The Town and the City: A Novel

  Peter walked along these noisy crowded streets in the sunny noontime that day. He saw a fat mournful-eyed soprano, apparently an aspirant to the Metropolitan Opera, wild and mad, singing in her tenement—he gaped up with amazement at the sound of her piercing voice over the streets—and the little children raced and raced around him on the sidewalk. It was almost always a tremendous sadness when he walked the streets of New York. He had never expected the city to be that way at all, when he lived in Galloway.

  He went up the dark musty stairs to Dennison’s rooms, six floors up in the gloomy and decrepit tenement which was about to be condemned by the authorities. The door of the apartment itself was girded tight with a double lock, a padlock on the outside, not in lock at the moment, and a lock-and-chain inside, which slowly eased over as Peter began to knock. There was a moment of insane silence and suspicion, and then the door opened an inch or two. Dennison’s long bony nose appeared in the crack: he seemed to be sniffing: and then Peter could see his pale eyes peering coldly.

  “It’s me, Will,” explained Peter, grinning stupidly.

  With this Dennison swung the door open a few more inches with a kind of gracious flourish. Peter entered, squeezing in with embarrassment.

  “Nobody with you, is there?”

  Peter looked foolishly behind him. “No, no, I’m alone.”

  “Fine.” Dennison locked the door and slid the chain back in place. “I’m glad to see you, Pete,” he said, shaking hands stiffly. “Make yourself at home, won’t you? I’ll be busy for a while now. We’re all friends here,” he added loudly, baring his lips and showing his teeth in a ratty grin. “I’ve got a few things to attend to. Just grab a chair.”

  The door through which Peter had come in opened right into a sort of kitchen which had an isolated bathtub sitting ridiculously high off the floor over antiquated plumbing. There was also a sink, a battered icebox that Dennison had bought in a secondhand store, and a greasy gas stove. The wash hung from the high ceiling on criss-crossing ropes. To the right was the back room of the four narrow “railroad” rooms that made up the apartment; in the moldy doorway hung a moth-eaten green drape that concealed whatever was behind it. To the left were the two front rooms—a kind of alcove with an ancient huge bureau, some chairs, and a card table and, beyond the alcove, the front room, also marked off by some old drapery, from which Peter could hear voices, radio music, and a baby crying. A girl with dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses peered at him from the drapery of the front room and vanished again without comment. This was Mary Dennison, who rarely spoke to Peter or anyone who chanced to drop in. She was a confidante of Junkey, whose voice Peter could hear in the front room, and she did the housework in the dolorous apartment.

  Peter sat down in a chair in the alcove and watched Dennison and the other fellow, a tall, cadaverous, indistinct-looking man. At the moment they were busy boiling down morphine tablets in spoons. They bent absorbedly over their spoons and cottons and pills and hypodermic needles. They paid no attention whatever to Peter.

  “This ain’t bad stuff here,” the tall skeleton was saying, as he picked delicately at an eye-dropper and inclined with the unction of a great chemist over his work. “This here Rogers is a pretty reliable guy, as doctors go, and he’s never given me any cause for complaint.”

  “Well, the only thing is, as you say, he don’t cotton up to me and Junkey so well,” said Dennison out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Well, he’ll get used to you. He’s jittery, you know, and he wants to make sure everything’s all right with you guys. I’ve been getting prescriptions from him for four years now and he knows I’ve had the Chinaman on my back too long to jeopardize a good connection for stuff. The thing about Rogers is, get in his confidence and you can always score.”

  “Well, Al, put in a good word for me every time you see him,” said Dennison, holding up a full hypodermic to the light. “I’ll certainly appreciate it, in view of the fact that I ain’t doing so well with these other characters. Last Sunday, Meyer up in the Bronx threw Junkey out of his office and told him not to come back. I think he got wise to the fact that Junkey’s been lifting some of his prescription blanks from his desk.”

  “Well,” said the cadaver, rolling up his sleeve judiciously, “I wouldn’t fool around with forging prescriptions if I were you. You might get in trouble, you know.”

