Maggie Cassidy (8 page)

Yet in the morning I wake up reconciled with the fact not only she'll make some kind of apology but I ought to laugh and shake it off and shake her off and she'll climb on again.

My mother sees the palings in my thoughts, advises me—“Stop breaking your head on all kindsa junk—concentrate on your track and school, never mind Gus Poulo and your gang they got nothing to do but hang around you got lots of things, see them later, and never mind that Maggie Cassidy—see her this spring or this summer—dont rush things and dont rush around with everything and everybody—Take some advice from you old la-dy, aye?” And she'd wink, and pat my head, and reassure me. “I'm not crazy me.” Stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor, my mother, with a kind of ribbon in her coalblack hair, rosy cheeks on both sides of her big blue eyes, her hands joined together at her lean rest on the back of the chair just loosely and for a second, looking at me seriously, primly, grave understanding of the prime things pressed down in her lips, and a twinkle in her eyes, “Mama'll always did show you how to get things done and everything will be all right, I got you for Saturday night guess what?”

“What?
Quoi
?”

“A nice pair of new shoes, when you go to the track and change to your sneakers there wont be nobody be able to say you got old shoes,
tes vieilles son pu bonne
” she'd announce and sneak in in an entirely different authoritative almost greedy-sneering believing tone, as a shoe worker she was talking about the condition of a pair of shoes—“so I got you a nice new pair at Thorn McAns, didnt cost much.”

“Aw Ma
tu depense tout ton argent
!” (Aw Ma you spend all your money).

“
Voyons, ta besoin d'une paire de bottine, ton pére itou, fouaire n'achetez avant I'moi est funi lui itou
—
weyondonc
—” (Look, you need a pair of shoes, your father too, have to buy him some before the month's out too—look here!)—angry such a thing should not be realized, going off into the parlor to straighten out a lace armrest on the sofa while we're talking over my breakfast.

“Ah Ma, I love you” I say to myself, and I dont know how to say it to her out loud but I know she knows I love her anyway.

“So
mange
, eat, forget it—a pair of shoes aint no silverware china bazaar, ah?” And nods, and winks. I
sit
in the firm eternity there.

I kneel at my bed at night to pray, instead my head falls on the blanket and I just goof with my eyes crushed down. I try to pray in the winter night, moveless.

“Make my skull, my nose, soften, melt; just make me one piece knowing—”

I went to the indoor racetrack that Saturday evening, Pa was with me, rode the bus down jabbing blah blah blah “Well so I said to so and so”—

“Hey Pa,
t'en rappelle tu quand qu'on faisa les lions
—Hey Pa remember when we made the lions, I was four years old, on Bridge Street, and you'd sit me on your knees imitating the noises of animals! Remember? and Ti Nin?”

“
Pauvre
Ti Nin,” said my father; talk to him, it would start him, gather in him, “it's a damn shame the way that poor little girl has found troubles—!”

“—and we'd listen together, you made lions.”

“It was fun, I was amusing myself with my little kids,” he'd say way off brooding darkly, over lost youth, mistaken rooms, weird troubles and strange gossipy rumors and stiff unpleasant unhappiness of bleary people in parlors, remembering himself with pride and pity. The bus went downtown.

I explained my track to him, so he'd understand the night's races better; he understood that 3.7 was my best time and that night there was a Negro on the Worcester North team who was supposed to be like a lightning eagle in the sprints; I was afraid I was going to be beaten in my city that night by a Negro, just like the young boxers around the corner at the Crescent and the Rex Ballroom when they put the chairs and the ring in the floor of the cold dancers. My father said—“Go as fast as you can, beat the bastard: they're supposed to run like damn streaks! antelopes of Africa!”

“Hey Pa—and Pauline Cole's gonna be there.”

“Oh—That's your other girl? Little Pauline, yeh, I like that little one me—Too bad you dont get along with her, she must be just as good as your little Maggie Papoopy there the other side of the river—”

“They're different!”

“Aw, well you're already startin to have trouble with women!”

“Well, what do you want me to do.”

Hand up. “Don't ask
me
! Ask your mother—ask the old curé—ask the askers—
I
dont know—I dont pretend to know—I'm just trying to get along in the world—You'll all have to work with me. You'll see that it's gonna be pretty damn bad,
Comprends
?” loud, in French, like an uncle calling the idiot from the corner making clear to me meanings that can never be recorded in the English language.

