People didn’t much care for me at first. They must have caught the milkfed puppy smell, sour as a kennel, of a man who wanted death to his father but couldn’t do it. The inner yipping of a man who had assaulted the Pittsburgh of his babyhood may have given them obscure desires to kick me. Turning tail from Phyl caused nobody to love me in the whole wide world of men and women.
So I ate grass in several states of the Union.
In Washington I did get a ride from a man running away from his wife, drinking from a bottle of fine stuff and dirtying the upholstery of his car, but we didn’t see eye-to-eye on things. First of all, he too believed that oyster sandwiches would calm his stomach. “Gotta put a lid on it,” this fugitive explained. Grack had that idea, but it was one from Grack’s Almanac—he didn’t drink. “I’m sixty-two years old and never had a day’s peace out of my life. Money I made, got me a Buick franchise—no luck at all. Daughter married at eighteen to get away from her mother.” Then open would go the glove compartment and up the bottle and down too fast again and the lid came flying off. Second, when he felt sad he wanted to love me up, which is not my way. I quit him after a hundred and fifty miles of nursing and saying too bad and leaning against the far door, not any surer than before that I was to be a member of the great old human race.
“Like this and like that,” Pauline used to tell me, reading without looking at my palm or the cards, shimmying her loose bare arms of which she was so proud for their milky flesh, “like this, like that, and ziggety-zaggety. What do I mean? Don’t ask, I’m not charging you, Bud.”
“Then what good does it do me?”
“Find out yourself! Trobble, trobble! It’s all free. Make your own fortune!”
But it had cost me to go back to Pittsburgh, although I had rec’d value. The old neighborhood, increased thick of tree and gray of stone, apartment where the stick-hockey field had been, was not something I dwelled in for free. My eyeballs had hardened and saw the old place differently. The new kids, fleet skinny punks, were neither my friends nor Bud Williams. I had gone backwards to walk sideways, ziggety-zaggety, and maybe Pauline would say:
“I told you so, and I never charged you. Make your own fortune! Look how my Joy is now a big girl!”
I quit the man with a bad wife and a franchise in D.C. and sat on my suitcase until I was tired of sitting. I walked to the next bend in the road.
You may ask why I took such pleasure in being a dog and singing, “Do ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?” and wondering if I were really a human being or something else that had no decisions to make. I didn’t seem right to myself. Ungrateful for having a head and heart. Unfit and wounded in the world, and yet ready for more. It just seemed to me that leaving Pittsburgh meant leaving strong feeling for a while, and it was a thing necessary for me to survive. A young man has to stop killing his father sometime. I got away. I got to scheming again. I was doing better. Funny thing, too, how the carnie fell away now that I was no longer doing what Grack thought I needed to do. I talked American talk again. The carnie was for the carnies, at least until I would get with it again, and then it would be for everyone.
“Come on in,” Bossman Stan would say, yawning to show his gold inlays, “but no F.O.B.’s, C.O.D.’s, junkies, lushes, agitators, and collect telegrams. I’m the only signifier I need around here. You still want in, Bud?”
“I heard your song already, Bossman,” I would answer. “And you heard me count the balls already, too.”
Well, Bossman could wait while I dogged it awhile in the country. In South Carolina I walked down Route One from a dirt road where a farmer had turned me off. He didn’t even take me to the gas station at the crossroads where I might have picked up a trucker. “Gimma a quatah,” he asked.
“Ain’t got no money,” I answered him right back.
“Ain’t got no luck then either,” he said. “Right chere,”—and he dropped me down together with a jet of tobacky juice.
“Yessir, no luck without money, that right?” I started to ask him, being friendly with my thoughts of dogs and John Peel, but his truck was bumping down the road in a funnel of dust, and it was just as well. I didn’t want to be rewarded for philosophy by being grabbed by the sheriff to work on his peaches. They do that in the South when you haven’t got twenty dollars in your pocket. Vagrancy. The charge is called “Unlawful Refusal to Work.”
