waved me to a stop, asking me,
"Hhhhmmm, where does this particular song end, sir?"
"End?" I looked over at him. "Jest a-gettin' strung out good, mister!'
"The number is most amusing. Exciting. Extremely colorful. But I'm
wondering if it would be suited to the customers. Ahemm. To our customers.
Just a couple of questions. How do you get out to the microphone and back
again?"
"Walk, as a rule."
"That won't do. Let's see you trot in through that arch doorway there,
sidestep when you come to that flat platform, prance pretty lively when you
go down those three stairs, and then spring up to the microphone on the
balls of your feet throwing your weight on the joints of your ankles." And
before I could say anything he had run out and trotted back, showing me
exactly what he was talking about.
Another one of the bosses from the table at the back wall yelled, "As
far as his entrance is concerned, I think we can rehearse it a week or two
and get it ironed out!"
"Yes! Of course, his microphoning has got to be tested and lights
adjusted to his size, but that can come later. I'm thinking about his
make-up. What kind of make-up do you use, young man?" Another boss was
talking from his table.
"Ain't been a-usin' none," I talked into the mike. I felt the faraway
rattling and rumbling of freight trains and transfer trucks calling to me. I
bit my tongue and listened.
"Under the lights, you know, your natural skin would look too pale and
too dead. You wouldn't mind putting on some kind of make-up just to liven
you up, would you?
"Naww. Don't 'spose." Why was I thinking one thing in my head and
saying something different with my mouth?
"Fine!" A lady nodded her head from the boss's table. "Now, oh yes,
now, what kind of a costume shall I get for him?"
"Which?" I said, but nobody heard me.
She folded her hands together under her chin and clicked her wax
eyelashes together like loose shingles in a high wind, "I can just imagine a
hay wagon piled high with singing field hands, and this carefree character
following along in the dust behind the wagon, singing after the day's work
is done! That's it. A French peasant garb!"
"Or--no--wait! I see him as a Louisiana swamp dweller, half asleep on
the flat top of a gum stump, his feet dangling in the mud, and his gun
leaning near his head! Ah! What a follow-up for the gunny-sack girl singing,
'Hillbilly Bride'!" A man losing a wrestling match with a four-bit cigar was
arguing with the lady.
"I have it! Listen! I have it!" The lady rose up from her table with a
look on her face like she was in a trance of some kind, and she walked over
across the carpet to where I was standing, saying, "I have it! Pierrot! We
shall dress him in a Pierrot costume! One of those darling clown suits! It
will bring out the life and the pep and the giddy humor of his period! Isn't
that a simply swell idea?" She folded her hands under her chin again and
swayed over against my shoulder as I sidestepped to miss her. "Imagine! What
the proper costuming will bring out in these people! Their carefree life!
Open skies! The quaint simplicity. Pierrot! Pierrot!" She was dragging me
across the floor by the arm, and we left the room with everybody talking at
once. Some taking tryouts said, "Gosh! Gon'ta catch on!"
Outside, on a high glass porch of some kind, where wild tangled green
things growed all along the floor by the windows, she shoved me down in a
leather chair by a plastic table and sighed and puffed like she'd done an
honest day's work. "Now, let me see, oh yes, now, my impression of the
slight sample of your work is a bit, so to say, incomplete, that is, as far
as the cultural traditions represented and the exchange and
interrelationships and overlappings of these same cultural patterns are
concerned, especially here in America, where we have, well, such a mixing
bowl of culture, such a stew-pot of shades and colors. But, nevertheless, I
think the clown costume will represent a large portion of the humorous
spirit of all of them--and--"
I let my ears bend away from her talking and I let my eyes drift out
the window and down sixty-five stories where the town of old New York was
standing up living and breathing and cussing and laughing down yonder acrost
that long island.
I begun to pace back and forth, keeping my gaze out the window, way
down, watching the diapers and underwear blow from fire escapes and clothes
lines on the back sides of the buildings; seeing the smoke whip itself into
a hazy blur that smeared across the sky and mixed in with all of the other
smoke that tried to hide the town. Limp papers whipped and beat upwards,
rose into the air and fell head over heels, curving over backwards and
sideways, over and over, loose sheets of newspaper with pictures of people
and stories of people printed somewhere on them, turning loops in the air.
