Бетти Смит: Maggie-Now

"Do not hold him, Missus. Let him go from you."

"He'll never go from me."

"He will. Like the others. Where are your children?

Where's Lenny and Shamus and Sean and Robbie and Neely what I played with as a boy? All are gone. Gone because you held them too hard. Hold your last one easy and he won't go far away."

1 2s 1 She thought of Patsy going to America and her face worked. He thought she grieved for her other children. He said: "Let your tears fall out, Missus. 'Twill bring you some peace."

"Bad cess to you and to all of youse," she muttered. She went into the shanty and started to shut the door. He held it open with his foot.

"Look, Missus," he said. He reached into his pocket and drew out a packet of new dollar bills. "I brought a dowry for me sister. One hundred new American dollars. A

forchune in Ireland or anywhere else in the world." He fanned out the bills. He saw her eyes flicker with interest.

Her thoughts tumbled `,ver each other like acrobats. 'Tis me boy's money if he marries her. If I let them live here, I

could have the money f or meself. I could buy me a broody hen setting on a dozen eggs and a left-out weaner pig what wouldn't cost dear what I could feed up to be a grand sow.

And a calf what would be a milking cow in time. And to think on it! All the money brought into the house from the eggs and crea,mt and butter and from the selling of rashers of bacon and hams from me pigs always holding some back to breed the next year. . But, she wavered, I'd have to have that one, his sister, in me house.

Big Red knew her thoughts. "Think on it, Missus," he said. "A hen, a suckling pig and a weaned calf. And enough money over to build a room onto your shanty for me sister and your boy. And when yourself is old and helpless, Maggie Rose would wait on you and carry you in her hand. Ah, 'tis a grand picture."

Lizzie Moore saw a different picture. She saw Maggie Rose in her son's arms, right before her eyes always in his arms, day and night. She heard the girl say: "Your mother's in the way." There'd be friction. She could hear her son say: "Me wife is right, Mother. 'Tis you at fault."

She was honest enough to know she'd die of jealousy and wise enough to know she couldn't change her ways.

"And think of the grandchilthren," said Big Red, "follying you around and swinging on your skirts."

The mention of grandchildren did it!

"I'll have none of your sister and her whelps in me house."

She slammed the door and he heard the bolt shoot home.

~ 29] By agreement, Patsy and his mother pretended to be all for the marriage the following Sunday. When the priest read the banns for a second time and the congregation turned around to gloat, Mrs. Moore smiled and bowed graciously and Patsy smiled tenderly at the Shawn family.

This threw the villagers into confusion. After Mass, they gathered in groups outside the church and held worried, whispered consultations. Had something gone wrong, they asked each other. Would he marry the girl after all? It was a big letdown. Big Red relaxed and was happy. He felt he had done the right thing after all.

Two days later, Patrick Dennis strapped a homemade knapsack, made of coarse linen, on his back. It held all he owned: six colored handkerchiefs, his other shirt and a pair of woolen socks knitted by his loving mother.

"And you will send for me before the year is out?" she asked for the tenth time.

"That I will, Mother dear."

"Swear! "

He swore on the little black leather prayer book she had given him when he made his First Communion.

"May I drop dead," he swore, "if I don't send for,N70U

\V-ithin the year. As God is my witness."

"Amen,~' she said, as she nicked the book in his knapsack.

He looked around once more before he mounted his bicycle. The soft, green, rolling hills. . the blue sky and tender white clouds and the pink, wild roses tangled on the tumble-down, grad, rock wall around the cottage.

And he didn't want to go he didn't want to go. But he was caught up in the momentum of all the events and the arrangements were made and it was easier to go than to stay.

Way down the road, he saw a filthy figure coming along and leading a goat and carrying a zither. A whine came on the wind. Henny, the Hermit, was singing as he walked.

Oh, I'll sing you the story Of Patsy Dee NIoore.

Patsy jigged with impatience while his mother sprinkled the bicycle and himself with holy water and ceremoniously pinned

~ 3 ]

a St. Christopher's medal to his undershirt. When that was done, he got onto his bike in one frenzied leap. His mother's parting words were: "God grant, me son, that her basrid of a brother don't ketch you sneaking out of Ireland."

He turned to wave and w heeled out of his mother's life, and out of Ireland forever.

Sure, he thought, here they Must give them away with a pound of tea for where would all these people be getting the naor~ey to buy them?

He stood on the curb, knapsack on back and card with Moriarity's address clutched in his hand. "Ask a cop," a man in the steerage had instructed him. "Be sure to call him 'officer' and he'll tell you how to get the ferry to Brooklyn." Patsy saw a cop across the street but the traffic confused him so he didn't know how to cross.

Great beer trucks, some drawn by six Percherons, pounded by; horse-drawn cars clanged along on iron tracks. A funeral procession, composed of a hearse, an open carriage full of floral pieces and ten coaches of mourners, crawled along. The dead man, likely as not ineffectual in life, was important enough in death to hold up traffic for ten minutes.

Two-wheeled carts, some loaded with fruit, others with junk, were pushed along by men with long, patriarchal beards. The junk carts had cowbells on a leather strap across the top. The bells made an unholy, discordant jangle in the jungle of noises. A lot of cursing, most of it directed at the bearded men, seemed necessary to keep all the vehicles moving.

Bicycles skimmed in and out, confounding all traffic. The [32 1

riders irritated everyone by their nervous tinkling of the bicycle bells. The men rode looking constantly over a shoulder, which made the bicycles swerve from here to there.

A bell-clanging fire engine thundered by and the horses!

hoofs drew sparks from the cobblestones. Patsy stared in amazement at a spotted dog that ran along under the fire truck, avoiding, by some miracle, being ground to death by the fast-turning wheels.

There — were hansom cabs and lacquered traps and varnished carriages drawn by nervous, shining horses and with elegantly dressed dandies and ladies lolling back on the cushions.

A two-horse ambulance whizzed by. The driver kept kicking the gong, which gave out a noise like a great alarm. A whitesuited intern swayed on the back step, holding on to a strap and reading the morning paper while the ambulance rushed him to some place of sudden accident and probably death.

An uncovered wagon, loaded with fish and flies and drawn by a starveling horse whose uncertain gait made the weighing scales jangle, came along. The fishmonger blew rusty toots on a tin horn and hoarsely called out Fish! at intervals.

The cop across the street was moving away. Patsy was afraid he'd lose him so he made an attempt at crossing the street. Bedlam! Whistles blew, bells tinkled, gongs clanged, drivers cursed, horses reared and a man fell off a high-wheeled bicycle. People yelled at Patsy: "Get out-a the gutter, yer Goddamned greenhorn!" This was Patsy's first greeting in the new world.

"Wipe-a behin' ears, dotty mick," yelled an Italian fish peddler. This was the first instruction Patsy received.

And, "Go back where you come from, why doncha,"