Gertie saw Enoch and Mike Turbovitch with Amos tagging at their heels. They walked slowly and proudly up the alley, conscious of the watching eyes. They passed the Daly coalhouse where the little Dalys were now mixing snowballs with the screams they flung at Wheateye. Enoch strutted yet more proudly. “We licked yer big brothers, made em run to their mama.”
“Dat’s wot youse tink,” the grape giver cried, flinging soft snow into Enoch’s uplifted face, while another, even smaller, threw a tin can which he seemed to have been saving just for this.
“Run kids, run. Double, double cross. Run, Claude Jean. They’re loaded down with icicles. Yu cain’t fight um now. Run.” It was Gilbert, who had run around the end unit, peeked, and run back again. “Run. We cain’t fight; we’re all out a ammunition.” Gilbert smiled at the child, offering it a bite of turnip. When it refused, he took a large bite himself, and stood chewing, smiling at the little child like one who has lost all interest in fights and fighting.
Claude Jean and Mike disappeared around the unit at the further end of the building. Enoch, however, paused long enough to pick up the tin can and throw it back at the little Dalys.
He whirled to run after Claude Jean and Mike, but turned just in time to catch a hard thrown icy ball full in his face. Another, from the opposite direction, hit his shoulder. Gilbert cried, strangling on the turnip: “They’ve gotcha cornered, kid. Git in frontaya door. Git atcha door. They’ll kill yu.”
Enoch grabbed desperately for a handful of snow. But balls from every direction hit him—head, shoulders, and stomach. Bending low with his arms about his head and blood trickling down his chin, he dashed behind the Meanwell coalhouse. Gertie heard the cry, “We’ve got um,” and saw three boys, all bigger than Enoch, running toward him across her walk. Gilbert, still chewing, holding the baby, warned: “Don’tcha throw at me. Yu’ll kill this kid.”
Cassie, whimpering with fright, ran up the steps and clawed at the storm door. Gertie started to open it, but Whit caught her hand and hung on with a grip surprisingly strong for such an old-looking man. “Don’tcha start mixen in th kids’ quarrels. Old man Daly’ull call th cops. An if it comes to callen th cops, let it be you.”
“I cain’t stand an see em half killed,” Gertie cried. She shoved open the storm door and jerked Cassie inside just as a snowball whizzed past her outthrust head. She called to Enoch, but he, with a yelp of pain, and blood, looked like, running all over his head, jumped hard against the storm door and slammed it shut.
Gertie, still calling to Enoch, pushing on the door, stared through the glass. A second ago a Daly had been running across her walk with Gilbert watching, smiling a little as he patted the child. Gilbert was still smiling, but the Daly had gone sprawling hard onto the cement, like a galloping colt stepped into a sinkhole. Chris Daly was screaming. “Yu tripped Mike, yu dirty bastard.”
“Oh, yeah?” Gilbert said, smiling down at Mike, writhing in pain. His smile widened when a tin can, thrown by the “Oh, Lordy, Lordy,” crying Wheateye, hit the struggling Mike on the head.
Gertie still fought to get the storm door open. But Enoch continued to shove his shoulders hard against it, though it seemed to Gertie that all the Dalys, armed with chunks of icicles as well as snowballs, were charging upon him. The back of Enoch’s head was pressed against the glass, and past it she saw one of the bigger Dalys spring to her bottom step. She saw the lifted arm and the red-lashed eyes consider the pane of glass behind Enoch. Enoch hurled an icicle. The Daly ball came hard, aimed for his head. Enoch ducked, and the ball landed in a shower of glass on the kitchen floor.
Gilbert, Wheateye, Claude Jean, Mike Turbovitch, and many of the neutrals began screaming: “Call a cops. Call a cops. Kids breaken winders.”
Then all their crying seemed no more than a summer’s breeze in pines when Max’s door was flung open, and Victor boomed: “I gotta sleep. Git home. I call a cops.”
There was at once quietness enough that Wheateye, now on Gertie’s coalhouse, could explain, screaming: “Timothy Daly broke out Miz Nevels’ door light. Joseph tore down Miz Nevels’ door an beat up on that little bitsy Nevels’ girl.”
