The Bruiser

by Jim Tully

  “Drive through the park a while,” the girl said, while Shane continued to mumble.

  The girl was pensive. The past hurried by.

  She had heard of him all her life. When his name began to creep into the newspapers, she sent a letter to him in care of a Chicago sports editor. “Tell me,” she wrote, “if you’re my Shane Rory.” She mentioned what her father had told about him. The letter was never answered.

  His name became fixed in her mind. If his fight were too unimportant to warrant a paragraph in a New York newspaper, she turned to the section—”Fights Last Night.” She often found Shane Rory’s name—and after it, “Won” or “draw”—and the number of rounds. It was more than the career of a fighter to her. It made the young road of her days glow as if the morning sun were upon it. He came out of the same neighborhood.

  He was always “the little Rory kid” to her father. He would read of him and say, “The boy has nerve— his father was a slash of a man. It’s the great blood in his veins—the Roarin’ Shane Rory—eh—that fellow Daily can name them—his father could roar a cyclone down.”

  Shane again mumbled,

  “‘Oh the glory road, the glory road—

  I’m goin’ to push leather

  down the glory road.’”

  Her father had speculated on Shane’s chances with Bangor Lang—and never learned the result.

  The lights slanted across Shane as the cab rolled along. She had never seen such strength. His immense shoulders bulged in the well tailored coat.

  She recalled his fight with Sully. What a great man Sully must be—to get a decision over him.

  He moved quickly. “Where are we?”

  “In Central Park.” In sudden fear that he might want to leave, she talked rapidly, “I’m taking you with me—my dad knew yours—you’ll trust me, won’t you—Daddy was a cop till he got killed—and here we are— their two kids trying to find out what it’s all about— life’s funny, huh—nutty as a wedding cake, and all gummed up with a lot of sticky things. It was the day you fought Bangor Lang that Daddy was killed. I wanted to come to you then and introduce myself, but I was a little jittery—it’s heaven to love someone; but it’s hell when he slips away—it leaves an empty place the whole earth can’t fill.”

  Shane pulled the fingers of his hand. The knuckles cracked like bullets.

  He looked around the cab.

  The girl talked swiftly.

  “Daddy told me all about you as a kid—when I saw your picture several days ago I said to myself, ‘Gee, I’d like to know him again—your hair’s like mine, huh?”

  Shane remained quiet. The hard ridge of his jaw was low on his chest.

  The slender hand of the girl touched his face.

  “Want some money?” he asked.

  “No—damn your money—I’m not working tonight.… Let me help you—I mean it—I can still hear my dad sayin’—‘If that broke little bastard makes good, there’s a chance in the world for everybody,’ and I believed him. I’m your pal—you can’t go around this way. Ask Hot and Cold Daily about me.”

  Her green gown clung to her slender body. Sheer stockings on lovely legs, satin slippers, auburn hair in waves, she was a vivid contrast to Shane.

  “You’re purty,” he said in a half-conscious drawl.

  “Keep the change,” she laughed, “So you think I’m a girl of the night—and me in a thirty dollar seat to see you fight. I’m an entertainer, Shane—Berniece Burue— fancy name for Mary Cassidy.” She put her card in his upper coat pocket, “If you get lost, strayed, or stolen, ask for me. I sing silly songs and play a violin—men play with me—give me tips on the stock market, and when they don’t get to first base they quit the game.… Well, here we are.”

  “I’d rather not go in,” he said.

  “Come on—it’s all right.”

  She stood at the cab door.

  He got out, looked up and down the fashionable street, said, “So long,” quickly, and vanished into Central Park.

  She watched him for a second; then handing the driver money, she went into the elevator.

  Going to the telephone, “This is Berniece Burue— Do me a favor Hoten Cold?”

  “Sure thing, Berniece—”

  “Shane Rory just left me. I’m here at the Imperial-he went over into the park—he’s slightly—you know-maybe you can call some of the cops—confidential— and find him—don’t say anything—please—”

  “I won’t—thanks, Berniece—he must be slug-nutty to leave you. So long.”

