Ironweed

VII

“I look like a bum, don’t I?” Rudy said.

“You are a bum,” Francis said. “But you’re a pretty good bum if you wanna be.”

“You know why people call you a bum?”

“I can’t understand why.”

“They feel better when they say it.”

“The truth ain’t gonna hurt you,” Francis said. “If you’re a bum, you’re a bum.”

“It hurt a lotta bums. Ain’t many of the old ones left.”

“There’s new ones comin’ along,” Francis said.

“A lot of good men died. Good mechanics, machinists, lumberjacks.”

“Some of ‘em ain’t dead,” Francis said. “You and me, we ain’t dead.”

“They say there’s no God,” Rudy said. “But there must be a God. He protects bums. They get up out of the snow and they go up and get a drink. Look at you, brand-new clothes. But look at me. I’m only a bum. A no-good bum.”

“You ain’t that bad,” Francis said. “You’re a bum, but you ain’t that bad.”

They were walking down South Pearl Street toward Palombo’s Hotel. It was ten-thirty, a clear night. full of stars but very cold: winter’s harbinger. Francis had left the family just before ten o’clock and taken a bus downtown. He went straight to the mission before they locked it for the night, and found Pee Wee alone in the kitchen, drinking leftover coffee. Pee Wee said he hadn’t seen, or heard from, Helen all day.

“But Rudy was in lookin’ for you,” Pee Wee told Francis. “He’s either up at the railroad station gettin’ warm or holed up in some old house down on Broadway. He says you’d know which one. But look, Francis, from what I hear, the cops been raidin’ them old pots just about every night. Lotta guys usually eat here ain’t been around and I figure they’re all in jail. They must be repaintin’ the place out there and need extra help.”

“I don’t know why the hell they gotta do that,” Francis said. “Bums don’t hurt nobody.”

“Maybe it’s just cops don’t like bums no more.”

Francis checked out the old house first, for it was close to the mission. He stepped through its doorless entrance into a damp, deep-black stairwell. He waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness and then he carefully climbed the stairs, stepping over bunches of crumpled newspaper and fallen plaster and a Negro who was curled up on the first landing. He stepped through broken glass, empty wine and soda bottles, cardboard boxes. human droppings. Streetlights illuminated stalagmites of pigeon leavings on a windowsill. Francis saw a second sleeping man curled up near the hole he heard a fellow named Michigan Mac fell through last week. Francis sidestepped the man and the hole and then found Rudy in a room by himself, lying on a slab of board away from the broken window, with a newspaper on his shoulder for a blanket.

“Hey bum,” Francis said, “you lookin’ for me?”

Rudy blinked and looked up from his slab.

“Who the hell you talkin’ to?” Rudy said. “What are you, some kinda G-man?”

“Get your ass up off the floor, you dizzy kraut.”

“Hey, is that you, Francis?”

“No, it’s Buffalo Bill. I come up here lookin’ for Indians.”

Rudy sat up and threw the newspaper off himself

“Pee Wee says you was lookin’ for me,” Francis said.

“I didn’t have noplace to flop, no money, no jug, nobody around. I had a jug but it ran out.” Rudy fell back on the slab and wept instant tears over his condition. “I’ll kill myself, I got the tendency,” he said. “I’m last.”

“Hey,” Francis said. “Get up. You ain’t bright enough to kill yourself You gotta fight. you gotta be tough. I can’t even find Helen. You seen Helen anyplace? Think about that woman on the bum somewheres on a night like this. Jesus I feel sorry for her.”

“Where the wind don’t blow,” Rudy said.

“Yeah. No wind. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Outa here. You stay here, you wind up in jail tonight. Pee Wee says they’re cleanin’ out all these joints.”

“Go to jail, at least it’s warm. Get six months and be out in time for the flowers.”

“No jail for Francis. Francis is free and he’s gonna stay free.”

They walked down the stairs and back to Madison because Francis decided Helen must have found money somewhere or else she’d have come looking for him. Maybe she called her brother and got a chunk. Or maybe she was holding out even more than she said. Canny old dame. And sooner or later, with dough, she’d hit Palombo’s because of the suitcase.

“Where we goin’?”

“What the hell’s the difference? Little walk’ll keep your blood flowin’.”

“Where’d you get them clothes?”

“Found ‘em.”

“Found ‘em? Where’d you find ‘em?”

“Up a tree.”

“A tree?”

“Yeah. A tree. Grew everything. Suits, shoes, bow ties.”

“You never tell me nothin’ that’s true.”

“Hell, it’s all true,” Francis said. “Every stinkin’ damn thing you can think of is true.”

o o o

At Palombo’s they met old man Donovan just getting ready to go off duty, making way for the night clerk. It was a little before eleven and he was putting the desk in order. Yes, he told Francis, Helen was here. Checked in late this morning. Yeah, sure she’s all right. Looked right perky. Walked up them stairs lookin’ the same as always. Took the room you always take.

“All right,” said Francis, and he took out the ten-dollar bill Billy gave him. “You got change of this?” Donovan made change and then Francis handed him two dollars.

“You give her this in the mornin’,” he said, “and make sure she gets somethin’ to eat. If I hear she didn’t get it, I’ll come back here and pull out all your teeth.”

“She’ll get it,” Donovan said. “I like Helen.”

“Check her out now,” Francis said. “Don’t tell her I’m here. Just see is she okay and does she need anything. Don’t say I sent you or nothin’ like that. Just check her out.”

So Donovan knocked on Helen’s door at eleven o’clock and found out she needed nothing at all, and he came back and told Francis.

“You tell her in the mornin’ I’ll be around sometime during the day,” Francis said. “And if she don’t see me and she wants me, you tell her to leave me a message where she’ll be. Leave it with Pee Wee down at the mission. You know Pee Wee?”

“I know the mission,” Donovan said.

“She claim the suitcase?” Francis asked.

“Claimed it and paid for two nights in the room.”

“She got money from home, all right,” Francis said. “But you give her that deuce anyway.”

Francis and Rudy walked north on Pearl Street then, Francis keeping the pace brisk. In a shopwindow Francis saw three mannequins in formal dresses beckoning to him. He waved at them.

“Now where we goin’?” Rudy asked.

“The all-night bootlegger’s,” Francis said. “Get us a couple of jugs and then go get a flop and get some shuteye.”

“Hey,” Rudy said. “Now you’re sayin’ somethin’ I wanna hear. Where’d you find all this money?”

“Up in a tree.”

“Same tree that grows bow ties?”

“Yep,” said Francis. “Same tree.”

Francis bought two quarts of muscatel at the upstairs bootlegger’s on Beaver Street and two pints of Green River whiskey.

“Rotgut,” he said when the bootlegger handed him the whiskey, “but it does what it’s supposed to do.”

Francis paid the bootlegger and pocketed the change: two dollars and thirty cents left. He gave a quart of the musky and a pint of the whiskey to Rudy and when they stepped outside the bootlegger’s they both tipped up their wine.

And so Francis began to drink for the first time in a week.

o o o

The flop was run by a bottom-heavy old woman with piano legs, the widow of somebody named Fennessey, who had died so long ago nobody remembered his first name.

“Hey Ma,” Rudy said when she opened the door for them.

“My name’s Mrs. Fennessey,” she said. “That’s what I go by.”

“I knew that,” Rudy said.

“Then call me that. Only the niggers call me Ma.”

“All right, sweetheart,” Francis said. “Anybody call you sweetheart? We want a couple of flops.”

