So the next afternoon Mrs. Massey was back in her old neighborhood on the avenue at the corner of Christopher Street, staring around longingly for some familiar sight that might recall an incident in her childhood. Looking carefully to the right and left, she had darted forward across the street with a determined look on her face, for traffic now made her nervous, and had arrived on the other side breathless with relief.
She walked slowly along the street, taking one deep breath after another, and leaning forward to lift some of the weight off her feet. Her face was screwed up as she peered at the numbers on the houses, and as she stopped to put on her glasses she was smiling eagerly like a woman who nurses a secret.
If she had closed her eyes and stood there, she could have remembered vividly almost every word of her quarrel with Mary Woolens. Mary had been a foolish, rather homely girl who found herself in love with a deceitful man who kept on promising to marry her while he borrowed her money. Then Mary had borrowed a hundred dollars from her, and it turned out that she had given it to the fellow, who had gone away, and of course Mary was not able to pay the money back. There had been so much bitterness. She had wanted to have the man arrested. For a while Mary and she seemed to hate each other, then their friendship was over.
Now, walking along the street, Mrs. Massey was full of shame to think there had been a quarrel about money. It seemed now that they both had been mean and spiteful, and she couldn’t bear to think Mary might not know that she had forgiven her long ago. “This must be the place here,” she said, looking up at a brownstone house. For a moment she felt awkward and still a bit ashamed, then she went up the steps, feeling like a self-possessed, well-dressed woman in good circumstances.
It was a clean-looking house with a little sign advertising small apartments and a few rooms for rent. As Mrs. Massey rang the bell in the hall, she peered up the stairs, waiting, and then saw a woman in a plain dark blue dress and with astonishingly white hair coming toward her. This woman, who had a pair of earnest blue eyes and a mild, peaceful expression, asked politely, “Were you wanting to see somebody?”
“I was wanting to see Miss Woolens,” Mrs. Massey said. Then she said, “Goodness, you’re Mary. Mary, don’t you really know me?”
“I can’t quite see you in that light. If you’d turn your head to the side. There now, well. Elsie Wiggins! It can’t be Elsie Wiggins. I mean Elsie Massey.”
The little white-haired woman was so startled that her hands, held up to her lips, began to shake. Then she was so pleased she could not move. “I never thought of such a thing in my life,” she said. She was very flustered, so she cried out suddenly, “Oh, I’m so glad to see you; come in, please come in, Elsie,” and she went hurrying along the hall to a room at the back of the house, while Mrs. Massey, following more slowly, smiled to herself with deep enjoyment.
And even when they were sitting in the big carpeted room with the old-fashioned couch and arm-chairs, she knew that Mary was still looking at her as though she were a splendid creature from a strange world. Mrs. Massey smiled with indulgent good humor. But Mary had no composure at all. “I just don’t know what to say to you, Elsie. I’m so delighted to see you.” Then darting up like a small bird, she said, “I’ll put on the kettle and we’ll have a cup of tea.”
While she waited, Mrs. Massey felt a twinge of uneasiness, wondering how she would mention that she had long ago forgiven Mary, for she was sure that was what was making the poor woman so flustered, even though, so far, she was pretending there had never been bitterness between them. With a pot of tea on a tray, and beaming with childish warmth, Mary returned, saying, “I was just trying to count up the years since we last saw each other.”
“It must be thirty years. Fancy that,” Mrs. Massey said.
“But I’ve heard about you, Elsie. I once met a woman who had lived in Chicago, and she told me that you had a son who was a doctor, and I read about some wonderful operation he performed in one of the hospitals here. It was in all the papers. You must be awfully proud, Elsie. Who does he look like?”
“They always said he looked like his father.”
“Maybe so. But of course I always think of him as Elsie’s boy.”
“Has your health been good, Mary?”
“I’ve nothing to complain about. I don’t look strong, do I? But outside of a pain in my head that the doctor says might be caused by an old tooth, I’m in good health. You look fine, though.”
