The Luck Of Ginger Coffey (8 page)

"Hickey?" he shouted.

Without looking up from his work one old man elbowed the next, who rapped on his neighbor's desk with a pencil, who, hearing the rapping, turned slowly in his stool. His eyes, huge and shifting under lenses thick as an aquarium window, floated up to find the interrupter. Then he stood, buttoning about him a darned, many-stained cardigan of navy blue wool.

"Mr. Hickey?"

The red face nodded, the shifting eyes indicated that Ginger must follow. The old man's large, gently sliding posteriors moved between rows of linotypes, leading Coffey into the comparative quiet of the locker room. There Mr. Hickey paused, his distorted eyes searching for enemies, his raw, red hands knitting together a homemade cigarette.

"Yes?" he said. "New man?"

"How did you know?" Coffey said, surprised.

"Gets so you can tell," Mr. Hickey said. "Hitler send you?"

"Who?"

"Hitler. The boss."

"Oh! You mean Mr. MacGregor. Yes, he told me to ask you for a stylebook."

Mr. Hickey wheezed like an ancient organ. "MacGregor," he said. "Never call him by that name, son. Hitler's his name. Because he's —"

And then came a slow, enjoyed recital — noun, adjective, verb — of fourteen well-rehearsed obscenities. When he had finished, Mr. Hickey reached into his darned cardigan to produce a small red booklet. "Stylebook/' he said. "Now, go on down the street, one block to the left of here. In the tavern on the corner you'll find the night men. Look for a fellow with a crutch. That's Fox, head of the shift. It's pay night, so they all like to come in together. Better come in with them, okay?"

"Okay," Coffey said. "And thanks very much."

"Thanks?" Mr. Hickey seemed surprised. "For what, fella? This job, you don't have much to be thankful for. God bless, fella. Be seeing you."

"Going down," the elevator man shouted. "Going down."

He went down.

The tavern described by Mr. Hickey was unnamed. Above its door was an electric sign: Verres Sterilises — Sterilized Glasses, a sign which no one read but which conveyed to the passing eye that here was a place to drink, a place which shut late or never, a place unlikely to be well-frequented. This last was its deception, Coffey found. Forgotten, faded, off the main streets, in a downtown limbo where property owners allowed buildings to live out a feeble charade of occupation until the glorious day when all would be expropriated in a city slum clearance drive, the tavern, instead of dying, had burgeoned

in a new and steady prosperity. As Coffey pushed open its doors he was met by a beer stench and a blast of shouted talk. Two waiters in long white aprons, each balancing a tray containing a dozen full glasses of draught beer, whirled in and out among the scarred wooden tables, answering thirsty signals. Slowly Coffey moved up the room, searching for the man with a crutch. The customers put him in mind of old Wild West films: they wore fur caps, peaked caps, tuques. They wore checked shirts, lumber jackets, windbreakers. They wore logging boots, cattle boots, flying boots. They talked in roars, but they numbered also their solitaries. These sat alone at smaller tables, staring at the full and empty bottles in front of them as though studying the moves in some intricate game.

No one heeded Coffey as he moved on. At the far end of the room a huge jukebox, filled with moving colors and shifting lights, brooded in silence amid the roar of voices. Near it, disfigured with initials, an empty phone booth — symbol of the wives and worries the tavern's customers bought beer to forget. Coffey paused by the phone. What if she were sitting in the duplex this minute, already sorry for what she'd said? She could be. Yes, she might be.

He went into the booth and shut the door on the noise. He dialed, and Paulie answered.

"Is that you, Bruno?" she said.

"Who's Bruno, Pet?"

"Oh, it's you, Daddy."

"Is your mother home yet?"

"She was in but she went out again."

"Where?"

"She didn't say, Daddy."

"And she left you all alone, Pet?"

"Oh, that's all right, Daddy. I'm going to supper at a

girl friend's house and her mother's giving me a lift home in their car."

"Oh."

"I must go now, Daddy. I'm late already."

"Wait a minute, Pet. Did Mummy tell you IVe got a job?"

"No."

"Well, I have. A — an editing job on a newspaper. Isn't that good?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Well — well, tell your mother I phoned her, will you, Apple?"

"Okay, Daddy."

"And listen, Apple — don't be too late getting home, will you?"

