way to make money.”
Emile found Mme. Rigaud’s bulgy black eyes probing his. “I enjoyed your
singing so last time.... I’ve thought of it often.... Music does one
good dont it?” Mme. Rigaud’s dimples stretched and stretched as she
smiled. “My poor husband had no ear.... That gave me a great deal of
pain.”
“Couldn’t you sing me something this evening?”
“If you want me to, Emile?... But there is nobody to wait on customers.”
“I’ll run in when we hear the bell, if you will permit me.”
“Very well.... I’ve learned a new American song ... C’est chic vous
savez.”
Mme. Rigaud locked the till with a key from the bunch that hung at her
belt and went through the glass door in the back of the shop. Emile
followed with his hat in his hand.
“Give me your hat Emile.”
“Oh dont trouble yourself.”
The room beyond was a little parlor with yellow flowered wallpaper,
old salmon pink portières and, under the gas-bracket from which hung
a bunch of crystals, a piano with photographs on it. The pianostool
creaked when Mme. Rigaud sat down. She ran her fingers over the keys.
Emile sat carefully on the very edge of the chair beside the piano
with his hat on his knees and pushed his face forward so that as she
played she could see it out of the corner of her eye tilted up towards
hers. Madame Rigaud began to sing:
Just a birrd in a geelded cage
A beauteeful sight to see
You’d tink se vas ’appee
And free from all care
Se’s not zo se seems to be....
The bell on the door of the shop jangled loud.
“Permettez,” cried Emile running out.
“Half a pound o bolony sausage sliced,” said a little girl with
pigtails. Emile passed the knife across the palm of his hand and sliced
the sausage carefully. He tiptoed back into the parlor and put the
money on the edge of the piano. Madame Rigaud was still singing:
Tis sad ven you tink of a vasted life
For yout cannot mate vit age
Beautee vas soooold
For an old man’s gooold
Se’s a birrd in a geelded cage.
Bud stood on the corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street eating
peanuts out of a bag. It was noon and his money was all gone. The
Elevated thundered overhead. Dustmotes danced before his eyes in the
girderstriped sunlight. Wondering which way to go he spelled out the
names of the streets for the third time. A black shiny cab drawn by two
black shinyrumped horses turned the corner sharp in front of him with a
rasp on the cobblestones of red shiny wheels suddenly braked. There was
a yellow leather trunk on the seat beside the driver. In the cab a man
in a brown derby talked loud to a woman with a gray feather boa round
her neck and gray ostrich plumes in her hat. The man jerked a revolver
up to his mouth. The horses reared and plunged in the middle of a
shoving crowd. Policemen elbowing through. They had the man out on the
curbstone vomiting blood, head hanging limp over his checked vest. The
woman stood tall and white beside him twisting her feather boa in her
hands, the gray plumes in her hat nodding in the striped sunlight under
the elevated.
“His wife was taking him to Europe.... The _Deutschland_ sailing
at twelve. I’d said goodby to him forever. He was sailing on the
_Deutschland_ at twelve. He’d said goodby to me forever.”
“Git oute de way dere;” a cop jabbed Bud in the stomach with his elbow.
His knees trembled. He got to the edge of the crowd and walked away
trembling. Mechanically he shelled a peanut and put it in his mouth.
Better save the rest till evenin. He twisted the mouth of the bag and
dropped it into his pocket.
* * * * *
Under the arclight that spluttered pink and green-edged violet the man
in the checked suit passed two girls. The full-lipped oval face of the
girl nearest to him; her eyes were like a knifethrust. He walked a few
paces then turned and followed them fingering his new satin necktie. He
made sure the horseshoe diamond pin was firm in its place. He passed
them again. Her face was turned away. Maybe she was.... No he couldn’t
tell. Good luck he had fifty dollars on him. He sat on a bench and
let them pass him. Wouldnt do to make a mistake and get arrested.