And it was blow little paper, blow! Twist and turn and stay up as long as
you can, and when you come down, come down on a pent-house porch, come down
easy so's not to hurt your self. Come down and lay there in the rain and the
wind and the soot and smoke and the grit that gets in your eyes in the big
city--and lay there in the sun and get faded and rotten. But keep on trying
to tell your message, and keep on trying to be a picture of a man, because
without that story and without that message printed on you there, you
wouldn't be much. Remember, it's just maybe, some day, sometime, somebody
will pick you up and look at your picture and read your message, and carry
you in his pocket, and lay you on his shelf, and burn you in his stove. But
he'll have your message in his head and he'll talk it and it'll get around.
I'm blowing, and just as wild and whirling as you are, and lots of times
I've been picked up, throwed down, and picked up; but my eyes has been my
camera taking pictures of the world and my songs has been messages that I
tried to scatter across the back sides and along the steps of the fire
escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls.
Still going like a Nineteen Hundred and Ten talking machine, my lady
friend had said a whole raft of stuff that I'd not heard a single word of.
I'm afraid my ears had been running somewhere down along the streets. I
heard her say, "So, the interest manifest by the manager is not at all a
personal thing, not at all, not at all; but there is another reason why you
are so certain to satisfy the desires of his customers; and I always say,
don't you always say, 'What the customer says is what we all have to say'?"
Her teeth shined and her eyes snapped different colors. "Don't you?'
"Don't I? What? Oh, 'scuse me jest a minute, huh? Be right back." I
took one good long look all up and down the red leather seats and the
plastic tables in the glassed-in room, and grabbed lmó guitar by the neck
and said to a boy in uniform, "Rest room?" And I followed where he pointed,
except that when I got within a couple of feet of the sign that said "Men,"
I took a quick dodge down a little hallway that said "Elevator."
The lady shook her head and nodded with her back turned to me. And I
asked the elevator man, "Goin' down? Okay. Groun' floor. Quickest way's too
slow!" When we hit bottom I walked out onto the slick marble floor whanging
as hard as I could on the guitar and singing:
Ever' good man gits in hard luck sometime
Ever' good man gits in hard luck sometime
Gits down an' out
Dead broke
Ain't gotta dime!
I never heard my guitar ring so loud and so long and so clear as it did
there in them high-polished marble halls. Every note was ten times as loud,
and so was my singing. I filled myself full of free air and sung as loud as
the building would stand. I wanted the poodle dogs leading the ladies around
to stick up their noses and wonder what in the hell had struck that joint.
People had walked hushed up and too nice and quiet through these tiled
floors too long. I decided that for this minute, for this one snap of their
lives, they'd see a human walking through that place, not singing because he
was hired and told what to sing, but just walking through there thinking
about the world and singing about it.
She mortally echoed around and glanced across the murals painted on the
walls. And folks in herds and family groups stopped looking in the fancy
lit-up shop windows along the corridors and listened to me telling the
world:
Old John Dee he ain't no friend of mine
Old John Dee he ain't no friend of mine
I'm a-sayin' Did John Dee shore ain't no friend of
mine
Takes all th' purty wimmen
An' leaves us men behind!
Little boys and girls trotted up alongside of me, jerking out from
their parents' hands, and kept their ears and noses rubbing against my
guitar's sounding board. While I was beating the blues chords and not
singing, I heard side remarks:
"What is he advertising?"
"Isn't he a card?"
"Quaint."
"A Westerner. Possibly lost in a subway.''
"Children! Come back here!"
I heard a cop say, "Cut it! Hey! Yez cain't pull dat stuff in here!"
But before he could get at me, I'd whirled through a spinning door and
fought my way across some avenues packed with traffic, and was lighting out
along some sidewalks and not even paying much attention to where I was
heading. A few hours could of went by. Or days. I wasn't noticing. But I was
'dodging walking people, playing kids, and rusting iron fences, rotting
doorsteps, and my head was buzzing, trying to think up some reason why I'd
darted out away from the sixty-fifth story of that big high building back
yonder. But something in me must of knowed why. Because in a little while I
found myself walking along New York's Ninth Avenue, and cutting over another
long cement block to come to the waterfront. I seen mothers perched on high
rock steps and out along the curbs on cane-bottom chairs, some in the shade,
some in the sun, talking, talking, talking. Their gift of the spirit was
talking, talking to the mother or to the lady next to them, about the wind,
the weather, the curbs, the sidewalks, the rooms, roaches, bugs, rent, and
the landlord, and managing to keep one eye on all of the hundreds and
hundreds of kids playing in the open street. As I walked along, no matter
what they'd been talking about, I heard them first to one side and then to
the other, saying, "music man!" "Heyyy! Playa for ussa th' song!" "Hi! Le's
hear ya tromp it!" "Would you geeve to us a museek?" "Play!" "Ser'nade me!"