  She gazed over the wilderness below. A thick haze hung over the park. Lights gleamed dimly through the trees.

  “Well, that’s that,” she said, “What a man—and my people—his dad and mine.”

  XV

  Completely conscious in the railroad station at South Bend, Indiana, he tried to recall what had happened. Vaguely the fight with Sully returned to him.

  He bathed his eyes in cold water, and looked at himself in the mirror. His cheeks were sunken. He felt for his watch. It was gone.

  He found a crumpled card in his pocket.

  He remembered the girl and his leaving the cab.

  A Negro attendant applied a whiskbroom to his clothes. Shane fumbled in his pocket. “Here, Mate.” He flipped a twenty-five cent piece.

  “I doan guess you got no moah.” The Negro advanced with the quarter.

  “That’s all right,” remarked Shane. “I’ve got a few dollars.”

  “No, you ain’t—you’s all in, down an’ out. I can tell.”

  “Who, me?” Shane smiled slowly.

  “Yes suh— I let’s you sleep heah all night— Fly cop he come in an’ looks at yuh an’ I says you’s my frien’ so he goes on out an’ you keeps talkin’ ‘bout a fahm in No’th Dakota an’ fightin’ somebody.”

  He put the quarter in Shane’s hand. Shane tried to hand it back. The Negro repeated, “No suh, no suh,” and ambled away.

  He found his way to the Midland Labor Agency in Chicago.

  Men jostled each other in a large room on West Madison Street. Some had blankets tied to sticks slung across their backs. They were the familiar “bindle stiffs” or men who carried bundles in a wandering world. Old “jungle buzzards,” the parasites of tramps, loitered about in the throng—the poor begging of the poor.

  Written in chalk on a huge blackboard were the words:

  “400 MEN WANTED FOR NORTH DAKOTA—GRAINSVILLE AND ADJACENT POINTS—CHARGES $2.00—FULL SHIPMENT MUST BE HAD IMMEDIATELY—”

  A “man-catcher” touched Shane’s arm. “You look like you could do a day’s work. Go get a valise to show good faith.”

  When he returned, the man said, “All right—two dollars, please—over to one side—North Dakota-Rolling River Farm—first gang—Red River Valley next—get in line there, boys.”

  They were marched to the depot, and put in a once gaudy but now old-fashioned passenger car.

  On Sunday morning they were in the Red River Valley of North Dakota.

  Wonder at what had happened since he left brought surcease from more hectic memories.

  He gazed out of the dusty window as the train rumbled through small, flat towns. Combining a red railroad station, a listless flagman at a crossing, a short main street, a cattle pen, and a tall grain elevator, they were as much alike as knots in a string he remembered. Small school buildings and fantastic frame houses, with lightning rods gleaming above turrets and cupolas, were scattered over the level land.

  From Grainsville, they were taken to the four thousand acre Rolling River Farm.

  A graveled road went directly to the house. Of faded brick, with green shutters, it was a huge, sixteen-room box, half hidden by trees. It had been built by a farmer for whom Peter Lund, the present owner, had worked as a hired hand.

  Red buildings, with slate roofs, and larger than his house, were all about. An office, built of logs, was at the edge of his barnyard, two hundred feet from the house. A large map of the world and a larger on
e of the United States was on the wall. Magazines and books were everywhere in the office.

  A Danish peasant, and silent as falling snow, Lund left his land but seldom.

  He had married the girl on the next farm. A country school teacher, she taught him to read and write.

  Slow of speech and movement, and sturdy and wind-beaten as the maples about the house, he was very tall. Though seventy, he was the equal in strength of any man who worked for him. His shoulders were bent with labor. He was, in his every action, the master of four thousand acres—and himself.

  The same migratory laborers had come to his farm for years. He paid them every week, and allowed them to draw money each day for anything needed.

  He would listen to their tales with a slight glint of humor.

