The Ultimate Egoist (13 page)

“Holy smoke!” I said. “What’s his name?”

“
I
don’t know,” said Swede. “We call him Steamboat.”

“How long has he been on there?”

“About a year.”

“A year? How the hell does he last?”

The Swede’s face sobered. “The chief.” And he held up two fingers very close together. “The kid uses words a mile long and three miles deep, and reads the weirdest damn books. It started when the chief found him reading a book called
Jurgen
by a guy called Cable. You remember the chief. He’s a peculiar duck himself. Well, they got
to talking about that damn book. From then on the kid got away with murder. Always running to the chief with some pome or something, and knocking off work at 4:15. Boy, he don’t work for a living. He cruises.”

“Nice guy,” I said. “I know about three dozen damn good wipers on the beach here without a slug.”

The Swede picked up his beer and then put it down again. “Speak of the devil—”

A kid was weaving toward us across the dance floor. He was drunk, but not half as drunk as he thought he was. He was dressed up in a lapelled vest, a purple shirt, pants with about five pleats on each side, and square-toed shoes. Under his ear, which was dirty, was the fruitiest-looking yellow necktie in the South.

“Hiyah, Swedey, ol’ boy ol’ boy,” he squeaked. “Have a beer?”

Swede winked at me and had two beers set up. The kid wandered over to the phonograph and stood there looking over the selections until the Swede paid for the beer. Then he was back and guzzling.

Swede winked again and said, “Hey, Steamboat, show us that dogcatcher.”

The kid got out on the floor, barking like a dog and swinging an imaginary net. It wasn’t funny; but everybody laughed because he was making such a damn fool of himself. It was derisive, cruel laughter, but Steamboat didn’t seem to know that. If he did, he didn’t care. An A-1 grandstander.

Someone yelled, “Be a quartermaster!” Steamboat grabbed an invisible wheel and put an imaginary ship thirty degrees off course. The whole ginmill howled, booed, and bellowed. “Oiler!” “Streetcar conductor!” “Hey, Steamboat,” Swede roared, “Give us ‘Bellbottom Trousers’ ”!

He did. It wasn’t a funny song, and it wasn’t dirty. Just crummy. It was well received. After it was over he came back to the oyster bar, regaining his stagger on the way. But the wolves had found prey; it was open season on twerps. Steamboat was dragged away and plied with beer until he encored.

It was then that I noticed Gay. She was standing with her back
to the bar, staring with wonder and unbelief and something like disgust on her face. I went up behind the bar, leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Quite a show, isn’t it?”

“Leo, what’s the matter with him? What’s happened to him? Is he drunk? He looks sick. Why are they making him do that?”

“It’s all right, Gay,” I said. She didn’t look at me as I spoke, just kept staring at Steamboat. “He’s gundecking; he isn’t drunk. But he soon will be. They’re doing that to him because he’s a twerp, that’s all. Gay!” I said sharply, an awful fear clutching me. “Gay! What’s it to you?”

She didn’t answer but suddenly ran to the crowd around Steamboat, shoved and elbowed people aside. Steamboat was on the third verse of “Bell-bottom Trousers” when she burst through, screaming, “Billy! Billy! Stop it, Billy!”

“Oh my God,” I groaned.

Steamboat stopped singing and stared at her, shook his head and stared again. “Gay …”

Gay had forgotten the Anchor, the job, Leo … everything but that her Billy was acting like a twerp. She started on him in a low voice, in the dead silence that had fallen in the place. A phonograph shrilling “Bewdyful, bewdyful Tex-us” suddenly lost pitch and grated to a stop as someone jerked out the plug. Gay had a perfect stage voice; every syllable rang clear.

And I don’t remember what she said. Not to repeat it, anyway. They say Lincoln once made a speech so moving, so eloquent, that no one remembered a word afterwards. Gay did too. I don’t remember her words, but I remember the hush in the town’s noisiest beer joint; I remember the smiles on the faces of sailors and come-on girls, barkeeps and refinery workers, fading, growing, fading again, dying. I remember there being something about a promise, something about a pedestal, something about waiting … but most of all I remember Gay, how she half crouched as she spoke, how her eyes were slitted with anger, wet with tears, and how her mouth writhed with her contempt.