She let them in and took their money, a dollar for two flops, and then led them upstairs to a large room that used to be two or three rooms but now, with the interior walls gone, was a dormitory with a dozen filthy cots, only one occupied by a sleeping form. The room was lit by what Francis judged to be a three-watt bulb.

“Hey,” he said, “too much light in here. It’ll blind us all.”

“Your friend don’t like it here, he can go somewhere else,” Mrs. Fennessey told Rudy.

“Who wouldn’t like this joint?” Francis said, and he bounced on the cot next to the sleeping man.

“Hey bum,” he said, reaching over and shaking the sleeper. “You want a drink?”

A man with enormous week-old scabs on his nose and forehead turned to face Francis.

“Hey,” said Francis. “It’s the Moose.”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Moose said.

“Moose who?” asked Rudy.

“Moose what’s the difference,” Francis said.

“Moose Backer,” Moose said.

“That there’s Rudy,” Francis said. “He’s crazier than a cross-eyed bedbug, but he’s all right.”

“You sharped up some since I seen you last,” Moose said to Francis. “Even wearin’ a tie. You bump into prosperity?”

“He found a tree that grows ten-dollar bills,” Rudy said.

Francis walked around the cot and handed Moose his wine. Moose took a swallow and nodded his thanks.

“Why’d you wake me up?” Moose asked.

“Woke you up to give you a drink.”

“It was dark when I went to sleep. Dark and cold.”

“Jesus Christ, I know. Fingers cold, toes cold. Cold in here right now. Here, have another drink and warm up. You want some whiskey? I got some of that too.”

“I’m all right. I got an edge. You got enough for yourself?”

“Have a drink, goddamn it. Don’t be afraid to live.” And Moose took one glug of the Green River.

“I thought you was gonna trade pants with me,” Moose said.

“I was. Pair I had was practically new, but too small.”

“Where are they? You said they were thirty-eight, thirtyone, and that’s just right.”

“You want these?”

“Sure,” said Moose.

“If I give ‘em to you, then I ain’t got no pants,” Francis said.

“I’ll give you mine,” Moose said.

“Why you tradin’ your new pants?” Rudy asked.

“That’s right,” said Francis, standing up and looking at his own legs. “Why am I? No, you ain’t gonna get these. Fuck you, I need these pants. Don’t tell me what I need. Go get your own pants.”

“I’ll buy ‘em,” Moose said. “How much you want? I got another week’s work sandin’ floors.”

“Well shine ‘em,” Francis said. “They ain’t for sale.”

“Sandin’, not shinin’. I sand ‘em. I don’t shine ‘em.”

“Don’t holler at me,” Francis said. “I’ll crack your goddamn head and step on your brains. You’re a tough man, is that it?”

“No,” said Moose. “I ain’t tough.”

“Well I’m tough,” Francis said. “Screw around with me, you’ll die younger’n I will.”

“Oh I’ll die all right. I’m just as busted as that ceiling. I got TB.”

“Oh God bless you,” Francis said, sitting down. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s in the knee.”

“I didn’t know you had it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry anybody’s got TB.”

“It’s in the knee.”

“Well cut your leg off.”

“That’s what they wanted to do.”

“So cut it off.”

“No, I wouldn’t let them do that.”

“I got a stomach cancer,” Rudy said.

“Yeah,” said Moose. “Everybody’s got one of them.”

“Anybody gonna come to my funeral?” Rudy asked.

“Probably ain’t nothin’ wrong with you work won’t cure,” Moose said.

“That’s right,” Francis said to Rudy. “Why don’t you go get a job?” He pointed out the window at the street. “Look at ‘em out there. Everybody out there’s workin’.”

“You’re crazier than he is,” Moose said. “Ain’t no jobs anyplace. Where you been?”

“There’s taxis. There goes a taxi.”

“Yeah, there’s taxis,” Moose said. “So what?”

“Can you drive?” Francis asked Rudy.

“I drove my ex-wife crazy,” Rudy said.

“Good. What you’re supposed to do. Drive ‘em nuts is right.”

In the corner of the room Francis saw three long-skirted women who became four who became three and then four again. Their faces were familiar but he could call none of them by name. Their ages changed when their number changed: now twenty, now sixty, now thirty, now fifty, never childish, never aged. At the house Annie would now be trying to sleep, but probably no more prepared for it than Francis was, no more capable of closing the day than Francis was. Helen would be out of it, whipped all to hell by fatigue and worry. Damn worrywart is what she is. But not Annie. Annie, she don’t worry. Annie knows how to live. Peg, she’ll be awake too, why not? Why should she sleep when nobody else can? They’ll all be up, you bet. Francis give ‘em a show they ain’t gonna forget in a hurry.

He showed ‘em what a man can do.

A man ain’t afraid of goin’ back.

Goddamn spooks, they follow you everywheres but they don’t matter. You stand up to ‘em is all. And you do what you gotta do.

Sandra joined the women of three, the women of four, in the far corner. Francis gave me soup, she told them. He carried me out of the wind and put my shoe on me. They became the women of five.

“Where the wind don’t blow,” Rudy sang. “I wanna go where the wind don’t blow, where there ain’t no snow.”

Francis saw Katrina’s face among the five that became four that became three.

o o o

Finny and Little Red came into the flop, and just behind them a third figure Francis did not recognize immediately. Then he saw it was Old Shoes.

“Hey, we got company, Moose,” Francis said.

“Is that Finny?” Moose asked. “Looks like him.”

“That’s the man,” Francis said. Finny stood by the foot of Francis’s cot, very drunk and wobbling, trying to see who was talking about him.

“You son of a bitch,” Moose said, leaning on one elbow.

“Which son of a bitch you talkin’ to?” Francis asked.

“Finny. He used to work for Spanish George. Liked to use the blackjack on drunks when they got noisy.”

“Is that true, Finny?” Francis asked. “You liked to sap the boys?”

“Arrrggghhh,” said Finny, and he lurched off toward a cot down the row from Francis.

“He was one mean bastard,” Moose said. “He hit me once.”

“Hurt you?”

“Hurt like hell. I had a headache three weeks.”

“Somebody burned up Finny’s car,” Little Red announced. “He went out for somethin’ to eat, and he came back, it was on fire. He thinks the cops did it.”

“Why are the cops burnin’ up cars?” Rudy asked.

“Cops’re goin’ crazy,” Little Red said. “They’re pickin’ up everybody. American Legion’s behind it, that’s what I heard.”

“Them lard-ass bastards,” Francis said. “They been after my ass all my life.”

“Legionnaires and cops,” said Little Red. “That’s why we come in here.”

“You think you’re safe here?” Francis asked.

“Safer than on the street.”

“Cops’d never come up here if they wanted to get you, right?” Francis said.

“They wouldn’t know I was here,” Little Red said.

“Whataya think this is, the Waldorf-Astoria? You think that old bitch downstairs don’t tell the cops who’s here and who ain’t when they want to know?”

“Maybe it wasn’t the cops burned up the car,” Moose said. “Finny’s got plenty of enemies. If I knew he owned one, I’da burned it up myself The son of a bitch beat up on us all, but now he’s on the street. Now we got him in the alley.”

“You hear that, Finny?” Francis called out. “They gonna get your ass good. They got you in the alley with all the other bums.”

“Nggggghhhh,” said Finny.

“Finny’s all right,” Little Red said. “Leave him alone.”

