“Yes, I did,” the boy said stubbornly.
“Shut up, child,” she said, shaking him.
O’Meara knelt down till his eyes were on a level with the child’s and they looked at each other till they felt close together and he said, “But why did you want to do that for God?”
“’Cause it’s a swell sleigh, and I thought God would like it.”
Mrs. Farrel, fussing and red-faced, said, “Don’t you worry, I’ll see he’s punished by having the sleigh taken away from him.”
But O’Meara, who had picked up the figure of the Infant Jesus, was staring down at the red sleigh; and suddenly he had a feeling of great joy, of the illumination of strange good tidings, a feeling that this might be the most marvelous Christmas Day in the whole history of the city, for God must surely have been with the child, with him on a joyous, carefree holiday sleigh ride, as he ran along those streets and pulled the sleigh. O’Meara turned to Mrs. Farrel, his face bright with joy, and said, commandingly, with a look in his eyes that awed her, “Don’t you dare say a word to him, and don’t you dare touch that sleigh do you hear? I think God did like it.”
ALL RIGHT, FLATFOOT
At midnight Karl came into the hotel lobby and approached the desk with a self-conscious air, asking for Mr. Bristow, the boxing promoter. He was only nineteen and in his first year of university and not accustomed to hotel lobbies at that hour. “Mr. Bristow?” said the neat, cool night clerk. “Why, there’s Mr. Bristow right over there,” and he pointed to a group of men standing by one of the marble pillars about ten feet away. “Mr. Bristow,” he called softly.
A big shouldered, heavy man about forty-five, who was wearing a dark brown suit and a snap-brimmed brown hat on the back of his head, left the group and came toward the desk. He was good-looking with bold regular features and cold blue eyes and a face which in repose was like a piece of gray stone, but when he grinned as he came closer his expression changed and he seemed to have an engaging jolly self-assurance.
The clerk had merely nodded at Karl, and Mr. Bristow, without waiting for Karl to speak, put out his big hand. “You’re Karl, aren’t you?" he said. “How are you, Karl? So your uncle’s laid up, eh?”
“He had a touch of pleurisy, Mr. Bristow.”
“He sounded all right on the phone, Karl.”
“He’s all right, only he has to stay in bed.”
“Well, it was nice of you wanting to come down and meet me, Karl.”
“I’ve always wanted to meet you, Mr. Bristow,” Karl said shyly. “I’ve heard so much about you from my uncle.”
“It’s nice having you want to sit around with us. You look just right to me,” Mr. Bristow said warmly, as he took him by the arm and led him toward the two friends. Karl grinned. He liked Mr. Bristow immediately, felt at ease with him and decided quickly that he was even more impressive than he had expected him to be.
Ever since Karl had been a kid he had heard his Uncle John talk about his old friend, Willie Bristow, who had had such an exciting, successful life in the biggest cities on the continent. Willie had made money out of fighters and he had kept it. If Willie hadn’t liked the easy careless sporting life he could have been a great politician or an industrialist, according to Uncle John, for he had a very remarkable quality: he had great instinctive knowledge of a man’s weakness; he knew how to handle people.
They had only walked across the lobby, but Willie had already made Karl feel like an old friend and the two men to whom he was introduced seemed to accept him as someone who was important in Willie’s life. Both these men were smoking fine cigars and they wore good clothes and they shared the same mellow nonchalance. The thin one with the tired eyes and the intellectual stoop was Pierre Ouiment, a fight manager from Montreal whose boy, a lightweight, had been knocked out two hours ago in the Garden.
The other was Solly Stone, who had been a fighter himself ten years ago, and now had an unmarked, bland, moonlike face and the soft chuckling assurance of a man with a rapidly growing bank account. They went on talking about the fight, teasing each other because they had all lost money. Then Willie said, “Just a moment,” and he went back to the desk and Karl, who was more interested in watching Willie than in listening to his friends, saw what his uncle had meant.
