Part 4 (2/2)

The motionless wooden horses were fantastic in the late afternoon sun. They pranced up statically, pierced by their dull gilt bars. The horse nearest Jake had a splintery wooden crack in its dingy rump and the eyes walled blind and frantic, shreds of paint peeled from the sockets. The motionless merry-go-round seemed to Jake like something in a liquor dream.

'I want a experienced mechanic to run this and keep the works in good shape,' Patterson said.

'I can do that all right.'

'It's a two-handed job,' Patterson explained. 'You're in charge of the whole attraction. Besides looking after the machinery you got to keep the crowd in order. You got to be sure that everybody gets on has a ticket. You got to be sure that the tickets are O.K. and not some old dance-hall ticket. Everybody wants to ride them horses, and you'd be surprised what n.i.g.g.e.rs will try to put over on you when they don't have no money. You got to keep three eyes open all the time.'

Patterson led him to the machinery inside the circle of horses and pointed out the various parts. He adjusted a lever and the thin jangle of mechanical music began. The wooden cavalcade around them seemed to cut them off from the rest of the world. When the horses stopped, Jake asked a few questions and operated the mechanism himself.

'The fellow I had quit on me,' Patterson said when they had come out again into the lot. 'I always hate to break in a new man.'

'When do I start?'

Tomorrow afternoon. We run six days and nights a week--beginning at four and shutting up at twelve. You're to come about three and help get things going. And it takes about a hour after the show to fold up for the night.'

'What about pay?'

'Twelve dollars.'

Jake nodded, and Patterson held out a dead-white, boneless hand with dirty fingernails.

It was late when he left the vacant lot. The hard, blue sky had blanched and in the east there was a white moon. Dusk softened the outline of the houses along the street. Jake did not return immediately through Weavers Lane, but wandered in the neighborhoods nearby. Certain smells, certain voices heard from a distance, made him stop short now and then by the side of the dusty street. He walked erratically, jerking from one direction to another for no purpose. His head felt very light, as though it were made of thin gla.s.s. A chemical change was taking place in him. The beers and whiskey he had stored so continuously in his system set in a reaction. He was sideswiped by drunkenness. The streets which had seemed so dead before were quick with life. There was a ragged strip of gra.s.s bordering the street, and as Jake walked along the ground seemed to rise nearer to his face. He sat down on the border of gra.s.s and leaned against a telephone pole. He settled himself comfortably, crossing his legs Turkish fas.h.i.+on and smoothing down the ends of his mustache. Words came to him and dreamily he spoke them aloud to himself.

Resentment is the most precious flower of poverty. Yeah.

It was good to talk. The sound of his voice gave him pleasure.

The tones seemed to echo and hang on the air so that each word sounded twice. He swallowed and moistened his mouth to speak again. He wanted suddenly to return to the mute's quiet room and tell him of the thoughts that were in his mind.

It was a queer thing to want to talk with a deaf-mute. But he was lonesome.

The street before him dimmed with the coming evening.

Occasionally men pa.s.sed along the narrow street very close to him, talking in monotones to each other, a cloud of dust rising around their feet with each step. Or girls pa.s.sed by together, or a mother with a child across her shoulder. Jake sat numbly for some time, and at last he got to his feet and walked on.

Weavers Lane was dark. Oil lamps made yellow, trembling patches of light in the doorways and windows. Some of the houses were entirely dark and the families sat on their front steps with only the reflections from a neighboring house to see by. A woman leaned out of a window and splashed a pail of dirty water into the street. A few drops of it splashed on Jake's face. High, angry voices could be heard from the backs of some of the houses. From others there was the peaceful sound of a chair slowly rocking. Jake stopped before a house where three men sat together on the front steps. A pale yellow light from inside the house shone on them. Two of the men wore overalls but no s.h.i.+rts and were barefooted. One of these was tall and loose-jointed. The other was small and he had a running sore on the corner of his mouth. The third man was dressed in s.h.i.+rt and trousers. He held a straw hat on his knee. 'Hey,' Jake said. The three men stared at him with mill-sallow, dead-pan faces. They murmured but did not change their positions. Jake pulled the package of Target from his pocket and pa.s.sed it around. He sat down on the bottom step and took off his shoes. The cool, damp ground felt good to his feet. 'Working now?'

'Yeah,' said the man with the straw hat. 'Most of the time.'

Jake picked between his toes. 'I got the Gospel in me,' he said. ''I want to tell it to somebody.'

The men smiled. From across the narrow street there was the sound of a woman singing. The smoke from their cigarettes hung close around them in the still air. A little youngun pa.s.sing along the street stopped and opened his fly to make water.

'There's a tent around the corner and it's Sunday,' the small man said finally. 'You can go there and tell all the Gospel you want.'

