Maggie Cassidy (9 page)

The track floor was being laid out with broad-jump mats, high-jump poles, the big shotputters are standing around agreeing and determining the layout of the jump area so they can start warming up right away—Ernie Sanderman who later became a round-the-world magician seaman on luxurious passenger ships of the blue sea was our best broad-jumper—stood, on his takeoff board, and swung his arms back together and wailed out heaving his tortured neck into the annezvoid-athema of the wild Annex, reaching for his landing place of both feet he'd jump ten feet, clear across a narrow livingroom, with big feet flapping to the mark. I also participated in this event, jumped 9 feet and 5, 6 or 7 inches, made points for the team, but always losing to Ernie and usually the visiting champ too and finishing third—

The last event I led off, Kazarakis anchor, the 300-yard hated relay, with bull-necked Fullback Melis and Irish curly locks Mickey Maguire from Belvedere, zooming around the track like streamliners and the Worcester men in their blue regalia flying a half-foot behind in closepacked races of serious interest, when I was off and underway nothing gave me a bigger boot than the 300-yard run, it was frantic, you had to kill yourself, the guys were screaming on all sides, in the Annex, “Run!” and we'd be hollowy echoing with hard feet on wood bank board turns making a roar coming off just on the inside on the smooth basketball floor into the inside line without now any further booming noise, just cat feet sprinting, all the mothers of Lowell should have come to see their sons show their fathers how they can run—into the woods, into the thieveries and wood piles, into the hysterical idiot streakfoot madness of mankind—

I took off frightened, the guy with me was a white boy from Worcester, I let him shoulder me out of the first turn as we raced with the relay sticks—this was a courtesy on my part. We boomed around the boards—came off, both of us, sleekly, skinly, padding up our court, interested audiences watching interested racers, the whole corps of newspapermen now alert with heads up from their typewriters or from the sidelines, a few dull, immediate cries of opening-lap audiences. “Bang!” the gun had said, the gunpowder was just spreading in the air—we was off.

My Pop was standing at his bench plank, just bent to watch, tense, his whole huge body toned to hold up watchful on the quivering hard legs with which he used to play basketball in YMCAs of pre-World War I—

“Okay Jean”—under his breath—“Go on!” He was afraid because I'd given the kid the first bank I'd given up my show. No. I leisurely followed him around the far turn, and as we came into the homestretch of the first of two laps I just passed him with a sneaky quiet sprint he hardly heard and flew ahead of him bent for that first turn again, for the tilt of the boards, and flashed by the line of watchers, the kid was heard to curse, he pictures himself taking off after me—I was already boastfully in the back stretch and halfway along it and had done my booming and my soft off-step and all things of that nature and was in a straight line for the last turn, no sound, streaking across the kitchen, bent for the last boards—ghosting in—turning with the world on the revolving banks like a funhouse barrel and now very tired and hurting all over and my heart dying from so much pain in lungs, legs—The kid from Worcester overtook nothing, but lost spaces of breeze between us, hopelessly mawkfaced lost and discouraged, almost embarrassed to shame. I run up and assume the handout pose with the relay stick and give it to Melis with a 10-yard lead and he's off running his two laps while the next Worcester kid still waits, mincing nervously on a hot potato—Maguire and Kazarakis complete the race like invisible bullets and it's a farce, no contest, and relays are always sad.

—Won races, leaving other boys embarrassed to shame—Shame . . . that key to immortality in the Lord's grave . . . that key to courage . . . that key heart. “Lord, Lord,
Mon Doux, Mon Doux
” (Canadian boy's pronunciation of
Mon Dieu
, My God) I'm saying to myself. “What's gonna happen!”—won races, was applauded, laurel-wreathed, smiled, patted, understood, taken in—took showers, shouted—combed—was young, youthful, was the key—“Hey McKeever!” echoing now loud bang in the locker room glooms. “Hee hee hee didja take a big ass plunge off that 600 right! Hee hyah ha—whatta batt-ed . . . Jee-heever, ole Jeeheever sure missed tonight!”

“Kelly? I told Kelly, stop throwing it will ya?”

“Oodja see Smack make that line?”

“Hey, know what happened tonight—”

“Where?”

“Keith's—”

“What?”