They didnt notice him. He followed them down the path and out of the
Park. His heart was pounding. I’d give a million dollars for ... Pray
pardon me, isn’t this Miss Anderson? The girls walked fast. In the
crowd crossing Columbus Circle he lost sight of them. He hurried down
Broadway block after block. The full lips, the eyes like the thrust of
a knife. He stared in girls’ faces right and left. Where could she have
gone? He hurried on down Broadway.
Ellen was sitting beside her father on a bench at the Battery. She was
looking at her new brown button shoes. A glint of sunlight caught on
the toes and on each of the little round buttons when she swung her
feet out from under the shadow of her dress.
“Think how it’d be,” Ed Thatcher was saying, “to go abroad on one of
those liners. Imagine crossing the great Atlantic in seven days.”
“But daddy what do people do all that time on a boat?”
“I dunno ... I suppose they walk round the deck and play cards and read
and all that sort of thing. Then they have dances.”
“Dances on a boat! I should think it’d be awful tippy.” Ellen giggled.
“On the big modern liners they do.”
“Daddy why dont we go?”
“Maybe we will some day if I can save up the money.”
“Oh daddy do hurry up an save a lot of money. Alice Vaughan’s mother an
father go to the White Mountains every summer, but next summer they’re
going abroad.”
Ed Thatcher looked out across the bay that stretched in blue sparkling
reaches into the brown haze towards the Narrows. The statue of Liberty
stood up vague as a sleepwalker among the curling smoke of tugboats and
the masts of schooners and the blunt lumbering masses of brickbarges
and sandscows. Here and there the glary sun shone out white on a sail
or on the superstructure of a steamer. Red ferryboats shuttled back and
forth.
“Daddy why arent we rich?”
“There are lots of people poorer than us Ellie.... You wouldn’t like
your daddy any better if he were rich would you?”
“Oh yes I would daddy.”
Thatcher laughed. “Well it might happen someday.... How would you like
the firm of Edward C. Thatcher and Co., Certified Accountants?”
Ellen jumped to her feet: “Oh look at that big boat.... That’s the boat
I want to go on.”
“That there’s the _Harabic_,” croaked a cockney voice beside them.
“Oh is it really?” said Thatcher.
“Indeed it is, sir; as fahne a ship as syles the sea sir,” explained
eagerly a frayed creakyvoiced man who sat on the bench beside them. A
cap with a broken patentleather visor was pulled down over a little
peaked face that exuded a faded smell of whiskey. “Yes sir, the
_Harabic_ sir.”
“Looks like a good big boat that does.”
“One of the biggest afloat sir. I syled on er many’s the tahme and on
the _Majestic_ and the _Teutonic_ too sir, fahne ships both, though a
bit light’eaded in a sea as you might say. I’ve signed as steward on
the Hinman and White Star lahnes these thirty years and now in me old
age they’ve lyed me hoff.”
“Oh well, we all have hard luck sometimes.”
“And some of us as it hall the tahme sir.... I’d be a appy man sir, if
I could get back to the old country. This arent any plyce for an old
man, it’s for the young and strong, this is.” He drew a gout-twisted
hand across the bay and pointed to the statue. “Look at er, she’s
alookin towards Hengland she is.”
“Daddy let’s go away. I dont like this man,” whispered Ellen
tremulously in her father’s ear.
“All right we’ll go and take a look at the sealions.... Good day.”
“You couldn’t fahnd me the price of a cup o coffee, could you now sir?
I’m fair foundered.” Thatcher put a dime in the grimy knobbed hand.
“But daddy, mummy said never to let people speak to you in the street
an to call a policeman if they did an to run away as fast as you could
on account of those horrible kidnappers.”
“No danger of their kidnapping me Ellie. That’s just for little girls.”
“When I grow up will I be able to talk to people on the street like
that?”
“No deary you certainly will not.”
“If I’d been a boy could I?”
“I guess you could.”
In front of the Aquarium they stopped a minute to look down the bay.
