Maggie Cassidy (17 page)

It was three years later, a cold snowing night, the Lowell Depot was crowded with late arrivers from Boston clutching
Daily Records
, rushing to cars, buses. Across the street the depot diner did a thriving business, hamburgers sizzled juicily on the grille, when the counterman with his old Montana face let go a batter of pancake mix on the dull gleaming fat of the grille it shot up a sizzlecloud, loud, as doors squeaked over and the boys off the train came in to eat. The passenger train, the 6:05 or 6:06 had just left, a freight was rumbling through Lowell in the winter dusk snow a hundred cars long, its tail-end caboose was riding after at the Concord River Bridge in South Lowell near Massachusetts Street—the locomotive was nosing through lumberyards and wholesale plumbers and gastanks of Lowell downtown back of the mills and Chelmsford Street, out in the yards on Princeton Boulevard the rolling stock was still in the dribbling snow sweeps. Down Middlesex Street and over the tracks, a few dull gray battered doorways hid a few Lowell waiters in the storm. The Blagden restaurant wasnt doing much business, brown on a corner, a few dull eaters inside, a cafeteria lunchroom. In back, the Blagden Garage and Parking was almost all done for the evening rush. The garageman had just wheeled back a big truck into place, against the partition wall, and squeezed the last Buick against the fleet deep in the far end of the garage, there was not much space left. The garageman was alone, walking back with his car keys, pencil and tickets, thick thighs hurrying—in a half dance. At the big overhead door he whistled to see the storm dropping softly in the alley; above, a gray tenement kitchen window glowed dully—the garageman could hear kids talking. He turned into the small potbelly office with the rolltop desk, threw the ticket tab on the desk among papers and cigarette packs and threw himself in the swivel chair and turned it around and shot his feet to the desk. He reached down and slugged out of a quart of beer. He burped. He picked up the phone.

Dialed. “Hey there, is that you Maggie?”

“Yeah. Jack? Calling agin? I thought you was all through with me—didnt believe it—”

“Yeah! Come on! I'll come pick you up right now—We'll drink beer in the office, play the radio, dance—I'll take you home—a big Buick—”

“What time?”

“Right now!”

“You sound like you changed.”

“Sure. Three years makes a difference!”

“Last time I saw you—was after the Prom—you remember—college boy—”

“I aint no college boy now.—I'm goin in the Navy next month.”

“You
was
in!”

“Just merchant marine—”

“Well you were better off—But I'll come—”

“Same old Maggie,” thought the garageman, Jack Duluoz, calculating, “I'll be over in twenty minutes sharp. Be ready. I've got to bring that Buick right back. This is like stealing a car. And I'm leaving the lot unattended—”

“Okay. I'm ready now.”

“Okay baby,” said J.D. “see ya” hanging up and leaping to his feet. He took out keys, went out, locked the door of the office, tried it—walked over to the overhead door just to give it a yank, slapped it, strode back deep into the garage to the Buick, and got in.

The car door frumped softly. It clicked open again as he leaped out and put out a few garage lights—In the gloom now he foraged sadly after something. Then slowly the motor started, he backed around, shifting, came front, headlights flashing—lighting up the shadows of the garage—The horn tooted as accidentally he moved his elbow convulsively in search of cigarettes—Looking suspiciously over his shoulder he drove around, through the door, out into the snowy alley—He wore no hat, just a jacket—Only a few months before he'd been a reporter on the Lowell newspaper, he wore the wild look of a man emancipated into the redbrick heap of night from some bank jail and so gleaming and furtive he looked around frantically with a wild head everywhere hearing imaginary noises and seeing traffics and checking to make sure to be ready—incredibly slowly the Buick crawled to the mouth of the alley. The snow thickened. “
Jack o diamonds
,” sang Jack, “
Jack o diamonds, you'll be my downfall
,” pronouncing it “Jack o doymonds” as in his memory of G.J. Rigopoulos thus singing it New Year's Eve night of 1939 when he'd first met Maggie this girl he her in this Buick late tongith in the garage, deep—“Baby,” he said out loud, “I'm sure gonna get you tonight—aint gonna be like it used to be with you—I'm gonna find out about you at last—I've had women since you, and traveled, and been far—the stories I could tell you'd make your little Massachusetts Street sit pale in
this
star—about railroads, and bottles I throwed, and women brought me gin for supper, and old bo's I followed across fields to hear them sing the blues—and moons over Virginia—and birds in the same place in the dry morning—rails leading south, west—dusty places I sat down in—slept in—Things I've known in the morning at office desk, school desk, personal bedroom desk—Romances I had on gravel—on newspapers in parks—on couches of beery fraternities—Dances I've known alone at night windows—Books I've read, new philosophies I've made—Thorstein Veblen, my dear—Sherwood Anderson, sweet—and some man they call Dostoevsky—and North Pole mountains I've climbed—So dont manage me off tonight, I'll slap your wrist, I'll drive you inta rivers, I'll show ya—” As he talked he drew out of the garage driveway into Middlesix Street having waited for three cars to pass and now barely ahead of three others he swung to the right, on over the tracks, looking fearfully into the hole of night each way for engines of the crack, past the depot, diner, Merrimack Hotel—where, he knew, Reno the owner of the Buick was just simply with his woman in a bed and wouldnt come out till morning and if tonight at all much later—At the foot of the steep hill of School Street at Middlesex he swung up with courage trusting he needed no chains in the mad new snowfall—

Traffics flashed around. He ground up the hill, stopping at the rotary momentarily to see, swinging right, giving leeway in the glorietta hobbyhorses to cars from downtown Lowell, swinging around all the way and on down School, driving confidently now, picking up speed, interested in the dangers of real life confronting. Down past the Commodore Ballroom, down past Keith's Academy, and with the black great Common white and blacktraceries on the left on down toward South Lowell and Maggie's house.

But it hadnt changed. Sadly the garageman gazed at the warm lights of the house, the rutted road, the dull street-lamps, the dead vines on winter's porch, the shape dear and loving and half hauntingly unclear of some old couch-form against the corner of the porch where so long ago he'd swooned the wine of the moon in other youths and when his youth was young—

Maggie, at the toot of his horn, ran out. He couldn't see her face. She came around to the door of the car. “Dont you wanta come in see my folks?”

“Nah nah come on—”

She came in, frightened, climbed into the machine on her hands and knees as with the difficult leg-up she tried to throw herself in to sit. “Well there you are—you dont look the same—”

“Why not?” he demanded.

“You look thinner but you're not a kid any more—you're a kid but you look . . . cold hearted er sumpin . . .”

“
Cold
hearted!! Hah!”

“Er sumpin—How about me did I change any?”

He started the car, looking swiftly. “Sure—you're the kind of girl'll always look the same—good—”

“You didnt even look.”

He was pushing the car down Massachusetts Street desperately for something to do dodging mudholes black in the snow.

“Yes I did.”

They thrashed and fought deep in the Buick deep in the garage at two o'clock in the morning, the sweetness of the girl was hidden from the boy by a thick rubber girdle at which he pulled and yanked, desperately drunk, poised at the gate.

She laughed in his face, he slammed door shut, put out lights, drove her home, drove the car back skittering crazily in the slush, sick, cursing.