The Party at Jack's

by Thomas Wolfe

  Poor child! For it would have been now instantly apparent to anyone who knew her and with half an idle look that, as were so many of the “lost” people that we know, she was not lost at all—if only there can be a fire all the time. The girl could not accept getting up in the morning or going to bed at night, or doing accustomed things in their accustomed order. But she could and did accept the fire. It did not seem to her at all strange. It seemed to her to be wonderful, the most natural thing in the world, instantly to be accepted and understood when it occurred. She was delighted with everything that happened: the movements of the firemen with the hose, the action of the police, the conduct of the crowd—all fascinated her, all aroused at once her eager and excited interest, her perfect understanding. She threw herself into the whole thing not as a spectator but as a vital and inspired participant. It was apparent at once that she knew people everywhere—she could be seen moving about from group to group, her gold head bobbing through the crowd, her voice eager, hoarse, short, abrupt, elated, infusing everyone somehow, wherever she went, with the energy and exuberance of her own ebullient spirit.

  She returned to her own group: “I mean!—You know!—These firemen here!—” she gestured hurriedly. “When you think of what they have to know!—Of what they have to do!—I went to a big fire once!—” she shot out quickly in explanatory fashion “—a guy in the department was a friend of mine!—I mean.”—She laughed hoarsely, elatedly, gesturing toward a group of helmeted men who dashed into a smoke-filled corridor with a tube of chemicals—“When you think of what they have to—” At this point there was a splintering crash within: Amy laughed hoarsely, jubilantly and made a quick and sudden little gesture as if this answered all: “After all, I mean!” she cried.

  While this was going on, a young girl, fashionably attired in evening dress, and wearing a cloak had wandered casually up to the group and with that free democracy of speech which the collision of the fire seemed in some amazing way to have induced among all these people, now addressed herself, without a word of preliminary introduction, in the somewhat flat, nasal and almost toneless accents of the middle west, to Stephen Hook: “You don’t think it’s very bad, do you?” she said, looking up at the billowing puffs of oily smoke and flame that now really were belching formidably from one of the windows of the top floor. “I mean,” she went on, before anyone had a chance to answer, “I hope it’s not bad—”

  Hook, who was simply terrified at her raw and unexpected intrusion, had turned three-quarters away from her and was looking at her side-ways with eyes that were almost closed and with a face of such mandarin-like aloofness and haughty contempt that it seemed it would have abashed a monkey. But it didn’t phase the young girl a bit. Getting no answer from him, she turned in an explanatory fashion to Mrs. Jack: “I mean,” she said again, “It will be just too bad if anything was wrong up there, wouldn’t it?-”

  Mrs. Jack answered quickly, her face full of friendly and earnest reassurance, in a gentle, quiet and comforting voice: “No, dear,” she said. “I don’t think it’s bad at all.” At the same moment, instinctively, she looked up quickly with trouble in her eyes at the billowing mass of smoke and flame which now, to tell the truth, not only looked “bad” but distinctly threatening. Then lowering her perturbed gaze quickly, she turned to the girl again and said encouragingly: “I’m sure everything is going to be all right.”

  “Well,” said the girl, “I hope you’re right—Because,” she added, apparently as a kind of after-thought as she turned away. “That’s Mama’s room, and she’s up there, it will be just too bad, won’t it?—I mean, if it is too bad,” she remarked casually in a flat and nasal tone that betrayed no more emotion than if she were asking for a glass of ice-water.

  There was dead silence for a moment. Then Mrs. Jack turned to Hook with an earnest and even alarmed face as if she were not certain she had heard aright. Hook returned her glance with a sideways look of bored indifference. “But did you hear—” Mrs. Jack began in a bewildered and protesting tone.

  “But I mean!” cried Amy at this moment, with a short, hoarse, even exultant laugh. “There you are! What I mean to say is—the whole thing’s there!” she cried exultantly.

  Mrs. Jack continued to look at Hook for a moment with her alarmed, questioning and deeply concerned face.

  “Hah?” she cried eagerly and demanding, and getting no answer, suddenly her shoulders began to shake hysterically: “God!” she screamed faintly, “Isn’t it the most—in all your life, did you ever hear—?”

  “Um,” he murmured noncommittally, as he turned completely away from her. For a moment she was shaken with wild laughter, and Hook, so sick, so frightened, so full of terror and of fear as he was, was yet pierced instantly with strong, incredible humor. His lips twitched slightly, just for the fraction of a second his plump shoulders quivered.

  THE FIRE

  • • •

  THE TUNNELED ROCK

  • • •

  The lights around the cloistered sides of the building now flashed off, plunging the court in darkness save for such light as was provided by the billowing bursts of fiery smoke on the top floor. There was a restless stir in the crowd. In a few moments two or three young men, attired in evening dress, began to move back and forth among the dark mass of people, rather arrogantly flashing electric flashlights into the faces of various people they passed as if they now suspected everyone of being a jewel thief and of being determined, in this hour of crisis, to protect the vested accumulations of property and wealth.

