the street with clattering roar. Three blocks down smoke and an
occasional gasp of flame came from the roof of a house. A crowd was
jammed up against the policelines. Beyond backs and serried hats Emile
caught a glimpse of firemen on the roof of the next house and of three
silently glittering streams of water playing into the upper windows.
Must be right opposite the delicatessen. He was making his way through
the jam on the sidewalk when the crowd suddenly opened. Two policemen
were dragging out a negro whose arms snapped back and forth like broken
cables. A third cop came behind cracking the negro first on one side of
the head, then on the other with his billy.
“It’s a shine ’at set the fire.”
“They caught the firebug.”
“’At’s ’e incendiary.”
“God he’s a meanlookin smoke.”
The crowd closed in. Emile was standing beside Madame Rigaud in front
of the door of her store.
“Cheri que ça me fait une emotiong.... J’ai horriblemong peu du feu.”
Emile was standing a little behind her. He let one arm crawl slowly
round her waist and patted her arm with his other hand, “Everyting
awright. Look no more fire, only smoke.... But you are insured, aint
you?”
“Oh yes for fifteen tousand.” He squeezed her hand and then took his
arms away. “Viens ma petite on va rentrer.”
Once inside the shop he took both her plump hands. “Ernestine when we
get married?”
“Next month.”
“I no wait zat long, imposseeble.... Why not next Wednesday? Then I
can help you make inventory of stock.... I tink maybe we can sell this
place and move uptown, make bigger money.”
She patted him on the cheek. “P’tit ambitieux,” she said through her
hollow inside laugh that made her shoulders and her big bust shake.
* * * * *
They had to change at Manhattan Transfer. The thumb of Ellen’s new kid
glove had split and she kept rubbing it nervously with her forefinger.
John wore a belted raincoat and a pinkishgray felt hat. When he turned
to her and smiled she couldn’t help pulling her eyes away and staring
out at the long rain that shimmered over the tracks.
“Here we are Elaine dear. Oh prince’s daughter, you see we get the
train that comes from the Penn station.... It’s funny this waiting in
the wilds of New Jersey this way.” They got into the parlorcar. John
made a little clucking sound in his mouth at the raindrops that made
dark dimes on his pale hat. “Well we’re off, little girl.... Behold
thou art fair my love, thou art fair, thou hast dove’s eyes within thy
locks.”
Ellen’s new tailored suit was tight at the elbows. She wanted to feel
very gay and listen to his purring whisper in her ears, but something
had set her face in a tight frown; she could only look out at the
brown marshes and the million black windows of factories and the
puddly streets of towns and a rusty steamboat in a canal and barns
and Bull Durham signs and roundfaced Spearmint gnomes all barred and
crisscrossed with bright flaws of rain. The jeweled stripes on the
window ran straight down when the train stopped and got more and more
oblique as it speeded up. The wheels rumbled in her head, saying
Man-hattan Tran-sfer. Man-hattan Tran-sfer. Anyway it was a long time
before Atlantic City. By the time we get to Atlantic City ... _Oh it
rained forty days_ ... I’ll be feeling gay.... _And it rained forty
nights._... I’ve got to be feeling gay.
“Elaine Thatcher Oglethorpe, that’s a very fine name, isn’t it,
darling? Oh stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples for I am sick
of love....”
It was so comfortable in the empty parlorcar in the green velvet
chair with John leaning towards her reciting nonsense with the brown
marshlands slipping by behind the rainstriped window and a smell like
clams seeping into the car. She looked into his face and laughed. A
blush ran all over his face to the roots of his redblond hair. He put
his hand in its yellow glove over her hand in its white glove. “You’re
my wife now Elaine.”
“You’re my husband now John.” And laughing they looked at each other in
the coziness of the empty parlorcar.
White letters, ATLANTIC CITY, spelled doom over the rainpitted water.
Rain lashed down the glaring boardwalk and crashed in gusts against the
window like water thrown out of a bucket. Beyond the rain she could
hear the intermittent rumble of the surf along the beach between the
illuminated piers. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling. Beside
her in the big bed John lay asleep breathing quietly like a child with
a pillow doubled up under his head. She was icy cold. She slid out of
bed very carefully not to wake him, and stood looking out the window
down the very long V of lights of the boardwalk. She pushed up the
window. The rain lashed in her face spitefully stinging her flesh,
wetting her nightdress. She pushed her forehead against the frame. Oh
I want to die. I want to die. All the tight coldness of her body was
clenching in her stomach. Oh I’m going to be sick. She went into the
bathroom and closed the door. When she had vomited she felt better.
