Бетти Смит: Maggie-Now

"I can't be made if I go to America."

"And you'd be leavin, me like me other chilthren did?"

"Only for a uThile. I'll send for vou before the year is crone."

"You'll not be sanding for anyorle. You'll bide here with me. Die if you have the uish. But you'll not marry and you'll not leave me."

"'Tis hard to die'" lie said. and our Lord forgive me for

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saying I would and me not meaning it a-tall. I will stay, Mother dear, and marry Maggie Rose, and I will be shamed in the county all the days of me living and I'll not be caring, because I love Maggie Rose."

"You say so."

"I would do so."

She put the lid on the tin of blacking. "In a year you say? You'll send for me?"

"I swear it."

" 'Tis for the best." She put the blacking away. "Go, then, to America and make a place for me and I will come to you."

The next morning, he cycled ten miles to the next village. The Liverpool sport who represented a steamship company made things easy for Patrick Dennis Moore.

Passage was arranged and everything was free free for the time being.

Yes, Patsy would have tO pay for the ticket in time, but that was easy, too. There was a job waiting for him in America. One Michael Moriarity and, oh, he was Lord Mayor of Brooklyn or something near as grand, was the sport's opinion would pay Patsy all of five dollars a w eek and give him room and board. And all for what? For nothing. For taking care of two darling carriage horses.

Staunchly, Patsy promised to pay the passage money back. That he would, the sport assured him. A man from the steamship branch in Brooklyn would come once a week and take two dollars from his wages until the ticket was paid up. Patsy agreed with the sport that the remaining three dollars was a "forchune" in America or anywhere else.

Patsy put his name on a paper.

"You'll be wanting some loose change for the trip,"

suggested the sport.

"Glory be," said Patsy. "Does the company give out spending money, too?"

"Well, hardly. But your wheel. You'll have no use for it when you're gone. I'll take it olf your hands for two pounds. You ride over on it Tuesday when the coach leaves for Cobh Harbor and I'll take ownership then and give you the pound notes."

[AS] Big Red wasn't happy. His mother and sister forever found fault with him. Maggie Rose was not a bit grateful.

She told her brother she hated him because he had thrashed her love and shamed him and herself in the village.

"Now he'll go from me forever," she wept.

"Over me dead body," vowed Big Red.

"Why did you come a-tween us?" she sobbed. "I vitas vialling to wait till his mother died. Why did you make him the clown of the county?"

"Anyone," he said bitterly, "who would marry a sharp-tongue girl like you his mother living or dead is a clown born and not made." He was instantly sorry.

"forgive me wild talk, Maggie Rose, do," he said.

There was that pain coming, in his left temple; a sure sign that he was thinking deep. God forgive me, he thought, if I did a wrong to this boy what never knew me, by giving him a licking and putting his name up to be read in church q~i,b me sister's.

His mother's reception of the wedding gift his Lottie had sent by him wasn't appreciated by Big Red. It was a pair of pillow shams with hand-crocheted edges. 7\~1rs.

Shawn claimed the linen was coarse and that Lottie had changed crochet patterns in the middle of an edging

"'Tis not so," shouted Bh, Rcd. 'L ver! thins, ~i! Lottie does is beautiful."

"Ah, the sloppy hous. she must be keeping for rile only son," sighed the Widow.

"So help me, God, Mother. ." he shouted.

"Raise your voice to me again," she interrupted, and I'll give it to you. Big as you art!"

Holy Mother, he praN+ed, let me not be losing me temper Old brie here for only a bit of a while with the mother caveat bore me arid me only baby sister.

Slie kept him working. She had him wl-litewash the cottage and clean out the pig sty, mend the ruined stone wall and chop up a dead tree for firewood. Now, Big Red was an obliging man and he would have loved doing things for his mother except that she acted as though it were her due and his privilege to serve her. Why, when he did some little thing for Lottie, like lifting the vv-ashboiler up onto the stove or sawing off a broom handle, say!

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she kissed him and carried on as though he had given her a dozen American Beauty roses.

Another thing irked hirn: a friend of his mother's. This friend was a dirty, old, one-eyed man with a goat and a zither, who kept showing up at the house nearly every day.

Invariably, his mother brought a plate of food out to the man and Tim saw their heads together in low conversation.

"What's he doing here all the time?" asked Tim.

"Nothing," replied the mother. "He's making up a grand ballad and I'm helping him."

All of a sudden he missed his Lottie so much!

Back in Brooklyn, Lottic was putting the finishing touches to the midday snack of lamb stew, crusty, fresh Jewish rye bread, sweet butter, pound cake with ice cream on top, and coffee, that she was preparing for herself and son Widdy. As she worked, she sang her icernan song. She sang it in a sad cadence because her Timmy was away.

And I found out once or twice, That all you can get from the iceman Is ice! Ice! Ice!

Widdy, coming home from school for lunch, saw the letter in the mailbox ill the vestibule. Ele brought it up to his mother. It was from Timmy a short letter.

Dear Lottie: Don't ou ever leave note.

Yours truly, Timothy Shawn.

She put the letter down her shirtwaist over her left breast where she judged her heart to be. It was the first letter he'd ever written her.

Big Red did not feel well. He was thinking too deep.

The conviction was growing in him that he had done wrong in forcing the marriage. But he wavered What was right, what was wrong? What was right for his sister might be wrong for Patrick Dennis. He couldn't figure it out. He hit on the idea of putting himself in Patsy's place.

or 27]

i1Iake believe, he started out, that I loved Lottie but ain't thinking of marrying at the tinge. So her old chro~no of a mother sends for Lottie's brother what lives far away maybe up in the Catskills. So he comes down and he pucks me in the nose, say, and tells me there's more where that comes from in front of people, if I don't marry his sister. So what would I do?

He clenched his hands and his face got red and the cords stood out on his neck. Why. . why I'd beat the be-Jesus OZlt of the bastid and the old chromo too and Lottie could go fish. That's just what I'd do.l Then he was sorry for the way he had treated Patsy.

Why, he thought, I'm no better than that Catskill Mo?mtain bastid! (He forgot that Lottie had no brother.)

He fell back in his chair and Wolfe out into a sweat. He had thought the whole thing through. I shouldn't-a butted in, he concluded. The wimmen folks could have handled it theirselves. Like they're doing anyways.

He decided to see Lizzie Moore before he left. He would try to get her to remove all obstacles to her son marrying Maggie Rose. But Lizzie wouldn't let him in the house, even. She barred the doorway with folded arms and spread legs.

"Missus," he said, "let there be peace amongst us and give up so's your son can marry me sister and we'll be relations and friends."

"Friends?" she sneered. "The gall of the man!" she told an imaginary companion. "And friends in the bargain!

Hah!"

"Do not stand in the way. It is decent and good that a man marry a woman."

"Why?'' she asked.

"First off to sleep with." Although embarrassed, he looked her straight in the eye because he thought that was right that a man marry to sleep with his woman.

"You durtee little man!" She spat in the direction of his shoe.