  “You know me, Al, always careful,” smiled Dennison charmingly.

  “And what about Doc Johnson out in Brooklyn?”

  “Didn’t you hear? The narcotics squad closed in on him last Wednesday. He’s out on bail now but it looks pretty bad for him.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad, Johnson wasn’t a bad egg. Kind of nice guy, you know?”

  “He certainly was,” said Dennison, and both of them had rolled up their sleeves by now and were poising the needles on their arms. Al’s arm was livid with one long scar along the vein. He seemed to be having difficulty adjusting the needle just the way he wanted it. Finally, after several unsuccessful attempts, he took the needle out and sighed.

  “Well, I guess I’ll have to try the leg again. This arm’s just about raw this trip.” And he put down his pants, ran his finger up and down a long livid scar on his thigh, and finally decided on a spot that seemed favorable. He sank the needle in and pushed the plunger down slowly. Meanwhile Dennison had concluded his own ministrations and was punctiliously cleaning out his needle and eye-dropper with water.

  “Yes, Johnson wasn’t a bad sort at all,” he was saying.

  “Yes,” said Al, daubing his bleeding scar with a piece of cotton, “he came from a good family, you know, but found it hard going to live up to their square standards, you might say.”

  “Well, I suppose they’ll take his license away from him, but he’ll get another one somewhere else.”

  “Yes, I suppose he’ll make out some way. We all have to take the bumps when they come and try to make the best of it.”

  They cleaned everything up, put away their pills and needles and cottons with great care, Dennison washing out glasses and spoons. Al rubbing the top of the table with a cloth, and everything was neat again. Al put on his coat and hat, and Dennison said he would accompany him downstairs.

  “I’ve got to get a few quarts of milk at the grocery, Al, and some Benzedrine and codeine cough syrup at the drugstore, a few suppositories I want to try out, headache powders for pickup in the mornings, a few things like that, so I might as well walk with you downstairs.”

  Whereupon the tall cadaverous Al opened the door and said, “After you, Will.”

  But Dennison bowed slightly at the waist, smiling, “Please, Al, I am home here.” They went out, ignoring Peter completely and he was left alone.

  He had nothing to do now but go into the front room.

  Junkey was there, sitting on a small barrel, painting lightbulbs blue in a kind of diligent absorption as he talked to Mary Dennison. She was bending over a broom as though in sudden thought. Jack the young hoodlum from Times Square was sitting there quietly. In a dim corner of the room, almost unnoticeable, sat another youngster whom Peter had never seen before, a small shriveled husk of a young-old man with beady gleaming eyes, a pale small face, and infinitely tiny hands that he kept folded primly on his lap as he sat staring at all the others.

  “Well, man,” greeted Junkey, with his somnolent gaze of dry reproach, “I was wondering when you’d come in and say hello.” He had a crooked, pathetic way of grinning. “I’ve got no place to sleep,” he went on. “I was up all last night in Beckwell’s cafeteria on the Square waiting for a guy to show up with some shiazit. Don’t you know, I’m beat and I need some sleep if I’m also going to score with the doctors for everybody around here.” He continued with the bulbs in a dark ruminative chore. The purpose of the blue bulbs, he said, was to give the room a “weird, soothing effect” in the evenings. It was one of Junkey’s many rudimentary decorations intended to ward off the stark street world he always had to live in. He hoped he
could sleep in Dennison’s that night.

  Mary Dennison suddenly snickered secretly, and Jack the hoodlum and the staring madman in the corner said nothing. Peter wondered whether he ought to leave.

  Suddenly the shriveled little man in the corner stood up and spoke. “Who wants a blast?”

  “Everybody wants a blast, man,” said Junkey reproachfully, but a little eagerly too. “I was wondering how long you’d hold out on us with that weed.”

  The shriveled young man methodically removed a long thin cigarette from an envelope and examined it carefully, with a dry, secret grin.

