locomotive. The smoke rolled out of the stack in huge bronze and lilac
coils. Down the track a red light snapped green. The bell started to
ring slowly, lazily. Forced draft snorting loud the train clankingly
moved, gathered speed, slid into dusk swinging a red taillight.
“Gee I wish we lived here,” said Jimmy. “I’ve got two hundred and
seventytwo pictures of locomotives, I’ll show em to you sometime if you
like. I collect em.”
“What a funny thing to collect.... Look Jimmy you pull the shade down
and I’ll light the light.”
When Maisie pushed the switch they saw James Merivale standing in the
door. He had light wiry hair and a freckled face with a pugnose like
Maisie’s. He had on riding breeches and black leather gaiters and was
flicking a long peeled stick about.
“Hullo Jimmy,” he said. “Welcome to our city.”
“Say James,” cried Maisie, “Jimmy doesn’t know what jackstones are.”
Aunt Emily appeared through the blue velvet curtains. She wore a
highnecked green silk blouse with lace on it. Her white hair rose in a
smooth curve from her forehead. “It’s time you children were washing
up,” she said, “dinner’s in five minutes.... James take your cousin
back to your room and hurry up and take off those ridingclothes.”
Everybody was already seated when Jimmy followed his cousin into the
diningroom. Knives and forks tinkled discreetly in the light of six
candles in red and silver shades. At the end of the table sat Aunt
Emily, next to her a rednecked man with no back to his head, and at the
other end Uncle Jeff with a pearl pin in his checked necktie filled
a broad armchair. The colored maid hovered about the fringe of light
passing toasted crackers. Jimmy ate his soup stiffly, afraid of making
a noise. Uncle Jeff was talking in a booming voice between spoonfuls of
soup.
“No I tell you, Wilkinson, New York is no longer what it used to be
when Emily and I first moved up here about the time the Ark landed....
City’s overrun with kikes and low Irish, that’s what’s the matter with
it.... In ten years a Christian wont be able to make a living.... I
tell you the Catholics and the Jews are going to run us out of our own
country, that’s what they are going to do.”
“It’s the New Jerusalem,” put in Aunt Emily laughing.
“It’s no laughing matter; when a man’s worked hard all his life to
build up a business and that sort of thing he dont want to be run out
by a lot of damn foreigners, does he Wilkinson?”
“Jeff you are getting all excited. You know it gives you
indigestion....”
“I’ll keep cool, mother.”
“The trouble with the people of this country is this, Mr. Merivale” ...
Mr. Wilkinson frowned ponderously. “The people of this country are too
tolerant. There’s no other country in the world where they’d allow
it.... After all we built up this country and then we allow a lot of
foreigners, the scum of Europe, the offscourings of Polish ghettos to
come and run it for us.”
“The fact of the matter is that an honest man wont soil his hands with
politics, and he’s given no inducement to take public office.”
“That’s true, a live man, nowadays, wants more money, needs more money
than he can make honestly in public life.... Naturally the best men
turn to other channels.”
“And add to that the ignorance of these dirty kikes and shanty Irish
that we make voters before they can even talk English ...” began Uncle
Jeff.
The maid set a highpiled dish of fried chicken edged by corn fritters
before Aunt Emily. Talk lapsed while everyone was helped. “Oh I forgot
to tell you Jeff,” said Aunt Emily, “we’re to go up to Scarsdale
Sunday.”
“Oh mother I hate going out Sundays.”
“He’s a perfect baby about staying home.”
“But Sunday’s the only day I get at home.”
“Well it was this way: I was having tea with the Harland girls
at Maillard’s and who should sit down at the next table but Mrs.
Burkhart ...”
“Is that Mrs. John B. Burkhart? Isn’t he one of the vicepresidents of
the National City Bank?”
“John’s a fine feller and a coming man downtown.”
“Well as I was saying dear, Mrs. Burkhart said we just had to come up
and spend Sunday with them and I just couldn’t refuse.”