But Paulie had already hung up. Who the blazes was selfish — he or a woman who would go out of the house and leave her little girl all alone? Suffering J! Ah well — let's have a beer. Where's this man I'm supposed to meet? Fox with a crutch.

He came out of the phone booth and stood solitary among the shouting drinkers searching for the cripple's sign. On the top of a radiator by the far wall, he saw an aluminum cane with a rubber-covered elbow grip. Nearby, sticking out into the aisle, a built-up boot. Its owner was a tall, vaguely professorial man with fairish hair and a gray stubbled chin. Coffey went over.

"Mr. Fox?"

The cripple ignored him. "First million," he said to his companions. "That's the caste mark. As long as they made it long enough ago for people to forget what it was made in, they become one of Canada's first families."

One of the men at the table, a bald, sweating person in a navy blue shirt and a vermilion tie, looked up, saw Coffey. "Fu-Fox," he said. "Wu-wanted."

"Oh?" The cripple sprawled backwards in his chair, letting his gaze travel slowly from Coffey's brown suede boots to the tiny Tyrolean hat. "New man, eh?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"How did I know? Hear that, Harry?"

Both Fox and the stammerer were seized with a laughing fit. Fox cleared glasses and bottles from in front of him in a rash sweep of his arm, laying his laughing face on the beer-wet table top. He was, Coffey realized, half-seas over.

"Sit down," said a third reader, pulling out a chair for Coffey. He was very old, strangely dressed in a duckbilled fawn cap, fawn windbreaker and high, elastic-sided boots. A feathery white goatee grew precariously on his caved-in jaws, and as he reached forward to shake hands, Coffey was put in mind of the recruiting poster's Uncle Sam. "My name's Billy Davis," he said. "And this here is Kenny."

Kenny was little more than a boy. His face, tortured by eczema, looked up at Coffey in a lost, posed smile. His right hand clutched the neck of a beer bottle. He sat primly on the edge of his chair.

"Drink up, Paddy," Fox said, signaling a waiter. "You're behind."

A waiter came and Fox paid for four glasses of draught beer which he at once lined up in front of Coffey. His companion, Harry, seemed to consider this a further occasion for laughter. "Now, Paddy," Fox said. "Let's see you sink these. Go ahead."

"Thanks very much," Coffey said. "That's very decent of you. My treat next, I hope?"

"Drink!" Fox shouted. "One, two, three, four. Go ahead."

Lord knows, Coffey liked a wet as well as the next man.

But there was something lunatic about this. He began on the first beer. Bald Harry's upper lip dripped sweat. The boy widened his fixed smile a fraction, in encouragement. The old man nodded his goatlike chin. Glass empty, Cof-fey put it down and reached for a second.

"Good man/* Fox said. "Away you go. One swallow."

It took two swallows.

"Number three, now," Fox said.

But as he raised the third glass to his lips, Coffey paused. Wasn't this daft? What was he doing, drinking himself stocious for a clatter of strangers?

"What's up?" Fox said.

"Nothing. Only that it's against nature, guzzling like this. What's the rush?"

Fox and Harry exchanged glances. "A good question, Paddy," Fox said. "And it answers mine. Booze is not your problem, right?"

They must be joking. It must be some sort of joke, this chat?

"Never mind him," the girlish boy said. "Say, that's a dandy overcoat you have. Sharp." He touched Coffey's sleeve.

"Wu-women?" Harry said. "Du-do you think that's his pu-problem, Foxy?"

"Why must I have a problem?" Coffey said. "What are you talking about?"

"Every proofreader has," Fox said. "All ye who enter here. Look at Kenny." He leaned over as he spoke and put his arm around the boy's shoulders. "You know what Kenny's problem is, I suppose?"

"Shut up," the boy said. "Lousy gimp."

"Hostility to the father figure," Fox shouted. "Classic!"

Feathery fingers plucked at Coffey's wrist. The old man thrust his Uncle Sam visage close. His mouth opened,

showing gaps of gums policed by ancient dental survivors. "Could be money," he said. "That's everybody's problem, am I right, fellow?"

"That's right," Coffey said, uneasily jovial. "It's the root of all evil, they tell me."

"Wrong!" Fox shouted. "Why, money is not evil, Paddy my boy. Money is the Canadian way to immortality."

"Cu-christ, here he gu-goes again," Harry said.

