Ironweed (1984 Pulitzer Prize)

by William Kennedy

  For a time Francis believed everything Edward Daugherty had written about him: liberator of the strikers from the capitalist beggars who owned the trolleys, just as Emmett had helped Paddy-with-a-shovel straighten his back and climb up out of his ditch in another age. The playright saw them both as Divine Warriors, sparked by the socialistic gods who understood the historical Irish need for aid from on high, for without it (so spoke Emmett, the goldentongued organizer of the play), “how else would we rid ourselves of those Tory swine, the true and unconquerable devils of all history?”

  The stone had (had it not?) precipitated the firing by the soldiers and the killing of the pair of bystanders. And without that, without the death of Harold Allen, the strike might have continued, for the scabs were being imported in great numbers from Brooklyn, greenhorn Irish the likes of Emmett on the packet boat, some of them defecting instantly from the strike when they saw what it was, others bewildered and lost, lied to by men who hired them for railroad work in Philadelphia, then duped them into scabbery, terror, even death. There were even strikers from other cities working as scabs, soulless men who rode the strike trains here and took these Albany men’s jobs, as other scabs were taking theirs. And all of that might have continued had not Francis thrown the first stone. He was the principal hero in a strike that created heroes by the dozen. And because he was, he lived all his life with guilt over the deaths of the three men, unable to see any other force at work in the world that day beyond his own right hand. He could not accept, though he knew it to be true, that other significant stones had flown that day, that the soldiers’ fusillade at the bystanders had less to do with Harold Allen’s death than it did with the possibility of the soldiers’ own, for their firing had followed not upon the release of the stone by Francis but only after the mob’s full barrage had flown at the trolley. And then Francis, having seen nothing but his own act and what appeared to be its instant consequences, had fled into heroism and been suffused further, through the written word of Edward Daugherty, with the hero’s most splendid guilt.

  But now, with those events so deeply dead and buried, with his own guilt having so little really to do with it, he saw the strike as simply the insanity of the Irish, poor against poor, a race, a class divided against itself. He saw Harold Allen trying to survive the day and the night at a moment when the frenzied mob had turned against him, just as Francis himself had often had to survive hostility in his flight through strange cities, just as he had always had to survive his own worst instincts. For Francis knew now that he was at war with himself, his private factions mutually bellicose, and if he was ever to survive, it would be with the help not of any socialistic god but with a clear head and a steady eye for the truth; for the guilt he felt was not worth the dying. It served nothing except nature’s insatiable craving for blood. The trick was to live, to beat the bastards, survive the mob and that fateful chaos, and show them all what a man can do to set things right, once he sets his mind to it.

  Poor Harold Allen.

  “I forgive the son of a bitch,” Francis said.

  “Who’s that?” Old Shoes asked. Rudy lay all but blotto across the backseat, holding the whiskey and wine bottles upright on his chest with both tops open in violation of Old Shoes’ dictum that they stay closed, and not spilling a drop of either.

  “Guy I killed. Guy named Allen.”

  “You killed a guy?”

  “More’n one.”

  “Accidental, was it?”

  “No. I tried to get that one guy, Allen. He was takin’ my job.”

  “That’s a good reason.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he was just doin’ what he had to do.”

  “Baloney,” Old Shoes said. “That’s what everybody does, good, bad, and lousy. Burglars, murderers.”

  And Francis fell quiet, sinking into yet another truth requiring handling.

  o o o

  The jungle was maybe seven years old, three years old, a month old, days old. It was an ashpit, a graveyard, and a fugitive city. It stood among wild sumac bushes and river foliage, all fallen dead now from the early frost. It was a haphazard upthrust of tarpaper shacks, lean-tos, and impromptu constructions describable by no known nomenclature. It was a city of essential transiency and would-be permanency, a resort of those for whom motion was either anathema or pointless or impossible. Cripples lived here, and natives of this town who had lost their homes, and people who had come here at journey’s end to accept whatever disaster was going to happen next. The jungle, a visual manifestation of the malaise of the age and the nation, covered the equivalent of two or more square city blocks between the tracks and the river, just east of the old carbarns and the empty building that once housed Iron Joe’s saloon.

  Francis’s friend in the jungle was a man in his sixties named Andy, who had admitted to Francis in the boxcar in which they both traveled to Albany that people used to call him Andy Which One, a name that derived from his inability, until he was nearly twenty, to tell his left hand from his right, a challenge he still faced in certain stressful moments. Francis found Andy Which One instantly sympathetic, shared the wealth of cigarettes and food he was carrying, and thought instantly of him again when Annie handed him two turkey sandwiches and Peg slipped him a hefty slice of plum pudding, all three items wrapped in waxed paper and intact now in the pockets of his 1916 suitcoat.

  But Francis had not seriously thought of sharing the food with Andy until Rudy had begun singing of the jungle. On top of that, Francis almost suffocated seeing his own early venom and self-destructive arrogance reembodied in Little Red, and the conjunction of events impelled him to quit the flop and seek out something he could value; for above all now, Francis needed to believe in simple solutions. And Andy Which One, a man confused by the names of his own hands, but who survived to dwell in the city of useless penitence and be grateful for it, seemed to Francis a creature worthy of scrutiny. Francis found him easily when Old Shoes parked the car on the dirt road that bordered the jungle. He roused Andy from shallow sleep in front of a fading fire, and handed him the whiskey bottle.

