Back in Oakland from my wanderings, I returned to the water-front and
renewed my comradeship with Nelson, who was now on shore all the time and
living more madly than before. I, too, spent my time on shore with him,
only occasionally going for cruises of several days on the bay to help
out on short-handed scow-schooners.
The result was that I was no longer reinvigorated by periods of open-air
abstinence and healthy toil. I drank every day, and whenever opportunity
offered I drank to excess; for I still laboured under the misconception
that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in drinking to bestiality and
unconsciousness. I became pretty thoroughly alcohol-soaked during this
period. I practically lived in saloons; became a bar-room loafer, and
worse.
And right here was John Barleycorn getting me in a more insidious though
no less deadly way than when he nearly sent me out with the tide. I had
a few months still to run before I was seventeen; I scorned the thought
of a steady job at anything; I felt myself a pretty tough individual in a
group of pretty tough men; and I drank because these men drank and
because I had to make good with them. I had never had a real boyhood,
and in this, my precocious manhood, I was very hard and woefully wise.
Though I had never known girl's love even, I had crawled through such
depths that I was convinced absolutely that I knew the last word about
love and life. And it wasn't a pretty knowledge. Without being
pessimistic, I was quite satisfied that life was a rather cheap and
ordinary affair.
You see, John Barleycorn was blunting me. The old stings and prods of
the spirit were no longer sharp. Curiosity was leaving me. What did it
matter what lay on the other side of the world? Men and women, without
doubt, very much like the men and women I knew; marrying and giving in
marriage and all the petty run of petty human concerns; and drinks, too.
But the other side of the world was a long way to go for a drink. I had
but to step to the corner and get all I wanted at Joe Vigy's. Johnny
Heinhold still ran the Last Chance. And there were saloons on all the
corners and between the corners.
The whispers from the back of life were growing dim as my mind and body
soddened. The old unrest was drowsy. I might as well rot and die here
in Oakland as anywhere else. And I should have so rotted and died, and
not in very long order either, at the pace John Barleycorn was leading
me, had the matter depended wholly on him. I was learning what it was to
have no appetite. I was learning what it was to get up shaky in the
morning, with a stomach that quivered, with fingers touched with palsy,
and to know the drinker's need for a stiff glass of whisky neat in order
to brace up. (Oh! John Barleycorn is a wizard dopester. Brain and body,
scorched and jangled and poisoned, return to be tuned up by the very
poison that caused the damage.)
There is no end to John Barleycorn's tricks. He had tried to inveigle me
into killing myself. At this period he was doing his best to kill me at
a fairly rapid pace. But, not satisfied with that, he tried another
dodge. He very nearly got me, too, and right there I learned a lesson
about him--became a wiser, a more skilful drinker. I learned there were
limits to my gorgeous constitution, and that there were no limits to John
Barleycorn. I learned that in a short hour or two he could master my
strong head, my broad shoulders and deep chest, put me on my back, and
with a devil's grip on my throat proceed to choke the life out of me.
Nelson and I were sitting in the Overland House. It was early in the
evening, and the only reason we were there was because we were broke and
it was election time. You see, in election time local politicians,
aspirants for office, have a way of making the rounds of the saloons to
get votes. One is sitting at a table, in a dry condition, wondering who
is going to turn up and buy him a drink, or if his credit is good at some
other saloon and if it's worth while to walk that far to find out, when
suddenly the saloon doors swing wide, and enters a bevy of well-dressed
men, themselves usually wide and exhaling an atmosphere of prosperity and
fellowship.
They have smiles and greetings for everybody--for you, without the price
of a glass of beer in your pocket, for the timid hobo who lurks in the
corner and who certainly hasn't a vote, but who may establish a
lodging-house registration. And do you know, when these politicians
swing wide the doors and come in, with their broad shoulders, their deep
chests, and their generous stomachs which cannot help making them
optimists and masters of life, why, you perk right up. It's going to be
a warm evening after all, and you know you'll get a souse started at the
very least.
