McIntyre sat down in an easy chair that was full of rattling Christmas paper, his head still moving with each breath.
“Who was it?” he said at last. “Who’s the boy?”
“Ask her,” his wife said. “Go on, ask her and see. She won’t tell you. She won’t tell anybody—that’s the whole trouble. She wouldn’t even of let on about the baby if I hadn’t found out, and now she won’t even tell her own mother the boy’s name. She’d rather break her mother’s heart—yes, she would, and her brother’s too.”
Then he heard it again, a little snuffle across the room. Joseph was standing there smirking as he stubbed out a cigarette. His lower lip moved slightly and he said, “Maybe she don’t know the guy’s name.”
McIntyre rose very slowly out of the rattling paper, walked over to his son and hit him hard across the face with the flat of his hand, making the long hair jump from his skull and fall around his ears, making his face wince into the face of a hurt, scared little boy. Then blood began to run from the little boy’s nose and dribble on the nylon shirt he had gotten for Christmas, and McIntyre hit him again, and that was when his wife screamed.
A few hours later he was back in Building Seven with nothing to do. All week he ate poorly, talked very little, except to Vernon Sloan, and spent a great deal of time working on a letter to his daughter that was still unfinished on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve.
After many false starts, which had ended up among the used Kleenex tissues in the paper bag that hung beside his bed, this was what he had written:
JEAN HONEY,
I guess I got pretty excited and made a lot of trouble when I was home. Baby it was only that I have been away so long it is hard for me to understand that your a grown up woman and that is why I kind of went crazy that day. Now Jean I have done some thinking since I got back here and I want to write you a few lines.
The main thing is try not to worry. Remember your not the first girl that’s made a mistake and
(p. 2)
gotten into trouble of this kind. Your mom is all upset I know but do not let her get you down. Now Jean it may seem that you and I don’t know each other very well any more but this is not so. Do you remember when I first come out of the army and you were about 12 then and we used to take a walk in Prospect Pk. sometimes and talk things over. I wish I could have a talk like that
(p. 3)
with you now. Your old dad may not be good for much any more but he does know a thing or two about life and especially one important thing, and that is
That was as far as the letter went.
Now that Tiny’s laughter was stilled, the ward seemed unnaturally quiet. The old year faded in a thin yellow sunset behind the west windows; then darkness fell, the lights came on and shuddering rubber-wheeled wagons of dinner trays were rolled in by masked and gowned attendants. One of them, a gaunt, bright-eyed man named Carl, went through his daily routine.
“Hey, you guys heard about the man that ran over himself?” he asked, stopping in the middle of the aisle with a steaming pitcher of coffee in his hand.
“Just pour the coffee, Carl,” somebody said.
Carl filled a few cups and started across the aisle to fill a few more, but midway he stopped again and bugged his eyes over the rim of his sterile mask. “No, but listen—you guys heard about the man that ran over himself? This is a new one.” He looked at Tiny, who usually was more than willing to play straight man for him, but Tiny was moodily buttering a slice of bread, his cheeks wobbling with each stroke of the knife. “Well, anyways,” Carl said at last, “this man says to this kid, ‘Hey kid, run acrost the street and get me a packa cigarettes, willya?’ Kid says, ‘No,’ see? So the man ran over himself!” He doubled up and pounded his thigh. Jones groaned appreciatively; everyone else ate in silence.
When the meal was over and the trays cleared away, McIntyre tore up the old beginning of page 3 and dropped it in the waste bag. He resettled his pillows, brushed some food crumbs off the bed, and wrote this:
(p. 3)
with you now.
So Jean please write and tell me the name of this boy. I promise I
But he threw that page away too, and sat for a long time writing nothing, smoking a cigarette with his usual careful effort to avoid inhaling. At last he took up his pen again and cleaned its point very carefully with a leaf of Kleenex. Then he began new page:
(p. 3)
with you now.