When she stopped speaking she turned her back on him, marched proudly through the aisle that was made for her in the crowd and
up to the Syrian. He shook his head and waved his arms at what she told him, but she turned from him almost as she had from Steamboat, and disappeared into the dressing room.

The crowd melted away from Steamboat, leaving him with his bowed head and shocked eyes and his shame … and things got noisy again. “Sizzle one!” cried the barkeep to the chef. “Four beers!” Somebody laughed drunkenly. “Where the bewdyful blue-bonnets grow” moaned the phonograph. The door of the dressing room slammed violently, Gay came out and straight to me.

“Leo, I’m quitting.”

“I know,” I said. “Good. What are you going to do?” Over her shoulder I noticed the crowd gathering around Steamboat again.

“I’m going home—up North. But Leo,” and she flushed painfully, “I haven’t very much money …”

Steamboat’s voice rose, half saying, half singing something. Gay’s eyes strayed from mine for a second, and when they came back there was something new there. “Leo, could you lend me a little? I’ll pay you back as soon as I get home. Really I will.”

I began to hear what Steamboat was saying, there in the midst of the crowd that hid him from us.

“What the hell is that?” I asked her.

“Keats,” she said. “ ‘Endymion’… we used to read it together.”

Gay had turned slowly from me, leaned back against the bar. That high, kiddish voice pounded at us. Someone in the crowd saw Gay, nudged his neighbor, who also stared. The movement spread, the crowd broke and we saw Steamboat. He was on his knees, with his arms outstretched, his head up, and tears in his eyes. He was a striking and ridiculous picture as he knelt there, intoning his poetry … Keats in a honky-tonk! His gaze slowly fell until it rested on us.

Out of place, but from the heart. Laughable, yet agonized. Gay was like a drugged thing, answering a call. She stood there, absolutely spellbound, while that drunken child took her away from me … what could I do? For the spell was there.

He stopped, repeated himself, stopped again. Gay’s eyes widened a little, and it was as if she had forgotten to breathe and was just starting again. And Leo?

With a great rush, the hard veneer around me splintered and was gone, and an old Leo, a Leo that I thought was dead, a Leo who loved beauty and beautiful things, leaned over her shoulder and spoke into her ear.

And the spell was there again, and it was my spell, and I wound it round and about Gay, and she responded, for a great light dawned in those green eyes, a light that threw its glow over us two, and shut out the world.

That’s how I won her. Billy forgot, and, you see, I had the right line.

I
SAW A
painted pastoral come to life …

There were two small figures on a country lane. He was dressed in sturdy blue denims, and her hair shone brightly in the late sunlight. His face was smooth and rosy, and he was masterful and strong for his age. They walked hand in hand. I heard them speak …

“It’s better than the city, Tommy.”

“Sure it is. How does anyone ever sleep in the city, Sue?”

“Oh, I don’t know … Tommy, there’s a bull!”

The bull was a little red Jersey cow, belly-deep in sweet timothy. She stared at them with great tender eyes, her head moving perceptibly with the steady champing of her jaw.

Tommy laughed. “Don’t be afraid of her, Sue. That’s just an ol’ cow! Gee, you
are
a city slicker! Watch.” He walked over to the cow and put out his hand, but she jerked her head away and stood watching him out of the corner of her eye. Tommy was startled, but he caught his lower lip in his teeth, advanced, and laid his hand on the smooth red neck.

Sue stood in the middle of the lane with her hands clasped, scarcely breathing until Tommy came back to her, swaggering a little. “My goodness! Aren’t you afraid of
anything
?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“You know me,” he said, and suddenly began to whistle loudly and out of tune, because he was so happy.

She looked up at him as they walked (he was ever so little taller than she) and took his hand and pressed it. He smiled at her, and then snatched the hand away and thrust it deep into his pocket. It came out with a huge jackknife.

“My,” she said, looking at it with awe. “That’s an awful thing to carry around with you.”

“Everybody around here has one of these,” he said. He opened
the bright blade, and you could see he was very proud of it. “It’s real sharp, too.” He crossed the ditch and cut a switch, and then came back to her side, whittling busily.

Her hands were clasped again. “Don’t cut yourself, Tommy.”

He laughed at her and ran his thumb confidently over the blade. He did cut himself.