“Basketball game—they took on Lowell—”

“What score?”

“63–64.”

“Jeez!”

“You shoulda seen Tsotakos—you know, Steve's brother—

“You mean Samaras?”

“No!—not Odysseus, the guy with the red-shirt brother!”

“Spaneas?”

“No!”

“Oh yeah!”

“He's the greatest—they never had a basketball player like him—Nobody talks about him”—(some little kid with thin hands falling under the sleeves of his coat weighing 98 pounds and a class officer and sometime team manager and only fourteen years old bringing back reports from other parts of Lowell in the eventful exciting Saturday night). My father's standing there laughing and getting his kicks from all these funny children and looking around fondly to find me. I'm just putting on my shirt, comb in my hand, making a Hitler mustache at Jimmy Jeeheever with it.

“A great night!” yells an enthusiast from that world-packed Lowell door. “Jimmy Foxx never hit more homers than you guys tonight!”

“Joe Garrity,” announces somebody, and here comes our track coach in a shabby sad overcoat sad glinting Harry Truman eyes behind glasses and hands hopelessly folded into his coatpockets and says “Well boys, you did pretty well, you did pretty well. . . . We scored 55 points. . . .” He wants to tell us a thousand things but he's waiting for the reporters and enthusiasts to leave, Joe is very secretive about his track team and his quiet matter-of-fact grave relations with each of his boys and all of them in group. “I'm glad about that win, Johnny. I think you're going to make your name in Boston Garden before spring.” Half grin, half joke, kids laughing—

“Gee coach, thanks”—Johnny Lisle, who was liked by Joe particularly because he was an Irish boy and close to his heart. Melis—Kazarakis—Duluoz—Sanderman—Hetka—Norbert—Marviles—Malesnik—Morin—Maraski—and seven Irishmen Joyce McDuff Dibbick Lisle Goulding Maguire, he had international national problems to deal with. My father, far from rushing up to the coach to be seen with him, hides in a corner wearing an appreciative smile as he secretly digs Joe the Coach in his real soul and mentally pictures him in City Hall and realizes what Joe is like—and likes him—

“Yah—I can see him at his old desk—like my Uncle Bob who was that railyard clerk in
Nashué
(Nashua)—trying to get along with things as best he can—No different than me—Didnt I know some brother of his a long time ago on the old
Citizen
? or was it Dowd's out on Memorial Road—Wal—And whattaya know, Jacky went and beat that
Neigre
—ha ha ha—when I saw him there I was sure he was too fast for him, but he did it! he did it! Ha ha ha, little tyke, I remember him when he was three feet high and used to crawl on the floor pushing up boxes to me and bringing me toys—two feet high—
Ti Pousse
! Ha ha—Say, that
Neigre
was built, he was sleek—I was damn glad to see my boy beat
him
—that proves he's an athlete—those
Neigres
are the fastest runners in the world—in the jungles of Africa even right now they're running like mad after wild pigs, with spears—You see it in the Olympics, the great Negro athletes there that Jesse not Jesse James Jesse Jones that Jesse Owens flying—the international flavor of the world—”

Pauline is waiting for me at the door, Pa joins her as soon as he finds her.

“Well by God—Pauline—I didnt know
where
you were—I'da sat with you!”

“Why didnt that damn Jack tell me you were here—Hey!” They loved each other, she always had a joke for him, he for her—Their eyes shined as I rushed out of the showers to join them. It was social, provincial, glad, sad; it was ecstasy in the heart. We felt vibrations of love laughing and yelling in the laughing yelling crowds pouring out and milling around; Saturday night is dense and tragic in all America from Rocky Mount on up, San Luis on over, Killdeer on down, Lowell on in.

“Jack! There you are! Dad,” whispering in his ear, “tell that lout we's got a date of our own and we dont want him around tonight.”

“Okay keed,” my father'd say, puffing on the cigar in a strenuous acting pose, “we'll see if we cant fix him up with Cleopatra next week and make up to him for it.” In his jests serious.

“All right, Mark Antony. Or wasnt your name Mark Antonio and you came rovin over here to steal this British baron from my castle?”

“Nah!—we'll shoot him tonight in the stagecoach—Don't worry about nothing keed. Let's go to Paige's and have an ice cream soda.”

