Never Love a Stranger (23 page)
About ten o’clock I went downstairs to the telegraph desk. An operator was sitting there. “Do you know where Helen is?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “How should I know?” she asked. “The office sent her over for a trial when I was out. D’ya want I should find out for ya?”
“Could you, please?” I asked. “It’s very important.”
She got her central office on the wire. Back came the message. “No. She was hired for the day and paid off at the end of her trick. She didn’t leave any address.”
That was that. I went from there to the desk and asked to see the manager. I was shown into his office. He was a medium-sized, quiet-spoken, grey-haired man.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Kane?” he asked politely.
I told him the whole story. He listened, his hands folded on his chest. When I had finished he asked me what I wanted him to do.
“I don’t know what you can do,” I answered him honestly.
“I don’t know what I can do, either,” he said, standing up. “We provide a safe for the guests to leave their money and valuables. We have a sign prominently posted: ‘Not responsible for money or valuables unless checked with the desk’. If we would listen to every hard luck story handed us, where would we be? I heard plenty stories like that before. People come in here after spending and losing their money gambling and in other ways and expect us to do something for them. This is a business, the same as any other. We have to run the business right or we lose our jobs. Have you enough to pay your bill?” he asked shrewdly.
“No,” I answered. “I told you that bitch cleaned me.” “Tsk, tsk,” he said, shaking his head. “Very unfortunate!”
“I know that,” I said. “But how about giving me a few days? I’ll get a job and pay you every cent.”
He laughed at that. “Do you have any idea, Mr. Kane, how scarce jobs are? And your room is pretty expensive too—about three-fifty a day, I think. No, I’m afraid the owners would never permit anything like that.”
“Then now about letting me work it off?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t do that. We’re overstaffed as it is, and I expect to have to let some people go this coming week.”
“Well, I said, “that puts me right back to where I started from. What do I do next?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But in view of the circumstances, you’ll have to let us have the room immediately. We’ll require that you leave your clothing—er, that is, what you’re not wearing—with us as security for payment of the rent.”
I got sore at that. I stood up. “You lousy swine!” I said to him. “That’s a hell of a way to treat somebody who comes in trying to level with you! If I wanted to fool you, I could have gone on saying nothing and let you find out for yourself. But, no! I have to be the sucker to take the rap for the rest of the cheap tinhorns who are too smart for you!”
He tried to interrupt me but I shouted him down.
“I’m going to take my stuff and get out of here, and you try to stop me! If you do I’ll split my guts out all over this town about how you let your telegraph operators take your customers. See how you like that!” I started out of the room.
He stopped me at the door. “All right, Mr. Kane,” he said, “don’t get excited. Supposing I let you take your stuff and go. We’ll forget the whole matter.”
“You bet your life I’m goin’!” I said, still angry. “You can forget it, not me!” I slammed the door behind me. I went up to my room and began to pack my things. When I had everything packed, I went out into the hall and took the elevator downstairs.
I walked out of the hotel. I stopped at the news-stand on the corner. I bought a paper. “Do you know a good reasonable rooming house?’ I asked the vendor.
“Sure,” he said. He wrote an address on a piece of paper for me. It was a few blocks away, so I walked there. I took a room there for three-fifty a week, two weeks on the line in advance. That left me with three dollars and about eighty cents in change. I packed my stuff into the dresser. This place was a dump compared with the hotel, but at least I was good here for the next two weeks.
The next day I went job hunting. I was lucky. I got a job paying fourteen dollars a week delivering groceries and meat for a big market down on Centre Street. I came home tired. I stretched out on the bed. It was pretty tough running around all day with grocery orders, and I had been taking it kind of easy the last few months. I got out of bed and sat down trying to figure out how far the money would go. I took a piece of paper and pencil and jotted down figures on it:
Rent $ 3
Food 7
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Total $10
Salary 14
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Extra $ 4
I figured about a dollar a day for food was enough. Breakfast was just coffee and a roll. Lunch was a sandwich and coffee or a plate of soup and coffee. For supper I would take a plate in a cafeteria. I lay down on the bed again. I wasn’t worried. I’d get by.
