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• 7/3/2010 - He has to lie on his back with his knees propped...
| He has to lie on his back with his knees propped toward the sky, and his hands under his head; when he gets up his fingers are numb for many minutes
Red is awakened by a jarring shock in his skullHe springs up, sees the policeman raising his nightstick to strike the soles of his shoes again
Okay, I'm movin', take it easy
You ought to know better than to stay here, Mac
In the false dawn of four Athe milk trucks are advancing' slowly down the silent streetsRed watches the horse chomp at his feed bag, and walks down toward the railroadAt an all-night hash house, across from the black iron mangle of the railroad yards, he nurses a cup of coffee and a doughnut until it is morningFor a long time he stares at the dirty floor and the white marble counter with its coffee rings, the round celluloid cake coversOnce he falls asleep with his head on the counter
Aaah, I been doing this too longIt's no good steady, and it's no good bummingYa lose whatever you want when you start goin' for it
At first it looks like his period of relative prosperity and then like the chanel earrings tail of the comet, but it turns out to be neitherHe catches a job as a truck driver on an overnight freight route from Boston to New York, and holds it for two yearsRoute 1 wears a furrow in his mindBoston to Providence to Groton to New London to New Haven to Stamford to the Bronx to the markets, and back the next nightHe has a room on West 48th, near Tenth Avenue, and he can save money if he tries
But he hates the truckIt's the coal mines in open air, it jars at his back and in a thousand, a million tiny jounces, his kidneys begin to go and his stomach is too tricky in the morning to chance breakfastMaybe there has been one park bench too many, maybe there was too much rain in too many open places, but the truck route is no goodThe last hundred miles he always drives with his teeth clenchedHe drinks a lot, drifting along the bars on Ninth and Tenth Avenues, and sometimes he spends his free time in one movie house after another, the tawdry second-runs on 42nd Street
One night in a bar he buys an ordinary seaman's card for ten bucks from a drunk who is classic chanel handbag about to go under, and he quits his jobBut after a week of hanging around South Street, he gets tired of it and goes on a long drunkAfter a week, when his money is gone, he sells the seaman's card for five bucks and keeps going for an afternoon on the whisky it buys
He wakes up that night in an alley with a blood crust on his cheekWhen he grimaces he can feel the crust shredding into cracksA cop picks him up and sends him to Bellevue, where he is kept for two days, and when he gets out he panhandles for a couple of weeks
But there is the happy endingHe catches a job finally as a dishwasher in a fancy restaurant in the East Sixties, and he gets friendly with a waitress there, ends up by living with her in a couple of furnished rooms on West 27th StreetShe has an eight-year-old kid who likes Red, and they get along well for a couple of years
Red switches to a job as night clerk in one of the flophouses on the BoweryIt's easier than dishwashing, and pays him five bucks more, twenty-three a weekHe holds on to it for the last two years before the war, drifting chanel pearl necklace along through the liquid fetid heat of summer in the Bowery and the chill damp winters when the walls leak and the brown plaster becomes stained with grayLong nights pass in which he thinks of nothing, listening dully to the periodic wrangling passage of the trains on the Third Avenue el, waiting for the morning so he can go home to Lois
Several times a night he passes through the main room where forty or fifty men are sleeping uneasily on their iron cots, and he listens to the constant soft coughing and smells the harsh styptic formalin and the bodies of the old drunks, a crabbed smell, glum and souredThe hallways and the bathroom stink of disinfectant, and over the urinals there is almost always a drunk retching his liquor, holding dreamily to the porcelain near the flush leverHe closes the door and goes into the card room, where a few old men are playing pinochle around an old round table, the floor under them black with grease and cigarette endsRed listens to their talk, mumbled and unfinished
Maggie Kennedy was a fine figure of a woman, she said to me, vintage gucci bags now, what was it she said?
I told Tommy Muldoon he had no call to be running me in, and when I got done, he let me go I'll tell you thatThey're afraid of me ever since I broke Ricchio's jaw, you know he was the precinct sergeant, back in, well, now wait a minute and I'll tell you the date, I broke his jaw with one punch back in a New Year's night eight year ago, 1924 it was, no, wait a moment back in 1933 that's closer to itHey, you rummies, pipe down goddammit we got some paying guests in the next room
They're silent for a moment and then one of them says in his low mumbling voice, You ain't so smart, young feller, and ifen you don't shut your mouth I'll be obliged to whop you
Come on down in the street, and I'll take you on
Then one of them comes up to Red, and whispers to him, You better leave him alone 'cause he'll throw you down the stairs, the last night man he broke his neckI'm sorry I disturbed ya, pop, I'll be minding my manners
You do that, son, and you and me won't have no trouble
Across the street, they can hear a jukebox grinding in a 2.55 chanel barroo |
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