The Search for Maggie Ward

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “The young lady wants us to leave, peckerwood.” He leered evilly at me.

  “Fine with me.”

  “I’ll take care of you and then come back and see if she’s any good in a quick rape.”

  “Lock the door, Maggie.”

  “You think that’s gonna stop me, peckerwood?” He chuckled. “I’ll break that door right in.”

  The smell of gin, and a lot of it, wafted toward me. Jacob Walz always drank too much before a fight. That would make it easier.

  I let the Dutchman get behind me again. I tried to hobble down the steps quickly to stay ahead of him.

  “Running, huh, peckerwood?” He was bumping and weaving above me. “Can’t run fast enough to get away from old Wade McCarron. I’m going to tear you apart with my bare hands.”

  I didn’t look behind me. I must get to ground as quickly as possible so I could turn and face Walz on an equal footing.

  I almost made it.

  On the wooden landing outside the door of the second floor entrance, he lunged after me. I dodged to the side of the platform, not quite quickly enough.

  He landed on me with the full force of his large, fat body and sent me tumbling down the full flight of slippery stairs.

  Battered, breathless, bleeding from my mouth again, and with shudders of pain echoing and re-echoing through my body, I lay on my back in the snow on the sidewalk. The Dutchman rushed down the stairs full speed, prepared to stomp on me with both feet.

  A Zero in the sun.

  Behind him the demons were screaming for my blood.

  Just as he jumped, I kicked him in the gut and twisted away. Screaming like an injured rhinoceros, he sailed over me and tumbled into a snowbank, now doubled up in pain of his own.

  So now we’re on even terms. And you’re outnumbered, even if you don’t realize it.

  I’m not sure what I would have done next. Probably picked him up and dragged him off to the local police station. I hurt too much for a sustained fight.

  He rolled over, pawed in his coat pocket, and pulled out a small silver revolver, a twenty-two, probably, I noted as I watched it emerge, small and deadly like a water moccasin sliding around a tree stump.

  That’s how the Dutchman had killed Meisner, his partner. And the Mexicans.

  “I’m going to blow you apart, peckerwood.”

  He was too drunk to aim properly. On the other hand, he might get lucky.

  I spun on my left foot, and with a clumsy imitation of the proper martial-arts kick, swung my right foot toward his gun hand.

  I missed his hand completely but connected with his shoulder.

  It was enough to send the gun spinning into the snow.

  And turn me into a raving maniac.

  Threaten my woman, would he? Try to take her away from me, huh?

  Not in this caveman’s district, Jacob Walz. Not here.

  I forgot my own injuries. I forgot decency and honor. I forgot to worry about how I would explain eventually to the police. The horror of the Lost Dutchman must at last be ended. I didn’t want his gold, but he wasn’t going to take my woman away from me. Not now or ever.

  My fists, remembering enthusiastically the skills from my days on the Fenwick boxing team, slammed into his chest, his gut, his face with exuberant glee. I beat him to a bloody mess.

  Even now I don’t feel much guilt.

  He fell into the snow a couple of times. I dragged him to his feet and pounded away again.

  Finally I tossed him into a snowbank.

  Two of the Dutchman’s hired demons tried to grab me. With a sharp swing of my shoulders I sent them into the snowbank too.

  “I’m outnumbered, CIC; where are you with your BAR when I really need you.”

  Suddenly he was there.

  “That man assaulted my brother, officers, with a gun. There it is. It’s the second time he’s attacked him. I’m Pat Keenan, a Quigley seminarian, this is my brother Jerry. He won two Navy Crosses in the war and this slacker who was thrown out of the Marines tried to kill him.”

  Not Pat Keenan. That was not Pat Keenan. That was a fleet admiral with wings.

  “What year did you start at the Q?”

  “Forty-two.”

  “Pete Grabowski. I was there in thirty-nine. Did you have Clarkie?”

  “Sure did.”

  “He flunked me out. Just as well, my wife says. Hey, this gun is loaded. Mean-looking son of a bitch, isn’t he?”

