“Why don’t you just tell that guy to shove off?”
“Spook, spook …”
“Even spooks shove off,” scowled Peter.
“Not faggot spooks like these. They tell tales of love and death. This here spook has followed me for years from one haunt to another, scaring little children and making old folks cry. Still, do you think you could round up a hundred dollars?”
“Not a hundred.”
“A hundred or nothing at all!” said Kenny in a strange strangled voice, beating his knees with his fists. “Or I’ll simply have to hitchhike and try not to see spooks in trees at night.” They paid their bill and went out for a cab.
When they arrived on Fifty-Second Street, Peter confusedly saw a large group of people standing on the sidewalk in front of a nightclub. Then he recognized Judie and Jeanne, Levinsky and Waldo, Junkey, and a tall shambling youngster who seemed strangely familiar. Kenneth ran up to them and suddenly seized Jeanne and began kissing her passionately in a long embrace. The others paid no particular attention to this, except Waldo, who raised his cane to his shoulder and watched with an intent smile.
“Yeah, there you are finally!” cried Julie, scowling at Peter. “I’d wait a heck of a long time if I waited at home for you!” But she took his arm and pulled him off.
Leon Levinsky stepped up in a curious little shuffle, hands clasped in front of him meekly, like a polite Oriental, bowing with a little nod. “Just now two fellows in the bar wanted to fight Waldo and Junkey and me because we had two charming young ladies with us. Apparently they felt some sort of unseemliness, and I rather admire their awful wisdom. Needless to say, we cut out.” He giggled and stepped back.
“Well, let’s not stand around here,” emphasized Kenneth nervously, “let’s walk or something, or go somewhere else.” And he went over to Waldo Meister, who had been standing around listening with a vague smile, took a cigarette from his pack, and went back to Jeanne. Everybody began to move in straggling confused groups, Kenneth and Jeanne taking up the rear and stopping frequently to kiss passionately. It was a warm pleasant Spring night and the sidewalks of Fifty-Second Street were crowded.
“Well,” said the tall shambling boy, putting a big hand on Peter’s shoulder, “don’t you remember me?”
It was Buddy Fredericks. Peter had to think twice before he realized it.
“We’ve been waiting for you since this afternoon!” cried Judie scornfully. “Buddy came to see you and had some beer and everything!”
“And where’s Liz?” cried Peter.
“She’s in town,” smiled Buddy. “Look over there at that sign in front of the Opal Club, what do you see, man?”
Across the street in front of the nightclub there was a large sign, reading: “Billy Camarada and his sextet, featuring Ottawa Johnson, tenor; Curly Parker, bass; Mel Gage, drums; Lucky DeCarlo, guitar; and Buddy Fredericks, piano.”
“Why, that’s wonderful! I didn’t know you were playing with Billy Camarada. He’s great! And where’s Liz? How is she? How’s the Lizzy?”
“She’s singing in a nightclub down in the Village, the Village Haven.”
“Singing!” yelled Peter astounded. “My own sister—singing in a nightclub? And I didn’t even know about it! What do you know about that, Judie! Is she any good, Bud? Come on, man, give us a fair estimate!” He was suddenly overjoyed to be talking to Buddy, and to Judie too, after the strange tormented talk of Kenneth downtown.
“Liz is a pretty good singer,” laughed Buddy, “a little on the Neets O’Day kick. She started in ’Frisco last summer—”
“And where are you two living?”
Buddy looked at Peter with sudden gravity.
“Say!” went on Peter enthusiastically, “did you happen to succeed a second time? Did you have a nephew for me maybe?”
“Well, no. Ever since what happened in Detroit Liz never wanted to have a baby again—”
“Aw, she’ll get over that.”
