Meanwhile Maggie’s across town crying in her bed, everything is totally unhappy in the grave of things.
I go to bed with horror on my wings. In my pillow is sad comforts. Like my mother says, “On essaye a s’y prendre, pi sa travaille pas” (We try to manage, and it turns out shit).
23
Morning is when the slackened sleep faces of the children of God must be righted, rubbed and waked up. . . .
All that day Sunday I mourn in my room, in the parlor with the papers, Lousy comes to see me and sympathizes with my face making long drawn glooms on his own (“In your old town there is nothing much to talk about except the old saying, ‘Dead’,” he said actually) but only in between excited reports of everything that’s meanwhile been happening—“Zagg—guess what?—Mouse and Scotty got real mad the other night and had a big wrestling match at Vinny’s, they almost wrecked the stove, Scotty almost killed him—We played basketball with the North Common Panthers Saturday afternoon when you was resting?—I let em have it, you babe—Seven basket two fouls—sixteen points—I just showed them one of my one-hand side shots, zeet? See M.C. last night at the track meet? I was with my mother’n father at my uncle’s—I had a nice girl to talk to, you babe—I said I was gonna bite her ear off—She said eek!—Hee hee—Barney McGillicuddy O’Toole was hot Satty, eleven points himself, one a long shot from midcourt, but that team wont be the same, Zagg, till you play again—”
“I will now—I’m through with all this love shit”—
“Kid Belgium Yanny scored two points by god!”
“Who?”
“G.J. That’s the new name I gave him. Call me ‘Sam.’ That’s my new name. Kindhearted Belgium they also call me. Was M.C. at the meet?”
“Pauline Yeah.”
“I see her study periods. Jean,” using my French name, “she could even knock out Joe Louis just by lookin at him.”
“I know,”—sadly.
“Damn! We shoulda never gone to that damn Rex New Year’s Eve! Everything changed since then! Even me!”
“Take it easy, Kid Sal Slavos Len!”
“Well ga-dammit I’m mad!” jumping off the bed with the sudden furious funny small-eyed rage of a mad cat. “Eh? Mad! Hey Zagg?”
“Kill em, Sal, dont let em get you down.”
“I’ll bury em a mile deep!” Lousy swung at the air. “King of the Tits!”
The rest of the gang filed into my room, my mother’d let them in from the front; it was gray Sunday, symphonies on the radio, papers on the floor, Pop snoring in his chair, roast beef in the oven.
“Good old Belgium!” yelled Vinny embracing Lousy. “Scot, show Zagg your contract. He made out a contract to make us promise to help him buy that car next summer.”
“Beware if not signed—Signed, the Unknown, that’s what it says, Zagg,” put in Gus who also was gloomy this day, green, quiet, musing.
Lousy had his fists up before him. “Fight? Fight?”
“The contract?” chuckled Scotty showing his cunning gold tooth. “We will discuss the deal under a few liquidoriums.”
With a cat’s furious rage raining sweats Lousy was still dancing shadowboxing.
G.J. looked up. “Did you bring that paper Vinny?”
“No—the storm stopped me, I threw it away.” Snow outside.
“Lookout!”
G.J. jumped up suddenly with his knife, and placed it in Vinny’s back. “The bastid! He’ll get shithouse and kill us all!” screamed Vinny.
“Just like Billy Artaud—you know what he said the other night, ‘Sorry Mouse I cant help you clean up the Silver Moon saloon gang Depernac’s gangsters because my left vertebral artebral is injured’—Wattaguy!”
“This spring every one of you guys is gonna lose his head, I’m gonna pitch and bean you with my new high hard one—Opening day, March!”
Scotty:—(musing aloud) “It’ll be wind like a bastid out and it’ll be pretty hard to judge those balls that first afternoon and maybe the sun’ll be shining and the only thing that’ll be wrong is that wind—”
“Sure!”
“Zagg”—Gus solemn—“when I bean you the first time you’ll be staggering and reeling at the plate and I’m going to bean you again!—a broken heap they’ll see you Pitou Plouffe and the gang groveling to your home in sunset—easy prey to my more blinding than ever speedball and loping curve—” In actuality Gus’s pitching was the biggest hilarious in the gang, he had so little control one time he threw a pitch over the backstop and we never found the ball again as it probably rolled down the hill to the river—
We tried to continue and expand these conversations; at suppertime they left. Grayness covered Lowell, the jokes were said, the goofs done—Something was like loss on mute snowbanks in the streets; and here in the long dark light of late day you’d see the litle kids coming back from Sunday afternoon movies tripping from double features at the Royal and the Crown—Sunday night came with one wink of streetlamps—I mooned in the club watching bowlers—I walked in the sad finished-up streets of human time.