“My father,” continued Mr. Wilkinson, “used to be old Johannes
Burkhart’s physician. The old man was a cranky old bird, he’d made his
pile in the fur trade way back in Colonel Astor’s day. He had the
gout and used to swear something terrible.... I remember seeing him
once, a redfaced old man with long white hair and a silk skullcap over
his baldspot. He had a parrot named Tobias and people going along the
street never knew whether it was Tobias or Judge Burkhart cussing.”
“Ah well, times have changed,” said Aunt Emily.
Jimmy sat in his chair with pins and needles in his legs. Mother’s
had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school. Friday, Saturday,
Sunday, Monday.... He and Skinny coming back from playing with the
hoptoads down by the pond, in their blue suits because it was Sunday
afternoon. Smokebushes were in bloom behind the barn. A lot of fellows
teasing little Harris, calling him Iky because he was supposed to be
a Jew. His voice rose in a singsong whine; “Cut it fellers, cant you
fellers. I’ve got my best suit on fellers.”
“Oy Oy Meester Solomon Levy with his best Yiddisher garments all marked
down,” piped jeering voices. “Did you buy it in a five and ten Iky?”
“I bet he got it at a firesale.”
“If he got it at a firesale we ought to turn the hose on him.”
“Let’s turn the hose on Solomon Levy.”
“Oh stop it fellers.”
“Shut up; dont yell so loud.”
“They’re juss kiddin, they wont hurt him,” whispered Skinny.
Iky was carried kicking and bawling down towards the pond, his white
tearwet face upside down. “He’s not a Jew at all,” said Skinny. “But
I’ll tell you who is a Jew, that big bully Fat Swanson.”
“Howjer know?”
“His roommate told me.”
“Gee whiz they’re going to do it.”
They ran in all directions. Little Harris with his hair full of mud was
crawling up the bank, water running out of his coatsleeves.
There was hot chocolate sauce with the icecream. “An Irishman and a
Scotchman were walking down the street and the Irishman said to the
Scotchman; Sandy let’s have a drink....” A prolonged ringing at the
front door bell was making them inattentive to Uncle Jeff’s story. The
colored maid flurried back into the diningroom and began whispering in
Aunt Emily’s ear. “... And the Scotchman said, Mike ... Why what’s the
matter?”
“It’s Mr. Joe sir.”
“The hell it is.”
“Well maybe he’s all right,” said Aunt Emily hastily.
“A bit whipsey, ma’am.”
“Sarah why the dickens did you let him in?”
“I didnt let him, he juss came.”
Uncle Jeff pushed his plate away and slapped down his napkin. “Oh hell
... I’ll go talk to him.”
“Try and make him go ...” Aunt Emily had begun; she stopped with her
mouth partly open. A head was stuck through the curtains that hung in
the wide doorway to the livingroom. It had a birdlike face, with a
thin drooping nose, topped by a mass of straight black hair like an
Indian’s. One of the redrimmed eyes winked quietly.
“Hullo everybody!... How’s every lil thing? Mind if I butt in?” His
voice perked hoarsely as a tall skinny body followed the head through
the curtains. Aunt Emily’s mouth arranged itself in a frosty smile.
“Why Emily you must ... er ... excuse me; I felt an evening ... er
... round the family hearth ... er ... would be ... er ... er ...
beneficial. You understand, the refining influence of the home.” He
stood jiggling his head behind Uncle Jeff’s chair. “Well Jefferson ole
boy, how’s the market?” He brought a hand down on Uncle Jeff’s shoulder.
“Oh all right. Want to sit down?” he growled.
“They tell me ... if you’ll take a tip from an old timer ... er ... a
retired broker ... broker and broker every day ... ha-ha.... But they
tell me that Interborough Rapid Transit’s worth trying a snifter of....
Doan look at me crosseyed like that Emily. I’m going right away....
