River of the Brokenhearted (9 page)

“Of course not,” Putsy had said.

Still, who had she been looking back at? How could he not say he did not notice, and how could he not say her look was not even slightly eager to keep something hidden from him? He tried to think of the men he had seen talking to her over the last few weeks. Then he thought, Is she not allowed to talk? How horrible that would be for her if she was not allowed to talk to anyone. But still, as he made the changeover he couldn’t help reflect on this again. On the screen, amid the screeches and howls of those in the packed house below smelling of chip bags and winter woollen clothes, was Frankenstein’s creature, Boris Karloff, hideous for all to see. Never had the world seen such a monster, the one-sheet proclaimed. And the picture on the one-sheet was so horrific it was said a woman had fainted as she passed the theatre. When he heard the shouts of the common crowd chasing the poor mad beast who died for love, or lack of it, he remembered the scalding taunts of his youth, when he dressed in a tie and jacket his cousin Janie had got for him to go to his first dance. They had chased him too, until he met Janie on the street. She picked up a stick and, swinging it like a crazy woman, drove them all away. Then, putting her arm about him, she said, “You are my one favourite person, Walter P.” It was hard to keep tears from his eyes when he remembered how noble Janie was as a girl.

He went downstairs and stoked the stove one last time. There were two stoves, a wood stove and a coal stove with a coal bin near it. They did not use the coal stove, so Walter had given the coal to the Drukens.

He went up to the canteen and took a Coca-Cola back to the projection booth as the patrons filed out. He preferred not to see them, or have them see him. At ten-thirty the last of the patrons left. He was alone, in his sanctuary. Far from the madding crowd, or any other crowd for that matter. He took his broom and swept under the seats and down the aisles. He closed off the cold air from the exit. Then he trimmed the Christmas tree in the foyer, put up lights over Janie’s newly built ticket booth, ran an extra electrical cord along the front and put it under the carpet so Santa’s face would light up every few seconds. He had angels and the manger as well. This manger, with its cows and ducks and sheep, and mother of Jesus.

“The mother of Jesus is everyone’s mother—even Walter’s,” a nun in a prim peaked cap and with red-rimmed eyes used to say every Christmas. “Yes, even Walter’s.”

And the children would turn and look at him in amazement.

Walter went into his apartment behind the projection booth and lay on his single bed, with his clothes still on. Relighting his cigar, he whispered into the dark, as he always did, about something, love or goodness, kindness or fidelity. Like the scrofulous Sam Johnson with the orange peels, it was a sublime and private moment, a secret for the ages. (Although Sam probably used them to rub on his face and neck because of scrofula—for as Walter knew, Johnson—Sam Johnson himself—was hideous wasn’t he, and had a wife older and far away.)

Once when he was whispering, Putsy said, “Walter, why don’t you pray—say, for an operation to take your affliction away?”

“I could never do that,” he said. “It would be breaking faith with God, who gave me life. You see, I refuse to call it an affliction.”

“Why not? I would call it an affliction and I would blame God,” Putsy said.

He looked at her and she smiled, but tossed her head slightly and averted her eyes. Ah, he thought, the poor girl has prayed for it herself because it is an affliction to her.

Perhaps he thought that life must come and go as if his affliction were a great heavenly checkers match between some damn archangels, or some bet such that to ask a favour, to be happy as others seemed, to have love and life and a woman’s hand was to prove himself unworthy of the test he was engaged in. Strangely self-inflicted, yet still, with a humpback and a crooked leg, perhaps the only way to proceed. So he never answered an insult against him. Sometimes he would go away, as when Janie in haste said he had two humps, but he could never answer an insult. And why? Was he frightened of ridicule if he took action and failed? How could he be, for in many ways he had been ridiculed all of his life? And he knew he was strong enough to badly injure many who mocked him. No, his lack of action was far more subtle and far braver, for those who mocked him did not know it was bravery in its purest form, and that they were engaged in living God’s pact with him—the allowable mocking of a better man. Walter was a sign of God’s inevitable mercy—once it was understood that the mercy befell those Walter himself was most tormented by.

He stood and turned off the marquee lights. They went off with a pulsating flicker, and everything was silent and the Christmas wind blew.

There were those, of course, who had made something of a different pact, with the archangels of the other world. He tried not to think of how Joey Elias had come to him, offering him fifteen more cents a picture to change sides while the Englishman was in his bed dying. It was such an improper thing that Walter could not even tell Janie.

“You don’t want to be mixed up with a foggin’ Brit,” Elias had said. “Now is the time to come with me.” When a man was dying, when no one was there to look after the theatre—how could that be the time?

Walter said no. Elias sweetened his offer. Walter said no thank you once more. Then out of the blue one afternoon, in Walter’s hearing, Joey said to his men as he passed by, “Yes, that’s who Janie has managed to get working for her. He asked to come working for me, but I cannot take Janie’s last—man.”

