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Page 7.

Within a few days, still feeling the tiniest bit weak, but almost back to her normal self, Kate Morgan stood in the lobby of the hospital with her bag. A nun had walked her out; had brought her bag along and set it on the floor. The nun handed her something, saying: “They brought this in with you—it fell off you when you went down the steps.”

It was her gold locket, which contained her only picture of her lost child Eddie. The nuns said they were expecting Tom would come to pick her up, as he had promised someone he would. Kate looked at herself in a mirror as she put her locket back on, by its fine little gold chain. She looked gaunt, with big hollow eyes and protruding cheekbones. Her sense of loss radiated from those eyes. Twice now she had lost that precious gift, and now it would never come again. It was something she could not forgive Tom for—not this. Anything else, but not taking that away. Most women had many children, and lost a few along the way. It was normal, even though it hurt terribly. You never forgot that brief, tiny life you would have loved to nurture into a strapping son or daughter. Now she had this to bear, and she would bear it for the rest of her life. She had always dreamed of one day leading a normal life somewhere, once her demons had their fill and left her, but now she was resigned to being a shadow of a woman. She determined she could not be at the whim of the destroyer any longer. Gathering her shawl around her, and picking up her satchel, she made her way slowly and effortfully out the door.

On the great steps overlooking the city, she was overwhelmed by the noise and the colors and the thousands of bustling people, carts, horses with clattering hooves, rumbling electric trolleys, billboards, smoking locomotives, and yelling vendors. The smell of horse manure and men’s cigars and a thousand things burning, rotting, flowering, decaying, almost made her want to return to the green and silent womb of the hospital. But she pushed that morbid thought away.

To hell with Tom Morgan. To hell with her grandfather, the wealthy and stern miller back in Iowa. To hell with the toads and grabbers of this world. She had a life to live, and she would make the most of it in whatever way was hers to make it work. As she walked back to the tenements, she picked up her step. Her legs seemed to grow stronger, and the warm spring city air filled her lungs. She was 24 years old, and by God she was determined to enjoy her youth to the fullest. She resisted the urge to feel sorry for herself.

The tenements were noisy and smelly as ever. She hoped Tom wasn’t there. Looking up, she saw the place seemed dark, as if nobody were home. She had only one errand here, and that was to pick up her belongings. Then she would disappear where Tom could never find her.

As she walked up the outside steps in back, she was surrounded by blurry, running, yelling children. She almost welcomed their noise in her ears. It was the music of life. She climbed up the wooden stairs to the third floor landing, from which Tom had kicked her. Someone had replaced several broken pieces of the railing. The apartment window was dark. As she turned the key in the lock and opened the door, her heart froze.

There, sitting at the table amid a litter of empty liquor bottles, was Tom Morgan, smoking. His eyes were red from drink, and he had a cold cigar butt in one dirty yellow hand. He had not washed or shaved in a week or more, from the looks of him. When he saw her, he stumbled to his feet so the wooden chair fell over backwards. “Katie, my love…”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

He fell to his knees on the floor and raised his coupled hands in prayer. “My darling, my wife, I beg you, forgive me for what I have done.”

“You are not the boy I fell in love with back in Iowa.” She walked past him and pulled her trunk from under the bed. Surprised at her own furious strength, she sat it open on the bed and added her belongings on top of those already in the trunk—including one of Eddie that she prized above all, a wispy lock of her lost son’s hair.

Tom knelt behind her and wrapped his arms around her thighs. “Katie, my darling, I can’t live without you.”

She struggled to get free. She waved the lock of Eddie’s hair and yelled: “This one at least I have something to remember him by. The one you just killed I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. Get away from me.” She smashed her hand across his mouth and nose, and he sat back holding his face. A noose bleed shot between his fingers. He got that ominous fury in his eyes as he rose and walked to the stove, where he rattled the empty kettle and tossed it aside, then to the sink. They had only cold water, when that was running, and there wasn’t time to heat water on the stove. Cold water was just right for stopping a bloody nose. She could see the violence building in him, and yelled: “So, you dirty bastard, you want to finish the job and kill me while you still can? Because I’m leaving you, and there is nothing you can do or say to keep me with you. You don’t deserve a wife. You don’t even deserve a dog that you can beat and kick around.”

“Katie, my love, think of our years together.” He held a cold, wet towel to his face and turned, looking exhausted. “I’m sorry, Katie, I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

“How can you make it up to me?” she yelled as she gathered her coat and hat and a few other belongings and threw them in the trunk. She walked to the door, stepped out onto the landing, and yelled down to the unemployed men milling below around a whiskey bottle. “I need a man to carry my trunk. Give you a quarter.” There was a rumble of feet as they fought to climb over each other, up the stairs, and she pointed to one she knew, Magruder, a big quiet reliable man. “You’ll get the trunk for me, and I’ll tell you where to bring it when we’re gone from here.”