Why howdedo Mr. Wilkinson.... Kids are looking well. Well I’ll be if
that isn’t Lily Herf’s lil boy.... Jimmy you dont remember your ... er
... cousin, Joe Harland do you? Nobody remembers Joe Harland.... Except
you Emily and you wish you could forget him ... ha-ha.... How’s your
mother Jimmy?”
“A little better thank you,” Jimmy forced the words out through a tight
throat.
“Well when you go home you give her my love ... she’ll understand.
Lily and I have always been good friends even if I am the family
skeleton.... They dont like me, they wish I’d go away.... I’ll tell you
what boy, Lily’s the best of the lot. Isn’t she Emily, isn’t she the
best of the lot of us?”
Aunt Emily cleared her throat. “Sure she is, the best looking, the
cleverest, the realest.... Jimmy your mother’s an emperess.... Aways
been too fine for all this. By gorry I’d like to drink her health.”
“Joe you might moderate your voice a little;” Aunt Emily clicked out
the words like a typewriter.
“Aw you all think I’m drunk.... Remember this Jimmy” ... he leaned
across the table, stroked Jimmy’s face with his grainy whisky breath
... “these things aren’t always a man’s fault ... circumstances ...
er ... circumstances.” He upset a glass staggering to his feet. “If
Emily insists on looking at me crosseyed I’m goin out.... But remember
give Lily Herf Joe Harland’s love even if he has gone to the demnition
bowbows.” He lurched out through the curtains again.
“Jeff I know he’ll upset the Sèvres vase.... See that he gets out all
right and get him a cab.” James and Maisie burst into shrill giggles
from behind their napkins. Uncle Jeff was purple.
“I’ll be damned to hell if I put him in a cab. He’s not my cousin....
He ought to be locked up. And next time you see him you can tell him
this from me, Emily: if he ever comes here in that disgusting condition
again I’ll throw him out.”
“Jefferson dear, it’s no use getting angry.... There’s no harm done.
He’s gone.”
“No harm done! Think of our children. Suppose there’d been a stranger
here instead of Wilkinson. What would he have thought of our home?”
“Dont worry about that,” croaked Mr. Wilkinson, “accidents will happen
in the best regulated families.”
“Poor Joe’s such a sweet boy when he’s himself,” said Aunt Emily. “And
think that it looked for a while years ago as if Harland held the whole
Curb Market in the palm of his hand. The papers called him the King
of the Curb, dont you remember?” “That was before the Lottie Smithers
affair....”
“Well suppose you children go and play in the other room while we have
our coffee,” chirped Aunt Emily. “Yes, they ought to have gone long
ago.”
“Can you play Five Hundred, Jimmy?” asked Maisie.
“No I cant.”
“What do you think of that James, he cant play jacks and he cant play
Five Hundred.”
“Well they’re both girl’s games,” said James loftily. “I wouldn’t play
em either xept on account of you.”
“Oh wouldn’t you, Mr. Smarty.”
“Let’s play animal grabs.”
“But there aren’t enough of us for that. It’s no fun without a crowd.”
“An last time you got the giggles so bad mother made us stop.”
“Mother made us stop because you kicked little Billy Schmutz in the
funnybone an made him cry.”
“Spose we go down an look at the trains,” put in Jimmy.
“We’re not allowed to go down stairs after dark,” said Maisie severely.
“I’ll tell you what lets play stock exchange.... I’ve got a million
dollars in bonds to sell and Maisie can be the bulls an Jimmy can be
the bears.”
“All right, what do we do?”
“Oh juss run round an yell mostly.... I’m selling short.”
“All right Mr. Broker I’ll buy em all at five cents each.”
“No you cant say that.... You say ninetysix and a half or something
like that.”
“I’ll give you five million for them,” cried Maisie waving the blotter
of the writing desk.
“But you fool, they’re only worth one million,” shouted Jimmy.
Maisie stood still in her tracks. “Jimmy what did you say then?” Jimmy
felt shame flame up through him; he looked at his stubby shoes. “I
said, you fool.”