“Well, I am, and I’m not. I’ve a pain in the leg and sometimes a swelling here, just at the ankle, that may be from my heart. Never mind. Have the years been good to you, Mary? What’s happened?”
“Why, nothing. Nothing at all, I suppose,” Mary said, looking around the room as though puzzled. As she smiled, she looked sweet and frail. “I look after the house here. I learned to save my money,” she said. All of a sudden she added, “Tell me all about your son, the doctor,” and she leaned forward, as though seeking a confirmation of many things she might have dreamed. “I ought to pour the tea now,” she said, “but you go right on talking. I’ll hear everything you say.”
Mrs. Massey began to talk quietly with a subdued pride about her son, and sometimes she looked up at Mary, who was pouring the tea with a thin trembling hand. The flush of excitement was still on Mary’s face. Her chest looked almost hollow. She was a woman who, of course, had worked hard for years, every day wearing clothes that looked the same, seeing that her house was cleaned in the morning, going to the same stores every afternoon, and getting much pleasure out of a bit of lively gossip with a neighbor on the street.
“I need more hot water,” she said now, and hurried to the kitchen with short steps, and then, when she returned, she stood there with a cup in her hand, lost in her thoughts. “Goodness,” she said. “There are so many things to say I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Mrs. Massey continued to talk with gentle tolerance, remembering that her own life had been rich and fruitful, and having pity for Mary, who had remained alone. But when a bit of sunlight from the window shone on Mary’s white head and thin face as she sat there with a teacup in her hand, her face held so much sweetness and gentleness that Mrs. Massey was puzzled, for Mary had been a rather homely girl.
“It upset me terribly to stand on the corner and feel so strange,” Mrs. Massey was saying.
“Elsie, heavens above! I didn’t ask about Will, your husband.”
“Will? Why, Will’s been dead for five years, Mary.”
“Dead. Think of that. I hardly knew him. It seems like yesterday.”
“We were married twenty-five years.”
“You used to love him very much, didn’t you, Elsie? I remember that. He was a good-living man, wasn’t he?”
“He was a good man,” Mrs. Massey said vaguely, and they both sat there, silent now, having their own thoughts.
Mary Woolens, the small white-haired one, was leaning forward eagerly, but Mrs. Massey, stout and red-faced, sighed, thinking of the long, steady years of married life; and though there had been children and some bright moments and some hopes fulfilled, she was strangely discontented now, troubled by a longing for something she could not see or understand.
Perhaps it was Mary’s eagerness that was stirring her, but she aroused herself by thinking, “Has she forgotten I once told her I hated her? Won’t she mention it at all?” And since she had been the one who had held the old grievance, she felt resentful, for the old mean quarrel had bothered her a long time, had filled her with shame so that she had been eager to forgive Mary; and now Mary seemed to have forgotten it.
She looked full into Mary’s face, and then couldn’t help wondering what was making her smile so happily. “What are you thinking of, Mary?” she asked.
“Do you remember how we grew up around here, and were little bits of kids together?”
“I sort of half remember.”
“Do you remember when we were such little things, we used to sit together on the steps and you used to tell me al
l kinds of fairy stories, making them up. I’ll bet you can’t remember.”
“I do remember,” Mrs. Massey said, leaning forward eagerly. “There was another girl used to sit with us sometimes. Bertha, Bertha – oh, dear, now, what was it?”
“Bertha Madison. We wore big hair ribbons. I can remember some of the fairy stories now. The night I read about your son being the fine surgeon and performing that wonderful operation, I lay awake in bed thinking about you, and I remembered the stories. It used to seem so wonderful that you could make up such fine stories as you went along, and it seemed just right, when I thought about it, that your boy should be doing the things he was. I remember there was one story you kept carrying on, and like a whole lot of bright patches it was.”
“I remember,” Mrs. Massey said, holding on to her animation.
