The Fires of Spring (57 page)

On a warm day in December the fat lady was watching the empty street when she saw Mom Beckett throw the little fire inspector out of the restaurant. Then Mom shouted, “So you’ll report me, will you? I’ll break your goddamned neck!” The inspector made some brave reply, and Mom grabbed him by the coat lapels.

“Fight! Fight!” screamed the fat woman. From every door along the street men and women and children catapulted onto the sidewalks, and among them David appeared to see what Mom was doing. As he arrived, the neat, marcelled woman pushed the little inspector in the face.

“You little stinker!” she cried. David tried to rescue the inspector, for he knew that if Mom actually struck him she would be arrested; but when the big Arizona woman saw David attempting to break up the brawl she said, “Dave! You stand clear.”

“He’s the law!” David protested.

“He’s a pismire!” Mom replied, and in the excitement she hauled her right arm back and socked the frightened little man. On her fifth wallop a flash bulb went off, and it was this picture that made the fight famous. It was printed in all the papers under the heading “Arizona Amazon,” and it showed a meticulously dressed woman, her hair unruffled, swinging a terrific haymaker at a quaking little man. What made the picture truly hilarious was that Mom was biting her lower lip as if eager to muster all her power into the blow.

The case of the Arizona Amazon was a six-day wonder. One New York paper dubbed her the “MacDougal Mauler” and said, “She makes Gene Tunney look like a bum.” The judge, of course, took a more serious view. He said that the appointed servants of the people could not be put in danger of their lives—here the courtroom began to heave with chuckles—simply because someone did not like the decisions of the appointed servants of the people. Mom Beckett had been clearly heard to say in the presence of witnesses that “she would break that little bastard’s neck,” and judging from the photograph entered as evidence—here the judge coughed—she had come pretty close to doing so. “Thirty days!”

So they carted Mom off to jail, and then an unforeseen thing took place. Claude became ill. He actually became sick because of his worry over Mom. For years people had seen him hanging around the restaurant and had taken for granted that he was Mom’s whilom lover, but now the full quality of his passion for the big woman from Arizona manifested itself. He lay in bed and cried. He experienced deep pain at the degradation Mom had suffered, and he could not eat.

David ran the restaurant, which did a tremendous business, and between times went up to see Claude. The bearded poet lay wanly on his bed and said, “It was a frightful thing. Those damned fools just wanted her to make a spectacle of herself.” Then tears came into his eyes. Later he said, “That violent voice shouting ‘Fight! Fight!’ She’s the woman who should have been arrested. It’s like the line from
Othello
: ‘Silence that dreadful bell!’ ”

For two weeks Claude would not get up. Friends who had visited Mom in prison reported on her good health. They said she and the police got along fine, since they had so many common acquaintances. Finally one consistent old drunk said, “Mom’d like to see you, Claude.”

This intelligence put the poet into a nervous state and a conclave was held. A collection was taken and David purchased a large bunch of flowers. The men combed and dressed Claude, but it was apparent that he could not negotiate the trip by subway, so they plopped him and David into a cab and sent them off to jail.

The police were very considerate. They took Claude right in and produced Mom. She looked better than ever and seemed to have been dining well. When she saw the flowers she winced and said, “I’m a prisoner, not a corpse.” Then Claude began to weep, and he looked across the barren table at her as if his heart had been stricken. She comforted him as best she could and said the flowers were wonderful. Just what she needed. But when Claude left, sniffling and weak-kneed, she held onto David’s sleeve.

“He must be nuts!” she whispered. “I need flowers like an ox needs a tail full of cement. Psst! Kid! How about sneakin’ me in a pint of gin? That’s what I really need.”

So David sent Claude home in a taxi and then scrounged about the Village till he found a pint of gin. To his surprise the jailer laughed and said, “For Mom Beckett it’s OK, but don’t let the blue-noses hear about this.” He let David go
right back to Mom’s cell, where the big handsome woman knocked the top off the bottle and took a lusty swig.

“Jesus!” she cried. “That’s even worse than I used to sell. But it’s good!”

Then David felt that he must explain. “I’m running the restaurant, Mom. And if you don’t mind, I’m sleeping in your room.”