  All on the large farm, including his wife, called him “the Boss.” Lyndal, his daughter, called him “Daddy Denmark.” She now joined him. Two Great Danes followed. He had given them to her years ago when Shane was on the farm. She called them Norway and Sweden.

  Lund watched the caravan coming from the door of his office. There was a quizzical expression about his eyes as if he were wondering for a moment about these mysterious men who came and went indifferently as the seasons, without regret, without hope, and as seemingly carefree as the wind across his fields.

  Shane was the last of the group. Lyndal watched them all, smiling, until he came.

  Startled, her eyes met his. How powerful he had grown.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Shane.”

  “I’m glad to be back—it’s like home,” he replied bashfully, in a half daze, and moved away.

  Now above six feet, with heavy drooping shoulders, his jaws were sharp and protruding.

  Peter Lund turned to his daughter, as a rift of wind blew a wisp of brown hair, the color of her eyes. Her figure was curved and slender, her lips full and red; her heart beating fast, her eyes followed him.

  “He’s back again, eh, daughter?”

  “Yes, Daddy—I’m glad.”

  “A fine-looking fellow like that driftin’ around like a cloud.” Her father’s eyes went upward.

  “It’s what I’d do if I were a man.”

  “Be glad you’re not a man,” he said, as, outwardly calm, she went to the house.

  She had often wondered what had become of him.

  He had stayed from the beginning of the harvest until she had gone to college. A letter she had written to him had been returned by her mother with the news that he had left suddenly. She was so used to him that it did not seem possible he would leave as suddenly as he came.

  He was everywhere on the farm. If someone were needed to go on an errand to Grainsville, Shane went. She often went along. Those were happy hours. She was proud of his reverence for her.

  She remembered him saying, “I’m a road kid—some morning I’ll be gone.”

  She did not dare show concern.

  With Shane and her father, she felt secure. She thought how much alike they were.

  The years had given her time to compare. His silence had been more to her than the talk of other boys. He had asked her questions about everything. She had caressed him slightly in leaving for college.

  She gazed out of the window across the waving fields. In the distance was the red brick schoolhouse she had attended as a child.

  Pupils and teachers returned to her. Irvin Rogers had taught her two seasons. He had lived at her house. She would have married him had “the boy” not come to the farm. Unconsciously he had filled her with un rest, uncertainty. She had been more contented with “the boy.”

  He stood alone now, near the windmill.

  She went to him.

  A stillness that comes now and then in the wheat country followed. Everything stopped moving at once. Horses stood, their heads down, their eyes half closed. Hens did not cackle. Roosters did not crow. Over the ground passed a long wave of shadow.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” She looked at the young giant before her.

  “Yes—it is,” Shane replied.

  “Where have you been so long?”

  “Every place,” was the answer.

  “Didn’t you ever think of us here? We wondered about you.”

  She wore a form-fitting brown sweater, a bright yellow scarf, and white flannel skirt.

  “You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you—but my question.”

  “Yes, a lot of times. I started a letter to you once.”

  Pleased, “Did you? Why didn’t you finish it. I’d have loved it.”

  “I don’t know,” at a loss for words. “You’re growing up.”

  “So are you.” She smiled, looking up at him.

  “How’s your grandmother?” he asked.

  “Didn’t you know? How could you? She died a few months after you left.”

  Lyndal’s grandmother was a Sioux Indian. She died on a windy January morning, her clay pipe clutched in her hand. The funeral stretched for a mile over the frozen ground. Lyndal was more drawn to the old lady than to her own mother. She had inherited a slender body, a lithe, graceful walk, and a love of Indian lore from her grandmother. Mrs. Lund had put aside all things Indian in girlhood.

  The stern, unyielding old woman, and her equally determined father had influenced Lyndal’s life. For hours she would form a trinity of silence with them. As close to them as the soil, she loved the ripple of wheat, the patter of rain, and the primitive sweep that made up their lives.

