Answer as a Man Read online

  Jason, to please his mother, put on the red woolen cap she had knitted, and wound the scarf about his neck. He would have preferred to go to bed, but he put on his own worn coat, far too short for him now in length and sleeve, and his grandfather shrugged his way into the long tweed coat. A half-filled pint of cheap whiskey peered from one pocket. Katie wrapped a good piece of the cake in a white piece of cloth and Bernard put that in another pocket. “Katie,” he said, “they’ll never call you ‘blessed.’ But I do. It’s a real saint you are.”

  Grandfather and grandson went out into the cold black night. The sharp blizzard sliced into their faces and the wind brought tears to their eyes. The narrow street was empty and desolate in the storm.

  Bernard said, “It’s hell to be poor if you have a family, but it’s more of a hell to be poor and have nobody. That’s the case with Joe, but he doesn’t complain. Comes to me often—why were we born?”

  “Well,” said Jason, struggling to keep his coat closed, “it does say in the catechism that we’re born to know God in this life and serve him, and then join him forever after death.”

  “Hum,” said Bernard, with no reverence. “He goes the wrong way about it, sure and he does. On a night like this you think of selling your soul to the Divil for comfort.”

  “At least they say it’s warm in hell,” said Jason, laughing. The howling wind tore at the back of his throat, and he choked. The man and boy leaned into the gale, bent almost double. Each step was a struggle against an unseen icy battlement. In that short, distance their eyelashes and brows were thick with snowflakes. The wan yellow light from Joe Maggiotti’s small shop was only a wavering shadow in the night. “He’s still up, then,” said Bernard. They heard a steady banging of a swinging door even above the shrieking of the wind.

  Then the pale dancing lamplight of the shop blew out. “Ah,” said Bernard. “We’re just in time.”

  They had almost reached the door of the shop when it came to Jason that it was the shop door itself which was wildly swinging in the wind and making that crashing sound. He stopped for an instant. Bernard went on. Then Bernard uttered a rough oath and fell heavily on his knees. Jason ran to him and by the arc light saw that a log of wood, covered with snow, was lying near the raging door, and Bernard had fallen over it. Jason took the old man by his shoulders; he was lying prone over the log. Bernard struggled to rise. “Some bastard put it there,” he said. “Curse him.”

  Then Jason cried out. Bernard’s body had disturbed the snow on the log, and now Jason saw it was no log, but Joe Maggiotti, himself, lying on the wooden walk near the poundsing shop door, Joe as silent as death, and as still. Bernard saw, also, and was frozen on his knees, staring.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he stammered. “Joe! Joe?”

  “Oh, my God!” Jason shouted, as the arc light flared up. “It’s … it’s Joe … and his head is all bleeding!”

  Dazed and stunned, Bernard took off his woolen mitten and touched Joe’s face. It was already deathly cold and stiff. He pulled his hand away; the congealed blood was like a dull red jelly on his fingers. Joe’s open brown eyes gazed fixedly at nothing; his jaws had fallen apart. There was a bloody gash on his chin, and the whole top of his head was crushed.

  Jason was fourteen years old and a large boy, but he suddenly was weeping. “It … it was the door. It must have hit him. We’ve got to get him out of this.”

  Bernard was silent, swaying on his knees, his hands clenched against his broad chest. He had closed his eyes. Then he said, “No use. He’s dead. Joe.” The slow painful tears of grief and pity began to roll down his cheeks.

  Bernard opened his eyes and looked at Jason. Never had the boy seen such a terrible face before. Bernard said, “He’s been murdered. Killed. Get Dave Clancy.”

  Jason pushed himself to his feet. He felt weak and shocked, and his breath seemed to have solidified in his throat. He tried to make himself run to the corner; he tried to shout in his despair and terror and sorrow. He had had nightmares like this, full of deadly fear when his legs felt held down by quicksand and he could not move them to flee, to flee from a thing to horrible to be faced but which menaced him.

  He reached the corner, gasping, swung about it, and immediately fell over something that appeared, in the dimmer light, to be a big dog moving very slowly on the ground, shaking its head. Wildly he seized the head and felt a hot liquid running over his hands. Then he heard a groaning.

