Departure (12 page)

“I ain't hungry,” I said. “Who is Jesus Christ?”

“If you ain't hungry, go and play.”

I turned to the window and indicated the pack. They had driven me tight and close, and here I was and there they were. They hung over the fence, and their words were in their motions because all the windows were closed. There were eight of them, and beyond them, down the hill, stretched the ragged fringe of Linday, the curl of the river, the smoking stacks of the factories beyond.

“I got to wait,” I said calmly.

“What did you do to them?” she demanded fiercely. “What do they want from you? I'll take my ironing board and break it over their heads! I'll break every bone in their bodies!”

I waited for her rage to pass. “You couldn't catch them,” I said.

“Then stay in the house!” She turned back to her washing.

“I killed Christ,” I said, pressing my face against the window and showing them that my facial gestures could be as competent as theirs.

“What!”

“That's what I told them.”

This time she dried her hands more slowly. She looked at me keenly and curiously and wanted to know “Why did you tell them that?”

“They say I killed him. My God, they don't stop saying I killed him. They threw me into the river because I killed him. When they took off my pants and burned them up, it was because I killed Christ. And I don't even know who he is. So today I said, ‘God damn you, I killed him and I'm damn glad.'”

“Don't use such words,” she whispered.

“What words?”

“Damn.”

“All right, but that's what I told them.”

“You shouldn't have told them that,” she said sadly. “When they hit you, come into the house. But don't tell them such things.” Then she turned back to her washing.

I knew that it was no use by now, but I kept insisting. “Who was Jesus Christ?” I pestered her. “Who was Jesus Christ?”

“Go read a book.”

“Who was Jesus Christ?”

“Leave me alone. Go play.”

So that was that. And when I asked my father that night, do you think I got any more satisfaction? Like fun I did.

My father peddled down the valley to Aberlee with a Ford truck. The Ford was a ninteen twenty-seven Model T, and he would say that he pushed it as much as it pushed him. All the way down the river it was corn and cucumber country. He sold to the farmers, and he said it was as hard to sell to farmers as it was to find a good man. When he came home at night, the tiredness stood out all over him. He wasn't a good man to ask questions.

I asked him while he was eating, and he stopped eating and looked at me as if he had never seen me before.

“Who?” he demanded.

“Jesus Christ.”

At first he looked mad, so mad that I could feel the rage crackling all over him like electricity; and I was terrified and sorry that I had asked him the question, and would have liked to take it all and cram it back down my throat. But then the anger drained away, and I saw the love come back into his eyes, the same love that was always there when he regarded me, his one child, his son and first-born.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he smiled. “And I was going to bite off your nose for a foolish question.”

Then he turned back to his meal.

“All day long,” Mamma said, “he bothered me with that.”

“Enough. For the last time, enough!” Then he pointed a finger at me and said, “That name is something not to mention in this house—never again. For us, such a man does not live.”

“Why?”

“Don't ask me why,” he said.

I saw how things went, and closed my mouth. That's the best way when you see how things are going.

The next day, I asked Mike Finnegan, the garbage man, all the time cocking an eye over my shoulder for my mother. Mike Finnegan had on his left arm a naked lady, tatooed in pink and yellow, but with a snake covering the part I wanted to see most. Whenever I asked him, he wiggled his muscle and made the lady dance.

I said to him, “Mike, who was Jesus Christ?”

“Holy Christ,” he whispered, putting down the can of garbage. “Can it be that in this Christian country a boy of your age don't know the Lord's name?”

“Nobody told me.”

“I'm not blaming you,” Mike said. “It's others I'm blaming.”

“What others?”

“Them that keep you in your heathen ignorance.”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“And when you mention the name of our Lord,” Mike said, “do this.” He crossed himself.

“Like this?”

Mike grinned and took away the garbage. I went into the kitchen and said, “Mamma, look,” and I crossed myself.

The stinging slap of her hand sent me reeling back against the wall. I began to cry, and then she knelt down next to me and begged my forgiveness.

“I didn't do nothing,” I said.

She smoothed my tears away and spoke to me softly and entreatingly. “Look, my little one,” she said. “My precious one, listen to me. You got to know how we are and what we are. I can't make you understand because you're just a little boy. But try to see this. A great big ocean of water and in the middle of it one little island of sand. All day and all night for all the years, the ocean tries to wash away the little island of sand. But each grain of sand clings to the next grain. They hold on to each other like when I hold on to you, so tight. And no matter what the ocean tells them, they hold on, and because of that, they're able to look up and see the sun. No matter what black days come, they can still see the shining promise of almighty God. Do you understand, my little one?”

“No,” I said.

She smiled and shrugged and said, “Go and play.”

“No,” I said, and she looked at me and seemed to understand why. She shrugged her shoulders and kissed me.

“Let them say it,” she said softly. “They themselves killed him, a long time ago, maybe two thousand years ago. They hated us before that, but when they killed him, they had more reasons to hate us.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“Who knows why?” She made faces at me, trying to make me laugh. “Have some bread and butter and milk and play in the house.”

“All right,” I said.

And I didn't ask that question of anybody else for a long time. But years later, there was a learned man traveling west from Chicago, and he stopped off at our town and stayed at our house because it was the only house of our faith in the town. After dinner, he sat at the table and talked with my parents and I put my chin on my hands and watched him. They talked about this and that and everything.

Finally, the learned man turned to me and said, “It is good for a boy to listen, but even better for a boy to ask certain questions that may be in his mind.”

I questioned my father with my eyes, and when he nodded, blurted out, “Who was Jesus Christ?”

Well, what did they expect? Hadn't I waited long enough with that question gnawing my insides like a rat?

In the deep, ominous silence that followed, I saw the stranger smiling. He answered calmly, the way he had answered twenty other questions during the evening.

