L
ate one warm night in July, a week after they had let Wally Mullane out of the hospital on Welfare Island, he was back in his old neighborhood, searching for a place to sleep. He tried the stores on the avenue first, but they were closed, even the candy store on the corner. The hall doors were all shut, and the cellars padlocked. He peered into the barbershop window and cursed his luck for getting there so late, because Mr. Davido would have let him sleep on one of the barber chairs.
He walked for a block along the avenue, past the stores, and turned in on Third Street, where the rows of frame houses began. In the middle of the block, he crossed the street and slipped into an alley between two old-fashioned frame houses. He tried the garage doors, but they were locked too. As he came out of the alley, he spotted a white-topped prowl car with shaded lights moving slowly down the street, close to the curb, under the trees. Ducking back into the alley, he hid behind a tree in the back yard and waited there nervously for the police car to go by. If the car stopped, he would run. He would climb the fences and come out in his mother’s yard on Fourth Street, but he didn’t like the idea. The lights moved by. In five minutes Wally sneaked out of the alley and walked quickly up the street. He wanted to try the cellars of the private houses but was afraid to because someone might wake and take him for a burglar. They would call the police, and it would be just his luck if his brother Jimmy was driving one of the radio cars.
All night long Wally hunted through the neighborhood, up Fourth, then Fifth Street, then along the parkway, all the way from the cemetery to the railroad cut, which was a block from the avenue and ran parallel to it. He thought of sleeping in the BMT elevated station but didn’t have a nickel, so that was out. The coal yard near the railroad cut was out too, because they kept a watchman there. At five o’clock, tired from wandering, he turned into Fourth Street again and stood under a tree, across the street from his mother’s house. He wanted to go into the cellar and sleep there, but he thought of Jimmy and his sister Agnes and said to hell with that.
Wally walked slowly down the avenue to the El station and stood on the corner watching it grow light. Gray light seeped into the morning sky, and the quiet streets were full of thinning, warm darkness. It made Wally feel sad. The neighborhood looked the same but wasn’t. He thought of the fellows who were gone now and he thought of his friend Vincent Davido, the barber’s son, who had been gone since before the war. He thought of himself not having set foot in his own house for years, and it made him feel like crying.
There was an empty milk box in front of the delicatessen. Wally dragged it across the sidewalk and placed it against the El pillar to have a backrest. He was tired but didn’t want to fall asleep, because soon the people would be going up to the station and he wanted to see if there was anyone he knew. He thought if he saw two or three people he knew, maybe they would give him about fifty cents and he would have enough for a beer and some ham and eggs.
Just before the sun came up, Wally fell asleep. The people buying their papers at the newsstand looked at him before they went upstairs to the station. Not many of them knew him. A fat man in a gray suit who recognized him stood on the corner with a disgusted look on his face, watching Wally sleep. Wally sat heavy-bellied on the milk box, with his head leaning back against the pillar and his mouth open. His straw-colored hair was slicked back. His face, red and smudged, was unshaven and thick with loose flesh. He had on a brown suit, oily with filth, black shoes, and a soiled shirt, with a rag of a brown tie knotted at the collar.
“The bastard’s always drunk,” said the fat man to the man from the candy store who had come out to collect the pennies on the newsstand. The storekeeper nodded.
At eight o’clock, a water truck turned the corner of Second Street and rumbled along the avenue toward the El, shooting two fanlike sprays of water out of its iron belly. The water foamed white where
it hit the sizzling asphalt and shot up a powdery mist into the air. As the truck turned under the El, the floating cool mist settled upon Wally’s sweating face and he woke up. He looked around wildly, but it wasn’t Jimmy and the feeling of fright went away.
The day was heavy with wet, blistering heat, and Wally had a headache. His stomach rumbled and his tongue was sour. He wanted to eat but he didn’t have a cent.
Several people walked past him on their way to work, and Wally looked at their faces but saw no one he knew. He didn’t like to ask strangers for money. It was different if you knew them. Looking into the candy-store window to see the time, he was annoyed that it was eight-twenty-five. From long experience Wally knew that he had missed his best chances. The factory workers and those who worked in the stores had passed by very early in the morning, and the white-collar employees who followed them about an hour or so later were also gone. Only the stragglers and the women shoppers were left. You couldn’t get much out of them. Wally thought he would wait awhile, and if no one came along soon, he’d go over to the fruit store and ask them if they had any spoiled fruit.
At half past eight, Mr. Davido, who lived on the top floor above the delicatessen, came out of the house to open his barbershop across the street. He was shocked when he saw Wally standing on the corner. How strange it is, he thought, when you see something that looks as if it was always there and everything seems the same once more.
The barber was a small, dark-skinned man nearing sixty. His fuzzy hair was gray, and he wore old-fashioned pince-nez with a black ribbon attached to them. His arms were short and heavy, and his fingers were stubby, but he maneuvered them well when he was shaving someone or cutting his hair. The customers knew how quickly and surely those short fingers moved when a man was in a hurry to get out of the shop. When there was no hurry, Mr. Davido worked slowly. Sometimes, as he was cutting a man’s hair, the man would happen to look into the mirror and see the barber staring absently out the window, his lips pursed and his eyes filled with quiet sadness. Then, in a minute, he would raise his brows and begin cutting again, his short, stubby fingers snipping quickly to make up for time he had lost.
“Hey, Wally,” he said, “where you keep yourself? You don’t come aroun for a long time.”
“I was sick,” Wally said. “I was in a hospital.”
“Whatsamatter, Wally, you still drinkin poison whiskey?”
“Nah, I ain’t allowed to drink anymore. I got diabetes. They took a blood test an it showed diabetes.”