And so, not half caring, there in the last few patches of the setting sun, I
walked along winding my way through the women and young boys and girls, and
singing:
What does the deep sea say?
Tell me, what does the deep sea say?
Well, it moans and it groans,
It swells and it foams
And it rolls on its weary way!
I walked along, the day just leaving out over the tops of the tall
buildings, and sifting through the old scarred chimneys sticking up. Thank
the good Lord, everybody, everything ain't all slicked up, and starched and
imitation. Thank God, everybody ain't afraid. Afraid in the skyscrapers, and
afraid in the red tape offices, and afraid in the tick of the little machine
that never explodes, stock market tickers, that scare how many to death,
ticking off deaths, marriages and divorces, friends and enemies; tickers
connected and plugged in like juke boxes, playing the false and corny lies
that are sung in the wild canyons of Wall Street; songs wept by the families
that lose, songs jingled on the silver spurs of the men that win. Here on
the slummy edges, people are crammed down on the curbs, the sidewalks and
the fireplugs, and cars and trucks and kids and rubber balls are bouncing
through the streets. I was thinking, "This is what I call bein' borned an'
a-livin'; I don't know what I call that big high building back yonder that I
left.''
I'd noticed a quiet-faced young Mexican seaman following along behind
my shoulder. He was of a small build, almost like a kid, and the sea and the
sun had kept his hair oily and his smile smooth. After a block or two we'd
got to knowing each other and he'd told me, "My name iss Carlos, call me
Carl." Outside of that Carl didn't say much; we just almost knew that we was
buddies without making lectures on the subject. So for about an hour I
walked along singing, while this man walked beside me, smiling right on down
through the wind, not telling me no big tall tale of submarines and
torpedoes, no hero stories.
A little girl and boy clattered on roller skates, and told me to sing
louder so's they could hear me above the noise. Other kids quit swatting
each other and walked along listening. Mamas called in a hundred tongues,
"Kids, come back here!" The kids would usually follow along humming and
singing with me for about a block, and then stand on the curb when I crossed
the street and look for a long time. In each block a new gang formed and
herded along, feeling of the wood of the guitar, and getting their hands on
the strap, the strings. Older kids tittered and flirted in dark doorways and
pushed each other around in front of soda fountains and penny-candy
hangouts, and I managed to sing them at least a little snatch, a few words
of the songs they'd ask to hear. At times I stopped for a minute and papas
and mamas and kids of all ages stood around as quiet as they could, but the
whamming and banging of big trucks, busses, vans, and cars made us stand
jammed together real tight to be heard.
It got to be night, the kind of summer night that pitches on the wind
and dips in the white clouds and makes buildings look like all kinds of
freighters creaking along. Dark swarms of us sprawled out along stone steps
and iron railings, and I felt that old feeling coming back to me. When I
reached the water front, the song I was singing over and over was:
It was early in the spring
Of nineteen forty-two
She was queen of the seas
And the wide ocean blue
Her smoke filled the sky
In that Hudson River's tide
And she rolled on her side
When that good ship went down
Oh, the Normandie was her name
And great was her fame
And great was her shame
When that good ship went down
Folks joined in like one voice in the dark. I could vision on the
screen of fog rolling down a picture of myself singing back yonder on the
sixty-fifth floor of Rockefeller's Center, singing a couple of songs and
ducking back into a dressing room to smoke and play cards for two more hours
until the next show, then more smoke and cards until the next show. And I
knew that I was glad to be loose from that sentimental and dreamy trash, and
gladder to be edging on my way along here singing with the people, singing
something with fight and guts and belly laughs and power and dynamite to it.
When Carl touched me on the arm we was throwing on our brakes in the
green shiver of a neon sign that said, "Anchor Bar." We stood outside on the
curb and he grinned and told me, "This iss a nice place; always a good bunch
here." By now we had a whole crew around us waving their heads in the wind,
singing:
Oh, the Normandie was her name
And great was her fame
And great was her shame
When that good ship went down
I sung out by myself:
So remember her sorrow
And remember her name
We will all work together
And she'll soon sail again
All kinds of hats, caps, sweaters, and dresses stood around tapping
shoes against the concrete, patting hands, like getting new hope out of old
religion; and when my eyes got a plainer look at the crowd, I seen lots of
uniforms and sailor caps of all kinds. Light sifted through the open door
and big windows of the bar, and hit against our backs and faces.
