Plexus (65 page)

When I hung up I had such a fit of remorse that I was of a mind to turn back in the morning.

“Come on,” said O'Mara, “don't let it get you down. You know Mona, she'll find a way out.”

I knew that myself but it didn't make me feel any better.

“Let's get started bright and early tomorrow,” I said. “We can be in Miami in three days, if we try.”

The next day, around noon, we walked in on Ned who had installed himself in a broken-down hotel for a dollar a night. His room was like a setting for Gorky's
Night Lodging
. Every other windowpane was broken; some were stuffed with rags, some with newspapers.

The faucets didn't work, the bed had a straw mattress, and the springs had completely given way. There were cobwebs hanging everywhere. The smell of dust was so thick it almost choked us. And this was a hotel for “white people.” In our glorious capital no less.

We bought some cheese, wine and salami, a good loaf of bread and some olives, and moved across the bridge, into Virginia. Once across the line, we sat down on the grass under a shady tree and filled our bellies. Then we stretched out in the warm sunshine, smoked a cigarette or two, and finally sang a little tune. This tune was to become our theme song—something about looking for a friendly face.

We were in high spirits when we got up on our hind legs. The South looked good—warm, inviting, gracious, spacious. We were already in another world.

Entering the South is always inspiring. By the time one hits Maryland and starts going over the roller coaster curves everything has undergone moderation, softening.
When you come to the “Old Dominion” you are definitely in a new world, no mistaking it. People have manners, grace, dignity. The state that gave us the most Presidents, or at least the best ones, was a great State in its day. It still is, in many ways.

Many times I left New York, not caring in what direction I was wafted, so long as I could put some distance between myself and the city I loathed. Often I wound up in North Carolina or Tennessee. Passing through Virginia was like rehearsing a motif from a familiar symphony or quartet. Occasionally I would stop in a little burg and ask for a job because I liked the looks of the place. Of course I never took the job. I would linger for a while in an effort to imagine what it would be like to pass the rest of my days there. Hunger always routed me out of my reverie.…

From Washington we got to Roanoke not without difficulty, since we were three; not many drivers are willing to pick up three vagabonds, especially from the North. We decided that night that it would be better to split up. We looked at the map and decided that we would all meet the next evening at the Post Office in Charlotte, N.C. The plan worked out beautifully. One by one we arrived at our destination, the last one only a half-hour later than the first. Here we again changed plans, since Ned had discovered that he might have gone all the way through to Miami with the man who had picked him up. We decided that our next rendezvous would be Jacksonville. O'Mara and I were to stick together; Ned would travel alone. It was a drizzling rain we faced next morning, shortly after dawn, standing on the highway outside of Charlotte, for an hour or more no one gave us a tumble. Fed up, we decided to stand in the middle of the road. It worked. The next car in sight came to a stop with a screech.

“What in Christ's name's the matter with you?” shouted the driver.

“Where are you headed?” we shouted.

“Jacksonville!”

The door opened and we tumbled in. We were off again, at a record-breaking clip. Not a word out of the driver for several minutes. When he did open his trap it was to say—“Lucky I didn't run you down.” We said nothing. “I didn't know whether to shoot or to run you over,” he continued. O'Mara and I exchanged glances. “Where are you from?” he asked. “What's your racket?” We told him. He looked at us searchingly, decided, I suppose, that we were speaking the truth, then slowly, painfully, related to us that he had accidentally killed a friend of his at a bar in a drunken brawl. He had hit him over the head with a bottle, in self-defense. Terrified and panic-stricken, he had fought his way out of the place, piled into his car, and skipped. He had two guns in his pockets and was ready to use them should anyone attempt to bar his way. “You had a narrow escape,” he said.

After a while he confided that he was making for Tampa, where he could safely hide away for a while. At least he thought he could. “I'll probably go back and take what's coming to me. I've got to collect myself first,” he said. Again and again he repeated: “It wasn't my fault, I never meant to
kill him.”
Once he broke down and wept like a child.

