Place in the City (16 page)

At the next station, one person entered the car, a mulatto woman whose face was powdered to a death's shade of gray, and whose lips were heavily rouged. She sat down opposite him, crossed her legs, and stared. As the train started again, she smiled.

He turned his eyes away, closed them, and then opened them again; she was still staring at him and, smiling. Then she nodded at him.

What did she want with him, when Anna—

“Anna's dead,” he muttered.

The mulatto continued to smile and nod. At the next station, he sprang to his feet and ran out. When the train pulled away, he was alone on a subway platform once more.

Dazedly, he found his way to a bench, and dropped down on it. He put his head in his hands, pressed his glasses into his face.

“Anna,” he whispered.

“I didn't want to,” he went on, “but I had to. I loved you, my Anna. Now you could go; now I'd let you go—but I wouldn't even speak; I wouldn't try to stop you. Only I loved you so much. How much you won't know. It is not in you, with your small simple mind to understand how much I loved you. I would do anything in the world for you. I would come to you on my knees and ask your forgiveness. I would do that, my Anna. Believe me—that I would do anything in the world, only to have you forgive me—”

He shook his bird-like head from side to side.

E
DWARDS
was conscious of rushing feet, of a world and a street coming together. Where there had been silence, a babble of hungry voices filled the air; and it seemed to him that a thousand hungry hands were plucking at him …

The boy had picked himself out of the snow, brushed it from him. He stood erect in a world of cold and beauty; and in him there was a great wonder, for when he came out of Shutzey's house he had been sick and disgusted with himself. Now something had happened; it happened just before his father struck him.

There was no hate in Thomas O'Lacy because his father had struck him. The pain of the blow, which he still felt, was still good. He rubbed his face.

But his father would have to understand; he would have to understand what had happened to him then, and he would have to know that they were both on the same footing now, both together.

He knew now that he couldn't boast about what had happened in Shutzey's house; and he wondered how he could explain that to his father. But however he explained it, he would come to his father as man to man.

He walked away; he was some distance from the street when he heard the shots; but he was deep in the splendor of his own thoughts, and he walked on.

It woke Meyer. Tossing restlessly, dreaming, the slightest sound would have wakened him. As it was, the shots blasted into his slumber, and brought him abruptly awake. He sat up.

He sat up afraid and anxious, wondering what had drawn him out of his sleep. At first, it might have been any night, and then he remembered what had happened. Alice had gone away—but what was the use of thinking now? “Go back to sleep, Meyer,” he told himself. But still he was puzzled, thinking that he had heard shooting.

Was there a sound outside in the hall? He bent forward and listening, cupping a hand around his ear; then he sighed wearily. Nothing—yet it still seemed that somewhere, outside perhaps, a confused murmur was making itself up.

The night, the shadows, and the mystery weighed on him like the presence of near death. He was cold and afraid, old. He moved over against his wife, and then he touched her shoulder. Bessie sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“What's the matter?” she asked him.

“I thought I heard something.”

“You're imagining things,” she told him. “Go back to sleep, Meyer. You have to get up and open the store. So go back to sleep now.”

“Yeah—but I heard something. I thought maybe someone was in the store.”

“Nobody's in the store.”

“All right.”

He attempted to compose himself for sleep, but it was useless. The moment he closed his eyes, countless pictures flooded into his brain, large distorted pictures that turned him into a very small man, such a small man. He shivered and trembled with his own smallness.

“Bessie,” he moaned desperately, “I'm afraid.”

She put out her hand and closed it over his, understanding something of his fear. Poor small man—he was beaten finally. What use is it for a small man to struggle, when he has to give up in the end? Nothing was left, no money, no children, just the two of them alone in bed, realizing that their lifelong dream had burst like a swollen bubble. Money—after all, say what you will, money is the breath of life; but now he had nothing.

“Poor Meyer,” she thought, “you've lost yourself.”

“Bessie, I'm afraid,” he whispered.

“I know—I know, Meyer, but it's nothing. There's nothing to be afraid of.”