  “Have a drink, pal. Lubricate your soul.”

  “Hey, old Francis. How you makin’ out there, buddy?”

  “Puttin’ one foot in front of the other and hopin’ they go somewheres,” Francis said. “The hotel open here? I brought a couple of bums along with me. Old Shoes here, he says he ain’t a bum no more, but that’s just what he says. And Rudy the Cootie, a good ol’ fella.”

  “Hey,” said Andy, “just settle in. Musta known you was comin’. Fire’s still goin’, and the stars are out. Little chilly in this joint. Lemme turn up the heat.”

  They all sat down around the fire while Andy stoked it with twigs and scraps of lumber, and soon the flames were trying to climb to those reaches of the sky that are the domain of all fire. The flames gave vivid life to the cold night, and the men warmed their hands by them.

  A figure hovered behind Andy and when he felt its presence he turned and welcomed Michigan Mac to the primal scene.

  “Glad to meet ya,” Francis said to Mac. “I heard you fell through a hole the other night.”

  “Coulda broke my neck,” Mac said.

  “Did you break it?” Francis asked.

  “If I’da broke my neck I’d be dead.”

  “Oh, so you’re livin’, is that it? You ain’t dead?”

  “Who’s this guy?” Mac asked Andy.

  “He’s an all-right guy I met on the train,” Andy said.

  “We’re all all right,” Francis said. “I never met a bum I didn’t like.”

  “Will Rogers said that,” Rudy said.

  “He did like hell,” Francis said. “I said it.”

  “All I know. That’s what he said. All I know is what I read in the newspapers,” Rudy said.

  “I didn’t know you could read,” said Francis.

  “James Watt invented the steam engine,” Rudy said. “And he was only twenty-nine years old.”

  “He
was a wizard,” Francis said.

  “Right. Charles Darwin was a very great man, master of botany. Died in nineteen-thirty-six.”

  “What’s he talkin’ about?” Mac asked.

  “He ain’t talkin’ about nothin’,” Francis said. “He’s just talkin’.”

  “Sir Isaac Newton. You know what he did with the apple?”

  “I know that one,” Old Shoes said. “He discovered gravity.”

  “Right. You know when that was? Nineteen-thirty-six. He was born of two midwives.”

  “You got a pretty good background on these wizards,” Francis said.

  “God loves a thief,” Rudy said. “I’m a thief.”

  “We’re all thieves,” Francis said. “What’d you steal?”

  “I stole my wife’s heart,” Rudy said.

  “What’d you do with it?”

  “I gave it back. Wasn’t worth keepin’. You know where the Milky Way is?”

  “Up there somewheres,” Francis said, looking up at the sky, which was as full of stars as he’d ever seen it.

  “Damn, I’m hungry,” Michigan Mac said.

  “Here,” said Andy. “Have a bite.” And from a coat pocket he took a large raw onion.

  “That’s an onion,” Mac said.

  “Another wizard,” Francis said.

  Mac took the onion and looked at it, then handed it back to Andy, who took a bite out of it and put it back in his pocket.

  “Got it at a grocery,” Andy said. “Mister, I told the guy, I’m starvin’, I gotta have somethin’. And he gave me two onions.”

  “You had money,” Mac said. “I told ya, get a loaf of bread, but you got a pint of wine.”

  “Can’t have wine and bread too,” Andy said. “What are you, a Frenchman?”

  “You wanna buy food and drink,” said Francis, “you oughta get a job.”

  “I caddied all last week,” Mac said, “but that don’t pay, that shit. You slide down them hills. Them golf guys got spikes on their shoes. Then they tell ya: Go to work, ya bum. I like to, but I can’t. Get five, six bucks and get on the next train. I’m no bum, I’m a hobo.”

  “You movin’ around too much,” Francis said. “That’s why you fell through that hole.”

  “Yeah,” said Mac, “but I ain’t goin’ back to that joint. I hear the cops are pickin’ the boys outa there every night. That pot is hot. Travel on, Avalon.”

  “Cops were here tonight earlier, shinin’ their lights,” Andy said. “But they didn’t pick up anybody.”

  Rudy raised up his head and looked over all the faces in front of the fire. Then he looked skyward and talked to the stars. “On the outskirts,” he said, “I’m a restless person, a traveler.”

  o o o

  They passed the wine among them and Andy restoked the fire with wood he had stored in his lean-to. Francis thought of Billy getting dressed up in his suit, topcoat, and hat, and standing before Francis for inspection. You like the hat? he asked. I like it, Francis said. It’s got style. Lost the other one, Billy said. First time I ever wore this one. It look all right? It looks mighty stylish, Francis said. All right, gotta get downtown, Billy said. Sure, said Francis. We’ll see you again, Billy said. No doubt about it, Francis said. You hangin’ around Albany or movin’ on? Billy asked. Couldn’t say for sure, said Francis. Lotta things that need figurin’ out. Always is, said Billy, and then they shook hands and said no more words to each other.