The liner with a tug puffing white smoke against either bow was abreast
of them towering above the ferryboats and harborcraft. Gulls wheeled
and screamed. The sun shone creamily on the upper decks and on the big
yellow blackcapped funnel. From the foremast a string of little flags
fluttered jauntily against the slate sky.
“And there are lots of people coming over from abroad on that boat
arent there daddy?”
“Look you can see ... the decks are black with people.”
* * * * *
Walking across Fiftythird Street from the East River Bud Korpenning
found himself standing beside a pile of coal on the sidewalk. On the
other side of the pile of coal a grayhaired woman in a flounced lace
shirtwaist with a big pink cameo poised on the curve of her high bosom
was looking at his stubbly chin and at the wrists that hung raw below
the frayed sleeves of his coat. Then he heard himself speak:
“Dont spose I could take that load of coal in back for you ma’am?” Bud
shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“That’s just what you could do,” the woman said in a cracked voice.
“That wretched coal man left it this morning and said he’d be back to
bring it in. I suppose he’s drunk like the rest of them. I wonder if I
can trust you in the house.”
“I’m from upstate ma’am,” stammered Bud.
“From where?”
“From Cooperstown.”
“Hum.... I’m from Buffalo. This is certainly the city for everyone
being from somewhere else.... Well you’re probably a burglar’s
accomplice, but I cant help it I’ve got to have that coal in.... Come
in my man, I’ll give you a shovel and a basket and if you dont drop any
in the passage or on the kitchen floor, because the scrubwoman’s just
left ... naturally the coal had to come when the floor was clean....
I’ll give you a dollar.”
When he carried in the first load she was hovering in the kitchen.
His caving hungersniff stomach made him totter lightheadedly, but he
was happy to be working instead of dragging his feet endlessly along
pavements, across streets, dodging drays and carts and streetcars.
“How is it you haven’t got a regular job my man,” she asked as he came
back breathless with the empty basket.
“I reckon it’s as I aint caught on to city ways yet. I was born an
raised on a farm.”
“And what did you want to come to this horrible city for?”
“Couldn’t stay on the farm no more.”
“It’s terrible what’s going to become of this country if all the fine
strong young men leave the farms and come into the cities.”
“Thought I could git a work as a longshoreman, ma’am, but they’re
layin’ men off down on the wharves. Mebbe I kin go to sea as a sailor
but nobody wants a green hand.... I aint et for two days now.”
“How terrible.... Why you poor man couldn’t you have gone to some
mission or something?”
When Bud had brought the last load in he found a plate of cold stew on
the corner of the kitchen table, half a loaf of stale bread and a glass
of milk that was a little sour. He ate quickly barely chewing and put
the last of the stale bread in his pocket.
“Well did you enjoy your little lunch?”
“Thankye ma’am.” He nodded with his mouth full.
“Well you can go now and thank you very much.” She put a quarter into
his hand. Bud blinked at the quarter in the palm of his hand.
“But ma’am you said you’d give me a dollar.”
“I never said any such thing. The idea.... I’ll call my husband if you
dont get out of here immediately. In fact I’ve a great mind to notify
the police as it is....”
Without a word Bud pocketed the quarter and shuffled out.
“Such ingratitude,” he heard the woman snort as he closed the door
behind him.
A cramp was tying knots in his stomach. He turned east again and walked
the long blocks to the river with his fists pressed tight in under his
ribs. At any moment he expected to throw up. If I lose it it wont do
me no good. When he got to the end of the street he lay down on the
gray rubbish slide beside the wharf. A smell of hops seeped gruelly and
sweet out of the humming brewery behind him. The light of the sunset
flamed in the windows of factories on the Long Island side, flashed in
the portholes of tugs, lay in swaths of curling yellow and orange over
the swift browngreen water, glowed on the curved sails of a schooner
that was slowly bucking the tide up into Hell Gate. Inside him the pain
was less. Something flamed and glowed like the sunset seeping through
his body. He sat up. Thank Gawd I aint agoin to lose it.