Together, heads bent forward with the bus, we rode downtown. He wore a felt hat, I had an earmuff hunting cap; it was a cold night.

The crowd was swarming around the dark street outside the brilliantly lit Annex, it was like some great church service suddenly let out and they were all coming to the track meet, an old church a block away, huge trees, redbrick factory annexes, the back of a bank, the glow of midtown Kearney Square red and vague over the backs of tar roofs and neon signs beyond. The football coach from some little suburban town would be there, talking in the door with the owner of a sporting goods store, or old soda-fountain habitue with long memories of track records from 1915 (like in German Europe); my father and I, bashful, would push through the crowds; my father'd be looking everywhere to see somebody he knew, grinning, and wouldnt see anybody. The mysterious inside, with people standing around the great door to the Annex and the track, beyond them were the boards of the banked turns, like circus props huge and dusty. Ticket takers. Little nameless kids jumping around. “I'll go sit in the stands while I can still get a seat,” Pop said. “I'll wave at you when you come out.”

“I'll
see you
—” But Pop thinks I said “be seeing you” and is already waddling off through the crowds inside, he walks around the banks, onto the floor, to his plank seat; others are standing in the middle of the track in topcoats jawing. Young kids have already started running around in shorts, when they get older than fourteen or fifteen they'll be getting big hood suits with long running ski pants with the school's colors on them; the older boys are inside leisurely changing. The great mysterious Negro flyer is hidden in the opponents' showers somewhere—like a great lion beast I can feel his stalking presence—like a thonged whip the surly tawny tail is flashing at the level floor, the growl, the teeth, no greeting in the V's and W's of his Vow—the rumbling roar of other lions even further down below—My imagination had been fed on circuses and unclean magazines; I looked everywhere like a goof as I hurried to my track shoes.

Others were there—Johnny Lisle—Dibbick who ran so funny, the track team captain—smells of liniment, towels—

“Hey there Jack waddayasay boy?” Johnny Lisle out of the corner of his mouth. “Think we'll win the 300 tonight?”

“Hope I dont have to run it.” It was like the railroad local, it was hard work.

“Melis'll run it tonight—and Mickey Maguire—and Kazarakis.”

“Krise, they cant be beat.”

“Joe was asking me to run it second man but I dont know that route—you know, I'm a 1000-yard runner, I dont wanta wear myself out and get my *#:! shins all cracked out—”

“I knew I'd have to run it,” I said out loud, really complaining, but Johnny didnt hear me as just then a panic seized us all and we knew there was no more time to talk, in twenty seconds we were all bundling in our running hoods and parka pants and stepping out mincingly on little tiny toe-dancer sneakers with hard rubber bottoms to catch the wood of the indoor planks—nail shoes were for moderner high schools with all-cork tracks. In these tight sneakers you could really streak, they were light.

I saw Pauline at the door. She never looked more glamorous, great moist eyes of grueling blue were mooning right at me like swimming seas, at her age it had all the men turning quick furtive felt hats to see her twice. All I had to do was stand there like a post and let her go. She leaned on the wall wriggling before me, with hands back clasped, I just smiled, she made love speeches.

“Hey I bet you'll be watching for me behind the forty-yard line, huh? I'll wave. You wave back at me.”

“Okay.”

“Dont say that I didnt come here to see you because I dont love ya, see?”—in closer.

“What?”

“I didnt think you'd catch it the first time—I'll get even with you if you grrr with me.” She was clenching her teeth and fists at me. All the time she never took her eyes off me; she was in love with something, probably me, probably love. I grieved inside that I had to give up her for Maggie. But I couldnt have Mary and Magdalene both so I had to decide my mind. And I didnt want to be a boor and do the wrong thing hurting Pauline—if boor is strong enough, gross enough. So I looked solemnly at her and said nothing and started out to my race. Her sympathies were with me. “What a funny rat!” she also must have thought—“Never comes and admits nothing.” Like Faust.

