by Betty Smith
"Want to eat now, them''
"Let's see." He lifted a foot out of the dishpan and
watched it drip. "Not yet. Me feet lin't done yet."
He was content. He looked fondly at IZjS wife. She was
teasing a lock of hair; making it frizzy by holding one hair
and pushing the others up on it in a tangled ball.
He was proud of her. >Jo matter how hard she worked
in the house or taking care of their son, she always
dressed up for his homecoming. She got into her corsets
and tied on a bustle pad (not that she needed one) and
pinned the lace ruffles to her corset cover (not that she
needed them either). The bustle and ruffles filled her out
more and Big Red liked a well-filled-out woman.
Her dusty blond hair was in dips and waves and the rat
made her pompadour stand up high. That was the way she
had worn it when he first met her and she hadn't changed
her hair style a bit in ten ~years.
Come to think of it, few women changed their hair style
after they married. You could tell how long a woman had
been married by looking at her hair style. He recalled
when he was a rookie cop keeping company with Lottie.
He and three other rookies had been a quartet going
around to different precincts and singing:
And may there be no motlrning of the bar, When I put
our to sea.
Over the biers of dead pol cement
By coincidence, all four of the rookies had married in
the same year and had been each other's groomsmen and
ushers. And all of their wives still wore their hair the same
way.
Why is this? he pondered. Is it because they try out
differentt styles to attract a feller acid when they land him
they hold 07Z to the old hair style because i, worked in the
first place? Or is it that they don't care no more after they
got a feller hooked? He realized he was thinking too much
and he shuddered. I mustn't think so deep, he advised
himself. Nothing good comes 071t of deep thinking.
Il~he~` a man thinks deep, he ain't contented MO more.
And he was a contented man. He loved his wife and his
SOn
1 9 1
and his job and his home and his fellow cops. He didn't
love his mother-in-law. A man wasn't supposed to love his
mother-in-law. That was the tradition. But he loved
everything else about his work and home. He even loved
washdays. Their weekly recurrence assured him that life
was a mighty sure and safe proposition.
Washday was a weekly ritual. Before Big Red left for
duty on Monday mornings, Lottie had him lift the
water-filled, copperhottom washboiler up onto the stove
for her. Of course she could have put the empty boiler on
herself and filled it from the teakettle, but she loved little
attentions like that from her husband. As she wrote to an
older sister in Weehawken: It keeps HIS sweethearts.
She shaved half a bar of I;irkman's yellow soap over the
soaking clothes, put the cover on, let it come to a boil,
throttled it down to simmer and then set up the boiled
dinner for supper.
She filled her iron cook pot half full of water, threw in
a hunk of corned beef, a whole head of cabbage and six
unpared potatoes. When that came to a boil, she put on
a tight cover and got it down to simmering. It cooked all
day long.
At noon, the boiled dinner smelled like boiling black
socks and the laundry smelled like overcooked cabbage.
At supper, Big Red's plate would be filled with shreds of
boiled beef that got between his teeth. (That's whv the
shot glass on the table always held toothpicks.) Next the
beef would be limp black cabbage and water-logged
potatoes.
That was exactly the way Big Red liked it!
He wouldn't eat that particular dinner cooked any other
way. Once when Lottie's mother was sick and Lottie had
to be with her, Big Red had had to eat out. He had
ordered a corned-beefand-cabbage dinner. The beef came
in a smooth unshredded slice, the cabbage was in tender
and still-green leaves and the potatoes mealy. Big Red
told the waiter to take it all back; that it wasn't fit for a
clog to eat.
At half-hour intervals, Lottie turned the cooking boiled
dinner upside down in the pot with a wooden spoon and
stirred the clothes around in the boiler with a sawed-off
broomstick.
Lottie was funny for broomsticks sawed off. She must
have
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had a dozen in the closet. Why, a broom was no more
than half used when she had Big Red saw it down for a
wasUstick. As she wrote to another sister who lived in
Flatbush: Jimmy likes to make wasksticks for 7;7le. Things
like that keep us sweethearts.
She sang lustily as she stirred the simmering socks and
shirts and food.
l lIe ice Illan
1 a nice man....
At noon, Widdy, the son, came home from school for
lunch. They shared a pick-up lunch of ham bologna,
potato salad, coffee, hard poppyseed rolls and charlotte
7~u.sse from the baker's. It was hardly a pick-up lunch
but Lottie called it that because, like the boiled dinner, a
pic17~-up lunch was traditional for washdays.
About Widdy: He was the pride of his father's heart.
Big Red was sure they broke the mold when Widdy fell
out of it.
"My kid," he'd brag to his fellow cops, "is a plain,
ordinary, everyday kid. Nothing fancy. No A's on his
report card. No sir! He makes straight C's. Oh, maybe a
D once in a while in deportment," said Big Red modestly,
not liking to brag. "That's the way he is and I wouldn't
want him no different."
If it were possible for Big Red to have a fly in his
ointment, his son's name would be it. The kid's full name
was De Witt Xavier Shawn. He had been named for a
ferryboat.