* * * * *
On deck it’s damp and shivery in the dawn. The ship’s rail is wet when
you put your hand on it. The brown harborwater smells of washbasins,
rustles gently against the steamer’s sides. Sailors are taking the
hatches off the hold. There’s a rattle of chains and a clatter from the
donkeyengine where a tall man in blue overalls stands at a lever in the
middle of a cloud of steam that wraps round your face like a wet towel.
“Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?”
Mother’s hand has grasped his firmly trailing him down the companionway
into the dining saloon. Stewards are piling up baggage at the foot of
the stairs.
“Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?”
“Yes deary I’m afraid it is.... A holiday is a dreadful time to arrive.
Still I guess they’ll all be down to meet us.”
She has her blue serge on and a long trailing brown veil and the
little brown animal with red eyes and teeth that are real teeth round
her neck. A smell of mothballs comes from it, of unpacking trunks, of
wardrobes littered with tissuepaper. It’s hot in the dining saloon,
the engines sob soothingly behind the bulkhead. His head nods over
his cup of hot milk just colored with coffee. Three bells. His head
snaps up with a start. The dishes tinkle and the coffee spills with
the trembling of the ship. Then a thud and rattle of anchorchains and
gradually quiet. Muddy gets up to look through the porthole.
“Why it’s going to be a fine day after all. I think the sun will burn
through the mist.... Think of it dear; home at last. This is where you
were born deary.”
“And it’s the Fourth of July.”
“Worst luck.... Now Jimmy you must promise me to stay on the promenade
deck and be very careful. Mother has to finish packing. Promise me you
wont get into any mischief.”
“I promise.”
He catches his toe on the brass threshold of the smokingroom door and
sprawls on deck, gets up rubbing his bare knee just in time to see the
sun break through chocolate clouds and swash a red stream of brightness
over the putty-colored water. Billy with the freckles on his ears whose
people are for Roosevelt instead of for Parker like mother is waving a
silk flag the size of a handkerchief at the men on a yellow and white
tugboat.
“Didjer see the sun rise?” he asks as if he owned it.
“You bet I saw it from my porthole,” says Jimmy walking away after a
lingering look at the silk flag. There’s land close on the other side;
nearest a green bank with trees and wide white grayroofed houses.
“Well young feller, how does it feel to be home?” asks the tweedy
gentleman with droopy mustaches.
“Is that way New York?” Jimmy points out over the still water
broadening in the sunlight.
“Yessiree-bobby, behind yonder bank of fog lies Manhattan.”
“Please sir what’s that?”
“That’s New York.... You see New York is on Manhattan Island.”
“Is it really on an island?”
“Well what do you think of a boy who dont know that his own home town
is on an island?”
The tweedy gentleman’s gold teeth glitter as he laughs with his mouth
wide open. Jimmy walks on round the deck, kicking his heels, all foamy
inside; New York’s on an island.
“You look right glad to get home little boy,” says the Southern lady.
“Oh I am, I could fall down and kiss the ground.”
“Well that’s a fine patriotic sentiment.... I’m glad to hear you say
it.”
Jimmy scalds all over. Kiss the ground, kiss the ground, echoes in his
head like a catcall. Round the deck.
“That with the yellow flag’s the quarantine boat.” A stout man with
rings on his fingers--he’s a Jew--is talking to the tweedy man. “Ha
we’re under way again.... That was quick, what?”
“We’ll be in for breakfast, an American breakfast, a good old home
breakfast.”
Muddy coming down the deck, her brown veil floating. “Here’s your
overcoat Jimmy, you’ve got to carry it.”
“Muddy, can I get out that flag?”
“What flag?”
“The silk American flag.”
“No dear it’s all put away.”
“Please I’d so like to have that flag cause it’s the Fourth of July an
everything.”