Approaching the desk, Willie called, “Hey, you . . . ” And the neat polite clerk, who had jerked his head around in indignation, quickly smiled. With his big hands flat on the desk, Willie gave the clerk some instructions about delivering a parcel the next day, and then he looked at his watch, returned to his friends, hardly listened to them and finally said impatiently, “Oh, come on up to the room and have a drink. That dame can come up to the room.”
It was a big double room on the fifth floor and the window was open with the curtains bellying in the warm night wind and the sound of a tugboat whistling coming from the harbor. “Take off your coat, Karl,” Willie said. The others, and Willie too, had quickly taken off their coats.
“I’m all right like this,” Karl said.
“Come on, take it off, be one of us,” Willie said and he took the coat from Karl. Then he opened a box of cigars and took a bottle from his bag. For his friends, he poured generous drinks, but for Karl he poured a very small one which hardly colored the water with which he filled the glass and he whispered sympathetically, “Nurse it along, Karl, as a favor to me. I don’t want your uncle bending my ear about getting you into bad habits.”
Advice of this kind might have offended Karl if Willie hadn’t offered it so intimately, or if he hadn’t had such a comradely touch which made Karl want to please him. Willie hadn’t poured himself a drink: in fact he drank nothing until the girl he had been waiting for, a girl with thick shining hair in a black dress, who had a good-natured smile and a beautiful figure, came in with a bottle of special imported Scotch, which was Willie’s favorite drink. The girl was the secretary of one of the directors of the Garden and she knew a lot about fight managers and promoters.
For ten minutes Willie was wonderfully considerate of her, and his friends smiled and winked at each other and watched him intently.
“You know,” said Pierre, “I still figure Willie was right in betting on my boy. It was a sucker punch that got the kid.”
“It was a sucker punch from where I was sitting,” Karl said, and they argued about the fight.
“What business are you in, Mr. Stone?” Karl asked suddenly.
“Mr. Stone? What’s this Mr. Stone stuff, Karl?”
“Well . . . Solly.”
“That’s better,” Willie said. “And as for Solly, he’s got a hundred and fifty thousand salted away.”
“How did you make it, Solly?”
“That’s easy,” Solly said softly with a bland grin. “You see, Karl, when I was twenty I was a fighter. And in New York I won sixteen straight fights.”
“For which he got three dollars and twenty cents apiece,” Willie jeered.
“No, four dollars and eighty cents,” Solly chuckled. They were all laughing heartily and didn’t hear the knock on the door. At the second knock, Solly said, “The house dick for sure.”
“Let me handle this,” Willie said with real enjoyment.
When he opened the door, they could see two tall detective, one of them gray-haired and hollow-cheeked, peering into the room. Blocking the door with his huge body, Willie said quietly, “Why, you’re my boys, come on in and have a quick one.”
“No thanks, no thanks, Mr. Bristow,” the detectives answered with false smiles and deprecating gestures. “You’re making a little too much noise. Other people on the floor complain when they want to sleep and well, you know . . . ”
“Sure,” Willie said, and he walked out to the hall with him. When he returned he said with a shrug, “Flatfeet are all right, only you got to take a little interest in them. What were we saying, guys?”
Then they began a conversation about who was the most stylish fighter they had ever seen. It was the kind of conversation Karl
wanted to hear, wise and salty, and his young face was full of eagerness. He felt happy. His one drink had warmed him: he began to dream of being in faraway cities with Willie Bristow and having a share of his exciting life.
He found himself thinking positively about fighters he had never seen and his opinion was respected because he was a friend of Willie’s. First they talked about Benny Leonard, then about Kid Chocolate. “Chocolate, yeah, Chocolate, the nicest piece of fighting machinery I ever saw,” Willie said. Solly and Pierre each longed to tell about the last time they had seen Chocolate in the ring, and their voices rose and they laughed happily, throwing their arms around each other’s shoulders, each one trying to offer some splendid illumination about the perfection of the great black fighter’s style.
“This is wonderful — wonderful,” Karl thought, grinning gratefully at Willie, who was sitting on the edge of his chair, the collar of his expensive sport shirt pulled open, his bright expensive silk tie sliding across the shirt every time he threw his head back and laughed hilariously.