Mary looked up suddenly. Her face was flushed, her blue eyes were brilliant. She was looking up with a kind of desperate eagerness. With a rapt interest and mysterious delight, Mrs. Massey was leaning forward, her heavy face holding a little smile that kept her lips parted. They were both filled with delight, leaning close to each other, almost breathing together, while they were silent. Then, without any warning, Mary began to cry, shaking her head hopelessly from side to side, and dabbing at her eyes with a small handkerchief.
“Mary dear, Mary! What is the matter? Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know,” Mary said.
“You shouldn’t go on like that, then,” Mrs. Massey said, fretfully. But she, too, felt her eyes moistening. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, Mary,” she said, rocking from side to side, “oh, dear, oh, dear.” She tried bravely to smile, but it no longer seemed important that they had once quarrelled bitterly, or that her life had been full and Mary’s quite barren – just that once they had been young together. A great deal of time had passed, and now they were both old.
1933
TWO FISHERMEN
The only reporter on the town paper, The Examiner, was Michael Foster, a tall, long-legged, eager fellow, who wanted to go to the city some day and work on an important newspaper.
The morning he went to Bagley’s Hotel, he wasn’t at all sure of himself. He went over to the desk and whispered to the proprietor, “Did he come here, Mr. Bagley?”
Bagley said slowly, “Two men came here from this morning’s train. They’re registered.” He put his spatulate forefinger on the open book and said, “Two men. One of them’s a drummer. This one here, T. Woodley. I know because he was through this way last year and just a minute ago he walked across the road to Molson’s hardware store. The other one … here’s his name, K. Smith.”
“Who’s K. Smith?” Michael asked.
“I don’t know. A mild, harmless looking little guy.”
“Did he look like the hangman, Mr. Bagley?”
“I couldn’t say that, seeing that I never saw one. He was awfully polite and asked where he could get a boat so he could go fishing on the lake this evening, so I said likely down at Smollet’s place by the powerhouse.”
“Well, thanks. I guess if he was the hangman, he’d go over to the jail first,” Michael said.
He went along the street, past the Baptist church to the old jail with the high brick fence around it. Two tall maple trees, with branches drooping low over the sidewalk, shaded one of the walls from the morning sunlight. Last night, behind those walls, three carpenters, working by lamplight, had nailed the timbers for the scaffold. In the morning, young Thomas Delaney, who had grown up in the town, was being hanged: he had killed old Mathew Rhinehart whom he had caught molesting his wife when she had been berry picking in the hills behind the town. There had been a struggle and Thomas Delaney had taken a bad beating before he had killed Rhinehart. Last night a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk by the lamppost, and while moths and smaller insects swarmed around the high blue carbon light, the crowd had thrown sticks and bottles and small stones at the out-of-town workmen in the jail yard. Billy Hilton, the town constable, had stood under the light with his head down, pretending not to notice anything. Thomas Delaney was only three years older than Michael Foster.
Michael went straight to the jail office, where the sheriff, Henry Steadman, a squat, heavy man, was sitting on the desk idly wetting his long moustache with his tongue. “Hello, Michael, what do you want?” he asked.
“Hello, Mr. Steadman, The Examiner would like to know if the hangman arrived yet.”
“Why ask me?”
“I thought he’d come here to test the gallows. Won’t he?”
“My, you’re a smart young fellow, Michael, thinking of that.”
“Is he in there now, Mr. Steadman?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m saying nothing. Say, Michael, do you think there’s going to be trouble? You ought to know. Does anybody seem sore at me? I can’t do nothing. You can see that.”
“I don’t think anybody blames you, Mr. Steadman. Look here, can’t I see the hangman? Is his name K. Smith?”
“What does it matter to you, Michael? Be a sport, go on away and don’t bother us any more.”
“All right, Mr. Steadman,” Michael said, “just leave it to me.”
Early that evening, when the sun was setting, Michael Foster walked south of the town on the dusty road leading to the powerhouse and Smollet’s fishing pier. He knew that if Mr. K. Smith wanted to get a boat he would go down to the pier. Fine powdered road dust whitened Michael’s shoes. Ahead of him he saw the power plant, square and low, and the smooth lake water. Behind him the sun was hanging over the blue hills beyond the town and shining brilliantly on square patches of farmland. The air around the powerhouse smelt of steam.