"More!"
"Sing!"
"Crank up!"
A funny little gang of us there on that curb.
"Where'd ja pick up such songs at?" one lady asked me
"Ohh," I told her, "jest bummin' aroun', see stuff, make up a little
song about it."
"Buy ya a drink if ya want it!" a man said.
"Mister, I'll take óa up in jest a minute! Cain't stop right now ta buy
no drink! I'd lose my crowd!"
"What th' hell you doin'?" he said back in the crowd "Runnin' f'r
office with that whang-danger music box?"
"Back in Oklahoma," I kidded him, "I know one Negro boy that blows a
mouth organ, an' he's elected our las' four gov'nors!"
There was a little laugh run through the listeners, and you could see a
pile of smoke rising out of our huddle from cigarets and cigars and
ocean-going pipes the people was pulling on. In the flare of the smoking, I
got looks at their faces, and when I seen how hard and tough they was, I
thought I must be in just about the best of company.
A tall man pushed through the rest, with both hands stuck down in his
overcoat pockets, and said, "By God an' by Jesus! Howya makin' out?" It was
my old friend, Will Geer, an actor playing the lead part of Jeeter Lester in
the play, Tobacco Road. Will was a big tall cuss, head and shoulders over
the most of us, and I rocked considerably when he whooped me down across the
back and shoulders with his open hand. "You îl' dog! Howya been?"
"Hi! Will! Dam yer hide! Lay yer head back, boy, an' sing!"
"Go right on. Don't let me stop you." Will's voice had a dry crackle to
it that sounded like a stick in the fire. "Mighta knew who 'twas when I saw
this big crowd here singin'! Keep it up!"
"Carl, shake han's with Will there."
"Meester Will? I am glad to know you."
"Hey! Ever'body! Here's another frienda mine! Name's Will!"
He stood with his long chin and square jaw set against the dampness of
the fog, and folded his hands together and waved them above our heads.
Behind him the doorway of the Anchor Bar was filled with three people on
their way out, the bartender leading a lady and a man by the arm. She was
about fifty, little and slight, leathery skin like wet canvas full of
pulling wind, coarse black hair all tangled up with the atmosphere and
scenery, and a voice like sand washing back into the ocean, "I don't need
your help! I wanta buy another drink!" Then she looked up at the crowd and
said, "Cain't insult a lady this-a way!"
"Lady," the bartender was pushing the pair onto the sidewalk, "I know
you're a lady, an' we all know you're a lady; but Mayor La Gad-about says no
drinks after closin' time, an' it's after closin' time now!"
"Honey, sweet thing," I could hear her husband talking, "don't hurt th'
man, don't, he just only works here."
"Who ask'd you f'r advice?" She marched out onto the sidewalk beside
us.
"Put'cher coat on! Here, hold still!" He was tip-toeing around her
trying to get the coat untangled. First he held it upside down with the
sleeves dragging the sidewalk; then he got hold of the sleeves, but he had
the lining on the wrong side; and after a couple of minutes, they had one
sleeve plumb on, but she was still running her fist through the air feeling
for the last sleeve. She had a look on her face like she was searching the
waterfront for a man because she knew he had one sleeve of her coat, and he
was working in the wind with a serious look in his eye, but always, just
about a foot or two south of where she was holding her arm up, fishing.
Will walked over and took her fist and jammed it through the sleeve,
and except for some mumbling and grumbling in the crowd nobody laughed. Will
lit up some kind of a long cigaret and took the pair by the arms and brought
them over to the bunch. "Meet ever'body!" He was smiling and saying, "All of
you, here, meet Somebody!"
"Ever'body, gladta knowya!"
"Somebody, hello! Join up!"
"Don' mind gittin' booted outa that joint! We're a-havin' a lot th'
bes' time out here!"
"Welcome ta our mists! Wahooo!"
"What yez a-doin'? Sangin'? Oh! Lord Godamighty! I mortally luv ta hear
good sangin'! Sang! Make some racket!" The lady was standing at my elbow in
the middle of the crowd. We sung our song about the Normandie all over
again, and her and her man both shook the wax out of their ears in a minute
and started singing, and their voices sounded good, like coal being dumped
down into a cellar.
