Ironweed (24 page)

          “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.”