AMERICAN OBITUARY
The highways of America are white with summer now, and through the dust go the homeless. Till one thinks of America as a long dust road leading to nowhere. The road curves by the wharves of New Orleans, where merchant ships wait high in dry-dock; past the freight yards in Council Bluffs, where the box-cars rot on the sidings. This is America, the vast heart of her, with grey boy-faces pressed to the cold blue bars.
On Madison Street in Chicago the boys stand on corners waiting.
Down at the morgue I saw Frank Mears, address unknown, lying on his back with his eyes still wide and his belly still blue from the water. The ticket on the box said, Frank J. Mears, no address, cause unknown. This is the American thing, the unknown death in the heat of midday, and the country boy in the long ice-box.
Say this is how it happened; say this is how it was.
Frank Mears turned south down Dearborn Street, and no face turned to follow. He went into a tavern where music was, and he’d been drinking four straight days. He banged on a table till they threw him out, and he walked back south down Dearborn. On Harrison Street he stood and swayed: a dollar bill was all he possessed, and he waved it like a flag. Two lean men saw him doing that, and when he walked on they followed. Frank Mears turned into a dime burlesque, and he watched till they threw him out.
Frank Mears, no address, slugged for ninety cents.
The lean one said, “Let me help you, friend,” and Frank Mears leaned on his arm. The other one said, “This way, kid,” and Frank Mears followed, swaying.
American youth, as a boy you sat on a barrel in front of the general store in Sangamon County, watching the farm-carts coming into town. Dust rose uneasily from between their wheels, and the country dogs lay in the sun. Between Hurricane Creek and the slow-winding Sangamon there was a kind of tumultuous, rough- and tumble wildness about the Illinois prairie that all the railroads had not tamed. It was still a vast and sprawling country of shaggy hills and undammed creeks and half-cleared forests. In the moment before the dark came down, Frank Mears, you remembered these farm-carts coming into town. You saw the slow dust rising from between their wheels.
You didn’t know, that morning when you caught a slow freight through Sangamon County, Frank Mears. When you got into Springfield you gaped at Lincoln’s tomb a while, and then you got on toward Chicago.
Frank Mears, unemployed by civilization, age twenty-two perhaps. Perhaps twenty-five. And whether you came from Council Bluffs, from Sangamon County or from East St. Louis, you still wouldn’t have gotten drunk one day if you’d had a day’s work to do.
So cover up the box. Beside the low siloes on prairie farms, below the tipples of mines long abandoned or above zinc smelters silent now in the valleys, red cedar and black tamarack wait, creeping to claim back their own. Though Sangamon County has been laced with long steel rails the prairie still plunges, like a wild horse with outstruck hooves, across the planned ties and over the planned Sears-Roebuck fences, past the low siloes, through the Indian corn, across the fields and the farms and the mines and the factories between Hurricane Creek and the slow Sangamon. America is a long dust-road. Frank Mears sways in the sun.
THE LIGHTLESS ROOM
PITTSBURGH, PA (AP).… Coroner’s physician Ed Biddeson disclosed today that the death of Frank (“Blackie”) Cavanaugh, Chicago welterweight pugilist, was caused by cerebral hemorrhage sustained when he was knocked out in the third round of a scheduled eight-round preliminary with Benny Speciale of this city, at Sportsmen’s Arena Saturday night. Ringside spectators assert that Cavanaugh’s head struck the canvas as he fell and that he may have been dead before having been fully counted out. Dr. Biddeson’s postmortem serves to substantiate this opinion. Coroner Mark-heim has ordered a thorough investigation into the death.
—News Dispatch
CAVANAUGH’S GIRL-FRIEND:
We was always suppose to get married, right from the start, but I don’t think we would of ever, even if this hadn’t happened. Now that he’s gone I can say it better: Blackie never meant a thing he said, he lied to me more often than not. I woulda married him any time he woulda just give the word so’s I could go home again and hold up my head to Pa like a Christian and say I was now lawfully wed.
