Clay Hand (18 page)

He laid the last magazine on the seat between them. “I am a fool, blind, and a coward, by your own description, Margaret. How could you ever have found it worth your while to stay in Winston, in Mrs. O’Grady’s house, to be near me?”

“Go to hell,” she said, and coming from her, it sounded particularly ugly.

F
IELDS WAS NOT AT
Krancow’s when Phil returned. He had been gone the whole afternoon, and Krancow did not know when he would return. Lempke was looking for him. He had called several times. There was unrest in Number Three again. Even as the constable strung out his worries, the phone rang again, and Krancow complained bitterly. At best, he had no use for the telephone. In his business, his wife always attended it.

Phil watched the men moving down the street from their work. The daytime shift was up. They walked, most of them with a tired stoop. The first day back from a layoff was probably the longest, and the first glass of beer the best. Several of them lingered at McNamara’s door, coaxing their fellows who were inclined to go home first.

Krancow returned from the office. “That was that reporter, Nichols. He wants a confirmation from the sheriff on him exploring the abandoned section. I can’t give it to him. He didn’t tell me itself.”

It was strange, hearing that phraseology from Krancow. The Irish spilling over… Phil snapped out of his contemplation of it. “Where’s Nichols now?”

“On his way over here. He says it goes, confirmation or not, in an hour. It won’t do him any good to threaten me. You can’t cut hair from an onion.”

Phil went outdoors and waited on the steps for Nichols. He saw him coming from the railroad station, and met him halfway. “Where did you get your information, Randy?”

“Not from you, that’s a cinch.”

“He swore me to secrecy on it. There were just four people knew it, the four of us down there.”

“That’s a lot of people on one secret,” Nichols said. “The most fragrant little man I ever met told me. I’d swear he was an unwashed leprechaun.”

“Jerry Whelan, the taxi man?” said Phil.

“That’s the one.”

“What else did he tell you, Randy?”

“That was all, but I wasn’t the only one he told. He was carrying it round the town like news of a wedding.”

“Where did he get it?”

“Ask him. What did you find down there?”

“Work on the sheriff for it, will you, Randy? It may be worth the working.”

“I’ll tune in next week and find out.”

It was almost eight o’clock when Fields returned. He was dirty, tired and discouraged. He beckoned Phil and Krancow into the office with him, and then listened to the constable’s accounts of his calls without a word. Occasionally, he scratched a word on a piece of paper on the desk.

“And all that got out, then, was us being down there?”

“That’s all I heard. There’s an envelope came there for you on the night train.”

Fields picked it up, and Phil saw the letterhead of the Cleveland and Mobile Railway. “All right, Joe. I’ll take over for the night. Get some rest.”

He opened the envelope and read its contents. “This is Glasgow’s record with the railway,” he said presently. “It looks clean as a whistle without a toot.”

He handed it to Phil. On the back of the questionnaire a photostat of Glasgow’s army discharge was attached. Phil read the form through and then looked at the discharge. “I wonder why the army when he was in the Merchant Marine at one time?”

“Draft probably,” Fields said. He took a pipe from his pocket and filled it. “One thing, he don’t work as much as he seems to be away from home. He must have a lot of layovers some place.” He took back the papers and went over them again. “He don’t earn much money either. But you can’t accuse a man on account of that.”

“Accuse him of what?”

“Bootlegging. I spent the whole blessed day tracing that stuff. I’ve been in the next county on all sides. Nothing. Nobody ever heard of Whelan or Laughlin…or Glasgow or Clauson. I checked on the magician he mentioned being here. He’s legitimate. Does a lot of Legion shows.”

“What about Whelan giving out information on our being in there this morning?” Phil asked. “Where did he get it?”

“Lempke’s the only source I know. But with no word about the still, it may be somebody saw us. I didn’t really expect to keep it quiet. I just wanted Lempke to know we were trying.” He lit his pipe. “Have you got anything for me?”

Phil pointed to the stack of magazines on top of the desk. “Margaret was very cooperative,” he said. “She even confirmed your suspicions on why she was staying on in Winston.”

The sheriff grinned. “You don’t know your own strength, lad.”

“But I do. I know my weakness, too.”