“You givin’ orders here at the Waldorf-Astoria, is that it?” Francis asked.

“Who the hell are you?” Little Red asked.

“I’m a fella ready to stomp all over your head and squish it like a grape, you try to tell me what to do.”

“Yeah,” said Little Red, and he moved toward the cot beside Finny.

“I knew it was you soon as I come in,” Old Shoes said, coming over to the foot of Francis’s cot. “I could tell that foghorn voice of yours anyplace.”

“Old Shoes,” Francis said. “Old Shoes Gilligan.”

“That’s right. You got a pretty good memory. The wine ain’t got you yet.”

“Old Shoes Gilligan, a grand old soul, got a cast-iron belly and a brass asshole.”

“Not cast-iron anymore,” Old Shoes said. “I got an ulcer. I quit drinkin’ two years ago.”

“Then what the hell you doin’ here?”

“Just came by to see the boys, see what was happenin’.”

“You hangin’ out with Finny and that redheaded wiseass?”

“Who you callin’ a wiseass?” Little Red said.

“I’m callin’ you wiseass, wiseass,” Francis said.

“You got a big mouth,” Little Red said.

“I got a foot’s even bigger and I’m gonna shove it right up your nose, you keep bein’ nasty to me when I’m tryna be polite.”

“Cool off, Francis,” Old Shoes said. “What’s your story? You’re lookin’ pretty good.”

“I’m gettin’ rich,” Francis said. “Got me a gang of new clothes, couple of jugs, money in the pocket.”

“You’re gettin’ up in the world,” Old Shoes said.

“Yeah, but what the hell you doin’ here if you ain’t drinkin’ is what I don’t figure.”

“I just told you. I’m passin’ through and got curious about the old joints.”

“You workin’?”

“Got a steady job down in Jersey. Even got an apartment and a car. A car, Francis. You believe that? Me with a car? Not a new car, but a good car. A Hudson two-door. You want a ride?”

“A ride? Me?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Now?”

“Don’t matter to me. I’m just sightseein’. I’m not sleepin’ up here. Wouldn’t sleep here anyway. Bedbugs’d follow me all the way back to Jersey.”

“This bum here,” Francis explained to Rudy, “I saved from dyin’ in the street. Used to fall down drunk three, four times a night, like he was top-heavy.”

“That’s right,” Old Shoes said. “Broke my face five or six times, just like his.” And he gestured at Moose. “But I don’t do that no more. I hit three nuthouses and then I quit. I been off the bum three years and dry for two. You wanna go for that ride, Francis? Only thing is, no bottle. The wife’d smell it and I’d catch hell.”

“You got a wife too?” Francis said.

“You got a car and a wife and a house and a job?” Rudy asked. He sat up on his cot and studied this interloper.

“That’s Rudy,” Francis said. “Rudy Tooty. He’s thinkin’ about killin’ himself.”

“I know the feelin’,” Old Shoes said. “Me and Francis we needed a drink somethin’ awful one mornin’. We walked all over town but we couldn’t score, snow comin’ through our shoes, and it’s four below zero. Finally we sold our blood and drank the money. I passed out and woke up still needin’ a drink awful bad, and not a penny and no chance for one, couldn’t even sell any more blood, and I wanted to die and I mean die. Die.”

“Where there ain’t no snow,” Rudy sang. “Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night.”

“You wanna go for a ride?” Old Shoes asked Rudy.

“Oh the buzzin’ of the bees in the cigarette trees, by the soda water fountains,” Rudy sang. Then he smiled at Old Shoes, took a swallow of wine, and fell back on his cot.

“Man wants to go for a ride and can’t get no takers,” Francis said. “Might as well call it a day, Shoes, stretch out and rest them bones.”

“Naaah, I guess I’ll be movin’ on.”

“One evenin’ as the sun went down, and the jungle fires were burnin’,” Rudy sang, “Down the track came a hobo hikin’, and said, Boys, I am not turnin’.”

“Shut up that singin’,” Little Red said. “I’m tryna sleep.”

“I’m gonna mess up his face,” Francis said and stood up.

“No fights,” Moose said. “She’ll kick us the hell out or call the cops on us.”

“That’ll be the day I get kicked out of a joint like this,” Francis said. “This is pigswill. I lived in better pigswill than this goddamn pigswill.”

“Where I come from-” Old Shoes began.

“I don’t give a goddamn where you come from.” Francis said.

“Goddamn you, I come from Texas.”

“Name a city, then.”

“Galveston.”

“Behave yourself,” Francis said, “or I’ll knock you down. I’m a tough son of a bitch. Tougher than that bum Finny. Licked twelve men at once.”

“You’re drunk,” Old Shoes said.

“Yeah,” said Francis. “My mind’s goin’.”

“It went there. Rattlesnake got you.”

“Rattlesnake, my ass. Rattlesnake is nothin’.”

“Cottonmouth?”

“Oh, cottonmouth rattler. Yeah. That’s somethin’. Jesus, this is a nice subject. Who wants to talk about snakes? Talk about bums is more like it. A bum is a bum. Helen’s got me on the bum. Son of a bitch, she won’t go home, won’t straighten up.”

“Helen did the hula down in Hon-oh-loo-loo,” Rudy sang.

“Shut your stupid mouth,” Francis said to Rudy.

“People don’t like me,” Rudy said.

“Singin’ there, wavin’ your arms, talkin’ about Helen.”

“I can’t escape myself.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Francis said.

“I tried it before.”

“I know, but you can’t do it, so you might as well live with it.”

“I like to be condemned,” Rudy said.

“No, don’t be condemned,” Francis told him.

“I like to be condemned.”

“Never be condemned.”

“I like to be condemned because I know I done wrong in my life.”

“You never done wrong,” Francis said.

“All you screwballs down there, shut up,” yelled Little Red, sitting up on his cot. Francis instantly stood up and ran down the aisle. He was running when he lunged and grazed Little Red’s lips with his knuckles.

“I’m gonna mess you up,” Francis said.

Little Red rolled with the blow and fell off the cot. Francis ran around the cot and kicked him in the stomach. Little Red groaned and rolled and Francis kicked him in the side. Little Red rolled under Finny’s cot, away from Francis’s feet. Francis followed him and was ready to drive a black laceless oxford deep into his face, but then he stopped. Rudy, Moose, and Old Shoes were all standing up, watching.

“When I knew Francis he was strong as a bull,” Old Shoes said.

“Knocked a house down by myself,” Francis said, walking back to his cot. “Didn’t need no wreckin’ ball.” He picked up the quart of wine and gestured with it. Moose lay back down on his cot and Rudy on his. Old Shoes sat on the cot next to Francis. Little Red licked his bleeding lip and lay quietly on the floor under the cot where Finny was supine and snoring. The faces of all the women Francis had ever known changed with kaleidoscopic swiftness from one to the other to the other on the three female figures in the far corner. The trio sat on straight-backed chairs, witnesses all to the whole fabric of Francis’s life. His mother was crocheting a Home Sweet Home sampler while Katrina measured off a bolt of new cloth and Helen snipped the ragged threads. Then they all became Annie.

“When they throw dirt in my face, nobody can walk up and sell me short, that’s what I worry about,” Francis said. “I’ll suffer in hell, if they ever got such a place, but I still got muscles and blood and I’m gonna live it out. I never saw a bum yet said anything against Francis. They better not, goddamn ‘em. All them sufferin’ bastards, all them poor souls waitin’ for heaven, walkin’ around with the snow flyin’, stayin’ in empty houses, pants fallin’ off ‘em. When I leave this earth I wanna leave it with a blessing to everybody. Francis never hurt nobody.”