But it would have had to have been at St. Columbanus to please Pa, with Father Ryan officiatin’. And Father Ryan wouldn’t even confess Blackie no more, far less marry him to a really church-going girl like me. Father Ryan always thought so highly of me. So no matter how you figure it, it couldn’t hardly ever of been, ’cause Blackie just wasn’t the kind to change his ways for a woman, he’d had so many of them. Even after me and him started going together so steady that folks would hint around to find out if we was married secret, he’d still brag up other women, about the places he took them he wouldn’t be seen in with me. And what he done with them just as easy as with me, every time.
Once, when we was first going together, Blackie knocked out a nigger, and Judge Costello came down in the locker room and give him ten dollars for training expenses and called him the White Hope of White City. The next afternoon at three o’clock sharp I met him in front of the Woodlawn. He kissed me that time and said we would now be lawfully wed, and on the way to the El we stopped in at John O’Connor’s.
I couldn’t any more stop him from drinking than I could have from fighting when he was mad. The drink was in him like the fighting, and not me nor him nor his father and brothers nor Father Ryan hisself could put any sort of a stop to either one. I begged O’Connor he should give Blackie no more, that we was that day to be lawfully wed. But all O’Connor done was quit selling to me, saying I was more drunk than Blackie. That may well have been, I have been known to overdo it. The middle of the week and this was the middle of the week; but I yet knew better what it was I wanted, drunk or sober, than Blackie ever did. It was him shouldn’t have been having the gins that time and not me. And when it got so late I knew full well we would never make the City Hall that day and it might be six months or a year or never before ever we had another ten-spot between us again, I slapped him hard, in the dark of the booth, and walked out praying Mary he wouldn’t let me go.
At the corner I let him catch up, holding a half-empty beer glass and his shirt-tails out. “I’m a fool for mistreatin’ a good woman,” he said, and that black curly hair was in his eyes till I could have kissed him right there on the public street. “We’ll be wed by Judge Costello hisself this very night.” Then he threw the beer in my eyes and shoved me flat against a store-glass like forcing a man onto the ropes. I heard the glass begin cracking above me, but he was too weak from the drink to shove me through. I shoved him off and ran, with him kicking me from behind—that’s a shameful thing for a woman to have to remember, any woman. Two blocks I ran, down 63rd, till there was no breath left in me, and people just making room instead of stopping him, men passing and one or two laughing even, and myself not well able to see any more where I was running, for the beer burning my eyes. And being that heartbroke.
And that’s how he would do: pretend he was crazy about me till he got me believing it all over again, and then right off act like an infidel, like he hated me something terrible. And which was how he really felt, I never did learn, and I doubt Frank knew hisself.
But those ones who laughed on the street that time—Lord how ever I held up my head that Sunday Mass I can’t say to this hour. But maybe you do see now, when his friends show me the sport page so I can see for myself it is so, that I’ve the same feeling I had when I prayed Mary every night for something to happen that Pa said never could be. And then it happen just the same, and Pa was that proud of me in front of people as he’s never once been since. I really hope you don’t mind my saying Frank was no good, but—just between you and me and Father Ryan of course—he didn’t care, one way or another, whether he lived or he died, and I do forgive him in my heart. Unless he’s just bad hurt and gets better or so paralyzed drunk again they can’t tell he’s not dead.
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HIS FATHER:
When an Irishman is bad, he’s very bad, he’s simply no good a-tall. The boys are all fine boys, I’ve been a sober hard-working man all my days. Frank was our first, the only one born in the Old World. And the only one to turn out bad.
Simply no good a-tall.