I took a look over the heads of the crowd and seen the bartender
standing just outside the door talking to a copper, and I knew our singing
had cut off about three fourths of his trade for the night, so I started
walking with my eyes up toward the stars, and the little mob followed me
along, filling the Hudson River's tide and the hulls of the warehouses, the
markets, loading buildings, and all of the docks, and all of the ocean, with
good husky voices. Some rasping, some gasping, some growling and some
rattling with whiskey, rum, beer, gin, tobacco, but singing all the same.
We'd walked for about a block when we heard a tough talker behind us
yell, "Hey, sailor!"
We walked a few more steps singing, then it come again.
"Hey, sailor!"
"Keep on with th' singin'." A sailor was ducking at my ear saying, "Law
says he's got ta yell 'hey sailor' three times!"
"Go on! Sing!" a second sailor said.
"Keep it up!" a third one put in.
Then it was, "Heyyyy, sailor!"
And a dead still spell come over our whole gang. The Military Policeman
had yelled his third time. The sailors stopped and stood at attention,
"Yessir, Off'cer."
"Go to your stations, sailors!"
"Aye, aye, Off'cer!''
"At once, sailor!"
"Goin', off'cer!"
And the sailors walked away in good order, rubbing their eyes and faces
in the night air, shaking their heads clear of tobacco smoke, and the dregs
of beer. There in a few steps, they seemed to turn into somebody else,
straightening up, fixing each other's shirts, blouses, ties, getting rigging
in order. Low talk, laughs, thanks, and pats on the back was about all they
give me, but as they slipped off in their different directions for their
ships, some French, some British, some American, some Everything Else, I was
thinking, There goes th' best fellers I ever seen.
"How'dya like ta be in th' Navy, Carl?" Will said.
"I would like to be in the Navy just fine," Carl said, "but I don't
guess I ever can."
"Reason?" I asked Carl.
"I have a leetle something the matter with my lungs. Rosin. ÒÂ. I
worked on a shingle-saw a few years. I'm in 4-F." His eyes followed the
sailors away in the dark, and then he said, "The Navy, yes, it would be
fine."
A Military Policeman swung his club around doing tricks and said to us,
"Go ahead with y'r party, by God, ya gotta perty dam good song there--'bout
that there Norm'ndie"
Another cop turned around and walked away saying, "It's jus' that we
gotta git our sailors ta werk on time. Those songs was doin' them men a lot
o' good!"
One or two of the bunch that was left took off in different directions
and then three or four shook my hand and told me, "Well, we had a dam good
time." "Be seem' ya." "Saved us money, too!" And all that was left was me
and Carl and Will and the lady and her husband, standing there on the curb,
looking out toward the waterfront, out across the big dark mountains moving
up and down at their docks, bigger than buildings, more alive than the
hills, sloshing at the portholes and waterlines, floating still and quiet
like three women, the living Queen Elizabeth, the breathing Queen Mary, and
the sleeping Normandie on her side.
"Fellers game ta go home with me?" the lady asked us. "Got a great,
great big bottle, nearly almost half full."
Her husband held his hands in his pockets and shook his head after
every word his wife said, his little hat rocking back and forth on his head
when he nodded.
"Take us!" Will told her, winking around at us. "I haven't even had a
drink tonight!"
We walked along just keeping our eyes on the red glare of her cigaret,
first bright, then dull, in the dark. The old hard cobblestones was lit up
with the filtered neon light that leaks somehow or other, some strange way,
down into all of the big town's dirtiest corners, and shines like
million-dollar jewelry, even on the spitty, foggy stones.
I seen the big hump-backs of five or six flat barges loaded full to the
brim. Heavy highway gravel. The tie ropes bucking and stretching, the waters
lapping and swelling and falling in the river with the up and down of the
ocean's roll.
"Fair warnin'!" I heard the lady holler ahead of us. "Walk careful!
Don't want hafta waste my time fishin' no land wallopers outa this slimy
warsh!"
I followed the others across some narrow planks and I held my breath
when I looked down under me at all of the moving, slurping water licking its
mouth under my feet. Finally, after crossing over more whitish loads of
gravel and rocks, we come to a little two-by-scantling shanty built on the
head end of a creaking, heavy barge.
"So this is your homestead, huh?" Will asked her.
"I ain't so graceful out there much on that there solid groun'." She
was fumbling with a lock at the door, and walked into the shack saying, "But
they ain't a gal in th' show business c'n foller aroun' over these here
river boats!"