Then she climbed into bed again careful not to touch John. If she
touched him she would die. She lay on her back with her hands tight
against her sides and her feet together. The parlorcar rumbled cozily
in her head; she fell asleep.
Wind rattling the windowframes wakened her. John was far away, the
other side of the big bed. With the wind and the rain streaming in
the window it was as if the room and the big bed and everything were
moving, running forward like an airship over the sea. _Oh it rained
forty days._... Through a crack in the cold stiffness the little tune
trickled warm as blood.... _And it rained forty nights._ Gingerly she
drew a hand over her husband’s hair. He screwed his face up in his
sleep and whined “Dont” in a littleboy’s voice that made her giggle.
She lay giggling on the far edge of the bed, giggling desperately as
she used to with girls at school. And the rain lashed through the
window and the song grew louder until it was a brass band in her ears:
Oh it rained forty days
And it rained forty nights
And it didn’t stop till Christmas
And the only man that survived the flood
Was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus.
* * * * *
Jimmy Herf sits opposite Uncle Jeff. Each has before him on a blue
plate a chop, a baked potato, a little mound of peas and a sprig of
parsely.
“Well look about you Jimmy,” says Uncle Jeff. Bright topstory light
brims the walnutpaneled diningroom, glints twistedly on silver knives
and forks, gold teeth, watch-chains, scarfpins, is swallowed up in the
darkness of broadcloth and tweed, shines roundly on polished plates and
bald heads and covers of dishes. “Well what do you think of it?” asks
Uncle Jeff burying his thumbs in the pockets of his fuzzy buff vest.
“It’s a fine club all right,” says Jimmy.
“The wealthiest and the most successful men in the country eat lunch up
here. Look at the round table in the corner. That’s the Gausenheimers’
table. Just to the left.” ... Uncle Jeff leans forward lowering his
voice, “the man with the powerful jaw is J. Wilder Laporte.” Jimmy cuts
into his muttonchop without answering. “Well Jimmy, you probably know
why I brought you down here ... I want to talk to you. Now that your
poor mother has ... has been taken, Emily and I are your guardians in
the eyes of the law and the executors of poor Lily’s will.... I want to
explain to you just how things stand.” Jimmy puts down his knife and
fork and sits staring at his uncle, clutching the arms of his chair
with cold hands, watching the jowl move blue and heavy above the ruby
stickpin in the wide satin cravat. “You are sixteen now aren’t you
Jimmy?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well it’s this way.... When your mother’s estate is all settled up
you’ll find yourself in the possession of approximately fiftyfive
hundred dollars. Luckily you are a bright fellow and will be ready
for college early. Now, properly husbanded that sum ought to see you
through Columbia, since you insist on going to Columbia.... I myself,
and I’m sure your Aunt Emily feels the same way about it, would much
rather see you go to Yale or Princeton.... You are a very lucky
fellow in my estimation. At your age I was sweeping out an office
in Fredericksburg and earning fifteen dollars a month. Now what I
wanted to say was this ... I have not noticed that you felt sufficient
responsibility about moneymatters ... er ... sufficient enthusiasm
about earning your living, making good in a man’s world. Look around
you.... Thrift and enthusiasm has made these men what they are. It’s
made me, put me in the position to offer you the comfortable home,
the cultured surroundings that I do offer you.... I realize that your
education has been a little peculiar, that poor Lily did not have quite
the same ideas that we have on many subjects, but the really formative
period of your life is beginning. Now’s the time to take a brace and
lay the foundations of your future career.... What I advise is that you
follow James’s example and work your way up through the firm.... From
now on you are both sons of mine.... It will mean hard work but it’ll
eventually offer a very substantial opening. And dont forget this, if a
man’s a success in New York, he’s a success!” Jimmy sits watching his
uncle’s broad serious mouth forming words, without tasting the juicy
mutton of the chop he is eating. “Well what are you going to make of
yourself?” Uncle Jeff leaned towards him across the table with bulging
gray eyes.
Jimmy chokes on a piece of bread, blushes, at last stammers weakly,
“Whatever you say Uncle Jeff.”
“Does that mean you’ll go to work for a month this summer in my
office? Get a taste of how it feels to make a living, like a man in a
man’s world, get an idea of how the business is run?” Jimmy nods his
head. “Well I think you’ve come to a very sensible decision,” booms
Uncle Jeff leaning back in his chair so that the light strikes across
the wave of his steelgray hair. “By the way what’ll you have for
dessert?... Years from now Jimmy, when you are a successful man with a
business of your own we’ll remember this talk. It’s the beginning of
your career.”