“Yeah—I'm afraid of everything. Soon, I'll die, Bessie. I'm an old man—”

“Nothing to be afraid of, Meyer. Soon, it'll be morning, and in the morning, you'll feel better …”

The poker game, up in the regular club, went on. Kraus had dropped out, but Mickey the louse had taken his place. Now Shutzey was winning; he had been winning for a half-hour already, steadily, deal after deal, and it occurred to him that never before had he known such good luck in cards. It seemed that the cards were enchanted. He played blind, but if there were kings on top, it always turned out that there was a king under. If someone else had a pair of kings, and he had an ace up, he knew that when he turned over, there'd be an ace under. Luck like that doesn't come often, and Shutzey bet high. The others bet high, too; they knew that Shutzey's luck couldn't last forever.

“Yer a sonovabitch,” said Mickey the louse. “I never knew a guy what had a run like that.”

“Put up, put up,” Timy said. “Maybe you guys oughta get clinched, like Danny.”

“Aces,” Shutzey said. “Look.”

“Yer a sonovabitch.”

“Danny's all right,” Shutzey nodded. “Danny's a good kid—a damn good kid. You ain't got no leg to stand on without Danny, Timy.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. You ain't no lawyer.”

“When I'm a supreme court judge, Shutzey, I'll pull you outta stock with a dozen of your whores.”

“O.K., Timy.”

Then they heard the shots. In that silent night, they were heard much further than Kraus' place; in the club they were clear and sharp.

“Wot the hell—”

“Someone shootin' up.”

“Deal out.”

“Who the hell's shootin'?”

“Over on the Place.”

“Yeah.”

“Deal out.”

“We oughta see.”

“It ain't none uv yer business.”

“I'm going—”

“Comin', Timy?”

“Yeah—the game'll wait.”

It was almost in front of Mary White's house that Anna was shot, but the noise hardly penetrated into her lethargy. She stirred, moaned once or twice, and then lay still.

But it woke Peter and Sasha. Peter stirred, opened his eyes once, and then closed them tight; he attempted to think of the dream he had been torn out of, drove his fists into his eyes, and wondered whether there had been shooting in the dream or not.

He was in bed, but he couldn't remember going to bed. Also, he was vaguely disturbed; he didn't remember his mother coming home.

He wanted to see whether his mother was home, yet his bed was so warm and comfortable that he hated to stir. On the other side of the room, someone was moving; that meant Sasha was awake, too. He peered across the room, tried to make out her form, but found it impossible because of the darkness. It was funny to be in a place so dark that you might just as well be blind. The idea fascinated him, and he held his hand up before his face; nothing there, nothing at all. The he commenced to feel afraid; he was hardly awake.

“Sasha?” he whispered.

“You awake, Pede?”

“Yeah—bud I can't see my hand. Maybe I'm blind.”

“Me, too.”

“Yu think yer blind, Sasha?”

“I dunno.”

“I god my hand ride in fronta my face. I can't see nothin'.”

“You scared, Pede?”

“A liddle.”

“What are you goin' to do?”

Peter slipped out of bed and felt his way over to Sasha. Hearing him coming, she reached out a warm, small hand, and Peter found it. For a moment he held it; then, feeling cold, he crawled in beside her, head first. Under the covers, he twisted around, so that they were face to face. Sasha clasped her arms around him, and they snuggled close to one another. Sasha was drowsy with sleep; mechanically, she kissed Peter. Then she was dozing off, when Peter said:

“Sasha—”

“Yeah?”

“I'll marry yu, if yu want me tu. I'm scared, Sasha.”

“Mmmm,” Sasha whispered. She held him tighter.

Peter was falling asleep again. He had a picture of himself seated at a piano. Sasha was watching him, nodding and smiling.

Jessica had not yet fallen asleep. After the shots, she opened the window and looked out. People and excitement, but it was too far away for her to make out what had happened. Shutzey carried a gun. She had felt it pressing into her breast when he put his arms around her. Suppose he had been shooting; suppose he were lying there now, with a bullet somewhere inside of him.

