The Lincoln Highway (28 page)

—What now? he asked after a moment. Don’t tell me you came all this way to apologize.

I laughed.

—No, I don’t put much stake in apologies. They always seem a day late and a dollar short. What I had in mind is something more concrete. Like a settling of accounts.

—A settling of accounts.

—Exactly.

—And how is that supposed to work?

—If it were only a matter of the movie, it could have been a switch for a switch. Eight minus eight and we’d be done. The problem is that you still owe me for the Oreo incident.

—The Oreo incident? said the big fella with an even bigger smile.

—It may not be worth the same as a switching, I continued, but it should count for something. Rather than an eight minus eight sort of situation, what we have here is more of an eight minus five. So I figure if you take three swings at me, that should make us even.

All the boys on the stoop were looking at me with varying degrees of disbelief. An act of honor has a way of doing that to the common man.

—You want to have a fight, said Townhouse.

—No, I said with a wave of the hand. Not a
fight
. A fight would imply that I’d try to hit you back. What I’m going to do is stand here and let you hit me, uncontested.

—You’re going to
let
me hit you.

—Three times, I emphasized.

—What the fuck? said Maurice, his disbelief having transitioned into some form of hostility.

But the big fella, he was trembling with soundless laughter. After a moment, Townhouse turned to him.

—What do you make of this, Otis?

Wiping the tears from his eyes, Otis shook his head.

—I don’t know, T. On the one hand, it seems pretty crazy. But on the other, if a white boy comes all the way from Kansas to ask you for a beating, I think you gotta give it to him.

As Otis began laughing again in his silent way, Townhouse just shook his head. He was disinclined to do it. I could tell. And if it were just the two of us, he probably would have sent me on my way, unsatisfied. But Maurice was staring at me now with a look of borrowed indignation.

—If you won’t hit him, I will, he said.

There he goes again, I thought. Maurice just didn’t seem to understand the chain of command. To make matters worse, when he volunteered to hit me, he did so with just enough bravado to imply that
maybe the reason Townhouse was stalling was because he wasn’t up to the task.

Townhouse turned to Maurice very slowly.

—Maurice, he said, just because you’re my cousin doesn’t mean I’m not willing to shut you the fuck up.

That put so much color into Maurice’s face that his freckles almost disappeared. Then he was the one gazing down the street wishing it was simpler times.

It made me feel a little sorry for him, watching him get humiliated like that in front of the rest of us. But I also could tell that through his injudiciousness, he had raised Townhouse’s temperature, which was just as well.

Sticking my chin out toward Townhouse, I pointed to it.

—Just give me a pop, T. What’ve you got to lose?

When I called him T, Townhouse grimaced like I knew he would.

Showing disrespect toward Townhouse was the last thing I wanted to do, but the challenge before me was to get him to take that first swing. Once he took the first one, I knew the rest would come easy. Because even if he didn’t gripe about the switching, I’m sure he still carried a bit of a grudge.

—Come on, I said, intending to call him T one more time.

Before I got the chance, he delivered. The punch landed right where it was supposed to, but it only knocked me a few steps back, like he hadn’t put everything into it.

—There you go, I said encouragingly. That’s a pretty good one. But this time, why don’t you give it some of the old Joe Louis.

And that’s what he did. I mean, I didn’t even see it coming. One second I’m standing there egging him on, and the next second I’m lying on the sidewalk aware of that strange aroma that you only smell when your skull has been rattled.

Planting both hands on the concrete, I pushed myself off the ground, rose to my feet, and went back to the hitting spot—just like Emmett.

The young teens were practically jumping up and down.

—Give it to him, Townhouse, they shouted.

—He asked for it, muttered Maurice.

—Mother Mary, said Otis in sustained disbelief.

Though all four spoke at once, I could hear each of them as clearly as if they’d spoken alone. But Townhouse couldn’t. He couldn’t hear any of them at all because he wasn’t on 126th Street. He was back at Salina. Back in that moment that he’d sworn he’d never think about again: taking Ackerly’s beating as the rest of us watched. It was the fire of justice that was burning through Townhouse now. The fire of justice that appeases the injured spirit and sets the record straight.

The third blow was an uppercut that put me flat on the pavement.

It was a thing of beauty, I tell you.

Townhouse took two steps back, heaving a little from the exertion, the sweat running down his forehead. Then he took another step back like he needed to, like he was worried that if he were any closer, he would hit me again and again, and might not be able to stop.