The hatcheck girl smiles from under the disdainful pile of her billowy
blond hair when she hands Jimmy his hat that looks squashed flat and
soiled and limp among the big-bellied derbies and the fedoras and the
majestic panamas hanging on the pegs. His stomach turns a somersault
with the drop of the elevator. He steps out into the crowded marble
hall. For a moment not knowing which way to go, he stands back against
the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching people elbow their
way through the perpetually revolving doors; softcheeked girls chewing
gum, hatchetfaced girls with bangs, creamfaced boys his own age, young
toughs with their hats on one side, sweatyfaced messengers, crisscross
glances, sauntering hips, red jowls masticating cigars, sallow concave
faces, flat bodies of young men and women, paunched bodies of elderly
men, all elbowing, shoving, shuffling, fed in two endless tapes through
the revolving doors out into Broadway, in off Broadway. Jimmy fed in a
tape in and out the revolving doors, noon and night and morning, the
revolving doors grinding out his years like sausage meat. All of a
sudden his muscles stiffen. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to
hell. The words are so loud inside him he glances to one side and the
other to see if anyone heard him say them.
They can all go plumb to hell. He squares his shoulders and shoves
his way to the revolving doors. His heel comes down on a foot. “For
crissake look where yer steppin.” He’s out in the street. A swirling
wind down Broadway blows grit in his mouth and eyes. He walks down
towards the Battery with the wind in his back. In Trinity Churchyard
stenographers and officeboys are eating sandwiches among the tombs.
Outlandish people cluster outside steamship lines; towhaired
Norwegians, broadfaced Swedes, Polacks, swarthy stumps of men that
smell of garlic from the Mediterranean, mountainous Slavs, three
Chinamen, a bunch of Lascars. On the little triangle in front of
the Customhouse, Jim Herf turns and stares long up the deep gash of
Broadway, facing the wind squarely. Uncle Jeff and his office can go
plumb to hell.
* * * * *
Bud sat on the edge of his cot and stretched out his arms and yawned.
From all round through a smell of sweat and sour breath and wet clothes
came snores, the sound of men stirring in their sleep, creaking of
bedsprings. Far away through the murk burned a single electric light.
Bud closed his eyes and let his head fall over on his shoulder. O God I
want to go to sleep. Sweet Jesus I want to go to sleep. He pressed his
knees together against his clasped hands to keep them from trembling.
Our father which art in Heaven I want to go to sleep.
“Wassa matter pardner cant ye sleep?” came a quiet whisper from the
next cot.
“Hell, no.” “Me neither.”
Bud looked at the big head of curly hair held up on an elbow turned
towards him.
“This is a hell of a lousy stinking flop,” went on the voice evenly.
“I’ll tell the world ... Forty cents too! They can take their Hotel
Plaza an ...”
“Been long in the city?”
“Ten years come August.”
“Great snakes!”
A voice rasped down the line of cots, “Cut de comedy yous guys, what do
you tink dis is, a Jewish picnic?”
Bud lowered his voice: “Funny, it’s years I been thinkin an wantin to
come to the city.... I was born an raised on a farm upstate.”
“Why dont ye go back?”
“I cant go back.” Bud was cold; he wanted to stop trembling. He pulled
the blanket up to his chin and rolled over facing the man who was
talking. “Every spring I says to myself I’ll hit the road again, go out
an plant myself among the weeds an the grass an the cows comin home
milkin time, but I dont; I juss kinder hangs on.”
“What d’ye do all this time in the city?”
“I dunno.... I used to set in Union Square most of the time, then I set
in Madison Square. I been up in Hoboken an Joisey and Flatbush an now
I’m a Bowery bum.”
“God I swear I’m goin to git outa here tomorrow. I git sceered here.
Too many bulls an detectives in this town.”
“You could make a livin in handouts.... But take it from me kid you go
back to the farm an the ole folks while the goin’s good.”
Bud jumped out of bed and yanked roughly at the man’s shoulder. “Come
over here to the light, I want to show ye sumpen.” Bud’s own voice
crinkled queerly in his ears. He strode along the snoring lane of cots.
The bum, a shambling man with curly weatherbleached hair and beard and
eyes as if hammered into his head, climbed fully dressed out from the
blankets and followed him. Under the light Bud unbuttoned the front
of his unionsuit and pulled it off his knottymuscled gaunt arms and
shoulders. “Look at my back.”
“Christ Jesus,” whispered the man running a grimy hand with long yellow
nails over the mass of white and red deep-gouged scars. “I aint never
seen nothin like it.”
“That’s what the ole man done to me. For twelve years he licked me when
he had a mind to. Used to strip me and take a piece of light chain to
my back. They said he was my dad but I know he aint. I run away when
I was thirteen. That was when he ketched me an began to lick me. I’m
twentyfive now.”