Fields walked through the parlor to the porch with him. They could see the shadowy traffic about McNamara’s from where they stood for a moment. “I don’t like them all in there,” Fields said. “I hope Mac’s got the sense not to serve them much. They’ll get up groggy and sore in the morning and they’ll be sulking about going down. We’ll get the blame for it. Well, goodnight to you, lad. And thank you for your help.”

Phil went down the street. He looked back before reaching McNamara’s. The sheriff had turned back into the parlor. Beneath the porch light, his worn coat shone green, the rounded slump of his shoulders exaggerated in the play of shadow over them the instant before he passed out of sight.

From where he stood, Phil could hear the hard, cold music of a pounded piano. The rhythm was there, and the skeleton of a tune, but it was not melody. He paused and peered above the half curtains into the smoky room. Several men were slouching around tables and the bar in their heavy shirts, their jackets hung in a row on the wall beyond the piano. At the piano itself, a tall, melancholy looking man was beating the keys, his head bobbing just off the jig-time rhythm. Above him, John L. Sullivan was shivering naked in his picture frame. Nichols glanced up from his usual place at the bar, saw Phil, and waved him in. The reporter held up a glass of milk. “Mac bought the cow for me. He figured it’ll pay off in the long run.”

The rumble of talk among the men had died down with his entrance, leaving the pianist cruelly alone with his playing. They knew he had been in the mine, Phil thought. McNamara looked uneasily from him to the men. He shoved a glass and a bottle before him without speaking.

“I’d be better off with a cow myself,” Phil said, pouring the whiskey.

“Or maybe a goat,” the man next to him said.

Phil glanced in the mirror. The men were all looking at him.

“Will you lay off the murdering of that unfortunate instrument, Frankie,” one of them called out.

In the mirror, Phil saw Frankie quit his playing, the muscles of his back relaxing beneath the wool shirt. Presently he reached for a glass of beer on top of the piano.

“And how’s the dear lady of the boarding house?” McNamara said to him then with a loud, false heartiness.

“Holding her own,” Phil said.

“It isn’t her own she’s holding,” somebody called. Phil recognized the voice and spotted Jerry Whelan then. He was sore at being banished from the widow’s.

“Mind your knitting there, Jerry,” the barkeep said.

“You’d defend her, Mac, and her housing a viper.”

McNamara ignored the remark and looked at Phil. “You better go home, McGovern.”

“I’ll finish my drink.”

He watched Whelan say something to the man next to him and that one get up and go over to the pianist. Frankie nodded and set his glass down. He played a few chords, and the one who had prompted him started singing in a high, lilting voice…

As I went a-walking one morning in spring,

To hear the birds whistle, and nightingales sing,

I heard a fair lady a-making great moan,

Saying I’m a poor stranger, and far from my own.

Nichols was studying the film that had formed on his milk. Phil emptied his glass and poured a second drink.

And as I drew nigh her I made a low jee,

I asked her for pardon for making so free;

My heart, it relented to hear her moan

Saying I’m a poor stranger and far from my home.

The eyes upon him were not cruel. In most of them there was no more than mischief. But they were daring him to stay. He sipped his drink and stayed.

Then gently I asked her if she would be mine,

And help me to tend to my goats and my kine;

She blushed as she answered in sorrowful tone,

Be kind to the stranger, so far from her own.

Even McNamara was looking at him now, the sharp blue eyes prodding him. He lit a cigaret.

I’ll build my love a cottage at the end of this town,

Where the lords, dukes and earls shall not pull it down;

If the boys they should ask you why you live alone,

You can tell them you’re a stranger, and far from your own.

The singer repeated the last chorus, all the men joining in. Phil emptied his drink and turned to face them, leaning his elbow on the bar. When the last chord was struck he laid fifty cents on the bar, pulled up his coat collar and went out.

He was past Lavery’s corner before the sound of the singing left him, and even then it seemed to play on in his head—the warnings of restless men being stirred to further unrest. Dick had been kicked out of McNamara’s the last night of his life. He kept forgetting that. Was it only a matter of time until it happened to all strangers, whatever the provocation or excuse?… “Tell them you’re a stranger and far from your home.”