She lit the lantern, lit the oil stove, and set a half a gallon coffee
pot on the flame. We all found chairs on boxes and big lard cans; then she
said, "Why not sing me a song about somethin' perty? While this here
coffee's a-comin' ta a boirl? Likker goes a lot longer ways when ya mix it
with scaldin' hot coffee."
"I'll make ya up one 'bout yer barge house here. Lemme think."
My bottle it will soon be empty
And I myself won't have a dime
But I've hauled my freight from here to yonder
A many, and a many, and a many a time
While fishing under her tin-topped cupboard she chanted and sung almost
under her breath:
I pulled this package from here ta Albanyyyyy
From there ta Uticayyyyy
From there ta Schenectadyyyyyy
It's a many, an' a many, an' a many a time
Ohhh yes
A many, an' a many, an' a many a time
The only thing that broke up her singing was the coffee pot spewing
over the sides and the fire barking at the steam. Then she said, "Never did
ask me my name. Dam that stove ta hell, anyhow! Boirl all o' my coffee
away!" She grabbed a few cups from nails over the sink and poured one half
full in front of every one of us. Then she popped a stopper out of a
mean-looking bottle and poured the cups the rest of the way full. "McElroy.
That's me! But don't tell me your names," she said to all of us, " 'cause I
can't remember names none too good noway. I'll just call you Mr.
Broadshoulders, an' you there, lemme see, I'll name you Eel Foot! Mister Eel
Foot; an' next, you there with th' music doin's, I'll name you--le's
see--Curley."
She jammed the red-hot coffee pot down on the table under my nose, and
a half a cupful sloshed out like melted lead and soaked the front part of my
britches. I jumped to the floor and fought and fanned the spots where the
coffee was scalding me, but she was laughing as loud as the barge would
stand it, and yelling, while she downed her hot drink, "Whheeeww! Yipppeee!
Flappin' salmon! What's th' matter, Hot Pants? Scorch you?" Her face turned
against the lantern light and it was the first time I'd got a real look at
her. Weather-whipped and wind-blistered, salt-soaked and frostbit ten
thousand times just like the skim that shines across the humps and the
swells of the tidewaters. "Mister Hot Pants! Yah! Yah! Yah!" she laughed
while I fanned my legs to cool the hot spots.
Her husband in the deal got up and stumbled ten or fifteen feet through
a little partition, heaving like a sick horse, and I heard him fall down
across some kind of a couch. I watched her drain her cup into her mouth, and
men she stuck out her tongue and made a witchy-looking face out through the
window at the moon splashing along on the clouds. Will and Carl and me
tipped our cups together, held our breath, shut our eyes, and sloshed our
mouths full of the fiery mixture.
While she was waiting for us to fall over on the floor, we lit up some
smokes, and I sung her another made-up verse:
I've freighted and barged it from New York and up
I drunk my hard likker from a blistering cup
And who was the pride of the brave river boys?
A lass by the name of Miss McElroy.
"Now ain't that perty? Ain't that a slippery shame?'' She only had two
teeth in her head, one low and on the left, one high and on the right, but
she put a look on her lace like she was a Freshman in a girls' school. "You
mighty rum-com-a-tootin'! I wuz th' only female she womern up an down this
Goddern slimy warsh! I wuzn't no dam house cat! No flower pot! an' if I wuz
jus' twenty-five years younger tonight, I'd give you gents a honest ta God
run fer yer marbles!" Then she run the end of her tongue out over her pair
of mismated teeth, and tapped the oilcloth of the table, and laughed; and
the whole string of barges rocked in the ooze and the bellies of the old
rafts pushed against each other, and the waterfront groaned and foamed
around the edges.
Songs rippled across the loads of highway rock and dripped off down
across the edges, and such songs and such yarns and lies and windy tales as
we pulled out of our minds for the next hour or two was never before or
since topped by the humans on this planet.
She said she'd had six children, that being pregnant so much had caused
her teeth to fall out. Four boys. Three alive. Two girls, both up and gone.
She showed us picture post cards of the places one daughter had worked as a
taxi-dancer. The other girl lived across the river and come to see her on
Sundays. One son used to send picture cards, but he was a merchant seaman,
and she hadn't heard from him for over eight months. One son got in jail
four or five times for little rackets; then he went out West to work in the
mines, and he never wrote much anyhow. Him and his pa was always a-scrappin'
when they'd get together, because the old man did believe in being honest as
the law allows. They'd of killed each other if the boy hadn'ta left. She was
glad he was gone.
"What's this leave you with?" Will asked her.