Now baby I have got an idea. As you know I am now waiting to have another operation on the left side in February but if all goes well maybe I could take off out of this place by April 1. Of course I would not get a discharge but I could take a chance like I did in 1947 and hope for better luck this time. Then we could go away to the country someplace just you and I and I could take a part time job and we could
The starched rustle and rubber-heeled thump of a nurse made him look up; she was standing beside his bed with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. “How about you, McIntyre?” she said. “Back rub?”
“No thanks,” he said. “Not tonight.”
“My goodness.” She peered just a little at the letter, which he shielded just a little with his hand. “You still writing letters? Every time I come past here you’re writing letters. You must have a lot of people to write to. I wish I had the time to catch up on my letters.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Well, that’s the thing, see. I got plenty of time.”
“Well, but how can you think of so many things to write about?” she said. “That’s my trouble. I sit down and I get all ready to write a letter and then I can’t think of a single thing to write about. It’s terrible.”
He watched the shape of her buttocks as she moved away down the aisle. Then he read over the new page, crumpled it, and dropped it in the bag. Closing his eyes and massaging the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger, he tried to remember the exact words of the first version. At last he wrote it out again as well as he could:
(p. 3)
with you now.
Baby Jean your old dad may not be good for much any more but he does know a thing or two about life and especially one important thing, and that is
But from there on, the pen lay dead in his cramped fingers. It was as if all the letters of the alphabet, all the combinations of letters into words, all the infinite possibilities of handwritten language had ceased to exist.
He looked out the window for help, but the window was a black mirror now and gave back only the lights, the bright bedsheets and pajamas of the ward. Pulling on his robe and slippers, he went over to stand with his forehead and cupped hands against the cold pane. Now he could make out the string of highway lights in the distance and, beyond that, the horizon of black trees between the snow and the sky. Just above the horizon, on the right, the sky was suffused with a faint pink blur from the lights of Brooklyn and New York, but this was partly hidden from view by a big dark shape in the foreground that was a blind corner of the paraplegic building, a world away.
When McIntyre turned back from the window to blink in the yellow light, leaving a shriveling ghost of his breath on the glass, it was with an oddly shy look of rejuvenation and relief. He walked to his bed, stacked the pages of his manuscript neatly, tore them in halves and in quarters and dropped them into the waste bag. Then he got his pack of cigarettes and went over to stand beside Vernon Sloan, who was blinking through his reading glasses at The Saturday Evening Post.
“Smoke, Vernon?” he said.
“No thanks, Mac. I smoke more’n one or two a day, it only makes me cough.”
“Okay,” McIntyre said, lighting one for himself. “Care to play a little checkers?”
“No thanks, Mac, not right now. I’m a little tired—think I’ll just read awhile.”
“Any good articles in there this week, Vernon?”
“Oh, pretty good,” he said. “Couple pretty good ones.” Then his mouth worked into a grin that slowly disclosed nearly all of his very clean teeth. “Say, what’s
the matter with you, man? You feelin’ good or somethin’?”
“Oh, not too bad, Vernon,” he said, stretching his skinny arms and his spine. “Not too bad.”
“You finish all your writin’ finally? Is that it?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “My trouble is, I can’t think of anything to write about.”
Looking across the aisle to where Tiny Kovacs’s wide back sat slumped in the purple amplitude of the new robe, he walked over and laid a hand on one of the enormous satin shoulders. “So?” he said.
Tiny’s head swung around to glare at him, immediately hostile. “So what?”
“So where’s that beard?”
Tiny wrenched open his locker, grabbed out the beard and thrust it roughly into McIntyre’s hands. “Here,” he said. “You want it? Take it.”
McIntyre held it up to his ears and slipped the string over his head. “String oughta be a little tighter,” he said. “There, how’s that? Prob’ly look better when I get my teeth out.”
