There was no compassion in Cass for the chorus girls, white or black. They worked like Trojans, ten hours a day and twelve on Saturday, six and a half days a week. And they earned seven dollars.
Cass scarcely saw them after a while; after a while he saw only a continual shaking of loose breasts (breasts made loose by pawing and shaking); he saw only the graceless clogging, and painted clown-lips, and the old men who strained far forward to see. They watched with their aged mouths pursed.
“The seegars is fi’ cents, gen’nelmen,” he barked. “The chewin’ gum is fi’ cents, the peanuts is fi’ cents, the pop is fi’ cents, an’ the big choklut-almond-raisins bar is fi’ cents.”
On his evening round he put aside candy and peanuts to sell cigarettes and magazines. Older men bought cigars or cigarettes; boys bought candy and the Paris Art magazine.
When Cass stood at the head of the aisle after the lights came on for intermission, Herman’s customers saw a loosely built man with close-set eyes, his hair combed straight back from his forehead with a fine-tooth comb. The magazines they bought from him were “For Lovers of Nature Only,” according to a warning printed in red on their covers.
“Somethin’ speshul fo’ men only!” Cass barked, “Fo’ fifteen cents what ’riginally costed fifty! Across the street it’s still fifty, gentlemen—what a bargun! Money back if unsatisfied—but what he-man wouldn’t be satisfied with this,” he flung back a cover to display a two-page print of a half-dressed girl on a bed. “Now,” he conduded, starting up the aisle, “who’s first? Oney nine copies left, so speak up fast, first come first served. Fo’ fifteen cents what costed fifty an’ money back if unsatisfied—somethin’ speshul fo’ men only!”
Each Tuesday night was amateur night, and Thursday, when souvenirs were given, was ladies’ night. But Saturday night was “Win a Lucky Garter Night,” and this event often packed the house till twelve o’clock. On this night six men in the audience holding lucky tickets were privileged to go on the stage and remove, each from the knee of one of the white choristers, one gaudy garter. There were six girls in the white chorus, and Saturday night was all theirs. There was no black show on Saturday night. And Herman saw to it that on Saturday night no Negro in the audience ever got hold of one of his “lucky” tickets.
Cass came to hate them all save Dill Doak.
Had it not been for the hope of seeing Norah once more, for planning against a day when he might again see her, Cass might have gone back on the road. But he felt that she could not be far from the street, wherever she was. Sooner or later he would find her, or he would see someone passing who knew where she was. And when he found her again he didn’t want to be broke, he didn’t want to be on the bum then. He wanted to be able to take care of Norah. So he saved against that time. Every week he saved one dollar. On his one night off, rain or wind, he walked streets of the Near North Side: Erie and Ontario, Huron and LaSalle and Cass.
When he rose from his dressing-room cot at seven he built a fire in the boiler-room downstairs, dusted backstage, dusted the seats and swept down the aisle, and mopped the stage with warm water and suds. At nine o’clock he put out the signs, and the pictures of black and white dancing girls.
During the day he built up the fire before each performance. The boiler-room had never been cleaned. Years before the building had housed the Helping Hand mission, and there still hovered above the ashes in the basement something of a dim religious light. Ashes had been piled to the ceiling in every corner; on wet days the sewer backed swirlingly into the middle of the floor and spread to the corners and seeped down the walls. Bedraggled gray rats would be left lying belly-up in front of the furnace grate when it receded. Cass would toss them by their tails into one common burying ground, in ashes. Sometimes as he groped for the llght halfway down the rickety staircase there would come a swift scampering from below; then he would know some rats had survived the last rain. Sometimes the globe burned out, and he felt a little afraid to go down; but night was cold and fire was low, and he had to go down. He would go stepping high, with a flashlight in his hand.
If the fire smoldered and died in the night he would have to scout through the alleys for kindling in the morning. He would run down deep snow-ruts, his collar upturned, his big feet sometimes tripping over a tin can frozen in ice. Behind some Loomis Street store he would find a crate, usually filled with rotten or frozen fruit; he would dump the fruit out and race back to the showhouse, passing waiting milk-wagons as he ran. By eleven o’clock, when Herman walked in in his heavy overcoat, the Little Rialto would be warm, the aisle would be clean, and the stage would be ready for its props. The props were always the same, save for Saturday night. Cass was prop man, janitor, vendor, errand boy, occasional rouster, and, when Herman’s throat was sore, barker. He stood in front with the blue megaphone then, in Herman’s overcoat. And he bawled like a young bull just freed of the barn.