When we stopped for lunch he insisted on paying the bill. He paid for dinner too. In Macon (Georgia) we took a room with two beds, for which he also footed the bill. At the far end of the wide hall, seated in a rocker under a red light, sat a whore. As we were undressing our friend laid his revolvers out on the dresser, together with his wallet, remarking quietly that whoever got to them first would be the lucky man.

Early next morning we set out again. Our friend should have gone straight on to Tampa but no, he insisted on depositing us first in Jacksonville. Not only that, but we had to accept the ten-dollar bill he handed us—“for good luck.”

“You'd better get the lay of the land before you go
any farther,” he warned. “I have a hunch the boom is over.” We wished him good luck and watched him take off again, wondering how long it would be before the law caught up with him. He was a simple, honest chap with a good heart, a mechanic by trade. One of those people of whom one says—“He wouldn't hurt a fly.”

It was indeed fortunate for us that we had met up with him. Aside from the ten dollars he had handed us we had just about four dollars between us. Ned had most of the money and he had forgotten to divvy up. Well, we went to the Post Office, as agreed upon. Sure enough, there was Ned. Had been there some two hours or more. The man who picked him up in Charlotte had driven him straight through, and what's stranger still, he had also paid for his meals and put him up in the same room with him.

All in all we hadn't done so bad. The next thing was to get the feel of the land.

It didn't take us long to find out what the situation was. Jacksonville was filled to overflowing with poor dopes like ourselves, all returning from the boom country below. If we had had any sense we would have turned about immediately and trekked homeward, but pride made us determined to stick it out for a while. “There must be
something
we can do,” we kept telling one another. But there was not only nothing to do, there wasn't even a place to sleep. In the daytime we hung around at the Y.M.C.A., which had come to resemble a Salvation Army shelter. No one seemed to be making any effort to find work. Everyone was waiting for a letter or a telegram from the folks back home. Waiting for a train ticket, a money order, or just a plain dollar bill. It went on like that for days. We slept in the park (until the cops caught up with us), or on the floor of the jail, in the company of a hundred or more filthy bodies wrapped in newspapers, some vomiting, some shitting in their pants. Now and then in an effort to create work, we would wander off to a neighboring village and try to invent a job which would at
least keep us in food. On one of these forays, not having eaten for thirty-six hours and having walked eight miles to the mythical job, we had to walk back again on empty bellies, our legs creaking, our guts rumbling, so dog-tired, so utterly weary and dejected that, like Indians, we walked single file, one behind the other, heads down, tongues hanging out. That night we tried to storm the Salvation Army. Useless. One had to have a quarter to be allowed to sleep on the floor. In the toilet there my guts began to fall out. The pain was so great I keeled over. Ned and O'Mara had to carry me out of the place. We inched our way to the railroad yards where the freight trains were loaded with rotting fruit for the North. There we ran into a sheriff who drove us away with a gun in our backs. He wouldn't even permit us to gather a few rotten oranges which were lying on the ground. “Get back where you belong!” Always the same cry.

By great luck the next day Ned ran into a weird old chap named Fletcher whom he had known in the advertising business in New York. The man was a commercial artist, had a studio, as he called it, and, though utterly broke, promised to make us a meal that evening. It seems he was celebrating his silver anniversary. For the occasion he had managed to get his wife released from the insane asylum.

“It won't be very merry,” he informed Ned, “but we'll make it as cheerful as we can. She's a sweet creature, perfectly harmless. She's been this way for the last fifteen years.”

It was one of the longest days I ever put in, waiting for that promised meal. I lolled about the Y.M.C.A. the whole day, trying to conserve my energies. Most of the fellows passed the time playing cards or checkers—dice was forbidden. I read the newspapers, the Christian Science magazines, and all the other trash that was lying about. If a revolution had broken out in New York it wouldn't have excited me in the least. I had only one thought—food!

The moment I set eyes on poor Fletcher I felt an immense sympathy for him. He was a man approaching seventy, with watery blue eyes and a big moustache. He looked for all the world like Buffalo Bill. On the walls were examples of his work—from the old days—when he had been handsomely paid to do ponies and cowboys for the magazine covers. A small pension helped him to eke out a bare existence. He lived in hopes of getting a fat commission some day. Between times he painted little signs for tradespeople, anything that would bring in a few pennies. He was thankful to be living in the South where the days at least were warm.