“Oh, Tommy, I knew it! Won’t you
ever
grow up?” she scolded. “Here. Let me see it. Oh, what a cut!” She took the injured hand gently, clucking softly over the tiny slit.

Tommy said, through slightly puckered lips, “It doesn’t hurt much. I’ve been cut lots of times.”

“We’ll have to bind it or it will get infested.” She used that word as if she loved it. Pulling a handkerchief out of a little pocket in her spotless blue-and-white checked dress, she folded it precisely and wrapped it around the wound. The softness of her hands belied her age. Before she tied it she asked anxiously, “Is it too tight, Tommy?”

“No,” he said bravely. When she had finished he stared at the bandage. “You sure know how to take care of a man, Sue,” he said. His cheeks glowed.

“Silly.” But she was terribly pleased.

They walked on until they came to a little brook where a bridge carried the lane from one grassy bank to the other. They stood at the rail for a while, Sue watching Tommy, Tommy tossing pebbles at the minnows that slowly fanned in the clear water. Once they saw a little turtle, and once a frog splashed noisily and frightened them.

Then they went on up the hill, and just before they reached the top, Tommy said, “You’ll be able to see it from here.”

Sue was all eyes as they crossed the brow of the hill, and saw before them a clump of Norway poplars shading a little white house. It was nearly covered with trumpet vines and morning glory, and it had a little white picket fence. There were roses in the garden, and hollyhocks at the corners of the house.

They walked up to the gate and, ceremoniously, Tommy held it open for her. She stared at him, and at the house, and at him again. “Is this your house?” she asked wonderingly.

He did not answer immediately, and so she went in. Together
they walked up the crooked flagstone path to the shadowed porch that half hid the green door.

Tommy opened it, then turned to her. “This is
our
house,” he said.

And then the little old man in the blue denims picked up his little old wife and carried her over the threshold of the green doorway.

It was his present to her on this, their golden wedding day.

S
HE PULLED
A
CE
’
S
five-dollar bill from her pocketbook and handed it and the telegraph blank to the clerk. The bill was clean and fresh, and it crackled inaudibly in her fingers as she handed it to him—it and the message that would bring Ace back.

Bring him back! Not to her feet again, but to her side. It would all be different this time, she thought, wincing again at the memory of his hurt brown face and the sudden flare in his eyes and his voice when he said, “When you send that wire, Margot, you’ll know what you’ve done—to both of us.”

It seemed so unjust, she thought, anger flooding against the penitence that filled her, that a woman as beautiful as she should be denied the power of it because the exercise of her power was his pain—not that she had ever denied herself that. And now she was calling him back; now she was caught in her own bright net. Where was her pride? she thought, suddenly panicky, suddenly tempted to snatch his five-dollar bill from the clerk and run from the office. No—too late now. She needed him desperately. How could she have been so cool and self-assured when she sent him away? She’d gone too far!

The clerk took the message (imperious surrender! “NOW I KNOW ACE MY DEAR YOU MAY COME BACK”) and the bill slipped out of her fingers with the same soft swish as it had made coming out of his wallet. What a funny, dramatic thing for him to do! She remembered every word he had said that night, every expression on his taut dark face when she told him so coldly to go away.

“I knew it was coming,” he said roughly. He lit a cigarette, and she remembered the little thrill that shot through her when she saw how his hand shook. “You’ve known you could walk on me, throw me down, pick me up again …” his voice trailed away, and she smiled
gently, to herself, she thought. But he saw her, and burst out furiously:

“Don’t you know that the day when a woman can throw her glove into the lion’s den for the brave to retrieve is past? Don’t you know that you can go too far with that fair demoiselle performance? I’ve got your out-of-season strawberries for you; I’ve given you the star sapphire you demanded but won’t wear; time and again I upset my days and nights for your whims, barging out to the middle of a Connecticut nowhere because you called me, only to find that you were here in New York gloating over your power. Canceling my vacation and rushing back to the city because you said you needed me, only to find you out of town; going to places I don’t like to, visiting people I don’t care to know because of your desire to make me bohemian, religious, radical, or whatever you think I should be at the moment—and now you tell me to go in that holier-than-thou tone; now you are Victoria saying, ‘We are not amused.’ ”