“The mockin’birds’ll sing when you die,” Old Shoes said.

“Let ‘em. Let ‘ em sing. People tell me: Get off the bum. And I had a chance. I had a good mind but now it’s all flaked out, like a heavin’ line on a canal boat, back and forth, back and forth. You get whipped around so much, everything comes to a standstill, even a nail. You drive it so far and it comes to a stop. Keep hittin’ it and the head’ll break off.”

“That’s a true thing,” Moose said.

“On the Big Rock Candy Mountain,” Rudy sang, “the cops got wooden legs.” He stood up and waved his wine in a gesture imitative of Francis; then he rocked back and forth as he sang, strongly and on key: “The bulldogs all got rubber teeth, and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs. The boxcars all are empty and the sun shines every day. I wanna go where there ain’t no snow, where the sleet don’t fall and the wind don’t blow, on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

Old Shoes stood up and made ready to leave. “Nobody wants a ride?” he said.

“All right, goddamn it,” Francis said. “Whataya say, Rudy? Let’s get outa this pigswill. Get outa this stink and go where I can breathe. The weeds is better than this pigswill.”

“So long, friend,” Moose said. “Thanks for the wine.”

“You bet, pal, and God bless your knee. Tough as nails, that’s what Francis is.”

“I believe that,” Moose said.

“Where we goin’?” Rudy asked.

“Go up to the jungle and see a friend of mine. You wanna give us a lift to the jungle?” Francis asked Old Shoes. “Up in the North End. You know where that is?”

“No, but you do.”

“Gonna be cold,” Rudy said.

“They got a fire,” Francis said. “Cold’s better than this bughouse.”

“By the lemonade springs, where the bluebird sings,” Rudy sang.

“That’s the place,” Francis said.

o o o

As Old Shoes’ car moved north on Erie Boulevard, where the Erie Canal used to flow, Francis remembered Emmett Daugherty’s face: rugged and flushed beneath wavy gray hair, a strong, pointed nose truly giving him the look of the Divine Warrior, which is how Francis would always remember him, an Irishman who never drank more than enough, a serious and witty man of control and high purpose, and with an unkillable faith in God and the laboring man. Francis had sat with him on the slate step in front of Iron Joe’s Wheelbarrow and listened to his endless talk of the days when he and the country were young, when the riverboats brought the greenhorns up the Hudson from the Irish ships. When the cholera was in the air, the greenhorns would be taken off the steamboats at Albany and sent west on canal boats, for the city’s elders had charged the government with keeping the pestilential foreigners out of the city.

Emmett rode up from New York after he got off the death ship from Cork, and at the Albany basin he saw his brother Owen waving frantically to him. Owen followed the boat to the North Albany lock, ran along the towpath yelling advice to Emmett, giving him family news, telling him to get off the boat as soon as they’d let him, then to write saying where he was so Owen could send him money to come back to Albany by stagecoach. But it was days before Emmett got off that particular packet boat, got off in a place whose name he never learned, and the authorities there too kept the newcomers westering, under duress.

By the time Emmett reached Buffalo he had decided not to return to such an inhospitable city as Albany, and he moved on to Ohio, where he found work building streets, and then with the railroads, and in time went all the way west on the rails and became a labor organizer, and eventually a leader of the Clann na Gael, and lived to see the Irish in control of Albany, and to tell his stories and inspire Francis Phelan to throw the stone that changed the course of life, even for people not yet born.

That vision of the packet moving up the canal and Owen running alongside it telling Emmett about his children was as real to Francis, though it happened four decades before he was born, as was Old Shoes’ car, in which he was now bouncing ever northward toward the precise place where the separation took place. He all but cried at the way the Daugherty brothers were being separated by the goddamned government, just as he was now being separated from Billy and the others. And by what? What and who were again separating Francis from those people after he’d found them? It was a force whose name did not matter, if it had a name, but whose effect was devastating. Emmett Daugherty had placed blame on no man, not on the cholera inspectors or even the city’s elders. He knew a larger fate had moved him westward and shaped in him all that he was to become; and that moving and shaping was what Francis now understood, for he perceivced the fugitive thrust that had come to be so much a part of his own spirit. And so he found it entirely reasonable that he and Emmett should be fused in a single person: the character of the hero of the play written by Emmett’s son, Edward Daugherty the playwright: Edward (husband of Katrina, father of Martin), who wrote The Car Barns, the tale of how Emmett radicalized Francis by telling his own story of separation and growth, by inspiring Francis to identify the enemy and target him with a stone. And just as Emmett truly did return home from the west as a labor hero, so also did the playright conjure an image of Francis returning home as underground hero for what that stone of his had done.

For a time Francis believed everything Edward Daugherty had written about him: liberator of the strikers from the capitalist beggars who owned the trolleys, just as Emmett had helped Paddy-with-a-shovel straighten his back and climb up out of his ditch in another age. The playright saw them both as Divine Warriors, sparked by the socialistic gods who understood the historical Irish need for aid from on high, for without it (so spoke Emmett, the goldentongued organizer of the play), “how else would we rid ourselves of those Tory swine, the true and unconquerable devils of all history?”

The stone had (had it not?) precipitated the firing by the soldiers and the killing of the pair of bystanders. And without that, without the death of Harold Allen, the strike might have continued, for the scabs were being imported in great numbers from Brooklyn, greenhorn Irish the likes of Emmett on the packet boat, some of them defecting instantly from the strike when they saw what it was, others bewildered and lost, lied to by men who hired them for railroad work in Philadelphia, then duped them into scabbery, terror, even death. There were even strikers from other cities working as scabs, soulless men who rode the strike trains here and took these Albany men’s jobs, as other scabs were taking theirs. And all of that might have continued had not Francis thrown the first stone. He was the principal hero in a strike that created heroes by the dozen. And because he was, he lived all his life with guilt over the deaths of the three men, unable to see any other force at work in the world that day beyond his own right hand. He could not accept, though he knew it to be true, that other significant stones had flown that day, that the soldiers’ fusillade at the bystanders had less to do with Harold Allen’s death than it did with the possibility of the soldiers’ own, for their firing had followed not upon the release of the stone by Francis but only after the mob’s full barrage had flown at the trolley. And then Francis, having seen nothing but his own act and what appeared to be its instant consequences, had fled into heroism and been suffused further, through the written word of Edward Daugherty, with the hero’s most splendid guilt.

But now, with those events so deeply dead and buried, with his own guilt having so little really to do with it, he saw the strike as simply the insanity of the Irish, poor against poor, a race, a class divided against itself. He saw Harold Allen trying to survive the day and the night at a moment when the frenzied mob had turned against him, just as Francis himself had often had to survive hostility in his flight through strange cities, just as he had always had to survive his own worst instincts. For Francis knew now that he was at war with himself, his private factions mutually bellicose, and if he was ever to survive, it would be with the help not of any socialistic god but with a clear head and a steady eye for the truth; for the guilt he felt was not worth the dying. It served nothing except nature’s insatiable craving for blood. The trick was to live, to beat the bastards, survive the mob and that fateful chaos, and show them all what a man can do to set things right, once he sets his mind to it.

Poor Harold Allen.

“I forgive the son of a bitch,” Francis said.