  “My brother was escorting him from a young woman’s apartment where he’d made improper advances. Then he pulled the gun.”

  “Sure looks that way to me; but how come you didn’t help your brother.”

  He wasn’t my brother. He was Michael. Seraph. Specialist in wars in heaven.

  “Does he look like he needs any help?”

  CHAPTER 43

  FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS I WAS HIGHER THAN A PHANTOM jet.

  During the war I would return from combat, avoid looking at the empty places in the wardroom, plunge into my bunk and sleep as if I’d been drugged. In later years I smoked pot a couple of times with no discernible effect. Exercise does not give me a high.

  Physical violence, however, sends me into orbit—which disproves my wife’s contention that I am not a violent man.

  I talked, I chattered, I babbled, I ranted. Most of what I said was incoherent to others. Poor Packy could not understand why I thought he was Saint Michael. The police wondered why I called Wade McCarron “Walz” much of the time. My father, understandably, wondered about the “gold mine” I claimed to have won. Sister Mary Norbertine fetched the hospital chaplain when I raved about demons.

  The cops were persuaded that the mixture of pain and painkiller from my previous battle with McCarron and my memories of wartime experiences made me temporarily “nervous.” The hospital chaplain recommended a Florida vacation. The law-school dean suggested a semester off.

  I replied that I had routed the demons in a fair fight and the girl was now legitimately mine. All mine.

  Not that I had made any attempt to call her and claim her. Andrea King, as she was again, lived in the same world as the Dutchman and Michael.

  Finally I crashed with a thud, became morose and depressed, was released from the hospital—with a warning from S’ter to stay away from there, for a few weeks, anyway—and went home to study contracts and torts and civil procedures.

  Today I am still uncertain. Both the incidents were real, both were related to my search for meaning in life, both were part of my quest for adventure and romance, both involved Andrea King, whatever might be her current name, both were part of an ongoing conflict between good and evil that we haven’t lost yet.

  And both hinted that if I continued to be involved with Andrea King, I’d have all the adventure and romance I wanted: the Dutchman and the seraph would always lurk just around the corner, waiting to renew their war in heaven for the possession of her soul.

  After I collapsed from my violence-induced high and began to ache again, I concluded that studying civil procedures was a lot easier.

  I was even respectful to Professor Hennessey.

  With a little more self-restraint, Wade McCarron could have gone a long way. In small-town and rural America in the early years of the century, such men, sociopaths we’d call them now, were not dangerous because everyone knew their reputations since first grade and no one trusted them. The mobility caused by the war gave the Wade McCarrons of the country a larger stage on which to perform and greater freedom to escape punishment.

  Maggie, an isolated young woman deprived of her own roots, was the perfect victim for such a man.

  He had overreached, as such men always do, sooner than many of them. Now he was finished in Chicago. He was held without bond for forty-eight hours in Cook County Jail on charges of illegal possession of firearms, assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon, and attempted murder. His seat on the Board of Trade was revoked because he had obtained it under the false pretense that he was a
combat veteran. The federal grand jury was considering conspiracy charges. The IRS was taking a hard look at his tax returns.

  He jumped bond the day after he was released. No one tried very hard to find him. He was killed in a barroom fight in Juárez, Mexico, the following summer, a lost soul in whose character conscience had been misplaced. I tried to feel sorry for him and did so in my head. In my gut I still remember the muzzle of the little silver revolver waving unsteadily at me, like a snake ready to strike.

  Maggie Ward—into whom Andrea King was again dissolving?

  I had won her in a fair fight, had I not?

  Sure, but, if it’s all the same to you, can I return the prize?

  Or so I thought as January shivered toward February, the exams drew near, George Marshall became Secretary of State, and “I’ll Dance at Your Wedding” surged to the top on the Saturday-night Hit Parade radio program.

  Even the song didn’t bother me. Whose wedding?

  Me date?

  Don’t be silly! I’m finished with women!

