The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan

by Callaghan, Morley; Atwood, Margaret;

  “I’m on the level,” Ray cried, bewildered.

  “And who is it who comes along?” said Harry, his face straight again. “Who’s the emissary? A scared little outcast with no one else to turn to. Driven out. No hole left to hide in. So he comes to me with a contrite heart. Conlin,” he said, mockingly solemn again. “Don’t you realize you may be making a grave mistake?”

  “I don’t get it,” Ray said, brushing his oily hair out of his eyes, and feeling lost again. “I’m not so educated. I told you I know my mistake. I didn’t mind my own business. That’s all. This is no way to treat an apology.”

  “You’re wrong, Conlin,” Harry said. “I really appreciate the event. I thank you,” and he grinned and linked his arm under Annie Laurie’s and led her back to the window.

  “Haggerty, just a minute,” Ray said, grabbing his arm. “Is the guy really off my back or is he laughing at me?”

  “The absolution seems to be in the laughter,” Haggerty said, grinning, and he joined them at the window, leaving Ray there by himself, hesitant, yet full of hope, as he wondered what he would say when he, too, joined them at the window; then he heard a noise at the door and he turned and saw Mike Kon, and he said the right thing; going closer he touched Harry on the arm and said, “Harry, it’s Mike Kon.”

  ✧ XXIV ✧

  In the crowd at the fight Mike had lost sight of Harry, though he had waited at the exit, and later, on the street. Then he had gone into a bar, and had sat there drinking and brooding. In a little while he could think only of Harry saying, “I’ll wear the coat at the fight,” and of his own threat, which had been frustrated. Again he would appear to be bluffing. The fact was that he was left sitting alone in a little bar where he was a stranger. All year, after a fight, he had gone to Dorfman’s. Now he couldn’t go there. Yet Harry was probably there right now wearing the coat. This is an outrage, and I’m letting him get away with it, he thought. Suddenly he left the bar, took a taxi over to Peel, and was blocked off from Dorfman’s by the crowd watching the fire. The smoke and the flames and the cops who drove him back every time he tried to go up the street inflamed his imagination. He felt hemmed in and wild because he could see the light over Dorfman’s. For a while he tried to stay quietly in the crowd and wait, but he had to jerk open his collar so he could breathe more evenly, and finally he went back to the corner, and east a block, then all the way up to Sherbrooke and back, and now Dorfman’s was down the hill, with the crowd on the street there smaller, and not so many policemen, and he edged his way slowly from door to door till he was through, then suddenly he trotted toward Dorfman’s.

  Flushed, with his collar opened and his tie pulled away, he stood near the bar, bewildered for a moment, seeing Ray Conlin there with Harry, then all his anger showed in his hard eyes. When he sat down on a stool at the end of the bar, Charlie hurried over to him.

  “What’ll it be, Mike?” he asked nervously.

  Taking his time Mike dropped his cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Don’t you remember, Charlie? I’m not welcome here,” he said.

  “Alfred was at the fight, Mike. He phoned and said he wouldn’t be in.”

  “I’m very lucky, eh, Charlie?”

  “Alfred has a touch of gastritis. What’ll you drink, Mike?”

  “Since Alfred won’t be in, eh? This insults me, Charlie.”

  “Nobody’s in tonight. Everybody must be down the street. They’ll want to come in just when I’m closing up.”

  But Mike had swung around on the stool, staring at Harry, who looked absolutely unimpressed as he put his hands in his pockets with a nonchalant and happy air.

  “I told you, Harry Lane,” Mike called over. “If I saw you wearing that coat again I’d tear it off your back. I saw you at the fights. I couldn’t get near you.” He stood up suddenly. “But I knew you’d be here.”

  “Mike,” Ray called, hurrying over to him. “You’re doing this thing all wrong, Mike. I know how you should behave. Listen to me.”

  “You little rat,” Mike said, and he swung the back of his hand and caught him on the mouth and knocked him to one side against a stool and the stool squeaked as it spun round.

  As Mike went toward the window there were cries from firemen high on ladders down the street; a bell was clanging, and then came a murmur from the crowd as flames shot from a window. Haggerty sat down, his elbow on the table, and watched him reflectively, and Annie Laurie picked up a glass, her eyes fierce. But for Mike, there was only Harry, who, smiling a little, took Annie’s arm. “We were watching the fire, Annie,” he said. “Come on,” and he turned to the window.