Often during those first months Cass could not sleep well on his cot in the dressing room. He would wake up thinking himself back in the El Paso County jail; the hardness of the cot and the stuffiness of the room, thick with the odor of stale sweat, made him have this waking-fear often. He would rise in the night and walk the narrow aisle, sick at heart for Norah Egan. He would pace up and down as he had in the bull-pen in County. The dark old stage behind him stood, at three o’clock of a winter’s morning, like a dirty-curtained tomb; and each single seat as though death had been sitting there. Each seat, like each bar in a jailhouse tank, stood singly and alone. And even in daylight, when girls perfumed the air, there always remained something of death in the place to one who had seen it deserted at night. At night, after cheap perfume had faded a little, and girls had gone home, and laughter had died, then a death-smell crept into the little house, and Cass would wake up afraid.
Cass sat in the front row and held his head in his hands. Sitting so, he would think of Norah Egan, of her life and of his own. Sometimes he felt that they had both been robbed, some way, and he did not understand quite how. But whenever he thought of one man robbed by another, he thought of somebody in boots. He was an ignorant man. The real world he never saw. Daily he saw suffering and want, but he saw through a veil of familiarity. What he saw he took for granted. He could not trouble himself, one way or another, about any better or happier world. He had become too hardened to pain and to suffering. His heart had become callused. He could see no farther than Herman Hauser. All those faculties which might have enabled Cass to see farther than the end of his nose had been dulled; they had been dulled into atrophy by hunger and cold and frequent humiliation. So Cass had not only gone hungry and cold, but he had been blinded to that which had robbed him. He knew he had been cheated: he had been cheated of Norah Egan. And sometimes it felt as though it were someone behind him who kept cheating him all the time.
He had but one strong desire: he wanted Norah Egan. He wanted to place his life firmly on earth, and he wanted to live it with her.
In the middle of January came a change: Cass had to learn a new line. Instead of carrying chocolate bars and magazines through the aisles, he stood out front and bawled the new line through Herman’s blue megaphone.
“Hot peppy burlesque goin’ on inside, folks—chase them blues away! See all the little dancin’—shakin’—singin’—squirmin’ laydeez! See ’em do the World’s Fair fan dance! See ’em doin’ it! See ’em dance on a dime! See ’em do the Gilda Grey! See ’em shake an’ see ’em wobble! Every mussel in movement every minute gennelmen—First she dawnces on one leg an’—”
It was cold standing outside in the middle of January. Herman bought him a fancy red cardboard hat, high as a hussar’s and trimmed with silver braid. It was purchased to rival the hat of the uniformed barker at the sixty-cent burlesque across the street; but it failed to keep Cass’s ears warm. He wore his yellow slicker, and for gloves he borrowed the huge dangling things that Dill Doak wore on the stage. These he always had to return before Doak went on, however, and Herman never li
ked to see him run inside to return them. So when he saw that the barking job was fairly permanent, Cass bought himself a pair of mittens. He spent little, and only when forced to do so. He was saving for Norah, a dollar a week.
He became proud of his big blue megaphone, of his line, of his gloves and, most of all, of his fancy red cardboard hat. After he had conquered an early diffidence, he became proud of his barking, too. Full of self-import, he strode up and down. Oppressed with his responsibility, he marched back and forth in front of the ticket cage, the January snow flaking the front of his slicker. Herman liked his bullish voice. He taught Cass to drop much of his Southern accent, and let him bawl away.
After the months spent in selling inside, Cass was glad to get out on the open street. The pounding of the great drum inside, the shrill singing from the stage, and the hard laughter from the seats came to him but faintly where he now stood. He was glad not to hear it, he was happy to be free of the faces inside; here there was more to see and to hear. From where he now stood he could see the whole street. And sometimes as he barked, watching faces thronging past, he would think suddenly, “Norah will come past! Ah’ll see Norah again!”