  That is not, however, how the Good Lord—or Lady Wisdom, as my son Jamie (the priest) calls Her—has designed our species.

  So, almost without realizing it, I found myself, on the Sunday before the exams, boarding the Lincoln Avenue streetcar at North Avenue.

  I glanced fretfully at the handful of people on the car, more afraid, I think, that she would be among them than that she would not be there.

  I saw her halfway down the car, bent over a book. My heart exploded with relief and love. “She’s yours, after all,” CIC informed me; “you won her in a fair fight, didn’t you?”

  Right!

  I sat next to her and removed Mauriac’s The Vipers’ Tangle from her mittened hand.

  “Good afternoon, Maggie Ward. I thought I’d remind you that I won you in a fair fight.”

  Her shooting-star smile lit up the streetcar, the grimy gray North Side and most of the rest of the cosmos. Then she turned it off just as quickly, twisted away from me toward the window, and buried her face in her mittens.

  “I’m so ashamed.”

  I took possession of her tough little jaw and twisted her face back toward me.

  “I don’t care whether you’re ashamed.…” I tilted the jaw upward. “I don’t quite mean it that way, Maggie. I hurt when you hurt, but I won’t permit it to get in the way.”

  “I deserted you,” she said helplessly. “Just like I did in Arizona.”

  I hadn’t bothered to think about that.

  “He would have hit me and raped me and maybe murdered me. You saved me. And I threw you out of my apartment too. And I didn’t come running down the stairs to help you.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t even look out the window to see what was happening. Well, not at first.”

  “And when you did?” I continued to resist the pressure of her chin, which wanted the worst way to collapse to the floor of the streetcar.

  “I thought I saw you on the ground and then I flew down the stairs”—she snickered despite her tears—”with a carving knife in my hand.”

  I couldn’t help myself. Public conveyance or not, I kissed her. “Butcher knife?”

  “No.” She shook her head vigorously. “This time it was a carving knife. And I saw your adorable brother talking to the police and you stalking around like you were Achilles or some other warrior who had won a battle and I laughed and I cried and I ran back upstairs and put the knife away.”

  “Adorable, huh?”

  The picture of Maggie Ward, in blue flannel pajamas, heavy robe trailing behind her, rushing into battle with an enormous knife clutched in both hands was worth the price of admission.

  Okay, Seraph, maybe there’s three of us now.

  “Well,” she said as she blushed, “not as adorable as you. And not nearly as sweet. But,” she rushed on, eager to put all her guilt on the table and learn whether absolution was still possible, “I realized that I had betrayed you again and was so ashamed that I didn’t have the courage to visit you in the hospital or even call you on the phone. I thought I might never see you again.”

  “Did you really?” I put one hand on either shoulder.

  “No, I really didn’t. I knew I’d see you again. I just couldn’t wait.”

  “And my adorable brother Packy, alias Michael the Archangel, kept you informed, every day, on my hospital progress.”

  “I heard, secondhand, every one of Sister Mary Norbertine’s sermons. Packy loves you almost as much as I do.”

  I put my arm around her and drew her close. “You are direct when you make up your mind, aren’t you, Maggie Ward?” I placed François Mauriac back in her hands. “Finish your book.”

  “I’m forgiven?”

  “The issue is irrelevant. I won you.…”

  “In a fair fight. I know that, Aeneas, but …”

  “But the violence which you have already experienced in your life dispenses you from any obligations other than self-preservation when you’re threatened with more violence. I don’t feel betrayed, Maggie.”

  We left the streetcar at Sheffield and walked, hand in hand, through the old German neighborhood, stronghold of the German American Bund just before the war, though, heaven knows, most German Americans were as opposed to Hitler as the rest of us.

  The German-American Cardinal put it succinctly: “Hitler was an Austrian paperhanger, and a poor one at that.”

