“You didn’t accomplish anything.”
“Did Jack really say that they don’t want me anymore?”
“Right. But they asked me to stay. Clara thinks you’re a temptation to Jack. The way I figure, if I give her some attention she won’t worry about you, but you’re so goddamn boisterous. Here. Have a piece of sandwich.”
“It’d choke me.”
“It won’t choke you. You’ll be glad for it.”
“I’m not a phony.”
“I’m not a phony either.”
“You’re not, eh?”
“You know what I’ll do?” He grabbed her collar and her throat and screamed into her eyes. “I’ll knock you right across that goddamn street! You don’t bullshit me one time. Be a goddamn woman! That’s the reason you can’t flop with nobody. I can go up there right now and sleep. Jack said I could stay.”
“He did not.”
“He certainly did. But they don’t want you. I asked for a sandwich. Did I get it?”
“You’re really stupendous and colossal.”
“Listen”--and he still held her by the collar-”you squint your eyes at me and I’ll knock you over that goddamn automobile. You been a pain in the ass to me for nine years. They don’t want you because you’re a pain in the ass.”
Headlights moved north on Pearl Street, coming toward them, and Francis let go of her; She did not move, but stared at him.
“You got some goddamn eyes, you know?” He was screaming. “I’ll black ‘em for you. You’re a horse’s ass! You know what I’ll do? I’ll rip that fuckin’ coat off and put you in rags.”
She did not move her body or her eyes.
“I’m gonna eat this sandwich. Whole hunk of cheese.”
“I don’t want it.”
“By god I do. I’ll be hungry tomorrow. It won’t choke me. I’m thankful for everything.”
“You’re a perfect saint.”
“Listen. Straighten up or I’m gonna kill you.”
“I won’t eat it. It’s rat food.”
“I’m gonna kill you!” Francis screamed. “Goddamn it, you hear what I said? Don’t drive me insane. Be a goddamn woman and go the fuck to bed somewhere.”
They walked, not quite together, toward Madison Avenue, south again on South Pearl, retracing their steps. Francis brushed Helen’s arm and she moved away from him.
“You gonna stay at the mission with Pee Wee?”
“No.”
“Then you gonna stay with me?”
“I’m going to call my brother.”
“Good. Call him. Call him a couple of times.”
“I’ll have him meet me someplace.”
“Where you gonna get the nickel to make the call?”
“That’s my business. God, Francis, you were all right till you started on the wine. Wine, wine, wine.”
“I’ll get some cardboard. We’ll go to that old building.”
“The police keep raiding that place. I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t know why you didn’t stay with Jack and Clara since you were so welcome.”
“You’re a woman for abuse.”
They walked east on Madison, past the mission. Helen did not look in. When they reached Green Street she stopped.
“I’m going down below.” she said.
“Who you kiddin’?” Francis said. “You got noplace to go. you’ll he knocked on the head.”
“That wouldn’t he the worst ever happened to me.”
“We got to find something. Can’t leave a dog out like this.”
“Shows you what kind of people they are up there.”
“Stay with me.’’
“No, Francis. You’re crazy.”
He grabbed the hair at the hack of her head, then held her whole head in both hands.
“You’re gonna hit me,” she said.
“I wont hit ya, babe. I love ya some. Are ya awful cold?”
“I don’t think I’ve been warm once in two days.’’
Francis let go of her and took off his suitcoat and put it around her shoulders.
“No. it’s too cold for you to do that,” she said. “I’ve got this coat. You can’t he in just a shirt.’’
“What the hell’s the difference. Coat ain’t no protect ion.”
She handed him hack the coat. “I’m going.” she said.
“Don’t walk away from me.” Francis said. “You’ll he lost in the world.”