Monday morning we blearily blearyfaced met and proceeded to school as usual—Heartbrokenly I could hear the song I’m Afraid the Masquerade is Over darkening in my ear as we crossed the windy bridge—All the joy was gone from my anticipation of days—
But in the Spanish class, lo!—a note from Maggie.
I tore it open, slow and thoughtful, shaky.
Dear Jack,
I am writing this Saturday night after the dance. I feel very blue and let me explain. Bessy came over to me, Bloodworth introduced her to Edna. And you know how I like Edna and her smug ways. She said Pauline was with you at the track meet. Well I flew right off the handle. Edna and Pauline are friends and they would stop at nothing to get you away from me. You made me so jealous I dont know what I said or did all I know is that I wanted to get out of there but the girls wouldnt come home with me. If you have to talk with Pauline please dont let any of my friends see you because it always gets back to me. I cant seem to get over my jealousy it must have been born in me. And of course there is another side to the story. In my jealousy I do things that hurt you and that is the last thing I want to do. I cant seem to understand that you can go out with any girls you want to without me having to interfere. I realize now how selfish I have been. Jack you will have to forgive me please. I think it is because I like you so much. I will try and remember that it is your privilege to go out and do as you please. I’ll be jealous of course but I have to get over it sometime. Some day you might find in me the qualities you admire most in a girl and a selfish one at that. I know you have every reason not to answer but, you always let me get away with too much and I knew it. I just had to write and tell you I felt so sorry about the other night.
With all my love
MAGGIE
Please forgive me
Write soon—tear this up.
That night I was there at eight o’clock, immediately after supper and on the fastest bus, the gloomy air had turned warm, something had broken and mushroomed in the wet winter earth of Lowell, ice was cracking on the Concord, winds blew with a greeny freight of hope over excited trees—it seemed the earth was being reborn—Maggie ran into my arms at the door, we hid in it in the dark silent and tight held, kissing, waiting, listening—“Poor Jacky, you’ll never have anything but trouble with a damn fool like me.”
“No I wont.”
“I got sore at Bloodworth the other night. Did you see him? Today? At school? Can you tell him I’m sorry?”
“Sure—sure—”
Hiding her face in my sweater “I’ve been feeling awful anyway—My uncle died, I saw him in his coffin. Ah—it’s so . . . people tell me I’m bored, I shouldnt hang around the house thinking about boys—about you—you,” kissing me poutingly—“I dont even wanta leave the house—if
all they’ve got is coffins, dead—How could I work I dont even wanna live. Oh my—I was so skeered—”
“What?”
“My uncle—They buried him Friday morning, they dropped rocks on him and his flowers—I was feeling bad about you anyway—but that’s not what was wrong—but I cant tell you—explain you—”
“Nevermind.”
She sat staring on my lap for hours, silent, in the dark parlor—I understood everything, held myself in, waited.
24
And that Saturday night when I met her at the Rex, as our usual arrangement, they were playing The Masquerade Is Over when she came in with Bessy from the cold—ineffably beautiful as never before, with dew drops in her black hair like little stars in her eyes, and rosiness effulging from sweet laughs tinklin one after another—She was feeling good again, beautiful and unwinnable again forever—like the dark rose.
Her coat smelling of winter and joy, in my arms. Her coquettish looks everywhere—impulsive quick looks at me to laugh, comment, or criticize, and straighten my tie. Suddenly throwing her arms around my neck and pulling up her eyes to my face, her own, seized like a sob to squeeze me, plead love out of me, own and possess me greedily, whispering in my ear—Cold wiggling nervous hands in mine, the sudden grip and fear, the vast sadness all around her like wings—“Poor Maggie!” I thought—looking for something to say—and there is nothing to say—or if you said it—it would fall like a strange wet tree from your mouth—like the pattern of black veins in the earth of her uncle’s and all uncles graves—non-sayable—non-ownable—split.
Side by side we stared at the dance, the two of us dumb and darkened. Adult love torn in barely grownup ribs.
25
Maggie by the river—“Poor Jack,” sometimes she laughs, and fondles my neck, looks deep into my eyes rich and snug—her voice voluptuously breaking on a laugh, low—her teeth like little pearls in those red gates of her lips, the rich red gates of summer’s fat, April’s scar—“Poor Jack”—and now the smile has faded from the dimples, only the light of the smile flashes in her eye—“I dont think you know what you’re doing.”