  The nightmare of darkness, storm, and terror expanded about Jason. He lay, panting, where he had fallen. He knew now it was no dog which had caused him to fall. It was young Mr. Clancy, bareheaded, his helmet having rolled into the gutter, a bleeding slash on his forehead. The policeman was scrabbling on his hands and knees. His club had gone. He stared up vacantly at Jason and muttered something. One of his hands fumbled at a pocket. Blood was running into one of his eyes and he blinked. He muttered again, and Jason, feeling burning vomit in his throat, rolled over on the snowy walk and tried to hear. “Whistle,” Clancy muttered again.

  “Yes,” said Jason. He clawed his numb fingers into the policeman’s pocket and found the whistle. He pulled with all his strength, for he was steadily succumbing to shock. The first blast was feeble; Jason closed his eyes, prayed, and blew again. Now the sound was penetrating and bounded back from the brick wall of the small warehouse near where Mr. Clancy lay. Over and over Jason blew until he could blow no more. He dropped the whistle, tore off the red woolen scarf his mother had given him, and rolled it into a little pillow. Gently, crying, he put it under the policeman’s bleeding head to protect it from the frozen gidewalk. He said, “Please, please, Mr. Clancy, hold on.” He took one of the policeman’s hands and held it as tightly as he could, as if dragging the young man from a pit. Mr. Clancy stared at him sightlessly.

  He did not hear any running footsteps or shouts or exclamations, but all at once he was surrounded by men, shawled women, children, and two policemen who had come running from other streets. Someone was lifting him to his feet. He struggled. “Help, help. Mr. Clancy. My grandfather … Joe’s shop … Joe’s been killed. They must have tried to kill Mr. Clancy, too.”

  He burst into great tearing sobs, and a man put his arms about him and said, “It’s all right. We’ll take care. Jase Garrity is it, then? Yes. Your grandda is all right, too. We’ll take care. Let’s go home now, Jase. Home.”

  Jason saw Mr. Clancy being carried into an ambulance. He saw flickering faces milling in the darkness; he saw distended eyes, gesturing hands. A woman was holding his hand. Someone was wiping his face.

  He said, out of his new manhood, “Get them. Kill them. Joe. Mr. Clancy. Why, why?”

  He did not remember reaching home. He found himself in bed, his grandfather sitting beside him, holding his cold hand. Bernard said, “We’ll find them, boyo, we’ll find them.” Bernard was trying to smile. Long silent tears ran down his cheeks. “We’ll find them, niver you fear.” Jason swallowed, gasped. He had been given a huge draft of whiskey.

  Jason whispered out of a hurting throat, “Why, why, Da?”

  A little light seeped in from the kitchen, and Jason saw Bernard avert his head. He was staring at the door. “Yes. Why, why? There’s never any real honest answer to human wickedness. Dave Clancy won’t die, Jason, though he’s badly hurt. He woke up in the hospital and said he heard a screaming—Joe screaming when he ran from his shop to escape the murderers—and Dave started to run and he was knocked down with his own club. He sends his thanks, Jason.”

  There was a deep silence in the house, except for Kate’s soft crying in the kitchen beyond the bedroom. It seemed to Jason that her mourning filled the whole world, and there was no comforting.

  He looked at his grandfather, and was suddenly frightened. For Bernard had lifted a clenched fist toward the ceiling and his mouth moved in ferocious and silent execration. It was not Bernard’s face raised to the ceiling. It was a face of vengeance, hatred, repudiation. It was a face full of memories; it was a
s if he were taking a solemn and dreadful oath of blasphemous defiance. Jason closed his eyes in an awful fear and fell abruptly asleep.

  Bernard rose heavily and slowly and for the first time walked like an old man. He went into the kitchen, where Kate was sitting alone at the table, weeping. Her son John and her daughter were not there. And John was not in the bedroom with Jason. Bernard put his hand on Kate’s shoulder, and she felt the iron weight of it. She looked up, and her weary face was scoured with tears and pain.

  “Jason’s asleep, Katie. I gave him … something.”

  “It minds me. Like Ireland, Da.”

  “Yes, Katie. Like the whole cursed world. Jack still with that young bumpkin of a priest in the rectory?”