  When he himself left an hour and a little bit later, Francis shook hands also with George Quinn, a quirky little guy as dapper as always, who told bad jokes (Let’s all eat tomatoes and catch up) that made everybody laugh, and Peg threw her arms around her father and kissed him on the cheek, which was a million-dollar kiss, all right, all right, and then Annie said when she took his hand in both of hers: You must come again. Sure, said Francis. No, said Annie, I mean that you must come so that we can talk about the things you ought to know, things about the children and about the family. There’s a cot we could set up in Danny’s room if you wanted to stay over next time. And then she kissed him ever so lightly on the lips.

  “Hey Mac,” Francis said, “you really hungry or you just mouthin’ off for somethin’ to say?”

  “I’m hungry,” Mac said. “I ain’t et since noon. Goin’ on thirteen, fourteen hours, whatever it is.”

  “Here,” Francis said, unwrapping one of his turkey sandwiches and handing Mac a half, “take a bite, take a couple of bites, but don’t eat it all.”

  “Hey all right,” Mac said.

  “I told you he was a good fella,” Andy said.

  “You want a bite of sandwich?” Francis asked Andy.

  “I got enough with the onion,” Andy said. “But the guy in the piano box over there, he was askin’ around for something awhile back. He’s got a baby there.”

  “A baby?”

  “Baby and a wife.”

  Francis snatched the remnants of the sandwich away from Michigan Mac and groped his way in the firelight night to the piano box. A small fire was burning in front of it and a man was sitting cross-legged, warming himself.

  “I hear you got a kid here,” Francis said to the man, who looked up at Francis suspiciously, then nodded and gestured at the box. Francis could see the shadow of a woman curled around what looked to be the shadow of a swaddled infant.

  “Got some stuff here I can’t use,” Francis said, and he handed the man the full sandwich and the remnant of the second one. “Sweet stuff too,” he said and gave the man the plum pudding. The man accepted the gifts with an upturned face that revealed the incredulity of a man struck by lightning in the rainless desert; and his benefactor was gone before he could even acknowledge the gift. Francis rejoined the circle at Andy’s fire, entering into silence. He saw that all but Rudy, whose head was on his chest, were staring at him.

  “Give him some food, did ya?” Andy asked.

  “Yeah. Nice fella. I ate me a bellyful tonight. How old’s the kid?”

  “Twelve weeks, the guy said.”

  Francis nodded. “I had a kid. Name of Gerald. He was only thirteen days old when he fell and broke his neck and died.”

  “Jeez, that’s tough,” Andy said.

  “You never talked about that,” Old Shoes said.

  “No, because it was me that dropped him. Picked him up with the diaper and he slid out of it.”

  “Goddamn,” said Old Shoes.

  “I couldn’t handle it. That’s why I run off and left the family. Then I bumped into one of my other kids last week and he tells me the wife never told nobody I did that. Guy drops a kid and it dies and the mother don’t tell a damn soul what happened. I can’t figure that out. Woman keeps a secret like that for twenty-two years, protectin’ a bum like me.”

  “You can’t figure women,” Michigan Mac said. “My old lady used to peddle her tail all day long and then come home and tell me I was the only man ever touched her. I come in the house one day and found her bangin’ two guys at once, first I knew what was happenin’.”

  “I ain’t talkin’ about that,” Francis said. “I’m talkin’ about a woman who’s a real woman. I ain’t talkin’ about no trashbarrel whore.”

  “My wife was very good-lookin’, though,” Mac said. “And she had a terrific personality.”

  “Yeah,” said Francis. “And it was all in her ass.”

  Rudy raised up his head and looked at the wine bottle in his hand. He held it up to the light.

  “What makes a man a drunk?” he asked.

  “Wine,” Old Shoes said. “What you got in your hand.”

  “You ever hear about the bears and the mulberry juice?” Rudy asked. “Mulberries fermented inside their stomachs.”

  “That so?” said Old Shoes. “I thought they fermented before they got inside.”

  “Nope. Not with bears,” Rudy said.

  “What happened to the bears and the juice?” Mac asked.

  “They all got stiff and wound up with hangovers,” Rudy said, and
he laughed and laughed. Then he turned the wine bottle upside down and licked the drops that flowed onto his tongue. He tossed the bottle alongside the other two empties, his own whiskey bottle and Francis’s wine that had been passed around.

  “Jeez,” Rudy said. “We got nothin’ to drink. We on the bum.”

  In the distance the men could hear the faint hum of automobile engines, and then the closing of car doors.

  o o o

  Francis’s confession seemed wasted. Mentioning Gerald to strangers for the first time was a mistake because nobody took it seriously. And it did not diminish his own guilt but merely cheapened the utterance, made it as commonplace as Rudy’s brainless chatter about bears and wizards. Francis concluded he had made yet another wrong decision, another in a long line. He concluded that he was not capable of making a right decision, that he was as wrongheaded a man as ever lived. He felt certain now that he would never attain the balance that allowed so many other men to live peaceful. nonviolent, nonfugitive lives, lives that spawned at least a modicum of happiness in old age.