Ancient Lineage and Other Stories

by Morley Callaghan

  As he ate his cold dinner he was rolling his brown eyes fiercely and sometimes shaking his big black head. His father, who was sitting in the armchair by the window, a huge man with his hair nearly all gone so that his smooth wide forehead rose in a shining dome, kept looking at him steadily. When Michael had finished eating and had gone out to the veranda, his father followed, sat down beside him, lit his pipe and said gently, “What’s bothering you, son?”

  “Nothing, Dad. There’s nothing bothering me,” Michael said, but he kept staring out at the gray dust drifting off the road.

  His father kept coaxing and whispering in a voice that was amazingly soft for such a big man. As he talked his long fingers played with the heavy gold watch fob on his vest. He was talking about nothing in particular and yet by the tone of his voice he was expressing a marvelous deep friendliness that somehow seemed to become part of the twilight and then of the darkness. Michael began to like the sound of his father’s voice, and soon he blurted out, “I guess by this time all the guys around here are saying I’m yellow. I’d like to be a thousand miles away.” He told how he could not force himself to jump off the roof the second time. But his father lay back in the armchair laughing in that hearty, easy way that Michael loved to hear; years ago when Michael had been younger and he was walking along the paths in the evening, he used to try and laugh like his father only his voice was not deep enough and he would grin sheepishly and look up at the trees overhanging the paths as if someone hiding up there had heard him. “You’ll be alright with the bunch, son,” his father was saying. “I’m betting you’ll lick any boy in town that says you’re yellow.”

  But there was the sound of the screen door opening, and Michael’s stepmother said in her mild, firm way, “If I’ve rebuked the boy, Henry, as I think he ought to be rebuked, I don’t know why you should be humoring him.”

  “You surely don’t object to me talking to Michael.”

  “I simply want you to be reasonable, Henry.”

  In his grave, unhurried way, Mr. Lount got up and followed his wife into the house and soon Michael could hear them arguing; he could hear his father’s firm, patient voice floating clearly out to the street; then his stepmother’s voice, mild at first, rising, becoming hysterical till at last she cried out wildly, “You’re setting the boy against me. You don’t want him to think of me as his mother. The two of you are against me. I know your nature.”

  As he looked up and down the street, Michael began to make prayers that no one would pass by who would think, “Mr. and Mrs. Lount are quarreling again.” Alert, he listened for faint sounds on the cinder path, but he heard only the frogs croaking under the bridge opposite Stevenson’s place and the faraway cry of a freight train passing behind the hills. “Why did Dad have to get married? It used to be swell on the farm,” he thought, remembering how he and his father had gone fishing down at the glen. And then while he listened to the sound of her voice, he kept thinking that his stepmother was a fine woman, only she always made him uneasy because she wanted him to like her, and then when she found out that he couldn’t think of her as his mother, she had grown resentful. “I like her and I like my father. I don’t know why they quarrel. Maybe it’s because Dad shouldn’t have sold the farm and moved here. There’s nothing for him to do.” Unable to get interested in the town life, his father loafed all day down at the hotel or in Bailey’s flour-and-feed store but he was such a fine-looking, dignified, reticent man that the loafers would not accept him as a crony.

  Inside the house now, Mrs. Lount was crying quietly and saying, “Henry, we’ll kill each other. We seem to bring out the very worst qualities in each other. I do all I can and yet you both make me feel like an intruder.”

  “It’s just your imagination, Martha. Now stop worrying.”

  “I’m an unhappy woman. But I try to be patient. I try so hard, don’t I, Henry?”

  “You’re very patient, dear, but you shouldn’t be so suspicious of everybody, don’t you see?” Mr. Lount was saying in the voice of a man trying to pacify an angry, hysterical wife.

  Then Michael heard footsteps on the cinder path, and then he saw two long shadows: two women were approaching, and one tall, slender girl. When Michael saw this girl, Helen Murray, he tried to duck behind the veranda post, for he had always wanted her for his girl. He had gone to school with her. At night he used to lie awake planning remarkable feats that would so impress her she would never want to be far away from him. Now the girl’s mother was calling, “Hello there, Michael,” in a very jolly voice.

  “Hello, Mrs. Murray,” he said glumly, sure his father’s or his mother’s voice would rise again.

  “Come on and walk home with us, Michael,” Helen called. Her voice sounded so soft and her face in the dusk light seemed so round, white and mysteriously far away that Michael began to ache with eagerness. Yet he said hurriedly, “I can’t. I can’t tonight,” speaking almost rudely as if he believed they only wanted to tease him.

  As they went along the path and he watched them, he was really longing for that one bright moment when Helen would pass under the high corner light, though he was thinking with bitterness that he could already hear them talking, hear Mrs. Murray saying, “He’s a peculiar boy, but it’s not to be wondered at since his father and mother don’t get along at all.” And inside one of the houses someone had stopped playing a piano, maybe to hear one of the fellows who had been in the lumberyard that afternoon laughing and telling that young Lount was scared to jump off the roof.

