Jimmy chokes on a piece of bread, blushes, at last stammers weakly, “Whatever you say Uncle Jeff.”
“Does that mean you’ll go to work for a month this summer in my office? Get a taste of how it feels to make a living, like a man in a man’s world, get an idea of how the business is run?” Jimmy nods his head. “Well I think you’ve come to a very sensible decision,” booms Uncle Jeff leaning back in his chair so that the light strikes across the wave of his steelgray hair. “By the way what’ll you have for dessert? … Years from now Jimmy, when you are a successful man with a business of your own we’ll remember this talk. It’s the beginning of your career.”
The hatcheck girl smiles from under the disdainful pile of her billowy blond hair when she hands Jimmy his hat that looks squashed flat and soiled and limp among the big-bellied derbies and the fedoras and the majestic panamas hanging on the pegs. His stomach turns a somersault with the drop of the elevator. He steps out into the crowded marble hall. For a moment not knowing which way to go, he stands back against the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching people elbow their way through the perpetually revolving doors; softcheeked girls chewing gum, hatchetfaced girls with bangs, creamfaced boys his own age, young toughs with their hats on one side, sweatyfaced messengers, crisscross glances, sauntering hips, red jowls masticating cigars, sallow concave faces, flat bodies of young men and women, paunched bodies of elderly men, all elbowing, shoving, shuffling, fed in two endless tapes through the revolving doors out into Broadway, in off Broadway. Jimmy fed in a tape in and out the revolving doors, noon and night and morning, the revolving doors grinding out his years like sausage meat. All of a sudden his muscles stiffen. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell. The words are so loud inside him he glances to one side and the other to see if anyone heard him say them.
They can all go plumb to hell. He squares his shoulders and shoves his way to the revolving doors. His heel comes down on a foot. “For crissake look where yer steppin.” He’s out in the street. A swirling wind down Broadway blows grit in his mouth and eyes. He walks down towards the Battery with the wind in his back. In Trinity Churchyard stenographers and officeboys are eating sandwiches among the tombs. Outlandish people cluster outside steamship lines; towhaired Norwegians, broadfaced Swedes, Polacks, swarthy stumps of men that smell of garlic from the Mediterranean, mountainous Slavs, three Chinamen, a bunch of Lascars. On the little triangle in front of the Customhouse, Jim Herf turns and stares long up the deep gash of Broadway, facing the wind squarely. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell.
Bud sat on the edge of his cot and stretched out his arms and yawned. From all round through a smell of sweat and sour breath and wet clothes came snores, the sound of men stirring in their sleep, creaking of bedsprings. Far away through the murk burned a single electric light. Bud closed his eyes and let his head fall over on his shoulder. O God I want to go to sleep. Sweet Jesus I want to go to sleep. He pressed his knees together against his clasped hands to keep them from trembling. Our father which art in Heaven I want to go to sleep.
“Wassa matter pardner cant ye sleep?” came a quiet whisper from the next cot.
“Hell, no.” “Me neither.”
Bud looked at the big head of curly hair held up on an elbow turned towards him.
“This is a hell of a lousy stinking flop,” went on the voice evenly. “I’ll tell the world … Forty cents too! They can take their Hotel Plaza an …”
“Been long in the city?”
“Ten years come August.”
“Great snakes!”
A voice rasped down the line of cots, “Cut de comedy yous guys, what do you tink dis is, a Jewish picnic?”
Bud lowered his voice: “Funny, it’s years I been thinkin an wantin to come to the city. … I was born an raised on a farm upstate.”
“Why dont ye go back?”
“I cant go back.” Bud was cold; he wanted to stop trembling. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and rolled over facing the man who was talking. “Every spring I says to myself I’ll hit the road again, go out an plant myself among the weeds an the grass an the cows comin home milkin time, but I dont; I juss kinder hangs on.”
“What d’ye do all this time in the city?”
“I dunno. … I used to set in Union Square most of the time, then I set in Madison Square. I been up in Hoboken an Joisey and Flatbush an now I’m a Bowery bum.”
“God I swear I’m goin to git outa here tomorrow. I git sceered here. Too many bulls an detectives in this town.”
“You could make a livin in handouts. … But take it from me kid you go back to the farm an the ole folks while the goin’s good.”
Bud jumped out of bed and yanked roughly at the man’s shoulder. “Come over here to the light, I want to show ye sumpen.” Bud’s own voice crinkled queerly in his ears. He strode along the snoring lane of cots. The bum, a shambling man with curly weatherbleached hair and beard and eyes as if hammered into his head, climbed fully dressed out from the blankets and followed him. Under the light Bud unbuttoned the front of his unionsuit and pulled it off his knottymuscled gaunt arms and shoulders. “Look at my back.”
“Christ Jesus,” whispered the man running a grimy hand with long yellow nails over the mass of white and red deep-gouged scars. “I aint never seen nothin like it.”
“That’s what the ole man done to me.