And off we fly, into the bright dry night, stars above the redbrick snows are keen and clear, knives drop from them—the big sinewy trees with their claws deep under the pavements are stuck so high in the sky they are like lost silver in the Up, people walk among streetlamps passing massive trunk bases of something living and never pay it a thought—We join the flow of the sidewalks leading downtown—to the Lobster Cot—Merrimack Street—the Strand—the whole dense almost riotous inwards of the city aglow for the Saturday night in that time only fifteen years ago when not everybody had cars and people walked to shop and from buses to shows, not everything was locked-in strange behind tin walls with anxious eyes looking out to deserted sidewalks of modern America now—Pauline, Pa and I could not have laughed and experienced excitement and jumped so joyously as we did that night if we'd been in some automobile grimly buried three in a front seat haggling over traffics in the window of the television set of Time—instead we loped on foot over snowbanks, to dry shoveled sidewalks of downtown, to busy revolving doors of wild midnight sodas.

“Come on Jack, you're falling behind. Let's have some fun tonight!” Pauline was yelling in the street, punching me, playing with me.

“Okay.”

Whispering in my ear: “Hey, did I enjoy your legs tonight! I didnt know you had legs like that! Gee, can I come and visit you when you have a bachelor apartment? Hey!”

“Say,” my father an idea, “how ‘bout a nice snack in Chin Lee's?—some chop suey or something?”

“No let's just have ice cream!”

“Where? In the B.C. or Paige's?”

“Oh anywhere—Gee, I dont wanta get fat Mister Duluoz.”

“Aw wont hurt ya—I been fat for thirty years and I'm still here—Wont bother ya.”

“Look at Mrs. Madison and her son—You know them Jack, they live next door to me. That little kid always peeking at us?”

“And the dog in the yard with the gray fence?”

“Say”—my Pop—“you two little kids sound to me like you'd make a fine little couple—Why is it ya dont step out together”—laughing in his sleeve—secretly serious.

Pauline “Oh we
used
to go steady Mr. Duluoz.” Her eyes misting suddenly.

“Well why dont you now? Just because
Ti Pousse
is supposed to have some sweetie in another part of the county?—pay no attention to him, listen to his old man, psst,” whispering in her ear, out of which they explode laughing, and the joke's on me but I tingle all over with joy to be known and loved by them and agree with my father.

Yet suddenly I remember Maggie. She's at the Rex, a stone's throw for me over the neons of Kearney Square and all the dark heads of night and there she is, dancing, with Bloodworth, in the inexpressibly sad musical rose of sunset and moonlight serenades, all I have to do is walk over there, sweep aside the curtain, see all the dancers, look for her form, all I have to do is look—

But I cant leave Pa and Pauline except under some pretext, pretense. We go to the soda fountain, people from the meet are there, also people from the show at Keith's Strand or Merrimack Square, people from events of social importance to be mentioned in the next day, you can see their expensive cars out on the Square, and sometimes right on it (pre-1942)—My Pa is shabby, crack-toothed, dark and humble in his big coat, he looks around and sees a few people he remembers, sneers, or laughs, according to his feelings—Pauline and I delicately eat our sundaes—because of the tremendous suppressed excitement to fall down on them devouring with big spoons—Just a little hometown scene on a Saturday night—in Kinston on Queen Street they're driving up and down sadly the Southerners, or walking, looking in at bleak hardware hay and grain stores, out at the colored section there's a mob chattering in front of chickenshacks and taxi stands—In Watsonville California it's the gloomy mad field and section hands of Mexico strolling, arms sometimes around each other, father and son or friend and friend, in the sad California night of white raw fog, the Filipino poolhalls, the town green at the bank—In Dickinson North Dakota on Saturday night in the winter it's the howling blizzard, the stalled buses out of town, the wild warm food and pool tables in great restaurant-lunchrooms of the night with pictures of old lost ranchers and outlaws decorating all the walls—The Arctic loneliness snowdust swirling on a rill of sage—outside town, the lost lean fence, the snow moon's fury—Lowell, the soda fountain, the girl, the father, the boy—the local yokels all around the local yokels—

“Okay keed,” says my father, “and say, do you want to go home alone with Pauline now or are you coming home or what?”