It was meant for Walter to hear. And if Walter got angry enough to fight, Elias would beg off, saying his decency prevented him from fighting a cripple. But then later he got his three men—Leon Winch and two others from the shantytown on the bank—to beat him. This happened over four years earlier and Walter had never told a soul. He never went to the doctor and he tended his own wounds, his puffed face, swollen lips, and broken ribs as best he could.

“All three,” Walter murmured now, thinking of how, when he swung his good arm, Leon was stopped in his tracks, and how he was able to throw the second man against the wall. But of course they came back at him.

He tossed his cigar stub into the sink and laid his head back on the pillow. Because of the number of times he had been kicked, his ribs still ached when he breathed at night.

The wind howled, and somewhere there was the whine of a dog, lost in the storm. Walter knew poor Putsy had once threatened to kill herself over Joey Elias. Walter knew these things.

Finally he fell asleep, the clock ticking in the corner. After an hour he woke, reached up and put his nightcap on, and fell asleep again.

FOUR

Putsy walked through the snow, up one street and along another, with her purse swinging at her side and her skates over her shoulder. At these moments her life seemed the best possible, far better than any other life possible. How could she want anyone else? Well, she couldn’t and she didn’t. And she would tell anyone who wanted to speak about it—although no one did—that her life would be set: she would be Mrs. Walter McLeary. One could do a lot worse, she thought. And opened her mouth to taste the snow falling out of a black, black sky.

Along Tar Street there were no lights, and three houses in on the left was her place, behind a pale plywood fence, and unseen from the road. There was a car parked in the snowy drive, a new Ford racing coupe. She stood silently and stared at it open-mouthed for a moment while catching her breath. Then she entered the house through the back door, near the large old stove.

Mr. Elias was sitting in the chair old Phil usually reserved for himself, and Mrs. Druken was running about trying to make tea in the pot Janie had given them since Elias had thrown theirs out the door. Putsy had always been spellbound by this man, and Mrs. Druken knew it and used it to the family’s advantage—or so she hoped.

Elias stood and kissed her cheek, and asked her how things were, with the inflection that he was sad they had fallen out.

“I want a long talk, is all,” he said, deliberately evoking a different look than he had at the skating rink.

“Oh, yeah—about what, now?” Putsy said.

“About you and Walter and how happy you both are,” he said. “I simply need to know if you are happy. And as long as you are happy then I will be free!”

She felt the first twinge of jealousy, because in saying this did it now leave him free—for—she could hardly think it—Rebecca, who was fifteen now, her age when seduced. Well, however it was, she hated him now.

When Mrs. Druken came in with the tea, she immediately said, “Don’t she look some good, Joey?”

“Yes, she does. It’s too bad we all got in this mix-up. It’s because I listened to my men—that goddamn Leon Winch who almost always sided with Jim McLeary.”

Now everyone there knew that this was not true, but not one said it wasn’t.

“And what’s that that they told ya?” Putsy said, breathing through her nose, looking at her tea.

“They said ya were trying to cheat me—take advantage, but I was too quick to listen. You know whose fault this is—that Phil is out a job?”

“No. Whose fault is it?” Putsy said, trying to act nonchalant though her heart was pounding. And she knew, as she had from the time she was fifteen, she was once again vying for his attention with other girls in town. How she had loved that at one time. She wanted to say, “How are all yer other girlfriends, then?” but hesitated, fearful she might destroy something. And what was that something—a chance? What chance if she was to be Mrs. Walter McLeary?

“It is old Jim McLeary’s fault. He caused the whole depression in Dobblestein’s mill. I told him from the first to leave it alone, taking advantage of that woman, but he was terrible drunk, and he was bound to do what he was bound to do.”

Everyone knew that this was not true either. The mill had collapsed just as others had, and neither Jim McLeary nor anyone else had anything to do with it.

Elias had a way of looking around when he tried to deflate someone’s reputation. He did this with a look of astonished naivety, as if in sadness he had not forethought the fact that his argument would besmirch someone’s name but had just come to the realization of that person’s dishonesty at the exact same moment as those whom his words had just contrived successfully to convince.

“If we weren’t so quick to vacate that day, that wouldn’t have happened,” Mrs. Druken said, kindly. This, too, was not true in the least—they were not quick to vacate. Elias had to haul old Mrs. Druken’s left leg, and her shoe came off in his hand. But her saying this let Elias off the hook and allowed the infatuation Putsy had with him to continue.

“No, it was my fault,” he said, holding his gloves in his hand. “It’s what I realized last night. This was my fault and that’s the end of it. But when I come up here and saw where you are living now, I couldn’t accept this—couldn’t accept it—I know we all had an argument that day and things got out of hand. You started for the door, and I thought you wanted to go—and I was sad.”

“We were all sad that day, we all were,” Mrs. Druken said.

“Yes, yes, that’s right,” Phil said.

