The Long November Read online

  Remember the disgust in Steffie’s voice when she told you of Mrs. Rutledge? And how she, Steffie, tried to look after those kids, tried to get them straightened out? And all the while she waited for you. Well, I helped, Steffie....I brought Dick Barnett. And a little Austrian corporal, who let his ambitions exceed his regard for human life, brought peace to Phil Rutledge. And all you ever wanted was to be Mrs. Joe Mack, and you’re still waiting. But Mrs. Rutledge doesn’t wait for anyone. Isn’t it wonderful, Steffie, the way it works? I’m in the midst of the biggest slaughterhouse the world has ever seen just to protect an unending supply of bed companions for Mrs. Rutledge, and you, with all your clean warmth and honest passion, are lonely.

  Yes, Joe, those years were tougher for Steffie than they were for you. She may have lived in that frowning pile of brick and gingerbread old man Rutledge built, and perhaps there were butlers and maids looping about, but she did a day’s work every day, and came home to an alcoholic boy and a slightly mad girl, and her life was not simply the life of Steffie Gibson. She had a long way to fall, and she wasn’t a hundred and eighty pounds of man, Joe, she was just a hundred and fifteen pounds of slim girl, and she took that fall from the greatness of the Cataract City Gibsons, to the poor second cousin of the Toronto Rutledges, and she landed squarely on her feet. And for every inch I’d grown, I found Steffie had grown two.

  Dick kept the newspapers plastered with news of the big discoveries at Sleeping Squaw, and, almost overnight, prospectors rushed in and staked every property around my claims. Another mining camp was born. A year earlier, we’d have sold the whole deal on the public’s excitement, and the excitement would have sold every share we had to sell, right out of the office. But in 1938 things began to look different. The headlines carried more and more of the trouble lying ahead. A silly old man spent too much time driving a king off an English throne and not enough time looking at some other reports on his desk. Then he escaped to raise pigs; and another silly old man rolled his umbrella tightly and flew all over Europe to beg the little corporal not to do “it.” And millions of green kids all over the world were getting ready to face a life they felt would be full of clean things, but they were just putting in time, waiting for a couple of old whores, who weren’t quite in eye range up the street. BF did a super-job on Sleeping Squaw...for it was his dream mine, but he couldn’t beat the public’s interest in those headlines.

  I tried to keep another angle in mind. I remembered Freddie Miller and two thousand like him and I wanted some of the ‘little people” to have a piece of this wealth, for a change. I didn’t bother with the names from Dick’s unending mailing lists. I looked up trade labor unions, lodges, and social clubs. Dick and BF were amused. And BF tried to tell me:

  “It doesn’t work that way, Joe. The reason those fellows are still on a payroll somewhere is because they’ve never had guts enough to take a chance...they wouldn’t buy International Nickel at ten cents a share. Stick with the guys who buy mining stock, Joe, they know what the score is and they know they’re gambling.”

  But I had to find it out myself. You had to learn what Philip Rutledge the First learned and then forgot about money, eh, Joe? You had to learn that guts is the difference. That fear is man’s poverty and courage is his gold. You had to learn what money really is. That it’s only a frontier to be pushed back, cultivated, and controlled for man’s benefit...not a wild jungle where only the most muscular, most conniving will survive. You had to learn that little men are little only in heart.

  Whatever the days brought in the scramble to raise money for the Sleeping Squaw mine, the evenings brought Steffie and our love. The “girl-Steffie” of my dreams dimmed, and the “woman-Steffie” of my life began to share my hopes and my despairs. One night we wanted to celebrate, and I took Dick Barnett along for Sis. Dick hated the idea, and was sure Sis would be the typical blind date, “not-very-good-looking-but-loads-of-fun,” but from the moment he saw her he couldn’t take his eyes off her. We met Phil that night, too. We were just leaving when he practically fell in the front door. A slim guy, about my own age, and I’d have known Sis and he were twins, for I’ve never seen a stronger resemblance. He was as high as a flag pole and twice as stiff, but his conversation was clear enough. His knees kept folding like a two-dollar suitcase in a rainstorm. Phil leaned against the wall and looked Dick and me over with an agreeable smile.

