Each Man's Son (16 page)

“My luck iss run out on me!” he gasped to Charley Moss and began rolling his head for air.

It was two rounds later before Miller was sufficiently recovered to make a fight of it, two rounds in which the men had lurched around the ring while the crowd booed them. Now Miller was strong again. He wrestled Archie against the ropes and got in four slugging body slams. As Archie staggered, Miller kept after his body, clinched again and savaged the scar tissue over Archie's eyes with the palm of his glove. If Miller was in front of him now, Archie did not know it. The roar of the crowd was something he remembered having heard a long time ago. He saw nothing but the red haze which kept renewing itself in front of his eyes and he felt hardly any pain from the reverberating shocks pounding against his ribs and stomach and the sides of his head. Even now Miller was unable to land a clean punch, but the pounding told. When Archie went down he seemed to be taking an endless time about it. As he lay on a heaving sea he heard a voice screaming that he was yellow. He crawled up out of the tumbling waters and a renewed reverberation told him he was on his feet again, but everything faded out quickly this time. A round
later, when he foundered finally into the red thunder inside his own head, he had no knowledge of the fact that he had gone to the floor seven times and come up seven times before he fell for the eighth and last time.

In the front row under the lights, in the heat, smell and roar of noise, Sam Downey stared up at Charley Moss with his little mouth making a circle like a baby's as he sucked on his cigar. Three seats down the row a red-faced reporter leaned towards him and yelled, “What did you bastards do–dope him?”

Downey turned his noseless face and lifted his pudgy hands in a gesture of resigned disappointment. He took the cigar from his mouth and pointed it at the glaring lights over the ring.

“It's hot in here,” he piped. “Archie comes from a cold country. He never could fight in heat like this.”

 

Eighteen

N
EXT MORNING
in the Broughton hospital Ainslie remembered to look at the sports page of the paper. He read the brief account of the fight before Collie McCuen came into the common room and began to rage about what a sordid spectacle it had been, adding that if Archie had been properly handled he could have beaten Jack Dillon.

Ainslie had no idea who Jack Dillon was. He tossed the paper onto the table and put on a fresh gown as he wondered why it mattered to anyone but speculators who won a prize fight. In the operating room he forgot about Archie MacNeil and about everything else but the condition of the gall bladder from which he was removing three stones.

In the rest of Broughton men talked over the fight on their way down in the cages and behind counters. None of them could understand how a man could be so superior to his opponent and still be beaten like that. They felt the luck must have been against him, a superstition which more or less satisfied them all. It made them feel at one with Archie because they knew that luck was certainly working against themselves.

Breakfast was scarcely over before Alan discovered that something was wrong. Mrs. MacDonald came in from next door and spoke to his mother in the parlor and they talked
in voices so low he could not hear what they said. When they returned to the kitchen he could see that his mother was not only afraid but was also very sad and he knew it was because of his father. She never looked that way except when it was about his father. It was the same way Mrs. O'Connor had looked when her husband was killed in the pit.

Then Angus the Barraman came in and his presence made Alan sure that something terrible had happened, for he should have been down in the pit at this hour. A few minutes later they were joined by old Mr. MacIvor who had not been inside their house for more than a year. Alan stood by the kitchen window pretending to look out while he listened. Angus the Barraman said something and he heard his mother shushing him and Angus stopped what he was saying in mid-sentence. Then she touched Alan on the shoulder and led him into the parlor. She took a book of pictures and laid it on the table before him, but it was a book he had looked at so often he knew it by heart.

“Now be a good boy and stay in here. We have things to talk about together and you are not old enough to understand.”

When she went out she closed the door behind her and Alan heard the kitchen door close, too. He crossed to the window and looked out, feeling the fear grip the inside of his stomach. It was a lovely day after a night of rain and the sun was shining over wet ground. A stalk of wild grass was bearded with raindrops glistening like rainbows in the sun, but his fear prevented him from enjoying them. He left the window and opened the parlor door without a sound, tiptoed to the kitchen door and put his ear against the crack to listen. Angus the Barraman was talking, and his voice was more lugubrious than usual.

“He did what he could, Mollie. No man can do more than that whateffer now. The paper said he wass the better man till he got so tired. I ha? been tired my ownself and I know how it feels.”

Mr. MacIvor said, “Yes, indeed, Mollie, the paper said he did good. The crowd could not believe it, he stood on his feet so long.”

Then Alan heard his mother say, “To think that thousands of people paid money to see such a thing!”

There was a long silence, and Alan could hear the rocking chair creak as Angus the Barraman moved back and forth in it.

“Now perhaps Archie will come home,” Mrs. MacDonald said.