'It's not that kind. It's better. It's the truth.'

'What kind?'

Jake sucked his mustache and did not answer. After a while he said, 'You ever have any strikes here?'

'Once,' said the tall man. They had one of these here strikes around six years ago.'

'What happened?'

The man with the sore on his mouth shuffled his feet and dropped the stub of his cigarette to the ground. 'Well --they just quit work because they wanted twenty cents a hour. There was about three hundred did it. They just hung around the streets all day. So the mill sent out trucks, and in a week the whole town was swarming with folks come here to get a job.'

Jake turned so that he was facing them. The men sat two steps above him so that he had to raise his head to look into their eyes. 'Don't it make you mad?' he asked.

'How do you mean--mad?'

The vein in Jake's forehead was swollen and scarlet.

'Christamighty, man! I mean mad-m-a-d-mad! He scowled up into their puzzled, sallow faces. Behind them, through the open front door he could see the inside of the house. In the front room there were three beds and a wash-stand. In the back room a barefooted woman sat sleeping in a chair. From one of the dark porches nearby there was the sound of a guitar.

'I was one of them come in on the trucks,' the tall man said.

'That makes no difference. What I'm trying to tell you is plain and simple. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who own these mills are millionaires. While the doffers and carders and all the people behind the machines who spin and weave the cloth can't hardly make enough to keep their guts quiet. See? So when you walk around the streets and. think about it and see hungry, worn-out people and ricket-legged young-uns, don't it make you mad? Don't it?'

Jake's face was flushed and dark and his lips trembled. The three men looked at him warily. Then the man in the straw hat began to laugh.

'Go on and snicker. Sit there and bust your sides open.'

The men laughed in the slow and easy way that three men laugh at one. Jake brushed the dirt from the soles of his feet and put on his shoes. His fists were closed tight and his mouth was contorted with an angry sneer. 'Laugh--that's all you're good for. I hope you sit there and snicker 'til you rot!' As he walked stiffly down the street, the sound of their laughter and catcalls still followed him.

The main street was brightly lighted. Jake loitered on a corner, fondling the change in his pocket. His head throbbed, and although the night was hot a chill pa.s.sed through his body. He thought of the mute and he wanted urgently to go back and sit with him awhile. In the fruit and candy store where he had bought the newspaper that afternoon he selected a basket of fruit wrapped in cellophane. The Greek behind the counter said the price was sixty cents, so that when he had paid he was left with only a nickel. As soon as he had come out of the store the present seemed a funny one to take a healthy man. A few grapes hung down below, the cellophane, and he picked them off hungrily.

Singer was at home when he arrived. He sat by the window with the chess game laid out before him on the table. The room was just as Jake had left it, with the fan turned on and the pitcher of ice water beside the table. There was a panama hat on the bed and a paper parcel, so it seemed that the mute had just come in. He jerked his head toward the chair across from him at the table and pushed the chessboard to one side.

He leaned back with his hands in his pockets, and his face seemed to question Jake about what had happened since he had left. Jake put the fruit on the table. 'For this afternoon,' he said.

'The motto has been: Go out and find an octopus and put socks on it.'

The mute smiled, but Jake could not tell if he had caught what he had said. The mute looked at the fruit with surprise and then undid the cellophane wrappings. As he handled the fruits there was something very peculiar in the fellow's face. Jake tried to understand this look and was stumped. Then Singer smiled brightly.

'I got a job this afternoon with a sort of show. I'm to run the flying-jinny.'

The mute seemed not at all surprised. He went into the closet and brought out a bottle of wine and two gla.s.ses. They drank in silence. Jake felt that he had never been in such a quiet room. The light above his head made a queer reflection of himself in the glowing winegla.s.s he held before him--the same caricature of himself he had noticed many times before on the curved surfaces of pitchers or tin mugs--with his face egg-shaped and dumpy and his mustache straggling almost up to his ears. Across from him the mute held his gla.s.s in both hands. The wine began to hum through Jake's veins and he felt himself entering again the kaleidoscope of drunkenness.

Excitement made his mustache tremble jerkily. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and fastened a wide, searching gaze on Singer.

'I bet I'm the only man in this town that's been mad--I'm talking about really mean mad--for ten solid long years. I d.a.m.n near got in a fight just a little while ago. Sometimes it seems to me like I might even be crazy. I just don't know.'

Singer pushed the wine toward his guest. Jake drank from the bottle and rubbed the top of his head.

'You see, it's like I'm two people. One of me is an educated man. I been in some of the biggest libraries in the country. I read. I read all the time. I read books that tell the pure honest truth. Over there in my suitcase I have books by Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen and such writers as them. I read them over and over, and the more I study the madder I get. I know every word printed on every page. To begin with I like words.

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