Mr. Davido frowned and shook his head. “Take care of yourself,” he said.
“I had a bad time. I almost got gangrene. When you get that, they amputate your legs off.”
“How you get that, Wally?”
“From my brother Jimmy when he beat me up. My whole legs was swollen. The doctor said it was a miracle I didn’t get gangrene.”
Wally looked up the avenue as he talked. The barber followed his glance.
“You better keep away from your brother.”
“I’m watchin out.”
“You better leave this neighborhood, Wally. Your brother told you he don’t like you in this neighborhood. There’s a lot of jobs nowadays, Wally. Why don’t you get some kind of a job and get a furnish room to live?”
“Yeah, I’m thinkin of gettin a job.”
“Look every day,” said the barber.
“I’ll look,” said Wally.
“You better look now. Go to the employment agency.”
“I’ll go,” said Wally. “First I’m lookin for somebody. There’s a lot of strange faces here. The neighborhood is changed.”
“That’s right,” said the barber, “a lot of the young single fellows is gone. I can tell in the shop. The married men don’t come in for shaves like the single fellows, only haircuts. They buy electric razors. The single fellows was sports.”
“I guess everyone is gone or they got married,” said Wally.
“They went to the war but some never came back, and a lot of them moved away to other places.”
“Did you ever hear from Vincent?” Wally asked.
“No.”
“I just thought I’d ask you.”
“No,” said the barber. There was silence for a minute; then he said, “Come over later, Wally. I shave you.”
“When?”
“Later.”
Wally watched Mr. Davido cross the avenue and go past the drugstore and laundry to his barbershop. Before he went in, he took a key from his vest pocket and wound up the barber pole. The red spiral, followed by the white and blue spirals, went round and round.
A man and a woman walked by, and Wally thought he recognized the man, but whoever he was lowered his eyes and passed by. Wally looked after him contemptuously.
He became tired of watching the stragglers and drifted over to the newsstand to read the headlines. Mr. Margolies, the owner of the candy store, came out again and picked up the pennies on the stand.
Wally was sore. “What’s the matter, you think I’m gonna steal your lousy pennies?”
“Please,” said Mr. Margolies, “to you I don’t have to explain my business.”
“I’m sorry I ever spent a cent in your joint.”
Mr. Margolies’s face grew red. “Go way, you troublemaker, you. Go way from here,” he cried, flipping his hand.
“Aw, screwball.”
A strong hand grasped Wally’s shoulder and swung him around. For an instant he went blind with fear and his body sagged, but when he saw it was his oldest sister, Agnes, standing there with his mother, he straightened, pretending he hadn’t been afraid.
“What’d you do now, you drunken slob?” said Agnes in her thick voice.
“I didn’t do anything.”
Mr. Margolies had seen the look on Wally’s face. “He didn’t do anything,” he said. “He was only blocking the stand so the customers couldn’t get near the papers.”
Then he retreated into the store.
“You were told to stay out of this neighborhood,” rasped Agnes. She was a tall, redheaded woman, very strongly built. Her shoulders were broad, and her thick breasts hung heavily against her yellow dress.
“I was just standin here.”
“Who is that, Agnes?” asked his mother, peering through thick glasses.
“It’s Wallace,” Agnes said disgustedly.
“Hello, Ma,” Wally said in a soft voice.
“Wallace, where have you been?” Mrs. Mullane was a stout woman, big-bellied and stoop-shouldered. Her pink scalp shone through her thin white hair, which she kept up with two amber-colored combs. Her eyes blinked under her thick glasses and she clung tightly to her daughter’s arm for fear she would walk into something she couldn’t see.
“I was in the hospital, Ma. Jimmy beat me up.”
“And rightly so, you drunken bum,” said Agnes. “You had your chances. Jimmy used to give you money to go to the agencies for a job, and the minute he had his back turned, you hit the bottle.”
“It was the Depression. I couldn’t get a job.”
“You mean nobody would take you after the BMT canned you for spendin the nickel collections on the racehorses.”
“Aw, shut up.”
“You’re a disgrace to your mother and your family. The least you could do is to get out of here and stay out. We suffered enough on account of you.”
Wally changed his tone. “I’m sick. The doctor said I got diabetes.”
Agnes said nothing.
“Wallace,” his mother asked, “did you take a shower?”
“No, Ma.”
“You ought to take one.”
“I have no place.”
Agnes grasped her mother’s arm. “I’m takin your mother to the eye hospital.”
“Wait awhile, Agnes,” said Mrs. Mullane pettishly. “Wallace, are you wearing a clean shirt?”
“No, I ain’t, Ma.”
“Well, you come home for one.”
“Jimmy’d break his back.”
“He needs a clean shirt,” insisted Mrs. Mullane.
“I got one in the laundry,” said Wally.
“Well, then take it out, Wallace.”
“I ain’t got the money.”
“Ma, don’t give any money to him. He’ll only throw it away on drink.”
“He ought to have a clean shirt.”
She opened her pocketbook and fumbled in her change purse.
“A shirt is twenty cents,” said Agnes.
Mrs. Mullane peered at the coin she held in her hand. “Is this a dime, Agnes?”
“No, it’s a penny. Let me get it for you.” Agnes took two dimes from the change purse and dropped them into Wally’s outstretched palm.
“Here, bum.”
He let it go by. “Do you think I could have a little something to eat with, Ma?”
“No,” said Agnes. She gripped her mother’s elbow and walked forward.
“Change your shirt, Wallace,” Mrs. Mullane called to him from the El steps. Wally watched them go upstairs and disappear into the station.