I remember the hushed voice and loving touch of my mother. Her name was Jenny. She would come softly in the dark of morning to sit on my bed and hold my hand. She would kiss my eyes and whisper some surprising thing in my ear. It was easy for me to pretend that I was still dreaming.
For a time I had this midnight cough. My mother would bring me hot wine with sugar in it and then she would rub my throat and chest with a clean burning salve. Dark beloved eyes came close to mine. Her breath was warm and sweet.
“I’ll have to watch out for you,” she said.
She whispered and kissed me as though hiding me in a safe secret place until morning. I used to cough and cough just to bring her to me. It was in the night that I realized she would never come to me again. All was lost but the dreaming.
I didn’t stop that coughing right away. I went on with it and my sister Nina rubbed my chest for a few weeks. It was a different thing. Soon enough she tired of it.
“Make him stop that coughing,” she said. “He’s fooling around.”
“Did you hear?” said my father.
He was drinking heavily in those days.
“I can’t help it,” I said. “I really can’t.”
To spite them I coughed and coughed. I was experimenting with harsh new coughs that tore at my throat. Sometimes they made me dizzy.
“Stop it!” said Nina. “I can’t stand it!”
“You’re breaking the rule,” said my father. “My last warning.”
“Rule? What rule?”
“I just made a rule against coughing in the house at night. I’m sick of it and so I made a rule against it.”
“How can you do that?”
“Cough again and find out. Go ahead. Break the rule.”
“I never heard of such a thing. It’s impossible.”
“Now I made another rule.”
“What is it?”
“You just broke it,” he said.
“But what was it?”
“The last rule is not another word out of you tonight! Not one!”
I went to bed and cried myself to sleep. My father was worse than medicine and I decided he had never been a boy at all. Surely he had been born old and tough like a tree to block my way and spoil everything.
Every day we were choosing up sides in the house. Nina and my father would be against me or I would be with Nina against my father. At times I was with my father against Nina. It was confusing. I would wake in the morning and try to remember whose side I was on. A bit of talk would change things around.
“Where’s your sister?” my father would say.
“You mean Nina?” I said, stalling for time as usual.
“What a memory for names,” he said. “A prodigy.”
I was against him.
“Nina’s washing her hair,” I said.
“She left dishes and garbage in the sink.”
“She needs a little time for herself, too.”
“Do you think so?”
“I really do.”
“Then you do the dishes,” he said. “And be quick about it.”
“It’s not fair.”
“It’s fair to your sister. She needs time for herself. And it’s fair to me. I want the dishes done.”
“Maybe you should do them, Pa. That sounds fair to everybody.”
“Maybe it is. But I’m stronger and smarter than you are. Now I’ll give you fifteen minutes. And let that be a lesson to you.”
“It’s not fair at all!”
“What the hell are they teaching you in that school? Are you in the fairy-tale class or what? Don’t expect things to be fair. Get rid of that idea. It’s another one of those bubbles. Don’t be blowing them around here!”
It was so hard for Nina in the house that in the end she turned against both of us. She had to cook and clean and wash. She was only nineteen and like any girl she had other things on her mind. The truth is, she had the insurance man on her mind.
I have to admit she was a poor housekeeper. My father would come home from the steel mill and sit in the kitchen to smoke his pipe and drink glass after glass of his homemade red wine. At once Nina started sweeping the floor to impress him. She raised a cloud of dust.
“Stop, stop,” he said. “I just had eight hours of this on the job. Don’t you know enough to open a window or sprinkle the floor before you sweep? And why don’t you cover the food? And what were you doing all day that you waited till now to sweep? I know, I know: you were waiting to sweep!”
Nina sewed up our clothes in such a way that the stitching looked worse than the hole. It seemed there were mice in our socks after she finished with them. She mixed things together in the Easy washing machine. All the colors shifted around. One day she forgot to take the pipe tobacco out of my father’s dungarees before dropping them into that plunging machine.