  “So the ‘James boys’ are in town .. .” he said, and looking at Dick he continued, “which are you...Frank or Jesse?” We laughed, Phil went on. “If you’re selling anything, we’ll buy it. Won’t we, Sis? We buy everything.”

  “This is my brother Phil,” Sis cut in, “he’s sober sometimes. Phil, this is Joe Mack and this is Dick Barnett.” Phil shoved his hand toward me and nearly fell on his face. Dick caught him. The handshake was firm.

  “Not THE Joe Mack,” Phil said, “not the wonder-boy from the rugged north?”

  I wasn’t sure I liked his attitude, drunk or sober.

  “Yes, little-boy-blue,” I answered, “I’m THE Joe Mack; try it in your horn.”

  “Come on, Phil,” said Sis, “off to bed-dy with your head-dy...you and your little playmates can get stiff again tomorrow.”

  Phil ignored her completely. “So, I meet the phantom Mr. Mack, at long last,” he said, still very agreeably. “You know, Mack, we have a hell of a lot in common...were going to marry the same girl...fun, eh?”

  Steffie spoke, quite sharply. “I’m sure Mr. Mack and Mr. Barnett are interested in your ideas of what to do with the surplus manpower, Phil, but does it have to be now?”

  “I’m sorry, Steffie-darling,” Phil said. “I’ll make it clearer...Mr. Mack has been in my hair for a long time. We’re going to marry the same girl, Mr. Mack...only you aren’t.” He smiled a very nice smile.

  “Now you’re getting the com in the horn,” I replied.

  Sis reached for the bell cord and pulled it angrily. Phil shrugged his shoulders and braced himself against the wall.

  “It’s been very nice, gentlemen, and when Sis pulls that cord, a great, sinewy brute arrives and carries me off to Never-Never-Land. You’ll have to pardon my condition...I’m celebrating the marriage of my mother. Don’t you think it’s a ‘good-thing’ to have at least one of one’s parents married at all times?”

  Dick laughed. “That’s a swell idea, Phil,” he said, “I must tell my folks about it...

  Phil turned to Dick. “Have you ever had a count in your family?” he asked, “we’ve had two, haven’t we, Sis? Mother’s just gone down for the second count...”

  The wrestler-butler arrived and led Phil away like a doting parent leading little Johnny to the boys’ room. Steffie was silent.

  We could only talk during the dances, because Dick kept a machine-gun patter working on Sis. But the “Steffie-darling” crack and the rest of Phil’s conversation was buzzing in my head. My plan needed Steffie too much to wait, and I had to know.

  “I’m very fond of Phil, Joe,” she said, “just as I’m fond of Sis...they’ve had a dreadful life, and maybe if you hadn’t come back, I might have taken Phil seriously because he needs me so much.”

  “He can’t need you more than I do, Steffie...”

  “He isn’t strong like you, Joe.”

  “Don’t be misled by these muscles, lady. No, Steffie, I think I see how you feel, but we’ve got to be together, you and I...I love you, Steffie...

  She smiled. “We’ve always loved each other, Joe, and we always will...there’s no doubt in my mind now. Whenever you say, Joe...”

  November became December and Christmas started looming ahead. I’d taken a bachelor apartment on Avenue Road and was trying to live as cheaply as I could. The two grand wasn’t going to last forever, and the “little men” weren’t buying stock very damned fast. I kept slugging at it and kept hoping. I wanted to give Steffie her engagement ring for Christmas, but the idea of laying five hundred bucks out nearly floored me. BF cut that in two for me...Rebecca’s
brother was in the wholesale jewelry business. It was a beauty. In its yellow-gold Tiffany setting it made you think somehow of an age when marriages seemed to endure. Remember the night Steffie saw it, Joe? Yes, because all the wonderful things Steffie means to me were in that night. Remember how ashamed you were of a body which you felt was not good enough? How the Rosies and the Noras of your life all paraded past? And in scanning the lot of them you could only find one really clean thing, just one Fern Miller? But it had to happen or we had to stop seeing each other. And the night before Christmas Eve we knew it.

  I don’t know whether it was the cocktails we’d had at Dick’s apartment, or whether it would have reached that point anyway, but we stood in the hall and we held the good night kiss a little too long. Steffie clung to me and shivered a little.

  “When will it be, Joe,” she whispered.