I gave him the friendly wave of one crying uncle. Then being careful to take my time so the blood wouldn’t rush from my head, I got back on my feet.

—That’s the stuff, I said with a smile, after spitting some blood on the sidewalk.

—Now we’re square, said Townhouse.

—Now we’re square, I agreed, and I stuck out my hand.

Townhouse stared at it for a moment. Then he took it in a firm grip and looked me eye to eye—like we were the presidents of two nations who had just signed an armistice after generations of discord.

At that moment, we were both towering over the boys, and they knew it. You could tell from the expressions of respect on the faces of Otis and the teens, and the expression of dejection on the face of Maurice.

I felt bad for him. Not man enough to be a man, or child enough
to be a child, not black enough to be black, or white enough to be white, Maurice just couldn’t seem to find his place in the world. It made me want to tussle his hair and assure him that one day everything was going to be all right. But it was time to move along.

Letting go of Townhouse’s hand, I gave him a tip of the hat.

—See you round, pardner, I said.

—Sure, said Townhouse.

I’d felt pretty good when I settled the scores with the cowboy and Ackerly, knowing that I was playing some small role in balancing the scales of justice. But those feelings were nothing compared to the satisfaction I felt after letting Townhouse settle his score with me.

Sister Agnes had always said that good deeds can be habit forming. And I guess she was right, because having given Sally’s jam to the kids at St. Nick’s, as I was about to leave Townhouse’s stoop I found myself turning back.

—Hey, Maurice, I called.

He looked up with the same expression of dejection, but with a touch of uncertainty too.

—See that baby-blue Studebaker over there?

—Yeah?

—She’s all yours.

Then I tossed him the keys.

I would have loved to see the look on his face when he caught them. But I had already turned away and was striding down the middle of 126th Street with the sun at my back, thinking:
Harrison Hewett, here I come
.

A
t quarter to eight
in the evening, Emmett was sitting in a run-down saloon at the edge of Manhattan with a glass of beer and a photograph of Harrison Hewett on the bar in front of him.

Taking a drink, Emmett studied the picture with interest. It showed the profile of a handsome forty-year-old man looking off in the distance. Duchess had never said exactly how old his father was, but from his stories one got the sense that Mr. Hewett’s career dated back to the early 1920s. And hadn’t Sister Agnes guessed that he was about fifty when he’d brought Duchess to the orphanage in 1944? That would make Mr. Hewett about sixty now—and this photograph about twenty years out of date. It also meant the photograph might well have been taken before Duchess was born.

Because the photograph was so old and the actor so young, Emmett had no problem seeing the family resemblance. In Duchess’s words, his father had the nose, chin, and appetites of John Barrymore. If Duchess hadn’t quite inherited his father’s appetites, he had definitely inherited the nose and chin. Duchess’s coloring was lighter, but perhaps that came from his mother, whoever she was.

However good-looking Mr. Hewett had been, Emmett couldn’t help picture him with a certain distaste as the man of fifty who drove off in a convertible with a lovely young girl in the passenger seat, having just abandoned his eight-year-old son.

Sister Agnes had been right when she observed that Emmett was
angry at Duchess for taking his car. And Emmett knew that she was also right when she observed that what Duchess needed more than anything else was a friend who, upon occasion, could save him from his own misguided intentions. Whether Emmett was up to the task remained to be seen. Either way, he would have to find Duchess first.

When Emmett had woken at seven that morning, Stew was already up and about.

Seeing Emmett, he pointed to an overturned crate where there was a bowl, a pot of hot water, soap, a razor, and towel. Stripping to the waist, Emmett bathed his upper body and shaved. Then having eaten a breakfast of ham and eggs—at his own expense—and received assurances from Ulysses that Billy would be watched over, he followed Stew’s directions through a gap in some fencing and down a caged metal staircase, which led from the tracks down to Thirteenth Street. Shortly after eight, he was standing on the corner of Tenth Avenue looking eastward, feeling like he had a jump on the day.

But Emmett underestimated every aspect of what was to follow. He underestimated how long it would take to walk to Seventh Avenue. He underestimated how difficult it would be to find the entrance to the subway, passing it twice. He underestimated how disorienting the station would be once he got inside—with its network of gangways and staircases, and its bustling, purposeful crowd.

After being spun around by the current of commuters, Emmett found the token booth, he found a map of the subway system, he identified the Seventh Avenue line and determined there were five stops to Forty-Second Street, each step in the process posing its own challenges, its own frustrations, its own causes for humility.