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. MacIvor, “and for Alan it whill be a fine thing to ha? his father with him again. The other night I prayed to God that Archie might win, but if I had stopped to think I would not ha? prayed, for if he won he would not come home at all.”

Alan heard his mother speak again, her voice sounding a wild note that scared him. “Four years, Mr. MacIvor. Four years Alan and I have been alone here. I wrote him a letter to Trenton, but now he will not answer it. Four years! Each time his picture is in the papers I must burn it so Alan will not see what they have done to his face. It is awful, those men he is with. I knew they were awful, and the doctor himself says there are no words for them. It is those men who have changed him.”

“Indeed,” said Angus the Barraman, “when my brother wass home from Chicago last year he told me there iss bad people in the States. There iss people so bad he hass been there ten years already and he does not know yet how bad they iss. There iss good ones too, and Chicago iss a fine city, but the bad ones in Chicago iss real buggers.”

There was another silence. Then Mr. MacIvor said, “Holy Chesus, but Red Whillie MacIsaac whill be mad today. He lost two dollars on it.”

“And where whould Red Whillie be getting the two dollars to lose?”

“He took it owt of the old woman's stocking the night before last, and he bet it before he could spend it, moreoffer.”

Somebody got up and a chair moved. The voices blurred and Alan realized as he heard more feet moving that more neighbors had come in the back door. It was like the wake the day after Mr. O'Connor died. He went back to the parlor and closed the door, and after about an hour he heard the people leaving. When it was quiet again his mother came to him, and this time he was too frightened to ask her any questions at all.

“Run out and play,” she said. “I'm not feeling well today and I will have to lie down.”

Alan did as he was told and went out to the road, but when he saw some of the other boys in the row playing in the field, he knew he didn't want to hear whatever they might say. All he could think of now was his father and what might have happened to him last night. He wished his mother would tell him everything and not say he was too young to understand. The doctor had answered every question he had asked. Alan decided to go up the road to the colliery property. From where he stood outside the wire he could see the Newfoundlanders breaking up coal on the ground and the tipples working and the little pit engine shunting the cars around. When the whistles blew for twelve o'clock he saw Mr. Camire come out of one of the sheds and cross the yard. He turned away, not sure whether he liked Mr. Camire or not, and went back down the road to his own house.

The house was empty, and this was the strangest thing of all today. His mother always worked on her rugs in the morning and the moment the whistle blew she got up and prepared their dinner. He wandered from one room to the other wondering where she was and what had happened to her and remembered somebody saying that when bad luck came it never stopped with one person but spread like the smallpox. She had said she was not feeling well and was going to lie down. Perhaps when he was away she had become so
sick they had taken her off? It might even be like the time Mrs. Jim Jack MacFarlane had been sick and the black wagon from the hospital came up to the door and Dr. Ainslie stood by while a pair of men in white carried her out of the house. Mrs. MacFarlane had never come back again.

In sudden panic he ran outside and trotted up the row. The boys had disappeared. Then he went back the way he had come, hoping his mother might return. He saw nobody. At this hour all the women were busy inside giving their children a midday meal and the men were still in the mine, eating from their black pails. At last he saw old Mrs. MacCuish who lived alone, sitting with gaunt knees on her own doorstep. He stopped to speak to her, even though his mother had told him that Mrs. MacCuish had been queer ever since her husband's death.

“Where is my mother?”

The old woman stared at him and narrowed her eyes. “And how would I be knowing where she iss?” She put her hand to the small of her back and got groaning to her feet. “Come here, boy!”

Alan approached cautiously, and the old woman looked down at him with her gaunt face set in bitter lines.

“So she went away and left you with nothing to eat, did she?”

“Yes, but she didn't mean to.”

“Heh! What makes you so sure of that? Come inside with me now.”

Alan stood in the doorway and looked about. It was dark and dirty and it smelled of the old woman.

“Is my mother sick?”

“Body and soul, that iss what I say, body and soul! But I am a Christian. Would I be telling what I know of her to a little child?” She pushed a chair towards the kitchen table. “You sit on that and be quiet.”

She took a bottle of molasses from a shelf and screwed off the top. Then she lifted a dirty plate from the sink, wiped it
with her apron and set it in front of him. She picked up a loaf of bread and cut two slices, both very thin.

“There!” she said. “Say your grace and eat that.”

Alan shivered as he sat down and picked up the bread. It was stale and there were little marks of mold at the corners. But before he could touch it the old woman cackled at him.

“Say your grace before you put that fud into your mouth or it whill poison you.”

Alan looked at her wide-eyed, frightened and puzzled.

