Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

Thought Claude: He's got something up his grubby sleeve.

Throwing up that good-will smokescreen. I'll wait and see.

This should be interesting.

Thought Maggie-Now: Papa knows I love Claude and that he can't do a thing about it. So I guess he thinks he might as well be nice about it. Only, she w orried, Papa don't need to be so awfully friendly, I'd feel better if he was just not unfriendly, Pat's thoughts were along the same line as Claude's. I'll treat him just like he was any other decent slob. He'll get so mad that I'm not interested in who or what he is that he'll spill the whole beans about himself, the bastid.

Denny: There's six cakes and four of us. Papa feels good and maybe he'll say to let the little boy get the two what's left.

[37 1 After supper, Claude told Denny he'd help him with his reading homework after the dishes were out of the way.

Claude and Pat went into the front room.

"Sit down, son," said pat benevolently.

"After you, sir," said Claude courteously.

Each sat at a window, their chairs facing each other. Pat lit up his clay pipeful of tobacco and Claude lit up a cigarette.

"I'm proud of you, me boy, and you getting the grand job the first day you look. Maggie-Now told me."

"Thank you, sir."

"And how much do they be paying you?" he asked mellowly.

"The usual salary." Pat was all ears. "A little more than they think I'm w orth and a little less than I think I'm worth."

The bastid, thought Pat bitterly. He pulled himself together. I must watch meself and At ask him anything right out. I got to go roundabout.

"I see you got a nice brown tan," said Pat.

Claude looked at one of his sun-tanned hands and said in simulated astonishment: "Why, so I have!"

"People what stay in the South for a time always get sunburned," said Pat.

"I envy vou your room upstairs, sir," countered Claude.

"You can see the sky while you lie in bed."

"Funny thing," mused Pat. "You can always tell when a man gets out that he's been in Sing Sing. Their skin is this here dead white because they never get out in the air."

"And," said Claude, assuming an eager naivete, "their hair is clipped close to the head."

"Now down South," said Pat, dreamily sucking on his pipe, "you can't tell. When they put them in jail, they let them out all day to work on the roads. Then they get a good tan. So, when they come out, nobody knows they're ex-convicts."

Now he'll kr~o~v I'm onto him, thought Pat.

"I read that in the paper," he added in a too offhand way.

"I read the newspapers, too," said Claude, dreamily contemplating the smoke from his cigarette. "I read that they put chains around their ankles when they work outdoors. And you can see white circles on the suntan of their ankles where the chains were."

In an absent-minded way, Claude pulled up a trouser leg and [3~']

crossed that leg over his other leg. Pat's eyes, like a true-thrown dart, went to the exposed ankle. It was smoothly tanned all over; no white circles.

"Is there some other topic you would care to discuss, sir? We have the whole evening ahead of us. My, it's good to be home again," said Claude.

Claude brought home his first week's salary: fifty dollars! Maggie-Now could hardly believe it. Even Pat was impressed.

"That's good pay for a man what ain't got no steady trade," was his compliment.

Claude mentioned the dressing table but Maggie-Now said to wait until there was a sale. She put the money in the bank, all but ten dollars of it.

Claude seemed to like his work. Each night when he got home, he threw away the former day's carnation and put a new one in the wineglass. Each Saturday night, he gave her his pay intact. He asked nothing more than seventy-five cents a day for carfare, a luncheon sandwich and cigarettes. He seemed to want no material things for himself.

He gave lavish Christmas gifts to them: a meerschaum pipe in a satin-lined, carved-wood c ase for Pat, a pair of ice skates for Denny with a promise he'd take him to Highland Park to teach him ice skating, and a beautiful small gold and white dressing table, with an oval mirror, for Mag~rie-Now.

Pat pawned the pipe the day after Christmas and gave the ticket to Flick Mack, who did not smoke. But the little fellow considered the ticket itself, with Pat's name on it, as a Christmas gift and he put it in his wallet and treasured it for years.

The payday after Christmas, Claude brought no salary home. He had charged the gifts at the store. He asked her if she minded and, of course, she said she didn't.

In January, Father Paul, a missionary priest, came to give instructions to non-Catholic s who wished to become converts. He would serve all the parish s in that part of Brooklyn and his headquarters were the principal's office in the neighborhood parochial school. Instructions would be given at night.

Father Paul was incredibly thin. His face looked like skin [312]

stretched tight over a skeleton of bones with no flesh in between. He had spent his years in jungles and swamps and the brush and places not on any map. He had eaten the strange foods of savage people and been subjected to the strange ills of the jungle and had endured unheard-of hardships. He was worn as fine as a knife that had been honed too much. Every three or four years, he took a

"rest" by carrying on his missionary work in America for a month or two.

Here, thought Claude, was no gentle, serene priest like Father Flynn; no priest who took a glass of wine before a meal or smoked a cigar or pipe for relaxation; who tapped a foot to the rhythm of a passing tune. Father Paul wore a long black cassock, and a sixinch crucifix, that looked like flashing gold, hung on the left side of his breast. He raised his hooded eyes to Claude and spoke in a strong, ringing voice.

"Your name, my son."

"Claude Bassett, Father."

"Religion? "

"I am a non-Catholic."

The hooded eyes flashed up and the cross trembled as he took a deep breath to bring out the full volume of his voice.

"Your religion!" he thundered. Religiously Religion!

came back the echo of his voice from the corners of the room.

"Protestant," said Claude, awed in spite of himself.

"How long have you been married?"

"A year, Father."

"Is there a child?"

"We have not been fortunate enough. ." began Claude.

"Has there been a child?" thundered the priest. The cross moved like a live thing and Child! Child! echoed in the room.

"No, Father."

"Is a child expected?"

"No, Father."

"Why?" Claude shrugged and smiled. "Why has your wife not conceived?" continued the priest.

"I beg your pardon, Father?"

"Do you do anything to prevent conception?"

"Really, Father," began Claude.

[3~3] "Do you use contraceptives?" thundered the priest. The word echoed back.

A dark color came into Claude's face. He got to his feet and said: "With all due respect to you, Father, that's hardly any of your business."

The priest rose, also. PI he cross flashed like fire and the echoes of his thundering words made it seem as though there were three voices in the room.

"It is my business! It is the business of the Church! It is the holy duty of those who marry in the Catholic Church to produce children children for the Church!"

"We might want them for our own pleasure," said Claude a little flippantly.