  The police now also began to move upon the crowd and good-naturedly but firmly, with outstretched arms, started to herd them back, out of the court, through the arches and out across the street. The streets surrounding the great building were laced and criss-crossed everywhere with a bewildering skein of hose, and the powerful throbbing of the fire machines could everywhere be heard. The residents of the great building were forced back across the street to take their place among the humbler following of the general public.

  A number of the ladies finding themselves too thinly clad in the cool night air sought refuge in neighboring hotels or in the apartments of friends who lived in the neighborhood. Some people tired of waiting went to hotels to spend the night. Others hung on curiously, eager to see what the outcome might be: Mr. Jack, Ernie, Alma, Amy, and two or three smart-looking young people of their acquaintance repaired to the Ritz, which was nearby. Mrs. Jack, her maids and servants, Miss Mandell and Logan, and a few of the other guests who still remained, looked on curiously for a while, but presently went into a small drug store near at hand, seated themselves at the counter, ordered coffee or sandwiches and engaged in eager chatter with many other people of their acquaintance who now filled the store.

  The conversation of these people was friendly, casual, and pleasant: some were even gay. But in their talk it would have been possible to detect a note of perturbation, something troubled, puzzled, and uncertain, as if something was now happening which they could no longer fathom or control. And in this feeling they were right. They were the lords and masters of the earth, the proprietors of vast establishments, those vested with the high authorities and accustomed to command. And now they felt curiously helpless, no longer able to command anything, no longer even able to find out what was happening.

  They had been firmly but unceremoniously herded out of their regal appointments, and now there was nothing for them to do except to wait, herded together in a drug store, or standing on the corner, huddled together in their wraps like shipwrecked voyagers, looking at one another with helpless eyes. They felt somehow that they had been caught up by some mysterious and relentless force, that they were being borne on helplessly by the momentum of some tremendous machine, that they were caught up and enmeshed in the ramifications of some tremendous web, some design so vast and complicated that they had not the faintest notion where it had its roots or what its pattern was, and that there was nothing for them to do except to be caught up and bor
ne onwards, as unwitting of the power that ruled them as blind flies fastened to the revolutions of a wheel.

  And in this feeling they were right.

  * * * * *

  For, in ways remote and far from the blind and troubled kennings of this helpless group, the giant web was at its mighty spinning: deep in the bowelled earth, the threads were being spun.

  * * * * *

  Not far from them, indeed, in one of the smoking corridors of that enormous hive, two men in helmets and in boots had met and now were talking quietly together.

  “Did you find it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s in the basement, chief. It’s not on the roof at all: the draft is taking it up a vent—but it’s down here”—he pointed thumb-wise down below.

  “Well, then, go get it: you know what to do.”

  “It looks bad, Chief. It’s going to be hard to get.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “If we flood the basement we will flood the tracks, too. You know what that means.”

  The other man looked at him: for a moment their troubled glances met and held each other steadily.

  Then the older man jerked his head, spoke shortly, started down the stairs:

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re going down.”

  * * * * *

  Far from the troubled kennings of these helpless folk also, deep in the tunnel’s depth there in the bowelled earth, there was a room where lights were burning, and where it was always night.

  There, now, a phone rang, and a man with a green eyeshade seated at the desk was there to answer it:

  “Hello—oh, hello, Mike”—he listened carefully for a moment, suddenly jerked forward taut with interest, and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth: “The hell you say!—Where? On number thirty two!—They’re going to flood it!—Oh, the hell!—”

  * * * * *

  Far from the kennings of these helpless folk, in these enormous congeries of dark, deep in the marvelous honeycombs of that bowelled rock, things began to happen with the speed of light, the beautiful complication of a vast design: lights changed and flashed, the marvelous lights, green, red, and yellow, silent, lovely, poignant as remembered grief, burned there upon the checkerboard of the eternal dark: all happened smoothly, there was no delay.

  * * * * *

  Six blocks away just where the mighty network of that amazing underworld begins its mighty flare, lights shifted, changed, and flared immortally: the Overland halted swiftly, but so smoothly that the passengers, already standing to debark, felt only a slight jar, were unaware that anything had happened.

  Ahead, however, in the cab of the powerful electric locomotive which had pulled the great train the last miles of its continental span along the Hudson River, the engineer peered out and read the signs: He saw these shifting patterns of hard light against the dark, and swore:

  “Now what the hell.” Turning, he spoke quietly across the darkness to another man:

  “We’re going in on Twenty-One—I wonder what the hell has happened.”

  Smoothly, swiftly, the train slid forward again, the enormous network of cold rail flared out around it. And there, unknowing of these other lives, there in the tunnel’s depths, five hundred men and women who had been hauled across the continent in one of the crack trains of the nation were sliding smoothly in now to their destination, each to his own end, his own goal, and his own desire in this immortal and unceasing web—which to a better end, a better goal, what man can say?

  * * * * *

  On the seventh landing of the service stairs, the foremen were working ruthlessly with axes. The place was dense with smoke: the sweaty men were wearing masks, and the only light they had to work by was that provided by a torchlight and a flare.