As Emmett came down the steps to the platform, a train was beginning to board. Quickly, he joined the crowd that was pressing its
way into the car. When the doors closed and Emmett found himself tucked shoulder-to-shoulder with some and face-to-face with others, he had the disorienting feeling of being at once self-conscious and ignored. Everyone on board seemed to have chosen some fixed point at which to stare with precision and disinterest. Following suit, Emmett trained his gaze on an advertisement for Lucky Strike cigarettes and began counting stops.

At the first two, it seemed to Emmett that people were getting off and on in equal number. But at the third stop, people mostly got off. And at the fourth, so many people got off that Emmett found himself in a nearly empty car. Leaning over to look through the narrow window onto the platform, he saw with a touch of unease that the station was Wall Street. When he had studied the map at Fourteenth Street, he hadn’t paid much attention to the names of the intervening stops, seeing no need to do so, but he was fairly certain that Wall Street wasn’t among them.

And wasn’t Wall Street in lower Manhattan . . . ?

Stepping quickly to a map that was posted on the subway car’s wall, Emmett ran a finger down the length of the Seventh Avenue line. Finding the Wall Street stop revealed that in his haste he had boarded an express train headed south rather than a local headed north. By the time he realized this, the doors had already closed. A second look at the map told Emmett that in another minute, the train would be somewhere under the East River on its way to Brooklyn.

Taking one of the now-empty seats, Emmett closed his eyes. Once again, he was headed in the wrong direction by a factor of a hundred and eighty degrees, but this time he had no one to blame but himself. At every step, there had been someone he could have asked for assistance, someone who could have eased his way by directing him to the right staircase, the right platform, the right train. Yet he had refused to ask a soul. With a grim self-awareness, Emmett remembered how
critical he had been of his father’s reluctance to ask the more experienced farmers around him for advice—as if to do so would somehow leave him unmanned. Self-reliance as folly, Emmett had thought.

As he rode from Brooklyn back to Manhattan, Emmett was determined not to make the same mistake twice. When he arrived at the station at Times Square, he asked the man in the token booth which exit would lead him downtown; on the corner of Forty-Second Street, he asked the man in the newsstand where he could find the Statler Building; and when he reached the Statler Building, he asked the uniformed man at the front desk which of the agencies in the building were the biggest.

By the time Emmett arrived at the Tristar Talent Agency on the thirteenth floor, there were already eight people gathered in the small waiting room—four men with dogs, two with cats, a woman with a monkey on a leash, and a man in a three-piece suit and bowler hat who had an exotic bird on his shoulder. He was talking to the middle-aged receptionist. When he finished, Emmett approached the desk.

—Yes? the receptionist asked, as if she were already bored with whatever Emmett had to say.

—I’m here to see Mr. Lehmberg.

She took a pencil from a holder and held it over a pad.

—Name?

—Emmett Watson.

The pencil scratched.

—Animal?

—I’m sorry?

She looked up from the pad and spoke with exaggerated patience.

—What sort of animal have you got?

—I don’t have an animal.

—If there’s no animal in your act, then you’re in the wrong place.

—I don’t have an act, explained Emmett. I need to speak to Mr. Lehmberg on a different matter.

—It’s one thing at a time in this office, sonny. You want to talk to Mr. Lehmberg on a different matter, you’ll have to come back on a different day.

—It shouldn’t take more than a minute . . .

—Why don’t you take a seat, Mac, said a man with a bulldog at his feet.

—I may not need to see Mr. Lehmberg at all, persisted Emmett. You might be able to help me.

The receptionist looked up at Emmett with an expression of serious doubt.

—I’m looking for someone who might have been one of Mr. Lehmberg’s clients. A performer. I’m just trying to track down his address.

As Emmett completed his explanation, the receptionist’s face darkened.

—Do I look like a phone book?

—No, ma’am.

As several of the performers behind Emmett laughed, he felt the color rising to his cheeks.

Stabbing her pencil back into its holder, the receptionist picked up the phone and dialed a number.

Imagining she might be calling Mr. Lehmberg, after all, Emmett remained at the desk. But when the call went through, the receptionist began talking to a woman named Gladys about what had happened on a television show the night before. Avoiding eye contact with the waiting performers, Emmett turned and headed back into the hallway—just in time to see the doors to the elevator closing.

But before they shut completely, the tip of an umbrella jutted through the gap. A moment later, the doors reopened to reveal the man with the bowler hat and the bird on his shoulder.

—Thank you, said Emmett.

—Not at all, said the man.