  Harry’s easy indifference enraged Mike, who took three quick steps to get close to him. He shot out his hand and grabbed the coat by the collar, and with the other hand he reached around and jerked it open. A button, snapping off, bounced on the floor. He wanted to get the coat off in one powerful motion and walk out with it.

  “Go away, you fool,” Annie Laurie cried, and Haggerty stood up anxiously for Mike looked so much heavier and more powerful than Harry and he had the craziness in his eyes. Harry had said nothing. The coat, being jerked down his back, was pinioning his arms. He hardly struggled, and Mike thought it was going to be easy. Then Harry pivoted suddenly; he jerked himself free of the coat which Mike held onto; the light caught Harry’s pale face and his wonderfully bright blue eyes, and balancing, flat on his feet and set, he punched Mike hard on the jaw. It was an astonishing punch, beautifully timed, for he was set right, and when he landed it, Haggerty stood up, his mouth open in surprise and admiration as Mike went down heavily on his haunches.

  “Come on, Annie,” Harry said, picking up the coat and taking her arm. “Let’s get out of here,” and he didn’t even hurry.

  “Remember — remember,” she said hysterically, as she put down the glass. “That street out there is full of cops right now.”

  Sitting on the floor, Mike shook his head, jerking it from side to side spasmodically, his eyes glazed, and then he looked up at Haggerty, who was wiping a flake of tobacco from his lower lip. The astonishment in Haggerty’s eyes seemed to degrade him, as if all along Haggerty, like everyone else, had been sure that he had been trying to behave with superior restraint because he was a great old fighter who could beat up Harry any time he wanted to. Yet now he saw him sitting on his pants in Dorfman’s in the worst moment of his life.

  Suddenly he bounded up, lurched a little, then rushed at the door, with Ray and Haggerty and Charlie crowding after him.

  Harry and Annie Laurie were at the door which he had just opened. Annie Laurie had stepped out, then Harry turned, standing under the wrought-iron light over the door which made Annie Laurie’s bare shoulders look golden. Then Mike shouted, “You — you —” and Harry half turned.

  Then Mike went down into his crouch, his eyes, just slits now under the scarred brows, gleaming with a hatred and contempt for himself for all the indignities he had suffered. His head bobbed a little to the left, and his right foot slid forward, then he suddenly shifted, and in the doorway Harry had no room to move away. He could have retreated quickly down the steps, but, defiant, not scared at all, his eager shining eyes tried to follow Mike’s shift; in that space he had no room to shift with him, and Mike’s right, as straight a punch as he had ever thrown, caught him on the point of the chin. Everything that Mike used to be was in the punch, and they heard a crack, and a kind of a little snap; and Harry lurched backwards, not tumbling, but falling stiff like a post, toppled down the steps to the sidewalk.

  He rolled past Annie Laurie who had both hands up, her purse hiding one side of her face, and she screamed and the wild lonely wail echoed down the street, then she screamed again, “Harry,” and stumbled down the steps and dropped on her knees beside him.

  The circle of light from the doorway reached only as far as her ankles and green pumps.

  “My God,” Haggerty said, and he started to wheeze as he ran out, but Ray, the first one down the steps, kne
lt beside Harry. Even in the shadow Harry’s face had a strange pallor, his neck was twisted awkwardly to one side, and there was a little blood on the sidewalk at the back of his head. Mike watched Ray give Harry’s face a little slap, then feel for his pulse, and then coming from what seemed to be a great distance away, he heard Annie Laurie sobbing, “Harry, oh, Harry, Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” and he turned, still dazed and trembling, and watched her touch Harry’s forehead and smooth back his hair. It made Mike feel lonely, and he thought, “What have I done? Why am I here with this man?” Then his own thoughts, wondering and desolate, frightened him, and he blurted out, “He asked for it.”

  “Get an ambulance,” Haggerty shouted. Charlie ran down the street toward the crowd and they watched him stop halfway down the street and talk to a policeman who had heard the shriek and come running toward Charlie. The policeman pointed across the road at another policeman and then at the street beside the hotel, and Charlie started to run again, and the policeman came on toward them.

