“Shit!” The motorman had jumped down from the car and seized the broom—
“Fan ’er vid de het!”
“Git off me feet, you!”
“At’s it! Lean on ’im O’Toole! Push ’im down! At’s it! At’s it! I woiked in a power house—”
And with the broom straws the motorman flipped the mangled metal from the rail. A quake! As if leviathan leaped for the hook and fell back threshing. And darkness.
Darkness!
They grunted, the masses, stood suddenly mute a moment, for a moment silent, stricken, huddled, crushed by the pounce of ten-fold night. And a voice spoke, strained, shrunken, groping—
“Ey, paizon! She ’sa whita yet — lika you looka da slacka lime alla time! You know?”
Someone shrieked. The fainting woman moaned. The crowd muttered, whispered, seething uneasily in the dark, welcomed the loud newcomers who pierced the dense periphery—
“One side! One side!” Croaking with authority, the stone-grim uniformed one shouldered his way through. “One side!”
“De cops!”
“Dun’t step on ’im!”
“Back up youz! Back up! Didja hea’ me, Moses? Back up! Beat it! G’wan!” They fell back before the perilous arc of the club. “G’wan before I fan yiz! Back up! Let’s see sompt’n’ in hea’! Move! Move, I say!” Artificial ire flung the spittle on his lips. “Hey George!” He flung at a burly one. “Give us a hand hea, will yiz!”
“Sure! Git back you! Pete! Git that other side!”
The policeman wheeled round, squatted down beside the black-shirted one. “Don’ look boined.”
“Jist his shoe.”
“How long wuz he on?”
“Christ! I don’t know. I came ouda Callahan’s an’ de foist t’ing I know somebody lams a broom out of a winder, an’ I grabs it an’ shoves ’im off de fuck’n t’ing—”
“Sh! Must a done it himself— Naa! Dat ain’t de way! Lemme have ’im.” He pushed the other aside, turned the child over on his face. “Foist aid yuh gits ’em hea.” His bulky hands all but encompassed the narrow waist. “Like drownin’, see?” He squeezed,
Khir-r-r-r-f! S-s-s-s-.
“I hoid ’im!”
“Yeah!”
“He’s meckin’ him t’ breed!”
“See? Gits de air in ’im.”
Khir-r-r-r-f! S-s-s-s.
“Looks like he’s gone, do. W’ere de hell’s dat ambillance?”
“Vee culled id a’reddy, Ufficeh!”
“Arh!”
“Rap ’im on de feet arficer, I woiked
in a power—”
Khir-r-r-r-f! S-s-s-s
“Anybody know ’im? Any o’ youz know dis kid?”
The inner and the craning semi-circle muttered blankly. The policeman rested his ear against the child’s back.
“Looks like he’s done fer, butchuh can’t tell—”
Khir-r-r-r-f! S-s-s-s.
“He sez he’s dead, Mary.”
“Dead!”
“Oy! Toit!”
“Gott sei donk, id’s nod mine Elix—”
Khir-r-r-r-f. S-s-s-s.
“Sit im helfin vie a toitin bankis.” The squat shirt-sleeved Jew whose tight belt cut his round belly into the letter B turned to the lime-streaked wop — squinted, saw that communication had failed. “It’ll help him like cups on a cawps,” he translated — and tapped his chest with an ace of spades.
Khi-r-r-r-f. S-s-s-s.
(E-e-e-e. E-e-e-e-.
One ember fanned … dulling … uncertain)
“Here’s the damned thing he threw in, Cap.” The motorman shook off the crowd, held up the thinned and twisted metal.
“Yea! Wot is it?”
“Be damned if I know. Hot! Jesus!”
Khir-r-r-f. S-s-s.
(E-e-e-e-e.
Like the red pupil of the eye of darkness, the ember
dilated, spun like a pinwheel, expanding, expanding,
till at the very core, a white flaw rent the scarlet
tissue and spread, engulfed the margin like a stain—)
“Five hundred an’ fifty volts. What a wallop!”
“He’s cooked, yuh t’ink?”
“Yea. Jesus! What else!”
“Unh!” The policeman was grunting now with his efforts.
Kh-i-r-r-r-f! S-s-s-s.
“Hey, Meester, maybe he fell on id—
De iron—”
“Sure, dot’s righd!”
“Id’s f’om de compeny de fault!”
“Ass, how could he fall on it, fer the love O Jesus!”
The motor-man turned on them savagely.
“He could! Id’s easy!”
“Id vuz stink — stick — sticken oud!”
“He’ll sue, dun’ vorry!”
“Back up, youz!”
Khi-r-r-r-f! S-s-s.
(Eee-e-e-e
And in the white, frosty light within
the red iris, a small figure slanted
through a desolate street, crack-paved,
rut-guttered, slanted and passed, and
overhead the taut, wintry wires whined
on their crosses—
E-e-e-e-e.
They whined, spanning the earth and sky.
— Go-d-d-b! Go-o-o-ob! G-o-o-b! G’bye!..)
“Makin’ a case fer a shyster. C’n yuh beat it!”
“Ha-a-ha! Hunh!”
“I’m late. Dere it is.” The motorman dropped the gnarled and blackened dipper beside the curb.
“An Irisher chuchim!”
“Ain’t it a dirty shame—”
“Noo vud den!”
“Wat’s happened, chief?”
“Dere give a look!”
“Let’s git troo dere!”
“Unh!”
Kh-i-r-r-r-f! S-s-s-s.
(—G’by-e-e. Mis-s-s-l-e. M-s-ter. Hi-i-i-i.
Wo-o-o-d.
And a man in a tugboat, hair under
arm-pits, hung from a pole among the
wires, his white undershirt glittering.
He grinned and whistled and with every
note yellow birds flew to the roof.)
“T’ink a shot o’ sompt’n’ ’ll do ’im any good?”
“Nuh! Choke ’im if he’s alive.”
“Yeh! If hiz alife!”
“W’ea’s ’e boined?”
“Dey say id’s de feet wid de hen’s wid eveytingk.”
“Unh!”
Khi-r-r-r-f! S-s-s-s.
(We-e-e-e-
The man in the wires stirred. The
Wires twanged brightly. The blithe
and golden cloud of birds filled the
sky.)
“Unh!”
(Klang!
The milk tray jangled. Leaping he
neared. From roof-top to roof-top,
over streets, over alley ways, over
areas and lots, his father soared with
a feathery ease. He set the trays
down, stooped as if searching, paused—)
“Unh!”
(A hammer! A hammer! He snarled,
brandished it, it snapped like a whip.
The birds vanished. Horror thickened
the air.)
“Unh!”
“He’s woikin’ hard!”
“Oy! Soll im Gott helfin!”
“He no waka.”
(Around him now, the cobbles stretched
away. Stretched away in the swirling
dark like the faces of a multitude aghast