“He must be eighty years old.”
“Anyway I should say he was eighty.”
“I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o’clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?”
“He stays up because he likes it.”
“He’s lonely. I’m not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me.”
“He had a wife once too.”
“A wife would be no good to him now.”
“You can’t tell. He might be better with a wife.”
“His niece looks after him.”
“I know. You said she cut him down.”
“I wouldn’t want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing.”
“Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him.”
“I don’t want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those who must work.”
The old man looked from his glass across the square, then over at the waiters.
“Another brandy,” he said, pointing to his glass. The waiter who was in a hurry came over.
“Finished,” he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people employ when talking to drunken people or foreigners. “No more tonight. Close now.”
“Another,” said the old man.
“No. Finished.” The waiter wiped the edge of the table with a towel and shook his head.
The old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a leather coin purse from his pocket and paid for the drinks, leaving half a peseta tip.
The waiter watched him go down the street, a very old man walking unsteadily but with dignity.
“Why didn’t you let him stay and drink?” the unhurried waiter asked. They were putting up the shutters. “It is not half-past two.”
“I want to go home to bed.”
“What is an hour?”
“More to me than to him.”
“An hour is the same.”
“You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drink at home.”
“It’s not the same.”
“No, it is not,” agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry.
“And you? You have no fear of going home before your usual hour?”
“Are you trying to insult me?”
“No, hombre, only to make a joke.”
“No,” the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from pulling down the metal shutters. “I have confidence. I am all confidence.”
“You have youth, confidence, and a job,” the older waiter said. “You have everything.”
“And what do you lack?”
“Everything but work.”
“You have everything I have.”
“No. I have never had confidence and I am not young.”
“Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up.”
“I am of those who like to stay late at the café,” the older waiter said. “With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.”
“I want to go home and into bed.”
“We are of two different kinds,” the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. “It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the café.”
“Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long.”
“You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”
“Good night,” said the younger waiter.
“Good night,” the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself. It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.
“What’s yours?” asked the barman.
“Nada.”
“Otro loco mas,” said the barman and turned away.
“A little cup,” said the waiter.
The barman poured it for him.
“The light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is unpolished,” the waiter said.
The barman looked at him but did not answer. It was too late at night for conversation.
“You want another copita?” the barman asked.
“No, thank you,” said the waiter and went out. He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted café was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.
The Light of the World
When he saw us come in the door the bartender looked up and then reached over and put the glass covers on the two free-lunch bowls.
“Give me a beer,” I said. He drew it, cut the top off with the spatula and then held the glass in his hand. I put the nickel on the wood and he slid the beer toward me.
“What’s yours?” he said to Tom.
“Beer.”
He drew that beer and cut it off and when he saw the money he pushed the beer across to Tom.
“What’s the matter?” Tom asked.
The bartender didn’t answer him. He just looked over our heads and said, “What’s yours?” to a man who’d come in.
“Rye,” the man said. The bartender put out the bottle and glass and a glass of water.
Tom reached over and took the glass off the free-lunch bowl. It was a bowl of pickled pig’s feet and there was a wooden thing that worked like a scissors, with two wooden forks at the end to pick them up with.
“No,” said the bartender and put the glass cover back on the bowl. Tom held the wooden scissors fork in his hand. “Put it back,” said the bartender.
“You know where,” said Tom.
The bartender reached a hand forward under the bar, watching us both. I put fifty cents on the wood and he straightened up.
“What was yours?” he said.
“Beer,” I said, and before he drew the beer he uncovered both the bowls.
“Your goddam pig’s feet stink,” Tom said, and spit what he had in his mouth on the floor. The bartender didn’t say anything. The man who had drunk the rye paid and went out without looking back.
“You stink yourself,” the bartender said. “All you punks stink.”
“He says we’re punks,” Tommy said to me.
“Listen,” I said. “Let’s get out.”
“You punks clear the hell out of here,” the bartender said.
“I said we were going out,” I said. “lt wasn’t your idea.”
“We’ll be back,” Tommy said.
“No you won’t,” the bartender told him.
“Tell him how wrong he is,” Tom turned to me.
“Come on,” I said.
Outside it was good and dark.
“What the hell kind of place is this?” Tommy said.
We’d come in that town at one end and we were going out the other. It smelled of hides and tan bark and the big piles of sawdust. It was getting dark as we came in, and now that it was dark it was cold and the puddles of water in the road were freezing at the edges.
Down at the station there were five whores waiting for the train to come in, and six white men and four Indians. It was crowded and hot from the stove and full of stale smoke. As we came in nobody was talking and the ticket window was down.
“Shut the door, can’t you?” somebody said.
I looked to see who said it. It was one of the white men. He wore stagged trousers and lumbermen’s rubbers and a mackinaw shirt like the others, but he had no cap and his face was white and his hands were white and thin.
“Aren’t you going to shut it?”
“Sure,” I said, and shut it.
“Thank you,” he said. One of the other men snickered.
“Ever interfere with a cook?” he said to me.
“No.”
“You interfere with this one,” he looked at the cook. “He likes it.”
The cook looked away from him holding his lips tight together.
“He puts lemon juice on his hands,” the man said. “He wouldn’t get them in dishwater for anything. Look how white they are.”