The Worcester men were out, jogging the banks in blue run suits that looked ominous and alien among our red and gray homey suits—and suddenly there he was, the Negro Flyer, long and thin floating on ghost feet in the far corner of the Annex, picking up, laying down his delicate feet with experimental restrain as though when he'd be ready he'd fly like an arrow and all you'd see is the flashing white socks, the reptilian head stuck out forward to the run. Hurdles was his specialty. I was a sunk ghost of a trackman. But, for all his great streaking in wild track meets of indoor New England brightlight night he wasnt going to reckon Jack the white boy, sixteen, hands clasped behind him in a newspaper photo with white kid trunks and white undershirt when early at fifteen I was too young to get a regular track suit, ears sticking out, raw, hair piled inky mass on square Keltic head, neck line ramrod holding head up, broad pillared neck with base in collarbone muscles and on each side slope-muscled shoulders down to big arms, legs piano thick just above the white socks—Eyes hard and steely in a sentimental Mona Lisaing face—jawbone iron new. Like Mickey Mantle at nineteen. Another kind of speed and need.

The first event was the 30-yard dash. I saw with satisfaction the Negro star wasnt in my heat, which I won from a bunch of kids, breezy. In his heat I saw him win by yards, fast and low and light on his feet, when he reached he clawed for the finish line and not just dull air. The big moment of the final heat came. We didnt even look at each other at the starting line, he too bashful for me, I too beweldered for him, it was like warriors of two nations. In his eyes there was a sure glow of venom tiger eyes in an honest rockboned face, so your exotic is just a farmer, he goes to church as well as you, has fathers, brothers as well as you—honesties—The Canuck Fellaheen Indian and the Fallaheen Negro face to face in a battle of spears before they hit the long grass, contesting territories that howl around. Pauline was watching very closely, I could see her leaning elbows on knee in the stands with an intent smile digging the whole drama of the track meet and everybody there. In the middle of the track were the officials, with watches, switch lists, we were making our moves by the clock right on schedule with the Lowell
Sun
reporter's written list of events:

 
30-YARD DASH—
1st Heat
(
Time: 3.8
)—
Duluoz
(
Lowell
),
Smith
(
WC
)
2nd Heat
(
Time: 3.7
)—
Lewis
(
WC
),
Kazarakis
(
Lowell
)
Final Heat
—

This was coming up, he had done 3.7 in his heat, I 3.8 in mine, which meant the difference of a yard, there was no doubt of his tremendous speed. His hands and arms hung loosely and muscular with great black veins. He was going to play beating drums to my wild alto.

We got down on the line, shivering in a sudden cold gust of air from the street; we tested our spit in the planks, kicked at it with dug-in sneakers, stuck the sneaker in and got down like to crawl but on thumb and forefingers level. Bent testing knees, teetered and balanced to feel. Spectators saw the madness of racers—human runners like Greeks of Sparta—the Socratic silences falling over the crowd as the starter raises his gun in the air. To my utter amazement I saw out of the corner of my eye the colored boy laid out almost flat on the floor in a low slung fantastic starting position, something impossibly modern and submarining and subterranean like bop, like the new gesture of a generation. It was in imitation of the great Ben Johnson who ran 60 yards in 6 seconds flat, this kid from the slums of Worcester was mad to imitate him who'd inconceivably broken the world's record by 2/10ths of a second, fabulous ghost streak Negro of Columbia in the late Thirties. Later on in life I'd see American Negro boy imitating Charley Parker and calling themselves Bird on street corners and it would be the same thing, and son to, this gesture of the early bop generation as I immeasurably understood it seeing it the first time. We teetered on thoughtful fingers just on the verge of exploding into fact, bang, the crash from the thought of running to the running itself, the kick-off to the dash. My friend—whose name was some forgotten-by-me Negro name of inconceivable anonymity and humility—John Henry Lewis was his name—he shot off ahead of the gun and we all flew off in a false start and held up when the gun cracked us to return, he ahead—We reorganized ourselves for the mental anguish of another start. I got down, saw him on my left low and lightly-hung to fly off the floor—and just as I predicted in my own mind the absolute certainty that the starter would shoot he shot but I was already gone. I was flying, luckily legally just barely beat the gun—no one knew but myself and the starter and the starter was Joe Garrity who knew a jump-the-gun when it was illegal and was inflexible (wouldnt cheat) in his knowledge, pity, and sense of duty. I flew ahead of my Negro, my Jim, eyes half closed so as not to see the horror of his black skin at my breast, and hit the tape well ahead but just barely beginning to sense his catch-up as he too late gathered a stunned momentum and knew that he was beaten anyway and by the mind. The others were not altogether out—John Kazarakis who was just coming into his own in realization of what a great athlete he really was hung on John Lewis' shirt behind by some half-inch behind me by a foot and also closing in. But my muscular headlong rush beat the thin speed demons just the same and by sheer will. It was like the way I'd once seen Billy Carr run so fast he stumbled in his run and kept somehow in the air and regained his feet and literally threw himself across the air against the finish-line tape all muscles and white power, 3.5, beating great college sprinters in his high school years . . . Billy Carr that went to Notre Dame, whose glamour in Lowell was some rich and hidden thing in the dense tree mansions of Andover Street in the winter night of golden home lights, lovely girls of summer and finishing schools strolling under laceries of branch in streetlamp sorrows by bushes, driveways, iron fences, bandana under pouting lip . . .

