Manhattan Transfer (10 page)

‘How is it you haven’t got a regular job my man,’ she asked as he came back breathless with the empty basket.

‘I reckon it’s as I aint caught on to city ways yet. I was born an raised on a farm.’

‘And what did you want to come to this horrible city for?’

‘Couldn’t stay on the farm no more.’

‘It’s terrible what’s going to become of this country if all the fine strong young men leave the farms and come into the cities.’

‘Thought I could git a work as a longshoreman, ma’am, but they’re layin’ men off down on the wharves. Mebbe I kin go to sea as a sailor but nobody wants a green hand… I aint et for two days now.’

‘How terrible… Why you poor man couldn’t you have gone to some mission or something?’

When Bud had brought the last load in he found a plate of cold stew on the corner of the kitchen table, half a loaf of stale bread and a glass of milk that was a little sour. He ate quickly barely chewing and put the last of the stale bread in his pocket.

‘Well did you enjoy your little lunch?’

‘Thankye ma’am.’ He nodded with his mouth full.

‘Well you can go now and thank you very much.’ She put a quarter into his hand. Bud blinked at the quarter in the palm of his hand.

‘But ma’am you said you’d give me a dollar.’

‘I never said any such thing. The idea… I’ll call my husband if you dont get out of here immediately. In fact I’ve a great mind to notify the police as it is…’

Without a word Bud pocketed the quarter and shuffled out.

‘Such ingratitude,’ he heard the woman snort as he closed the door behind him.

A cramp was tying knots in his stomach. He turned east again and walked the long blocks to the river with his fists pressed tight in under his ribs. At any moment he expected to throw up. If I lose it it wont do me no good. When he got to the end of the street he lay down on the gray rubbish slide beside the wharf. A smell of hops seeped gruelly and sweet out of the humming brewery behind him. The light of the sunset flamed in the windows of factories on the Long Island side, flashed in the portholes of tugs, lay in swaths of curling yellow and orange over the swift browngreen water, glowed on the curved sails of a schooner that was slowly bucking the tide up into Hell Gate. Inside him the pain was less. Something flamed and glowed like the sunset seeping through his body. He sat up. Thank Gawd I aint agoin to lose it.

*

On deck it’s damp and shivery in the dawn. The ship’s rail is wet when you put your hand on it. The brown harborwater smells of washbasins, rustles gently against the steamer’s sides. Sailors are taking the hatches off the hold. There’s a rattle of chains and a clatter from the donkey-engine where a tall man in blue overalls stands at a lever in the middle of a cloud of steam that wraps round your face like a wet towel.

‘Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?’

Mother’s hand has grasped his firmly trailing him down the companionway into the dining saloon. Stewards are piling up baggage at the foot of the stairs.

‘Muddy is it really the Fourth of July?’

‘Yes deary I’m afraid it is… A holiday is a dreadful time to arrive. Still I guess they’ll all be down to meet us.’

She has her blue serge on and a long trailing brown veil and the little brown animal with red eyes and teeth that are real teeth round her neck. A smell of mothballs comes from it, of unpacking trunks, of wardrobes littered with tissuepaper. It’s hot in the dining saloon, the engines sob soothingly behind the bulkhead. His head nods over his cup of hot milk just colored with coffee. Three bells. His head snaps up with a start. The dishes tinkle and the coffee spills with the trembling of the ship. Then a thud and rattle of anchorchains and gradually quiet. Muddy gets up to look through the porthole.

‘Why it’s going to be a fine day after all. I think the sun will burn through the mist… Think of it dear; home at last. This is where you were born deary.’

‘And it’s the Fourth of July.’

‘Worst luck… Now Jimmy you must promise me to stay on the promenade deck and be very careful. Mother has to finish packing. Promise me you wont get into any mischief.’

‘I promise.’

He catches his toe on the brass threshold of the smoking-room door and sprawls on deck, gets up rubbing his bare knee just in time to see the sun break through chocolate clouds and swash a red stream of brightness over the puttycolored water. Billy with the freckles on his ears whose people are for Roosevelt instead of for Parker like mother is waving a silk flag the size of a handkerchief at the men on a yellow and white tugboat.

‘Didjer see the sun rise?’ he asks as if he owned it.

‘You bet I saw it from my porthole,’ says Jimmy walking away after a lingering look at the silk flag. There’s land close on the other side; nearest a green bank with trees and wide white gray-roofed houses.

‘Well young feller, how does it feel to be home?’ asks the tweedy gentleman with droopy mustaches.