“Another thing—that is,” stammered the big musician, “well, Liz and I are separated. I just got in from L.A. myself. Liz has been in New York for three months. We broke up, you see …”
Without so much surprise as disgust Peter looked away angrily. They had all come to a halt on the corner of Fifth Avenue and were milling around uncertainly. Waldo Meister, the leader of this aimless parade, looked north and south, east and west, and finally turned about face and said, “Well, there’s no place to sit around here, we might as well go back this way”—and he started back in the direction they had come from.
“Say, why don’t we find a park bench or something to sit down!” suggested weary Junkey to the general company. “I’d like to sit down and just relax.…”
“I understand there’s a musician in the crowd,” spoke up Waldo Meister with a smile. “What do you play?”
“Piano,” said Buddy, looking down at him gravely. “They tell me you have a large collection of records.”
“Yes. But I don’t seem to enjoy it any more.…”
“Classical records, I imagine?”
“What else is there? Of course. Is there a connection?” Waldo demanded with sudden sarcasm.
“Oh, wonderful!” cried Levinsky, stepping in. “This is something that should be talked about! You haven’t heard the new bebop jazz, Waldo, a complete departure from the old European forms. It’s a kind of wild Dionysian American music, pure emotion and frenzy that sends great vibrations through everyone. It’s just mad!”
“It seems cooler to me than that,” smiled Buddy.
“Almost like an orgy, don’t you see, in which everyone will explode and become as one. Actually!”
“Music does all that?” grinned Buddy with amazement.
“Yes. I’ve felt that. It creates a frantic, almost daisy-chain rapport similar to marijuana, you see! Oh, you should see the mad characters that go to jazz concerts now, right here in New York!”
“Well, man—but what about the music itself?”
“As far as I can understand it,” snapped Waldo in a curious, piping, infuriated voice that sounded so forlorn and surprised everybody, “bebop or jazz or whatever you call it is just a lot of bleating noise. It certainly doesn’t rate as music and whatever you may say about it, it’s a lot of adolescent nonsense for adolescent American fools!”
“Hurrah!” cried Kenneth Wood from down the street.
Buddy was not visibly touched by these remarks which were flung at him in the general confusion and irritability of the moment. He only shrugged, smiled, and turned to look at Peter with cool amusement.
But at that moment Waldo had turned and said something, obviously pettish, to Kenneth, who suddenly flushed angrily and turned away. Jeanne was standing next to Waldo and listening to the general conversation with a dreamy smile, when Kenneth took Jeanne by the arm and said: “Come on, ma petite, let’s go home now.” Waldo clutched Kenneth’s arm and hung on with a haggard look of abject supplication.
Kenneth looked at him. “Let go, old man, or I’ll dispose of your carcass right now, I swear I will.”
Waldo stepped closer, still hanging on. “Look here, Kenneth, let me come with you, please. Don’t you think it’s time to have a long talk? Don’t you think it’s time to understand?”
Everybody was watching with horror and confusion, though pretending not to notice.
“I said let go, you old fairy!” shouted Kenneth in a rage. He suddenly gave Waldo a tremendous push in the face with the flat of his hand that sent him sprawling flat on his back on the side-walk. With a sickening thud his head popped back on the pavement and the cane he was carrying clattered tragically at his side. It was a gruesome helpless sight.
Waldo fumbled to sit up and Junkey leaned down to help him, as a small crowd gathered and the others stood around mortified. Kenneth went striding off up the street with his heels clacking loudly on the pavement. Peter suddenly ran after him and turned him around.
“Look here, for krissakes, Kenny, you don??
?t have to knock down a poor cripple!”
Kenneth kept walking. “Since you’re not acquainted with the facts, Martin, you might keep your conclusions to yourself.”
“Ah, you’re all crazy!” yelled Peter, suddenly feeling suffocated and sick with disgust.
“That may be so, naive one, but if someone wanted to kill you I don’t doubt you’d knock him down too. Good night.” Kenneth disappeared around the corner. Peter looked back at the others helping Waldo to his feet. Suddenly he wanted to go home and leave these sad nightmarish things behind. He hurried across the street towards the subway.