  “Yes, and Joan’s in bed. Da, Jack is praying for—”

  Bernard said, “I’ll kick Jackie boyo out of bed meself in the morning. He’ll not only deliver his damned papers but the laundry, too, and if he dares to shirk by going to Mass, I’ll break his blasted head, that I will.”

  He added in a changed, ponderous voice, very slow and calm. “And where was his God tonight? Yes, where was his God? When is he ever there when he is needed?”

  “Well, then,” said Bernard to the young priest, Father William Sweeney. “You sent a lad for me. What is it you want?”

  It was the next day, and even Belleville, that dull little town, was radiant with the light on the new snow, its ugliness almost obliterated. The white mountains scintillated with white fire and leaned against a sky the color of delphiniums, innocent and pure.

  Father Sweeney was both intimidated by Bernard, as usual, and resentful. He felt a powerful antagonism today against him personally, or, possibly, against the entire world. Bernard had a brutal look this late morning, a harshness of expression, and a most direct and formidable gaze. Father Sweeney moved uncomfortably in the straight kitchen chair in his dolorously bleak little study, which was nearly as cold as the day outside. He was a small man, twenty-nine years old, and almost fleshless, for he never had enough to eat. He had the long head of the Irish, and in his case it appeared fragile as an eggshell, and it was covered by a tentative mat of curling auburn hair which seemed quite childlike. His face was small and sensitive and not very worldly, though he usually wore a look of conscious determination or hopeful expectation. He had round brown eyes; Bernard thought them evasive, but they were only timid, for Father Sweeney was a shy man and he suffered all the misery of the shy. He had a short broad nose, and it was always wet because he had a chronic catarrh caused by inclement weather and his own frail constitution. His devoted mother, who lived in Pittsburgh, often sadly—if somewhat boastfully—said Billy had never been robust like other, rude boys. For the rest, Father Sweeney had the long Irish lip and so tremulous a mouth that he had trouble making it as stern as befitted a dedicated priest. He looked all of eighteen years old, and a young eighteen at that.

  His habit was shiny with long use, and made of cheap material. It was discreetly patched and the seams were always being restitched. But his collar was as stiff as an icicle, and immaculate. He had little chapped hands, which he usually kept clasped tightly, for they had a tendency to tremble when he was agitated, and he was agitated by Bernard, whom he feared.

  He had a weak, almost girlish voice, and many complained that they could hardly hear him at Mass. He had a “throat condition,” and it was painful this morning because of the cold.

  “A great tragedy, poor Joe Maggiotti,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Bernard, and his look, to the priest, was most terrible. “And why did you send for me, Father?”

  “Joe was your friend, wasn’t he, Bernard?”

  “That he was. Well?”

  Father Sweeney could not bear Bernard’s eyes, which were both gelid and unresponsive. He had seen that appearance in the eyes of an old embittered bishop from Ireland, and it had terrified him. To avoid those eyes, the priest stared down at his battered desk, which had been polished until it shone. He said, and his voice shook in spite of himself, “It was very strange. Joe brought an envelope to me only two weeks ago. He made a peculiar request, which he did not explain. He said that immediately on his death, and before his burial, I should give the envelope to you, his old friend.” Father Sweeney cleared his throat. “I don’t know if it is legal—”

  “The hell with law,” said Bernard. “Made by the unjust against the just. Well? Let me have the envelope … if you please, and I’ll be on my way to Joe’s house, where the neighbor wimin laid him out.”

  Again the priest cleared his throat. “He made another request. That you read it in my presence.”

  “He did then? Why, I wonder?” Bernard’s eyes took on a gleam of cold contempt.

  “I don’t know, Bernard. It is what he said. Perhaps funeral arrangements.”

  “He had nothing but his shop,” said Bernard. “It’ll be sold, likely, to keep him from a pauper’s grave.”

  He tore open the thick brown envelope with a rasping sound. A sheaf of papers fell out onto the desk. They were all covered by Joe’s thick black handwriting, painfully composed, but if the English was crude, the intent was clear, and the directions. Joe had spent weeks on the composition, sometimes asking the help of nuns.