“I wouldn’t be suss-prised—”
“If you knew what you were doing you wouldnt be here.”
“Didnt I say so.”
“No—you didnt say so-o-o—” rolling her eyes drunkenly at me, making me drunk, passing her cold palm over my cheek in a sudden caress so tender the winds of May would understand and the winds of March wait back for, and the soothe “oo” of her lips making some silent little blow word to me, like “oo” or “You”—
My eye’d fall looking right in hers—I wanted her to see the windows of my secret. She accepted it—she didnt accept it—she wasnt decided—she was young—she was cautious—she was moody—she wanted to reach something in me and hadnt done it yet—and maybe that was enough for her, to know—“Jack’s a dope.”
“I’d never have anything with him—He’ll never be a hardworker like we see, like men, around, Pa, Roy—he’s not our kind—He’s strange. Hey Bessy, dont ya think Jack is kinda strange?”
Bessy: “N-a-w??—How could I know!”
“Well—” Maggie humphin with herself—“I dont know, I must say,” turning to camp at teacups, “I rally daont knaow.” On the radio, record programs. Pillows all over. If I could have played hooky in that parlor. Sunny drapes—morning.
“So ya made up with Jack, huh?”
“Yeah.” Rich-throated, like the modiste that’s older than the other, like you see great old women in San Francisco bleak wood tenements sitting all day with their parrots and old cronies talking about when they owned all the whorehouses of Hawaii or complaining about their first husbands. “Yeah. I dont think he’d think much of me.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. I told you he was kinda funny.”
“Ah you’re crazy.”
“I guess I yam.”
If I’d laugh, and throw love teeth in her face, the big grin of accepting rapportive joy, she’d have just a twinge of suspicion of my motives—which would deepen—all night—till the bottomless sorrows of the dark—all my dark walks back from her house—all our misunderstandings—all her schemes, dreams—floop—all gone.
26
My birthday party was coming up but I wasn’t supposed to know about it—all planned by my sister, to be had in a little cottage up the Pawtucketville hill near the church, her girlfriend’s house. It was all supposed to be hidden from me. Presents were bought—little Emersonette radio so auspicious then but later to be little radiator radio of my father’s dull flops in cheap hotels in the years to come of his wandering work—Baseball glove, supposed to be mark and symbol of the coming baseball season and all of us to play ball, bought for my birthday by Bloodworth probably—neckties—Everybody was invited by my sister:—Maggie, Bloodworth, Lousy, Iddyboy, a few of her friends, my parents, girls from the neighborhood the boys would bring with them—I wasnt supposed to know about it but I did.
Bloodworth told me.
One night our friendship deepened immensely and sensationally in front of the Giant Store, across from the Silk Mills, the canal, in front of Boys’ Club, we’d been talking since practice where he came sometimes to see me run and now aimlessly walking to continue talk had reached the compromise split-up point of “I go home this way you go home that way”—to supper—It was already dark, cold winter, the streetlamps of the street bright like diamonds in cold howly grit winds, unpleasant—We hung there just talking—And about Maggie, baseball, everything—To keep warm we just suddenly began playing imaginary catch from about five feet from each other showing our also demonstrative technique styles of catch and throw, the leisurely windup, the throw—“Big leaguers always lob the ball easy” said Charley “you go to Fenway Park and you see the guys before game time just pitching it in easy not one guy throwing to snap and it looks like no effort at all but they can throw the ball far with the same easy lob, from years of easy lobbing—This means ‘Dont throw your arm out”‘—
“Charley, you shoulda been a big leaguer.”
“I’m gonna be—I hope—I’d sure love it—Taffy’ll make it—Taff will—”
In histories of their own in the Lowell Highlands Bloodworth and Taffy Truman had bent their heads together over their tremendous personalities and hope, ambitions, reading papers over each other’s shoulders, rushing to games, broadcasts, known each other’s most personal impossible interior hang-up pose core like they’d know their own or the marks of their own wounds—In coldwind nights stalked in jackets talking, like Scotchmen in an Edinburgh of the New World—Both of them worked on the railroad in Billerica, and their fathers too—
“Taff will make it—big leagues—I aint worried, Bill—Here’s the way I wind up and throw—”
“Here’s how my crazy pal G.J. Rigopoulos?—pitches, he’s the craziest guy in the world” I yelled to him across the winds and showed him, the Bob Feller exaggerated windup of almost falling back to the ground to throw, long leg up.