“Who’s that?” Old Shoes asked. Rudy lay all but blotto across the backseat, holding the whiskey and wine bottles upright on his chest with both tops open in violation of Old Shoes’ dictum that they stay closed, and not spilling a drop of either.

“Guy I killed. Guy named Allen.”

“You killed a guy?”

“More’n one.”

“Accidental, was it?”

“No. I tried to get that one guy, Allen. He was takin’ my job.”

“That’s a good reason.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he was just doin’ what he had to do.”

“Baloney,” Old Shoes said. “That’s what everybody does, good, bad, and lousy. Burglars, murderers.”

And Francis fell quiet, sinking into yet another truth requiring handling.

o o o

The jungle was maybe seven years old, three years old, a month old, days old. It was an ashpit, a graveyard, and a fugitive city. It stood among wild sumac bushes and river foliage, all fallen dead now from the early frost. It was a haphazard upthrust of tarpaper shacks, lean-tos, and impromptu constructions describable by no known nomenclature. It was a city of essential transiency and would-be permanency, a resort of those for whom motion was either anathema or pointless or impossible. Cripples lived here, and natives of this town who had lost their homes, and people who had come here at journey’s end to accept whatever disaster was going to happen next. The jungle, a visual manifestation of the malaise of the age and the nation, covered the equivalent of two or more square city blocks between the tracks and the river, just east of the old carbarns and the empty building that once housed Iron Joe’s saloon.

Francis’s friend in the jungle was a man in his sixties named Andy, who had admitted to Francis in the boxcar in which they both traveled to Albany that people used to call him Andy Which One, a name that derived from his inability, until he was nearly twenty, to tell his left hand from his right, a challenge he still faced in certain stressful moments. Francis found Andy Which One instantly sympathetic, shared the wealth of cigarettes and food he was carrying, and thought instantly of him again when Annie handed him two turkey sandwiches and Peg slipped him a hefty slice of plum pudding, all three items wrapped in waxed paper and intact now in the pockets of his 1916 suitcoat.

But Francis had not seriously thought of sharing the food with Andy until Rudy had begun singing of the jungle. On top of that, Francis almost suffocated seeing his own early venom and self-destructive arrogance reembodied in Little Red, and the conjunction of events impelled him to quit the flop and seek out something he could value; for above all now, Francis needed to believe in simple solutions. And Andy Which One, a man confused by the names of his own hands, but who survived to dwell in the city of useless penitence and be grateful for it, seemed to Francis a creature worthy of scrutiny. Francis found him easily when Old Shoes parked the car on the dirt road that bordered the jungle. He roused Andy from shallow sleep in front of a fading fire, and handed him the whiskey bottle.

“Have a drink, pal. Lubricate your soul.”

“Hey, old Francis. How you makin’ out there, buddy?”

“Puttin’ one foot in front of the other and hopin’ they go somewheres,” Francis said. “The hotel open here? I brought a couple of bums along with me. Old Shoes here, he says he ain’t a bum no more, but that’s just what he says. And Rudy the Cootie, a good ol’ fella.”

“Hey,” said Andy, “just settle in. Musta known you was comin’. Fire’s still goin’, and the stars are out. Little chilly in this joint. Lemme turn up the heat.”

They all sat down around the fire while Andy stoked it with twigs and scraps of lumber, and soon the flames were trying to climb to those reaches of the sky that are the domain of all fire. The flames gave vivid life to the cold night, and the men warmed their hands by them.

A figure hovered behind Andy and when he felt its presence he turned and welcomed Michigan Mac to the primal scene.

“Glad to meet ya,” Francis said to Mac. “I heard you fell through a hole the other night.”

“Coulda broke my neck,” Mac said.

“Did you break it?” Francis asked.

“If I’da broke my neck I’d be dead.”

“Oh, so you’re livin’, is that it? You ain’t dead?”

“Who’s this guy?” Mac asked Andy.

“He’s an all-right guy I met on the train,” Andy said.

“We’re all all right,” Francis said. “I never met a bum I didn’t like.”

“Will Rogers said that,” Rudy said.

“He did like hell,” Francis said. “I said it.”

“All I know. That’s what he said. All I know is what I read in the newspapers,” Rudy said.

“I didn’t know you could read,” said Francis.

“James Watt invented the steam engine,” Rudy said. “And he was only twenty-nine years old.”

“He was a wizard,” Francis said.

“Right. Charles Darwin was a very great man, master of botany. Died in nineteen-thirty-six.”

“What’s he talkin’ about?” Mac asked.

“He ain’t talkin’ about nothin’,” Francis said. “He’s just talkin’.”

“Sir Isaac Newton. You know what he did with the apple?”

“I know that one,” Old Shoes said. “He discovered gravity.”

“Right. You know when that was? Nineteen-thirty-six. He was born of two midwives.”

“You got a pretty good background on these wizards,” Francis said.

“God loves a thief,” Rudy said. “I’m a thief.”

“We’re all thieves,” Francis said. “What’d you steal?”

“I stole my wife’s heart,” Rudy said.

“What’d you do with it?”

“I gave it back. Wasn’t worth keepin’. You know where the Milky Way is?”

“Up there somewheres,” Francis said, looking up at the sky, which was as full of stars as he’d ever seen it.

“Damn, I’m hungry,” Michigan Mac said.

“Here,” said Andy. “Have a bite.” And from a coat pocket he took a large raw onion.

“That’s an onion,” Mac said.

“Another wizard,” Francis said.

Mac took the onion and looked at it, then handed it back to Andy, who took a bite out of it and put it back in his pocket.

“Got it at a grocery,” Andy said. “Mister, I told the guy, I’m starvin’, I gotta have somethin’. And he gave me two onions.”

“You had money,” Mac said. “I told ya, get a loaf of bread, but you got a pint of wine.”

“Can’t have wine and bread too,” Andy said. “What are you, a Frenchman?”

“You wanna buy food and drink,” said Francis, “you oughta get a job.”

“I caddied all last week,” Mac said, “but that don’t pay, that shit. You slide down them hills. Them golf guys got spikes on their shoes. Then they tell ya: Go to work, ya bum. I like to, but I can’t. Get five, six bucks and get on the next train. I’m no bum, I’m a hobo.”

“You movin’ around too much,” Francis said. “That’s why you fell through that hole.”

“Yeah,” said Mac, “but I ain’t goin’ back to that joint. I hear the cops are pickin’ the boys outa there every night. That pot is hot. Travel on, Avalon.”

“Cops were here tonight earlier, shinin’ their lights,” Andy said. “But they didn’t pick up anybody.”

Rudy raised up his head and looked over all the faces in front of the fire. Then he looked skyward and talked to the stars. “On the outskirts,” he said, “I’m a restless person, a traveler.”

o o o

They passed the wine among them and Andy restoked the fire with wood he had stored in his lean-to. Francis thought of Billy getting dressed up in his suit, topcoat, and hat, and standing before Francis for inspection. You like the hat? he asked. I like it, Francis said. It’s got style. Lost the other one, Billy said. First time I ever wore this one. It look all right? It looks mighty stylish, Francis said. All right, gotta get downtown, Billy said. Sure, said Francis. We’ll see you again, Billy said. No doubt about it, Francis said. You hangin’ around Albany or movin’ on? Billy asked. Couldn’t say for sure, said Francis. Lotta things that need figurin’ out. Always is, said Billy, and then they shook hands and said no more words to each other.