  “The minute we pull the drill cores on the mine, honey, the minute I know...”

  “I don’t want to wait, Joe, darling, I don’t want to and I don’t think it’s wrong.”

  The following night Steffie stayed at my apartment. Oh, darling, I’ve got to get back to you. I’ve got to hold you again, Steffie and again and again. Hold your loveliness as I did that Christmas Eve. Feel your warmth and the firmness of you welding to me. Hear you sob a little and then feel you snuggle even more closely. And afterward, have you drop off to sleep in my arms with your lips pressed against my neck, your hair falling across my chest, and in it smell the scent of clover. I’ve got to awaken again and find you sleeping still pressed to me, and by God, Steffie darling, I’m going to lift the covers again and look at all the loveliness of you as I did that morning. You’d probably have been embarrassed, Steffie, but I had to do it. You were so damned shy and so eager.

  Remember, honey, the way you sat with me in the chair and looked at your ring, and said “I’ll never take it off, Joe, never” and the way you asked if we could have the light off, and were you awful because you didn’t want to put your nightie on, and what was I laughing at? I was laughing, darling, at our Joe buying a pair of ten dollar pajamas that day, the first I’d owned in years. And the way she opened her eyes in the morning, and smiled the sad little smile, then reached up and kissed me and whispered, “Merry Christmas, darling.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Remember Auld Lang Syne, Joe? Remember that drunken old faker? Whatever became of him? He used to be around peddling his phony “good-neighbor-policy,” but his business hasn’t been so good since the New Year’s of ‘38-’39. Remember that New Year’s Eve, Joe, standing with your arm around Steffie’s lovely middle, waiting for the hands of the clock to point to heaven so you could kiss her? Yes, and I remember the next one, too. Lying drunk and puking under the table in that dive in Soho. And when I looked up I could see something Bill Preston hadn’t found out yet...his girl had long underwear on. What a horror she was, eh, Joe? Shifting her bargain-basement teeth, while Preston kept telling her she was beautiful.

  They’ve all been like that since ‘38-’39. I’ve been drunk somewhere...with someone I didn’t want, and I’ve gagged on the sour taste of my loneliness. But that last one with Steffie? When you held her and she whispered, “We’ll have every New Year’s Eve together, Joe, darling, every one as long as we live”...and you really thought you would. Remember kissing Rebecca and Sis? And rubbing BF’s head for good luck, and shaking hands with Dick; and how everyone said what a hell of a big year ‘39 was going to be? Well, it was. A befuddled old man flew all over hell’s-half-acre on his twin-engined umbrella and mouthed a lot of mumbo jumbo about “peace-in-our-time.” Don’t blame the old man, Joe, he just didn’t know the league he was batting in and that’s happened to lots smarter guys than him. This is another November, and in a few weeks it’ll be another New Year’s Eve...have you decided where you’ll spend this one, Private Mack? You’re damned right I have. If I’m not whirling a motionless waltz in a winding sheet, I’ll be dancing somewhere with Steffie...it’ll be one or the other, bub, and you can sing that in high “c.”

  It was a year to make the heart of every man pause a beat or two; it was the worst year in man’s history; and it was a year that broke Joe Mack’s heart. I guess it was a year that broke many men’s hearts, but I broke mine on my “plan.” I dreamed a great dream in which a town would rise on the site of the Sleeping Squaw claims and it would be named Millerville. It would be a town in which the decency of Freddie Miller would find a haven. It would be a model town with fine homes, hospitals, and churches all rising above the safest mine in Canada. In the homes healthy, rosy-cheeked children would play on the floors, while die miners’ bank accounts would grow fatter from the golden stopes they worked. And they’d all get home each night...for they’d be as safe in a stope or a drift as they’d be in their beds. And if gold had to be mined in our world, then it would benefit those who mined it. Yes, it was quite a dream.