“Now dont whine Jimmy. When mother says no she means no.”
Sting of tears; he swallows a lump and looks up in her eyes.
“Jimmy it’s put away in the shawlstrap and mother’s so tired of fussing
with those wretched bags.”
“But Billy Jones has one.”
“Look deary you’re missing things.... There’s the statue of Liberty.”
A tall green woman in a dressing gown standing on an island holding up
her hand.
“What’s that in her hand?”
“That’s a light, dear ... Liberty enlightening the world.... And
there’s Governors Island the other side. There where the trees are ...
and see, that’s Brooklyn Bridge.... That is a fine sight. And look
at all the docks ... that’s the Battery ... and the masts and the
ships ... and there’s the spire of Trinity Church and the Pulitzer
building.” ... Mooing of steamboat whistles, ferries red and waddly like
ducks churning up white water, a whole train of cars on a barge pushed
by a tug chugging beside it that lets out cotton steampuffs all the
same size. Jimmy’s hands are cold and he’s chugging and chugging inside.
“Dear you mustn’t get too excited. Come on down and see if mother left
anything in the stateroom.”
Streak of water crusted with splinters, groceryboxes, orangepeel,
cabbageleaves, narrowing, narrowing between the boat and the dock. A
brass band shining in the sun, white caps, sweaty red faces, playing
Yankee Doodle. “That’s for the ambassador, you know the tall man who
never left his cabin.” Down the slanting gangplank, careful not to
trip. _Yankee Doodle went to town._... Shiny black face, white enameled
eyes, white enameled teeth. “Yas ma’am, yas ma’am” ... _Stucka feather
in his hat, an called it macaroni._.... “We have the freedom of the
port.” Blue custom officer shows a bald head bowing low ... _Tumte
boomboom_ BOOM BOOM BOOM ... _cakes and sugar candy_....
“Here’s Aunt Emily and everybody.... Dear how sweet of you to come.”
“My dear I’ve been here since six o’clock!”
“My how he’s grown.”
Light dresses, sparkle of brooches, faces poked into Jimmy’s, smell of
roses and uncle’s cigar.
“Why he’s quite a little man. Come here sir, let me look at you.”
“Well goodby Mrs. Herf. If you ever come down our way.... Jimmy I
didn’t see you kiss the ground young man.”
“Oh he’s killing, he’s so oldfashioned ... such an oldfashioned child.”
The cab smells musty, goes rumbling and lurching up a wide avenue
swirling with dust, through brick streets soursmelling full of grimy
yelling children, and all the while the trunks creak and thump on top.
“Muddy dear, you dont think it’ll break through do you?”
“No dear,” she laughs tilting her head to one side. She has pink cheeks
and her eyes sparkle under the brown veil.
“Oh muddy.” He stands up and kisses her on the chin. “What lots of
people muddy.”
“That’s on account of the Fourth of July.”
“What’s that man doing?”
“He’s been drinking dear I’m afraid.”
From a little stand draped with flags a man with white whiskers with
little red garters on his shirtsleeves is making a speech. “That’s a
Fourth of July orator.... He’s reading the Declaration of Independence.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the Fourth of July.”
Crang! ... that’s a cannon-cracker. “That wretched boy might have
frightened the horse.... The Fourth of July dear is the day the
Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 in the War of the
Revolution. My great grandfather Harland was killed in that war.”
A funny little train with a green engine clatters overhead.
“That’s the Elevated ... and look this is Twentythird Street ... and
the Flatiron Building.”
The cab turns sharp into a square glowering with sunlight, smelling of
asphalt and crowds and draws up before a tall door where colored men in
brass buttons run forward.
“And here we are at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.”
Icecream at Uncle Jeff’s, cold sweet peachy taste thick against the
roof of the mouth. Funny after you’ve left the ship you can still
feel the motion. Blue chunks of dusk melting into the squarecut
uptown streets. Rockets spurting bright in the blue dusk, colored
balls falling, Bengal fire, Uncle Jeff tacking pinwheels on the tree
outside the apartmenthouse door, lighting them with his cigar. Roman
candles you have to hold. “Be sure and turn your face away, kiddo.”