She went to bed, thinking that the end of Shutzey would come in some way similar to that, if it were not Shutzey already. She didn't care a great deal, because of the others that were to come after Shutzey. Shutzey was a brute; undoubtedly, he would die like a brute.

She lay there thinking and wondering, wondering mostly about the sudden death that had come to the street, and wondering why it affected her not at all. Were men born to battle and die? And if two men were to fight over her, fight like two wild beasts and to the death? The idea thrilled her, made her tremble with eagerness for something she couldn't understand. What did she want?

Then, impulsively, she began to cry. She couldn't stop herself. For a long time, she lay there crying, until finally she slept.

Three or four of the girls had been working late, and now they had a drink with Minnie the storage vault. Minnie was telling them the story of Mary White and the stag, and they listened in silence. Minnie made a story dramatic when she told it; she used her hands and her face and her body, and in that way she left nothing to the imagination.

The house was very quiet now. No men were left, and the rest of the girls had either gone home or to sleep. They were sitting in the kitchen, where Lonnie the mouse was mixing drinks.

“Not me,” Janey said. “Not me. Geesus Christ, you don't have no insides after a night like that.”

“Yer a lot of little pikers,” Minnie told them. “None of the girls nowdays can take it. I remember when Orchard and Allen were the streets—”

“Wanna drink, Minnie?”

“No. I had enough. I'm gettin' old.”

“Oh, I'm sick of this lousy racket. I wanna get married.”

“You won't never get married. You'll stay in this until you croak.”

“Maybe I won't,” Lonnie said. “I'll marry the first guy asks me, even if he got a wooden leg.”

“They won't nobody ask you.”

“The first guy asked me,” said Janey, “I was sap enough to believe. So he knocks me up, an' then tells me he's going to join the army. So I say, What do I do? So he says, Awright, I'll marry yu. Then he goes down to the camp, an' I come down there after him. It took my last five bucks, an' when I get there, I don't have a cent in the world. What d'yu want? he tells me. So I ask him to marry me, an' he tells me to go to hell. So what am I to do? I hang around the camp for maybe two or three days, an' I'm hungry as hell. Yu can't starve, an' there was all these men with plenty of dough to get rid of. Geesus, I never knew there were so many men until I got down there. So I took some money from a nice kid, an' I figured it didn't make no difference, on account of I was knocked up anyway. You know how one thing leads to another. I kept it up because I hadda eat, an' kept on askin' him to marry me. So one day he gets wind of it, an' he fixes things with some of his friends. Then they get me all together, give me the works, an' he keeps hittin' me an' …

“What happened to him?” Minnie asked her.

“He was killed. I see his name in the paper one day, an' sure as hell I sit down and cry like a baby. Now wouldn't that give you something to laugh at? There's that no good sonovabitch gettin' what he deserved, an' I'm sap enough to sit down and cry. But you don't hate men—”

“They ain't worth it.”

“I still think about him. He wasn't no good, but he was handsome as hell—one of these big dark men, like Shutzey.”

“Yeah—but you got over it.”

“Did I? I ain't no good for nothing now. I oughta pray that he rots in hell, but I don't.”

Then they heard the shots. They ran to the front, peered through windows. Then, when they saw other people running, they ran too, oblivious to the cold, living because someone else had died.

Marion and the priest heard the shots after they left the mission, hurried on; they came into the Place and moved toward the crowd.

The priest knew it was death. Death came like that, part of the night, a cold, mysterious stranger.

W
HAT
did noise and people mean to John Edwards now? The fire in him, the mighty surging desire for life was gone. Nothing was left. All the will and energy that had transformed him into another person had been swept away with the life of Anna. He sat in the snow knowing no more than that the woman he loved was dead.

It was all over; in this way, things end and desires go. He sat there hardly even noticing his own coughing, the thin trickle of blood that came from his half-open mouth, ran down his chin and onto his coat.