Бетти Смит: Maggie-Now

"If the first's a boy," she said, "we'll call him De Witt in remembrance of the boat."

So the kid was baptised De Witt Xavier; the Xavier because it was a Catholic name and because Lottie said that parents owed it to children to give them an interesting middle initial.

As a baby, they called him De Witt. When he started to walk, they called him Witty because he wouldn't respond to De Witt. When he started school, he told his teacher his name was Widdy. (He couldn't articulate the t sound.)

Lottie thought it was cute, and from that time on he was called Widdy.

Often Big Red wished he had not been so beguiled at the time and had insisted that the kid be named Mike or Pete or even Tim.

He sat in his parlor, then, contented, soaking his feet and trying 1 121

not to think too deep. Lottie was folding towels and singing her iceman song under her breath.

. . of one thing 1 am sure. There's something about his business That affects his temperature.

"Where's the kid?" he asked.

"Over to Mama's."

"Why? "

"He's eating supper over there."

"What for?"

"Well, Mama took him to the butcher's with her and they had these rabbits hanging outside a barrel with hair on? You know. So Widdy wanted a rabbit- foot for luck and the butcher wouldn't sell just a foot so Mama had to buy the whole rabbit and she couldn't eat it all by herself so he's eating over there."

She got up, went to him and ran her fingers through the few red curls left on his head.

"Why'n't you tell me before?" he said.

He gave her a slap on the backside. He felt that, with their child out of the house, he could take a liberty. He lifted one foot out of the dishpan. It Dolled like a mummy's foot.

"Listen, Jimmy," she said. "Dry your feet and go down to Mike's for a pint of beer and we'll eat."

"Sure." But he looked ill at ease. "But first I got a letter today. It came to the station house." He stiffened, reached back, and pulled a letter out of iliS hind pocket.

"Who from?"

"Me mother."

"What does she want now?"

"Now' And 'tis five years since I heard from her last'" "What does she say?"

"I don't know. I saved it to read in front of you."

"Aw, Timmy, that's all right. You could've read your letter in the station house."

"We share."

"I know. Tllat's what keeps us sweethearts."

~ ~ ~ 1 "From Ireland." He turned the letter over and back.

"County Kilkenny." He dreamed: "Ah, I can see it plain, Lottie, the Fedders and all. And me mother's sod shanty with the rushes always blowing off the roof and the clay hearth and the black pot ever on the bob and the skinny cow and the few bony chickens and the praties \ve scratched out of the ground. ."

And, thought Lottie, not bitterly, his mother standing ill the doo~r~voy arid holding vat her hand once a month for the letter with the ten-dollar hill in it that he sends and his mother afar,' sister never writing to say, yes, no, or kiss my foot.

"And," dreamed Timmy, "the village walk and the girls with no corsets on and the skirts turned back to show the red petticoat and their hair flying in the wind. ." He sighed. "Ah so. And I wouldn't go back there for a million dollars."

"Will you read the Ictter now," she said, a little piqued about the girls not wearing corsets, "or will you frame it?"

He opened the letter and read.

Estee ned Son: I take my pen in hand to compose this sorrowful epistle. .

"Me mother can't read or write," he explained.

"Go on!" she said in disbelief.

"Bertie, the Broommaker, wrote it for her. I bet vou he's still living! Why, he must he seventy. . no, eighty years

. ."

"Will you read or will you frame?" she asked. He read:

. . to convey to you, esteemed son, the sorrowful tidings that one who once was with us and who had a loving place in our hearts and who was esteemed 'oy all, has heeded the call of a Higher Being, and is now in A Fix.

"Who died, rest his soul?" asked Lottie.

"Nobody yet. Let me read."

Oh, better, esteemed son, 'that we two lay sleeping in our nest in the churchyard sod," than to endure the grief of The Fix she is in.

Big Red paused to \vipe a tear from his eye and to give his vife a pleading look.

~ id 1 "You read it to yourself,]~hl~mNr, dear," she said, 'and tell me after."

He mumbled through sollle more of the letter and suddenly let out a snarling cry and stood upright in the dishpan of water.

"What?" she cried out. "Oh, sweetheart, what?"

"The blacktard!" he snarled. "The durrrtee black'ard!"

He stepped out of the dishpan and strode up and down the parlor with Lottie following hint w ith a towel. "Oh, me baby sister. Me baby sister," he moaned.

She tried to comfort him. "NVe all got to go someday, TinllllN darling."

"She's not dead. But 'twas better if she \vas."

"Oh, why-, my sweetheart?' "Because a black'ard by the nallle of. ." he consulted the letter, ". .]2. D. Moore, l squire, scandalized her name and now he won't marry her." He sobbed in big gulps.

"Sit here," said Lottie gently, "and I'll dr!r NrOur poor tired feet. "

She knelt before him and patted his puckered feet dry.

He wept until his feet w ere wt ll dried. Then he made a fist and shoals it at the ceiling.

"I'm going to Ireland a ld beat the be-Jesus out of him, God willing," he said.

"Sure, sure," she soothed. "But where will you find the money?"

"Let me think," he said. He sat there and thought deep while she put his socks and shoes on his feet.

"I could ask the boys to run a benefit dance for me like the! did for Connie Clancy ~ he time his mother passed away in Chicago and he needing money to go there for the funeral. I could say me mother's at deatil's door, God forgive me, and ask for a month's sick leave. ."

Her heart was in a panic. 11 he left me to co to Ireland, she thought, would he eater cr,me hack?

"No, I can't go."

"Why? "

"Me examination for sergcallt: It comes Up in two weeks. If I take it, I'd have a hard rime trying to pass it.

If I don't take it, I won't pass a-tall."

1 I, 1 "I wouldn't care," she said. "I got stuck on you when you vitas just a plain rookie. Remember?"

"I'd care. But not for meself. Did I not take the same examination four limes already and not pass and not care a damn except for you? That's why I keep on trying. If I

die a sergeant, sure, you'd get a bigger widder's pension."

What have I done in my life to deserve this good man, she thought.

She remembered the night when he had been two hours late coming home from worl;. One of the horses pulling the car he was in had dropped dead and held up traffic.

Not knowing about the horse, Lottie was sure that Tim had been beaten to death by the Hudson Dusters or hatcheted by one of the Chinese tongs. She had spent the two waiting hours on her knees in prayer.

Please, Holy Mother, let him be alive. Let him be drunk or with another woman just so he's alive. Oh, Holy Mother, intercede for me!

Hail, Mary, full of grace. .

I'll give him everything. . everything I've got to give. I'll never nag him again. I'll give him everything he asks for….

Now he was asking to go to his mother and sister. But how could she bear to let him go? She couldn't. But because she loved him so, she made it easy for him to go.

"Take the examination next year. Skip this year. It's only

. . well, it's only a year. And you'll only be gone a few weeks and what's a few weeks in al] the rest of the life we will have together?"

He doesn't really want to go, she thought. I know it. He wouldn't leave me.

"I'll buy you a new dress for the benefit dance. You'll be the belle of the ball."

"I don't want a new dress. I want only you. Old, Timmy, you won't stop loving me while you're gone?"