Complete silence fell in the alley when the Daly door opened. Wheateye, whose legs were nimble as her tongue, had leaped from the coalhouse and run toward the Daly walk the instant the door started opening. Like most of the others, she sighed with disappointment when, instead of Mr. Daly, only Mrs. Daly came out. She was clean and neat in her churchgoing clothes, with a boot in her hand as if interrupted in preparations for going out. She came on down the steps, and began a troubled looking about for her own when Wheateye began her screaming explanation. “Miz Daly, Miz Daly, Timmy’s busted th Nevels’ door an beat up on that little bitsy girl. She was all bloody, awful bloody, when her mommie carried her in. I seed her. Lookut, lookut their door.”
So convincing was Wheateye’s voice that Gertie gave a swift, searching glance at the unmarked Cassie, and Sophronie sighed, “Them youngens, I allus dread th days when they ain’t no school.”
Mrs. Daly looked toward the broken door, but said nothing as the children, gathering round her steps in an ever thickening circle, chorused: “Timmy done it. Timmy done it.”
And Timmy, defiant, shouted, “Gilbert tripped Mike. They started it.”
“I ain’t done nothen,” Gilbert cried. “I’m a tenden to this kid.”
“Yu did trip me, yu dirty lyen son uv a bitch,” Mike, blood-smeared and limping, cried.
“Go crap on yu mama’s neck,” Gilbert said, while Wheateye, seeing her father half in, half out of Gertie’s storm door, ran toward it, chanting, “Mike Daly broke out Miz Nevels’ winder light an scooted up ina snow an bloodied his head an broke his leg an blames it all on Gilbert.”
Whit turned, picked up his empty beer bottle, shook his head. “Them Dalys; their kids never does nothen. If’n one a our’n had broke their winder, they’d already be on their way to tell th office.”
Sophronie looked worried. “Now, don’t go a starten nothen. Mebbe they all need lickens but they’ve been hurt enough.” She turned to Gertie, sighing. “Pore things, I want um tu have a good Christmas an as good a time as they can. Did I tell ye? That school nurse said they had bad tonsils, so’s last week we carried um to th doctor an he said their tonsils all had tu come out. He’ll do it Christmas vacation.” She shivered. “I wisht it was me.”
“If it was jist you,” Whit said, “jist one, that ole Doc Edwards couldn’t finish payen fer his wife’s mink coat.”
“It ain’t like we didn’t have hospitalization,” Sophronie said.
“No,” Whit said, “that ole doc knows he is guaranteed his fifty a tonsil, cash on th line,” and he smiled at Gertie, fingering his scar as if the scar and the three operations were all one great big joke, funny still though on him.
“Git,” Sophronie said, pushing him toward the door. “I’ve gotta hurry er I’ll be late fer my merry-go-round, an if I don’t git them kids fed an off to a movie they’ll have another fight.” She had reached the bottom step, but turned, calling to Gertie: “If your youngens are goen to th movies, they can go with mine. It jist a little piece, no through street but th one here, an I watch um acrost that. Jist twenty cents an it’ull keep em out a meanness till dark—an ginerly they like it.”
“No,” Gertie said, her mouth a firm line. “I hadn’t figgered on senden em.”
However, Enoch, just coming into the kitchen, heard, and at once began begging for all the alley to hear: “Lemme go, Mom, lemme go. We’re th onliest young—kids never sees movies.”
Gertie closed the door and looked at him. There was blood on his forehead, a bruise on his cheek, a swollen lip, a tear in his trouser leg, and a missing mitten. He stood an instant looking at her, gritting his teeth to keep from cying, then whirled away toward the bathroom. She called him back. “I know it wasn’t all your fault, son, but—you wasn’t fighten fair. You was throwen ice like them. One a you could ha had a eye put out. An you didn’t try to git inside
. You stood by that door, a daren em, you might say, to throw. An I’m pretty certain I seen Gilbert trip that other’n. ‘Do unto others as … ’”
“That don’t work with them Dalys in this alley, Mom. One a them, he tried to git me in trouble. Out in th parken lot he got right in front uv a car an yelled at me, ‘Throw yu … ’ He called me a mighty dirty name, an I would ha throwed at him an broke that car winder, not thinken, if Gilbert hadn’t grabbed my arm. ‘He’s a tryen to git you in trouble so’s he can call th cops.’ Gilbert, he says.”
“But son …”
“Now, Callie Lou, you gotta help sing; come on, Callie Lou—your voice is pretty like your hair.” And Cassie’s thin trilling of “Away in a Manger” came from the room with the block of wood.
Enoch frowned. “Mom, you gotta make her quit that, talken to herself thataway. Some a th kids is a sayen she’s cuckoo.”