They went back without speaking to their cots and lay down.
Bud lay staring at the ceiling with the blanket up to his eyes. When he
looked down towards the door at the end of the room, he saw standing
there a man in a derby hat with a cigar in his mouth. He crushed his
lower lip between his teeth to keep from crying out. When he looked
again the man was gone. “Say are you awake yet?” he whispered.
The bum grunted. “I was goin to tell yer. I mashed his head in with the
grubbinhoe, mashed it in like when you kick a rotten punkin. I told him
to lay offn me an he wouldn’t.... He was a hard godfearin man an he
wanted you to be sceered of him. We was grubbin the sumach outa the old
pasture to plant pertoters there.... I let him lay till night with his
head mashed in like a rotten punkin. A bit of scrub along the fence hid
him from the road. Then I buried him an went up to the house an made me
a pot of coffee. He hadn’t never let me drink no coffee. Before light I
got up an walked down the road. I was tellin myself in a big city it’d
be like lookin for a needle in a haystack to find yer. I knowed where
the ole man kep his money; he had a roll as big as your head but I was
sceered to take more’en ten dollars.... You awake yet?”
The bum grunted. “When I was a kid I kep company with ole man Sackett’s
girl. Her and me used to keep company in the ole icehouse down in
Sackett’s woods an we used to talk about how we’d come to New York
City an git rich and now I’m here I cant git work an I cant git over
bein sceered. There’s detectives follow me all round, men in derbyhats
with badges under their coats. Last night I wanted to go with a hooker
an she saw it in my eyes an throwed me out.... She could see it in my
eyes.” He was sitting on the edge of the cot, leaning over, talking
into the other man’s face in a hissing whisper. The bum suddenly
grabbed him by the wrists.
“Look here kid, you’re goin blooy if you keep up like this.... Got any
mazuma?” Bud nodded. “You better give it to me to keep. I’m an old
timer an I’ll git yez outa this. You put yer clothes on a take a walk
round the block to a hash joint an eat up strong. How much you got?”
“Change from a dollar.”
“You give me a quarter an eat all the stuff you kin git offn the rest.”
Bud pulled on his trousers and handed the man a quarter. “Then you
come back here an you’ll sleep good an tomorrer me’n you’ll go upstate
an git that roll of bills. Did ye say it was as big as yer head? Then
we’ll beat it where they cant ketch us. We’ll split fifty fifty. Are
you on?”
Bud shook his hand with a wooden jerk, then with the laces flickering
round his shoes he shuffled to the door and down the spitmarked stairs.
The rain had stopped, a cool wind that smelled of woods and grass was
ruffling the puddles in the cleanwashed streets. In the lunchroom in
Chatham Square three men sat asleep with their hats over their eyes.
The man behind the counter was reading a pink sportingsheet. Bud waited
long for his order. He felt cool, unthinking, happy. When it came he
ate the browned corned beef hash, deliberately enjoying every mouthful,
mashing the crisp bits of potato against his teeth with his tongue,
between sips of heavily sugared coffee. After polishing the plate with
a crust of bread he took a toothpick and went out.
Picking his teeth he walked through the grimydark entrance to Brooklyn
Bridge. A man in a derby hat was smoking a cigar in the middle of the
broad tunnel. Bud brushed past him walking with a tough swagger. I
dont care about him; let him follow me. The arching footwalk was empty
except for a single policeman who stood yawning, looking up at the sky.
It was like walking among the stars. Below in either direction streets
tapered into dotted lines of lights between square blackwindowed
buildings. The river glimmered underneath like the Milky Way above.
Silently smoothly the bunch of lights of a tug slipped through the
moist darkness. A car whirred across the bridge making the girders
rattle and the spiderwork of cables thrum like a shaken banjo.
When he got to the tangle of girders of the elevated railroads of the
Brooklyn side, he turned back along the southern driveway. Dont matter
where I go, cant go nowhere now. An edge of the blue night had started
to glow behind him the way iron starts to glow in a forge. Beyond
black chimneys and lines of roofs faint rosy contours of the downtown
buildings were brightening. All the darkness was growing pearly,
warming. They’re all of em detectives chasin me, all of em, men in
derbies, bums on the Bowery, old women in kitchens, barkeeps, streetcar
conductors, bulls, hookers, sailors, longshoremen, stiffs in employment
agencies.... He thought I’d tell him where the ole man’s roll was, the
lousy bum.... One on him. One on all them goddam detectives. The river
was smooth, sleek as a bluesteel gun-barrel. Dont matter where I go;
cant go nowhere now. The shadows between the wharves and the buildings
were powdery like washingblue. Masts fringed the river; smoke, purple
chocolatecolor fleshpink climbed into light. Cant go nowhere now.