"Well," she smiled around at all of us just a speck and let her eyes
fall away to one side, "let me see. Thirty years o' river freightin',
twenty-six years o' married ta th' same man, if ya wanta call 'im a man.
This old rotten barge here. Three nice gent visitors, if ya call 'em
gentlemen; an' well, a little less th'n a halfa bottle o' perty pore
whiskey. Plenty o' hot scaldin' coffee f'r th' nights run, an' ta boot, ta
boot, ya might add, I liv'd ta see th' day that by God, I gotta song wrote
up about me!"
Will and me excused ourselves and walked out the door. We stood on the
edge on the next-door barge, and listened to the water trickle into the
Hudson River. The moon was pretty and scared-looking and the clouds chased
across the sky like early morning newskids. I could feel a sticky veil of
fog settle over the wood and the strings of my guitar, and when I played it,
the tone was soft and damp and muffled along the waters. I kept picking off
a little tune.
"Been doin' last few days?" Will asked me walking along.
"Awww, nuthin' very much. Singin' 'roun'."
"Chances for any jobs?"
"Yeah, few."
" 'Bouts?"
"Night clubs, mostly.''
"Get on?"
"Well, I, ah, that is, er, ah--I hadda big try-out ta day.
Rockefeller's Center."
"Rockefeller Center! Wow! Come out all right?"
"I come out, all right."
"Walk out on 'em?"
"Goddammit! I jes' had ta walk out, Will! Couldn't take that stuff!"
"Goin' ta keep pullin' them one-man walkouts till you've ruined all of
y'r chances here in New York. Better watch y'r step."
"Will, you know me. You know dam good an' well I'd play fer my beans
an' cornbread, an' drink branch water, 'er anything else ta play an' sing
fer folks that likes it, folks that knows it, an' lives what I'm a singin'
'bout. I'm all screwed up in my head. They try ta tell me if I wanta eat an'
stay alive, I gotta sing their dam old phony junk!"
"You'd just naturally explode up in that high society, wouldn't you?
But, money's what it takes, Woody."
"Yeah. I know." I was thinking of a girl named Ruth. ''Damit all ta
hell, anyhow! Mebbe I jest ain't got brains 'nuf in my head ta see that. But
after alla th' hard luck I had, Will, I seen money come, an' money go, ever
since I was jest a kid, an' I never thought 'bout nuthin' else, 'sides jest
passin' out my songs."
"Takes money, boy. You want to make any kind of a name f'r yourself,
well, takes all kinds of money. An' if you want to donate to poor folks all
over th' country, that takes money." '
"Cain't I jest sorta donate my own self, sort of?''
Will grunted. "Can't you go back to the Rainbow Room? Not too late, is
it?"
I said, "No, not too late, I guess I could go back. I guess I could!"
I looked up at the big tall building. The silence around us seemed to
be hollering at me--all right, whatcha gonna do? Come on, runt, make up your
mind. This is it! Christ, boy, this is it!
A little tugbout throwing smoke plowed out from ahead of us, and I
looked at it working in the smeared water like a black bug kicking up dust.
"This barge a-movin'?" I asked Will.
"Blieve 'tis." He walked a few feet along the back end, made a jump
clearing a two-foot gap, and landed back on the McElroy barge. "That barge
you're on's gettin' hauled out by that tug! Better throw me y'r guitar!
Jump!"
I didn't say anything right then. Will walked alongside where I was
moving along and I stalled for a little time, saying, "Looks like it really
is a-movin'."
"Jump! Jump quick! I'll catch your guitar! Jump!" He was trotting now
at a pretty fair gait. "Jump!"
I set myself down on the hind-end of the moving load of gravel, and lit
up a cigaret and blowed the smoke up toward tile long, tall Rockefeller
Building. Will had a great big grin in his face there by the light of the
moon, and he said, "Got any money on ya?"
I flipped a rock into the water and said, "Mornin' comes,
I'll feel in my pockets an' see!"
"But, where'll ya be?"
"I dunno."
My old friend was left behind, panting and all out of breath. I drug my
thumb down acrost the strings of the guitar. In the river waters at my feet,
I could see the reflection of fire and kids fighting their gang wars and a
right young kid up a tree and a mama cat hunting the squeezed-out bodies of
her kittens. Clara didn't look burnt and Mama didn't look crazy in that
river water, but kind of pretty. I seen the oil on the river and it might
have come from somewhere down in my old country, West Texas maybe, Pampa, or
Okemah. I seen the Redding jungle camp reflected there too, and the saloons
along Skid Row except that they looked awful clean. But mostly I saw a girl
in an orchard and how she danced along the mud bank of a river.