When he himself left an hour and a little bit later, Francis shook hands also with George Quinn, a quirky little guy as dapper as always, who told bad jokes (Let’s all eat tomatoes and catch up) that made everybody laugh, and Peg threw her arms around her father and kissed him on the cheek, which was a million-dollar kiss, all right, all right, and then Annie said when she took his hand in both of hers: You must come again. Sure, said Francis. No, said Annie, I mean that you must come so that we can talk about the things you ought to know, things about the children and about the family. There’s a cot we could set up in Danny’s room if you wanted to stay over next time. And then she kissed him ever so lightly on the lips.

“Hey Mac,” Francis said, “you really hungry or you just mouthin’ off for somethin’ to say?”

“I’m hungry,” Mac said. “I ain’t et since noon. Goin’ on thirteen, fourteen hours, whatever it is.”

“Here,” Francis said, unwrapping one of his turkey sandwiches and handing Mac a half, “take a bite, take a couple of bites, but don’t eat it all.”

“Hey all right,” Mac said.

“I told you he was a good fella,” Andy said.

“You want a bite of sandwich?” Francis asked Andy.

“I got enough with the onion,” Andy said. “But the guy in the piano box over there, he was askin’ around for something awhile back. He’s got a baby there.”

“A baby?”

“Baby and a wife.”

Francis snatched the remnants of the sandwich away from Michigan Mac and groped his way in the firelight night to the piano box. A small fire was burning in front of it and a man was sitting cross-legged, warming himself.

“I hear you got a kid here,” Francis said to the man, who looked up at Francis suspiciously, then nodded and gestured at the box. Francis could see the shadow of a woman curled around what looked to be the shadow of a swaddled infant.

“Got some stuff here I can’t use,” Francis said, and he handed the man the full sandwich and the remnant of the second one. “Sweet stuff too,” he said and gave the man the plum pudding. The man accepted the gifts with an upturned face that revealed the incredulity of a man struck by lightning in the rainless desert; and his benefactor was gone before he could even acknowledge the gift. Francis rejoined the circle at Andy’s fire, entering into silence. He saw that all but Rudy, whose head was on his chest, were staring at him.

“Give him some food, did ya?” Andy asked.

“Yeah. Nice fella. I ate me a bellyful tonight. How old’s the kid?”

“Twelve weeks, the guy said.”

Francis nodded. “I had a kid. Name of Gerald. He was only thirteen days old when he fell and broke his neck and died.”

“Jeez, that’s tough,” Andy said.

“You never talked about that,” Old Shoes said.

“No, because it was me that dropped him. Picked him up with the diaper and he slid out of it.”

“Goddamn,” said Old Shoes.

“I couldn’t handle it. That’s why I run off and left the family. Then I bumped into one of my other kids last week and he tells me the wife never told nobody I did that. Guy drops a kid and it dies and the mother don’t tell a damn soul what happened. I can’t figure that out. Woman keeps a secret like that for twenty-two years, protectin’ a bum like me.”

“You can’t figure women,” Michigan Mac said. “My old lady used to peddle her tail all day long and then come home and tell me I was the only man ever touched her. I come in the house one day and found her bangin’ two guys at once, first I knew what was happenin’.”

“I ain’t talkin’ about that,” Francis said. “I’m talkin’ about a woman who’s a real woman. I ain’t talkin’ about no trashbarrel whore.”

“My wife was very good-lookin’, though,” Mac said. “And she had a terrific personality.”

“Yeah,” said Francis. “And it was all in her ass.”

Rudy raised up his head and looked at the wine bottle in his hand. He held it up to the light.

“What makes a man a drunk?” he asked.

“Wine,” Old Shoes said. “What you got in your hand.”

“You ever hear about the bears and the mulberry juice?” Rudy asked. “Mulberries fermented inside their stomachs.”

“That so?” said Old Shoes. “I thought they fermented before they got inside.”

“Nope. Not with bears,” Rudy said.

“What happened to the bears and the juice?” Mac asked.

“They all got stiff and wound up with hangovers,” Rudy said, and he laughed and laughed. Then he turned the wine bottle upside down and licked the drops that flowed onto his tongue. He tossed the bottle alongside the other two empties, his own whiskey bottle and Francis’s wine that had been passed around.

“Jeez,” Rudy said. “We got nothin’ to drink. We on the bum.”

In the distance the men could hear the faint hum of automobile engines, and then the closing of car doors.

o o o

Francis’s confession seemed wasted. Mentioning Gerald to strangers for the first time was a mistake because nobody took it seriously. And it did not diminish his own guilt but merely cheapened the utterance, made it as commonplace as Rudy’s brainless chatter about bears and wizards. Francis concluded he had made yet another wrong decision, another in a long line. He concluded that he was not capable of making a right decision, that he was as wrongheaded a man as ever lived. He felt certain now that he would never attain the balance that allowed so many other men to live peaceful. nonviolent, nonfugitive lives, lives that spawned at least a modicum of happiness in old age.

He had no insights into how he differed in this from other men. He knew he was somehow stronger, more given to violence, more in love with the fugitive dance, but this was all so for reasons that had nothing to do with intent. All right, he had wanted to hurt Harold Allen, but that was so very long ago. Could anyone in possession of Francis’s perspective on himself believe that he was responsible for Rowdy Dick, or the hole in the runt’s neck, or the bruises on Little Red, or the scars on other men long forgotten or long buried?

Francis was now certain only that he could never arrive at any conclusions about himself that had their origin in reason. But neither did he believe himself incapable of thought. He believed he was a creature of unknown and unknowable qualities, a man in whom there would never be an equanimity of both impulsive and premeditated action. Yet after every admission that he was a lost and distorted soul, Francis asserted his own private wisdom and purpose: he had fled the folks because he was too profane a being to live among them; he had humbled himself willfully through the years to counter a fearful pride in his own ability to manufacture the glory from which grace would flow. What he was was, yes, a warrior, protecting a belief that no man could ever articulate, especially himself; but somehow it involved protecting saints from sinners, protecting the living from the dead. And a warrior, he was certain, was not a victim. Never a victim.

In the deepest part of himself that could draw an unutterable conclusion, he told himself: My guilt is all that I have left. If I lose it, I have stood for nothing, done nothing, been nothing.

And he raised his head to see the phalanx of men in Legionnaires’ caps advancing into the firelight with baseball bats in their hands.

o o o

The men in caps entered the jungle with a fervid purpose, knocking down everything that stood, without a word. They caved in empty shacks and toppled lean-tos that the weight of weather and time had already all but collapsed. One man who saw them coming left his lean-to and ran, calling out one word: “Raiders!” and rousing some jungle people, who picked up their belongings and fled behind the leader of the pack. The first collapsed shacks were already burning when the men around Andy’s fire became aware that raiders were approaching.

“What the hell’s doin’?” Rudy asked. “Why’s everybody gettin’ up? Where you goin’, Francis?”

“Get on your feet, stupid,” Francis said, and Rudy got up.

“What the hell did I get myself into?” Old Shoes said, and he backed away from the fire, keeping the advancing raiders in sight. They were half a football field away but Michigan Mac was already in heavy retreat, bent double like a scythe as he ran for the river.

The raiders moved forward with their devastation clubs and one of them flattened a lean-to with two blows. A man following them poured gasoline on the ruins and then threw a match on top of it all. The raiders were twenty yards from Andy’s lean-to by then, with Andy, Rudy, and Francis still immobilized, watching the spectacle with disbelieving eyes.

“We better move it,” Andy said.