Once, just as he was turning his head to speak of some triviality to the blonde in the ticket-cage, he caught a glimpse of a passing face that sent his heart into his throat. For a long moment he stood half-dazed, his megaphone dangling from his hand and his eyes staring after a slender girl walking slowly. He lurched awkwardly up to her, caught her sleeve—and his heart sank like a sudden sock in his breast. The camel in the ticket-cage stared at him in amazement, but he was too shaken to explain.
“Step right up, gennelmen,” he bawled. “When yore three feet inside the door yore six thousand miles from home—See all the little dawncin’ girruls—See ’em shake that thing, see ’em squirm, hear ’em sing—Hottest show off the World’s Fair grounds.—Don’t come in here, boys, it ain’t decent—Somethin’ special fo’ gennelmen oney inside, an’ every seat is a dime until the show closes! See ’em shake that thing! See ’em squirm! Hear ’em sing!”
PART FOUR
One Spring in this City
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
16
“YOU DON’T HAVE to building fire any more,” Herman Hauser said in the first warm week in May, “so now you’re getting five bucks per—O.K. by you, Red?”
Cass protested feebly.
“Five bucks ain’t much fo’ a man, Mist’ Hauser. Barker ’cross the way gits twelve an’ a half.”
Herman eyed the uniformed fellow at the sixty-cent burlesque across the street. Through a maze of traffic the springtime street-steam was rising from between street-stones.
“That guy is taller than you by an inch an’ a half. An’ he can’t sleep backstage like I let you doing, either, I bet. I save you room-rent every week—don’t you realizing?”
Cass realized. He realized too that in a dozen places he could rent a room for four and a half dollars a month.
“Ah’d rather keep on gittin’ mah reg’lar six bucks per then an’ not sleep backstage no more,” he said, sensing Herman’s chronic distrust of him.
“Well then, I been thinkin’ I would rather not have you sleeping backstage any more then, either,” Herman parried. “There is already too much sleeping back there with those niggers.”
He laughed at his wit, so Cass laughed with him.
So it was in that spring that Cass came to have a room of his own. It was not very clean, it was not very large, it had but one chair, and its window was small; it was smelly, and dark, and at night it was damp. A poor thing in all—but his own.
And it was on East Ontario, overlooking State.
This was the second World’s Fair spring in the big town by the lake. Cass had been renting a room for a week when the exposition reopened. On the opening afternoon, while a mayor was standing atop a platform in the midst of the shambles, Cass was pacing up and down in front of the Little Rialto three blocks away, barking; and listening to a mayor’s voice reproduced through a street-radio over his head as he barked.
This is an event to be remembered as the climax of man’s ideals. There is not a business which will not profit by this epochal event. The bettering of economic conditions will increase our attendance. An historic milestone on our national journey toward greater and finer and better things for our people.
But Cass McKay could drown out any street-radio, and he resented any rivalry, even a mayor’s.
Here y’are gents—hottest woman-show off the grounds, first she dawnces on one leg an’ then she dawnces on the other—Oh she shakes like jello on a frosty mornin’? Between the two she earns her livin’! All she wears is sleeves an’ two beads o’perspiration, —if y’ can’t see through them yore too old to come in here‚ Stella the little dawncin’ girrul!
World’s Fair spring in the big town by the lake. Over on Michigan Avenue the people were going in one gate and the people were coming out of another; and inside the gates was chaos. Nude dancers, wind-tunnels, Indians, Byrd’s South-Pole ship. Dante’s Inferno, Miss America, alligator-wrestlers, Lincoln’s cabin, flame-divers, a five-legged cow beside the House of David, pigs ships temples villages gorillas clocks artillery cats dogs camps—a zigzag riot of fakery, a hash of hot-dog stands and shimmy shows lapped by the lake. There were college-trained men pulling jinrikishas past gyp gambling joints, there were hundreds of Negroes scraping for tips, there were cane-sellers, peep-show houses, prostitutes, trinket-vendors, dinosaurs, punch-drunk pugs, a proboscis monkey . . . and a mayor, on top of a platform. He was standing right on the very top of the platform, in the very center of the nightmare, and he was bawling a line for Big Business.
Cass stopped pacing and cocked his head, listening hard as he was able; and he heard a president’s voice.