“Shut up, Mom, Dad,” Putsy said. Her eyes were wide. Her pouted face that always looked dark was beaming. He was lying, she knew. She knew and yet something about him made her not care, or not care well enough. “Where are you living now”—what did that mean when before they were paying for a rat-infested place he stole from them? The look on his face of shock at their living quarters made them ashamed, like the beaten-down so often are.

But there was something else Putsy could not admit. She was glad that Rebecca had not come home yet—for Rebecca, even at her young age, could steal Putsy’s show.

“You know the Drukens and Eliases must stick together,” he said, sitting down suddenly, and sighing. “No one here will help us if we don’t.”

These were all lies Putsy had heard a dozen times before. And every time she believed him, he was found with another woman or another plan that caused Putsy to dishonour herself in some way.

Joey Elias looked at Putsy. Putsy dropped four sugars in her tea because she was nervous. She suddenly felt that being engaged ruined everything for her—how could he come back right at the time she was being engaged? It wasn’t fair, and her hand shook as she stirred the sugar. (She forgot what she had been thinking walking up the hill.) It was true, with her bracelet, her ring, and her long black woollen coat, she looked like a different woman—far more exotic, and she knew it. And sadly it was her innocence that made her feel it; though Elias had been her lover, he now looked at her with new eyes.

Then, drinking his tea, Joey stated his case. It came down to this. He wanted to make them rich—or at least richer than they ever were before. And with the Depression, anything would be an improvement, he said with a laugh.

He realized that Phil was the man he needed. Phil Druken could run his projector, by the by. But now he needed someone else, and he was here to ask Putsy a favour, a very small one, he said, yet important. Could she get Walter P. McLeary away from Janie, just for a month, to train Phil? Then, with Phil able to do the work, Walter could go back to being Janie’s boy, he said.

Phil had already agreed to it, for he was only forty-eight years of age, and though his body had been racked by a number of injuries, running a projector for a theatre would be child’s play.

“And I’ll be getting thirty a week,” he said.

“Thirty a week,” Mrs. Druken echoed.

Now the fact that Elias had thrown them from their house didn’t seem to matter so much, not if they were going to get thirty a week.

In the thirty-five years he had worked, starting on the boats loading lumber, Phil had broken his left collar bone, both arms, his right leg above the knee (very painful) his left leg below the knee (quite painful) his right foot, his left big toe—and had an ear removed on a saw at Dobblestein’s mill. But now if he could—if he could—learn the projectors it would be blessed, as Mrs. Druken said.

“This is a new century fer sure,” Mrs. Druken said.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” Putsy said. All of a sudden the great world was alive with possibility again. In fact, her feeling was much like Walter’s whenever he saw her. But her happiness unfortunately was not bound by Walter. Walter would not deny her this small request. He could not—how could he?

“Oh, I’m sure he will do it.” She had to do this, to keep other girls away from Mr. Elias. She did not want to think this, she did not want to believe she was thinking this; nonetheless it was exactly what Putsy Druken was thinking.

Putsy knew that Elias was calculating something against Janie McLeary King. She didn’t know what it was, but looking at him in profile, it was clear he had a scheme.

But if she said anything, or admitted it to herself, Joey Elias would disappear into that wonderful pink hue she now believed she saw. If she thought there was going to be anything deceitful happening against the McLearys, she had to pretend she did not. The McLearys not only had shone their lights on her, they had hired her little sister to take care of the boy, Miles, and the baby Georgina, had hired Putsy herself three nights a week for the snack bar, had made her feel wanted, and Walter had given her a key.

Her hands shook as she thought of it all. How much improved their lives would be if her father was a projectionist, though, and how much her mother, with her toothaches and her withered mouth, would be pleased by her. (It did not register that she was thinking like a single girl, and that if she and Walter were to be married in the spring, the same result would be forthcoming.)

Elias smiled at her, took her hand for a second, and said he had to go.

She walked him to the door, aware of every step she took and he took, and aware also that his body reaffirmed her feeling of well-being, just as it had before her father had been forced out of work.

“What if I can’t get Walter?” she whispered. “I mean, he is busy.” She did not want to say “He is loyal.”

“Ah,” Joey said. “I need Walter. It’s imperative that he do this, for you. Janie can find lots of men to help her—she’s a young widow. You have to do this.”

And they both of them smiled at this at the same moment. But far at the back of her mind, in that anteroom of knowledge about true suffering and nobility that everyone, even Joey Elias at his best moments, knew and understood, Putsy Druken realized this: to take Walter from Janie, if even for a day, was to destroy Janie.

“I will ask him Christmas Eve,” she said.

She went to her cubbyhole, behind the main room. She took off her dress and her slip and got under the quilt. Here she said her Hail Mary, and the Our Father, blessed herself and thought. Did she think she would be faithful to Walter? Why, of course—but he had to do this favour. It would be the only thing she ever asked—and no Druken had asked a McLeary for a thing before. So it was settled.