It hadn’t looked like rain that morning, so Emmett guessed the umbrella was somehow part of the act. Looking up from the umbrella, Emmett realized the gentleman was staring at him expectantly.

—Lobby? he asked.

—Oh, I’m sorry. No.

Fumbling a little, Emmett removed from his pocket the list that the deskman downstairs had given him.

—Fifth floor, please.

—Ah.

The gentleman pressed the corresponding button. Then reaching into his pocket he produced a peanut, which he handed to the bird on his shoulder. Standing on one claw, the bird took the peanut with the other.

—Thank you, Mr. Morton, it squawked.

—My pleasure, Mr. Winslow.

As Emmett watched the bird shell the peanut with a startling facility, Mr. Morton noted his interest.

—An African grey, he said with a smile. One of the most intelligent of all our feathered friends. Mr. Winslow here, for example, has a vocabulary of one hundred and sixty-two words.

—One hundred and sixty-three, squawked the bird.

—Is that so, Mr. Winslow. And what was the hundred and sixty-third word?

—ASPCA.

The gentleman coughed in embarrassment.

—That is not a word, Mr. Winslow. It is an acronym.

—Acronym, squawked the bird. One hundred and sixty-four!

Only when the gentleman smiled at Emmett a little sadly did Emmett realize this little exchange was part of the act too.

Having reached the fifth floor, the elevator came to a stop and its
doors opened. With a word of thanks, Emmett stepped off and the doors began to close. But once again, Mr. Morton stuck the tip of his umbrella in the gap. This time when the doors reopened, he got off the elevator, joining Emmett in the hall.

—I don’t wish to intrude, young man, but I couldn’t help hearing your inquiry back in Mr. Lehmberg’s office. By any chance, are you now headed to McGinley & Co.?

—I am, said Emmett in surprise.

—May I offer you a piece of friendly advice?

—His advice is nice and worth the price.

When Mr. Morton gave the bird a hangdog expression, Emmett laughed out loud. It was the first time that he had laughed out loud in a good long while.

—I’d appreciate any advice you’re willing to give, Mr. Morton.

The gentleman smiled and pointed his umbrella down the hallway, which was lined with identical doors.

—When you go into Mr. McGinley’s office, you will not find his receptionist, Miss Cravitts, any more helpful than you found Mrs. Burk. The ladies who manage the desks in this building are naturally reticent, disinclined you might even say, to be helpful. This may seem ungenerous, but you have to understand that they are besieged from morning to night by artists of all persuasions who are trying to talk their way into a meeting. In the Statler Building, the Cravittses and Burks are all that stand between a semblance of order and the Colosseum. But if these ladies must be reasonably stern with performers, they have to be all the more so with those who come seeking names and addresses. . . .

Mr. Morton set the point of his umbrella down on the floor and leaned on the handle.

—In this building, for every performer an agent represents, there are at least five creditors in hot pursuit. There are outraged audience members, ex-wives, and cheated restaurateurs. There is only one person
for whom the gatekeepers show the slightest courtesy, and that is the man who holds the purse strings—whether he be hiring for a Broadway show or bar mitzvah. So, if you’re going into Mr. McGinley’s office, may I suggest you introduce yourself as a producer.

As Emmett considered this advice, the gentleman studied him discreetly.

—I can see from your expression that the notion of misrepresenting yourself goes against the grain. But you should take heart, young man, that within the walls of the Statler Building, he who misrepresents himself well, represents himself best.

—Thank you, said Emmett.

Mr. Morton nodded. But then he raised a finger with an additional thought.

—This performer you’re looking for. . . . Do you know his specialty?

—He’s an actor.

—Hmm.

—Is something wrong?

Mr. Morton gestured vaguely.

—It’s your appearance. Your age and attire. Let us just say that your image clashes with what one might expect from a theatrical producer.

Mr. Morton studied Emmett a little more brazenly, then smiled.

—May I suggest that you present yourself as the son of a rodeo owner.

—The man I’m looking for is a Shakespearean actor . . .

Mr. Morton laughed.

—Even better, he said.

And when he began to laugh again, his parrot laughed with him.

When Emmett paid his visit to the offices of McGinley & Co., he took care to do exactly as Mr. Morton had advised at every step, and he was not disappointed. When he entered the waiting room, which was crowded with young mothers and redheaded boys, the receptionist met
him with the same expression of impatience that he’d been given at Tristar Talent. But as soon as he explained that he was the son of a touring rodeo operator looking to hire a performer, her expression brightened.