You Can't Go Home Again (62 page)

Then summer comes again, heat-blazing summer, humid, murked with mist, sky-glazed with brutal weariness—and C. Green mops his face and sweats and says: “Jesus! Will it never end?”

This, then, is C. Green “thirty-five years old”—“unidentified”—and an American. In what way an American? In what way different from the men
you
knew, old Drake?

When the ships bore home again and Cape St. Vincent blazed in Spaniard’s eye—or when old Drake was returning with his men, beating coastwise from strange seas abreast, past the Scilly Isles towards the slant of evening fields, chalk cliffs, the harbour’s arms, the town’s sweet cluster and the spire—where was Green?

When, in red-oak thickets at the break of day, coon-skinned, the huntsmen of the wilderness lay for bear, heard arrows rattling in the laurel leaves, the bullets’ whining
plunk
, and waited with cocked musket by the tree—where was Green?

Or when, with strong faces turning towards the setting sun, hawk-eyed and Indian-visaged men bore gun-stocks on the western trails and sternly heard the fierce war-whoops around the Painted Buttes—where, then, was Green?

Was never there with Drake’s men in the evening when the sails stood in from the Americas! Was never there beneath the Spaniard’s swarthy eye at Vincent’s Cape! Was never there in the red-oak thicket in the morning! Was never there to hear the war-cries round the Painted Buttes!

No, no. He was no voyager of unknown seas, no pioneer of western trails. He was life’s little man, life’s nameless cypher, life’s man-swarm atom, life’s American—and now he lies disjected and exploded on a street in Brooklyn!

He was a dweller in mean streets, was Green, a man-mote in the jungle of the city, a resident of grimy steel and stone, a mole who burrowed in rusty brick, a stunned spectator of enormous salmon-coloured towers, hued palely with the morning. He was a renter of shabby wooden houses in a little town, an owner of a raw new bungalow on the outskirts of the town. He was a waker in bleak streets at morning, an alarm-clock watcher, saying: “Jesus, I’ll be late.”—a fellow who took short cuts through the corner lot, behind the advertising signs; a fellow used to concrete horrors of hot day and blazing noon; a man accustomed to the tormented hodge-podge of our architectures, used to broken pavements, ash-cans, shabby store fronts, dull green paint, the elevated structure, grinding traffic, noise, and streets be-tortured with a thousand bleak and dismal signs. He was accustomed to the gas tanks going out of town, he was an atom of machinery in an endless flow, going, stopping, going to the winking of the lights; he tore down concrete roads on Sundays, past the hot-dog stands and filling-stations; he would return at darkness; hunger lured him to the winking splendour of chop-suey signs; and midnight found him in The Coffee Pot, to prowl above a mug of coffee, tear a coffee-cake in fragments, and wear away the slow grey ash of time and boredom with other men in grey hats and with skins of tallow-grey, at Joe the Greek’s.

C. Green could read (which Drake could not), but not too accurately; could write, too (which the Spaniard couldn’t), but not too well. C. Green had trouble over certain words, spelled them out above the coffee mug at midnight, with a furrowed brow, slow-shaping lips, and “Jesus!” when news stunned him—for he read the news. Preferred the news with pictures, too, girls with voluptuous legs crossed sensually, dresses above the knees, and plump dolls’ faces full of vacant lechery. Green liked news “hot”—not as Fox knows it, not subtly sniffing with strange-scornful nostrils for the news
behind
the news—but straight from the shoulder—socko!—biff!—straight off the griddle, with lots of mustard, shapely legs, roadside wrecks and mutilated bodies, gangsters’ molls and gunmen’s hideouts, tallow faces of the night that bluntly stare at flashlight lenses—this and talk of “heart-balm”, “love-thief”, “sex-hijacker”—all of this liked Green.

Yes, Green liked the news—and now, a bit of news himself (nine lines of print in
Times
), has been disjected and exploded on a Brooklyn pavement!

Well, such was our friend, C. Green, who read, but not too well; and wrote, but not too easily; who smelled, but not too strongly; felt, but not too deeply; saw, but not too clearly—yet had smelled the tar in May, smelled the slow, rank yellow of the rivers, and the clean, coarse corn; had seen the slants of evening on the hill-flanks in the Smokies, and the bronze swell of the earth, the broad, deep red of Pennsylvania barns, proud-proportioned and as dominant across the fields as bulls; had felt the frost and silence in October; had heard the whistles of the train wail back in darkness, and the horns of New Year’s Eve, and—“Jesus! There’s another year gone by! What now?”

No Drake was he, no Spaniard, no coon-skin cap, no strong face burning west. Yet, in some remote and protoplasmic portion, he was a little of each of these. A little Scotch, perhaps, was Green, a little Irish, English, Spanish even, and some German—a little of each part, all compacted and exploded into nameless atom of America!

No. Green—poor little Green—was not a man like Drake. He was just a cinder out of life—for the most part, a thinker of base thoughts, a creature of unsharpened, coarse perceptions. He was meagre in the hips, he did not have much juice or salt in him. Drake gnawed the beef from juicy bones in taverns, drank tankards of brown ale, swore salty curses through his whiskers, wiped his mouth with the back of his hard hand, threw the beef bone to his dog, and pounded with his tankard for more ale. Green ate in cafeterias, prowled at midnight over coffee and a doughnut or a sugar-coated bun, went to the chop-suey joint on Saturday nights and swallowed chow mein, noodle soup, and rice. Green’s mouth was mean and thin and common, it ran to looseness and a snarl; his skin was grey and harsh and dry; his eyes were dull and full of fear. Drake was self-contained: the world his oyster, seas his pastures, mighty distances his wings. His eyes were sea-pale (like the eyes of Fox); his ship was England. Green had no ship, he had a motor-car, and tore down concrete roads on Sunday, and halted with the lights against him with the million other cinders hurtling through hot space. Green walked on level concrete sidewalks and on pavements grey, through hot and grimy streets past rusty tenements. Drake set his sails against the west, he strode the buoyant, sea-washed decks, he took the Spaniard and his gold, and at the end he stood in to the sweet enfoldments of the spire, the clustered town, the emerald fields that slope to Plymouth harbour—then Green came!