Hot thud and splutter in your hands, eggshaped balls soaring, red,
yellow, green, smell of powder and singed paper. Down the fizzing
glowing street a bell clangs, clangs nearer, clangs faster. Hoofs
of lashed horses striking sparks, a fire engine roars by, round the
corner red and smoking and brassy. “Must be on Broadway.” After it
the hookandladder and the firechief’s highpacing horses. Then the
tinkletinkle of an ambulance. “Somebody got his.”
The box is empty, gritty powder and sawdust get under your nails when
you feel along it, it’s empty, no there are still some little wooden
fire engines on wheels. Really truly fire engines. “We must set these
off Uncle Jeff. Oh these are the best of all Uncle Jeff.” They have
squibs in them and go sizzling off fast over the smooth asphalt of the
street, pushed by sparkling plumed fiery tails, leaving smoke behind
some real fire engines.
Tucked into bed in a tall unfriendly room, with hot eyes and aching
legs. “Growing pains darling,” muddy said when she tucked him in,
leaning over him in a glimmering silk dress with drooping sleeves.
“Muddy what’s that little black patch on your face?”
“That,” she laughed and her necklace made a tiny tinkling, “is to make
mother look prettier.”
He lay there hemmed by tall nudging wardrobes and dressers. From
outside came the sound of wheels and shouting, and once in a while a
band of music in the distance. His legs ached as if they’d fall off,
and when he closed his eyes he was speeding through flaring blackness
on a red fire engine that shot fire and sparks and colored balls out of
its sizzling tail.
The July sun pricked out the holes in the worn shades on the office
windows. Gus McNiel sat in the morrischair with his crutches between
his knees. His face was white and puffy from months in hospital. Nellie
in a straw hat with red poppies rocked herself to and fro in the swivel
chair at the desk.
“Better come an set by me Nellie. That lawyer might not like it if he
found yez at his desk.”
She wrinkled up her nose and got to her feet. “Gus I declare you’re
scared to death.”
“You’d be scared too if you’d had what I’d had wid de railroad doctor
pokin me and alookin at me loike I was a jailbird and the Jew doctor
the lawyer got tellin me as I was totally in-cap-aciated. Gorry I’m all
in. I think he was lyin though.”
“Gus you do as I tell ye. Keep yer mouth shut an let the other guys do
the talkin’.”
“Sure I wont let a peep outa me.”
Nellie stood behind his chair and began stroking the crisp hair back
from his forehead.
“It’ll be great to be home again, Nellie, wid your cookin an all.” He
put an arm round her waist and drew her to him.
“Juss think, maybe I wont have to do any.”
“I don’t think I’d loike that so well.... Gosh if we dont git that
money I dunno how we’ll make out.”
“Oh pop’ll help us like he’s been doin.”
“Hope to the Lord I aint goin to be sick all me loife.”
George Baldwin came in slamming the glass door behind him. He stood
looking at the man and his wife a second with his hands in his pockets.
Then he said quietly smiling:
“Well it’s done people. As soon as the waiver of any further claims
is signed the railroad’s attorneys will hand me a check for twelve
thousand five hundred. That’s what we finally compromised on.”
“Twelve thousand iron men,” gasped Gus. “Twelve thousand five hundred.
Say wait a second.... Hold me crutches while I go out an git run over
again.... Wait till I tell McGillycuddy about it. The ole divil’ll be
throwin hisself in front of a market train.... Well Mr. Baldwin sir,”
Gus propped himself onto his feet.... “you’re a great man.... Aint he
Nellie?”
“To be sure he is.”
Baldwin tried to keep from looking her in the eye. Spurts of jangling
agitation were going through him, making his legs feel weak and trembly.