And--who knows?--the gods may be kind, other drinks may come, and the
night culminate in glorious greatness. And the next thing you know, you
are lined up at the bar, pouring drinks down your throat and learning the
gentlemen's names and the offices which they hope to fill.
It was during this period, when the politicians went their saloon rounds,
that I was getting bitter bits of education and having illusions
punctured--I, who had pored and thrilled over "The Rail-Splitter," and
"From Canal Boy to President." Yes, I was learning how noble politics and
politicians are.
Well, on this night, broke, thirsty, but with the drinker's faith in the
unexpected drink, Nelson and I sat in the Overland House waiting for
something to turn up, especially politicians. And there entered Joe
Goose--he of the unquenchable thirst, the wicked eyes, the crooked nose,
the flowered vest.
"Come on, fellows--free booze--all you want of it. I didn't want you to
miss it."
"Where?" we wanted to know.
"Come on. I'll tell you as we go along. We haven't a minute to lose."
And as we hurried up town, Joe Goose explained: "It's the Hancock Fire
Brigade. All you have to do is wear a red shirt and a helmet, and carry
a torch.
"They're going down on a special train to Haywards to parade."
(I think the place was Haywards. It may have been San Leandro or Niles.
And, to save me, I can't remember whether the Hancock Fire Brigade was a
republican or a democratic organisation. But anyway, the politicians who
ran it were short of torch-bearers, and anybody who would parade could
get drunk if he wanted to.)
"The town'll be wide open," Joe Goose went on. "Booze? It'll run like
water. The politicians have bought the stocks of the saloons. There'll
be no charge. All you got to do is walk right up and call for it. We'll
raise hell."
At the hall, on Eighth Street near Broadway, we got into the firemen's
shirts and helmets, were equipped with torches, and, growling because we
weren't given at least one drink before we started, were herded aboard
the train. Oh, those politicians had handled our kind before. At
Haywards there were no drinks either. Parade first, and earn your booze,
was the order of the night.
We paraded. Then the saloons were opened. Extra barkeepers had been
engaged, and the drinkers jammed six deep before every drink-drenched and
unwiped bar. There was no time to wipe the bar, nor wash glasses, nor do
anything save fill glasses. The Oakland water-front can be real thirsty
on occasion.
This method of jamming and struggling in front of the bar was too slow
for us. The drink was ours. The politicians had bought it for us. We'd
paraded and earned it, hadn't we? So we made a flank attack around the
end of the bar, shoved the protesting barkeepers aside, and helped
ourselves to bottles.
Outside, we knocked the necks of the bottles off against the concrete
curbs, and drank. Now Joe Goose and Nelson had learned discretion with
straight whisky, drunk in quantity. I hadn't. I still laboured under
the misconception that one was to drink all he could get--especially when
it didn't cost anything. We shared our bottles with others, and drank a
good portion ourselves, while I drank most of all. And I didn't like the
stuff. I drank it as I had drunk beer at five, and wine at seven. I
mastered my qualms and downed it like so much medicine. And when we
wanted more bottles, we went into other saloons where the free drink was
flowing, and helped ourselves.
I haven't the slightest idea of how much I drank--whether it was two
quarts or five. I do know that I began the orgy with half-pint draughts
and with no water afterward to wash the taste away or to dilute the
whisky.
Now the politicians were too wise to leave the town filled with drunks
from the water-front of Oakland. When train time came, there was a
round-up of the saloons. Already I was feeling the impact of the whisky.
Nelson and I were hustled out of a saloon, and found ourselves in the
very last rank of a disorderly parade. I struggled along heroically, my
correlations breaking down, my legs tottering under me, my head swimming,
my heart pounding, my lungs panting for air.
My helplessness was coming on so rapidly that my reeling brain told me I
would go down and out and never reach the train if I remained at the rear
of the procession. I left the ranks and ran down a pathway beside the
road under broad-spreading trees. Nelson pursued me, laughing. Certain
things stand out, as in memories of nightmare. I remember those trees
especially, and my desperate running along under them, and how, every
time I fell, roars of laughter went up from the other drunks. They
thought I was merely antic drunk. They did not dream that John
Barleycorn had me by the throat in a death-clutch. But I knew it. And I
remember the fleeting bitterness that was mine as I realised that I was
in a struggle with death, and that these others did not know. It was as
if I were drowning before a crowd of spectators who thought I was cutting
up tricks for their entertainment.