  Watching the corner, Michael felt that the twisting and pulling in the life in the house was twisting and choking him. “I’ll get out of here. I’ll go away.” And he began to think of going to the city. He began to long for freedom in strange places where everything was new and fresh and mysterious. He began to breathe heavily at the thought of freedom. In the city he had an Uncle D’Arcy who sailed the lake boats in the summer months and in the winter went all over the south from one racetrack to another following the horses. “I ought to go down to the city tonight and get a job,” he thought: but he did not move; he was still waiting for Helen Murray to pass under the light.

  For most of the next day, too, Michael kept to himself. He was uptown once on a message, and he felt like running on the way home. With long sweeping strides he ran steadily on the paths past the shipyard, the church, the railway tracks, his face serious with determination.

  But in the late afternoon when he was sitting on the veranda reading, Sammy Schwartz and Ike Hershfield came around to see him.

  “Hello Mike, what’s new with you?” they said, sitting on the steps.

  “Sammy, hello, Ike. What’s new with you?”

  They began to talk to Michael about the colored family that had moved into the old roughcast shack down by the tracks. “The big coon kid thinks he’s tough,” Sammy said. “He offered to beat up any of us so we said he wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance with you.”

  “What did the nigger say?”

  “He said he’d pop you one right on the nose if you came over his way.”

  “Let’s go over,” Michael said. “I’ll tear his guts out for you.”

  They went out to the street, fell in step very solemnly, and walked over to the field by the tracks without saying a word. When they were about fifty paces away from the shack, Sammy said, “Wait here. I’ll go get the coon,” and he ran to the unpainted door of the white-washed house calling, “Art, Art, come on out.” A big colored boy with closely cropped hair came out and put his hand up, shading his eyes from the sun. Then he went back into the house and came out again with a straw hat on his head. He was in his bare feet. The way he came walking across the field with Sammy was always easy to remember because he hung back a little, talking rapidly, shrugging his shoulders. When he came close to Michael he grinned, flashing his teeth, and said, “What’s the matter with you white boys? I don’t want to do no fighting.” He looked scared.

  “I’m going to do a nice job on you,” Mich
ael said.

  The colored boy took off his straw hat and with great care laid it on the ground while all the time he was looking mournfully across the field and at his house, hoping maybe that somebody would come out. Then they started to fight, and Michael knocked him down four times, but he, himself, got a black eye and a cut lip. The colored boy had been so brave and he seemed so alone, licked and lying on the ground, that they sat down around him, praising him and making friends with him. Finding out that Art was a good ball player, a left-handed pitcher who specialized in a curve ball, they agreed they could use him, maybe, on the town team.

  Lying there in the field, flat on his back, Michael liked it so much that he almost did not want to go away. Art was telling how he had always wanted to be a jockey but had got too big; he had a brother who could make the weight. Michael began to boast about his Uncle D’Arcy who went around to all the tracks in the winter making and losing money at places like Saratoga, Blue Bonnets and Tia Juana. It was a fine, friendly, eager discussion about faraway places.

  It was nearly dinnertime when Michael got home; he went in the house sucking his cut lip and hoping his mother would not notice his black eye. But he heard no movement in the house. In the kitchen he saw his stepmother kneeling down in the middle of the floor with her hands clasped and her lips moving.

  “What’s the matter, Mother?” he asked.

  “I’m praying,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “For your father. Get down and pray with me.”

  “I don’t want to pray.”

  “You’ve got to,” she said.

  “My lip’s all cut. It’s bleeding. I can’t do it,” he said.

  Late afternoon sunshine coming through the kitchen window shone on his stepmother’s graying hair, on her soft smooth skin and on the gentle, patient expression that was on her face. At that moment Michael thought that she was desperately uneasy and terribly alone, and he felt sorry for her even while he was rushing out of the back door.

  He saw his father walking toward the woodshed, walking slow and upright with his hands held straight at his side and with the same afternoon sunlight shining so brightly on the high dome of his forehead. He went into the woodshed without looking back. Michael sat down on the steps and waited. He was afraid to follow. Maybe it was because of the way his father was walking with his head held up and his hands straight at his sides. Michael began to make a small desperate prayer that his father should suddenly appear at the woodshed door.

  Time dragged slowly. A few doors away Mrs. McCutcheon was feeding her hens who were clucking as she called them. “I can’t sit here till it gets dark,” Michael was thinking, but he was afraid to go into the woodshed and afraid to think of what he feared.

  “What’s he doing in here, what’s he doing?” Michael said out loud, and he jumped up and rushed to the shed and flung the door wide.

  His father was sitting on a pile of wood with his head on his hands and a kind of beaten look on his face. Still scared, Michael called out, “Dad, Dad,” and then he felt such relief he sank down on the pile of wood beside his father and looked up at him.

  “What’s the matter with you, son?”

  “Nothing. I guess I just wondered where you were.”

  “What are you upset about?”

  “I’ve been running. I feel all right.”

  So they sat there quietly till it seemed time to go into the house. No one said anything. No one noticed Michael’s black eye or his cut lip.