But there was one thing I didn’t figure on.
I
USED
to come in to work at seven o’clock in the morning. My first job was to get out the early orders. The clerks had them ready the night before, and I would take them out, put them into the push-cart, and deliver them. I didn’t care much for the work, but by being careful and saving that extra four bucks a week, I hoped to save up enough to take me back East. I figured that was where I’d find the folks.
But two days later it blew up. I was carrying an order out to the cart when I began to get sick and dizzy. I guess it was the crummy food I’d been eating. The sidewalk seemed to incline up towards the building line. It seemed to be harder and harder for me to keep my balance. I dropped the order on the ground and fell against the side of the building. Stupidly I watched the broken eggs and milk form a mush on the walk. I was sweating. Only by exerting my will power could I keep from falling to the ground. Desperately I fought myself. I must not fall. I mustn’t. But the building kept going up and up as the sidewalk kept rising.
The boss came out and looked at the sidewalk, then at me, leaning against the building. I was white. Beads of sweat had run down into my eyes and I couldn’t see clearly. He made no move to help me. I tried to say something to him but the words that came out were unintelligible.
“Come in and get your time when you’ve sobered up,” he said, turning on his heel and walking back to the building.
I looked after him helplessly. I tried to speak again but couldn’t. I just leaned against the building, hoping I wouldn’t pass out. The rage and shame and the humiliation were all burning inside of me. The son of a bitch thought I was drunk! I could have wept. But I didn’t have time. I had to fight that sidewalk. It was like a tightrope; at any minute I felt I would fall. Slowly I sank to my haunches and rested my head on my arms. I shut my eyes so I didn’t have to see that terrible incline I was so afraid of. I tried not to think of it, not to think of anything.
At last it passed. I began to feel a little better. I raised my head and opened my eyes. They were wet with tears I had suppressed. I had a dull headache. The side-walk was back to normal. I stood up slowly. I still felt shaky. Holding my hands to the side of the building, I walked around to the door. As I went in, a clerk rushed past me to clean up the mess. I went back to the little glass cage the boss called his office.
He was standing there. “Mr. Rogers,” I began.
“Here’s your time, Kane,” he said. He held out five dollars towards me.
I took it slowly. I couldn’t move too quickly. I counted it. “But, Mr. Rogers,” I said, “there’s only five dollars here. I’ve worked three days. It should be seven.”
“I’ve taken out what you broke,” he said, turning his back on me.
Stupidly I put the money in my pocket. I started to walk away, then turned back. “Mr.
Rogers,” I said. “I wasn’t drunk. I was sick.”
He didn’t answer. I could see he didn’t believe me.
“You gotta believe me, Mr. Rogers!” I said, my voice trembling. “It’s the truth. I was dizzy and …”
“If you’re sick you shouldn’t work anyhow,” he said, turning to me. “Now beat it! I haven’t any time to waste.”
I knew he didn’t believe me. I walked past the clerks as I took off the apron and put on my jacket. They watched me out of the corner of their eyes. I hadn’t worked there long enough to know any of them. I felt that they thought as Mr. Rogers did.
I went directly home. I didn’t feel well enough to look for another job that day. Besides, I had a funny feeling of shame that seemed to cling to me. I thought everybody on the streets looked at me strangely. I went up to my room and lay down. I stayed inside for the rest of the day. I wasn’t hungry and didn’t feel like eating anything.
The next morning I went out again. But that day passed and I didn’t get a job—and the next day, and the day after that. I was pretty low on dough. I had cut down to one cheap meal a day. By the middle of the next week I was broke. I could see no job in sight, and Sunday I would have to pony up three and a half for the room.
I was on the street when the idea hit me. I would go back to New York. I had friends there. I knew my way around that town. They would help me find the folks. I turned back to my room. I got all my clothes together—the new suits I had bought a few weeks ago and all my shirts but one—and put them into the valise. On the way downstairs I told the landlady I was giving up the room at the end of the week.
