The Bottom of the Harbor (24 page)

“Ah, well,” said Mr. Townsend.

“It seems to me it was only just a few short years ago I was a young man going back and forth to work,” said Mr. Hewitt, “and the years flew by, they really flew by, and now I'm an old man, and what I want to know is, what was the purpose of it? I know what's going to take place one of these days, and I can visualize some of the details of it very clearly. There'll be one twenty-five-dollar wreath, or floral design, or whatever they call them now, and there'll be three or maybe four costing between twelve dollars and a half and fifteen dollars, and there'll be maybe a dozen running from five to ten dollars, and I know more or less what the preacher will say, and then they'll take me out to the Edgewater Cemetery and lay me beside my parents and my brothers and sisters and two of my grandparents and one of my great-grandparents, and I'll lie there through all eternity while the Aluminum Company factory goes put-put-put.”

Harry laughed, “You make the Aluminum Company factory sound like a motorboat,” he said.

“I don't go to funerals any more,” said Mr. Townsend. “Funerals breed funerals.”

“My grandfather used to like the word ‘mitigate,'” Harry said. “He liked the sound of it, and he used it whenever he could. When he was a very old man, he often got on the subject of dying. ‘You can't talk your way out,' he'd say, ‘and you can't buy your way out, and you can't shoot your way out, and the only thing that mitigates the matter in the slightest is the fact that nobody else is going to escape. Nobody—no, not one.'”

“I know, I know,” said Mr. Hewitt, “but what's the purpose of it?”

“You supported your wife, didn't you?” asked Harry. “You raised a family, didn't you? That's the purpose of it.”

“That's no purpose,” said Mr. Hewitt. “The same thing that's going to happen to me is going to happen to them.”

“The generations have to keep coming along,” said Harry. “That's all I know.”

“You're put here,” said Mr. Hewitt, “and you're allowed to eat and draw breath and go back and forth a few short years, and about the time you get things in shape where you can sit down and enjoy them you wind up in a box in a hole in the ground, and as far as I can see, there's no purpose to it whatsoever. I try to keep from thinking such thoughts, but the last few years almost everything I see reminds me of death and dying, and time passing, and how fast it passes. I drove through Shadyside the other day, and I noticed that some of those factories down there are getting real smoky-looking and patched up and dilapidated, and the thought immediately occured to me, ‘I'm older than most of those factories. I remember most of them when they were brand-new, and, good God, look at them now.' And to tell the truth, I'm pretty well patched up myself. I've maybe not had as many operations as some people, but I've had my share. Tonsils, adenoids, appendix, gall bladder, prostate. I wear false teeth, and I've worn them for years—‘your dentures,' my dentist calls them; ‘Oh, for God's sake,' I said to him, ‘
I
know what they are, and
you
know what they are.' And the last time I went to the eye doctor he prescribed two pairs of glasses, one for ordinary use and one for reading, and I can't really see worth a damn out of either one of them. I've got varicose veins from walking around on wet cement floors in Fulton Market all those years, and I have to wear elastic stockings that are hell to get on and hell to get off and don't do a damned bit of good, and I've got fallen arches and I have to wear some kind of patented arch supports that always make me feel as if I'm about to jump, and I've never known the time I didn't have corns—corns and bunions and calluses.”

“Oh, come on, Joe,” said Harry. “Don't you ever get tired talking about yourself?”

A shocked look appeared on Mr. Hewitt's face. “I wasn't talking about myself, Harry,” he said, and his voice sounded surprised and hurt. “I was talking about the purpose of life.”

Harry started to say something, and then got up and went out to the galley. It had become too warm, and I went over and opened the window. I put my head out of the window and listened for a few moments to the lapping of the water against the side of the barge. Two of Harry's shad boats moored to stakes in the flats were slowly shifting their positions, and I could see that the tide was beginning to change. I heard the click of the refrigerator door in the galley, and then Harry returned to the bunkroom, bringing four cans of beer. He paused for a moment in front of Mr. Hewitt. “I'm sorry I said that, Joe,” he said. “I was just trying to get your mind on something else.” Then he stood the cans on the bunkroom table and started opening them. “As far as I'm concerned,” he said, “the purpose of life is to stay alive and to keep on staying alive as long as you possibly can.”

(1959)

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Joseph Mitchell
came to New York from North Carolina the day after the
1929
stock market crash. After eight years as a reporter and feature writer at various newspapers he joined the staff of
The New Yorker,
where he remained until his death in
1996
at the age of eighty-seven. His other books include
McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, My Ears Are Bent, Up in the Old Hotel, Old Mr. Flood,
and
Joe Gould's Secret.

Also by
Joseph Mitchell

My Ears Are Bent

McSorley's Wonderful Saloon

Old Mr. Flood

Joe Gould's Secret

Up in the Old Hotel

Copyright © 1944, 1947, 1951, 1952, 1956, 1959 by Joseph Mitchell

Foreword copyright © 2008 by Luc Sante

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in slightly different form by Little, Brown in 1959. All of the pieces in this work were subsequently collected in
Up in the Old Hotel
(Pantheon, 1992).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mitchell, Joseph, 1908–1996

The bottom of the harbor / Joseph Mitchell; foreword by Luc Sante.—1st rev. ed.

p.                                                       cm.

“Originally published in slightly different form by Little, Brown in 1959”—T.p. verso.

1. New York (N.Y.)—Social life and customs. 2. Harbors—New York (State)—New York. 3. Waterfronts—New York (State)—New York. I. Title.

F
128.63.
M
5 2008

974.7'1—dc22                                                                         2008009494

www.pantheonbooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-37763-0

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