We who never saw brave Drake can have no difficulty conjuring up an image of the kind of man he was. With equal ease we can imagine the bearded Spaniard, and almost hear his swarthy oaths. But neither Drake nor Spaniard could ever have imagined Green. Who could have foreseen him, this cypher of America, exploded now upon a street in Brooklyn?

Behold him, Admiral Drake! Observe the scene now! Listen to the people! Here is something strange as the Armadas, the gold-laden cargoes of the bearded Spaniards, the vision of unfound Americas!

What do you see here, Admiral Drake?

Well, first, a building—your own hotel—such a building as the folk of Plymouth never saw. A great block of masonry, pale-hued, grimy-white, fourteen storeys tall, stamped in an unvarying pattern with many windows. Sheeted glass below, the store front piled with medicines and toilet articles, perfumes, cosmetics, health contrivances. Within, a soda fountain, Admiral Drake. The men in white with monkey caps, soda jerkers sullen with perpetual overdriven irritation. Beneath the counter, pools of sloppy water, filth, and unwashed dishes. Across the counter, Jewesses with fat, rouged lips consuming ice-cream sodas and pimento sandwiches.

Outside upon the concrete sidewalk lies the form of our exploded friend, C. Green. A crowd has gathered round—taxi-drivers, passersby, hangers-on about the subway station, people working in the neighbourhood, and the police. No one has dared to touch exploded Green as yet—they stand there in a rapt and fascinated circle, looking at him.

Not much to look at either, Admiral Drake; not even those who trod your gory decks would call the sight a pretty one. Our friend has landed on his head—“taken a nose dive”, as we say—and smashed his brains out at the iron base of the second lamp-post from the corner. (It is the same lamp-post as heretofore described, to be found throughout America—a “standard”, standardised, supporting five hard grapes of frosted glass.)

So here Green lies, on the concrete sidewalk all disjected. No head is left, the head is gone now, head’s exploded; only brains are left. The brains are pink, and almost bloodless, Admiral Drake. (There’s not much blood here—we shall tell you why.) But brains exploded are somewhat like pale sausage meat, fresh-ground. Brains are stuck hard to the lamp-post, too; there is a certain driven emphasis about them, as if they had been shot hydraulically out of a force-hose against the post.

The head, as we have said, is gone completely; a few fragments of the skull are scattered round—but of the face, the features, forehead—nothing! They have all been blown
out
, as by some inner explosion. Nothing is left but the back of the skull, which curiously remains, completely hollowed out and vacant, and curved over, like the rounded handle of a walking-stick.

The body, five feet eight or nine of it, of middling weight, is lying—we were going to say “face downwards”; had we not better say “stomach downwards”?—on the sidewalk. It is well-dressed, too, in cheap, neatly pressed, machine-made clothes: tan shoes and socks with a clocked pattern, suit of a light texture, brownish-red in hue, a neat canary-coloured shirt with attached collar—obviously C. Green had a nice feeling for proprieties! As for the body itself, save for a certain indefinable and curiously “disjected” quality, one could scarcely tell that every bone in it is broken. The hands are still spread out, half-folded and half-clenched, with a still-warm and startling eloquence of recent life. (It happened just four minutes ago!)

Well, where’s the blood, then, Drake? You’re used to blood; you’d like to know. Well, you’ve heard of casting bread upon the waters, Drake, and having it return—but never yet, I’ll vow, of casting blood upon the streets—and having it run away—and then come back to you! But here it comes now, down the street—down Apple Street, round the corner into Hay, across the street now towards C. Green, the lamp-post, and the crowd!—a young Italian youth, blunt-featured, low-browed, and bewildered, his black eyes blank with horror, tongue mumbling thickly, arm held firmly by a policeman, suit and shirt all drenched with blood, and face be-spattered with it! A stir of sudden interest in the crowd, sharp nudges, low-toned voices whispering:

“Here he is! Th’ guy that ‘got it’!...Sure, that’s him—you know him, that Italian kid that works inside in the news-stand—he was standin’
deh
beside the post! Sure,
that’s
the guy!—talkin’ to another guy—he got it all!
That’s
the reason you didn’t see more blood—_this_ guy got it
The guy just missed him by six inches
I’m tellin’ you I
saw
it, ain’t I? I looked up an’ saw him in the air! He’d a hit this guy, but when he saw that he was goin’ to hit the lamp-post, he put out his hands an’ tried to keep away!
That’s
the reason that he didn’t hit this guy!...But this guy heard him when he hit, an’ turned round—and zowie!—he got all of it right in his face!”

And another, whispering and nudging, nodding towards the horror-blank, thick-mumbling Italian boy: “Jesus! Look at th’ guy, will yuh!...He don’t know what he’s doing!...He don’t know yet what happened to him
He got it
all
. I tell yuh! He was standin’ deh beside the post, wit a package undehneath one ahm—an’ when it happened—when he got it—he just stahted runnin’...He don’t know yet what’s happened!...That’s what I’m tellin’ yuh—th’ guy just stahted runnin’ when he got it.”