And running there under the trees, I fell and lost consciousness. What
happened afterward, with one glimmering exception, I had to be told.
Nelson, with his enormous strength, picked me up and dragged me on and
aboard the train. When he had got me into a seat, I fought and panted so
terribly for air that even with his obtuseness he knew I was in a bad
way. And right there, at any moment, I know now, I might have died. I
often think it is the nearest to death I have ever been. I have only
Nelson's description of my behaviour to go by.
I was scorching up, burning alive internally, in an agony of fire and
suffocation, and I wanted air. I madly wanted air. My efforts to raise
a window were vain, for all the windows in the car were screwed down.
Nelson had seen drink-crazed men, and thought I wanted to throw myself
out. He tried to restrain me, but I fought on. I seized some man's
torch and smashed the glass.
Now there were pro-Nelson and anti-Nelson factions on the Oakland
water-front, and men of both factions, with more drink in them than was
good, filled the car. My smashing of the window was the signal for the
antis. One of them reached for me, and dropped me, and started the
fight, of all of which I have no knowledge save what was told me
afterward, and a sore jaw next day from the blow that put me out. The
man who struck me went down across my body, Nelson followed him, and they
say there were few unbroken windows in the wreckage of the car that
followed as the free-for-all fight had its course.
This being knocked cold and motionless was perhaps the best thing that
could have happened to me. My violent struggles had only accelerated my
already dangerously accelerated heart, and increased the need for oxygen
in my suffocating lungs.
After the fight was over and I came to, I did not come to myself. I was
no more myself than a drowning man is who continues to struggle after he
has lost consciousness. I have no memory of my actions, but I cried
"Air! Air!" so insistently, that it dawned on Nelson that I did not
contemplate self-destruction. So he cleared the jagged glass from the
window-ledge and let me stick my head and shoulders out. He realised,
partially, the seriousness of my condition, and held me by the waist to
prevent me from crawling farther out. And for the rest of the run in to
Oakland I kept my head and shoulders out, fighting like a maniac whenever
he tried to draw me inside.
And here my one glimmering streak of true consciousness came. My sole
recollection, from the time I fell under the trees until I awoke the
following evening, is of my head out of the window, facing the wind
caused by the train, cinders striking and burning and blinding me, while
I breathed with will. All my will was concentrated on breathing--on
breathing the air in the hugest lung-full gulps I could, pumping the
greatest amount of air into my lungs in the shortest possible time. It
was that or death, and I was a swimmer and diver, and I knew it; and in
the most intolerable agony of prolonged suffocation, during those moments
I was conscious, I faced the wind and the cinders and breathed for life.
All the rest is a blank. I came to the following evening, in a
water-front lodging-house. I was alone. No doctor had been called in.
And I might well have died there, for Nelson and the others, deeming me
merely "sleeping off my drunk," had let me lie there in a comatose
condition for seventeen hours. Many a man, as every doctor knows, has
died of the sudden impact of a quart or more of whisky. Usually one
reads of them so dying, strong drinkers, on account of a wager. But I
didn't know--then. And so I learned; and by no virtue nor prowess, but
simply through good fortune and constitution. Again my constitution had
triumphed over John Barleycorn. I had escaped from another death-pit,
dragged myself through another morass, and perilously acquired the
discretion that would enable me to drink wisely for many another year to
come.
Heavens! That was twenty years ago, and I am still very much and wisely
alive; and I have seen much, done much, lived much, in that intervening
score of years; and I shudder when I think how close a shave I ran, how
near I was to missing that splendid fifth of a century that has been
mine. And, oh, it wasn't John Barleycorn's fault that he didn't get me
that night of the Hancock Fire Brigade.