‘Is that way New York?’ Jimmy points out over the still water broadening in the sunlight.

‘Yessiree-bobby, behind yonder bank of fog lies Manhattan.’

‘Please sir what’s that?’

‘That’s New York… You see New York is on Manhattan Island.’

‘Is it really on an island?’

‘Well what do you think of a boy who dont know that his own home town is on an island?’

The tweedy gentleman’s gold teeth glitter as he laughs with his mouth wide open. Jimmy walks on round the deck, kicking his heels, all foamy inside; New York’s on an island.

‘You look right glad to get home little boy,’ says the Southern lady.

‘Oh I am, I could fall down and kiss the ground.’

‘Well that’s a fine patriotic sentiment… I’m glad to hear you say it.’

Jimmy scalds all over. Kiss the ground, kiss the ground, echoes in his head like a catcall. Round the deck.

‘That with the yellow flag’s the quarantine boat.’ A stout man with rings on his fingers - he’s a Jew - is talking to the tweedy man. ‘Ha we’re under way again… That was quick, what?’

‘We’ll be in for breakfast, an American breakfast, a good old home breakfast.’

Muddy coming down the deck, her brown veil floating. ‘Here’s your overcoat Jimmy, you’ve got to carry it.’

‘Muddy, can I get out that flag?’

‘What flag?’

‘The silk American flag.’

‘No dear it’s all put away.’

‘Please I’d so like to have that flag cause it’s the Fourth of July an everything.’

‘Now dont whine Jimmy. When mother says no she means no.’

Sting of tears; he swallows a lump and looks up in her eyes.

‘Jimmy it’s put away in the shawlstrap and mother’s so tired of fussing with those wretched bags.’

‘But Billy Jones has one.’

‘Look deary you’re missing things… There’s the statue of Liberty.’ A tall green woman in a dressing gown standing on an island holding up her hand.

‘What’s that in her hand?’

‘That’s a light, dear… Liberty enlightening the world… And there’s Governors Island the other side. There where the trees are… and see, that’s Brooklyn Bridge… That is a fine sight. And look at all the docks… that’s the Battery… and the masts and the ships… and there’s the spire of Trinity Church and the Pulitzer building.’… Mooing of steamboat whistles, ferries red and waddly like ducks churning up white water, a whole train of cars on a barge pushed by a tug chugging inside it that lets out cotton steampuffs all the same size. Jimmy’s hands are cold and he’s chugging and chugging inside.

‘Dear you mustn’t get too excited. Come on down and see if mother left anything in the stateroom.’

Streak of water crusted with splinters, groceryboxes, orangepeel, cabbageleaves, narrowing, narrowing between the boat and the dock. A brass band shining in the sun, white caps, sweaty red faces, playing Yankee Doodle. ‘That’s for the ambassador, you know the tall man who never left his cabin.’ Down the slanting gangplank, careful not to trip.
Yankee Doodle went to town…
Shiny black face, white enameled eyes, white enameled teeth. ‘Yas ma’am, yas ma’am’…
Stucka feather in his hat, an called it macaroni
… ‘We have the freedom of the port.’ Blue custom officer shows a bald head bowing low…
Tumte boomboom
BOOM BOOM BOOM
…
cakes and sugar candy…

‘Here’s Aunt Emily and everybody… Dear how sweet of you to come.’

‘My dear I’ve been here since six o’clock!’

‘My how he’s grown.’

Light dresses, sparkle of brooches, faces poked into Jimmy’s, smell of roses and uncle’s cigar.

‘Why he’s quite a little man. Come here sir, let me look at you.’

‘Well goodby Mrs Herf. If you ever come down our way… Jimmy I didn’t see you kiss the ground young man.’

‘Oh he’s killing, he’s so oldfashioned… such an oldfashioned child.’

The cab smells musty, goes rumbling and lurching up a wide avenue swirling with dust, through brick streets soursmelling full of grimy yelling children, and all the while the trunks creak and thump on top.

‘Muddy dear, you dont think it’ll break through do you?’

‘No dear,’ she laughs tilting her head to one side. She has pink cheeks and her eyes sparkle under the brown veil.

‘Oh muddy.’ He stands up and kisses her on the chin. ‘What lots of people muddy.’

‘That’s on account of the Fourth of July.’

‘What’s that man doing?’

‘He’s been drinking dear I’m afraid.’

From a little stand draped with flags a man with white whiskers with little red garters on his shirtsleeves is making a speech. ‘That’s a Fourth of July orator… He’s reading the Declaration of Independence.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s the Fourth of July.’