It was the time Lottie and Tirn had been going steady
for a couple of years. One summer's day, he took her on
a policemen's picnic up the Hudson. They drifted away
from the other couples and stood alone on the bank. She
wore a floppy leghorn hat with a big pink rose on it and
black velvet streamers.
"Somebody looks mighty pretty today," he said.
"Oh, go on," she said. "I bet you say that to all the girls."
"That I do. So why shouldn't I say it to me best girl?"
"Timmy," she said out of the blue, "the time is come
when we got to get married."
His eyes rolled wildly It the suddenness of it. He was
crazy about her and had always s intended to marry her
but he felt trapped all the same.
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"I been intending to ask you meself someday. Now you
spoiled the surprise."
"When was you going to ask me, Timmy?"
force." (He was a rookie at the time.)
"Well, I went and asked you. Now what do you say?"
"I accept you," he said in a deep voice.
He felt relief. Now it was done. Now they would be
married and he wouldn't have to go through the Purgatory
of making up his mind.
"Oh, Timmy," she said, her eyes full of happy tears.
He took her in his arms and gave her a kiss that
knocked the leghorn hat off her head. A steamboat came
by. The captain, seeing the couple in a locked embrace,
blew the whistle in salute. The passengers waved, and
hollered and whistled and yelled things like: "Does your
mother know you're out?" and, "Oh, you kid!" Big Red
released Lottie and turned away, embarrassed. Lottie
picked up her hat and waved it at the steamboat,
screaming:
"We're gonna get married!"
"AI1 your troubles should be little ones," yelled the
captain through his megaphone.
As the boat steamed out of sight, or before, Lottie
caught the name painted on the side: The De Witt Clinton.
"If the first's a boy," she said, "we'll call him De Witt in
remembrance of the boat."
So the kid was baptised De Witt Xavier; the Xavier
because it was a Catholic name and because Lottie said
that parents owed it to children to give them an interesting
middle initial.
As a baby, they called him De Witt. When he started to
walk, they called him Witty because he wouldn't respond
to De Witt. When he started school, he told his teacher
his name was Widdy. (He couldn't articulate the t sound.)
Lottie thought it was cute, and from that time on he was
called Widdy.
Often Big Red wished he had not been so beguiled at
the time and had insisted that the kid be named Mike or
Pete or even Tim.
He sat in his parlor, then, contented, soaking his feet and
trying
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not to think too deep. Lottie was folding towels and
singing her iceman song under her breath.
. . . of one thing 1 am sure. There's something about his
business That affects his temperature.
"Where's the kid?" he asked.
"Over to Mama's."
"Why? "
"He's eating supper over there."
"What for?"
"Well, Mama took him to the butcher's with her and
they had these rabbits hanging outside a barrel with hair
on? You know. So Widdy wanted a rabbit- foot for luck
and the butcher wouldn't sell just a foot so Mama had to
buy the whole rabbit and she couldn't eat it all by herself
so he's eating over there."
She got up, went to him and ran her fingers through the
few red curls left on his head.
"Why'n't you tell me before?" he said.
He gave her a slap on the backside. He felt that, with
their child out of the house, he could take a liberty. He
lifted one foot out of the dishpan. It Dolled like a
mummy's foot.
"Listen, Jimmy," she said. "Dry your feet and go down
to Mike's for a pint of beer and we'll eat."
"Sure." But he looked ill at ease. "But first I got a
letter today. It came to the station house." He stiffened,
reached back, and pulled a letter out of iliS hind pocket.
"Who from?"
"Me mother."
"What does she want now?"
"Now' And 'tis five years since I heard from her last'"
"What does she say?"
"I don't know. I saved it to read in front of you."
"Aw, Timmy, that's all right. You could've read your
letter in the station house."
"We share."
"I know. Tllat's what keeps us sweethearts."
~ ~ ~ 1
"From Ireland." He turned the letter over and back.
"County Kilkenny." He dreamed:
"Ah, I can see it plain, Lottie, the Fedders and all. And
me mother's sod shanty with the rushes always blowing off
the roof and the clay hearth and the black pot ever on
the bob and the skinny cow and the few bony chickens
and the praties ve scratched out of the ground . . ."
And, thought Lottie, not bitterly, his mother standing ill
the doo~r~voy arid holding vat her hand once a month for
the letter with the ten-dollar hill in it that he sends and his
mother afar,' sister never writing to say, yes, no, or kiss my
foot.
"And," dreamed Timmy, "the village walk and the girls
with no corsets on and the skirts turned back to show the
red petticoat and their hair flying in the wind . . ." He
sighed. "Ah so. And I wouldn't go back there for a million
dollars."
"Will you read the Ictter now," she said, a little piqued
about the girls not wearing corsets, "or will you frame it?"
He opened the letter and read.
Estee ned Son: I take my pen in hand to compose this
sorrowful epistle . . .
"Me mother can't read or write," he explained.
"Go on!" she said in disbelief.
"Bertie, the Broommaker, wrote it for her. I bet vou he's
still living! Why, he must he seventy . . . no, eighty years
. . ."