  Even after they had eaten Michael could not get rid of the fear within him, a fear of something impending. In a way he felt that he ought to do something at once, but he seemed unable to move; it was like sitting on the edge of the roof yesterday, afraid to make the jump. So he went back of the house and sat on the stoop and for a long time looked at the shed till he grew even more uneasy. He heard the angry drilling of a woodpecker and the quiet rippling of the little water flowing under the street bridge and flowing on down over the rocks into the glen. Heavy clouds were sweeping up from the horizon.

  He knew now that he wanted to run away, that he could not stay there any longer, only he couldn’t make up his mind to go. Within him was the same breathless feeling he had had when he sat on the roof staring down, trying to move. Now he walked around to the front of the house and kept going along the path as far as Helen Murray’s house. After going around to the back door, he stood for a long time staring at the lighted window, hoping to see Helen’s shadow or her body moving against the light. He was breathing deeply and smelling the rich heavy odors from the flower garden. With his head thrust forward he whistled softly.

  “Is that you, Michael?” Helen called from the door.

  “Come on out.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Come on for a walk?”

  For a moment she hesitated at the door, then she came toward him, floating in her white organdie party dress over the grass toward him. She was saying, “I’m dressed to go out. I can’t go with you. I’m going down to the dance hall.”

  “Who with?”

  “Charlie Delaney.”

  “All right,” he said. “I just thought you might be doing nothing.” As he walked away he called back to her, “So long, Helen.”

  It was then, on the way back to the house, that he felt he had to go away at once. “I’ve got to go. I’ll die here. I’ll write to Dad from the city.”

  No one paid any attention to him when he returned to the house. His father and stepmother were sitting quietly in the living room reading the paper. In his own room he took a little wooden box from the bottom drawer of his dresser and emptied it of twenty dollars and seventy cents, all that he had saved. He listened solemnly for sounds in the house, then he folded a clean shirt and stuffed a comb and a toothbrush into his pocket.

  Outside he hurried along with his great swinging strides, going past the corner house, on past the long fence and the bridge and the church, and the shipyard, and past the last of the town lights to the highway. He was walking stubbornly, looking solemn and dogged. Then he saw the moonlight shining on the hay stacked in the fields, and when he smelled the oats and the richer smell of sweet clover he suddenly felt alive and free. Headlights from cars kept sweeping by and already he was imagining he could see the haze of bright light hanging over the city. His heart began to thump with eagerness. He put out his hand for a lift, feeling full of hope. He looked across the fields at the dark humps, cows standing motionless in the night. Soon someone would stop and pick him up. They would take him among a million new faces, rumbling sounds and strange smells. He got more excited. His Uncle D’Arcy might get him a job on the boats for the rest of the summer, maybe, too, he might be able to move around with him in the winter. Over and over he kept thinking of places with beautiful names, places like Tia Juana, Woodbine, Saratoga and Blue Bonnets.

  1934

  THE BLUE KIMONO

  It was hardly more than dawn when George woke up suddenly. He lay wide awake listening to a heavy truck moving on the street below; he heard one truck driver shout angrily to another; he heard the noises of doors slamming, of women taking in the milk, of cars starting, and sometime later on in the morning, he wondered where all these people went when they hurried out briskly with so much assurance.

  Each morning he wakened a little earlier and was wide awake. But this time he was more restless than ever and he thought with despair. “We’re unlucky, that’s it. We’ve never had any luck since we’ve come here. There’s something you can’t put your hands on working to destroy us. Everything goes steadily against us from bad to worse. We’ll never have any luck. I can feel it. We’ll starve before I get a job.”

  Then he realized that his wife, Marthe, was no longer in the bed beside him. He looked around the room that seemed so much larger and so much emptier in that light and he thought, “What’s the matter with Marthe? Is it getting that she can’t sleep?” Sitting up, he peered uneasily into the room’s dark corners. There was a
light coming from the kitchenette. As he got out of bed slowly, with his thick hair standing up straight all over his head, and reached for his slippers and dressing gown, the notion that something mysterious and inexorable was working to destroy them was so strong in him that he suddenly wanted to stand in front of his wife and shout in anger, “What can I do? You tell me something to do. What’s the use of me going out to the streets today? I’m going to sit down here and wait, day after day.” That time when they had first got married and were secure now seemed such a little faraway forgotten time.

  In his eagerness to make his wife feel the bad luck he felt within him, he went striding across the room, his old, shapeless slippers flapping on the floor, his dressing gown only half pulled on, looking in that dim light like someone huge, reckless, and full of sudden savage impulse, who wanted to pound a table and shout. “Marthe, Marthe,” he called, “what’s the matter with you? Why are you up at this time?”

  She came into the room carrying their two-year-old boy. “There’s nothing the matter with me,” she said. “I got up when I heard Walter crying.” She was a small, slim, dark woman with black hair hanging on her shoulders, a thin eager face, and large soft eyes, and as she walked over to the window with the boy she swayed her body as though she were humming to him. The light from the window was now a little stronger. She sat there in her old blue kimono holding the boy tight and feeling his head with her hand.

  “What’s the matter with him?” George said.

  “I don’t know. I heard him whimpering, so I got up. His head felt so hot.”