I pulled the handle off my split cardboard suitcase under that hot wet sun, a mile to go to the crossroads. I was in the clerk class among bums: suitcase, friends. But it made walking hard, even with “Do ye ken John Peel in the mo-o-rning?” The thought of being safe in the great hobo bourgeoisie didn’t make me any less hot and sticky where I moved. The grass drilled into the sand and nodded its head—it was corn or tobacco or cotton grass, what difference what?—but this thought of vegetables does no good either when you’re hungry and hot and tired and the sweat is trickle, trickle, trickling into your eyes and your feet are swelling in your shoes and you feel your clothes wet all over when you bend to untie your laces and the dog has a thorn in its ear and the hell with John Peel. But I mean hot.
It would never be a surprise to find Grack anyplace. I didn’t find Grack. But I did find, and I was surprised to find, something growing in the field. It helped distract me from my thoughts of being a sick dog with a heat that no amount of tonguing the breeze could cool. There was a weed in the field. This weed with languishing Latin eyes and a caved-in middle, squeezed by a belt, massacred, grass in its hair and its shoes off for comfort, was almost a man. When an ant bit it, it scratched just like a man can. It had sad puppy eyes and bones sticking out all over, each knob for a kick, a disappointment, a regret. It was a pimply boy of maybe twenty-two, and it would be a pimply boy until it died.
“Why hello,” I said.
“Yuss.”
“Yes what? What you doing here?”
“Waiting for a hitch.”
“Me too, but do you expect a truck to come poking off the ditch for you in the grass? What’s the matter with you? Stand up and beg like a man.”
He groaned and flopped in the field. “I’m too tired, too hungry. I’m weak. I’m sick.”
Oh-oh, I thought, serves me right for asking questions and not just moving straight on my way. Looks like a refugee from the boys’ farm or a vocational school. Looks like a meek who will never inherit the earth. I fingered in my pocket for my one dollar and six cents as if I didn’t know how much it was—three quarters, three dimes, penny-one. But it made me feel still less like a dog and more like John Peel to know that I would buy him a cup of coffee. I didn’t admit it yet.
“You just dreaming asleep like that?” I asked.
“Once I was a man in the Army near here. Quartermaster Corpse, eats drinks sleeps. Boy, I never had it so good, that’s what I been thinking.”
I had served a term at Fort Bragg, up near what we called Fagleburg, not so far from there, but I didn’t tell him. “Whatever got into you, kid?” Grack used to call me kid, and here I was, calling a kid kid! John Peel and music did this!—and maybe winning out a little with my father and Phyllis and the touch players in Pittsburgh after all. “Howjaever come to crawl back to this here red sand, kid?” I asked him.
He gave a thin, pale, weak, and clever smile from the weeds in which he still flopped. He pinched an ant between his two fingers and wiped its fastidious oozing. “You must’ve been in too if you call it red sand,” he said. “That was our word for it in the Service.”
I began to laugh. He was so beat that he rolled in the weeds without protest, letting me take in laughter his starved girlish belly, pinched by the belt, his overlarge girlish eyes, his hungry mouth, rosy-red with fever among the bluish dimples about it. I prodded him with a stick. “Howja come so low after the Army and the Quartermasters and all? You probably could live on the jump boots and blankets you sold, especially with that Hahvahd accent of yours.”
“Laziness,” he said mournfully. He was too weak to stand up, and m
y prancing about him gave me an advantage he finally admitted. “Laziness, unlucky in love and other businesses, bad salesmanship, nervous. That answer your questions, nosy?” He seemed to feel better and braver. Confession is good for the soul, conversation nourishing to the body. “It’s not Hahvahd, either, I’m a Wop Irisher from Boston. What a family tree!”
“Okay, no difference at bottom, brother. Can you get up and make it to the crossroads? I’ll buy you a coffee, you need it, but I’ll be damned if I’ll carry you. Up now!”
“My name is Andy,” he said.
“Up first!”
He arose and lifted a bundle wrapped in a dirty shirt and carried it by draping the sleeves about his neck. This boy looked for liabilities, that was the only answer. The hobo who doesn’t have a cardboard suitcase loses his chance for all kinds of luck with hitchhiking. For example, it’s well known and widely appreciated that a female motorist will never crawl into the back seat with a lad who has his bindle wrapped in a dirty shirt, and therefore she will never give him a sandwich after the fun. And that’s only the part about love—there are jobs, money, friendship, a future with sunshine and happiness and movies on Saturday and plenty of other commodities to be lost. Go without socks if you have to, but get yourself a suitcase: that’s my advice to young men who want to get ahead and a piece.