SAUL SINGER, HIS MANAGER:
Well, Blackie won’t be around Coulon’s this winter, lazying against the ropes when he ought to be in there mixing it and getting the booze out of his system. Loafing on the rubbing table in them trunks with the shamrock my own wife sewed on for him. Chewing the fat and always razzing the boys who are going somewhere some day, telling everybody how they ain’t going nowheres, ever. Betting even the promising boys they’ll be walking on their heels after their next fight, always roughing it up or holding on or fighting in a shell when he should ought to be in there mixing it clean, never taking the cigarette out of his puss in workouts unless I took it out for him.
Honest, I couldn’t tell you straight if Blackie was a contender or a bum. I couldn’t never find out myself, and it’s about killed me trying to. He’d never show me what he really had, he was forever holding something out on me. Right up to last Saturday night.
It does seem though that it almost had to be Blackie if it was anyone. The way he was always squawking he was going to quit on me just as soon as he could get on cash relief—that was how he really felt.
He was the only one of the boys around Coulon’s who seemed to know he wasn’t going nowheres.
Well, he was right, I can see now, but I wasn’t so certain then. And it’s bad to think of him not being around in that faded green sweater comin out at the elbows and the faded letter they’d give him out at Fenger High a dozen years ago. Not pickin up pins at the White City bowlin alleys for his supper and a ten-dollar four-rounder on Monday night or knocking off clay pigeons for a snort of bar-whiskey behind the stands, challenging the boys who run the concessions, and settin on the newsstand at 63rd and South Park like that first time I seen him, wavin a red toy cane in one hand and a Popeye kewpie in the other, barrelhouse drunk and cussing out everyone walking past him. He’d just lost to Bruno Meleska, a good boy I was handling at the time, and he yelled over at me I was just one more flannel-mouth Polack and did I want a piece of what he had give Meleska. You would have thought he had beat Bruno to hear him. I came over to see what he looked like up close and told him I’d like some of it too, just to see what he’d do. He just sat there waving that Popeye and the red cane around and yelling he’d go out of his class and lick every flannel-mouth Polack on Chicago Av’noo.
I picked him up a few days later just for his cockiness. He never did come through any more in the fights I got him though he come through that night. But it does make me feel low thinkin how I won’t never see him yank off a tablecloth in O’Connor’s, beers and all onto the floor again, and then call O’Connor a underfed shoneen. He’d get hisself and everybody with him thrown out of some place, and then back in and argue till they tossed him out again. “I liked that,” he’d say as soon as he caught his wind on the sidewalk. “Give me some more of that, O’Connor you filth”—and out he’d come flying again, and keep it up till O’Connor either closed the place or called the squad. I won’t pass no tavern no more and hear him shoutin around inside for the biggest shot on 63rd Street, even if he was orderin it somewheres in Blue Island or Gary. Or meet him weavin down 57th at nine o’clock of a Sunday morning with a half-gallon empty under either arm, brushing folks out of his way and panhandling every Irish face he passed. The good Irish on their way to Mass would keep right on going when he’d offer to give them the empties for half the price of the refund on them.
Maybe we brought him along too fast. Maybe he was overmatched. His feet wouldn’t follow his punches though, ever; though he was fast enough when he was right. If he’d been right a little more often, if he’d of lived right even three days of the week before a fight, say, this never would have happened. It only happened because deep inside him he wanted it to.
I had that feeling that he’d been holding out the whole time. Looking down at his casket in the open grave with five shots of good Irish whiskey inside of me, I tossed the empty bottle in against the edge of the casket and bust it. And all at once it just seemed to me this was just a new way Blackie had thought up of holding back on me. If I’d had one more and the casket would have still been open, I would have bust the bottle on his stubborn skull. It’s four days now since the wake and I can’t seem to care about the things I got to do, one way or another, any more than he ever did.
If I’d never crossed the street that night after he lost to Bruno Meleska to talk to the tramp, I’d be settin on top of the world this minute, instead of where I am.