I looked around for a hock shop. I found one down on lower Main Street. I walked into the shop and dumped the stuff on the counter. An old man, wearing glasses, came forward to wait on me. “What can I get for this, uncle?” I asked him as I opened the valise.
He took out the new suits and looked at them carefully. Then he put them down. “It can’t be done,” he said. “I’m not handling hot goods.”
“Uncle,” I said, “this stuff ain’t hot. I just bought it last week. But I lost my dough and I want to blow out of this burg.”
“You got maybe a bill of sale?” he asked, looking at me shrewdly.
I fished in my wallet. I found the one for the suits. I showed it to him. He looked at it. “Five dollars apiece I’ll give you for the suits—fifty cents for the shirts.”
“I just paid twenty bucks for those suits a few weeks ago, and now you offer me five bucks!”
“Business is bad,” he said, with an expressive gesture of his hands, “and suits is a drug on the market.”
I began packing the stuff back into the valise.
“Vait a minute,” he said. “You vant to sell the stuff or hock it?”
“I want to sell it,” I said, still packing. “The valise too. I told you I’m leaving town.”
“In that case,” he said, “I’m offering you seven-fifty for the suits, since I don’t have to hold them, and two-fifty for the valise.”
We settled for thirty bucks and a pair of blue denim work pants and shirt. I changed in the back room. I gave him the suit I had on as well as the others. I walked out of the
store and went to the nearest restaurant and had me a good meal. After I had eaten I bought me a pack of cigarettes and lit up. I walked back to the rooming-house, feeling a little bit better. I went upstairs and went to sleep.
Early the next morning I was down at the freight yards. I was heading home—back to New York.
I
T
wasn’t too tough a trip. There were many others like me riding the rods for one reason or another, some heading nowhere in particular—people without anchors, just drifting along. Others were going some place definite—home or to a new place where a job might be found.
They too were like other people, some nice and helpful, some nasty and mean, but on the whole I got along. I minded my own business, never stayed on one train too long, jumped off at an occasional town along the route to hole up for a day and night in a cheap room and eat a few decent meals, and then I’d be on my way again.
I didn’t nave much dough left when I tumbled off the sleeper in Hoboken, just across the river from New York, but it didn’t worry me. I knew I could get along once I was there.
It was four blocks from the freight yards to the ferry, and the rain that had been falling when I first got off the train turned to a heavy snow by the time I boarded the ferry.
It was late in the evening and the crowds were coming back from work. There were mostly trucks going back to New York. I swung up behind one of them and climbed inside. Once the truck was on board the ferry I hopped out.
I could feel the lurch of the ferry and the slush of the water against the pier as the ferry went out. I walked into the closed-in passenger part. I sat down and looked forward through a glass window, trying to see New York in front of us, but I couldn’t. All I could see was white snow falling—falling in a thick blanket between the water and the sky.
When the boat suddenly came near the dock and the tall buildings and the lights of New York began to shine in front of me, I felt as if I’d come home—really come home. This was one town and one set of people that I could understand.
I heard the clank of chains as the gate rolled open, and I walked forward. The trucks began to roll off and I joined the crowd pushing their way on to the dock. I was cold but too excited to mind it. The blue denim trousers and heavy work shirt I had on weren’t enough protection against this kind of weather, but at the time I didn’t mind.
The ferry docked at Forty-second Street. I walked cross-town to Times Square and stood on the corner, just like any other hick for the first time in New York, and gawked up at the big sign on the Times Building as the lights went on.
“Seven p.m. February 10, 1932.”
Suddenly I was hungry. I ducked into a cafeteria and ate a pretty good meal. It wasn’t until I paid my check that I realized I had only about forty cents left. But I didn’t worry about it. I slept that night in a cheap hotel down on the Bowery for two bits. That left me with only fifteen cents for tomorrow. I remember smiling as I fell asleep. This was my town and I didn’t need dough to get along here.