But she walked away. And Francis leaned against the light pole on the corner, lit the cigarette Jack had given him, fingered the dollar bill Jack had slipped him in the kitchen, ate what was left of the cheese sandwich, and then threw his old undershorts down the sewer.
o o o
Helen walked down Green Street to a vacant lot, where she saw a fire in an oil drum. From across the street she could see five coloreds around the fire, men and women. On an old sofa in the weeds just beyond the drum, she saw a white woman lying underneath a colored man. She walked back to where Francis waited.
“I couldn’t stay outside tonight,” she said. “I’d die.”
Francis nodded and they walked to Finny’s car, a 1930 black Oldsmobile, dead and wheelless in an alley off John Street. Two men were asleep in it, Finny in the front passenger seat.
“I don’t know that man in back,” Helen said.
“Yeah you do,” said Francis. “That’s Little Red from the mission. He won’t bother you. If he does I’ll pull out his tongue.”
“I don’t want to get in there, Francis.”
“It’s warm, anyhow. Cold in them weeds, honey, awful cold. You walk the streets alone, they’ll pinch you quicker’n hell.”
“You get in the back.”
“No. No room in there for the likes of me. Legs’re too long.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’ll find me some of them tall weeds, get outa the wind.”
“Are you coming back?”
“Sure, I’ll be back. You get a good sleep and I’ll see you here or up at the mission in the ayem.”
“I don’t want to stay here.”
“You got to, babe. It’s what there is.”
Francis opened the passenger door and shook Finny.
“Hey bum. Move over. You got a visitor.”
Finny opened his eyes, heavy with wine. Little Red was snoring.
“Who the hell are you?” Finny said.
“It’s Francis. Move over and let Helen in.”
“Francis.” Finny raised his head.
“I’ll get you a jug tomorrow for this, old buddy,” Francis said. “She’s gotta get in outa this weather.”
“Yeah,” said Finny.
“Never mind yeah, just move your ass over and let her sit. She can’t sleep behind that wheel, condition her stomach’s in.”
“Unnngghh,” said Finny, and he slid behind the wheel.
Helen sat on the front seat, dangling her legs out of the car. Francis stroked her cheek with three fingertips and then let his hand fall. She lifted her legs inside.
“You don’t have to be scared,” Francis said.
“I’m not scared,” Helen said. “Not that.”
“Finny won’t let nothin’ happen to you. I’ll kill the son of a bitch if he does.”
“She knows,” Finny said. “She’s been here before.”
“Sure,” said Francis. “Nothing can happen to you.”
“No.”
“See you in the mornin’.”
“Sure.”
“Keep the faith,” Francis said.
And he closed the car door.
o o o
He walked with an empty soul toward the north star, magnetized by an impulse to redirect his destiny. He had slept in the weeds of a South End vacant lot too many times. He would do it no more. Because he needed to confront the ragman in the morning, he would not chance arrest by crawling into a corner of one of the old houses on lower Broadway where the cops swept through periodically with their mindless net. What difference did it make whether four or six or eight lost men slept under a roof and out of the wind in a house with broken stairs and holes in the floors you could fall through to death, a house that for five or maybe ten years had been inhabited only by pigeons? What difference?
He walked north on Broadway, past Steamboat Square, where as a child he’d boarded the riverboats for outings to Troy, or Kingston, or picnics on Lagoon Island. He passed the D amp; H building and Billy Barnes’s Albany Evening Journal, a building his simpleminded brother Tommy had helped build in 1913. He walked up to Maiden Lane and Broadway, where Keeler’s Hotel used to be, and where his brother Peter sometimes spent the night when he was on the outs with Mama. But Keeler’s burned the year after Francis ran away and now it was a bunch of stores. Francis had rowed down Broadway to the hotel, Billy in the rowboat with him, in 1913 when the river rose away the hell and gone up and flooded half of downtown. The kid loved it. Said he liked it better’n sleigh ridin’. Gone. What the hell ain’t gone? Well, me. Yeah, me. Ain’t a whole hell of a lot of me left, but I ain’t gone entirely. Be goddiddley-damned if I’m gonna roll over and die.