But Tiny wasn’t listening. He was burrowing in his locker for the strips of bandage. “Here,” he said. “Take this stuff too. I don’t want no part of it. You wanna do it, you get somebody else.”
At that moment Jones came padding over, all smiles. “Hey, you gonna do it, Mac? You change your mind?”
“Jones, talk to this big son of a bitch,” McIntyre said through the wagging beard. “He don’t wanna cooperate.”
“Aw, jeez, Tiny,” Jones implored. “The whole thing depends on you. The whole thing was your idea.”
“I already told ya,” Tiny said. “I don’t want no part of it. You wanna do it, you find some other sucker.”
After the lights went out at ten nobody bothered much about hiding their whiskey. Men who had been taking furtive nips in the latrines all evening now drank in quietly jovial groups around the wards, with the unofficial once-a-year blessing of the charge nurse. Nobody took particular notice when, a little before midnight, three men from C Ward slipped out to the linen closet to get a sheet and a towel, then to the kitchen to get a mop handle, and then walked the length of the building and disappeared into the A Ward latrine.
There was a last-minute flurry over the beard: it hid so much of McIntyre’s face that the effect of his missing teeth was spoiled. Jones solved the problem by cutting away all of it but the chin whiskers, which he fastened in place with bits of adhesive tape. “There,” he said, “that does it. That’s perfect. Now roll up your pajama pants, Mac, so just your bare legs’ll show under the sheet? Get it? Now where’s your mop handle?”
“Jones, it don’t work!” Tiny called tragically. He was standing naked except for a pair of white woolen socks, trying to pin the folded towel around his loins. “The son of a bitch won’t stay up!”
Jones hurried over to fix it, and finally everything was ready. Nervously, they killed the last of Jones’s rye and dropped the empty bottle into a laundry hamper; then they slipped outside and huddled in the darkness at the head of A Ward.
“Ready?” Jones whispered. “Okay. . . . Now.” He flicked on the overhead lights, and thirty startled faces blinked in the glare.
First came 1950, a wasted figure crouched on a trembling staff, lame and palsied with age; behind him, grinning and flexing his muscles, danced the enormous diapered baby of the New Year. For a second or two there was silence except for the unsteady tapping of the old man’s staff, and then the laughter and the cheers began.
“Out wivvie old!” the baby bellowed over the noise, and he made an elaborate burlesque of hauling off and kicking the old man in the seat of the pants, which caused the old man to stagger weakly and rub one buttock as they moved up the aisle. “Out wivvie old! In wivva new!”
Jones ran on ahead to turn on the lights of B Ward, where the ovation was even louder. Nurses clustered helplessly in the doorway to watch, frowning or giggling behind their sterile masks as the show made its way through cheers and catcalls.
“Out wivvie old! In wivva new!”
In one of the private rooms a dying man blinked up through the window of his oxygen tent as his door was flung open and his light turned on. He stared bewildered at the frantic toothless clowns who capered at the foot of his bed; finally he understood and gave them a yellow smile, and they moved on to the next private room and the next, arriving at last in C Ward, where their friends stood massed and laughing in the aisle.
There was barely time for the pouring of fresh drinks before all the radios blared up at once and Guy Lombardo’s band broke into “Auld Lang Syne”; then all the shouts dissolved into a great off-key chorus in which Tiny’s voice could be heard over all the others:
“Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind? . . .”
Even Vernon Sloan was singing, propped up in bed and holding a watery highball, which he slowly waved in time to the music. They were all singing.
“For o-o-old lang syne, my boys,
For o-o-old lang syne . . .”
And when the song was over the handshaking began.
“Good luck t’ya, boy.”
“Same to you, boy—hope you make it this year.”
All over Building Seven men wandered in search of hands to shake; under the noise of shouts and radios the words were repeated again and again: “Good luck t’ya. . . .” “Hope you make it this year, boy. . . .” And standing still and tired by Tiny Kovacs’s bed, where the purple robe lay thrown in careless wads and wrinkles, McIntyre raised his glass and his bare-gummed smile to the crowd, with Tiny’s laughter roaring in his ear and Tiny’s heavy arm around his neck.
