Part 11 (1/2)

But usually he did not stay at home. He went out into the narrow, empty streets. In the first dark hours of the morning the sky was black and the stars hard and bright. Sometimes the mills were running. From the yellow-lighted buildings came the racket of the machines. He waited at the gates for the early s.h.i.+ft. Young girls in sweaters and print dresses came out into the dark street. The men came out carrying their dinner pails.

Some of them always went to a streetcar cafe for Coca-Cola or coffee before going home, and Jake went with them. Inside the noisy mill the men could hear plainly every word that was spoken, but for the first hour outside they were deaf.

In the streetcar Jake drank Coca-Cola with whiskey added. He talked. The winter dawn was white and smoky and cold. He looked with drunken urgency into the drawn, yellow faces of the men. Often he was laughed at, and when this happened he held his stunted body very straight and spoke scornfully hi words of many syllables. He stuck his little finger out from his gla.s.s and haughtily twisted his mustache. And if he was still laughed at he sometimes fought. He swung his big brown fists with crazed violence and sobbed aloud.

After such mornings he returned to the show with relief. It eased him to push through the crowds of people. The noise, the rank stinks, the shouldering contact of human flesh soothed his jangled nerves.

Because of the blue laws hi the town the show closed for the Sabbath. On Sunday he got up early in the morning and took from the suitcase his serge suit. He went to the main street.

First he dropped into the New York Cafe and bought a sack of ales. Then he went to Singer's room. Although he knew many people in the town by name or face, the mute was his only friend. They would idle in the quiet room and drink the ales.

He would talk, and the words created themselves from the dark mornings spent in the streets or hi his room alone. The words were formed and spoken with relief.

The fire had died down. Singer was playing a game of fools with himself at the table. Jake had been asleep. He awoke with a nervous quiver. He raised his head and turned to Singer.

'Yeah,' he said as though in answer to a sudden question.

'Some of us are Communists. But not all of us. Myself, I'm not a member of the Communist Party. Because in the first place I never knew but one of them.

You can b.u.m around for years and not meet Communists.

Around here there's no office where you can go up and say you want to join--and if there is I never heard of it. And you just don't take off for New York and join. As I say I never knew but one--and he was a seedy little teetotaler whose breath stunk. We had a fight. Not that I hold that against the Communists. The main fact is I don't think so much of Stalin and Russia. I hate every d.a.m.n country and government there is. But even so maybe I ought to joined up with the Communists first place. I'm not certain one way or the other. What do you think?'

Singer wrinkled his forehead and considered. He reached for his silver pencil and wrote on his pad of paper that he didn't know.

'But there's this. You see, we just can't settle down after knowing, but we got to act And some of us go nuts. There's too much to do and you don't know where to start It makes you crazy. Even me--I've done things that when I look back at them they don't seem rational Once I started an organization myself. I picked out twenty lint-heads and talked to them until I thought they knew. Our motto was one word: Action. Huh! We meant to start riots--stir up all the big trouble we could.

Our ultimate goal was freedom--but a real freedom, a great freedom made possible only by the sense of justice of the human soul. Our motto, ”Action,” signified the razing of capitalism. In the const.i.tution (drawn up by myself) certain statutes dealt with the swapping of our motto from ”Action” to ”Freedom” as soon as our work was through.'

Jake sharpened the end of a match and picked a troublesome cavity in a tooth. After a moment he continued: 'Then when the const.i.tution was all written down and the first followers well organized--then I went out on a hitch-hiking tour to organize component units of the society. Within three months I came back, and what do you reckon I found? What was the first heroic action? Had their righteous fury overcome planned action so that they had gone ahead without me? Was it destruction, murder, revolution?'

Jake leaned forward in his chair. After a pause he said somberly: 'My friend, they had stole the fifty-seven dollars and thirty cents from the treasury to buy uniform caps and free Sat.u.r.day suppers. I caught them sitting around the conference table, rolling the bones, their caps on their heads, and a ham and a gallon of gin in easy reach.'

A timid smile from Singer followed Jake's outburst of laughter. After a while the smile on Singer's face grew strained and faded. Jake still laughed. The vein in his forehead swelled, his face was dusky red. He laughed too long. Singer looked up at the clock and indicated the time--half-past twelve. He took his watch, his silver pencil and pad, his cigarettes and matches from the mantel and distributed them among his pockets. It was dinner-time.

But Jake still laughed. There was something maniacal in the sound of his laughter. He walked about the room, jingling the change in his pockets. His long, powerful arms swung tense and awkward. He began to name over parts of his coming meal. When he spoke of food his face was fierce with gusto.

With each word he raised his upper lip like a ravenous animal.