  “That crack, that snap,” Ray said to Haggerty, as he stood up.

  “Never heard anything like it,” Haggerty whispered.

  “I think it broke his neck.”

  “He hit his head when he fell,” Mike said quickly.

  “I think he’s dead,” Annie Laurie cried. “My God, he’s dead.”

  Two puffs of smoke came from the night club windows, followed by a little flicker of flame; then Mike came over to Harry and looked down at him. The coat had flopped open, the torn lining showing, and Mike stared at it stupidly, and then he stooped and furtively folded it in on Harry, and he didn’t look up until he heard the policeman’s steps coming closer.

  Grabbing Haggerty’s arm, he said, “You saw what happened.”

  “I saw it, Mike.”

  “You saw him hit me. You’re my witness.”

  “That’s right. He certainly smashed you, Mike, when you touched that coat.”

  “Anyone who hears the story will say I had a right to do it and that I should have done it long ago. When he hits me — have I a right to hit back?”

  “Certainly you have. Take it easy. The three of us saw what happened.”

  Then Mike turned to Annie Laurie, for she was the one he was afraid of now. She was sitting on the Dorfman steps with the light on the back of her neck and on one leg. Her skirt had got pulled up and her round knee showed, and a hole had been rubbed in the knee of the stocking when she had knelt beside Harry. Mike couldn’t take his eyes off this hole in the stocking. She kept putting her fingers up to her lips to keep them from trembling but her hand trembled too. Over and over again she did this, as if she were cold and shivering, and she seemed to be watching raptly something across the road, but there was nothing there. “Annie Laurie,” Mike said, huskily. “You see, he knocked me down — you saw me on the floor.”

  “You poor driven fool, Mike,” she said, bitterly, and he didn’t know what she meant.

  Now the cop was there, kneeling beside Harry and listening while Haggerty explained what had happened.

  He was French and young and had a black mustache. “Who’s Mike Kon? You?” he said, looking up. “Me,” Mike said. “I don’t understand this about the coat. You’ll have to come to the station.” “I don’t mind at all,” Mike said. Then they heard the ambulance, which had been parked up the side street, called there because of the fire, coming up the street, its red light flashing off and on. They put Harry in the ambulance. Annie Laurie insisted on going with him. Haggerty helped her in. Then they were gone, and there was only the little blotch of blood on the sidewalk.

  “Get this down right here,” Mike said to the cop. “He hit me, then I went after him and hit him back. That’s all. These guys saw it. He hit me once and I hit him once.”

  “That’s right,” Haggerty said. “You have to tell about the coat, Mike.”

  But the cop, snapping his book closed, said, “We’ll go to the station,” and they all walked down the street to the hotel where the cop called a police car.

  In the station they stood before the sergeant’s desk while the policeman made his report. The gray-headed, gray-faced, gray-eyed sergeant pondered, then shook his head. “Where’s the coat? We better get hold of this coat, for your sake, Kon.”

  “Harry’s got it on,” Haggerty said impatiently.

  “You saw all this, Mr. Haggerty?” the sergeant said respectfully.

  “I certainly did,” Haggerty said. “And this guy Conlin saw everything too.”

  “We’ll have to wait until I hear from the hospital, but a man seems to have been killed,” the sergeant said. “We’ll have to book Kon on suspicion of manslaughter charge.”

  “It was a fight, a couple of blows struck,” Haggerty said. “Where’s there any suspicion of manslaughter?”

  “What do you want me to do, give Kon a medal?” the sergeant asked.

  “Charge him if you want to but you won’t make it stick,” Haggerty said sharply, and he turned to Mike, almost apologetically. “Don’t worry about it, Mike,” and Mike was astonished.

  Until tonight, Haggerty, like the others, had laughed at him and needled him. Yet now he was showing this indignant concern for him. Even now he was turning to Ray Conlin. “Is that right, Ray?” “You’re telling it just right, Mr. Haggerty,” Ray said enthusiastically. “I’m with you all the way, Mike. My story is Mr. Haggerty’s story.” His oily little face was friendly and almost happy. He was a witness; he was needed and Haggerty seemed to count on him.