  “I may as well tell you about Clint now that he has come out of his cocoon,” said Junkey, addressing Peter gravely. “Clint is a guy who shows up once a week with the wildest tea in the world, which he has there in his hand. Then he disappears again for a week. I don’t know where he gets that marijuana, but there’s none like it in New York. And I don’t know where he lives, or what he does for a living, or nothing and I don’t ask him. He sits in his corner and says nothing at first, but eventually comes out, Pops, and comes on like you never heard.”

  As Junkey outlined these facts, Clint began painstakingly lighting the cigarette with the deliberation and suaveness of an after-dinner speaker who is about to say a few words, meanwhile looking around at the others with a gleam in his eyes.

  “That’s Clint,” concluded Junkey, “and, man, they don’t make ’em any weirder.”

  “That’s right, Junkey!” piped up Clint proudly in a high-pitched voice. “Now try a drag on this here stick,” and he handed the lighted cigarette to Junkey, who promptly inhaled prodigiously with a furious hissing intake of air that startled Peter, and then passed the cigarette along to Mary Dennison, who also “booted herself to it” (as Junkey put it). Then Peter tried it, and finally Jack the hoodlum “blasted” a while. Then it went back to Clint, who took it and gazed at it reflectively. He suddenly began talking.

  “Tell you about cockroaches,” said Clint with intense enthusiasm, leaning forward with a finger pointed. “Now! The place I live in has a lot of cockroaches, but I don’t have trouble with them, understand, I’m on the best terms with them. Tell you how I do this. Some years ago I sat down and thought about the whole matter: I said to myself, cockroaches are human too, just as much as us human beings. Reason for that is this: I’ve watched them long enough to realize their sense of discretion, their feelings, their emotions, their thoughts, see. But you laugh. You think I’m talking through my hat. You doubt my word. Wait! wait!”

  The others were giggling uncontrollably, even Jack the hoodlum in a sort of idiotic, insolent way.

  “Now!” went on Clint, leaning over towards them even more, stretching out his arms with fantastic emphasis and holding their attention that insane way. “Time came when I got sick and tired of finding cockroaches in my bread and jam on the kitchen table. I like cockroaches, but it was too much, you dig? I got a little string”—and with this Clint dug into his pocket and pulled out a piece of string and held it up to display—“little string like this. Every time I found a cockroach in my bread and jam, I’d give it a little flip of the string, you see, a little whipping on the back. Not hard!” he warned breathlessly. “Not hard! Just … a … little … flick … of my wrist, like this!” He demonstrated gently, over and over again, while the others watched.

  “Now,” went on Clint, “time came when I not only had ’em trained so they wouldn’t mess around my own bread and jam, but they were living in the pan under the table in peace and plenty, in a real orderly fashion, you dig? I used to lay down on the floor and talk to them and watch. Some of them lived in the pan, some of them were recluses and went and lived under the sink pipe. Others were just plain snooty, they had to live in the cracks way up on the wall. They had all kinds of domestic trouble, too. Sometimes a wife would desert her husband and run off with another character, sometimes two husbands would fight it out, sometimes one of them would run wild—a bandit, see?—and steal everything in sight, all the breadcrumbs and jam and carry it off, you dig? It was wild, I tell you, it was wild and weird. Well, here’s what happened. Time came”—here Clint took another drag on the cigarette with a joyous fury—“time came when the cockroaches from next door began to drift into my place, and naturally, not being trained, there they were smelling around on top of my table. I thought I had a revolt on my hands and wasn’t being firm enough, not realizing that these here untrained cockroaches were causing all the trouble and I was beating up my own trained ones for the sins of others. The way I found out is, my cockroaches were sulking and resentful, you understand? When I’d talk to them they wouldn’t even look up. I could see their feelings was hurt. I said to myself, what gives here? Aren’t they happy, ain’t I treating them right? It dawned on me about the cockroaches from next door. Well, there I was, trying to figure out what to do, when my cockroaches sort of all got together in the pan and held a meeting. I could smell trouble was brewing, you understand? I just sat there watching. First thing you know they all take a beeline for the hole in the bottom of the wall leading to the next apartment and started fighting the cockroaches from next door. It was a real knock-out drag-down fight like something you never seen, a regular campaign with flanking attacks and charges and real crazy generals and everything. It was wild, man, it was wild! Next day, the cockroaches from next door stayed where they was put, my own cockroaches settled down to a peaceful disciplined life, and it’s been that way ever since.