“My name is Andy,” he repeated hopefully. He was long and yellow and big-eyed and sick as he unwound and swayed to his feet and finally loped by my side down the Carolina road. He was going to cost me a sandwich, too; I had seen it coming; but it’s funny how sacrifice for others is good for a man. Phyl and Grack and my father were hidden by the dust his big sad flat feet churned up. I was no dog. I had eaten enough grass. I was John Peel, the man, himself.
“Andy,” he said, ready to cry because I didn’t answer him.
“Oh yes, my name is John Peel,” I said.
“Boston Andy, mine is,” he said gratefully. “I was borned and raised in—”
“Pittsburgh, me. I’m not really John Peel. Bud Williams. You still talk like Hahvahd, Andy, even when you say ‘borned and raised.’”
“You never been in Boston, it just proves, Mr. Peel. I mean Bud. They got neighborhoods there. I’m weak from hunger and not eating.”
I squinted across at him and shifted my suitcase. “Yeah, that’s what you’re weak from,” I said, wondering how much food it would take to kill the weakness my pal Andy brought with him into the world.
The place at the crossroads turned out to be one of those Colonial-type drive-ins, white pillars and cozy curtains, they put up for the tourists prejudiced against social diseases and to whom the important thing when you get a cup of coffee is the ultraviolet irradiated toilet seat afterward. A fancy-lettered sign said HARVEY JOHNS, and to the fast reader, inexperienced with American ways, the way most Americans are, it was Howard Johnson, especially with the lace in the fake dormers and the orange captain’s turret and the pastel tiles and the girls with powder on their noses so that they looked positively clean. Also paper napkins in dispensers and plump creamers on each table and at the counter where Andy and I sat. Only Harvey didn’t have to pay Howard for the franchise—why not save a buck? This is the land of opportunity even for a Carolina hillbilly on Route One.
“Yes,” the girl behind the counter said, eyeing us to figure whether we really were bums or only sports in disguise, “sir?”
“Let’s eat,” I said. Pride kept me from telling Andy how much I had. A brave man would have been able to bear that burden, but I was afraid Andy would break down. I protected him from the facts of my life. “A sandwich and coffee,” I told him sternly, “a cheap sandwich is all you’re worth, Andy.”
“A hotdog?”
He broke my heart with dopiness. “Not that cheap! I didn’t say that, Andy boy. You can have cheese—American, pimento spread, cream, you can have a hamburger, you can even have a cheeseburger. What the hell, let’s enjoy, kid.” I didn’t say it, but he must have guessed that this was likely to be our last meal for a while. In a way it was a good thing, Andy being the kind of stiff who, once his belly is full, starts to crank out the story of his life, that is, how he was born for one reason only: to be misunderstood from coast to coast. The more you give him to eat and drink, the sadder the misunderstandings. “Eat up, kid,” I said, “don’t forget to nourish yourself.”
He ordered a hotdog and coffee anyway. (“They are very nice today,” the countergirl advised us.) I had a hamburger and coffee, and slyly I watched for the relish and ketchup. Andy ate half his sandwich before they came, stuffing the bread and pink pork down without letting his mouth get the good of them. I put my hand on his elbow and whispered, “Listen, kid, learn the truth about life. The ketchup and relish are free with all their vitamins, minerals, and encouragement for the intestinal tract.”
“What kind of a track is that, the intentional track?” he asked through sour spice and the smell of breadcrumbs chewed with pork.
“Please, Andy boy, you don’t have to kid. Be nice and pour it on.”
“Thank you,” he said with that prim girlishness which only got worse as he got courage, “but I’ll just take some mustard on my wienie, thank you.”
“But mustard is no good for you! No calories at all! You need strength when you’re starving, Andy, otherwise you can’t do it right.”
He pouted. “Just pass the mustard, please, Mr. Peel,” he said. “I always loved a little mustard with my wienie.”