"Quiet now," Fox shouted. "I have to explain the facts of life to our immigrant brother. Do you want to be remembered, Paddy? Of course you do. Then you must bear in mind that in this great country of ours the surest way to immortality is to have a hospital wing called after you. Or better still, a bridge. We're just a clutch of little Ozymandiases in this great land. Nobody here but us builders. This is Canada's century, they tell us. Not America's, mind you. Not even Russia's. The twentieth century belongs to Canada. And if it does, then you had better know our values. Remember that in this fair city of Montreal the owner of a department store is a more important citizen than any judge of the Superior Court. Never forget that, Paddy boy. Money is the root of all good here. One nation, indivisible, under Mammon that's our heritage. Now drink up."

Coffey reached for his fourth glass of beer. Might as well. She didn't bloody well love him any more so what did it matter if he got drunk. Today was enough to drive any man to drink.

"Tonight, Coffey, you will become a proofreader. You will read all the news. War in China, peace in our time. Mere finger exercises. Later, Coffey, if you show promise, we may let you read something more important. The Quebec Society News, for instance. Or the Governor-General's speech to the Crippled Deaf Mute Division of the

United Sons of Scotland. And if you continue to show promise — if you make no mistake, allow no errors typographic or orthographic to slip into print, then we may even let you read an advertisement. And some day, you may become a senior man, a man who reads only advertisements. Because, Coffey, news is cheap. Here today and gone tomorrow. But advertisements cost money. They count. So you must get them right, do you hear? Compree?"

"Compree," Coffey said, raising his hand to signal the waiter.

The old man nodded and smiled. "It's money that counts, all right," he said. "Ten men run this country, did you know that? Ten big finenceers. And did you know there's a book tells you who they are and how they made it? You'll want to read that book, being a New Canadian. Yes, you will. You can borrow my copy, if you like."

Yes, CofFey said, he must dip into that sometime. He paid for another round of beers.

"Are you just pu-passing through?" Harry asked him. "Or du-do you pu-plan to stay for a while?"

Coffey took a long pull of his beer. "Passing through," he said. "Matter of fact, I'm just in the proofroom so's I can pick up the Tribune style. MacGregor's going to make me a reporter."

As he said this, he saw Fox screw up his left eye in a large drunken wink. Harry collapsed in a fresh rush of laughter. The old man shook his head. "Big finenceers," he mumbled. "Scab labor, that's what we are."

"But — but what's the matter?" Coffey asked. "I mean, what's funny about it?"

Again Fox winked at the others. "Nothing funny," he said. "I just hope you succeed, that's all."

Coffey stared at their knowing faces. What did they

mean? Had he been tricked? "Look, fellows," he said. "Tell me. I want to know. Do you think he will make me a reporter?"

"Stranger things have happened," Fox said. "Drink

«p;

"Big finenceers," the old man mumbled. "I remember one time —"

But Coffey no longer listened. He sat dumb, drowsy with beer, the glasses multiplying in front of him, the stylebook forgotten in his pocket. Were they making a joke of him? Was MacGregor tricking him? What was going on? Was it for this he had traveled across half a frozen continent and the whole Atlantic Ocean? To finish up as a galley slave among the lame, the odd, the halt, the old?

"Money," Fox was saying. "Oh, let me tell you, you can be a four-letter bastard all your life but never mind. If you die with enough money in the bank, the Tribune will write you a fine editorial eulogy —"

Had he been wrong to bet his all on Canada? Would he have been better to stick in those dead-end jobs at home, plodding along, day in and day out, until he dropped? Canada — listen to these fellows — they seem to think Canada is the back of beyond. . . .

"Nu-nother depression," Harry said. "You just wu-watch it. They sneeze in the States and we get pneumonia here."

Was that true? Was it a backwater, like the land he had fled? Had he made the mistake of his life, landing himself up here among these people, either smug like old Gerry, or full of gloomy prophecies like these fellows? Bloody Canada! Bloody Canadians!

"Just a poor clutch of Arctic-bound sods—" Fox was saying.

For if Veronica was going to leave him, then hadn't this been the greatest mistake ever?

"Greatest mistake this country ever made was not joining the United States," Fox said.

There was always Paulie. IVe got a job, Pet, he'd told her. Yes, Daddy. Daddies are supposed to get jobs. Not very great to have a job, is it? Not this job. Yes, if he lost Veronica, he would lose Paulie too. And would have no one.

"Drink up," Fox said. "Last call, boys."

"Must phone," he said, standing up. "Just a moment."