. I took hold of her by the arm and warned her if she bothered Mother at all I’d kill her. Thank God, we’ve always you and Lillian anyway.”
“That’s right.”
“The two of you are in my thoughts all the time. I don’t know what I would do sometimes if I didn’t have you to think about.”
“Well, it’s over now and you’ll be happier.”
“No, it’s not over.”
“But you’ll be happier from now on.”
“No, it’s not over, but with you and Lillian, we’ll make it easier for each other.”
Mumbling words, he hardly answered her, looking down at the toecaps on his boots. Frowning, he heard neither Lillian nor Isabelle talking, for he was bothered by her possessive notion and did not want either Lillian or himself to go on being one with her in the bitterness of her thoughts.
When Isabelle went into the front room he said to Lillian: “Who is this Ed?”
“He’s not very nice, but he’s been seeing a lot of Isabelle the last few months.”
“But who is he?”
“He played ball with Fred three years ago, and goodness knows how he started going with Isabelle.”
The aunt, a wide-hipped tall woman, moving heavily, daubing her eyes with a small handkerchief, came into the room and behind her Ed moved reluctantly, a stocky man with ill-fitting clothes, who did not know what to do with his hands and so kept fingering one fist, then the other. His winged collar and black tie looked simply ridiculous, exasperating John so much he cleared his throat rapidly, staring coldly at Ed, who seemed glad to find someone at all interested in him. He smiled, letting all the expression go out of his face quickly to show an exhaustion from his own sorrow, but could hardly conceal his excitement.
“Did you know Freddie well?” he asked.
“I did.”
“We palled around a lot, too, and there he is in there. Like that, too. Can you beat it? Can you beat it?”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“Me neither. Only I could tell you hundreds of stories about Fred if we get talking about him.”
Father Mason came in and shook hands with Mrs. Thompson and moved restlessly the length of the room. His face was extraordinarily red. People spoke to him, but he only shook his head and would not talk because he wanted to remain absolutely composed. When he first came in he had spoken briefly to Mrs. Thompson, standing in the hall, and after that he would not even sit down. Three times he looked directly at John, hardly recognizing him, though finally he nodded and said: “Good morning, John.”
“Good morning, Father.”
“Well. .”
“It looks a little like rain.”
“Fred. .”
“He died a fine death. He died beautifully. I never saw anything like it. Listen, John, tell Mrs. Thompson and Isabelle that I had to go, will you? I have to get back to the church. I have to go at once.”
He shook hands with John and Lillian and went quietly.
It was time to move the casket over to the church, and five men, old neighbors, had come in to help Ed carry the casket. The men looked at the face in the casket, but John would not do it. Two of the neighbors, a short, nervous man with a thick gold watch-chain and a thin man with unnaturally white false teeth, were anxious to move rapidly and get out of the house. They carried the casket out of the house and down the steps to the hearse, sliding it in easily.
The mourners sat in two automobiles behind the hearse. The six pallbearers were sitting together in the first one; John squeezed tightly in the back seat with the short, nervous man, and Ed, could not move his arms freely. The nervous neighbor kept taking out his heavy gold watch, looking as if it had become suddenly important that they get there in a hurry. No one spoke. They were all embarrassed, avoiding a discussion.
The church, only five blocks away, was old, with a large dome, and the entrance far back at the side, a church everybody in the neighborhood liked because it had been built in sections in different periods and was really part of the land and the neighborhood. The six pallbearers carried the coffin to the door, placing it on an iron-wheeled table so they could push it up toward the altar. The feet were pointing toward the altar. The church was dimly lighted, only the flickering altar candles were at all bright, and a few people were in the pews. The mou
rners followed the casket, wheeled slowly by the pallbearers up the center aisle toward the altar.
John went up the narrow staircase to the gallery and spoke to the young lady at the organ. Five schoolboys were there to sing the mass for the dead. The girl shook hands with John and said that she had explained to the boys the parts he was going to sing.
The requiem mass in the early morning with only a few people in the church was solemn and simple. The few mourners were in pews at the right of the aisle close to the altar rail and the priest, moving silently on the altar carpet in his black-and-silver vestments, sang in the old, tired, aloof voice and the small soprano voices of the boys answered him. John, standing in the balcony, alternately looking at the white, smooth faces of the boys and the small crowd huddled together at the front of the church, was trying to avoid dealing with the notion making him restless and excited, the feeling that he ought not to sing at all or become part of the ceremony or have a part in the sorrow and all the consequences of the death. Breathing easier, his hands, which had gripped tightly the railing, relaxed, as it occurred to him that it was better to be up there in the gallery, sympathetically standing apart and not drawn into it, than down at the altar with Isabelle and her mother and Lillian. So finally, in his turn, he sang easily and with new dignity, his bass voice filling the empty church. A few people in the pews turned around, craning their necks, looking up at him. Waiting to sing again he glared down at the people, resenting their curiosity and refusing to admit to himself that even if it had been a normal Sunday mass and they had heard a new voice they would have turned and looked up at the gallery. The two parts of the mass he sang were not at all familiar, but the music was simple and the organist, satisfied, smiled at him eagerly. On the altar the priest had put on a black-and-silver cape and with two boys holding back the ends, advanced toward the coffin, sprinkling it with the holy water.
John shook hands with the organist and went downstairs when the pallbearers were wheeling the casket out to the hearse.
A crowd was on the steps when they carried the casket out, pressing around them tightly, peering at the casket. It was hard moving freely toward the sidewalk. A newspaper photographer was trying to get a picture of the small procession moving toward the hearse, and John, looking back, saw Isabelle and Lillian duck their heads, hold each other’s arm tightly, but the mother walked straight ahead, her white face so composed the crowd backed away from her, and even the photographer touched his hat, though irritated because it was a dark, dull day, very bad for newspaper photographs. It looked like rain, for the sun had not come out all morning. Before they had gone into the church the sun had been hidden behind thin gray clouds, but now the sky was dark, unbroken, and heavy. The undertaker had provided a small car to take the priest up to the cemetery.
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