  Her mother was never quite of the group.

  As Peter’s lands and money grew, his wife became more and more fastidious. She abhorred the sweating bodies of the harvesters and their salt-streaked clothing. A slight, dark woman, she was a contrast to her immense husband.

  The mood of nature lifted. Everything stirred.

  The farm was more vivid in color. Birds flew with more graceful motion through the bright, blue weather.

  Fleecy white clouds sailed before the sun and dappled the ground with shadow.

  Her mother called.

  Lyndal went to her.

  “Well, he’s back,” she said.

  “Yes,” returned Lyndal.

  “He’s changed, hasn’t he?”

  “And not for the better, I’m afraid,” returned her mother. She glanced at Lyndal. “He was such a nice-looking boy—he’s harder now.”

  “He’s stronger and bigger—more of a man,” said Lyndal.

  XVI

  Work began at dawn. The sun was soon shining, yellow and hot as a furnace blaze through the whirling dust of the cloudless sky. Hitched to a large machine, twelve horses plodded slowly through the clank and roar of the field.

  The grain fell in wide sheets, on a long apron that carried it into a machine. The straw was dropped on the ground, the grain into sacks from a tube at the side.

  Because of his strength, Shane was put to loading the heavy sacks of wheat. He tossed them into the waiting wagons that hauled them from the field. It was the hardest work of the harvest.

  Tireless and cheerful, the men worked early and late. There would be “get-togethers” as Peter Lund called them, after supper. Knowing the strain of labor, he liked to see the men relax—when sixteen hours of the day had gone. If he was a driver of men, nature drove him. His thousands of acres ripened quickly.

  There was a respite of twenty minutes in mid-afternoon. Lyndal took lunch to the men. Friendly to all, she did not forget that her father had once been a hired man.

  He was well known in the Red River Valley.

  The prey of nature for years, he had seen hot winds burn his fields in an hour—the labor and hope of months. He accepted ill or good fortune without change of expression. His eyes would follow a bobolink darting up and down with the undulating waves of his yellow fields with the same satisfaction that he gazed at a copper sun that betokened good weather. The chinch bug, the Hessian fly, the locust of old, he fought all in turn with the same determined calm. A fatalist, he fretted neither against nature n
or events.

  Each spring he would walk for miles across his fields to discover where the snowdrifts of winter had washed away his wheat. Later, he would watch the green coloring turn to a lighter shade and then to yellow until his wheat was ready for the harvest.

  One morning, after a rain, the wheat was too wet to handle. A whirring noise was heard above the barnyard.

  “Sounds like locusts,” an old laborer said to Shane. “They used to be a lot of ’em around. I’ll never forget my first year here. They came like so many clouds— the sun shining on their wings so they looked like a million specks of glass moving. The wheat was just getting ripe. There was nothing the boss could do but let them come. The sun was about two hours up in the sky. The boss watched them settle down—and I watched him. I thought I’d rather be a bum than have what was in his heart when he saw another swarm coming up in front of the sun and making it dark as a horse’s mouth.

  “The boss looked at them, hoping they wouldn’t light on his fields—nor any other fields nearby—for whatever else you can say about the old man, he’s not mean. They flew above the farm for three days. There were whole hours when you couldn’t see the sun. Old Peter knew if they ever lit, they’d clean his fields like a starving man would a platter of meat. They traveled in long waves like the pictures of a comet’s tail. A bunch of them took a notion to light on old Peter’s far field the third day. He took it standing up. His little girl looked up at him and said, ‘Brave Daddy.’ I can see her yet—she was a cute little shaver. He held her close against his right leg, his big paw covering her whole right shoulder—and he never said a word. I’ve never quit liking him since that day. It was a hundred acre field—they might eat up his farm and they might leave in an hour—you could see them going down in front of the sun, bent like rainbows, their wings all aglisten. Some of the women started beating a tin tub to scare them away. They might just as well have whistled ‘Yankee Doodle’ for all the good it did—