'Roast beef with gravy. Rice. And cabbage and light bread.

And a big hunk of apple pie. I'm famished. Oh, Johnny, I can hear the Yankees coming. And speaking of meals, my friend, did I ever tell you about Mr. Clark Patterson, the gentleman who owns the Sunny Dixie Show? He's so fat he hasn't seen his privates for twenty years, and all day he sits in his trailer playing solitaire and smoking reefers. He orders his meals from a short-order joint nearby and every day he breaks his fast with--' Jake stepped back so that Singer could leave the room. He always hung back at doorways when he was with the mute. He always followed and expected Singer to lead. As they descended the stairs he continued to talk with nervous volubility. He kept his brown, wide eyes on Singer's face.

The afternoon was soft and mild. They stayed indoors. Jake had brought back with them a quart of whiskey. He sat brooding and silent on the foot of the bed, leaning now and then to fill his gla.s.s from the bottle on the floor. Singer was at his table by the window playing a game of chess. Jake had relaxed somewhat. He watched the game of his friend and felt the mild, quiet afternoon merge with the darkness of evening.

The firelight made dark, silent waves on the walls of the room.

But at night the tension came in him again. Singer had put away his chess men and they sat facing each other.

Nervousness made Jake's lips twitch raggedly and he drank to soothe himself. A backwash of restlessness and desire overcame him. He drank down the whiskey and began to talk again to Singer. The words swelled with him and gushed from his mouth. He walked from the window to the bed and back again--again and again. And at last the deluge of swollen words took shape and he delivered them to the mute with drunken emphasis: 'The things they have done to us! The truths they have turned into lies. The ideals they have fouled and made vile. Take Jesus. He was one of us. He knew. When He said that it is harder for a camel to pa.s.s through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of G.o.d--he d.a.m.n well meant just what he said. But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of him. How they have turned every word he spoke for their own vile ends. Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today. Jesus would be one who really knows. Me and Jesus would sit across the table and I would look at him and he would look at me and we would both know that the other knew. Me and Jesus and Karl Marx could all sit at a table and-- 'And look what has happened to our freedom. The men who fought the American Revolution were no more like these D.A.R. dames than I'm a pot-bellied, perfumed Pekingese dog.

They meant what they said about freedom. They fought a real revolution. They fought so that this could be a country where every man would be free and equal. Huh! And that meant every man was equal in the sight of Nature--with an equal chance. This didn't mean that twenty per cent of the people were free to rob the other eighty per cent of the means to live.

This didn't mean for one rich man to sweat the p.i.s.s out of ten thousand poor men so that he can get richer. This didn't mean the tyrants were free to get this country in such a fix that millions of people are ready to do anything--cheat, lie, or whack off their right arm--just to work for three squares and a flop. They have made the word freedom a blasphemy. You hear me? They have made the word freedom stink like a skunk to all who know.'

The vein in Jake's forehead throbbed wildly. His mouth worked convulsively. Singer sat up, alarmed, Jake tried to speak again and the words choked in his mouth. A shudder pa.s.sed through his body. He sat down in the chair and pressed his trembling lips with his fingers. Then he said huskily: 'It's this way, Singer. Being mad is no good. Nothing we can do is any good. That's the way it seems to me. All we can do is go around telling the truth. And as soon as enough of the don't knows have learned the truth then there won't be any use for fighting. The only thing for us to do is let them know. All that's needed. But how? Huh?'

The fire shadows lapped against the walls. The dark, shadowy waves rose higher and the room took on motion. The room rose and fell and all balance was gone. Alone Jake felt himself sink downward, slowly in wavelike motions downward into a shadowed ocean. In helplessness and terror he strained his eyes, but he could see nothing except the dark and scarlet waves that roared hungrily over him. Then at last he made out the thing which he sought. The mute's face was faint and very far away. Jake closed his eyes.

The next morning he awoke very late. Singer had been gone for hours. There was bread, cheese, an orange, and a pot of coffee on the table. When he had finished his breakfast it was time for work. He walked somberly, his head bent, across the town toward his room. When he reached the neighborhood where he lived he pa.s.sed through a certain narrow street that was flanked on one side by a smoke-blackened brick warehouse. On the wall of this building there was something that vaguely distracted him. He started to walk on, and then his attention was suddenly held. On the wall a message was written in bright red chalk, the letters drawn thickly and curiously formed: Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth.

He read the message twice and looked anxiously up and down the street. No one was in sight. After a few minutes of puzzled deliberation he took from his pocket a thick red pencil and wrote carefully beneath the inscription: Whoever wrote the above meet me here tomorrow at noon, Wednesday, November 29. Or the next day.