“You forgot the pipe,” he said.
Another time she was washing his favorite white broadcloth shirt. She washed it tenderly by hand and then rinsed it. Carefully she folded the buttons inside before sending it through the wringer. She hung it on the line in the back yard. She failed to put the clothespins in tight enough. A wind came up and blew that shirt down the hill where it got caught high in a sycamore tree. That evening I called my father outside to show it to him. I was excited. He stood and watched it flapping down there like a broken white bird. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
Something was wrong at every meal. Nina took no interest in cooking. Once for supper she served round steak and beans and potatoes and cabbage. Next two nights we had tomato soup. One day she was making a lamb stew and it burned at the bottom of the pot. She skimmed off the best of it and put it in another pot. She forgot it and half an hour later it burned again. She changed it to another pot. The stew left for supper had this dead black look and taste.
“What the hell’s going on?” said my father. “Is this what’s left of a pound and a half of spring lamb? It’s like magic. Black magic, too, from the way it looks. And it wasn’t enough for you to ruin the lamb. I see you put in carrots and green peppers and potatoes. Why did you stop there? Why didn’t you put in the salad and bread and coffee? It would’ve been a complete triumph in one pot!”
Nina was ready to cry.
“But I ate a big dish of that stew,” I said.
“Is that so?” he said, wheeling on me.
“I was hungry when I came from school. I ate my share of it. I’ll just have some salad for supper.”
“Did you like the stew?”
“It was all right, Pa.”
“You can have this, too,” he said. “You can have my share. And I’ll sit here while you eat it. All of it.”
“It’s not his fault,” said Nina.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” he said. “He climbed on the horse and we’ll let him ride…. How’s the stew?”
“It’s good,” I said.
“Be careful,” he said, ominously.
I took a deep breath.
“This stew is a treat,” I said.
He swept the dish off the table.
“Clean it up and go to bed!” he said. “Right now!”
Later that night two fellow workers from the steel mill came to visit him. He was in such a drunken fury that he turned the oven on full blast to get rid of them. Those two men sat there sweating in the kitchen. They couldn’t stand it. Suddenly they leaped to their feet. They were dancing round as though the floor itself had gone hot. They were gasping and grabbing for their coats and plunging through the door. My father burst into laughter.
After a bad day in his crane at the mill he rushed home to complain about everything in sight. He tasted the beef soup and then jumped with a cry and threw dish and all against the wall. He always threw it against the same spot over the sink. Nina burst into tears and ran into her bedroom. I sat there eating while my father cursed and pounded the table. Dishes and cups were dancing.
“Do you call this living?” he said. “Work and sweat like an animal and then come home to this? Dishwater for supper! You should be ashamed of yourself! I say there’s no love in you! You won’t even take the time to cook a decent meal for your own flesh and blood! You couldn’t hold a dog in the house with this food! By Christ, he’d rip your apron off! Why the hell do you even wear an apron?”
Nina was crying.
“Look around,” he said. “Look at this house. Five rooms to clean and it’s like a tornado hit! What the hell do you do all day? I know, I know: you brush your hair and paint your lips and look in the mirrors. I wish I had a dollar for every time you saw yourself. You should have a twin sister. You could spend the day holding hands and looking at each other!—What’re you doing?”
I was eating. I was eating everything in front of me. I finished my soup and snatched his bread. I speared some boiled beef. I was reaching for the lettuce and tomato salad when he turned on me.
“Eating,” I said.
“I hear it,” he said, grinding his teeth. “How was the soup?”
“It was all right.”
“Is that the truth?” he said, looming in a dangerous way.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“I’ll give you one more chance.”
Nina was sobbing.
“It was remarkable,” I said, bracing myself.
I jumped sideways as he turned the table over.
“Get out of my sight,” he said, softly. “Quick, quick. I don’t want to see your face tonight.”