  And Steffie shared it—only Steffie. I didn’t want to brave the laughter of Dick and BF. I knew they’d think I’d flipped my lid. So we dreamed together, and not of millions for ourselves, but of building a monument to the men who really made the north, the Freddie Millers and the Curly Durants. And I tried. I tried for a whole year to raise the money to diamond-drill the property, and all I needed was fifteen thousand. I wanted to bring the money in from my own sources, to strengthen my argument to Dick and BF when the time came to talk of a co-operative mining venture. Night after night I’d talk to groups, social clubs, church clubs, lodges, and unions. Any place I could get a bunch to listen to me, I raved on about Canadian mining, past, present, and future. I told them the story of Curly Durant, of Freddie Miller, and of Peter Moreland, and Steffie would sit in the rear of the hall and smile. I began to hate these people for their closed minds, for their fears of losing their silly little amounts of money, and I learned just how little a little man can be.

  That’s the way I met Alf Jolley, and I wasted a month hoping I’d make a leadman or bird dog of him. He was little and warped, but it wasn’t only Alf’s body that was warped; his mind, or that bundle of petty viciousness he passed off as a mind, was about as healthy as his crooked yellow teeth. Alf peddled insurance to his fellow lodge members and he was a small-time oracle among them. Steffie didn’t like him and didn’t trust him, and she was right, but I’d wasted so much time on people like Alf Jolley I felt I had nothing to lose by trying once more. I worked like a dog on him and his group, and in the end I lost out because Dick Barnett was a Catholic. It didn’t make much sense, but that was the reason. The “Lodge” had carried on a hate with the Vatican for a couple of hundred years, and it had something weird to do with a certain king of England who rode a white horse, and it was all messed up with the Battle of the Boyne, which is still being fought every July in Toronto. Alf could have raised the fifteen grand, too, and I should have smartened up when he leaned across the desk and said he knew the Catholics were planning a “coupe” and were going to take control of Canada. I should have slapped his narrow cockney face all the way back to the Limehouse gutter it came from, but instead I listened to his filth, and actually hoped I’d get the money from him. But when he found Dick was a Catholic, he pulled out of the deal. Of such were my ‘little men.”

  You watched them, God, while the filth they produced made their old homes uninhabitable, and you thought of America, put aside for just such an emergency. One day you opened the doors, and you must have hoped they’d change; for in the new home you had room for all men. Some left everything behind and came happily, thankfully. But others brought the slop-smudged furnishings of their little minds...they brought their hates, the only luxuries small minds can afford, and they never question where these come from or how old they are. The Protestants can hate the Catholics, and the Catholics can hate the Protestants, and in their little minds when they tire of hating each other, they can always hate the Jews...and God, they do it in Your name. The new home was wide and clean, but in just a few hundred years the hates flourished, and th
e crowding was being felt, even in a home as big as America. Where will you send them next, God—you’ve run out of continents?

  I tried to raise the money through such sources and finally when I knew it was impossible, the whole idea turned sour and I felt I’d vomit if it crossed my mind once more. The mine was financed, yes, by God! By angles...angles that went all the way from Quill Masters curves to clipping Emily Dawson for twenty thousand dollars, and then we made a deal with some “big” money. Of all the things we have to swallow the hardest is a sour dream, and it goes down the throat like a huge chunk of rock salt. Even now it’s lying in the pit of my stomach, ready to make me sick. In time it will melt, like rock salt, but the taste will linger in every sour particle that belches its way through my mind.

  Dick slugged away at the sales and wrote the build-up. He, too, had his dream. Like my model town, and BF’s shaft-head with the turning wheels, Dick dreamed of the millions he’d have, millions to match the Rutledge bank roll, millions that would tell Sis he loved her and drive the fear out of her eyes...Sis’s fear that Dick only wanted, as the others had, to get at the Rutledge money. Dick knew the success of Sleeping Squaw would put him in the spot he wanted...in the world of poised people. Yet it wasn’t until Sis dropped her Rutledge exterior and acted like a Baldwin Street fishwife that Dick won. He worked like hell on the tried and true stock-buyers, rehashing the Sleeping Squaw story and plugging it in the papers. But the papers also published what the little corporal was doing, and whatever break the financial page gave us, the front page knocked it on the head. Dick would spend his days writing “BF’S MINING MARKET BULLETIN,” and we’d all gather in the early evenings and fold the multigraphed copies, put them in their “penny-saver” envelopes, and whip them out to the names on Dick’s lists. A self-addressed card was enclosed and if the “name” filled it in and returned it, Dick would grab the card hungrily and phone the person that night when the cheaper rates were on.