  “They keep regular sentries posted at that hole,” he went on. “Nobody can come in. I cried for weeks realizing I was punishing my own cockroaches for the sins of others. I spent days laying on the floor trying to explain to them that I didn’t know, that I couldn’t have possibly dug what was really going on—and they forgave me. As a reward I used to blow a little hay smoke toward them, just a little bit at first, to give ’em some kicks, you understand, and they’d all perk up at first and lift up their noses and take a real deep sniff, like this.” He sniffed deeply, to show them, and laughed scatteringly. “You dig? First thing you know, they was all high on marijuana. They’re all teaheads now. I have to get more and more of the stuff all the time to satisfy them. It’s a real killer, you oughta see it, I can almost see the expression of relief on their faces, dig, because they know they’re really getting the good weed.”

  “Don’t you know, Pops, it’s the best weed in town,” agreed Junkey impassively.

  It was dark when Peter got off the subway in Brooklyn. The streets were thronged with people bound for movies, restaurants, bars, or just strolling pleasurably in the mild night and eating hotdogs at the Fulton Street stands. With a feeling of orphan loss and mystery, and a kind of odd enigmatical consolation, Peter hurried towards home. Just because his parents lived in Brooklyn it seemed a more human place than Manhattan. It also struck him sorrowfully that while all his friends were engaged in their morbid demon-isms, these people were working gravely and living earnestly and enjoying their evenings with quaint and homely gladness. He felt humble and strangely glad.

  When he reached his new Brooklyn home, Peter stood in the dark street looking in at his family with inexpressible joyful confusion. His mother was ironing in the kitchen, his father was reading the papers, and Mickey was in the front room listening to the National Barn Dance with its cowbells and cheers and old-time music blaring on the radio.

  For a moment Peter simply sat down on the iron railing fronting the sidewalk over their basement windows and looked about him, at the mournful-looking moon over the rooftops, at the corner where the boys stood whistling at the girls, at the lovers who passed arm-in-arm talking in low voices in the soft night. Nearby, with thrilling closeness and magic, among the murmurs of Brooklyn and the misty April night, was the deep sonorous quaver of a big ship in the harbor.

  Peter was torn with a hundred confused desires. He wondered how he could have felt such empty bitter horror only a few hours ago in Manhattan.

  “I was wondering when
you’d get home!” his father cried happily. “So there was nothing in Galloway, huh, none of your friends? You didn’t happen to bump into any of my old pals, did you? Pete Cartier, Old Berlot or someone like that? I’ll bet that little old town hasn’t changed a bit, I’d like to visit it myself sometime.” He cackled hoarsely. “Say! you should have saved your money and stayed home with us and seen a couple good shows in New York. As a matter of fact, I was figuring on going to a movie later tonight. Say, Marge, give him some of that soup you made this afternoon and some of that nice crusty bread I bought. He looks half-starved!” The old man was so pleased to see his boy that he could not stop laughing and talking.

  Peter sat at the kitchen table and had rich home-made soup and three porkchops grilled a deep brown, peas, mashed potatoes, fresh tomatoes, bread and butter, two glasses of milk, two pieces of chocolate cake, a small piece of home-made date pie, and hot coffee. His parents sat with him and drank coffee and talked, anxiously watching him eat, while Mickey shyly turned the pages of the newspaper and stayed beside them all.

  “I suppose you saw your sweetie-pie?” the old man joked. “Your rootie-tootie Judie with the slacks? Boy, she certainly is a character if I ever saw one. You’re not thinking of marrying her, are you?” he ribbed slyly.

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Just the same, Petey, you shouldn’t be living with her like that,” spoke up Mrs. Martin. “A girl doesn’t really respect the man when she lets him live outright with her. Of course, I don’t know about Judie herself, she seems a nice little girl, but I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Ma, forget it! It’s no great scandal, people do that nowadays. Times have changed—”