He noticed me watching him, and had a smile left in him and shared it with me. "Keeps ya from freezin', they tell me," he said.
I didn't have a snappy answer. I managed to say, "Bet it does," and he said, "Gotta make sure you keep one over your heart."
"Oh?"
He shrugged. "That's if you plan on waking up."
"Ever see this guy?"
I showed him the picture.
He studied it. Said. "Any dough in it if I have?"
"No," I said.
"I haven't seen him. I wouldn't even've seen him if there was dough in it."
"Thanks for your trouble." I said.
"Don't mention it," he said, and spread out the rest of the newspaper and lay down on it. He didn't put any on top of him, like blankets, though: there was just enough wind to make that inadvisable.
I showed the picture to the rest of the squatters on Hamilton's pedestal. None of them had ever seen Jimmy Beame; most of them liked the looks of Mary Ann; some of them seemed past caring about the looks of a Mary Ann, even in an abstract way. I questioned some more men, who sat on benches along the lakefront, looking out at the nearly completed city of tomorrow where a sea of shacks had been, not so long ago. One of the men, a gray-complexioned middle-aged guy in hat and topcoat, both of which had cost some dough, though the topcoat's burtons were mostly gone, hadn't seen Jimmy, either, but suggested I get a copy of the photo made and then he could help me show the picture around, and could turn an honest dollar. I turned him down, without a twinge- like that old guy said. I didn't have enough money to do the job without covering my heart over, and with something tougher than newspaper.
I drove to the Hooverville at Harrison and Canal. It was a vista straight out of Krazy Kat: a surrealistic town of shelters built from tar paper and flattened tin cans, scrap lumber and cardboard boxes, packing crates and old car bodies, chicken wire and flapping tarps, anything the city dumps could provide, with an occasional old stovepipe sticking out at an odd. raffish angle. The hovels were rather neatly arranged in a landscaped setting, with walks carved out of the earth and some trees and bushes planted- barren now, of course, except for a couple of evergreens, one of which had probably served as a Christmas tree; no weeds or rubbish in sight, just a strange little town in the snow, many of its occupants huddling around trash-cans, fires in which burned a vivid orange against the gray-white day. This, and a number of other Hoovervilles near the railroad yards and in vacant lots around town, had been around long enough to have become more than a temporary stop: these people lived here, men and women and children, people who seldom were able to wash themselves or their clothes, but who carried themselves with a quiet dignity that said they would if they could. And from the number of children and pregnant women, life here seemed to be going on.
It was the Hoovervilles like this that were the most promising to me in this search: some of these people had been here well over a year, whereas the hobos of the city and the down-and-outers of Grant and Lincoln Park were transient. If Jimmy Beame had come here by freight, in which case he would just about had to have fallen in temporarily with tramps, he could very likely have come back to a Hooverville to spend the nights during his fruitless search for a desk in Tribune Tower. So it was the permanent residents of the city's Hoovervilles who had the best chance of having seen him.
Nobody at Harrison and Canal had ever seen Jimmy Beame.
I hit three more Hoovervilles, the outlying ones, and called it a Sunday. The next morning I tried the loading platforms on lower Wacker Drive, and none of the men there could identify the picture; neither could the men under the Michigan Avenue bridge. The Hoovervilles near the railroad yards were perhaps the best bet, but I got nowhere. I ended up in Barney's speak about seven Monday night and drank mm till I stopped seeing unshaven faces wearing battered fedoras.
Then I spent two days on the near North Side, going up and down North Clark Street with that goddamn picture in my hand. North Clark Street was not the place to go for a man tired of looking at hobos; it was. in fact, hobohemia. Ramshackle old buildings with halfhearted store fronts catered to the drifters who had been the soul of the street since before hard times, and would be after: peddlers and street hawkers had every corner and many spots in between all sewed up. Just a few blocks from here were the fancy shops of North Michigan Avenue, where wealthy women in furs and jewelry bought more furs and jewelry. But this was North Clark Street: pawnshops, whitetile restaurants, chop-suey joints, chili parlors, poolrooms, sleazy theaters, cigar stores, newsstands, secondhand stores, mission soup kitchens, flophouses; a dingy, shabby street that at night turned into a "little white way" of bright lights and hot jazz, with cabarets and "open" dance halls where lonely men and women from the rooming houses could get acquainted and maybe set up some light housekeeping for a week or a year, as well as tens-cents-a-dance halls, where the hookers plied their trade.
But the hobos shuffling these streets, filling the men's hotels and rooming houses, hadn't seen Jimmy Beame; at least not the ones I talked to. Or on LaSalle, Dearborn, State, or Rush streets; or the cross streets below Chicago Avenue, where dozens of flophouses had a bed- or something like a bed- for a homeless gent… assuming he had a quarter a night or a dollar a week. And a lot of people in Chicago didn't.
Didn't have a quarter, and didn't know who the hell Jimmy Beame was, either. That would seem to sum up the hundreds of unshaven, shabbily dressed men I showed that picture to.
I spent a day trying the flops along South Clark. South State, and West Madison- stopped in at the Dawes Hotel for Men. the skid-row charity hotel the General had founded in memory of his dead son. And got nowhere.
Back to North Clark Street. Between Clark and Dearborn streets, in Washington Square, in front of the Newberry Library, was Bughouse Square. If my father were alive, and down-and-out. he'd be here: at night, crowds of men would stand along its curbstones, listening to the oratory of whoever was atop the several soapboxes, propounding upon the favorite topics: the evils of capitalism, and the nonexistence of God. The more intellectual of the drifters and down-and-outers would tend to find their way here, this focal point for reds and I.W.W. sympathizers, intellectuals and agitators. My father would have been at home here.
During the daytime, the soapboxes stood vacant, mostly, and the benches and curbs were taken up by the same sort of unshaven faces I'd been looking at all day for days now (not to mention in my sleep). The major difference was a number of these shabbily dressed citizens were reading newspapers, not wearing them.
A young man on the down-and-out, disillusioned by his rejection from the great newspapers he so idolized, might well end up in Bughouse Square.
I asked several men and got a negative response; then a pale, younger one with wire-frames and longish brown hair seemed to know the face.
"Yes." he said. "I know who this is."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. It's Mary Ann Beame. She lives in a studio in Tower Town. She's an actress."
Great
"Yeah. Well thanks, kid."
"Isn't that worth something?"
"Not really."
"I'm not begging or anything. I just think since I identified the picture…"
"It's the boy I'm trying to find."
"Oh. Him I don't know. Why don't you look up Mary Ann? Maybe she knows him."
Til try that."
"I could use fifty cents. Or a quarter. I could use some lunch."
"Sorry."
"I'm not a hobo, you understand. I'm an inventor."
"Oh really." I started to move away.
He got up from the bench; he wasn't tall; his eyes were brighter than a puppy's- in terms of shine, anyway.