In a swallowtail suit with a gold watchchain and a red seal ring riding
to his wedding beside Maria Sackett, riding in a carriage to City Hall
with four white horses to be made an alderman by the mayor; and the
light grows behind them brighter brighter, riding in satins and silks
to his wedding, riding in pinkplush in a white carriage with Maria
Sackett by his side through rows of men waving cigars, bowing, doffing
brown derbies, Alderman Bud riding in a carriage full of diamonds with
his milliondollar bride.... Bud is sitting on the rail of the bridge.
The sun has risen behind Brooklyn. The windows of Manhattan have caught
fire. He jerks himself forward, slips, dangles by a hand with the sun
in his eyes. The yell strangles in his throat as he drops.
Captain McAvoy of the tugboat _Prudence_ stood in the pilothouse with
one hand on the wheel. In the other he held a piece of biscuit he
had just dipped into a cup of coffee that stood on the shelf beside
the binnacle. He was a wellset man with bushy eyebrows and a bushy
black mustache waxed at the tips. He was about to put the piece of
coffeesoaked biscuit into his mouth when something black dropped and
hit the water with a thudding splash a few yards off the bow. At the
same moment a man leaning out of the engineroom door shouted, “A guy
juss jumped offn de bridge.”
“God damn it to hell,” said Captain McAvoy dropping his piece of
biscuit and spinning the wheel. The strong ebbtide whisked the boat
round like a straw. Three bells jangled in the engineroom. A negro ran
forward to the bow with a boathook.
“Give a hand there Red,” shouted Captain McAvoy.
After a tussle they landed a long black limp thing on the deck. One
bell. Two bells, Captain McAvoy frowning and haggard spun the tug’s
nose into the current again.
“Any life in him Red?” he asked hoarsely. The negro’s face was green,
his teeth were chattering.
“Naw sir,” said the redhaired man slowly. “His neck’s broke clear off.”
Captain McAvoy sucked a good half of his mustache into his mouth. “God
damn it to hell,” he groaned. “A pretty thing to happen on a man’s
wedding day.”
_Second Section_
I. Great Lady on a White Horse
_Morning clatters with the first L train down Allen Street.
Daylight rattles through the windows, shaking the old brick
houses, splatters the girders of the L structure with
bright confetti._
_The cats are leaving the garbage cans, the chinches are
going back into the walls, leaving sweaty limbs, leaving
the grimetender necks of little children asleep. Men and
women stir under blankets and bedquilts on mattresses in
the corners of rooms, clots of kids begin to untangle to
scream and kick._
_At the corner of Riverton the old man with the hempen
beard who sleeps where nobody knows is putting out his
picklestand. Tubs of gherkins, pimentos, melonrind,
piccalilli give out twining vines and cold tendrils of
dank pepperyfragrance that grow like a marshgarden out of
the musky bedsmells and the rancid clangor of the cobbled
awakening street._
_The old man with the hempen beard who sleeps where nobody
knows sits in the midst of it like Jonah under his gourd._
Jimmy Herf walked up four creaky flights and knocked at a white door
fingermarked above the knob where the name _Sunderland_ appeared in old
English characters on a card neatly held in place by brass thumbtacks.
He waited a long while beside a milkbottle, two creambottles, and a
copy of the Sunday _Times_. There was a rustle behind the door and the
creak of a step, then no more sound. He pushed a white button in the
doorjamb.
“An he said, Margie I’ve got a crush on you so bad, an she said, Come
in outa the rain, you’re all wet....” Voices coming down the stairs, a
man’s feet in button shoes, a girl’s feet in sandals, pink silk legs;
the girl in a fluffy dress and a Spring Maid hat; the young man had
white edging on his vest and a green, blue, and purple striped necktie.
“But you’re not that kind of a girl.”
“How do you know what kind of a girl I am?”
The voices trailed out down the stairs.
Jimmy Herf gave the bell another jab.
“Who is it?” came a lisping female voice through a crack in the door.
“I want to see Miss Prynne please.”
Glimpse of a blue kimono held up to the chin of a fluffy face. “Oh I
don’t know if she’s up yet.”
“She said she would be.”
“Look will you please wait a second to let me make my getaway,” she
tittered behind the door. “And then come in. Excuse us but Mrs.
Sunderland thought you were the rent collector. They sometimes come on
Sunday just to fool you.” A smile coyly bridged the crack in the door.
“Shall I bring in the milk?”