  Mike put his shoulders back though he still had the inner trembling from his growing fear that he was disgraced and ruined. “At least I can get hold of my lawyer, can’t I?” he asked. “Sure, who’s your lawyer?” the sergeant said. “Louis Applebaum,” Mike said. “I want to get him right down here. I shouldn’t have to stay here. I want him down here.”

  They let him phone his lawyer and it took a little time; Applebaum was on his way to bed. When he heard what had happened and that Mike had three witnesses, he said he would be down to the station in an hour.

  “I’m going to stay here with you, Mike,” said Haggerty, now worried and unhappy. With the excitement gone, he spoke out of a long reflective troubled silence. “I’m staying too,” Ray said earnestly. “I’m not walking out on you, Mike. I’m a witness,” and the sergeant told them they could wait in a little room, a detective’s room, to the right of his desk, where they sat around the long table sprawled out in the chairs.

  The waiting seemed to drive them in on themselves. They said nothing. Finally, Mike took a cigar out of his pocket, but when he went to light it his hand trembled; he stared at the shaking hand and let the light go out, and as he put the burnt match carefully on the table he thought of his father and his shop, and he closed his eyes to hide his despair. A big detective came to the door, looked at them and went away. Then Haggerty, frowning and grappling with some aspect of the matter that bothered him, said angrily, “I liked Harry. Where could you have met a nicer guy? But you can’t go against people like he did. You can’t get away with it. People like people. That’s the thing. People have to go on liking people and respecting the general sentiment.” But these words didn’t comfort Mike at all; he had lost all confidence in people; the phrases about people made him think of the coat, and how the story would be told in the newspapers, and how he had known the coat would ruin him. Now he was in the police station where he had once been when he was a boy. The years since then had counted for nothing. The mysterious sureness of the fate awaiting him filled him with dread. He had no anger left. Slumping heavily in the chair he chewed hard on his cigar, then thought suddenly of Annie Laurie, kneeling on the pavement, brushing back the hair from Harry’s forehead as he lay on the sidewalk; it seemed all wrong, terribly wrong, and he took the cigar from his mouth, to say angrily, “To see him there in that coat, the lining all torn, with only a little stray kneeling beside him . . .” He didn’t say it — he was ashamed, and afraid of insulting Annie Laurie.

&
nbsp; “Until he had the trouble with Scotty, I liked Harry Lane,” he said suddenly. “He never knew it, and nobody else did either, but I used to look up to him. We should have been good friends. I used to admire the guy. I mean,” he said, groping desperately for the right words, “I used to admire the way he seemed to feel he didn’t have to impress people, he didn’t have to try. I used to watch him come down the street, or sit at a table, and I used to think he made people want to act their best. Lots of times I wanted to talk to him about things. I was embarrassed, you understand — afraid I’d say or do something and spoil it and he’d look down on me. I wanted to be proud like he was — without trying or caring. But a guy can be so proud he thinks he doesn’t have to care about anybody else, and I figured he was that way with Scotty. I thought he felt he just didn’t have to care what happened to Scotty, my friend, and it made me feel that if anything went wrong he’d look down on me too, and it hurt me, and it led to this — to this.”

  Another detective came to the door, chewing gum, and regarding them impassively. He took out a nail clipper and worked on his fingers, until they satisfied him; then went away.

  Haggerty had pulled the morning paper out of his pocket. “Look at my column, Ray,” he said idly.

  Turning to the sporting page Ray began to read the column. When Mike saw tears come to Ray’s eyes he got up and stood behind him. He had to do something to get the picture of Annie Laurie kneeling beside Harry out of his head. Leaning over Ray’s shoulder he read the long paragraph in the column about the fight. In this paragraph Haggerty had written that the one tragic figure in the comedy of errors in the ring was little Ray Conlin. The little guy, the most loyal handler a fighter ever had, had slipped maybe in not screaming for a postponement when Johnny got a nosebleed in training two days ago; but a doctor could have made the same mistake. For Eddie Adams to boot Ray out and leave him unpaid and wandering around, bewildered, was worthy of that exalted code of ethics that was now dominating the fight game since Rosso took over. “For shame, for shame, Eddie,” he had written.