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Morley Callaghan
Still watching the corner, Michael suddenly felt that the twisting
and pulling in the life in the house was twisting and choking him.
'I'll get out of here. I'll go away,' and he began to think of going to
the city. He began to long for freedom in strange places where
everything was new and fresh and mysterious. His heart began to
beat heavily at the thought of this freedom. In the city he had an
uncle Joe who sailed the lake-boats in the summer months and in
the winter went all over the south from one race track to another
following the horses. 'I ought to go down to the city tonight and
get a job,' he thought: but he did not move; he was still waiting for
Helen Murray to pass under the light.
For most of the next day, too, Michael kept to himself. He was
up-town once on a message, and he felt like running on the way
home. With long sweeping strides he ran steadily on the paths past
the shipyard, the church, the railway tracks, his face serious with
determination.
But in the late afternoon when he was sitting on the veranda
reading, Sammy Schwartz and Ike Hershfield came around to see
him. 'Hello Mike, what's new with you?' they said, sitting on the
steps very seriously.
'Hello, Sammy, hello, Ike. What's new with you?'
They began to talk to Michael about the colored family that had
moved into the old roughcast shack down by the tracks. 'The big
coon kid thinks he's tough,' Sammy said. 'He offered to beat up
any of us so we said he wouldn't have a snowball's chance with
you.'
'What did the nigger say?'
'He said he'd pop you one right on the nose if you came over his
way.'
'Come on, guys. Let's go over there,' Michael said. 'I'll tear his
guts out for you.'
They went out to the street, fell in step very solemnly, and walked
over to the field by the tracks without saying a word. When they
were about fifty paces away from the shack, Sammy said, 'Wait
here. I'll go get the coon,' and he ran on to the unpainted door of
the whitewashed house calling, 'Oh, Art, oh, Art, come on out.' A
big colored boy with closely cropped hair came out and put his
hand up, shading his eyes from the sun. Then he went back into the
house and came out again with a big straw hat on his head. He was
in his bare feet. The way he came walking across the field with
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Sammy was always easy to remember because he hung back a little,
talking rapidly, shrugging his shoulders and rolling the whites of
his eyes. When he came close to Michael he grinned nervously,
flashing his teeth, and said, 'What's the matter with you white
boys? I don't want to do no fighting.' He looked scared.
'Come on. Get ready. I'm going to do a nice job on you,' Michael
said.
The colored boy took off his big straw hat and with great care
laid it on the ground while all the time he was looking mournfully
across the field and at his house, hoping maybe that somebody
would come out. Then they started to fight, and Michael knocked
him down four times, but he, himself, got a black eye and a cut lip.
The colored boy had been so brave and he seemed so alone, licked
and lying on the ground, that they sat down around him, praising
him, making friends with him and gradually finding out that he
was a good ball player, a left-handed pitcher who specialized in a
curve ball, and they agreed they could use him, maybe, on the town
team.
Lying there in the field, flat on his back, Michael liked it so much
that he almost did not want to go away. Art, the colored boy, was
telling how he had always wanted to be a jockey but had got too
big; he had a brother who could make the weight. So Michael be-
gan to boast about his Uncle Joe who went around to all the tracks
in the winter making and losing money at places like Saratoga, Blue
Bonnets and Ha Juana. It was a fine, friendly, eager discussion
about far-away places.
It was nearly dinner-time when Michael got home; he went in
the house sucking his cut lip and hoping his mother would not
notice his black eye. But he heard no movement in the house. In the
kitchen he saw his stepmother kneeling down in the middle of the
floor with her hands clasped and her lips moving.
'What's the matter, Mother?' he asked.
'I'm praying,' she said.
'What for?'
'For your father. Get down and pray with me.'
'I don't want to pray, Mother.'
'You've got to,' she said.
'My lip's all cut. It's bleeding. I can't do it,' he said.
Late afternoon sunshine coming through the kitchen window
shone on his stepmother's graying hair, on her soft smooth skin and
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