“You got anything in that lean-to worth savin’?” Francis asked.

“Only thing I own that’s worth anything’s my skin, and I got that with me.”

The three men moved slowly back from the raiders, who were clearly intent on destroying everything that stood. Francis looked at the piano box as he moved past it and saw it was empty.

“Who are they?” Rudy asked Francis. “Why they doin’ this?”

But no one answered.

Half a dozen lean-tos and shacks were ablaze, and one had ignited a tall, leafless tree, whose flames were reaching high into the heavens, far above the level of the burning shacks. In the wild firelight Francis saw one raider smashing a shack, from which a groggy man emerged on hands and knees. The raider hit the crawling man across the buttocks with a half swing of the bat until the man stood up. The raider poked him yet again and the man broke into a limping run. The fire that rose from the running man’s shack illuminated the raider’s smile.

Francis, Rudy, and Andy turned to run then too, convinced at last that demons were abroad in the night. But as they turned they confronted a pair of raiders moving toward them from their left flank.

“Filthy bums,” one raider said, and swung his bat at Andy, who stepped deftly out of range, ran off, and was swallowed up by the night. The raider reversed his swing and caught the wobbling Rudy just above neck level, and Rudy yelped and went down. Francis leaped on the man and tore the bat from him, then scrambled away and turned to face both raiders, who were advancing toward him with a hatred on their faces as anonymous and deadly as the exposed fangs of rabid dogs. The raider with the bat raised it above his own head and struck a vertical blow at Francis, which Francis sidestepped as easily as he once went to his left for a fast grounder. Simultaneously he stepped forward, as into a wide pitch, and swung his own bat at the man who had struck Rudy. Francis connected with a stroke that would have sent any pitch over any center-field fence in any ball park anywhere, and he clearly heard and truly felt bones crack in the man’s back. He watched with all but orgasmic pleasure as the breathless man twisted grotesquely and fell without a sound.

The second attacker charged Francis and knocked him down, not with his bat but with the weight and force of his moving body. The two rolled over and over, Francis finally separating himself from the man by a glancing blow to the throat. But the man was tough and very agile, fully on his feet when Francis was still on his knees, and he was raising his arms for a horizontal swing when Francis brought his own bat full circle and smashed the man’s left leg at knee level. The knee collapsed inward, a hinge reversed, and the raider toppled crookedly with a long howl of pain.

Francis lifted Rudy, who was mumbling incoherent sounds, and threw him over his shoulder. He ran, as best he could, toward the dark woods along the river, and then moved south along the shore toward the city. He stopped in tall weeds, all brown and dead, and lay prone, with Rudy beside him, to catch his breath. No one was following. He looked back at the jungle through the barren trees and saw it aflame in widening measure. The moon and the stars shone on the river, a placid sea of glass beside the sprawling, angry fire.

Francis found he was bleeding from the cheek and he went to the river and soaked his handkerchief and rinsed off the blood. He drank deeply of the river, which was icy and shocking and sweet. He blotted the wound, found it still bleeding, and pressed it with the handkerchief to stanch it.

“Who were they?” Rudy asked when he returned.

“They’re the guys on the other team,” Francis said. “They don’t like us filthy bums.”

“You ain’t filthy,” Rudy said hoarsely. “You got a new suit.”

“Never mirnd my suit, how’s your head?”

“I don’t know. Like nothin’ I ever felt before.” Francis touched the back of Rudy’s skull. It wasn’t bleeding but there was one hell of a lump there.

“Can you walk?”

“I don’t know. Where’s Old Shoes and his car?”

“Gone, I guess. I think that car is hot. I think he stole it. He used to do that for a livin’. That and peddle his ass.”

Francis helped Rudy to his feet, but Rudy could not stand alone, nor could he put one foot in front of the other. Francis lifted him back on his shoulder and headed south. He had Memorial Hospital in mind, the old Homeopathic Hospital on North Pearl Street, downtown. It was a long way, but there wasn’t no other place in the middle of the damn night. And walking was the only way. You wait for a damn bus or a trolley at this hour, Rudy’d be dead in the gutter.

Francis carried him first on one shoulder, then on the other, and finally piggyback when he found Rudy had some use of both arms and could hold on. He carried him along the river road to stay away from cruising police cars, and then down along the tracks and up to Broadway and then Pearl. He carried him up the hospital steps and into the emergency room, which was small and bright and clean and empty of patients. A nurse wheeled a stretcher away from one wall when she saw him coming, and helped Rudy to slide off Francis’s back and stretch out.

“He got hit in the head,” Francis said. “He can’t walk.”

“What happened?” the nurse asked, inspec ting Rudy’s eyes.

“Some guy down on Madison Avenue went nuts and hit him with a brick. You got a doctor can help him?”

“We’ll get a doctor. He’s been drinking.”

“That ain’t his problem. He’s got a stomach cancer too, but what ails him right now is his head. He got rocked all to hell, I’m tellin’ you, and it wasn’t none of his fault.”

The nurse went to the phone and dialed and talked softly.

“How you makin’ it, pal?” Francis asked.

Rudy smiled and gave Francis a glazed look and said nothing. Francis patted him on the shoulder and sat down on a chair beside him to rest. He saw his own image in the mirror door of a cabinet against the wall. His bow tie was all cockeyed and his shirt and coat were spattered with blood where he had dripped before he knew he was cut. His face was smudged and his clothes were covered with dirt. He straightened the tie and brushed off a bit of the dirt.

After a second phone call and a conversation that Francis was about to interrupt to tell her to get goddamn busy with Rudy, the nurse came back. She took Rudy’s pulse, went for a stethoscope, and listened to his heart. Then she told Francis Rudy was dead. Francis stood up and looked at his friend’s face and saw the smile still there. Where the wind don’t blow.

“What was his name?” the nurse asked. She picked up a pencil and a hospital form on a clipboard.

Francis could only stare into Rudy’s glassy-eyed smile. Isaac Newton of the apple was born of two midwives.

“Sir, what was his name?” the nurse said.

“Name was Rudy.”

“Rudy what?”

“Rudy Newton,” Francis said. “He knew where the Milky Way was.”

o o o

It would be three-fifteen by the clock on the First Church when Frarncis headed south toward Palombo’s Hotel to get out of the cold, to stretch out with Helen and try to think about what had happened and what he should do about it. He would walk past Palombo’s night man on the landing, salute him, and climb the stairs to the room he and Helen always shared in this dump. Looking at the hallway dirt and the ratty carpet as he walked down the hall, he would remind himself that this was luxury for him and Helen. He would see the light coming out from under the door, but he would knock anyway to make sure he had Helen’s room. When he got no answer he would open the door and discover Helen on the floor in her kimono.

He would enter the room and close the door and stand looking at her for a long time. Her hair would be loose, and fanned out, and pretty.

He would, after a while, think of lifting her onto the bed, but decide there was no point in that, for she looked right and comfortable just as she was. She looked as if she were sleeping.

He would sit in the chair looking at her for an amount of time he later would not be able to calculate, and he would decide that he had made a right decision in not moving her.

For she was not crooked.

He would look in the open suitcase and wouId find his old clippings and put them in his inside coat pocket. He would find his razor and his penknife and Helen’s rhinestone butterfly, and he would put these in his coat pockets also. In her coat hanging in the closet he would find her three dollars and thirty-five cents and he would put that in his pants pocket, still wondering where she got it. He would remember the two dollars he left for her and that she would never get now, nor would he, and he would think of it as a tip for old Donovan. Helen says thank you.

