Katherine Anne Porter (61 page)

There was a short pause, a silence fell around them that seemed to ooze like a fog from somewhere deep in McCorkery, it was suddenly as if he had not really been there at all, or hadn’t uttered a word. Then he said outright: “Well, Halloran, let’s have it. What’s on your mind?” And he poured two more drinks. That was McCorkery all over, reading your thoughts and coming straight to the point.

Mr. Halloran closed his hand round his glass and peered into the little pool of whiskey. “Maybe we could sit down,” he said, feeling weak-kneed all at once. McCorkery took the bottle and moved over to the nearest table. He sat facing the door, his look straying there now and then, but he had a set, listening face as if he was ready to hear anything.

“You know what I’ve had at home all these years,” began Mr. Halloran, solemnly, and paused.

“Oh, God, yes,” said McCorkery with simple good-fellowship. “How is herself these days?”

“Worse than ever,” said Mr. Halloran, “but that’s not it.”

“What is it, then, Halloran?” asked McCorkery, pouring drinks. “You know well you can speak out your mind to me. Is it a loan?”

“No,” said Mr. Halloran. “It’s a job.”

“Now that’s a different matter,” said McCorkery. “What kind of a job?”

Mr. Halloran, his head sunk between his shoulders, saw McCorkery wave a hand and nod at half a dozen men who came in and ranged themselves along the bar. “Some of the boys,” said McCorkery. “Go on.” His face was tougher, and quieter, as if the drink gave him a firm hold on himself. Mr.
Halloran said what he had planned to say, had said already on the way down, and it still sounded reasonable and right to him. McCorkery waited until he had finished, and got up, putting a hand on Mr. Halloran’s shoulder. “Stay where you are, and help yourself,” he said, giving the bottle a little push, “and anything else you want, Halloran, order it on me. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and you know I’ll help you out if I can.”

Halloran understood everything but it was through a soft warm fog, and he hardly noticed when McCorkery passed him again with the men, all in that creepy quiet way like footpads on a dark street. They went into the back room, the door opened on a bright light and closed again, and Mr. Halloran reached for the bottle to help himself wait until McCorkery should come again bringing the good word. He felt comfortable and easy as if he hadn’t a bone or muscle in him, but his elbow slipped off the table once or twice and he upset his drink on his sleeve. Ah, McCorkery, is it the whole family you’re taking on with the jobs? For my Maggie’s husband is in now with the Little Tammany Association. “There’s a bright lad will go far and I’ve got my eye on him, Halloran,” said the friendly voice of McCorkery in his mind, and the brown face, softer than he remembered it, came up clearly behind his closed eyes.

“Ah, well, it’s like myself beginning all over again in him,” said Mr. Halloran, aloud, “besides my own job that I might have had all this time if I’d just come to see you sooner.”

“True for you,” said McCorkery in a merry County Mayo voice, inside Mr. Halloran’s head, “and now let’s drink to the gay future for old times’ sake and be damned to Lacey Mahaffy.” Mr. Halloran reached for the bottle but it skipped sideways, rolled out of reach like a creature, and exploded at his feet. When he stood up the chair fell backward from under him. He leaned on the table and it folded up under his hands like cardboard.

“Wait now, take it easy,” said McCorkery, and there he was, real enough, holding Mr. Halloran braced on the one side, motioning with his hand to the boys in the back room, who came out quietly and took hold of Mr. Halloran, some of them, on the other side. Their faces were all Irish, but not an Irishman Mr. Halloran knew in the lot, and he did not like any face he saw. “Let me be,” he said with dignity, “I came here to
see Gerald J. McCorkery, a friend of mine from old times, and let not a thug among you lay a finger upon me.”

“Come on, Big Shot,” said one of the younger men, in a voice like a file grating, “come on now, it’s time to go.”

“That’s a fine low lot you’ve picked to run with, McCorkery,” said Mr. Halloran, bracing his heels against the slow weight they put upon him toward the door, “I wouldn’t trust one of them far as I could throw him by the tail.”

“All right, all right, Halloran,” said McCorkery. “Come on with me. Lay off him, Finnegan.” He was leaning over Mr. Halloran and pressing something into his right hand. It was money, a neat little roll of it, good smooth thick money, no other feel like it in the world, you couldn’t mistake it. Ah, he’d have an argument to show Lacey Mahaffy would knock her off her feet. Honest money with a job to back it up. “You’ll stand by your given word, McCorkery, as ever?” he asked, peering into the rock-colored face above him, his feet weaving a dance under him, his heart ready to break with gratitude.