Crang!… that’s a cannon-cracker. ‘That wretched boy might have frightened the horse… The Fourth of July dear is the day the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 in the War of the Revolution. My great grandfather Harland was killed in that war.’

A funny little train with a green engine clatters overhead.

‘That’s the Elevated… and look this is Twentythird Street… and the Flatiron Building.’

The cab turns sharp into a square glowering with sunlight, smelling of asphalt and crowds and draws up before a tall door where colored men in brass buttons run forward.

‘And here we are at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.’

Icecream at Uncle Jeff’s, cold sweet peachy taste thick against the roof of the mouth. Funny after you’ve left the ship you can still feel the motion. Blue chunks of dusk melting into the squarecut uptown streets. Rockets spurting bright in the blue dusk, colored balls falling, Bengal fire, Uncle Jeff tacking pinwheels on the tree outside the apartmenthouse door, lighting them with his cigar.
Roman candles you have to hold. ‘Be sure and turn your face away, kiddo.’ Hot thud and splutter in your hands, egg-shaped balls soaring, red, yellow, green, smell of powder and singed paper. Down the fizzing glowing street a bell clangs, clangs nearer, clangs faster. Hoofs of lashed horses striking sparks, a fire engine roars by, round the corner red and smoking and brassy. ‘Must be on Broadway.’ After it the hookandladder and the firechief’s high-pacing horses. Then the tinkletinkle of an ambulance. ‘Somebody got his.’

The box is empty, gritty powder and sawdust get under your nails when you feel along it, it’s empty, no there are still some little wooden fire engines on wheels. Really truly fire engines. ‘We must set these off Uncle Jeff. Oh these are the best of all Uncle Jeff.’ They have squibs in them and go sizzling off fast over the smooth asphalt of the street, pushed by sparkling plumed fiery tails, leaving smoke behind some real fire engines.

Tucked into bed in a tall unfriendly room, with hot eyes and aching legs. ‘Growing pains darling,’ muddy said when she tucked him in, leaning over him in a glimmering silk dress with drooping sleeves.

‘Muddy what’s that little black patch on your face?’

‘That,’ she laughed and her necklace made a tiny tinkling, ‘is to make mother look prettier.’

He lay there hemmed by tall nudging wardrobes and dressers. From outside came the sound of wheels and shouting, and once in a while a band of music in the distance. His legs ached as if they’d fall off, and when he closed his eyes he was speeding through flaring blackness on a red fire engine that shot fire and sparks and colored balls out of its sizzling tail.

The July sun pricked out the holes in the worn shades on the office windows. Gus McNiel sat in the morrischair with his crutches between his knees. His face was white and puffy from months in hospital. Nellie in a straw hat with red poppies rocked herself to and fro in the swivel chair at the desk.

‘Better come an set by me Nellie. That lawyer might not like it if he found yez at his desk.’

She wrinkled up her nose and got to her feet. ‘Gus I declare you’re scared to death.’

‘You’d be scared too if you’d had what I’d had wid de railroad doctor pokin me and alookin at me loike I was a jailbird and the Jew doctor the lawyer got tellin me as I was totally in-cap-aciated. Gorry I’m all in. I think he was lyin though.’

‘Gus you do as I tell ye. Keep yer mouth shut an let the other guys do the talkin’.’

‘Sure I wont let a peep outa me.’

Nellie stood behind his chair and began stroking the crisp hair back from his forehead.

‘It’ll be great to be home again, Nellie, wid your cookin an all.’ He put an arm round her waist and drew her to him.

‘Juss think, maybe I wont have to do any.’

‘I don’t think I’d loike that so well… Gosh if we dont git that money I dunno how we’ll make out.’

‘Oh pop’ll help us like he’s been doin.’

‘Hope to the Lord I aint going to be sick all me loife.’

George Baldwin came in slamming the glass door behind him. He stood looking at the man and his wife a second with his hands in his pockets. Then he said quietly smiling:

‘Well it’s done people. As soon as the waiver of any further claims is signed the railroad’s attorneys will hand me a check for twelve thousand five hundred. That’s what we finally compromised on.’

‘Twelve thousand iron men,’ gasped Gus. ‘Twelve thousand five hundred. Say wait a second… Hold me crutches while I go out an git run over again… Wait till I tell McGillycuddy about it. The ole divil’ll be throwin hisself in front of a market train… Well Mr Baldwin sir,’ Gus propped himself onto his feet… ‘you’re a great man… Aint he Nellie?’