He could see the lights of the widow’s house above the weblike mist along the ground, and he could hear his own footsteps crunching in the gravel, and the sound of the song still in his head, suddenly thrust out with the wild jangling of the bell on Mrs. O’Grady’s gate. It was a moment before he recognized it. Then he started running. The bell persisted. When he was almost there, he made out that it was Anna. The ringing stopped and the girl hurried down the road toward him. He caught her arm. “Why all the noise, Anna?”

“The gate was stuck. Let go of me.”

“Were you warning them I was coming?”

“You’re nuts,” she said. “Let go of me or I’ll get my father after you.”

He let her go and she ran down the road from him. He hurried through the gate, which gave easily beneath his hand, and into the house.

Only Mrs. O’Grady was in the living room, but it was heavy with hanging cigaret smoke. The old lady looked up from her crochet work. “What’s the matter with you?”

He looked at his watch. The boarders had been in bed for more than an hour. “Since when do you smoke, Mrs. O’Grady?”

“She smokes, doesn’t she? She’s gone up the stairs five minutes ago. Sitting here the night through, smoking like a bad flue.”

“Who was with you?”

“What are you talking, who was with us? Anna went down the hill a minute ago. Come here to me, Philip.”

She looked up into his face. “You’re not jealous on account of that one upstairs, are you?” She jerked her head with the question.

“When I was coming up the hill I heard that bell ringing out there like she was tolling it. She was letting you know I was coming.”

“You’re daft, man. That giddy one puts me out of my mind with her swinging on the gate like an infant.”

“At ten o’clock at night?”

“Go upstairs and ask her then. She’s pining to see you, sitting here listening the night for the sound of your step on the back porch. Go up!”

Phil took off his coat and sat down on the sofa opposite her. He lit a cigaret. The old lady fanned the smoke of it from between them. “I never mind a good pipe, but them things smell like the back of a barn. My unfortunate plants’ll be choked with them.”

“That African violet has a new flower,” he said. “It looks to be thriving.”

“Did you notice that? My, you’re the observing one. It came out this morning when we were all out of the house to the funeral. Do you know, I think they like to be left to themselves now and then. They’re almost like people.”

Phil studied the end of his cigaret and then brushed the ash into the coal bucket. “Why did you ask Margaret here, Mrs. O’Grady?”

“Och, the poor, lorn creature. I felt sorry for her, seeing her up there yesterday. And trying so hard to make him out doing some good in the world.” She snapped the crochet thread between her teeth.

“The poor lorn creature can take care of herself and you know it,” Phil said. “Tell me the truth.”

The old lady’s eyes narrowed to the size of two little pearls. “I’ll tell it to you when I know it. Now go and fetch us the medicine bottle from the cubby. My bones are rusted with the chill of the night.”

O
NCE MORE PHIL AWAKENED
to the sound of the regular boarders rising. They got up like thunder, he thought, and turned his face toward the window. The bed creaked beneath his weight. It was strange to lie there and hear the sound of the wind, the shaking of the kitchen grate, the rattle of the pump, the heavy steps of the men in the hall, and the gruff voice of one as he called for the other. Sleep would not return, but the warmth of the bed held him, and he thought a moment of his room at home—the dash he would make to the thermostat in the hall, and the quick rush of heat through the ventilators. No thermostats in Winston.

The men were downstairs now at their silent breakfast of porridge with syrup, eggs and salt pork—dispensed from the Lenten fasts. They went into Number Two. He wondered if the men were going down in Number Three that morning. A sound, like the branch of a tree brushing against the window, disturbed the quiet, so acute when the heavy footsteps had gone down the stairs. There was no tree that high outside the window—mice probably. They would be in the walls of this old house and in the attic. O’Grady had built it fifty years before, thinking to raise a family in it, and all that had ever grown in it were flowers and mice, and the wife he left three weeks after taking her growing old.

He groped for the string to the ceiling light fixture. Catching it, he was reminded of the string Fields had picked up in the mine room where Laughlin died. What had he made of it? He was not saying that. There were many things he did not say until the well chosen moment. He thought of Margaret Coffee then—for the first time since waking—and with detachment, or at least, without the sting of wanting, of knowing that she lay in the room next to his. He got out of bed and dressed, feeling extraordinarily good. The closest comparison he could find for the feeling was a good confession, or the further vigor he would enjoy having sluiced himself with water in the widow’s back kitchen.