Builders
WRITERS WHO WRITE about writers can easily bring on the worst kind of literary miscarriage; everybody knows that. Start a story off with “Craig crushed out his cigarette and lunged for the typewriter,” and there isn’t an editor in the United States who’ll feel like reading your next sentence.
So don’t worry: this is going to be a straight, no-nonsense piece of fiction about a cabdriver, a movie star, and an eminent child psychologist, and that’s a promise. But you’ll have to be patient for a minute, because there’s going to be a writer in it too. I won’t call him “Craig,” and I can guarantee that he won’t get away with being the only Sensitive Person among the characters, but we’re going to be stuck with him right along and you’d better count on his being as awkward and obtrusive as writers nearly always are, in fiction or in life.
Thirteen years ago, in 1948, I was twenty-two and employed as a rewrite man on the financial news desk of the United Press. The salary was fifty-four dollars a week and it wasn’t much of a job, but it did give me two good things. One was that whenever anybody asked me what I did I could say, “Work for the UP,” which had a jaunty sound; the other was that every morning I could turn up at the Daily News building wearing a jaded look, a cheap trench coat that had shrunk a size too small for me, and a much-handled brown fedora (“Battered” is the way I would have described it then, and I’m grateful that I know a little more now about honesty in the use of words. It was a handled hat, handled by endless nervous pinchings and shapings and reshapings; it wasn’t battered at all). What I’m getting at is that just for those few minutes each day, walking up the slight hill of the last hundred yards between the subway exit and the News building, I was Ernest Hemingway reporting for work at the Kansas City Star.
Had Hemingway been to the war and back before his twentieth birthday? Well, so had I; and all right, maybe there were no wounds or medals for valor in my case, but the basic fact of the matter was there. Had Hemingway bothered about anything as time-wasting and career-delaying as going to college? Hell, no; and me neither. Could Hemingway ever really have cared very much about the newspaper business? Of course not; so there was only a marginal difference, you see, between his lucky break at the Star and my own dismal stint on the financial desk. The important thing, as I knew Hemingway would be the first to agree, was that a writer had to begin somewhere.
&nb
sp; “Domestic corporate bonds moved irregularly higher in the moderately active trading today. . . .” That was the kind of prose I wrote all day long for the UP wire, and “Rising oil shares paced a lively curb market,” and “Directors of Timken Roller Bearing today declared”—hundreds on hundreds of words that I never really understood (What in the name of God are puts and calls, and what is a sinking fund debenture? I’m still damned if I know), while the teletypes chugged and rang and the Wall Street tickers ticked and everybody around me argued baseball, until it was mercifully time to go home.
It always pleased me to reflect that Hemingway had married young; I could go right along with him there. My wife, Joan, and I lived as far west as you can get on West Twelfth Street, in a big three-window room on the third floor, and if it wasn’t the Left Bank it certainly wasn’t our fault. Every evening after dinner, while Joan washed the dishes, there would be a respectful, almost reverent hush in the room, and this was the time for me to retire behind a three-fold screen in the corner where a table, a student lamp and a portable typewriter were set up. But it was here, of course, under the white stare of that lamp, that the tenuous parallel between Hemingway and me endured its heaviest strain. Because it wasn’t any “Up in Michigan” that came out of my machine; it wasn’t any “Three Day Blow” or “The Killers”; very often, in fact, it wasn’t really anything at all, and even when it was something Joan called “marvelous,” I knew deep down that it was always, always something bad.
There were evenings too when all I did behind the screen was goof off—read every word of the printing on the inside of a matchbook, say, or all the ads in the back of the Saturday Review of Literature—and it was during one of those times, in the fall of the year, that I came across these lines:
The Collected Stories Page 17