“Ah, sure, sure,” said McCorkery in a loud hearty voice with a kind of curse in it. “Crisakes, get on with him, do.” Mr. Halloran found himself eased into a taxicab at the curb, with McCorkery speaking to the driver and giving him money. “So long, Big Shot,” said one of the thug faces, and the taxicab door thumped to. Mr. Halloran bobbed about on the seat for a while, trying to think. He leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “Take me to my friend Gerald I. McCorkery’s house,” he said, “I’ve got important business. Don’t pay any attention to what he said. Take me to his house.”

“Yeah?” said the driver, without turning his head. “Well, here’s where you get out, see? Right here.” He reached back and opened the door. And sure enough, Mr. Halloran was standing on the sidewalk in front of the flat in Perry Street, alone except for the rows of garbage cans, the taxicab hooting its way around the corner, and a cop coming toward him, plainly to be seen under the street light.

“You should cast your vote for McCorkery, the poor man’s friend,” Mr. Halloran told the cop, “McCorkery’s the man who will get us all off the spot. Stands by his old friends like a maniac. Got a wife named Rosie. Vote for McCorkery,” said
Mr. Halloran, working hard at his job, “and you’ll be Chief of the Force when Halloran says the word.”

“To hell with McCorkery, that stooge,” said the cop, his mouth square and sour with the things he said and the things he saw and did every night on that beat. “There you are drunk again, Halloran, shame to you, with Lacey Mahaffy working her heart out over the washboard to buy your beer.”

“It wasn’t beer and she didn’t buy it, mind you,” said Mr. Halloran, “and what do you know about Lacey Mahaffy?”

“I knew her from old when I used to run errands for St. Veronica’s Altar Society,” said the cop, “and she was a great one, even then. Nothing good enough.”

“It’s the same today,” said Mr. Halloran, almost sober for a moment.

“Well, go on up now and stay up till you’re fit to be seen,” said the cop, censoriously.

“You’re Johnny Maginnis,” said Mr. Halloran, “I know you well.”

“You should know me by now,” said the cop.

Mr. Halloran worked his way upstairs partly on his hands and knees, but once at his own door he stood up, gave a great blow on the panel with his fist, turned the knob and surged in like a wave after the door itself, holding out the money toward Mrs. Halloran, who had finished ironing and was at her mending.

She got up very slowly, her bony hand over her mouth, her eyes starting out at what she saw. “Ah, did you steal it?” she asked. “Did you kill somebody for that?” the words grated up from her throat in a dark whisper. Mr. Halloran glared back at her in fear.

“Suffering Saints, Lacey Mahaffy,” he shouted until the whole houseful could hear him, “haven’t ye any mind at all that you can’t see your husband has had a turn of fortune and a job and times are changed from tonight? Stealing, is it? That’s for your great friends the Connollys with their religion. Connolly steals, but Halloran is an honest man with a job in the McCorkery Club, and money in pocket.”

“McCorkery, is it?” said Mrs. Halloran, loudly too. “Ah, so there’s the whole family, young and old, wicked and innocent, taking their bread from McCorkery, at last. Well, it’s no bread
of mine, I’ll earn my own as I have, you can keep your dirty money to yourself, Halloran, mind you I mean it.”

“Great God, woman,” moaned Mr. Halloran, and he tottered from the door to the table, to the ironing board, and stood there, ready to weep with rage, “haven’t you a soul even that you won’t come along with your husband when he’s riding to riches and glory on the Tiger’s back itself, with everything for the taking and no questions asked?”

“Yes, I have a soul,” cried Mrs. Halloran, clenching her fists, her hair flying. “Surely I have a soul and I’ll save it yet in spite of you. . . .”

She was standing there before him in a kind of faded gingham winding sheet, with her dead hands upraised, her dead eyes blind but fixed upon him, her voice coming up hollow from the deep tomb, her throat thick with grave damp. The ghost of Lacey Mahaffy was threatening him, it came nearer, growing taller as it came, the face changing to a demon’s face with a fixed glassy grin. “It’s all that drink on an empty stomach,” said the ghost, in a hoarse growl. Mr. Halloran fetched a yell of horror right out of his very boots, and seized the flatiron from the board. “Ah, God damn you, Lacey Mahaffy, you devil, keep away, keep away,” he howled, but she advanced on air, grinning and growling. He raised the flatiron and hurled it without aiming, and the specter, whoever it was, whatever it was, sank and was gone. He did not look, but broke out of the room and was back on the sidewalk before he knew he had meant to go there. Maginnis came up at once. “Hey there now, Halloran,” he said, “I mean business this time. You get back upstairs or I’ll run you in. Come along now, I’ll help you get there this time, and that’s the last of it. On relief the way you are, and drinking your head off.”