[7]
One morning the following week, after spending his days at home reading and studying, Peter got ready to go back to Manhattan. It was noon, his father was in the front room figuring out the horses in the Racing Form and smoking a cigar.
“Where are you going now?” he asked, looking up at Peter over his spectacles with a bland, affectionate, curious stare.
“Oh, I’m going back to New York.”
“Still sold on them, hey?” The old man said that with a sly grin, chuckling heartily. Peter stood rooted to the spot, frowning, wondering why it always had to be so aggravating to talk to his father about his comings and goings—which, he realized ruefully, were always so useless. He had been thinking about it for days, just lying on his bed and thinking about it over his books. But a vast restless pendulum in him had swung back again, and now, inexplicably, he was burning with curiosity to go back and see what everybody was doing, what Kenneth was doing, and Judie, and Dennison, and Levinsky, even Waldo. And what else was there to do?
“What do you mean, I’m still sold on them?”
“Just what I said, you keep seeing them”—and old Martin, though not looking up at Peter, continued to pore over his figures with a secret pleased smile. He even began to hum a little bit.
“I’m not sold on them,” scoffed Peter.
His father said not a word, but continued to hum a little tune, and suddenly he leaned forward with a swift busy movement and neatly flicked a little figure on the sheet.
Peter started to leave the room, but his father seemed to pay no attention to this, and suddenly, with a distinct feeling that he was being fooled, Peter sat down and quickly lit a cigarette. There was a long interval of silence.
Finally Peter blurted: “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t see them?”
“I dunno. I think you ought to make better friends, that’s all.” And Martin wrote another figure on the sheet with a profound air. “Kids who’d take you seriously and be friendly and helpful and real, dammit.”
“Well,” smiled Peter almost sarcastically, “they aren’t exactly like the boys who used to hang around the barbershop with you in Galloway, you know. This is New York.”
“No, I guess they’re not,” said Martin with a certain amount of absentminded gloom as he turned over the page of the paper. “No, siree. ’Way back in Lacoshua we were just a bunch of country boys, just hicks, no fancy educations or anything like that. Just a bunch of simple boys, but we had a lot of fun and respected each other. Old Pete Cartier is one of those boys. Anything wrong with Pete Cartier?”
“Who said there was?” scowled Peter. “I only mean that these guys in New York have more on their minds—they’re smarter in some ways—more interesting in some ways—you might say modern. You can’t expect me to do the same things you did.”
“Modern,” smiled the old man dryly. “By the way, why don’t you see some of those shipmates of yours, they seemed like a nice bunch of fellows.”
“I don’t need friends, I don’t have to go around looking for friends. I can get along without them. When I’m ashore I like to do whatever I please. I’m just hanging around and taking it easy—”
“You’re hanging around with a bunch of dope fiends and crooks, that’s what you’re doing.”
“Who said that?” glared Peter.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got eyes and ears. As long as all that doesn’t affect you. I’m proud of you to have dope fiends and crooks and crackpots for friends. It’s just what I anticipated from you when you were a little kid, when you ran up to me that day crying and telling me that your little brother had died.”
Peter was strangely reflective. “I want to know everything about New York, that’s what it is.” He realized that his father knew all about his friends. He felt that he was picking up the threads of an old conversation somehow. “I’m really het up on that, Pa. It seems I don’t care what people do, as long as it’s something different. I get curious.”
“Well, yes,” said George Martin, equally calm and judicious, “I used to be like that too, I used to get curious as hell about some things, wasn’t satisfied till I knew all about it. Sometimes I’d make a fool of myself. I guess there was a streak of excessive curiosity in me. But some things disgusted me—I never liked crooks.”
“I’m too curious for that,” said Peter earnestly, wondering why this seemed so true. “I hate those punks on Times Square, the guys with blackjacks and sometimes guns, I can spot them. But I like to talk to some of the others. I don’t know what you call them—they’re just waiting around for something. I feel like an idiot sometimes, I really do.”
