McTeague, Frank Norris [polar express read aloud .txt] 📗

made but two attempts to secure a job. Trina had gone to see Uncle Oelbermann and had obtained for McTeague a position in the shipping department of the wholesale toy store. However, it was a position that involved a certain amount of ciphering, and McTeague had been obliged to throw it up in two days.

Then for a time they had entertained a wild idea that a place on the police force could be secured for McTeague. He could pass the physical examination with flying colors, and Ryer, who had become the secretary of the Polk Street Improvement Club, promised the requisite political “pull.” If McTeague had shown a certain energy in the matter the attempt might have been successful; but he was too stupid, or of late had become too listless to exert himself greatly, and the affair resulted only in a violent quarrel with Ryer.

McTeague had lost his ambition. He did not care to better his situation. All he wanted was a warm place to sleep and three good meals a day. At the first⁠—at the very first⁠—he had chafed at his idleness and had spent the days with his wife in their one narrow room, walking back and forth with the restlessness of a caged brute, or sitting motionless for hours, watching Trina at her work, feeling a dull glow of shame at the idea that she was supporting him. This feeling had worn off quickly, however. Trina’s work was only hard when she chose to make it so, and as a rule she supported their misfortunes with a silent fortitude.

Then, wearied at his inaction and feeling the need of movement and exercise, McTeague would light his pipe and take a turn upon the great avenue one block above Polk Street. A gang of laborers were digging the foundations for a large brownstone house, and McTeague found interest and amusement in leaning over the barrier that surrounded the excavations and watching the progress of the work. He came to see it every afternoon; by and by he even got to know the foreman who superintended the job, and the two had long talks together. Then McTeague would return to Polk Street and find Heise in the back room of the harness shop, and occasionally the day ended with some half dozen drinks of whiskey at Joe Frenna’s saloon.

It was curious to note the effect of the alcohol upon the dentist. It did not make him drunk, it made him vicious. So far from being stupefied, he became, after the fourth glass, active, alert, quick-witted, even talkative; a certain wickedness stirred in him then; he was intractable, mean; and when he had drunk a little more heavily than usual, he found a certain pleasure in annoying and exasperating Trina, even in abusing and hurting her.

It had begun on the evening of Thanksgiving Day, when Heise had taken McTeague out to dinner with him. The dentist on this occasion had drunk very freely. He and Heise had returned to Polk Street towards ten o’clock, and Heise at once suggested a couple of drinks at Frenna’s.

“All right, all right,” said McTeague. “Drinks, that’s the word. I’ll go home and get some money and meet you at Joe’s.”

Trina was awakened by her husband pinching her arm.

“Oh, Mac,” she cried, jumping up in bed with a little scream, “how you hurt! Oh, that hurt me dreadfully.”

“Give me a little money,” answered the dentist, grinning, and pinching her again.

“I haven’t a cent. There’s not a⁠—oh, Mac, will you stop? I won’t have you pinch me that way.”

“Hurry up,” answered her husband, calmly, nipping the flesh of her shoulder between his thumb and finger. “Heise’s waiting for me.” Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, frowning with pain, and caressing her shoulder.

“Mac, you’ve no idea how that hurts. Mac, stop!”

“Give me some money, then.”

In the end Trina had to comply. She gave him half a dollar from her dress pocket, protesting that it was the only piece of money she had.

“One more, just for luck,” said McTeague, pinching her again; “and another.”

“How can you⁠—how can you hurt a woman so!” exclaimed Trina, beginning to cry with the pain.

“Ah, now, cry,” retorted the dentist. “That’s right, cry. I never saw such a little fool.” He went out, slamming the door in disgust.

But McTeague never became a drunkard in the generally received sense of the term. He did not drink to excess more than two or three times in a month, and never upon any occasion did he become maudlin or staggering. Perhaps his nerves were naturally too dull to admit of any excitation; perhaps he did not really care for the whiskey, and only drank because Heise and the other men at Frenna’s did. Trina could often reproach him with drinking too much; she never could say that he was drunk. The alcohol had its effect for all that. It roused the man, or rather the brute in the man, and now not only roused it, but goaded it to evil. McTeague’s nature changed. It was not only the alcohol, it was idleness and a general throwing off of the good influence his wife had had over him in the days of their prosperity. McTeague disliked Trina. She was a perpetual irritation to him. She annoyed him because she was so small, so prettily made, so invariably correct and precise. Her avarice incessantly harassed him. Her industry was a constant reproach to him. She seemed to flaunt her work defiantly in his face. It was the red flag in the eyes of the bull. One time when he had just come back from Frenna’s and had been sitting in the chair near her, silently watching her at her work, he exclaimed all of a sudden:

“Stop working. Stop it, I tell you. Put ’em away. Put ’em all away, or I’ll pinch you.”

“But why⁠—why?” Trina protested.

The dentist cuffed her ears. “I won’t have you work.” He took her knife and her paint-pots away, and