To our surprise he brought out two bottles, one half-filled with gin, the other containing about a fingerful of rye. With the help of a lemon, some orange peels and a generous quantity of water, we managed to make his stock go a few rounds. His wife meanwhile was reposing in the next room. Fletcher said he would bring her out when it came time to eat. “It makes no difference to her,” he said. “She has her own world and her own rhythm. She doesn't remember me any more, so don't be surprised at what she says. She's usually very quiet—and fairly cheerful, as you'll see.”

He then set about preparing the table. The dishes were broken and chipped, nothing matched of course, and the cutlery was of tin. He laid the “couvert” on the bare table, and in the center of the table he placed an immense bowl of flowers. “It'll only be a cold snack,” he said apologetically, “but it may help to quiet the wolf.” He put out a bowl of potato salad, some rat cheese, some bologna and liverwurst, together with a loaf of white bread and some margarine. There were a few apples and nuts, for dessert. Not an orange in sight. After he had set a glass of water at each place he put a pot of coffee up to boil.

“I guess we're about ready now,” he said, looking towards the other room. “Just a minute and I'll bring Laura in.”

The three of us stood in silence as we waited for the two of them to issue from the next room. We could hear him rousing her from her slumber; he was speaking to her softly, gently, as he helped her to her feet.

“Well,” he said, smiling desperately through his tears, as he led her to the table, “here we are at last. Laura, these are my friends—
your friends too
. They're going to eat with us—isn't that lovely?”

We approached in turn, shook hands first with her, then with him. We were all in tears as we raised the water glasses and drank to their twenty-fifth anniversary.

“Well, this is almost like old times,” said Fletcher, looking first at his poor demented wife, then at us. “Do you remember, Laura, that funny old studio I had in the Village years ago? We weren't very rich then either, were we?” He turned to us. “I won't say grace, though tonight I would like to. I've lost the habit. But I want to tell you how grateful I am that you are sharing this little celebration with us. It might have been very sad, just the two of us alone.” He turned to his wife.

“Laura, you're still beautiful, do you know it?” He chucked her under the chin. Laura looked up wistfully and gave the flicker of a smile. “You see?” he exclaimed. “Ah yes, Laura was the belle of New York once. Weren't you, Laura?”

It didn't take us long to plough through the victuals, including the apples and nuts and a few stale cookies which Fletcher had dug up by chance while searching for the canned milk. Over a second cup of java Ned got out the ukulele and we took to singing, Laura too. We sang homely ditties, such as “O Susanna,” “A bullfrog sat on a railroad track,” “Annie Laurie,” “Old Black Joe”.… Suddenly Fletcher rose and said he would sing “Dixie,” which he did with gusto, ending up with the bloodcurdling Rebel yell. Laura, highly pleased with the performance, demanded that he sing another tune. He got up again and sang “The
Arkansas Traveler,” topping it off with a little jig. My, but we were merry. It was pathetic.

After a time I got hungry again. I asked if there wasn't any stale bread around. “We might make French pancakes,” I said.

We searched high and low but there wasn't even a crust to be found. We did find some moldy zwieback though and, dipping this in the coffee, we got a new lease of energy.

If it weren't for the vacant look in her eyes one wouldn't have thought Laura to be insane. She sang heartily, responded to our quips and jokes, and ate her food with relish. After a while, however, she dozed off, just like a child. We carried her into the bedroom and put her back to bed. Fletcher leaned over her and kissed her brow.

“If you boys will wait a few minutes,” he said, “I think I may be able to dig up a wee bit more gin. I'm going to see my next-door neighbor.”

In a few minutes he was back with a half-bottle of bourbon. He also had a little bag of cakes in his hand. We put up another pot of coffee, poured the bourbon, and began to chat. Now and then we threw a short log into the old potbellied stove. It was the first comfortable, cheery evening we were spending in Jacksonville.