Hour after hour he sat in the kitchen. I watched him through my bedroom door. He was drinking wine. His big brown work shoes sat on the floor beside him. They were like puppies. There were dark stains of sweat under the arms of his dungaree shirt. Now he was looking at his black cap and lunchpail on the cupboard. Beside them were his work gloves like smashed swollen hands. His glance went up to his black hat on top of the gleaming new refrigerator. It was the hat he saved for special occasions and for remembering. He got up and put it on. He sat down again. He was leaning forward in the chair. Surely he was thinking of my mother. Long into the night they would stay up to hold hands and drink wine and laugh. Her laughter was hushed and sweet. He would snort. Remembering, I got out of bed just to let him know I was there with him. He watched me. He beckoned.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“I can’t sleep. I guess I’m thirsty.”
He gave me half a glass of wine.
“It’s good,” I said.
“I know. For you everything is good. For me everything is bad. It’s a little difference of opinion we have.”
“But it really is good.”
His hatbrim slanted down in a kind of thin black salute.
“You may be right and right about things,” he said. “But in the end you’re wrong. I may be wrong and wrong but in the end I’ll be the one that’s right.”
“Is there enough wine for you?”
“I need an ocean. This is the last barrel.”
“We’ll make more. You’ll have it all winter.”
“We’ll see. Go to bed. Sleep here and not in school.”
In the morning it was the same old story with him. Before dawn he would be moving here and there as though searching in every corner of a strange house. Presently he slipped into our rooms to tear the bedcovers off us. His eyes were wild at the emptiness of the day.
“Get up, get up,” he said. “Are you on vacation?”
It happened every morning. He came like a thief into our rooms to whip the covers off. It was bad for me and worse for Nina. It was a shock and a shame to her. I used to wake up angry. I followed him around and glared at him.
“Do you know what happens to boys who look like that?” he said.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re looking at me.”
“What happens to them?”
“They see a star.”
“A star?”
He smacked me on the back of the head.
“What about it?” he said. “Did you see it?”
“I guess so.”
One morning I woke before he did. I dressed and put the mop in my bed and covered it. He slipped in and ripped the covers off. His mouth fell open. I scooted past him to escape a sweeping backhand. It was like being on the offensive. It made me reckless. A while later I complained about the coffee. I knew he made it. He had no consideration for us. He boiled coffee grounds right in the water and then killed the taste of it by putting whiskey in his cup. That coffee was black as night and seemed to be dissolving my teeth. There was always a layer of grounds in cups so stained they needed scouring.
“What is this?” I said, sipping the coffee.
“What?” said Nina. “What’s the matter, Paul?”
“Shame on you,” I said. “Your own flesh and blood.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This coffee. Why, it’s like a poison. Really, Nina, it’s very cruel of you to do these things to us. I mean it.”
“Do you?” said my father.
“I really do.”
He hit me on the back of the head and took my cup away.
“Now tell me how you feel?”
I saw a star and felt resentment.
All that day I had a big thirst for revenge. I rushed home from school. No one was there. I was kicking chairs and slamming dishes around when there came a soft rapping on the door. A bearded old man seemed to be talking to me even before I opened the door.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he said, in a low singing voice.
“The meaning of what?”
“Where is everybody?”
“Well, my father’s working. My sister must be shopping.”
“It’s your father I came to see, my boy.”
“He’ll be home in an hour or so. He’s working.”
“Say no more. I’ll wait for him. It’s an old promise. Ashtabula, Ashtabula. I wonder if I might trouble you for a bite to eat while I wait for him. My name is Lance. Lance Caulfield.”
I was bewildered. I was gazing at the white hair swirling round his ears and billowing down into the luscious beard. That beard was like a handful of summer cloud. Hidden sapphire eyes watched me. His graying shirt was open at the collar where a silver crucifix gleamed within the snowy whirls of his beard and chest hair. He wore a buttonless brown overcoat that looked as if it had been chewed up by a dog.