My win over John Lewis was received with applause and by myself with awe—as I bounced off the mattress against the wall I looked furtively at John and caught his whites of eye conceding me the race. He even shook his head and said something to me himself like “Man you” or “Damn” and we laughed together as we walked back.

They were putting up the hurdles for the 35, bustles, talk, the reporters typed their results:

 
30-YARD DASH—Final Heat (
Time: 3.7
)—
Duluoz
(
Lowell
),
Lewis
(
WC
),
Kazarakis
(
Lowell
)

Pauline waved; Pa gave me the okay sign. I'd overcome the ghost. “Ah,” I thought, “Ma's gonna be glad—she'll see that I run and work hard and I'm getting to my hand. She'll say to herself, ‘Bon, Ti Jean's doing his business, his homework too.'—I'll be able to sit home in the chair not sayin a word all day Sunday—It's at home we win.” And I saw my father with joy. “Look at his big happy smile—he's talkin to the men near him—The enemies of my father!—they're far, not near tonight—their mystery doesnt tear my teeth out tonight—the fact that we dont know their face, their place, the savage extent of their indifference to us—We'll bury em a deep one before midnight.” My thoughts ran like fallen stars. I saw in my eye in the middle of all the world the dark corners on the floor in my house where my cats, my migs hid, where I'd put my crazy face in rainy afternoons of no-school when I really dreamed immortality, the health of my blood and family, the frightening mystery too. I believed in the planks of the little corner; I knew that the earth, the streets, the floors and shadows of life were holy—like a Host—gray, dirty Host of interesting reality (like the bridge at Orleans) of great smoke of men and things, where I'd find myself an honor so great that my father with his old coats, humble hat, would look at me in another heavened life like you look at a man and we'd speak rare things—“Ti Nin'll read it in the paper, my sister—she'll show it to her friends—Lousy'll read it tomorrow morning when he gets up to go to church—Scotty—G.J.—Vinny—”

“And Maggie—”

“I beat the speedy
Neigre
from Worcester—and him, he'll go back to Worcester—maybe if not to tell to
know
that in Lowell the guys from the alleys and rock streets run like demons, let the name of Lowell make a noise in their hearts after this—that in the world where the name is Lowell the boys brothers and mad hurl themselves howling in this mortal ocean . . . brothers, boys, wolves of the North.” (These thoughts were all in French, almost untranslatable.)

I could see all the rooftops of Lowell and Worcester in my victory, my ideas, sensations. They'd put a poet in my craw. I was ecstatically insane in my innocence. I knew joys not by name but that they crossed my clotting breast of hot blood and disappeared unnamed, unknown, uncommunicated with the thoughts of others but arranged in the same manner and therefore like the thoughts of the Negro, intent, normal. It was later they dropped us radar machines in the sky to derange the senses. Let's hear no more about the excesses of Rimbaud! I cried remembering the beautiful faces of life that night.

The 35-yard hurdles I also won flying at the start ahead of Lewis by that whiteflashing split second—I skimmed over the hurdles in a mad anxiety, level with the race I dug floors away, aimed down the line. I was more surprised than anybody and John Henry Lewis. And for the first time I hit 4.6. I even began to wonder if I'd suddenly become a really great runner.