Karl forgot all about the time until someone knocked on the door, then he looked at his wristwatch. It was two-thirty. “The house dick again, I suppose,” Willie said, and he chuckled to himself. On his way to the door he switched off the light, then he opened the door and there was the tall, hollow-cheeked, gray-haired detective standing in the lighted hall, blinking his eyes in surprise.
Willie stepped out, closed the door, leaving them in darkness. Before anyone could get up and turn on the light, he’d opened the door again, turned the light on himself and was leading the thin detective into the room. “Karl,” he said, “pour this guy a real hooker. I can tell a man with an awful thirst.”
“Okay, boys,” the detective whispered, a guilty, apologetic smile on his face. “Only keep the noise down eh? Let’s keep it quiet.”
“Here you are, colonel,” Willie said affably as he handed him the drink Karl had poured. “Get this into that parched gullet, then take your coat off.”
“Well, just one,” the house detective said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“A guy like you, an old-timer, looks as if he might have an opinion on a great fighter,” Willie said.
“Now that’s a funny thing, Mr. Bristow,” the detective said. “I was a battalion champion in the war.”
“Drink to the battalion champ, gentlemen,” Willie commanded. As they all raised their glasses he went on, “These boys think Kid Chocolate was the nicest-looking fighter they ever saw. Did you ever see him?”
“That I did,” the battalion champion said enthusiastically, “and right here in this town about fifteen years ago.” With a quick smile he added in a pleading tone, “Keep the voices down, OK, boys?”
“We want to know what you thought of Kid Chocolate,” Willie said in a whisper.
“For my money,” the detective said, with a solemn glance at the glass which he had emptied in one gulp, “Chocolate was the real fancy Dan. A great artist.”
“I knew it, he’s one of us,” Willie cried in admiration. “Fill up his glass, Karl.”
Again they began to talk eagerly about Chocolate’s great fights, about his ability to deliver a straight punch from any angle, and the detective’s eyes began to glow. He felt happy and free. His opinions were being treated with respect and when he made a joke there was a burst of hearty laughter. Soon they were making more noise than they had made all evening.
“There’s just one thing I can’t understand,” Willie said suddenly, as he sat down on the bed beside the detective and put his arm on his shoulder. “How did a fine guy like you ever become a snooper?”
“Well, you know how it is,” the detective began awkwardly.
“Go on, tell me why.”
“I don’t know,” he said, fumbling for words. In his deep, apologetic embarrassment he looked almost innocent. “It’s a living, see. I’ve been at it ten years. I’ve got a wife and two kids. A married man has to have steady work, eh? It’s something you get used to. Some guys look for trouble. I mean, well, it’s not so bad.”
The fumbling apology had moved Karl, who suddenly felt happy when he saw Willie, Pierre and Solly nod gravely to each other. The flushed face of the detective lit up. He relaxed again, took another drink, his eyes shone and he started to sing softly, “By Killarney’s lakes and dells . . .”
“The man’s got a voice too,” Willie cried.
“A real baritone,” Solly said enthusiastically.
“If only there was a tenor here,” the detective sighed.
“I’ll be the tenor,” Karl said. So they sang “Killarney” with dignity and restraint, then swung easily into “Annie Laurie.” In the happiness of the song and the noisy enthusiasm of the applause the detective forgot where he was; he forgot about his job and the lateness of the hour.
Karl, turning, looked at Willie Bristow with wondering admiration, for it was Willie who, with his magical assurance, had touched this man and drawn him in among them. Someone irritable who didn’t know how to get along with people would have been intimidated by the detective’s knock on the door and would have let him spoil the evening.
The detective, liking Karl’s happy smile, had backed him into a corner and was telling how his father had taught him to use his fists and how he had dreamed in his youth of being the world’s light heavyweight champion. The detective had a very fond memory of his youth and his eyes had softened.
