The Coney Island that they landed on is gone now. It was a shouting
gypsy fair of side shows, beer gardens, dance halls, chowder tents,
shooting galleries and unsavory “joints.” It was not a sweet resort,
but “Shine” walked through it, like an old graduate through the
corridors of his college, fondly reminiscent. He laughed at the
“ballyhoo man” drawing the crowd to a booth with his sword-swallowing
and his fire-eating. He listened appreciatively to the art of a
“spieler” praising a “performance inside;” and he turned to smile on a
“booster” who put a shoulder behind him and gently impelled him towards
the ticket office. He sniffed the odor of steaming frankfurters and
fried crabs. He stood grinning before a merry-go-round that ground out
a deafening cacophany from a German organ. And Doherty, beside him, had
to stand and listen, grin and comment, with a hypocritical pretence of
delight--working his toes secretly in his broken shoes, meanwhile, to
ease the itch of his impatience to get on.
They got on, at last, to a saloon which Doherty had been heading for.
It was a pine “front” with a sign that pictured a beer glass as big
as a pail, marked “My Size! Five Cents!” They went past the bar to
the deserted little drinking room beyond it, and sat down at a table
beside a door which “Shine” did not notice--and Doherty did. The walls
were covered with colored tissue papers, cut and folded in fans and
circles, and with printed invitations to the public not to forget the
“receptions” of some half-dozen “associations.” These were a “Welcome
Home” to “Shine”; and he read them almost sentimentally while Doherty
was gone to speak to the “barkeep” who was a “frien’” of his.
When he came back with two glasses of beer, “Shine” received his glass
with a “Here’s lookin’ at yuh” that was warm. He drank a deep libation,
open-throated, without tasting. He put the glass down and smiled. “Bum
booze,” he said, clucking over a bitterness that burned his tongue.
Doherty kept his snub nose in his “schooner.”
“Shine” looked up at an “invitation” above him, and drank again to
quench a sudden heat in his mouth.
“Say,” he said thickly, “I don’t like this beer.”
“Mine’s all right,” Doherty assured him. “I’ll get y’ another.”
Before he returned, “Shine” had drained the first glass. He took the
second unsteadily, grinning at Doherty to cover the fact that he could
not think of what he had intended to say. He drank thirstily, put down
his glass and blinked. He had become conscious of a great lapse of
time. It seemed to him that he had been silent for an hour.
He began to talk very busily, but without any great success in saying
anything; and to lubricate his difficulty in articulation he drank and
drank. “How’s that?” Doherty asked him, with each successive glass, and
“Shine” assured him--as well as he could--that it was “A’ right a’
right.”
“How’s _that_?” Doherty asked at last, exultingly; and his voice came
to “Shine” as a thin rustle of hoarse sound. The wall seemed to be
bellying like a curtain in a draught. “I’m fu’,” he said, and laughed
tipsily.
The room had begun to swim around him, and he drank again, to steady
it. It revolved faster and faster. He shut his eyes and tried to sit
tight, but could not keep his balance. The motion dizzied him. He
rested his head on the table, feeling very tired and very sleepy;
and he decided that he would remain there until the world around him
returned to a state of rest.
When he woke again, in a semi-stupor--it seemed only a few minutes
later--he felt someone kicking the soles of his bare feet. He was lying
on the floor of a room, stripped to his undershirt and trousers. He
could not see Doherty anywhere. A stranger was saying, “Look-a-here,
‘Shine.’ That partner o’ yours, Doherty, was in to see me this mornin’.
He said yuh wanted a job ballyhooin’. He said yuh’d do me a barefoot
dance fer the price of a pair o’ boots. Is that right?”
He grinned a grin of malice that showed the gold in all his huge teeth;
and “Shine” recognized “Goldy” Simpson.