“And your mother?” he was saying, as he closed the door.
“My mother passed away.”
“I’m sorry, my boy.”
“Eggs,” I said. “How about some eggs?”
“Perfect, perfect. Three will do.”
He sat down at the table. I made coffee. I fried three eggs in butter and toasted four slices of bread. I put everything in front of him at the same time so that I could sit and watch him. I wanted to hear that rich singing voice again.
“My own dear mother came from Ireland,” he said. “One winter there she and my grandmother and grandfather ate thirty bushels of potatoes. The next winter they ate forty bushels of potatoes. And the next winter fifty bushels.”
“And then?”
“She came to try her luck in America. She met and married my father. He was an artist. A painter. He painted pictures of her. All day. My mother could never understand why he wanted pictures of her when she was there in the flesh. She began to think there was more to be said for potatoes.”
“Really?”
“Probably. Now look at me. But you mustn’t look too close. I have my father’s temperament, my boy, but no talent. A talent only for living. Would you believe I was once regarded as a dashing figure? And then I found myself dashing to catch buses. And dashing to the bank. And dashing to pay grocery bills.”
He finished the eggs and cleaned the dish with his bread. He sipped coffee and wiped the beard away from his mouth with his forefinger. His eyes were roving. They fell on my father’s pipe and hat on the refrigerator. He got up.
“A pipeful would be excellent,” he said. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
He filled the pipe and lit it. Puffing, he studied the hat. Gently he took it down and turned it in his smooth white hands. My father would have liked the way he touched it.
“Beautiful,” he said, sitting down. “How soft it is. And the color is perfect. It’s a living black. Like the night.”
He put it on. That black hat was perfect above swirling hair and clear startling eyes. I watched him. He gazed at me and then beckoned. I went to him. He wanted me to stroke his beard.
“Are you thinking deep thoughts?” he said. “You should always ponder and meditate when you stroke a beard. Wait then, wait then. Give me your other hand. Put it on my heart. Do you feel it beating? Alone in the dark and so brave. Yours is the same. Yours is the same. Keep stroking the beard. Think and feel. The heart sings alone like a bird. Think and feel, my boy.”
Sweet smoke from the pipe engulfed me.
Lance Caulfield was putting my hands together as though for prayer. He was whispering as he turned me to send me back to my chair.
“Promise me,” he said. “Promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Promise to tell your father that Lance will return. I kept my promise. I kept mine, I kept mine. Ashtabula, Ashtabula.”
He went away.
All at once my father came lunging through the door. It was such a shock to me that I burst into tears. After a while I remembered what happened. I tried to explain it to him.
“Lance will return,” I said, finally. “Ashtabula, Ashtabula.”
My father was looking at the top of the refrigerator where his pipe and hat had been. His dark eyes burned shut and seemed to leave his face in ashes. He put his hands in his pockets and went into the bedroom. He closed the door, softly.
First thing in the morning he hit me twice. Little by little I could feel my head going numb. It was happening more quickly all the time. My father hit me so often in those days that the neighbors explained everything about me by saying I was stunned. I still have this feeling he slapped something out of me, or into me.
After hitting me he ordered me to go down the cellar and fire the furnace. Before going down those creaking stairs I dropped a scrub pail to scatter the mice. That pail banging down the stairs brought a scream from Nina and a wild cry from my father. They thought I fell. My father rushed over.
“What happened?”
“I dropped the pail to scare the mice away.”
“When will you learn to think before you act?” he said. “When will it be, when will it be?”
He smacked me.
I went downstairs crying. I put newspaper and sticks in to start the fire. I decided to cut school and go downtown. To spite him further I threw one of his winter boots on the fire before putting in the coal. I was on my way downtown when the smell of it filled the house.
That night he gave me a terrible beating. Next morning I threw in the other boot and went downtown again. He gave me another beating. All in all it was worth it.