“Jesus was a part of the truth.”

“What truth?”

“I must apologize,” my father began.

“No, no, I am glad he asked that. Who is to say what man the child is father of? Perhaps he too will be part of the same truth.”

My father knit his brows. He was an uneducated peddler. I could see that he was determined to listen to the stranger without revealing his own unlearnedness.

“They killed him,” I said.

“Because he told them the truth and they feared him. In the same way that they fear every wise man and every good man.”

“Why?”

“Because they are afraid of the truth. Because as soon as the truth wins, there will be no more hate. Do you understand?”

I was afraid to say no. I felt small and unworthy.

Almost humbly, my father said, “Go up to bed. It's late.”

“Good night,” I told them. I was full of fear as I groped my way through the dark up to my room.

The Suckling Pig

H
E CALLED
M
ARCUS
and said, “I just heard about it. Jack Brady passed away this morning.”

“No!”

“Got up, took a shower, began to dress, and then keeled right over.”

“No! Heart?”

“That's right. I makes you stop to think. We're none of us as young as we used to be.”

“That's the God's honest truth. But a guy like Brady, you'd think he had twenty good years ahead of him.”

“Never had a sick day in his life. It makes you stop to think.”

“That's the truth. How's his wife taking it?”

“She's making a big thing. But I got my own ideas on that subject.”

“I got mine,” Marcus said. “I guess I'll see you at the wake.”

“I guess so.”

After he called one or two more of the boys, he told his girl to get Rialto Liquor to send a case up to Brady's, half Scotch and half bourbon, and to have a big wreath made up out of red and yellow roses.

“I wouldn't think red and yellow roses for a wreath,” the girl said.

“What in hell's the difference? Jack Brady liked red and yellow roses.”

The rest of the afternoon dragged slowly, interrupted only by phone calls to tell him what he already knew, that Jack Brady had passed away. Thoughts of death, more and more frequent lately, clouded his mind, and he half regretted that he was not a Catholic, like Brady, so he could let others do the worrying for him. At five, he cancelled the tickets for that evening, and went over to Toots's for a drink.

A half a dozen of the boys were there at the bar, and he killed four Scotches with them, and then felt better. They were all men in their middle fifties, about the same age Jack Brady had been, and they thought of themselves as well as Brady.

“Anyway, it's a nice, clean exit,” someone said.

“Clean or not, it ain't nice.”

“I had dinner with Jack at the Hickory House last night. He didn't have a thing on his mind, except he thought he'd go down to Florida a little early.”

“That's the way it is.”

“How is Sue taking it?”

“Breaking her heart.”

Some of them grinned, and someone said. “It's a goddamned dirty shame, because there never was a finer guy than Jack Brady.”

“You can say that again.”

It was after seven before they sat down to eat and almost nine before they had finished. He had clams, roast beef, and finished up with a piece of blueberry pie and coffee. He felt full and comfortable and resentful against the wake, and chastised himself with the thought of how it must have seemed to Brady, just keeling over at the last minute, the way he did.

They ordered a round of brandy, and over it one asked, “Did anyone call the Mayor?”

“Frankie did. Frankie's taking care of the arrangements.”

“He would. What about a drink up there?”

Glad he had remembered, he told about the Scotch and bourbon he had ordered—“Not that Jack didn't always have a little on hand.”

On their way out, they picked up two sports writers from the
Journal
and Gibbon, from the
Telly.

“I wrote the obit myself,” Gibbon said. “Did you know he was with the old 77th?”

Some did and some didn't.

“He was worth five punks from this fracas. That was a war.”

They got into three cabs and rode over to the Park Avenue address. The Garden crowd were just entering the building when they arrived, and everybody paused in front to exchange hellos and introductions in a subdued tone of voice. Then Dan Raye arrived and said that he had cancelled his performance for tonight. They crowded into the elevator.

He felt a little funny about all the big wheels, and began to wonder if he had ever been really close to a big-time operator like Jack Brady. He had thought of the liquor and he had thought of the wreath and he had rushed over before noon to see what he could do, but Brady moved in the top crowd, and it made him question whether he wasn't walking into Brady's death the same way he had walked into his life.

“The hell with it,” he told himself. “I had some damn good times with Jack Brady.”

Toots had made up a big basket of food, which Joe Schree was carrying, and he wondered now why he had not thought of that himself. But when they got upstairs, there already was a table loaded down with sandwiches, plates of cold cuts, and a suckling pig, half-carved, looking like a monster embryo. At least thirty people had already arrived, and the bar was set up in one corner, with everybody making his own drinks. Helen Canyon was acting as hostess and when he had a moment, he drew her aside and asked about the body.

“It's in the funeral parlor,” she said. “It's no use making it worse for Sue than it is.”

“Sure,” he said, thinking that after all it would be easier for everyone present without Brady also being present. “How is Sue?”

“She's a soldier, all right. She's in the bedroom.”

Almost all of the few women there were in the bedroom with Sue. He went in and said a few words to her, and in spite of himself he couldn't help but imagine himself crawling in with her. She was a big, handsome blond with a good figure, and he said to himself:

“What a lousy, cheap line of thought for Brady's wake!”

He went back to the living room and passed an hour or so just milling around and saying hello to various people and being introduced to others as a good old friend of Jack Brady's. It was after ten o'clock now, and some of the people were leaving. He and four or five of the others, all boys who had been pretty close to Jack Brady, stood in the pantry and swapped memories about one thing and another that they had shared with the dead man. A lot of the stories concerned the time Brady was in Chicago, and he felt somewhat left out of them, but when the stories shifted to the close past, he felt more at home, and he told about how he and Brady had shacked up with the Deleharty sisters in Philadelphia.