Sail on, little barge, heave on, little tug, pound your guts out, work,
dig in, plow this river all to hell.
It'll heal over.
Chapter XIX
TRAIN BOUND FOR GLORY
The wind howled all around me. Rain blistered my skin. Beating down
against the iron roof of the car, the sheets of rain sounded like some kind
of a high-pressure fire hose trying to drill holes. The night was as pitch
black as a night can get, and it was only when the bolts of lightning
knocked holes in the clouds that you could see the square shape of the train
rumbling along in the thunder.
"Jeez!" the kid was laying up as close to me as he could get, talking
with his face the other way, "I tink she's slowin' up."
"I'm ready ta stop any old time," I was laying on my side with my left
arm around his belly. "I'd like ta git cleaned up 'fore I git ta Chicago."
I listened in the dark and heard somebody yelling, "Hey, you guys! Been
asleep?"
'That you, John?" I yelled back at my Negro riding pardner.
"Dis is me, all right! Been asleep?''
"I been about half knocked out!"
''Me, too!" I heard the older kid yell out.
"Youse boids is softies!" the kid I was holding grunted. "How's yo'
music box?" "Still wrapped up in them shirts! I'm 'fraid ta even think about
it!"
"She's clackin' 'er gait! We'll be stoppin' heah in a few minnits!"
"Hope so! Is this purty close to Chicago?" I was yelling loud as I
could.
The little kid put in, "Naaa. Dis ain't ennywheres near Chucago. Dis is
Freeport. Tink."
"Illinois?" I asked him.
"Yaaa. Illinoy."
"Son, is yore face got as much dirt an' cinders an coal dust on it as
mine's got?"
"How can I tell? I cain't even see yer mug. Too dark."
"I'd give a dollar fer a good smoke."
"Come ta Chi, I'll git youse a smoke from me brudder."
"Wonder if them guys got finished with their fightin` inside th' car?"
"Shucks, man! Dey might of done et each othah up!" John slapped his
hand against the back of the kid he was holding.
"I benna listinin' to 'em down through da rooof."
"Shore 'nuff? What're they doin'?"
"Banged aroun' a long time. Cuss'n. Been kinda quiet last few miles."
"Sho' been still! Man, I bet dey jes' natchilly cut one `nothah ta
pieces!"
"I'm jest wonderin' how many we're gonna find that-away when this dam
train stops. These is good guys. Just outta work. You know how a feller is."
John oozed along on his belly from the end of the car where he had been
riding with his head to the wind. I felt him lay down at my side and hold
his arm across my ribs to hang onto a plank in the boardwalk. "Seems like
dis heah rain jus' holds alla dis train smoke right down on toppa th' train,
don' it? I seen 'em befo'. Take a buncha th' bes' workin' fellas in th'
worl'. Let 'em jus' git down an' out. No kinda steady job. Jus' makes ya
mean's all hell."
"Me ol' man wuz datta way." I could hear the oldest kid talking while
he crawled up and laid down alongside of the little one. "He was okay, okay.
Man gits outta woik, tho', goes off on a Goddam blink. Wuz two diff'rent
fellas. I go upstate now an' visit me maw when he ain't around. Slugged me
'bout a month ago. Ain't seen 'em since." His voice sounded slow and dry in
the banging and the rain.
"None a ya mushy talk."
"By gosh, little squirt, ya know, I believe that you talk tougher than
that whole boxcar fulla railroad rounders."
"Sho' do."
"I say what I t'ink, see!"
"Okay. Whatta yez men a-gonna do? Dere's de air brakes!"
I lifted my head up and looked over the top of my guitar. I saw the
crazy red glares from neon lights cutting against the clouds. Bushes and
hedges whizzing past with nice warm smears of electric lights from the
windows of houses. Spotlights and headlights from other locomotives shot
around in the rain. Chug holes and vacant lots standing full of water shined
like new money when the lightning cracked. I tried to keep the buckets of
water wiped out of my face long enough to see. "Edge of some town."
"Freeport. Ain't I done told yez oncet?" The runty kid snorted rain out
of his nose poking his head over the guitar. "I put da bum on alla dese
happy homes. Freeport."
All four of us got up on our hands and knees and listened to the
screaking and jamming of the brakes against the wheels. A red-hot switch
engine pounded past us. Heat flew from the fire bo