During Mardi Gras Charley walked round town till his feet were sore. There were crowds everywhere and lights and floats and parades and bands and girls running round in fancy dress. He picked up plenty of girls but as soon as they found he was flat they dropped him. He was spending his money as slowly as he could. When he got hungry he’d drop into a bar and drink a glass of beer and eat as much free lunch as he dared.
The day after Mardi Gras the crowds began to thin out, and Charley didn’t have any money for beer. He walked round feeling hungry and miserable; the smell of molasses and the absinthe smell from bars in the French Quarter in the heavy damp air made him feel sick. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He didn’t have the gumption to start off walking or hitchhiking again. He went to the Western Union and tried to wire Jim collect, but the guy said they wouldn’t take a wire asking for money collect.
The Panama woman threw him out when he couldn’t pay for another week in advance and there he was walking down Esplanade Avenue with Grassi’s accordion on one arm and his little newspaper bundle of clothes under the other. He walked down the levee and sat down in a grassy place in the sun and thought for a long time. It was either throwing himself in the river or enlisting in the army. Then he suddenly thought of the accordion. An accordion was worth a lot of money. He left his bundle of clothes under some planks and walked around to all the hockshops he could find with the accordion, but they wouldn’t give him more than fifteen bucks for it anywhere. By the time he’d been round to all the hockshops and musicstores it was dark and everything had closed. He stumbled along the pavement feeling sick and dopy from hunger. At the corner of Canal and Rampart he stopped. Singing was coming out of a saloon. He got the hunch to go in and play Funiculi funicula on the accordion. He might get some free lunch and a glass of beer out of it.
He’d hardly started playing and the bouncer had just vaulted across the bar to give him the bum’s rush, when a tall man sprawled at a table beckoned to him.
“Brother, you come right here an’ set down.” It was a big man with a long broken nose and high cheekbones.
“Brother, you set down.” The bouncer went back behind the bar. “Brother, you can’t play that there accordeen no mor’n a rabbit. Ah’m nutten but a lowdown cracker from Okachobee City but if Ah couldn’t play no better’n that…” Charley laughed. “I know I can’t play it. That’s all right.” The Florida guy pulled out a big wad of bills. “Brother, do you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to sell me the goddam thing…. Ah’m nothin’ but a lowdown cracker, but, by Jesus Christ…”
“Hey, Doc, be yourself… You don’t want the damn thing.” His friends tried to make him put his money back.
Doc swept his arm round with a gesture that shot three glasses onto the floor with a crash. “You turkey-buzzards talk in your turn… Brother, how much do you want for the accordeen?” The bouncer had come back and was standing threateningly over the table. “All right, Ben,” said Doc. “It’s all on your Uncle Henry… and let’s have another round a that good rye whisky. Brother, how much do you want for it?”
“Fifty bucks,” said Charley, thinking fast. Doc handed him out five tens. Charley swallowed a drink, put the accordion on the table and went off in a hurry. He was afraid if he hung round the cracker ’ud sober up and try to get the money back, and besides he wanted to eat.
Next day he got a steerage passage on the steamer Momus bound for New York. The river was higher than the city. It was funny standing on the stern of the steamboat and looking down on the roofs and streets and trolleycars of New Orleans. When the steamer pulled out from the wharf Charley began to feel good. He found the colored steward and got him to give him a berth in the deckhouse. When he put his newspaper package under the pillow he glanced down into the berth below. There lay Doc, fast asleep, all dressed up in a light gray suit and a straw hat with a burntout cigar sticking out of the corner of his mouth and the accordion beside him.
They were passing between the Eads Jetties and feeling the sea-wind in their faces and the first uneasy swell of the Gulf under their feet when Doc came lurching on deck. He recognized Charley and went up to him with a big hand held out. “Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch if there ain’t the musicmaker… That’s a good accordeen, boy. Ah thought you’d imposed on me bein’ only a poa country lad an’ all that, but I’ll be a sonofabitch if it ain’t worth the money. Have a snifter on me?”
They went and sat on Doc’s bunk and Doc broke out a bottle of Bacardi and they had some drinks and Charley told about how he’d been flat broke; if it wasn’t for that fifty bucks he’d still be sitting on the levee and Doc said that if it wasn’t for that fifty bucks he’d be riding firstclass.
Doc said he was going up to New York to sail for France in a volunteer ambulance corps; wasn’t ever’day you got a chance to see a big war like that and he wanted to get in on it before the whole thing went bellyup; still he didn’t like the idea of shooting a lot of whitemen he didn’t have no quarrel with and reckoned this was the best way; if the Huns was niggers he’d feel different about it.
Charley said he was going to New York because he thought there were good chances of schooling in a big city like that and how he was an automobile mechanic and wanted to get to be a C.E. or something like that because there was no future for a working stiff without schooling.
Doc said that was all mahoula and what a boy like him ought to do was go and sign up as a mechanic in this here ambulance and they’d pay fifty dollars a month an’ maybe more and that was a lot of seeds on the other side and he’d ought to see the goddam war before the whole thing went bellyup.
Doc’s name was William H. Rogers and he’d come from Michigan originally and his old man had been a grapefruit grower down at Frostproof and Doc had cashed in on a couple of good crops of vegetables off the Everglades muck and was going over to see the mademosels before the whole thing went bellyup.
They were pretty drunk by the time night fell and were sitting in the stern with a seedylooking man in a derby hat who said he was an Est from the Baltic. The Est and Doc and Charley got up on the little bridge above the afterhouse after supper; the wind had gone down and it was a starlight night with a slight roll and Doc said, “By God, there’s somethin’ funny about this here boat… Befoa we went down to supper the Big Dipper was in the north, and now it’s gone right around to the southwest.”
“It is vat you vould expect of a kapitalistichesky society,” said the Est. When he found that Charley had a red card and that Doc didn’t believe in shooting anything but niggers he made a big speech about how revolution had broken out in Russia and the Czar was being forced to abdicate and that was the beginning of the regeneration of mankind from the East. He said the Ests would get their independence and that soon all Europe would be the free sozialistitchesky United States of Europe under the Red flag and Doc said, “What did I tell yez, Charley? The friggin’ business’ll go bellyup soon… What you want to do is come with me an’ see the war while it lasts.” And Charley said Doc was right and Doc said, “I’ll take you round with me, boy, an’ all you need do’s show your driver’s license an’ tell ’em you’re a college student.”