  They had battered open the doorway of the elevator shaft, and one of them had lowered himself down on to the roof of the imprisoned elevator half a floor below, and was cutting in the roof with his sharp axe.

  “Have you got it, Ed?”

  “—O.K.—I’m almost through—Here it is.”

  The axe smashed through; there was a splintering crash, and then:

  “O.K.—Wait a minute—Hand me down that flashlight, Tom—”

  “See anything?”

  And in a moment, quietly: “Yeah—I’m going in—Jim, you better come down too: I’ll need you—”

  There was a silence for a moment, then the man’s quiet voice again:

  “O.K.—I’ve got it—Here, Jim, reach down and get underneath the arms—Got it?—O.K. Tom, you’d better reach down and help, Jim-Good.”

  In such a way they lifted it from its imprisoned trap, looked at it for a moment by the flare of their flashlight, and laid it down, not ungently—something old and tired and dead and very pitiful—upon the floor.

  * * * * *

  At this moment Mrs. Jack went to the window of the drug store and peered out at the great building across the street.

  “I wonder if anything’s happening over there,” she said, and turning to her friends with a puzzled and earnest look on her rosy little face, she said: “Do you suppose it’s over? Have they got it out?”

  * * * * *

  The cold immensity of those towering walls told nothing. But there were other signs that it was really “out.” The lines of hose that had threaded the street in a thick skein were noticeably fewer, one could see firemen pulling in the hose, and putting it back again into the wagon, and now and then there was the heavy beating roar of a great engine as a fire-truck thundered away. Firemen were coming from the building putting their tools and apparatus back into their trucks: At the corner a great engine throbbed quietly with a suggestion of departure, and although the police still held the line, and would not yet permit the tenants to return to their apartments, there was every indication now that the fire was over.

  Meanwhile, the newspapermen, who had arrived upon the scene, were beginning to come into the drug store to phone their stories to the papers. They were a motley crew, a little shabby and threadbare, with battered hats in which their press cards had been stuck, and occasionally with the red noses of the speakeasy period.

  It is hard to say why or how one knew that all these men were members of the press. Yet anyone would have known it at once. The signs were indefinable but unmistakable. There was something jaded in the eye, something a little battered, worn, tarnished about the whole man, something that got into his face, his tone, the way he walked, the way he smoked a cigarette, even into the hang of his trousers, and especially into his battered hat that told one that these were gentlemen of the press.

  It was something wearily receptive, wearily cynical, something that said wearily: “I know, I know. But what’s the story? What’s the racket?”

  And yet it was something that one liked, too, something corrupted but still good, something that had once blazed with hope and fired with aspiration, something that said, “Sure. I used to think I had it in me too, and I’d have given my life to do something good. Now I’m just a whore. I’d sell my best friend out to get a story. I’d steal the glass eye out of an orphan’s head to get a story. I’d betray your trust, your faith, your friendliness, twist everything you say around until all the sincerity, sense and honesty of what you say is made to sound like the meanderings of a buffoon or a clown—if I thought that it would make a better story. I don’t give a damn for truth, for accuracy, for facts, for telling anything about you people here, your lives, your speech, the way you look, the way you really are, the special quality, tone and weather of this moment—of this fire—except insofar as it will help to make a story. I don’t care for what is true, for what is right, for what is really important if I can get a special ‘angle’ on my story. There has been grief and love and ecstasy and pain and life and death tonight: a whole universe of living has been here enacted—but all of it doesn’t matter a damn to me if I can only pick up something that will make the customers sit up tomorrow and rub their e
yes—tell them that in the excitement last night Miss Lena Ginster’s pet boa constrictor escaped from its cage and that the police and fire departments are still looking for it while Members of Fashionable Apartment House Dwell In Terror—So there I am, folks, with yellow fingers, weary eyeballs, a ginny breath, and what is left of last night’s hangover, and I wish to God I could get to that telephone to send this story in, and the boss would tell me to go home, I’d like to go around to Eddy’s place for sixteen or twenty highballs before I call it another day—but don’t be too hard on me. Sure, I’d sell you out, of course. No man’s name or any woman’s reputation is safe with me—if I can make a story out of it—but at the bottom, Fm not such a bad guy, after all. I have violated the standards of decency again and again, but in my heart I’ve always wanted to be decent. I don’t tell the truth, or I’ve twisted the truth around a thousand times until it has a different meaning, but there’s a kind of bitter honesty in me for all of that. Fm able to look myself in the face at times, and tell the truth about myself and see just what I am. And I hate sham and hypocrisy and pretense and fraud and crookedness and if I could only be sure that tomorrow was really going to be the last day in the world—oh, Christ! What a paper we’d get out tomorrow! And, in addition, I have wit, a sense of humor, a love of gaiety, of the whole flashing interweft, the thrilling and unceasing pageantry of life, of food, of drink, of good talk, and of good companionship—So don’t be too severe on me. Fm really not as bad as some of the things I have to do!”