  The first mid-winter thaw was upon us. Dirty snow was melting under a disapproving gray sky; streams of water were frantically seeking a direction in which to flow. Patches of black and naked front lawns had begun to appear. The smell of rain hung threateningly in the air. Nature and humankind both knew it was a joke, a false alarm, an ingenious and perhaps mean-spirited trick. Tonight or tomorrow night a sudden freeze would sweep the city and convert it into a massive skating rink. The next day a blizzard would cover the dangerous ice with a deceptive blanket of snow.

  And once more the poet’s prediction about spring following winter would be proved wrong. In Chicago anyway.

  Key in hand, Maggie angled her jaw toward the heavens on the outside landing at the door of the building, “I’m not letting you in to express sorrow or gratitude.”

  “Are you letting me in?”

  “Silly. I’m letting you in—”

  “Do you think you can keep me out?”

  Lips pursed, she considered me thoughtfully. “Probably not, Finn.”

  “Who?”

  “Finn MacCool, Irish Achilles, berserker …”

  “You got me perfectly.”

  She inserted the key, turned it, and struggled with the door. “Anyway, I’m not letting you in for any of those silly childish reasons which I would not want to have to confess to Dr. Feurst when I see him tomorrow …”

  “Let me.” I pushed the door with my shoulder. It sprang open easily.

  “Men are useful.” She acknowledged my ceremonial bow and preceded me into the stairwell.

  “Rarely,” I agreed. No demons. No ghosts, no memories even of my war in heaven here.

  “You’re not letting me finish.” The stairs were dark, but I could imagine her eyes flashing dangerously.

  “Finish then.” I extended my arm around her waist and pressed my fingers lightly against her well-armored belly.

  You’d be fired at the Lantern Room if you did not wear a girdle.

  “I’m making it unnecessary for you to break the door down, Jeremiah Thomas Keenan, because …”

  “Aren’t you going to finish?”

  “Because”—she gulped—”I can’t live without you.”

  When Maggie makes a gift of herself, she does it with ribbons and fancy wrapping paper and nothing held back.

  I tightened my arm around her.

  “Funny thing. I know what you mean. Which is why I spent a perfectly good Sunday afternoon before exams watching Lincoln Avenue streetcars.”

  She opened the door to her apartment without any help from me, slipped out of my
arm, tossed aside her coat, and turned up the gas heater. “No point in freezing.”

  “I don’t plan to freeze.” I hung up her coat and mine in the paper-thin wardrobe.

  Maggie watched with troubled blue eyes. “Sometimes I think you are too sweet to be real.”

  “Because I hang up coats?” I closed the door of the wardrobe. “That’s the way my mother raised me.”

  “She’s a dear … Should I make you some hot chocolate?”

  “Just what I wanted.”

  “Hmff.” She strode into the kitchen alcove as if the three or four steps put a vast distance between us.

  I followed after her. She kept her back to me as, fingers unsteady, she measured the spoons of Ovaltine into two chipped mugs.

  She’s scared, I thought. So am I. We’re both driven by energies that we do not control.

  “What about time, Maggie?”

  She turned on me, surprised. “I’m not working tonight, the Lantern Room is … oh …” She paused as her face flushed. “You mean the time of which I needed more … like my correct sentence structure?”

  “Literary women speak correctly. And, yes, I do mean that time.”

  “I’ll always need time.” She cradled one of the mugs in her hand. “I’ll always have to struggle with what happened to my family, both families, I guess. That shouldn’t have any effect on how I feel about you.”

  She waited uncertainly for my reply.

  “Your milk is warm enough now.”

  “Huh? Oh … does it make any difference to how you feel about me?”

  “What do you think? … Be careful with that milk.”

  “I won’t spill it … I think it ought to, if you had any sense. But …” She filled my mug and presented it to me triumphantly. “If you don’t have any sense, there’s nothing I can do about that, is there? Would you take this into my drawing room, sir? I think I have some chocolate cookies here in the cabinet.”

  “Nothing like a chocolate orgy.” I chose the edge of the bed, leaving her the mohair chair.

  “Yes, there is.” She curled her legs under her and studied me, waiting for my reaction.