Magruder trudged up the steps, eyeballing Tom Morgan nervously. He wore a gray woolen slouch hat and a rumpled gray suit stained with sweat from many days’ work when there had been work to do. He could probably hold his own against the whipcrack Morgan, but he wasn’t a man who relished a fight. With his missing teeth, he kept nervously chewing his tongue and flicking its pink serpentine length among his various stumps like an eel underwater. He walked with his fists balled, keeping a nervous gaze on Tom Morgan, who stood dabbing himself on the face with the rose-stained towel.

Kate told him: “Go on, take the trunk down and I’ll be after you in a minute.” Ignoring Tom, she looked about to make sure she had not forgotten anything. Tom didn’t get in Magruder’s way—clearly that was not the fight Tom wanted to pick just now. Magruder left with the trunk, clomping down the wooden stairs. The noise of children, the wind, the city clamor, rose up as he went down. Kate turned and started for the door, but Tom blocked it. “Katie, you’re my wife. I forbid you to leave.”

“You can’t stop me, Tom. Don’t even try.”

Tom closed the door, so that they were alone and shut in. “Kate, you’ve had your say, and now I’ll have mine.”

She started around him, but he gripped her arm in a steely hand. As she struggled to escape, he yanked her back. He gripped both her arms, and she cried out in pain. He reeked sourly of whiskey, and his breath was foul from sore gums and unbrushed teeth stained with cigar juice. “Kate, Kate, stop it, Kate, Kate,” he said in a low, warning voice that usually meant kicks and blows were coming.

“You’ve already killed me,” she wailed. “What more can you do but kick my poor body to death?”

“I’m not going to do anything bad to you,” he slurred. But his grip on her was like a vise. She tried to wriggle free, and he dug his thumbs painfully into the nerves above the hollows of her elbows. She started to cry with pain. He pressed her toward the bed, speaking in that low, ominous voice: “Katie…Katie…look at me…I can’t live without you…” He threw her down on the bed, and then stood undoing his belt. For a moment she thought he was going to rape her. But the belt came off, and the square steel buckle dangled at his knees like a weapon. “I’ll kill you before I let you leave me.”

Still rubbing the numbness in each arm where he had gripped her, she rolled out of the way as the belt descended on the bed. The steel buckle landed with a thump in the pillow beside her skull. With a choking shriek of terror, she rolled off the bed and into the narrow space between bed and wall, onto the dusty, dirty wooden floor. Tom started to climb over the bed. Raising her feet, with her back propped against the wall, she shoved the flimsy steel bed against him. He yelled in pain as it gouged his shins. “Damn you, woman! Just trying to reason with you. Now you’re in for it!”

One of his Deringers lay on the floor in a heap of soiled clothing. She reached behind to get to the gun, sprawling awkwardly. He came crawling around the bed and grabbed her ankle. She kicked him in the head with her free foot, but he was unstoppable. She saw his full rage and fury come to the fore, clouded by days of drinking, and she hoped there was a round in the chamber as she aimed the gun at his face and pressed the trigger.

At that very moment, he jerked on her leg, and the shot went off a bit, creating a red splash in his filthy gray shirt, halfway between his neck and his shoulder joint. He grimaced, and gripped the wound.

She pulled the trigger again, but nothing more came out. She remembered it was a single-shooter. She dropped the gun, kicked him in the face with her free foot, and struggled up over the bed. He pushed himself up along the wall and started after her. She picked up the belt that lay on the floor, held it in both hands, and swung it fully around as hard as she could. She heard the crack as it connected with his head, and he went down like a sack. She stumbled to the door, sobbing, yanked it open, and ran outside without looking back or shutting the door. She half ran, half staggered down the stairs, one flight after another, until she arrived in the courtyard. The men standing around, amid a thousand yelling and running little street Arabs, were used to fights and screams and looked at her dumbly. Magruder stood by the trunk, tipped his hat, and his eelish tongue ran a few pink flicks amid the yellow reefs of his mouth.

Shortly, Kate and Magruder were on their way down the dirt alley. She held his quarter, and he carried her trunk on his shoulder as if he were an elephant of a man. Tom appeared on the balustrade high above, clutching his nicked shoulder. Streams of blood crisscrossed each other on his face from the wound on his head. “Kate, don’t leave me! Please! I love you.” She ignored him. Men all around sniggered, because none liked Morgan. Tom yelled all the louder: “You are my wife! I will find you, woman. Look over your shoulder every day! You are mine, and I will have you back no matter where you go.” Then he could be heard brokenly wailing in his drunken state, both from his physical pain and from the loss of her as Kate walked out of his life. She would keep looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life, but now she began to think about where her path would take her next.