“There was a little streak of that too, I guess—idiocy! I dunno … sometimes I feel like I’ve been an idiot at times, especially about my printing business. Yes, there’s a streak, all right.”
“I don’t take any of that dope, you know. What interests me is why they start taking it, how they feel. Life is life.”
“Look! You can say whatever you want, but I’ve no way of knowing whether you take it or not!” shouted Martin suddenly.
“You’d believe that of me?” cried Peter. “What do you think I am anyway?—a fool, a moron or something?”
“Your friends are, aren’t they? There’s an old saying that birds of a feather flock together.
“I don’t swallow that stuff about curiosity, Peter,” continued the old man, brooding away. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, frankly. It all went wrong long ago, you’re another victim of the same things I was talking about the other night—”
“I do whatever I like! If I’m curious, I am! If I’m interested in certain people, I am! I’m not a victim of anything! I’m going to live in this world, I’m going to find out all about it, I’m not going to hide my eyes like a maiden in distress, or like an old Puritan either, or like a scared rabbit! I’m interested in life, any kind of life, all of it!”
“What could be your interest in that one-armed fellow?”
“Waldo Meister? I don’t even know him.”
“But he hangs around, doesn’t he?”
“I don’t want him around and neither does Judie. Kenny Wood knocked him down last week!” Peter was blurting away with childlike apologetic eagerness.
“I know, I know …” said George Martin.
“Well, now, how would you know!” Peter looked at his father, and marveled that he should know so much. Then he felt somewhat frightened by the sudden, unexpected, unknown twist of it.
“I didn’t tell you, but your friend Levinsky came here the other night, I guess it was Monday night when you went to the movies with your mother and Mickey.”
“Ah-ha!”
“And I talked to him,” cried the old man angrily, “and I got a lot of information out of him, I got an earful. He likes to talk, he thinks he’s making an impression. I bought him a few drinks down at the corner and he talked.”
“You never told me he came.”
“No, I didn’t!”
“I don’t care anyway.”
They both sat staring away in irritated silence.
“If you want my opinion I think you’re crazy to hang around with that bunch—head-crazy!” He tapped his head. “I can’t think of any other explanation.”
“If I’m crazy, so are you!” choked Peter.
“That’s a fine thing to say.”
“Ever since I can re
member you’ve been telling me what not to do, what not to do. But you never did tell me what to do!”
“I’m not God, I can’t tell you what to do, all I can tell you is what I think you should do—”
“Should this and should that—it’s all I hear around here.”
“That may be so. I’m your father and I’m older than you are and I’ve had more experience—”
“More experience, and yet you say there are some things you wouldn’t look into—”
“I’ve lived longer and I should know what’s best for you!” shouted the old man. “What about your future? The way you’re going now, you’re not headed for anything.”
“The hell with the future.”
“For all I know you’ll end up a dope fiend yourself, a bum, a tramp, no better than the ones you hang around with. You threw away an education, you make a little money on ships and you spend it drinking and supporting a little slut—”
“She’s not that at all,” grinned Peter with a kind of mad satisfaction.
“Whatever she is! It isn’t right and it isn’t honest! You seem to have no sense of honor at all! Everything your mother and I taught you is gone, it’s all twisted up in that damn silly head of yours till I can’t make you out for the life of me. It hurts, you devil, it hurts!” he shouted. “I’m your father and I’m worried about you—”
“It’s just another way of saying I’m a no-good bum, go ahead and admit it! So I drink, all right, I have my reasons! What’s the great thing we’re supposed to be living for now anyway? What’s the great faith, hope and charity of the age that’s been dumped on our heads—”
“On my head, too! On my head, too!”
“All right! But we don’t have to blame the age, that’s all they do, blame the age.”
“It’s simple enough,” said Martin. “Your mother and I, your whole family, her people, dumb as they are, and my people have always been working people, we believed in working for a living and living real lives. That’s what you can say about this country in general, or at least the way it used to be—”