Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

there with hands of tobacco and a pile of new cigar boxes.

He sat there all day, except when waiting on customers, and rolled cigars by hand, moistening the edge of the last wrapping with his tongue to make it stick. He worked in the window because the light was better there and because people stopped to watch him work. He loved an audience.

He prospered in a small way. Lots of men liked hand-rolled cigars. He also carried a stock of fine smoking tobacco. As a third-generation cigar maker, he hated cigarettes and refused to stock them.

He had a wooden Indian in front of his store with war bonnet and a short skirt made of feathers and thongs around his legs. The Indian, which he painted each spring, had a get-on-your-mark stance and held up a hand of wooden tobacco as though it were a torch. The Icids said that Van Clees's great grandfather had bought the land for the cigar store from a chief for two dollars. And he had

"skinned" the chief, who fought with him and was killed by the great grandfather, and the chief's body was put inside the wooden Indian. Anyhow, that's the story the kids told.

Mr. Van Clees was a Lutheran but there was no Lutheran church within walking distance of his home. So he held his own Protestant service in Father Flynn's church which was two blocks away.

He brought his own prayer book and hymnal. He read the Gospel of the day sonorously in his mind; he sang the hymns rousingly in Dutch in a deep, mumbling bass also in his mind. He sat quietly with folded hands listening to an imaginary sermon. The sermons suited him fine. When he didn't want to wait, the sermon was short. When he had time and liked to sit a while, he let the sermon go on as long as he wished. Most of the imaginary sermons were long because he liked to sit in the church. It was dim and cool in summer and warm and bright in winter and where else did he have to go on a Sunday?

He went to church at three in the afternoon to hold his own services. He started out by going to morning Mass but he got tired of the dirty looks the congregation gave him when his ritual didn't coincide with the ritual of the Mass.

For instance, when the little silver bell tinkled out of the scented silence and people were on their knees, hand over heart

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and tapping the breast gtntly each time the bell sounded, like as not Mr. Van Clees was on his feet, opened hymn book in hand, head thrown back and silently mouthing a galloping hymn of joy everlasting.

He had a habit of leaving, bt~mping past people's knees, at the exact time the collection plates were being passed. People thought he was a cheapskate. He wasn't. It was that his own private services usually came to a logical end at the time of the collection.

He had tried going in i-he afternoon and liked it much better. The church, tln]ess there was a wedding or a christening, was almost empty then and l\lr. Van Clees could sit, stand or kneel as he chose. He could even sleep if he vdshed.

Father Flyml knew Ma. Van Clees wasn't a Catholic but he urged him to use the churl h as often as he \vished. Mr.

Van Clees accepted the offer with tile pr`Jviso that Father Flynn make no attempt to convert him.

"Oh, you'll be a Catholic sol of d as, by osmosis, if nothing else," said Father 1~ lynx.

They liked each other; they \vere friends, Father Flynn and the Lutheran. Or. Van Clees kept the priest's humidor full of good pipe tobacco. Father Flynil appreciated this because it ~ as indeed a poor living in that poor parislZ.

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.~laggie-lN'ow and the Vernachts together.

August Ve r~nacht had heed a \` i~odcuttcr back in Germanv. When he cone to' An1el,ca, there was no trade in Brooklyn knOV~7O as \VC30dCtittL1g. (OHS, h~we\cr, divas handy and had an aptitude for working with Nvf,`>cl. Isle called himself a carpenter but really he w is a free-iance repair marl. Whell he married Annie (American born fif German in~inigrants), he got a steady job in a furniture factor, that spec ialized in making rocking chairs.

1 Iffy 1 Gus supported Annie, his wife, and their children on his small but steady salary. They didn't have everything they wanted or even that they needed for that matter. But they were never in actual want. They were contented.

Gus's hobby was woodcarving. For years, now, he'd been working on a chess set. He kept his bits of wood, ebony, ash, oak and any other No cod that came his way, in Van Clees's store. When he had a spare hour, he'd drop in the store and whittle away while he and Van Clees engaged in endless, friendly debate on the ways of the world.

They were pals: Gus Vernacht and Jan Van Clees. They talked, played checkers and tried to teach each other chess. Sometimes on a holiday, they went to Glendale Schutzen Park and shot at targets with rented rifles and had a few seidels of beer afterward.

Gus knew all about l\laggie-Now before he met her. He knew about the baby. Van Clees made a moving story of it when he told Gus about hi r. The sentimental German's heart was touched. Gus happened to be in the store one Saturday afternoon when Maggie-Now came in with Dennis to get two clay pipes for her father. After the introductions, Gus said: "You must come and be friends with my Ahn-nee. A

little girl like you needs a big woman for a friend. So you come by my house and be friends."

"Annie's a good lady, Miss Maggie," said Van Clees.

"Ahl-zo a good mutter," said Gus. "We got the boy, Chamesee, and he has eight years. And the baby, T'ressa, she is z~vei months younger as your brother, Denn-ty here. And my Ahnnee, she will be good by you, and give you to eat cake and coffee, and put you in the bed to rest and cover you up. And you want to go down on the street and walk with the other girls? She will mind Denn-ty for you."

"You go see Annie, Miss Maggie," advised Van Clees.

"I'll ask my father."

She asked him. Pat didn't like the idea. "HONV do I

know who these: people are?"

"They're well known in the neighborhood. And after all, Papa, I'm eighteen. I know what I'm doing."

"The I [Ouse of the Good Shepherd is full-a girls, eighteen, ~ ISIS ~1

what knew what they were doing,'' he said darkly.

"What house?"

"Where they put wayward girls."

"I'm not wayward."

"Things happen before you know it," he said mysteriously.

He had a clutch of fear. She Divas growing up. She looked mature for her age. Why, he had started courting Maggie Rose when she had been a year younger than Maggie-Now. It had been the girl's virtue and her mother's nosiness and not his inclination that had kept Maggie Rose virginal.

But that was nearly twenty-five years ago, he consoled himself. Things is differed' roods. Girls that y OUMg don't keep steady company nowadays.

Still there is things she Would boom.,llary, why did you have to die ~vLen the girl Penis a another so bad to tell her things? I can't tell her.

No, he couldn't. As levity many fathers, the thought of sex in his daughter's life — was abhorrent to him. He couldn't stand the thought of any male lusting after her.

For the first time, he worried about his daughter. He knew that in some ways the congested neighborhood was a jungle where men preyed on girls: innocent girls, susceptible girls and willing girls. He knew of the narrow, trash~filled back alleys, the dark cellars, tenement rooftops cluttered with chimney pots, vacant stores where doors could be forced. . he knew all of these places where men took young girls for their purposes.