At twelve o'clock the next day he waited before the wall.

'Now and then he walked impatiently to the corner to look : up and down the streets. No one came. After an hour he had to leave for the show. The next day he waited, also. Then on Friday there was a long, slow winter rain. The wall was sodden and the messages streaked so that no word could be read. The rain continued, gray and bitter and cold. Bubber said. 'I come to believe we all gonna drown.' It was true that it like to never quit raining. Mrs. Wells rode them back and forth to school in her car, and every afternoon they had to stay on the front porch or in the house. She and Bubber played Parcheesi and Old Maid and shot marbles on the living-room rug. It was nearing along toward Christmas time and Bubber began to talk about the Little Lord Jesus and the red bicycle he wanted Santa Claus to bring him. The rain was silver on the windowpanes and the sky was wet and cold and gray. The river rose so high that some of the factory people had to move out of their houses. Then when it looked like the rain would keep on and on forever it suddenly stopped. They woke up one morning and the bright sun was s.h.i.+ning. By afternoon the weather was almost warm as summer. Mick came home late from school and Bubber and Ralph and Spareribs were on the front sidewalk. The kids looked hot and sticky and their winter clothes had a sour smell. Bubber had his slingshot and a pocketful of rocks.

Ralph sat up in his wagon, his hat crooked on his head, and he was fretful. Spareribs had his new rifle with him. The sky was a wonderful blue.

'We waited for you a long time, Mick,' Bubber said. 'Where you been?'

She jumped up the front steps three at a time and threw her sweater toward the hat rack. 'Practicing on the piano in the gym.'

Every afternoon she stayed after school for an hour to play.

The gym was crowded and noisy because the girls' team had basketball games. Twice today she was. .h.i.t on the head with the ball. But getting a chance to sit at a piano was worth any amount of knocks and trouble. She would arrange bunches of notes together until the sound came that she wanted. It was easier than she had thought. After the first two or three hours she figured out some sets of chords in the ba.s.s that would fit in with the main tune her right hand was playing. She could pick out almost any piece now. And she made up new music too. That was better than just copying tunes. When her hands hunted out these beautiful new sounds it was the best feeling she had ever known.

She wanted to learn how to read music already written down.

Delores Brown had taken music lessons for five years. She paid Delores the fifty cents a week she got for lunch money to give her lessons. This made her very hungry all through the day. Delores played a good many fast, runny pieces--but Delores did not know how to answer all the questions she wanted to know. Delores only taught her about the different scales, the major and minor chords, the values of the notes, and such beginning rules as those.

Mick slammed the door of the kitchen stove. 'This all we got to eat?'

'Honey, it the best I can do for you,' Portia said. Just cornpones and margarine. As she ate she drank a gla.s.s of water to help wash down the swallows.

'Quit acting so greedy. n.o.body going to s.n.a.t.c.h it out your hand.'

The kids still hung around in front of the house. Bubber had put his slingshot in his pocket and now he played with the rifle. Spareribs was ten years old and his father had died the month before and this had been his father's gun--All the smaller kids loved to handle that rifle. Every few minutes Bubber would haul the gun up to his shoulder. He took aim and made a loud pow sound.

'Don't monkey with the trigger,' said Spareribs. I got the gun loaded.'

Mick finished the cornbread and looked around for something to do. Harry Minowitz was sitting on his front porch banisters with the newspaper. She was glad to see him. For a joke she threw up her arm and hollered to him, 'Heil!' But Harry didn't take it as a joke. He went into his front hall and shut the door. It was easy to hurt his feelings. She was sorry, because lately she and Harry had been right good friends. They had always played in the same gang when they were kids, but in the last three years he had been at Vocational while she was still in grammar school. Also he worked at part-time jobs. He grew up very suddenly and quit hanging around the back and front yards with kids. Sometimes she could see him reading the paper in his bedroom or undressing late at night. In mathematics and history he was the smartest boy at Vocational. Often, now that she was in high school too, they would meet each other on the way home and walk together. They were in the same shop cla.s.s, and once the teacher made them partners to a.s.semble a motor. He read books and kept up with the newspapers every day. World politics were all the time on his mind. He talked slow, and sweat stood out on his forehead when he was very serious about something. And now she had made him mad with her.

'I wonder has Harry still got his gold piece,' Spareribs said.

'What gold piece?'

'When a Jew boy is born they put a gold piece in the bank for him. That's what Jews do.'

'Shucks. You got it mixed up,' she said. 'It's Catholics you're thinking about. Catholics buy a pistol for a baby soon as it's born. Some day the Catholics mean to start a war and kill everybody else.'