On Moody Street we’re pitching the invisible game the week of my birthday party, now we were imitating a great battery, I was squatted down with imaginary catcher’s mitt, we had ghost batters up and whole innings to play. “Two and O, two on, weary Charley Bloodworth pitching a crucial ninth—peppery sensational Jack Duluoz behind plate—here’s the pitch—I think you should know they’re gonna throw a party for ya—your sister—”
“Who? me?”
“Yeah, boy. Maybe you’d drop dead from excitement or shock or something, I dont know—I dont like surprises myself—so when March twelfth comes just take it easy and you’ll see—Your sister and M.C. Number One’ve been talking on the phone for weeks. You got lots of nice presents boy—including one I aint gonna tell you about—”
My mother and father were deeply involved in the big party too, it was
arranged for cakes, for a newspaper reporter to be there, games. I didnt look forward to it because of the immensity of everything. I half guessed that I would have to act surprised and as if I didnt know when everybody’d yell “Happy Birthday!” I bit my lips . . . proud.
27
The big night came.
Everybody was off to the party to await my arrival. I sat alone in the kitchen waiting for Iddyboy to come—“eediboy, come on, my brother Jimmy want to see you about something!” Jimmy Bissonette, the man of the house where the shindig was about to bang—friends of my sister—Outside a huge blizzard has started, by midnight it will have paralyzed Lowell and be making history 20 inches deep, vast, prophetic. How sad and funny that my parents are hiding with fun hats and our own house is empty—I have all the lights out, wait by the window among empty window shades, dark lost coats—I’m all dressed to go in my high school football sweater with the “38” on it for 1938 and a great sewn-in “L” for “Lowell” a little football sewn in redly in the gray thread of the “L”—an undershirt beneath, no collar—I want to have my picture taken by the photographers they’ll call from the local papers, I foreknow—Everybody else will wear coats, vests, ties—I’m going to look like an absurd child whose gray dream of vanity even love cannot penetrate.
I look out the window at the tremendous storm gathering.
Through it, eager gleeful big good Iddyboy’s plodding gravely to the plan—I see him in specky sweeps across the Gershom arc lamp rounding the corner, bent, his shoes leave little idiotness dots in snow, goodness tramps in the ghost and glee of it—my chest stabs deep sweet transcendent pain to see it, him, the snow, the night—across the furying murks thirty persons are hiding to scream me Happy Birthday, Maggie among them—Iddyboy rolling along in the slanty glooms, his big sleeky grin in sleet, teeth shining small separate gleams, rosy, glad, shadows in his rugged ruddy hardbone nose—an old pro guard of beef and iron slung low to murder when smash-football breaks the ruddy turfs—his busty knuckle knob of fists inbent in stiff sartorial partygoing gloves—“Bash I boo!” he says—he reaches out a snap punch and bashes the picket fence clean off the base—says “Grargh” and goes vlup and pelts his picket off—as oft he’d under cold midnight streetlamps dared me to try it, pow!—life in the nailed-in picketpost holds still, my knuckles burn, I try two more times, “Hard! sharp! ye boy!”—some oldwood frozenness cracks, the picket flies off—we range along the fence casting tooth after tooth out of it, crack, Old Man Plouffe who lived across from our favorite parkfence a strange old idler who’d all he do is open windows in the middle of the Lowell Night and admonish the boys “allez-vous-en mes maudits vandales!” with his stocking cap and rheumy rosy eyes alone in his brown house by forlorn coffin strips velvet and spittoons he’d hear the crack of our pickets at 2 A.M. —Iddyboy’s dark leer at the thought of it—“Hoo Gee!” yelled Iddyboy the night the French Canadian Mayor won the Lowell election, Arsenault O golden name, Iddyboy in political excitement leaped up from our fifteen-year-old pinochle game when my parents were out in the dense Lowell night and crammed his fist through the plaster of the kitchen wall, a prodigious wallop enough to kill Jack Dempsey gloveless like that—the plaster caved in on the other side in the radio mahogany table room—when my mother came home horrified she was convinced he was a maniac and worse—“He put his fist through it? His boot!” Knuckle marks were sunk in the deep wall. “How did he do that! I tell you they’re all crazy the Bissonettes—they’ve got the damnedest men in that family—the father—” Iddyboy, calmed down now—momentarily stops at the wood fence below, I see him turn anxious haggardness four flights up in the soft spit snow to see—“What? No light? Jacky aint dey? Where’s that damn He Thee Boy! I’m gonna break that neck! Argh”—He plunges across the street and under my sight at the tenement doors, powerful, silently sore, I hear him barge in the halls, Iddyboy is swimming up to me in the gloom of a dream so huge I see there is no end to it, to me, to him, to Maggie, to life, to wife, to world—