Mr. Halloran suddenly felt calm, collected; he would take Maginnis up and show him just what had happened. “I’m not on relief any more, and if you want any trouble, just call on my friend, McCorkery. He’ll tell you who I am.”

“McCorkery can’t tell me anything about you I don’t know already,” said Maginnis. “Stand up there now.” For Halloran wanted to go up again on his hands and knees.

“Let a man be,” said Mr. Halloran, trying to sit on the cop’s feet. “I killed Lacey Mahaffy at last, you’ll be pleased to hear,”
he said, looking up into the cop’s face. “It was high time and past. But I did not steal the money.”

“Well, ain’t that just too bad,” said the cop, hauling him up under the arms. “Chees, why’n’t you make a good job while you had the chance? Stand up now. Ah, hell with it, stand up or I’ll sock you one.”

Mr. Halloran said, “Well, you don’t believe it so wait and see.”

At that moment they both glanced upward and saw Mrs. Halloran coming downstairs. She was holding to the rail, and even in the speckled hall-light they could see a great lumpy clout of flesh standing out on her forehead, all colors. She stopped, and seemed not at all surprised.

“So there you are, Officer Maginnis,” she said. “Bring him up.”

“That’s a fine welt you’ve got over your eye this time, Mrs. Halloran,” commented Officer Maginnis, politely.

“I fell and hit my head on the ironing board,” said Mrs. Halloran. “It comes of overwork and worry, day and night. A dead faint, Officer Maginnis. Watch your big feet there, you thriving, natural fool,” she added to Mr. Halloran. “He’s got a job now, you mightn’t believe it, Officer Maginnis, but it’s true. Bring him on up, and thank you.”

She went ahead of them, opened the door, and led the way to the bedroom through the kitchen, turned back the covers, and Officer Maginnis dumped Mr. Halloran among the quilts and pillows. Mr. Halloran rolled over with a deep groan and shut his eyes.

“Many thanks to you, Officer Maginnis,” said Mrs Halloran.

“Don’t mention it, Mrs. Halloran,” said Officer Maginnis.

When the door was shut and locked, Mrs. Halloran went and dipped a large bath towel under the kitchen tap. She wrung it out and tied several good hard knots in one end and tried it out with a whack on the edge of the table. She walked in and stood over the bed and brought the knotted towel down in Mr. Halloran’s face with all her might. He stirred and muttered, ill at ease. “That’s for the flatiron, Halloran,” she told him, in a cautious voice as if she were talking to herself, and whack, down came the towel again. “That’s for the half-dollar,” she said, and whack, “that’s for your drunkenness—” Her arm swung around regularly, ending with a heavy thud on the face that was
beginning to squirm, gasp, lift itself from the pillow and fall back again, in a puzzled kind of torment. “For your sock feet,” Mrs. Halloran told him, whack, “and your laziness, and this is for missing Mass and”—here she swung half a dozen times—“that is for your daughter and your part in her. . . .”

She stood back breathless, the lump on her forehead burning in its furious colors. When Mr. Halloran attempted to rise, shielding his head with his arms, she gave him a push and he fell back again. “Stay there and don’t give me a word,” said Mrs. Halloran. He pulled the pillow over his face and subsided again, this time for good.

Mrs. Halloran moved about very deliberately. She tied the wet towel around her head, the knotted end hanging over her shoulder. Her hand ran into her apron pocket and came out again with the money. There was a five-dollar bill with three one-dollar bills rolled in it, and the half-dollar she had thought spent long since. “A poor start, but something,” she said, and opened the cupboard door with a long key. Reaching in, she pulled a loosely fitted board out of the wall, and removed a black-painted metal box. She unlocked this, took out one five-cent piece from a welter of notes and coins. She then placed the new money in the box, locked it, put it away, replaced the board, shut the cupboard door and locked that. She went out to the telephone, dropped the nickel in the slot, asked for a number, and waited.

“Is that you, Maggie? Well, are things any better with you now? I’m glad to hear it. It’s late to be calling, but there’s news about your father. No, no, nothing of that kind, he’s got a job. I said a
job
. Yes, at last, after all my urging him onward. . . . I’ve got him bedded down to sleep it off so he’ll be ready for work tomorrow. . . . Yes, it’s political work, toward the election time, with Gerald McCorkery. But that’s no harm, getting votes and all, he’ll be in the open air and it doesn’t mean I’ll have to associate with low people, now or ever. It’s clean enough work, with good pay; if it’s not just what I prayed for, still it beats nothing, Maggie. After all my trying. . . it’s like a miracle. You see what can be done with patience and doing your duty, Maggie. Now mind you do as well by your own husband.”