He shrank until he was of the smallness of dust, picking his way over crags and boulders in the roaring gutter, climbing straws, skirting motoroil lakes.
He sat in Washington Square, pink with noon, looking up Fifth Avenue through the arch. The fever had seeped out of him. He felt cool and tired. Another spring, God how many springs ago, walking from the cemetery up the blue macadam road where fieldsparrows sang and the sign said: Yonkers. In Yonkers I buried my boyhood, in Marseilles with the wind in my face I dumped my calf years into the harbor. Where in New York shall I bury my twenties? Maybe they were deported and went out to sea on the Ellis Island ferry singing the International. The growl of the International over the water, fading sighing into the mist.
Deported
James Herf young newspaper man of 190 West 12th Street recently lost his twenties. Appearing before Judge Merivale they were remanded to Ellis Island for deportation as undesirable aliens. The younger four Sasha Michael Nicholas and Vladimir had been held for some time on a charge of criminal anarchy. The fifth and sixth were held on a technical charge of vagrancy. The later ones Bill Tony and Joe were held under various indictments including wifebeating, arson, assault, and prostitution. All were convicted on counts of misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance.
Oyez oyez oyez prisoner at the bar. … I find the evidence dubious said the judge pouring himself out a snifter. The clerk of the court who was stirring an oldfashioned cocktail became overgrown with vineleaves and the courtroom reeked with the smell of flowering grapes and the Shining Bootlegger took the bulls by the horns and led them lowing gently down the courthouse steps. “Court is adjourned by hicky,” shouted the judge when he found gin in his waterbottle. The reporters discovered the mayor dressed in a leopard skin posing as Civic Virtue with his foot on the back of Princess Fifi the oriental dancer. Your correspondent was leaning out of the window of the Banker’s Club in the company of his uncle, Jefferson T. Merivale, wellknown clubman of this city and two lamb chops well peppered. Meanwhile the waiters were hastily organizing an orchestra, using the potbellies of the Gausenheimers for snaredrums. The head waiter gave a truly delightful rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home,” utilizing for the first time the resonant bald heads of the seven directors of the Well Watered Gasoline Company of Delaware as a xylophone. And all the while the Shining Bootlegger in purple running drawers and a blue-ribbon silk hat was leading the bulls up Broadway to the number of two million, threehundred and fortytwo thousand, five hundred and one. As they reached the Spuyten Duyvil, they were incontinently drowned, rank after rank, in an attempt to swim to Yonkers.
And as I sit here, thought Jimmy Herf, print itches like a rash inside me. I sit here pockmarked with print. He got to his feet. A little yellow dog was curled up asleep under the bench. The little yellow dog looked very happy. “What I need’s a good sleep,” Jimmy said aloud.
“What are you goin to do with it, Dutch, are you goin to hock it?”
“Francie I wouldnt take a million dollars for that little gun.”
“For Gawd’s sake dont start talkin about money, now. … Next thing some cop’ll see it on your hip and arrest you for the Sullivan law.”
“The cop who’s goin to arrest me’s not born yet. … Just you forget that stuff.”
Francie began to whimper. “But Dutch what are we goin to do, what are we goin to do?”
Dutch suddenly rammed the pistol into his pocket and jumped to his feet. He walked jerkily back and forth on the asphalt path. It was a foggy evening, raw; automobiles moving along the slushy road made an endless interweaving flicker of cobwebby light among the skeleton shrubberies.
“Jez you make me nervous with your whimperin an cryin. … Cant you shut up?” He sat down beside her sullenly again. “I thought I heard somebody movin in the bushes. … This goddam park’s full of plainclothes men. … There’s nowhere you can go in the whole crummy city without people watchin you.”
“I wouldnt mind it if I didnt feel so rotten. I cant eat anythin without throwin up an I’m so scared all the time the other girls’ll notice something.”
“But I’ve told you I had a way o fixin everythin, aint I? I promise you I’ll fix everythin fine in a couple of days. … We’ll go away an git married. We’ll go down South. … I bet there’s lots of jobs in other places. … I’m gettin cold, let’s get the hell outa here.”
“Oh Dutch,” said Francie in a tired voice as they walked down the muddyglistening asphalt path, “do you think we’re ever goin to have a good time again like we used to?”
“We’re S.O.L. now but that dont mean we’re always goin to be. I lived through those gas attacks in the Oregon forest didnt I? I been dopin out a lot of things these last few days.”
“Dutch if you go and get arrested there’ll be nothin left for me to do but jump in the river.”
“Didnt I tell you I wasnt goin to get arrested?”
Mrs. Cohen, a bent old woman with a face brown and blotched like a russet apple, stands beside the kitchen table with her gnarled hands folded over her belly. She sways from the hips as she scolds in an endless querulous stream of Yiddish at Anna sitting blearyeyed with sleep over a cup of coffee: “If you had been blasted in the cradle it would have been better, if you had been born dead. … Oy what for have I raised four children that they should all of them be no good, agitators and streetwalkers and bums … ? Benny in jail twice, and Sol God