Mom put down the bottle. “You mean that the scrawny actress is upstairs? And you’re down?”

“Yes. After the old man’s death I never want to see her again.”

Mom took a deep swig of gin and shook her head. “Honest to God, Dave, you must have mush in your brains.” She was going to add further comments but decided against it. “Look after Claude, will you?” she asked. “Tell him not to worry. All this jail means to me is a chance to get some regular sleep.” When David left, she was sitting on her hard bed, with the gin bottle in one hand and a comb in the other.

“She’s the best woman we ever had in this dump,” the jailer said proudly. “Big-hearted sorta, like my wife.”

The snow began about eight in the morning. Dreamily it fell upon the great city, and by mid-afternoon Washington Square was a place of formless beauty. The statue of Garibaldi, that chaotic adventurer, stood draped in a Roman toga, while upon the triumphal arch of Washington, a better organized adventurer, ruffles of white clung handsomely.

The sky was somber gray, and still the moist flakes fell. To the east the tall and ugly university buildings at last looked passably decent, as if their architect in shame had thrown a gossamer shroud about their hideousness. To the south slept the unimportant buildings that had housed the poets and the novelists and the painters. On these houses, where the creators had lived in their productive years, the snow fell with a kind of benison, as if it, senseless, knew that some painter, later than the rest, was watching it so that he might recall it for later use in some evocative canvas.

Actually, there was no watching painter, but in the middle of the Square, confused and reveling in the silent thunder of the snowstorm, stood David Harper in wet shoes, watching the whiteness fall upon the varied architecture he had grown to love. He turned around many times to see first the shrouded university buildings, then the painters’ homes, and then the handsome Georgian doors along the north. The stark and
barren trees clutched for a moment at accumulating burdens and then sent them tumbling to earth in a flurry of flakes. The fountain was lost beneath a solemn mound such as might have marked the grave of the ancient Indians who had owned the Square. This was the old potter’s field of New York, and David thought, “My people are in potter’s field, too.” Mysteriously, the twisting curtain of snow segregated the Square and the Village from the rest of the city, so that David could feel that he was, for once, standing absolutely alone in the heart of New York.

But he was not quite alone, for on a bench near Washington’s arch, a venturesome couple, wrapped high in coats, huddled together in kisses. It was unbelievable! Even in the midst of this increasing storm, there were lovers in Washington Square, and David thought, “I’ve seen it in all kinds of weather, and there’s always been at least one couple kissing. Maybe that’s why it’s such a wonderful place.” He stamped his wet feet and from a distance saluted the kissing pair. “Hiya, champs!” he called into the storm. Then he became aware of his feet and muttered, “I’m getting cold!”

Yet, like winter wheat, David thrived in the snow. Its great beauty, in the heart of his city, reminded him of strange and towering things. He watched the buses struggling to breast the drifts. Taxis no longer scurried back and forth, and students leaving the university bowed their heads low to forge a path through the indifferent flakes.

Tumultuous ideas possessed him as he stamped back and forth across the drifted Square. He felt, strangely, as if God had touched him that day, and his mind was in a ferment of hugh cloudy symbols. Names and scenes flashed across his memory, summoned by nothing but the storm. Words of towering evocation sprang to his mind:
field
,
clouds
,
and Hector lay face down upon the dust of Troy
,
this island of my soul
,
hunger
,
petticoat
 …

Up from the Hudson River, along the canyons, winds whistled into the Square and made a momentary blizzard, but then the echoing quietness of a city storm fell once more upon the burdened buildings, and David muttered, “Boy! My feet really are cold!”

Reluctantly, he plunged homeward to MacDougal Street. He was still determined not to go near Mona, but his sight of the lovers kissing in the snow had reminded him that the slim actress was at that very moment in his bed, alone. He recalled how entrancing Mona had seemed that morning when
she came downstairs for some of Mom’s free food. Even the circles under her eyes had disappeared. Twice David had asked, “When are you leaving?” and she had replied, “You know I got nowhere to go.” She was there now, in his room.