He would then sit on the bed and look at Helen from a different angle. He would be able to see her eyes were closed and he would remember how vividly green they were in life, those gorgeous emeralds. He would hear the women talking together behind him as he tried to peer beyond Helen’s sheltered eyes.

Too late now, the women would say. Too late now to see any deeper into Helen’s soul. But he would continue to stare, mindful of the phonograph record propped against the pillow; and he would know the song she’d bought, or stole. It would be “Bye Bye Blackbird,” which she loved so much, and he would hear the women singing it softly as he stared at the fiercely glistening scars on Helen’s soul, fresh and livid scars whitening among the old, the soul already purging itself of all wounds of the world, flaming with the green fires of hope, but keeping their integrity too as welts of insight into the deepest secrets of Satan.

Francis, this twofold creature, now an old man in a mortal slouch, now again a fledgling bird of uncertain wing, would sing along softly with the women: Here I go, singin’ low, the song revealing to him that he was not looking into Helen’s soul at all but only into his own repetitive and fallible memory. He knew that right now both Rudy and Helen had far more insight into his being than he himself ever had, or would have, into either of theirs.

The dead, they got all the eyes.

He would follow the thread of his life backward to a point well in advance of the dying of Helen and would come to a vision of her in this same Japanese kimono, lying beside him after they had made sweet love, and she saying to him: All I want in the world is to have my name put back among the family.

And Francis would then stand up and vow that he would one day hunt up Helen’s grave, no matter where they put her, and would place a stone on top of it with her name carved deeply in its face. The stone would say: Helen Marie Archer, a great soul.

Francis would remember then that when great souls were being extinguished, the forces of darkness walked abroad in the world, filling it with lightning and strife and fire. And he would realize that he should pray for the safety of Helen’s soul, since that was the only way he could now help her. But because his vision of the next world was not of the court of heaven where the legion of souls in grace venerate the Holy Worm, but rather of a foul mist above a hole in the ground where the earth itself purges away the stench of life’s rot, Francis saw a question burning brightly in the air: How should this man pray?

He would think about this for another incalculably long moment and decide finally there was no way for him to pray: not for Helen, not even for himself

He would then reach down and touch Helen on the top of the head and stroke her skull the way a father strokes the soft fontanel of his newborn child, stroke her gently so as not to disturb the flowing fall of her hair.

Because it was so pretty.

Then he would walk out of Helen’s room, leaving the light burning. He would walk down the hall to the landing, salute the night clerk, who would be dozing in his chair, and then he would reenter the cold and living darkness of the night.

o o o

By dawn he would be on a Delaware amp; Hudson freight heading south toward the lemonade springs. He would be squatting in the middle of the empty car with the door partway open, sitting a little out of the wind. He would be watching the stars, whose fire seemed so unquenchable only a few hours before, now vanishing from an awakening sky that was between a rose and a violet in its early hue.

It would be impossible for him to close his eyes, and so he would think of all the things he might now do. He would then decide that he could not choose among all the possibilities that were his. By now he was sure only that he lived in a world where events decided themselves, and that all a man could do was to stay one jump into their mystery.

He had a vision of Gerald swaddled in the silvery web of his grave, and then the vision faded like the stars and he could not even remember the color of the child’s hair. He saw all the women who became three, and then their impossible coherence also faded and he saw only the glorious mouth of Katrina speaking words that were little more than silent shapes; and he knew then that he was leaving behind more than a city and a lifetime of corpses. He was also leaving behind even his vivid memory of the scars on Helen’s soul.

Strawberry Bill climbed into the car when the train slowed to take on water, and he looked pretty good for a bum that died coughin’. He was all duded up in a blue seersucker suit, straw hat, and shoes the color of a new baseball.

“You never looked that good while you was livin’,” Francis said to him. “You done well for yourself over there.”

Everybody gets an Italian tailor when he checks in, Bill said. But say, pal, what’re you runnin’ from this time?

“Same old crowd,” Francis said. “The cops.”

Ain’t no such things as cops, said Bill.

“Maybe they ain’t none of ‘em got to heaven yet, but they been pesterin’ hell outa me down here.”

No cops chasm’ you, pal.

“You got the poop?”

Would I kid a fella like you?

Francis smiled and began to hum Rudy’s song about the place where the bluebird sings. He took the final swallow of Green River whiskey, which tasted sweet and cold to him now. And he thought of Annie’s attic.

That’s the place, Bill told him. They got a cot over in the corner, near your old trunk.

“I saw it,” said Francis.

Francis walked to the doorway of the freight car and threw the empty whiskey bottle at the moon, an outshoot fading away into the rising sun. The bottle and the moon made music like a soulful banjo when they moved through the heavens, divine harmonies that impelled Francis to leap off the train and seek sanctuary under the holy PheIan eaves.

“You hear that music?” Francis said.

Music? said Bill. Can’t say as I do.

“Banjo music. Mighty sweet banjo. That empty whiskey bottle’s what’s makin’ it. The whiskey bottle and the moon.”

If you say so, said Bill.

Francis listened again to the moon and his bottle and heard it clearer than ever. When you heard that music you didn’t have to lay there no more. You could get right up off’n that old cot and walk over to the back window of the attic and watch Jake Becker lettin’ his pigeons loose. They flew up and around the whole damn neighborhood, round and round, flew in a big circle and got themselves all worked up, and then old Jake, he’d give ‘em the whistle and they’d come back to the cages. Damnedest thing.

“What can I make you for lunch?” Annie asked him.

“I ain’t fussy. Turkey sandwich’d do me fine.”

“You want tea again?”

“I always want that tea,” said Francis.

He was careful not to sit by the window, where he could be seen when he watched the pigeons or when, at the other end of the attic, he looked out at the children playing football in the school athletic field.

“You’ll be all right if they don’t see you,” Annie said to him. She changed the sheets on the cot twice a week and made tan curtains for the windows and bought a pair of black drapes so he could close them at night and read the paper.

It was no longer necessary for him to read. His mind was devoid of ideas. If an idea entered, it would rest in the mind like the morning dew on an open field of stone. The morning sun would obliterate the dew and only its effect on the stone would remain. The stone needs no such effect.

The point was, would they ever know it was Francis who had broken that fellow’s back with the bat? For the blow, indeed, had killed the murdering bastard. Were they looking for him? Were they pretending not to look for him? In his trunk he found his old warm-up sweater and he wore that with the collar turned up to shield his face. He also found George Quinn’s overseas cap, which gave him a military air. He would have earned stripes, medals in the military. Regimentation always held great fascination for him. No one would ever think of looking for him wearing George’s overseas cap. It was unlikely.

“Do you like Jell-O, Fran?” Annie asked him. “I can’t remember ever making Jell-O for you. I don’t remember if they had Jell-O back then.”

If they were on to him, well that’s all she wrote. Katie bar the door. Too wet to plow. He’d head where it was warm, where he would never again have to run from men or weather.

The empyrean, which is not spatial at all, does not move and has no poles. It girds, with light and love, the primum mobile, the utmost and swiftest of the material heavens. Angels are manifested in the primum mobile.

But if they weren’t on to him, then he’d mention it to Annie someday (she already had the thought, he could tell that) about setting up the cot down in Danny’s room. when things got to be absolutely right, and straight.

That room of Danny’s had some space to it.

And it got the morning light too.

It was a mighty nice little room.