I munched my own relish and ketchup and looked at him disgustedly, thinking that only a Danish doctor could make an Andy into whatever he already was. “Look, let me explain about eating, friend—” But obviously he felt that I was trying to push my deep philosophy on him just because I was paying, so I shut up and ate in silence. It’s depressing all the same when people can’t get the good out of what you do for them. It made it hard for me to get the good of my burger sunk in a red swamp of ketchup and pushing up a jungle of relish: best things in the world for a quarter, too. Even if they make it of pure trichinosis worms in Carolina drive-ins.
Finishing his eating with a sigh and a dainty pit-patting of napkin at mouth, Andy waited before his coffee. He gazed glumly into the full cup, adenoidal, dog-eyed, girl-dog-eyed, while I peeked into the mirror behind the counter to see if the food was doing me any good. It was. The mirror looked clean. I felt better. The mirror and the waitress both gave me my reflection back. Neither knew about my troubles and both seemed to like me. In the meantime, Andy developed a nice steamy look on his face, innocent of pain and trouble now that he had a hotdog in him, although there was no more flesh on his bones and they stuck out against a world which had been rough on him. He sucked his teeth; that was all; but the sweet smile was gratified.
He sipped his coffee.
“Oh! don’t!” I said.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Peel? I don’t do anything right to suit you, do I? I’m just a Boston Wop Irisher.”
“Never mind the genealogy, kid, put cream in it.”
“What?”
“Put cream in it!”
I nodded jerkily to the creamer, which came full and free on the counter. First I poured as much as my cup would hold, then sipped a bit, then poured again to show him how. “Nourishing, the best thing for you,” I explained. “Vitamins, calories, minerals, strength. The coffee is just caffeine, it’ll pick you up and let you down, but the cream comes straight from the mama cow. Drink up.” I handed him the creamer.
“I like my coffee black,” he said. He blushed.
“Put sugar in it, too. You need sugar for the bloodstream.”
“I prefer my coffee the way it is, sir,” he said. He didn’t move. I knew he was a dope, and I was tempted to pour the cream for him. Let me put it down right here that I respect other people, even the dopes, even Andy. Human beings have their rights, idiots included. Every soul is free and equal on this earth, except that some of them will never come down from the sky, like Andy’s.
&nbs
p; So I didn’t pour it for him, but I said: “Didn’t you hear my explanation to you, kid? I had a year at U. of P. with hygiene required.”
His cheeks burned. He was ashamed, but he was for pulling his pride on me now that he had eaten. He refused to drink the cream.
I guess that was the only manly thing I ever saw him do, so I shouldn’t be too hard on him now. The cash register clanged and Andy looked over to our waitress, touching me to look also. She was nice. Heavy hips, heavy breasts, hot in their rubber cradles, heavy sleepy face and her hands in the cash. It surprised me that he could be interested in her. He wasn’t. “Look at all that money,” he said. “You like to try something?”
I wasn’t a holdup artist, never could be. He wasn’t either; this was just his way of apologizing to me and showing me he was right. He was all wrong. He wasn’t looking at the girl and he wasn’t looking at the paper money. His greedy eyes dropped into the puddle of quarters and dimes; that was as high as his imagination could strike. “Okay, never mind, finish your black unsugared coffee,” I said.
But all the same he stuck at that place, and I respected him for it. When he said black coffee, he meant it, and no good sense could dilute this integrity. He liked it that way. We walked out, me bloated with ketchup and cream, Andy jittery with garlic and caffeine, back to the road with our bindles and me wondering how never to see him again. It was nice to find the born jug of the continent and to decide even about him: he knows what he wants.
When we got outside I finished shedding him. It was an affair that required adrenalin and the squandering of part of my hamburger. “You’re a dope, you’re going to expire,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, drooping by my side at the road. “So will you someday, Mr. Peel.”
“You think you’re going to buddy up with me? You gone crazy?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Peel, I’ll leave you. Thanks for the handout.”
I yelled at him, “You think I’m going to buy you hotdogs without ketchup or relish and coffee without sugar and cream all the way down to Georgia? You think I came onto this planet to carry you around like my suitcase? You think you can follow me everywhere?”
Man Who Was Not With It Page 8