“Heh!” she cried at him. “And what else would I be expecting but this? You do not know your grace whateffer. Now then, you will say it after me.” She fixed her narrow eyes on his. “‘Most merciful God'–go on, say it now!”

“Most merciful God,” Alan repeated.

“I am a misserable sinner and I know I whill be damned.”

“I am a miserable sinner and I know I will be damned.”

“But I thank Thee for this fud.”

“But I thank Thee for this food.”

“And for Thy efferlasting mercy.”

“And for Thy everlasting mercy.”

“Now then,” the old woman said, “you can eat and it whill not poison you. Pour out the molasses. Pour it out good and wipe the staff of life in it.”

Alan did as he was told, but when he tasted the thick brown syrup he could hardly bear to swallow it, for it was not like the creamy molasses his mother gave him. It was full of crusty lumps and the moldy bread was dank and sour.

The old woman kept staring at him. “Iss what I ha? in my house not good enough for the likes of you?”

Alan did not know how to answer, but as she continued to stare he murmured that it was very nice.

“It iss blessed by the good God,” said Mrs. MacCuish, “and that iss more than can be said for the bread where you come from.”

Alan forced himself to eat the two slices while the old woman stood on the other side of the table watching him with compressed lips. When he had finished he looked around for a cloth to wipe his fingers.

“Lick them,” the old woman said. “Hass nobody told you it iss a sin to waste fud?”

Alan licked his fingers and held them stiffly in front of him for fear of smearing his pants. “What is sin, Mrs. MacCuish?”

“Aha–and what else whould I be expecting? So she did not tell you, eh? She iss one of the ones that say to themselves in their vanity there iss no hell, but her sins whill find her owt, don't you worry over that. Be sure your sin whill find you owt–that iss the words of the Good Book. And you whill find owt it iss true on the day when the sheep are parted from the goats. Sin!” the old woman went on. “What are you your ownself but a lump of it whateffer? And the time whill come when you whill pay, and when you whill remember everything you ha? done, but then it whill be too late whateffer.”

Alan licked his fingers again. “Do you think my mother is home now?”

“How whould I be knowing if the Lord did make up Hiss mind He had stood her as long as He could? Go and see for yourself if she iss home. I whould not be knowing.”

Alan went to the door with his head hanging and the old woman following him.

“Now you ha? had my fud you whill come again?”

Frightened still, he murmured, “Yes, thank you, Mrs. MacCuish.”

“Heh! Don't try to lie to me. You whill not come unless you ha? to.”

The moment Alan reached the sidewalk he began to run, but when he reached home the house was still empty, so he walked out into the sunshine again. This time he saw somebody he liked. Mrs. MacDonald was walking up the road with
a basket on her arm and she smiled as he ran towards her.

“Whell now, and aren't you the silly boy fretting yourself like that, when all your mother iss doing iss in to the store to market?”

He looked up at the woman's ruddy, smiling face and there was no fear. The fear had lifted from his shoulders and gone sailing up to the sky like a kite. Then Mrs. MacDonald began to laugh and he laughed with her and the laughter was wonderful even though she was making fun of him a little. He ran off down the road and over the bridge, climbed the slope on the far side and turned off into the woods near the doctor's house. He walked through the firs and birches and down the slope of the interval to the doctor's brook, and there he sat on a stone watching the pouring water and wondering where it all came from. Tadpoles flickered along the bottom of a shallow near the brink and he caught one and held it in his hand but it struggled so much he knew it was frightened, so he dropped it back into the water and was glad to see it scuttle away. A man with shaggy hair under a broken-peaked cap came along the uneven path carrying a bundle with a stick thrust through the loop where the ends of the cloth were knotted. He looked at Alan speculatively, put one hand on the side of his nose and blew a jet of matter to the ground, scratched his behind and passed without a word. A dog came out of the underbrush and nuzzled against Alan's legs, but after a time the dog went off to follow the man. The boy took off his shoes and put his feet into the water. It was warm, not sharp and challenging like the water of the sea, but warm and soft, and he remembered it was not fit to drink because chemicals had poisoned it. With his feet in the flowing water, his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees, he sat there on a flat stone and tried to think.

About one thing there was no doubt at all. Things had gone very badly with his father in the States and now perhaps he would never come home. If he was a prize fighter, as the boys
said he was, then he must have been beaten in a fight. But why was that so bad he wouldn't come home? And why was his mother so ashamed? Maybe she would talk to him about his father now, and he could stop trying to keep her from knowing that he understood what a prize fighter was. She always looked so frightened whenever he almost gave it away, and he hated to see her afraid of anything. But he wanted very badly to talk to someone about his father and find out what awful thing had happened to him in the States.