Over by the window Willie and Solly Stone were having a serious conversation, keeping their voices low. A puff of wind from the open window blew the light curtain across Willie’s face and he frowned and twisted his head and brushed it away and leaned closer to Solly. Pierre, who had been talking casually to the girl, turned away and stood behind the detective, listening and puffing methodically on his cigar. Suddenly, he blew a cloud of smoke at the back of the detective’s neck and grinned in derision when the detective began to cough.
Some little memory of his youth had struck the detective as being so good, so amusing, that he wanted Willie to hear it, and he went over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Listen to this, Willie,” he said with a strange innocent smile. Willie frowned and waved him away impatiently. “This is good, Willie,” the detective pleaded. “You’ll like this. I want you to hear it,” and again he rested his hand on Willie’s shoulder.
“I’m talking myself,” Willie said abruptly.
“Sure. Go ahead,” the detective said, drawing up a chair. The intrusion annoyed Willie, who looked at the smiling detective steadily for a moment.
“You finished that drink, soldier?” he said calmly.
“That I have,” the detective agreed with a deprecating chuckle as he held out the glass, thinking Willie was going to fill it again. “And it’s first-class stuff too.”
“All right, flatfoot,” Willie said crisply. “You’ve had a couple of drinks. That’s your payoff. Now get out of here and don’t bother us any more.”
“What?” the detective whispered in a bewildered tone. He seemed to be trying to believe they were kidding him. Then he looked stricken, for Willie was waiting with an assured, hard smile and the detective’s eyes shifted and he looked around as if he wanted to hide himself, but there was no place to hide, and he became obsequious and muttered, “Yes, sir,” and walked quickly to the door. “Thanks, gentlemen, for the drinks,” he said in a tone of comic dignity, but he did not look back.
“Nice work, Willie,” Solly said, grinning in admiration. “I wondered how long you were going to put up with that crumb.”
“Yes, Willie,” Pierre agreed with a meditative air. “Easing him out might have been difficult.”
“Him? Don’t worry,” Willie said contemptuously. “I know how to handle those flatfeet. He knows when his ears have been pinned back.”
“But . . .” Karl began.
“But what, Karl?”
“I don’t know,” Karl said unhappily. He was struggling against a terrible disappointment in Willie. “He
was letting himself go and feeling happy . . .” He could still see the detective’s hurt eyes. “I guess I got to like the guy a little,” he said awkwardly, as he looked from one face to another.
“You’ll get wise to those guys later on, Karl,” Willie said casually. “I’ve handled dozens of them. I know how to handcuff them.”
“I guess you do.”
“I’m going to take you out with us now, Karl, and buy you some first-class Chinese food. I know the place to get it. I want to have a real talk with you, Karl.”
“It’s getting late,” Karl said, and he stood up slowly.
“Oh, nonsense, Karl. This is your night.”
“No. I have to go,” Karl said with surprising firmness, for as he dwelt on Willie’s big, red, friendly, smiling face he felt himself pulling away in sudden fear, knowing that just as Willie had handled the detective and Solly and Pierre, he was now ready to handle him, too.
THE NEW KID
When Luke Baldwin was the new kid in town he was very lonely and didn’t believe he would ever make any sincere friends. The trouble was that he was a city kid. When his father, a doctor, died he had come to live with his uncle at the sawmill two miles beyond the town. Uncle Henry, the manager of the mill, was a confident, important man, whom everybody respected, but he couldn’t be expected to make friends for Luke. The only reliable friend Luke had in those days was the old collie dog, Dan, which was blind in one eye, and not much use to anybody around the mill.
The old dog helped Luke get better acquainted with the boys at school and particularly with Elmer Highbottom, the son of the rich merchant, who had Uncle Henry’s approval. Luke himself was too reticent and too quiet; he spoke too politely; and so the other boys jeered at him and would not believe he was really one of them. But the dog was always with him when he showed up at the ball field behind Stevenson’s orchard. The boys would talk to the dog and play with it and compare it with Elmer’s dog, which also was supposed to be a clean-bred.
The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan Page 5