“Cuckoo?”
“Yeah.” He tapped his head. “You know, goofy in th bean.”
Gertie studied him, looked at him so long and so hard that his, “Mom, lemme go to th movies,” was hardly more than a whisper.
Enoch had disappeared into the bathroom, and Gertie was listening, smiling, to Cassie sing when Clytie and Reuben returned from Zadkiewicz’s, where they had been for eggs and a few other groceries needed over the week end. Reuben stalked away to his room, and Clytie plopped the basket on the table so hard that Gertie trembled for the eggs. “Mom, don’t make me carry this old basket no more. Some youngens called us hillbillies an throwed snowballs. I think they was tryen to git Reuben to fight so’s they could all gang up an half kill him.”
“I don’t guess they meant any harm,” Gertie said, and put the ironing board under Clytie’s bed. She was just coming back into the kitchen when the door was pushed open, and there was Clovis, home from work, and it hardly noon.
The children began their chorus of, “Pop’s home, Pop’s got home,” while Gertie studied him in swift, troubled glances. She saw no bandages, no flush of fever to betoken accident or sickness, and though he looked more foolish and angry than sick, she asked, unable to think of any better question, “You sick?”
“Do I look sick,” he asked, short-worded and surly, banging down his dinner bucket.
“But,” she went on, still more puzzled than angry when he offered no explanation, “worken today would ha been time an a half fer overtime.”
“Do you recken I don’t know that?” he yelled, all jangled up somehow, the way he often was when he got home from work, especially after a good-sized stretch on overtime. He had never used to be like that back home, even when a broken-down truck or flat tire made him past midnight coming in. Today he was angrier than she had ever seen him, and she remained silent, fiddling about the dinner getting to cover up her worry until he said at last, “It was a walk out.”
“Walk out? What’s that?”
“Everbody walks off the job. You gotta walk with em. What else could it be?”
The anger for something or somebody that had been kept shut down and still back there among the men flamed up now against her; when Enoch had a tough time in the alley he was sassier when he got home to her. “It’s kinda like a wildcat, I recken,” he continued, turning now to the puzzled children. “They had one in th axle division day afore yesterday, but that didn’t bother us none—somethen about a steward on the grievance committee was what caused it today.”
“What’s that, this committee?” she said, for he seemed less angry now.
“Gert, darn it.” He flared up again. “I didn’t make the union—I pay dues, that’s all I know. I heard em a talken. This steward, he beefed—complained—said overtime wasn’t bein give out fair er somethen. He must ha had a kind a fight er somethen—I wouldn’t know—he done enough th company laid him off fer three days fer a—a ‘disciplinary measure’—that’s what they call it. So’s this parts division I’m a machine repairer in had a walkout in sympathy.”
Gertie had opened the lunch box. Maybe she could eat the stuff for her own dinner, and save what would have been wasted food. “But—Clovis.” She didn’t want to make him mad again, but still she had to know. “When them others walked off, couldn’t you ha stayed? You need th money, an th war needs whatever it is you all are maken an …”
She stopped in the face of his angry, jeering glance. “You want me to come home with a busted nose? When them others walk—you gotta walk.”
Enoch nodded wisely. “Mike Turbovitch’s mama, she works in a tiremaken place; they hadda walkout, an some didn’t want a go, an boy, he said she said you oughta seen what they done to one a them that got sassy an …”
But Clovis had for the first time noticed Enoch’s face. “What in th dickens happened to you? Fighten again? You youngens has got to learn to git along without allus fighten.”
“Them Dalys started it,” Enoch said, beginning all at once to cry. He continued to sob as he went on: “Me an the Meanwells an Mike Turbovitch an two a them little Miller kids was a playen peaceable on our hockey pond that we’d swept off ourselves. Them Dalys an that Bommarita kid, they come an grabbed our hockey sticks an called us names an started th hard snowballen. Pop, is a Protestant a heathen?”
“You know better’n that,” Clovis cried. “It’s th Catholics that’s th heathen, a worshipen idols an th pope—an they know it. That’s why they’re allus a throwen off on people like us. That’s why they hate us; we ain’t—”
“Aw, Clovis,” Gertie began, “not all—”
“How would you know, woman?” Clovis asked, his eyes blazing. “You never have to git out an work with em, hear em talk about hillbillies.”