“Haven’t you ever been to Sunday school? Don’t you know that God says
in the Bible that if you call anybody Thou fool you’ll be in danger of
hellfire?”
Jimmy didn’t dare raise his eyes.
“Well I’m not going to play any more,” said Maisie drawing herself
up. Jimmy somehow found himself out in the hall. He grabbed his hat
and ran out the door and down the six flights of white stone stairs
past the brass buttons and chocolate livery of the elevator boy, out
through the hall that had pink marble pillars in to Seventysecond
Street. It was dark and blowy, full of ponderous advancing shadows and
chasing footsteps. At last he was climbing the familiar crimson stairs
of the hotel. He hurried past his mother’s door. They’d ask him why
he had come home so soon. He burst into his own room, shot the bolt,
doublelocked the door and stood leaning against it panting.
* * * * *
“Well are you married yet?” was the first thing Congo asked when Emile
opened the door to him. Emile was in his undershirt. The shoebox-shaped
room was stuffy, lit and heated by a gas crown with a tin cap on it.
“Where are you in from this time?”
“Bizerta and Trondjeb.... I’m an able seaman.”
“That’s a rotten job, going to sea.... I’ve saved two hundred dollars.
I’m working at Delmonico’s.”
They sat down side by side on the unmade bed. Congo produced a package
of gold tipped Egyptian Deities. “Four months’ pay”; he slapped his
thigh. “Seen May Sweitzer?” Emile shook his head. “I’ll have to find
the little son of a gun.... In those goddam Scandinavian ports they
come out in boats, big fat blond women in bumboats....”
They were silent. The gas hummed. Congo let his breath out in a
whistle. “Whee ... C’est chic ça, Delmonico ... Why havent you married
her?”
“She likes to have me hang around.... I’d run the store better than she
does.”
“You’re too easy; got to use rough stuff with women to get anything
outa them.... Make her jealous.”
“She’s got me going.”
“Want to see some postalcards?” Congo pulled a package, wrapped in
newspaper out of his pocket. “Look these are Naples; everybody there
wants to come to New York.... That’s an Arab dancing girl. Nom d’une
vache they got slippery bellybuttons....”
“Say, I know what I’ll do,” cried Emile suddenly dropping the cards on
the bed. “I’ll make her jealous....”
“Who?”
“Ernestine ... Madame Rigaud....”
“Sure walk up an down Eighth Avenue with a girl a couple of times an I
bet she’ll fall like a ton of bricks.”
The alarmclock went off on the chair beside the bed. Emile jumped up to
stop it and began splashing water on his face in the washbasin.
“Merde I got to go to work.”
“I’ll go over to Hell’s Kitchen an see if I can find May.”
“Don’t be a fool an spend all your money,” said Emile who stood at the
cracked mirror with his face screwed up, fastening the buttons in the
front of a clean boiled shirt.
* * * * *
“It’s a sure thing I’m tellin yer,” said the man again and again,
bringing his face close to Ed Thatcher’s face and rapping the desk with
his flat hand.
“Maybe it is Viler but I seen so many of em go under, honest I dont see
how I can risk it.”
“Man I’ve hocked the misses’s silver teaset and my diamond ring an the
baby’s mug.... It’s a sure sure thing.... I wouldn’t let you in on
it, xept you an me’s been pretty good friends an I owe you money an
everythin.... You’ll make twentyfive percent on your money by tomorrow
noon.... Then if you want to hold you can on a gamble, but if you sell
three quarters and hold the rest two or three days on a chance you’re
safe as ... as the Rock of Gibraltar.”
“I know Viler, it certainly sounds good....”
“Hell man you dont want to be in this damned office all your life, do
you? Think of your little girl.”
“I am, that’s the trouble.”
“But Ed, Gibbons and Swandike had started buying already at three cents
when the market closed this evening.... Klein got wise an’ll be right
there with bells on first thing in the morning. The market’ll go crazy
on it....”