  Bernard picked up one paper. “This is an old insurance policy. Three hundred dollars, for funeral expenses and for Masses for his soul.” For a moment Bernard could not speak. “Twenty years ago. Six dollars a year. He must have starved to pay it.” Bernard took up all the other papers. “Dear Friend, Bernard Garrity,” the first began. “My own true friend.”

  Bernard’s eyes clouded. He could not speak. He could only read. Father Sweeney gazed at the big powerful man who appeared like an impervious gray boulder, without sensitivity or emotion. Father Sweeney had heard from Kate that Bernard’s father had been a teacher in Dublin and that Bernard himself had studied two or three years for the priesthood. It seemed incredible to him that this coarse and muscular man could even read and write. He resembled the raw uncouth Irish peasants of which Father Sweeney’s mother had told him with some scorn.

  Children were pouring out of the parish school on their way home for lunch, and their shrill voices made a ringing in the frigid air outside. It was the only sound which invaded the study. Bernard slowly and carefully read every sheet of paper. Finally he put them down and looked at the priest.

  “Joe’s left me his shop, its contents—everything,” said Bernard. “He owned the property. He left me his only treasure, a large cross which hung over his bed, made of olive wood from Jerusalem, with an ivory Corpus. He brought it from Italy. It is very old … and very beautiful. He would have died of starvation rather than sell it. It is valuable.”

  “I saw it once,” said Father Sweeney, thinking of the big cross, which would look beautiful over the high altar.

  Bernard went on. “There is the deed to that property here. And a deed to fourteen acres of land, right near here, on the mountain. He wrote that he bought it forty years ago, for twelve dollars. He had hoped someday to have enough money to build a house for himself and his wife, and the children—who never lived. He’s deeded it to my grandson Jason.”

  Father Sweeney said, “It is worth much more than a few dollars now, Bernard. Houses are being built on the closest mountains—”

  Bernard said, “A man doesn’t sell land. He buys it.”

  Father Sweeney was silent. Bernard said, “I will sell everything else Joe left to me, except for the cross, and use the money as a reward to anyone supplying the police with evidence that will lead to the arrest and conviction of Joe’s murderers. I should like to put a bulletin on the board in the church to that effect.”

  Father Sweeney was aghast. “No!” he exclaimed.

  Bernard folded his massive arms across his chest. “And why not, if you’ll be so kind as to tell me, Father?”

  Father Sweeney saw that Bernard had appeared to grow larger and almost to fill the tiny study, and that his formidable look had increase
d and had become more terrible. The priest wet his suddenly dry lips. “To find the murderers is the work of the police, not of a layman.”

  Bernard’s gaze was appalling. Only a dark avenging angel, thought Father Sweeney, with renewed fear, could look so.

  Bernard said, “Money has a way of stimulating interest in catching criminals. It saves time. It helps the police, when an informer comes to them.”

  “It is … corruption, Bernard.”

  “And is it, now? Catching criminals has become a crime?”

  “The police, the paid police—it is their work, not yours.”

  “It is the work of every man who wants justice.”

  “You want a man with guilty knowledge to inform the police, and that, again, is corruption. Corrupting the informer.”

  Bernard laughed. “A man who withholds knowledge of a crime is already corrupt. Informing, by money or by conscience, eases that corruption in his own mind. I know human nature, Father, and you do not.”

  The young priest clasped his damp hands tightly in his lap. “You are looking for revenge, Bernard.”

  “I am looking for retribution, or has retribution become a crime, too? And justice. And your famous law. If so, then let’s disband the police, the courts, the prisons, and kiss the murderer on the arse and forgive and love him.”

  He pointed a thick strong finger at the priest. “I have no right to forgive a crime committed against a friend. I have only the right to see that justice is done.”

  “Our Lord forgave those who executed him.”

  Bernard lifted fists and struck the desk. “You speak irreverently, Father, and I will not ask your forgiveness. God punishes, does he not? And does he not use men to act as his agents of punishment? Punishment, sure and swift, deters the criminal. Our Lord was not only divine—it is said—but was veritable Man, also. Have you forgotten what he said about criminals, murderers, thieves, liars, betrayers? I suggest you read your own Bible, Father. He was a man in all ways, and often a very angry man.” He gave that fearful laugh again and said, as if to himself, “Is it I who would explain him, to whom I am not reconciled?”