Manhattan Transfer (17 page)

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 gunbarrel. 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.’

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.