“Unless the fellers doin the dirty work change their minds. I know
that stuff through and through, Viler.... Sounds like a topnotch
proposition.... But I’ve examined the books of too many bankrupts.”
Viler got to his feet and threw his cigar into the cuspidor. “Well
do as you like, damn it all.... I guess you must like commuting from
Hackensack an working twelve hours a day....”
“I believe in workin my way up, that’s all.”
“What’s the use of a few thousands salted away when you’re old and cant
get any satisfaction? Man I’m goin in with both feet.”
“Go to it Viler.... You tellem,” muttered Thatcher as the other man
stamped out slamming the office door.
The big office with its series of yellow desks and hooded typewriters
was dark except for the tent of light in which Thatcher sat at a desk
piled with ledgers. The three windows at the end were not curtained.
Through them he could see the steep bulk of buildings scaled with
lights and a plankshaped bit of inky sky. He was copying memoranda on
a long sheet of legal cap.
FanTan Import and Export Company (statement of assets and liabilities
up to and including February 29) ... Branches New York, Shanghai,
Hongkong and Straights Settlements....
Balance carried over $345,789.84
Real Estate 500,087.12
Profit and Loss 399,765.90
“A bunch of goddam crooks,” growled Thatcher out loud. “Not an item
on the whole thing that aint faked. I dont believe they’ve got any
branches in Hongkong or anywhere....”
He leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window. The buildings
were going dark. He could just make out a star in the patch of sky.
Ought to go out an eat, bum for the digestion to eat irregularly like
I do. Suppose I’d taken a plunge on Viler’s red hot tip. Ellen, how
do you like these American Beauty roses? They have stems eight feet
long, and I want you to look over the itinerary of the trip abroad I’ve
mapped out to finish your education. Yes it will be a shame to leave
our fine new apartment looking out over Central Park.... And downtown;
The Fiduciary Accounting Institute, Edward C. Thatcher, President....
Blobs of steam were drifting up across the patch of sky, hiding the
star. Take a plunge, take a plunge ... they’re all crooks and gamblers
anyway ... take a plunge and come up with your hands full, pockets
full, bankaccount full, vaults full of money. If I only dared take the
risk. Fool to waste your time fuming about it. Get back to the FanTan
Import. Steam faintly ruddy with light reflected from the streets
swarmed swiftly up across the patch of sky, twisting scattering.
Goods on hand in U. S. bonded warehouses ... $325,666.00
Take a plunge and come up with three hundred and twentyfive thousand,
six hundred and sixtysix dollars. Dollars swarming up like steam,
twisting scattering against the stars. Millionaire Thatcher leaned
out of the window of the bright patchouliscented room to look at
the dark-jutting city steaming with laughter, voices, tinkling and
lights; behind him orchestras played among the azaleas, private wires
click click clickclicked dollars from Singapore, Valparaiso, Mukden,
Hongkong, Chicago. Susie leaned over him in a dress made of orchids,
breathed in his ear.
Ed Thatcher got to his feet with clenched fists sniveling; You poor
fool whats the use now she’s gone. I’d better go eat or Ellen’ll scold
me.
V. Steamroller
_Dusk gently smooths crispangled streets. Dark presses
tight the steaming asphalt city, crushes the fretwork of
windows and lettered signs and chimneys and watertanks and
ventilators and fireescapes and moldings and patterns and
corrugations and eyes and hands and neckties into blue
chunks, into black enormous blocks. Under the rolling
heavier heavier pressure windows blurt light. Night crushes
bright milk out of arclights, squeezes the sullen blocks
until they drip red, yellow, green into streets resounding
with feet. All the asphalt oozes light. Light spurts from
lettering on roofs, mills dizzily among wheels, stains
rolling tons of sky._
A steamroller was clattering back and forth over the freshly tarred
metaling of the road at the cemetery gate. A smell of scorched grease
and steam and hot paint came from it. Jimmy Herf picked his way along
the edge of the road; the stones were sharp against his feet through
the worn soles of his shoes. He brushed past swarthy-necked workmen
and walked on over the new road with a whiff of garlic and sweat
from them in his nostrils. After a hundred yards he stopped over the
gray suburban road, laced tight on both sides with telegraph poles
and wires, over the gray paperbox houses and the gray jagged lots of
monumentmakers, the sky was the color of a robin’s egg. Little worms of
May were writhing in his blood. He yanked off his black necktie and put
it in his pocket. A tune was grinding crazily through his head:
I’m so tired of vi-olets
Take them all away.