He paused for one last look at the swirling snow and then went down the flight of steps into the steamy restaurant. As soon as he appeared, the loafers ran up to him in deputation and handed him a long envelope. It was from
Fashion
, and with cold fingers he ripped it open. Inside was a $300 check for his story, and miserable Claude, who had not received $300 for his whole output of poetry, became so excited that he served free drinks to the entire crowd.

There was much talk as to who could cash the check, but finally a man guzzling from a full bottle of rye said, “Lemme see that check.” He studied it for a moment and said, “That’s a real check. You sign it here and I’ll cash it.” He pulled from his hip a roll of bills so large that he had to tug upon it to tear it loose from his pocket. Peeling aside the thousand- and five-hundred-dollar bills, he came at last to the mere hundreds. “Here,” he grunted, handing David three of them. And that trivial incident was what launched the strange events of that day.

The man was a notorious, cheap gangster. When he handed David the three bills he was standing beside Claude, so that with one glance David could see both men, and the discrepancy between them was shocking. There stood the bearded poet, and he had no money. Across from him stood the petty thief, the gambler, the bootlegger, the dabbler in all the rackets of the night, and this man had to peel away the big bills before he could reach the hundreds.

There are certain acts in a man’s life which spring from no sensible cause. A young man may stand in a snowstorm and immediately afterwards see a poet and a gangster, and without cause he is constrained to act in a given way. He has been stirred by the deep sources that agitate his race, and the acts which follow may be called acts of faith, for by them he reaffirms the hidden purposes of his life.

With his $300 David ran out of the restaurant and dashed through the swirling streets so that he left behind him a miniature blizzard. He ran to the jail, where the jovial keeper said, “Even Mom Beckett ain’t allowed to have $200 in this jail.”

“Could I see her anyway?” David asked.

“What for?”

“Let me give her the dough, and then you can keep it for her.”

“Look, buddy! Awready we got a hundred special rules for that dame. Now you want me to open a bank!” But nevertheless the jailer led David to the small visiting room into which Mom finally entered. She was trim, well rested, well corseted. Her big face grinned happily at David and she said, “I suppose you’re right well adjusted to my room by now. Well, haul ass outa there by Saturday night. They’re springin’ me!”

“Mom,” David said, “I got a break today, and I want to pay you back some of the dough I owe you.” Before she could protest he plopped $200 into her hand.

“Look, kid!” She laughed. “I never expect to get dough back. Especially not from writers. You need it. Look at your shoes!”

David pulled his hand away. “It’s yours.”

“But I don’t need it!”

David stared at her and asked, “Didn’t you ever get money that you didn’t want?”

The big Arizona woman laughed at her star boarder and said, “Not very often, but once or twice I did pick up a buck or two I was ashamed to own.” She yelled for the jailer and gave him the two hundred to be put with her things. Then she placed both hands on the table, palms down, and asked, “Since you gotta leave my room by Saturday, why don’t you and Miss Mona make up?”

“I’ve been thinking about that all day,” David admitted.

“Walkin’ around in the blizzard, eh? Look, kid, let me give you one piece of advice. Knock yourself out for principle. Give away your dough. Knock yourself out for revenge, or power, or ambition. But never knock yourself out for love.”

“What do you mean?” David asked.

“Just this. Power and ambition and writin’ and all that crap is sort of extra. I guess good men bother themselves quite a bit about such stuff. But don’t ever bother about love. Don’t crucify yourself on that cross, because lovin’ is so easy and natural there should never be no pain to it. If you still got that itchy feelin’ for Mona, why hop to it. Save your ponderin’ for somethin’ tough and big. Love is too simple to make a fuss over.”

The warden said that David would have to go, and as he left Mom shouted across the corridor, “Remember! Outa my bed by Saturday!”

Giving Mom $200 was a simple act of decency. What David did next was the act of faith. He wandered home through the silent streets, and at Mom’s he slipped in by the main door so as to avoid the restaurant. He climbed the steps, not to Mom’s room, but on up to his own. Mona was sitting hunched by the radio, and he said, “Turn it off, Mona,” and when she had done so, he grinned at her and said, “I gave you the first hundred-dollar bill I ever had, because when you took that screen test it was my test, too.” He thrust his last bill into her hands and said, “Right now I’m dead sure you’ll be a great actress. You’re part of me, and you just can’t fail.”