The most critical days of the national emergency have for the most part passed. I am fully convinced that this exposition will create a demand for the latest products of science and industry. I am fully convinced that this exposition will aid in the strengthening of national morale. I am fully convinced . . .
“She got the stuff that makes the young men old an’ the old men young!” Cass roared in challenge. “Yo’ can put ever’thin’ she wears on a letter behind a two-cent stamp! If y’aint been in here y’ve led a sheltered life!”
The millions who visited the exposition of 1933 must have seen in it, as I did, an inspiring demonstration of courage and confidence. Those who will come to the exposition of 1934 will see how abundantly that courage and that confidence were justified. They will see evidence of the recovery that has been brought about. They will see signs pointing the way along that upward path upon which we as a nation have set our feet. I am fully convinced . . .
That night ten thousand kids in Tenement Town were sleeping when it rained. When it rains in Tenement Town sewers back up into basement Hats. AH over the World’s Fair City, World’s Fair spring or World’s Fair summer, ten thousand kids slept in homes damp as kennels. Ten thousand kids didn’t have enough to eat. The World’s Fair playground was a city of ten thousand hungry half-sick kids searching the alleys of Tenement Town, a welter of diseased slum-streets. Sick kids sold papers, sniped tinfoil out of gutters, shot crap in hallways. Sick kids all over the World’s Fair City, all through the World’s Fair spring. No room to toss a ball around on these streets; these kids didn’t race on Tribute bicycles or Daily News roller-skates. No room for bikes in Tenement Town; no time for roller-skates or ball. But room for selling papers, room for shining shoes, time for working all day in N. R. A. sweat-shops.
The Polock kids chased the Dagoes and the Dagoes chased the Jews. The Wops slunk behind fences on either side of the Loomis Street alleys and slung milk bottles over at each other’s heads. They’re half sick from birth, so
they grow up bad. Black kids, Wop kids, Swede kids, Hunkey, Litvak and Chinese kids—the skinny tough dirty knockabout kids that had to knock down a fence to get into the World’s Fair playground.
Or look at the Irish around the old gas house, around the fourteenth ward. A hard-working tribe that is, when sober. Contractors, steel-workers, truck-drivers, ward-heelers, mailmen, and cops, and two-bit politicians. Only there isn’t much contracting being done just now, and the steel-workers are talking strike again, and the city is behind with the cops’ and the mailmen’s pay again, and the two-bit politicians are playing the races, and some of the truck-drivers are scabbing to pay the rent; and some of the ward-heelers are learning to pimp. The high-school kids from ’31 and ’32 and ’33 and ’34 are still waiting for work, any kind of work. They booze while waiting. Their old men booze too. The excontractors and the ex-cabbies and the ex-truck-drivers, the Dagoes and Hunkeys and Polocks and Jews.
Look at Young Finnegan this spring, now that the World’s Fair springs have passed. He’ll be eighteen in August, if he lives that long. Gets six dollars every Saturday night for fighting at White City if he wins in six rounds. Otherwise he gets only four. Fin earns his suppers during the week by pimping for the house on Twenty-second and Wabash. Finnegan’s big sister works upstairs, that’s how Fin got the job. Mamie’s up there now with five other girls, and that’s how the Finnegans get along. Finnegan’d like to go home, he’d like to take Mamie home with him, only he can’t. When Fin’s old man started throwing D.T.s at two o’clock in the morning Fin’s old lady leaned out of the window yelling bloody murder. The old man, and he hasn’t worked since ’29, started after her with a bottle of Hill and Hill in one hand and a six-inch can-opener in the other—Finnegan tossed the old fool downstairs on his fanny before somebody got hurt. So what? So the old man bounced all the way down on the fanny, two steps at a time, and when he hit bottom the Hill and Hill broke, and something inside the fanny broke too; he couldn’t get up, and he couldn’t lie down. So he sits up on top of three pillows all day now with a steel brace beneath him, a bottle of Hill and Hill on the medicine stand beside him, and a brickbat across his feet. He’s waiting for Finnegan to open the door, and he won’t let Mamie in either. Because Mamie would steal his watch and drink up his Hill and Hill and fight with the old lady and spit out the window.
Somebody in Boots Page 31