There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another
glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
So also is the resurrection of the dead.... He walked on fast splashing
through puddles full of sky, trying to shake the droning welloiled
words out of his ears, to get the feeling of black crêpe off his
fingers, to forget the smell of lilies.
I’m so tired of vi-olets
Take them all away.
He walked faster. The road climbed a hill. There was a bright runnel of
water in the ditch, flowing through patches of grass and dandelions.
There were fewer houses; on the sides of barns peeling letters spelled
out LYDIA PINKHAM’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND, BUDWEISER, RED HEN, BARKING
DOG.... And muddy had had a stroke and now she was buried. He couldn’t
think how she used to look; she was dead that was all. From a fencepost
came the moist whistling of a songsparrow. The minute rusty bird flew
ahead, perched on a telegraph wire and sang, and flew ahead to the
rim of an abandoned boiler and sang, and flew ahead and sang. The sky
was getting a darker blue, filling with flaked motherofpearl clouds.
For a last moment he felt the rustle of silk beside him, felt a hand
in a trailing lacefrilled sleeve close gently over his hand. Lying in
his crib with his feet pulled up cold under the menace of the shaggy
crouching shadows; and the shadows scuttled melting into corners when
she leaned over him with curls round her forehead, in silkpuffed
sleeves, with a tiny black patch at the corner of the mouth that kissed
his mouth. He walked faster. The blood flowed full and hot in his
veins. The flaked clouds were melting into rosecolored foam. He could
hear his steps on the worn macadam. At a crossroad the sun glinted
on the sticky pointed buds of a beechsapling. Opposite a sign read
YONKERS. In the middle of the road teetered a dented tomatocan. Kicking
it hard in front of him he walked on. One glory of the sun and another
glory of the moon and another glory of the stars.... He walked on.
“Hullo Emile!” Emile nodded without turning his head. The girl ran
after him and grabbed his coatsleeve. “That’s the way you treat
your old friends is it? Now that you’re keepin company with that
delicatessen queen ...”
Emile yanked his hand away. “I am in a ’urree zat’s all.”
“How’d ye like it if I went an told her how you an me framed it up to
stand in front of the window on Eighth Avenue huggin an kissin juss to
make her fall for yez.”
“Zat was Congo’s idea.”
“Well didn’t it woik?”
“Sure.”
“Well aint there sumpen due me?”
“May you’re a veree nice leetle girl. Next week my night off is
Wednesday.... I’ll come by an take you to a show.... ’Ow’s ’ustlin?”
“Worse’n hell.... I’m tryin out for a dancin job up at the Campus....
That’s where you meet guys wid jack.... No more of dese sailor boys and
shorefront stiffs.... I’m gettin respectable.”
“May ’ave you ’eard from Congo?”
“Got a postalcard from some goddam place I couldn’t read the name
of.... Aint it funny when you write for money an all ye git ’s a postal
ca-ard.... That’s the kid gits me for the askin any night.... An he’s
the only one, savvy, Frogslegs?”
“Goodby May.” He suddenly pushed the straw bonnet trimmed with
forgetmenots back on her head and kissed her.
“Hey quit dat Frogslegs ... Eighth Avenue aint no place to kiss a
girl,” she whined pushing a yellow curl back under her hat. “I could
git you run in an I’ve half a mind to.”
Emile walked off.