Gertie’s anger shook her like a wind. “You know I’d hunt a factory job in a minute, but you won’t hear to it. I bet I could make mighty nigh—”
“Now, Gert,” Clovis said, soothing now, for more than once she had hinted at the possibilities of her getting a factory job, though the mere mention of it always angered Clovis. The anger always, like now, gave way to calm reasoning. He reminded her that she was too big for the factory machinery, set up for little slim women like Sophronie, and also that she was so given to wool gathering she might get a hand or her head smashed the first day. He gave his usual arguments, then shifted the subject back to Enoch, warning: “But don’t go around talken agin Catholics in this town. It’ll git you in trouble quicker’n anything—they’s Catholics ever whichaway, seems like. If a body went around talken agin priests an sich, they’d be called a commie.”
“What’s that?” Enoch demanded.
Clovis turned toward the door. “A red, I recken, but whatever it is you gotta learn to keep shut. Quit asken so many questions. You’ll git in trouble.”
Gertie turned on him. “Aw, Clovis, it ain’t good fer people to go a bottlen their selves up thataway.” Her voice was like a cry as she went on: “‘I charge thee in th sight of God and of Christ Jesus—preach the word; be urgent in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort … ’”
“If I recollect my preachers right, Paul said that,” Clovis said, smiling at her as if she had been a child.
She nodded, conscious that Enoch and Clytie smiled as their father smiled.
“You know,” Clovis went on, still smiling, “what happened to Paul—an anyhow, he didn’t have no family. Not even Jesus Christ had to put up with a Catholic foreman on one side, a yellen for you to go faster, an a Catholic steward a tellen you they’s no need to break your neck a repairen a machine, that a minute’s rest won’t kill the tender.” He turned to Enoch. “I wish you could ha heared a tool-an-die man Whit knows a talken onct. They’d had a big fist fight in th parts presses where I’m at. ‘Rabbits gits along,’ he says. They cain’t fight. They don’t run as fast as a heap a animals, an everthing on earth, frum birds to men with guns, is after them, but they keep fat an raise families.’” And he stopped and looked at Enoch, asking, “Why?” And when Enoch could not answer, he went on. “They never make no noise till you kill em, an the
n jist one little squeak.”
He was through the door, calling over his shoulder, “Miller down here’s been a plaguen me to look at his car—idles too fast.”
They were just sitting down to a noonday snack when there came another knocking. Clytie sprang to answer with a guilty, confused air strange for Clytie. Gertie, trapped between the opened door and Enoch’s chair, heard soft murmurings of girlish voices, and called as she would have called at home, “Clytie, if it’s company you’ve got, bring her in.” By bending over Enoch’s chair and craning her head she was able to see on the stoop a blue-jeaned, short-coated, bare-headed, but warm-looking girl. Gertie was for an instant puzzled: so little clothing, so much warmth. She realized it was the red, curling hair falling past the girl’s shoulders, a frame for red-brown eyes and red cheeks.
The girl smiled at her, looked at Clytie, giggled, and then said to Clytie, “G’wan, ast her, cain’tcha?” And when Clytie only flushed and stammered, the girl drew a deep breath, and turned to Gertie again. “Can Clytie go to th movies with me? Mom lets me go ever Saturday afternoon—if I help clean house ina morning an go to Sunday school on Sunday.”
Clytie’s eyes were pleading as she stepped back in the shelter of the door and begged, whispering, so that the girl could not hear: “Please, Mom, please, this onct. Mom—you don’t know how it is. T’other day some a th girls at school was wonderen if Rita Gaynor had actually got a divorce from Bob Faith, he’s her third husband. An I ast who she was, an they laughed at me.” She choked. “You don’t know—I could baby-sit an make money.”
“Can he go, Miz Nevels? They’s gonna be a Western.” It was Claude Jean in a fresh, unbloodied shirt.
Enoch, unable to get out of his chair, was bouncing beneath the listening Gertie. “She’s goen to let us go.” Even surly Reuben was looking up from his plate, interested.
Gertie looked hopelessly about her. What would they do all afternoon, drive her crazy with the radio and quarreling in the house, or play and fight in the dirty alley? She shook her head wearily as she went for money. Did she want to be shet of her children, or was it that Clytie made her remember how it was to sit with company in her mother’s parlor when the preachers came and they talked of God. She had sat in sweating misery, the only one a stranger to her mother’s Christ the others knew so well. Maybe it was, for Clytie, equal misery to be the only one not knowing Rita Gaynor.