The Tartan

By William Curvan

The messy pinpricks of light that imposed themselves on the canvas of the night sky had always bothered him, actually. They were unpleasant and disorderly. This thought occurred as the otherwise peaceful and pleasant night unfolded around him, and the thought made him feel embarrassed for a moment. Was he really questioning the beauty of the night sky? He realized how ungrateful it must sound to comment on their lack of aesthetic composition, but still, he couldn’t help but be strangely bothered by their randomness. He sighed and wondered what this distaste for the stars meant about his brain.

The unseasonably warm January air made Allen think guilty thoughts of spring. He was wearing a thin button-up with no coat, yet was as comfortable as ever in the breeze. Friendly branches swayed in and out of his view of the sky, causing the irregular and bothersomes stars to flit in and out of his vision. He was staring up, neck nearly bent 90 degrees, to see these distant masterpieces of the cosmos. How often do you get to see the stars in Pittsburgh anyways? He couldn’t bear to keep looking at them, though, so he walked onward.

Fifth Avenue was lit by an orderly row of gas lamps, which, as Allen reached the bottom of Wilkins, lined up perfectly for the next half mile down the street. In the distance, a car chugged away and their headlamps bounced above the potholes. 

Hugh’s house was about a mile back up Wilkins in a new row of apartments built where the avenue meets Beeler at an oblique angle — characteristic of the distinctly un-gridlike streets that populated the region north of the Carnegie Institute. Sandwiched between the compact rows and columns that made the handsome village of Shadyside and the broad blocks growing on the slopes of Squirrel Hill was a rather hilly neutral zone populated by the upper crust of the city and, recently, the rowdy students of Carnegie Tech. This was where many of the students of the budding college had begun to take up residence.

But now Allen was on his way back, through this sparse land of the mansions and rolling lawns. He trudged past these manors toward the fraternity house he called home. It was a neat home, a three-story endeavor on the corner of Morewood and Forbes that had at one point, he assumed, been the home for a very large family (or at least, a moderate family and its sizable team of in-house servants). But now the brothers of Kappa-Sigma lived in that building — eleven-strong, with a room for every man and plenty of space left in the basement to build their car for the sweepstakes races.

He carried a flask that was now filled with moonshine, courtesy of Hugh’s family back home in Missouri (“Mizzurah,” as he’d call it). Allen had learned just tonight that Hugh’s folks lived on the edge of Ozark country and made moonshine. It was a culture shock for Allen; he’d only ever really known city life, and tended to think little of country folk. Hugh had regaled the party with the story of how he’d packed a small keg into his chest when he’d last visited his folks, and snuck it past a customs officer at the train station in St. Louis (or “Sant Lewie,” as he said it in the modest drawl he exaggerated whenever speaking of his home state).

Allen took the occasional sip, letting himself wallow in the pain of the moment. “Hugh was kind for inviting me,” he thought, trying to find something to be grateful for after a miserable night out. Hugh was like an older brother to a lot of the guys on the football team; he decided to attend school after serving in the Great War, making him a couple years older than even the other seniors. To celebrate everyone’s return to campus after the holidays, he had thrown a boozer and invited nearly three dozen people. Even though Allen quit the team after his first semester, Hugh was always keeping in touch and making sure Allen got invited to any events. It was nice of him.

Allen kept replaying the scene over and over in his mind. It was maddening, but he couldn’t let himself be mad. No wrong had actually truly been done to him, right? Only someone unreasonable would hold this as a grudge. 

He had been chatting with a girl — Marcia, her name was — a friend of Hugh’s friend who was getting a degree in the arts at Shady Side Academy. She was a joy to talk with, and really seemed to take an interest in him. At least, that’s what he’d told himself. They’d talked for what, two minutes? He was overreacting about it all, really. They’d exchanged nothing more than polite introductions.

Another sophomore, De Loy, had taken over the conversation with Marcia and left Allen with nobody to talk with. Allen orbited the party a couple times, stopping to have a drink with one acquaintance or a snippet of conversation with an old teammate, but really he wanted to get back to Marcia. Yet each time he circled near, De Loy was holding her attention raptly and gave Allen little room to chime in with a humorously inebriated comment. So he made his goodbyes Irishly and left the premises to drunkenly stumble home. 

Allen’s dam of self-pity had just been broken when a pair of headlights swung out of some private driveway, startling Allen. The car rumbled past and turned up Wilkins, out of sight. He fidgeted the top of the moonshine off and took another eager sip — smoother than he had expected for something so strong. He let little flecks of rainwater fall into the flask and ran a hand through his matted and soggy hair. On a whim, he walked out into the middle of the street, between the streetcar tracks, and walked. All alone. The city was asleep, and Allen was king of Fifth Avenue.

What began as a distant ticking soon came into focus as the rhythmic clopping of horseshoe against pavement. He looked back and saw a horse and carriage — no, not a carriage, that was a trick of the light. A lone rider was on the horse. 

He used to see more horses back in the day. Back in his boyhood home, above a butcher’s shop on Carson Street, he would watch horse-drawn wagons hauling shipments from the docks to the stores. He remembered that it was always the same horse which brought whole cow caracasses to his downstairs neighbor — silver, with brown spots around the neck. This horse was a muted gray, though everything looked gray on this night. He rarely saw horses anymore, only streetcars and automobiles. Few boys in the city grew up knowing how to ride horses these days, Allen included. He had traded that skill for a degree in metallurgy, a field that his parents neither comprehended nor understood the value of.

The rider looked to be in a policeman’s uniform; he had a helmet, a long blue hooded coat and leather riding boots. No badge nor insignia indicated who we was, but Allen remembered once hearing that the city police still sometimes do night patrols ahorse. That must be it.

The rider stopped and faced Allen. Did he want to say something? “Get out of the street, young man!”, or “Drinking tonight, sir?” He could sober up and talk to a cop; he wasn’t doing anything illegal.

Except holding onto a flask of moonshine. Dammit, the moonshine. He couldn’t hide it now, that would be too obvious. “You can’t check my flask, you need a warrant from a judge! Fifth Amendment!” he imagined himself saying. But the cop would need to talk first for him to provide this constitutionally-literate defense.

But he kept quiet. Or, perhaps, she kept quiet, as Allen couldn’t see the rider’s face in enough detail to determine gender, age, or race. 

Allen’s eyes were assaulted by a blast of light from the cop’s electric lightstick, and he reached out (with his non-flask hand) to cover his eyes. He squinted, confused and alarmed, now certain he would spend the night downtown in the prison. 

He wanted to scream “Who are you!” and have the assailant reveal themself. But it was utterly quiet besides the gentle trickle of rainwater down the gutter. Not even a whisper of a question.

They stood there for hours, days, maybe even years. The alcohol made it hard to tell anymore. Allen felt like a fool. If his friends knew what was happening they’d be yelling “Run! Run away, Allen! You too scared to run from the paddies?” But he was transfixed and mute. 

And then, as suddenly as this ordeal began, the light was gone. In fact, the horse was gone. Did it just gallop away quickly? Or was he blinded by the light? His night vision was shot, so for all Allen knew, now there was a hungry bear in the middle of the road. It seemed better than ever to walk home. He wisely tucked his flask away.

He meandered back to the sidewalk, and looked at the stars again. He wondered why the things that happened to him never made any sense.