"Will you read or will you frame?" she asked. He read:
. . . to convey to you, esteemed son, the sorrowful tidings
that one who once was with us and who had a loving place
in our hearts and who was esteemed 'oy all, has heeded
the call of a Higher Being, and is now in A Fix.
"Who died, rest his soul?" asked Lottie.
"Nobody yet. Let me read."
Oh, better, esteemed son, 'that we two lay sleeping in our
nest in the churchyard sod," than to endure the grief of
The Fix she is in.
Big Red paused to vipe a tear from his eye and to give
his vife a pleading look.
~ id 1
"You read it to yourself, ]~hl~mNr, dear," she said,
'and tell me after."
He mumbled through sollle more of the letter and
suddenly let out a snarling cry and stood upright in the
dishpan of water.
"What?" she cried out. "Oh, sweetheart, what?"
"The blacktard!" he snarled. "The durrrtee black'ard!"
He stepped out of the dishpan and strode up and down
the parlor with Lottie following hint w ith a towel. "Oh,
me baby sister. Me baby sister," he moaned.
She tried to comfort him. "NVe all got to go someday,
TinllllN darling."
"She's not dead. But 'twas better if she vas."
"Oh, why-, my sweetheart?'
"Because a black'ard by the nallle of . . ." he consulted
the letter, ". . . ]2. D. Moore, l squire, scandalized her
name and now he won't marry her." He sobbed in big
gulps.
"Sit here," said Lottie gently, "and I'll dr!r NrOur poor
tired feet. "
She knelt before him and patted his puckered feet dry.
He wept until his feet w ere wt ll dried. Then he made a
fist a
nd shoals it at the ceiling.
"I'm going to Ireland a ld beat the be-Jesus out of him,
God willing," he said.
"Sure, sure," she soothed. "But where will you find the
money?"
"Let me think," he said. He sat there and thought deep
while she put his socks and shoes on his feet.
"I could ask the boys to run a benefit dance for me like
the! did for Connie Clancy ~ he time his mother passed
away in Chicago and he needing money to go there for
the funeral. I could say me mother's at deatil's door, God
forgive me, and ask for a month's sick leave. . ."
Her heart was in a panic. 11 he left me to co to Ireland,
she thought, would he eater cr,me hack?
"No, I can't go."
"Why? "
"Me examination for sergcallt: It comes Up in two
weeks. If I take it, I'd have a hard rime trying to pass it.
If I don't take it, I won't pass a-tall."
1 I, 1
"I wouldn't care," she said. "I got stuck on you when you
vitas just a plain rookie. Remember?"
"I'd care. But not for meself. Did I not take the same
examination four limes already and not pass and not care
a damn except for you? That's why I keep on trying. If I
die a sergeant, sure, you'd get a bigger widder's pension."
What have I done in my life to deserve this good man, she
thought.
She remembered the night when he had been two hours
late coming home from worl;. One of the horses pulling
the car he was in had dropped dead and held up traffic.
Not knowing about the horse, Lottie was sure that Tim
had been beaten to death by the Hudson Dusters or
hatcheted by one of the Chinese tongs. She had spent the
two waiting hours on her knees in prayer.
Please, Holy Mother, let him be alive. Let him be drunk or
with another woman just so he's alive. Oh, Holy Mother,
intercede for me!
Hail, Mary, full of grace . . .
I'll give him everything . . . everything I've got to give. I'll
never nag him again. I'll give him everything he asks for....
Now he was asking to go to his mother and sister. But
how could she bear to let him go? She couldn't. But
because she loved him so, she made it easy for him to go.
"Take the examination next year. Skip this year. It's only
. . . well, it's only a year. And you'll only be gone a few
weeks and what's a few weeks in al] the rest of the life we
will have together?"
He doesn't really want to go, she thought. I know it. He
wouldn't leave me.
"I'll buy you a new dress for the benefit dance. You'll be
the belle of the ball."
"I don't want a new dress. I want only you. Old, Timmy,
you won't stop loving me while you're gone?"
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," he said.
Out of sight, out of mind, she thought. Will he come
back? He always says he hates County Kilkenny. But an
Irishman loves the land he came from. All the songs they
love prove it. She ran over some of the songs in her mind.
"I'll take you home again, Kathleen." And, "Where my
heart is,
[ 161
I am going," and, "Ireland must be heaven for my mother
came from there." And . . .
"Lottie," he said, putting his hand on her head, and
flattening her pompadour down to the rat. "Lottie, tell me
not to go and I'll stay and not hold it against you."
There were nine of us girls, she thought, and times was
hard. Annie died and Jeanie and Katie went in the convent.
Eileen and Martha went living out. Girly and Maudie and
Wily got married. I was the last one left and getting nearly
thirty. I never had a feller until I met Timmy. If it hadn't-a
been for him, I'd be a old maid; old Aunt Lottie living with
one of my married sisters; a servant girl without pay and
bringing up her kids instead of my own.
And Timmy's good to ?Ifama the five dollars he gives her
every week. And I'm homely but he thinks I'm beautiful. He
loves my cooking and I can't cook worth a nickel. I'm older