Out on the jutting, tumbledown pier of rock and logs, Michael saw a fellow without a hat, sitting down with his knees hunched up to his chin; a very small man who stared steadily far out over the water. In his hand he was holding a stick with a heavy fishing line twined around it and a gleaming copper spoon bait, the hooks brightened with bits of feathers such as they used in the neighborhood when trolling for lake trout. Apprehensively Michael walked out over the rocks toward the stranger and called, “Were you thinking of fishing, mister?” Standing up, the man smiled. He had a large head, tapering down to a small chin, a bird-like neck and a wistful smile. Puckering his mouth up, he said shyly to Michael, “Did you intend to go fishing?”
“That’s what I came down here for. I was going to get a boat back at the boathouse there. How would you like it if we went together?”
“I’d like it first rate,” the shy little man said eagerly. “We could take turns rowing. Does that appeal to you?”
“Fine. Fine. You wait here and I’ll go back to Smollet’s place and ask for a rowboat and I’ll row around here and get you.”
“Thanks. Thanks very much,” the mild little man said, as he began to untie his line. He seemed very enthusiastic.
When Michael brought the boat around to the end of the old pier and invited the stranger to make himself comfortable so he could handle the line, the stranger protested comically that he ought to be allowed to row.
Pulling strongly on the oars, Michael was soon out in the deep water and the little man was letting the line out slowly. In one furtive glance, he had noticed that the man’s hair, gray at the temples, was inclined to curl to his ears. The line was out full length. It was twisted around the little man’s forefinger, which he let drag in the water. And then Michael looked full at him and smiled because he thought he seemed so meek and quizzical. “He’s a nice little guy,” Michael assured himself, and he said, “I work on the town paper, The Examiner.”
“Is it a good paper? Do you like the work?”
“Yes. But it’s nothing like a first-class city paper and I don’t expect to be working on it long. I want to get a reporter’s job on a city paper. My name’s Michael Foster.”
“Mine’s Smith. Just call me Smitty.”
“I was wondering if you’d been over to the jail yet?”
Up to this time the litt
le man had been smiling with the charming ease of a small boy who finds himself free, but now he became furtive and disappointed. Hesitating, he said, “Yes, I was over there first thing this morning.”
“Oh, I just knew you’d go there,” Michael said. They were a bit afraid of each other. By this time they were far out on the water which had a millpond smoothness. The town seemed to get smaller, with white houses in rows and streets forming geometric patterns, just as the blue hills behind the town seemed to get larger at sundown.
Finally Michael said, “Do you know this Thomas Delaney that’s dying in the morning?” He knew his voice was slow and resentful.
“No. I don’t know anything about him. I never read about them. Aren’t there any fish at all in this old lake? I’d like to catch some,” he said. “I told my wife I’d bring her home some fish.” Glancing at Michael, he was appealing, without speaking, that they should do nothing to spoil an evening’s fishing.
The little man began to talk eagerly about fishing as he pulled out a small flask from his hip pocket. “Scotch,” he said, chuckling with delight. “Here, have a swig.” Michael drank from the flask and passed it back. Tilting his head back and saying, “Here’s to you, Michael,” the little man took a long pull at the flask. “The only time I take a drink,” he said, still chuckling, “is when I go on a fishing trip by myself. I usually go by myself,” he added apologetically, as if he wanted the young fellow to see how much he appreciated his company.
They had gone far out on the water but they had caught nothing. It began to get dark. “No fish tonight, I guess, Smitty,” Michael said.
“It’s a crying shame,” Smitty said. “I looked forward to coming up here when I found out the place was on the lake. I wanted to get some fishing in. I promised my wife I’d bring her back some fish. She’d often like to go fishing with me, but of course she can’t because she can’t travel around from place to place like I do. Whenever I get a call to go to some place, I always look at the map to see if it’s by a lake or on a river, then I take my lines and hooks along.”
Ancient Lineage and Other Stories Page 12