Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

oatmeal. The cuckoo clack struck once, and Timmy the bird answered with a tired chirp. It was only six-thirty. She covered the birdcage and went in to sit by the front window. It was going to be a long, lonely evening for her.

Maybe, she thought hopefully, one of the children nzight wake up and need something. She sat and waited. .

waited to be needed.

She walked into Winer's store. It was a very hot day in July; too hot to take the children shopping with her. She had talked her father into keeping an eye on them while she shopped. She asked Winer could she have a nice piece of chuck for pot roast. As he served her, she asl.ed where Denny was.

"Dinny goes home by his house now for dinner with the wife and the baby."

"That's right. I forgot," said Maggie-Now. "Business any better, Mr. Winer?" she asked.

"Worser," he said. "The neighborhood so bad is getting.

No one buys good meat no more. The colored people come in and all want hog chowls. And how many chowls gives it one hog? Then they want neck bones and how many necks is one hog got? And they ask for this thing, side meat. And the rest of the hog stands there.

"And all these new people what moves in; what speaks Spick."

"Speaks Spick?"

"You know: Aba-dabba-dabba? They ask for meat in Spick and I would not say to you how they say it. You would think I was cursing at you.

"When does your man come home, Missus Now?" he asked suddenly.

"Sometime after Thanksgiving."

"Is long time yet."

"Yes," she agreed with a sigh.

"When the winter is done," he said, "then I build my never store in Hempstead. Now is time. The men what work don't ask so much money now and all things for building is cheaper." He hesitated, then went on, "I talked to Dinny he should be boss of the new store. I tell him I build a little house for him and the family he should pay me off like rent."

"That's so nice of you, Mr. Winer."

[IS]

' Oinny likes it. But the wife. ." I le shrugged. "She don't Leant to go far away from tile mama. But I wait and see. Dinnv's a good boy. He will do via hat is good for all."

"I know he will."

"He is like son to me. And maybe u hen I die. . We see." he said mysteriously.

In September when ~ he nurse came from the home for her monthly inspection, she asked Maggie-Now wouldn't she like to take another baby? She had a nice empty room, observed the nurse, and there vitas no I

eason why she couldn't have a third foster child if she vanished.

I\laggie-Now was delighted. She said she hoped he'd be a very young baby so that she c ould have him a very long time.

A few weeks later, the nurse brought her a three-month-old baby. His name was Matthew; Matty for short. He had a large birthmark on his little cheek. The nurse said it didn't matter so much with a boy. But it would be bad on a girl. But, added the nurse, as soon as he was old enough, the home would see about having it removed.

A C'HAP<1'ER SIXTY-ONE ~ WRY ONE said that the November of that year was the coldest they remembered. On one of the coldest days, when there was an icy wind blowing and the very hair in one's nostrils froze, Father Francis set out to make some parish calls. Toward evening, an icy rain began to fall.

Father Francis came home with wet shoes and four dollars and thirty cents in contributions for the parishhouse coal fund. The young priest took off his wet muffler and his wet coat and his wet shoes. He put on his slippers and went down and put some coal on the furnace fire and shook down the ashes.

"If we go to bed immediately after supper and prayers,"

suggested Father Francis, "we can save on coal."

"No," said Father Flynn. "We may be needed this night.

The

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cold spell has held on too long and there are old people who may be dying and we must be available."

"I had better get my shoes dried then." He stuffed wadded papers into his shoes. He had but the one pair.

"Has the doctor been by?"

It was the kindly custom of one of the neighborhood doctors to inform the priest, the rabbi and the Methodist minister, by phone or personal call, when one of their parishioners was seriously ill.

"No, he hasn't. But, mark my words, Patrick Dennis Moore will send for me before the night is out. For the past ten years now, when the cold and snow of winter sets in, he has the idea he's going to die and he wants the Church. Well, one of the times may be the time."

And sure enough! While they were eating their supper, a neighbor boy came and said Maggie had sent him because her father was dying and asking for the priest.

Poor Father Francis took the paper out of his still-wet shoes and shrugged into his still-wet coat.

It was beginning to snow as they left. Ah! thought Father Flynn. But he said nothing. A pale and quiet Maggie-Now met them at the door with a lighted candle.

She genuflected and preceded them into the house in the proper way and took the two priests up to her father's room. The bedside table was prepared with crucifix and candles and the needed things.

As in other years, there were clean sheets on the bed and dried blood on Pat's face from Maggie-Now's inept barber work.

Pat started talking right away. "You will forgive me, Fathers," he said, "for getting you out in the weather."

And one of youse would have been enough, he thought.

"But I'm not long for this world and I want to make me peace with me God and me Church before I go."

"You are prepared then, my son?" asked the young priest of the man almost old enough to be his grandfather.

And there was no incongruity. The young priest was the older man's spiritual father.

"I have enough insurance to bury me," said Pat. "And a bit of money in the bank to pay for Masses for the sake of getting me out of purgatory when I go," said Pat. No one but Father tow] Flynn noticed he emphasised the word when.

"Be no longer concerned with things of the world," said good Father Francis. "Prepare yourself spiritually." Father Francis cot his stole out of his black leather bag.

He believes me! thought Pat in a panic.

Maggie-Now started to cry. Father Flynn touched her am' and said: "Come, my c hild." They started to leave the room.

"Where are you going, Father?" asked Pat, really scared now.

"Downstairs. I leave you in the good hands of Father Francis, my son." The door closed after his daughter and Father Flynn.

Pat heard them in the hall. He heard a sob from Maggie-Now and the murmurous voice of Father Flynn saying, ". . a speedy recovery or a happy death."

They all believe note, thought Pat in despair-. Mild all I Canted 'as to tell me priest lee troubles.

Father Flynn noticed that Maggie-Now's kitchen v-as freshlsscrubbed. There was a new white oilcloth cover on the kitchen table. The chintz skirts that masked the ugly built-in soapstone washtubs had been freshly washed, starched and ironed. There was the good smell of good cooking in the house, and, furnace or no, Maggie-Now had a wonderful fire burning in the kitchen range and a pot of coffee simmering on the back.

As she poured a cup of coffee for her priest, Father Flynn noted a strand of grey in one of the braids of her brown hair. Yet she had an expectant air, subdued as was natural with a dying man in the house or one whorls she thought was dying. There was something radiant about her like a bride waiting for her bridegroom.