One of the whores laughed out loud. She was the biggest whore I ever saw in my life and the biggest woman. And she had on one of those silk dresses that change colors. There were two other whores that were nearly as big but the big one must have weighed three hundred and fifty pounds. You couldn’t believe she was real when you looked at her. All three had those changeable silk dresses. They sat side by side on the bench. They were huge. The other two were just ordinary looking whores, peroxide blondes.
“Look at his hands,” the man said and nodded his head at the cook. The whore laughed again and shook all over.
The cook turned and said to her quickly, “You big disgusting mountain of flesh.”
She just kept on laughing and shaking.
“Oh, my Christ,” she said. She had a nice voice. “Oh, my sweet Christ.”
The two other whores, the big ones, acted very quiet and placid as though they didn’t have much sense, but they were big, nearly as big as the biggest one. They’d have both gone well over two hundred and fifty pounds. The other two were dignified.
Of the men, besides the cook and the one who talked, there were two other lumberjacks, one that listened, interested but bashful, and the other that seemed getting ready to say something, and two Swedes. Two Indians were sitting down at the end of the bench and one standing up against the wall.
The man who was getting ready to say something spoke to me very low, “Must be like getting on top of a hay mow.”
I laughed and said it to Tommy.
“I swear to Christ I’ve never been anywhere like this,” he said. “Look at the three of them.” Then the cook spoke up.
“How old are you boys?”
“I’m ninety-six and he’s sixty-nine,” Tommy said.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” the big whore shook with laughing. She had a really pretty voice. The other whores didn’t smile.
“Oh, can’t you be decent?” the cook said. “I asked just to be friendly.”
“We’re seventeen and nineteen,” I said.
“What’s the matter with you?” Tommy turned to me.
“That’s all right.”
“You can call me Alice,” the big whore said and then she began to shake again.
“Is that your name? “ Tommy asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Alice. Isn’t it?” she turned to the man who sat by the cook.
“Alice. That’s right.”
“That’s the sort of name you’d have,” the cook said.
“It’s my real name,” Alice said.
“What’s the other girls’ names?” Tom asked.
“Hazel and Ethel,” Alice said. Hazel and Ethel smiled. They weren’t very bright.
“What’s your name?” I said to one of the blondes.
“Frances,” she said.
“Frances what?”
“Frances Wilson. What’s it to you?”
“What’s yours?” I asked the other one.
“Oh, don’t be fresh,” she said.
“He just wants us all to be friends,” the man who talked said. “Don’t you want to be friends?”
“No,” the peroxide one said. “Not with you.”
“She’s just a spitfire,” the man said. “A regular little spitfire.”
The one blonde looked at the other and shook her head.
“Goddamned mossbacks,” she said.
Alice commenced to laugh again and to shake all over.
“There’s nothing funny,” the cook said. “You all laugh but there’s nothing funny. You two young lads; where are you bound for?”
“Where are you going yourself?” Tom asked him.
“I want to go to Cadillac,” the cook said. “Have you ever been there? My sister lives there.”
“He’s a sister himself,” the man in the stagged trousers said.
“Can’t you stop that sort of thing?” the cook asked. “Can’t we speak decently?”
“Cadillac is where Steve Ketchel came from and where Ad Wolgast is from,” the shy man said.
“Steve Ketchel,” one of the blondes said in a high voice as though the name had pulled a trigger in her. “His own father shot and killed him. Yes, by Christ, his own father. There aren’t anymore men like Steve Ketchel.”
“Wasn’t his name Stanley Ketchel?” asked the cook.
“Oh, shut up,” said the blonde. “What do you know about Steve? Stanley. He was no Stanley. Steve Ketchel was the finest and most beautiful man that ever lived. I never saw a man as clean and as white and as beautiful as Steve Ketchel. There never was a man like that. He moved just like a tiger and he was the finest, freest, spender that ever lived.”
“Did you know him?” one of the men asked.
“Did I know him? Did I know him? Did I love him ? You ask me that? I knew him like you know nobody in the world and I loved him like you love God. He was the greatest, finest, whitest, most beautiful man that ever lived, Steve Ketchel, and his own father shot him down like a dog.”
“Were you out on the coast with him?”
“No. I knew him before that. He was the only man I ever loved.”
Everyone was very respectful to the peroxide blonde, who said all this in a high stagey way, but Alice was beginning to shake again. I felt it sitting by her.
“You should have married him,” the cook said.
“I wouldn’t hurt his career,” the peroxide blonde said. “I wouldn’t be a drawback to him. A wife wasn’t what he needed. Oh, my God, what a man he was.”
“That was a fine way to look at it,” the cook said. “Didn’t Jack Johnson knock him out though?”
“It was a trick,” Peroxide said. “That big dinge took him by surprise. He’d just knocked Jack Johnson down, the big black bastard. That nigger beat him by a fluke.”
The ticket window went up and the three Indians went over to it.
“Steve knocked him down,” Peroxide said. “He turned to smile at me.”
“I thought you said you weren’t on the coast,” someone said.
“I went out just for that fight. Steve turned to smile at me and that black son of a bitch from hell jumped up and hit him by surprise. Steve could lick a hundred like that black bastard.”
“He was a great fighter,” the lumberjack said.
“I hope to God he was,” Peroxide said. “I hope to God they don’t have fighters lik
e that now. He was like a god, he was. So white and clean and beautiful and smooth and fast and like a tiger or like lightning.”
Short Stories Page 37