HIS MOTHER:
Of all the money that lad made at gambling and fighting, even stealing for all I might have known and setting such an example to his younger brothers as more than once made me wish him out of the house to stay, he never so much as once brought a dollar home or bought his mother so much as a flimsy house dress. All he ever brought me home was that night-cat Marge of his, to sleep with him in the roomer’s bed after the roomer had went off to work. And leave me to make their sheets up afters. Then back they’d go to their boozing and helling and whoring back of White City soon. As ever the streets were darkening and the little lights coming on.
So ‘tis just as well I say, for he was the sort of lad who’d strike his own mother, once the will took him. And I say Father Ryan was right in washing his hands of the lad, his own father and brothers was right in throwing him out when his breath smelt of the drink. And the lad would best have died in his cradle in Cork. And I’m a church woman in good standing that’s saying this.
I thank the Virgin not one of his brothers are fighters and gamblers, they’re good boys every one and it was Mary’s blessing, nothing less, that made him the one to go. I thank the Saviour he’ll not be bringing home that little simpering thing to sleep with him in the roomer’s bed, be leaving the sheets for me to make up afters and then to have her crossing herself like a nun and saying a Novena at my own table soon as ever it’s getting dark in the streets again.
CAVANAUGH:
I was fit that night. Hadn’t had me a drop all day nor a woman all the week. Feeling good too I was and knowing I could win, and weighed myself in feeling high as any lark.
It weren’t till the night and the great lights comin on in the streets, and the little sign-lights in between beginnin their flickerin off and on, and everythin else gettin dark again, like the only way I remember Cork, as though nothing might ever be light again. Then I sat alone in the hotel room recalling what a fool I been all my days, and what foolish things I’m still after doin. The foolish women always in my way, the foolish drink and all. And all the while the great night comin on the other side of the little window. And the foolish way I’ve wasted my strength on those streets.
What small difference could it make after all then, I asked myself, did myself or this I-talian lad win tonight? I asked it out loud, being there so alone by myself, and it seemed in that moment there was no other human voice in that whole great hotel. Nor anythin quite human on the street below. Nor in that whole great city. And how my own mother no longer cared in her heart, as she used to when I was a child in Cork and her only one, did I die on the street this very night.
And the whole great city I’d never been in before and nobody in it any longer knowin or carin. And my own manager, for all I could tell, bettin my own money against me, and me with no certain way of finding him out for sure. I looked then once at myself in the cracked dresser mirror. And even to myself then, I saw I looked like a ragged stranger. The unclane kind you send his ways before he finishes his whimperin just for the very foul look of him. And none of them, not even Sol Singer, knowin the sort of thing I wanted the whole time. And myself with no real way of showing them at all.
It was a sort of place I wanted, all my own mind you, a kind of a room I
must have been inside of, one time or another far back, a very small sort of room it must have been and I a very small sort of child. For I first recall wishing to be back within it with mother, when we were yet in Cork. A small room, surely, quiet in there and warm, with no small sign-lights going on and off in the street below. And no way of getting dark in there as though nothing at all could be light again.
Surely it was only for the wanting of such a place that I loved the drink instead. It would take four good preliminaries in New York, Sol would say, and me in the best shape of my career, to pay the rent of a month of such a place as often as I told him I wanted, the best way I could tell him. And how it was all he could do to keep getting me on once or twice a month at White City. Had he just not brought me along that fast, had it just not been for the drink and that holy-talkin Marge, perhaps then I might well have gotten those New York fights and even won them too. Then I would have set up in contracting with the old man, I should of clane forgot the drink. I should of set with my feet on the desk like Judge Costello hisself and never be after gettin my mouth bust open of a Monday night off some Chicago Av’noo Polack for twelve dollars and expenses, just because a crowd likes to see an Irishman take it. I would’ve got myself married to some quiet sort from around St. Columbanus. But no one like that holy Marge—how is a man supposed to respect a woman he has his own way with all the time, any night of the week, every night he has nothing to do and time on his hands, in the park or the fun-house at Riveriew or out at Danceland when they dim the lights? I had my way with Marge the first night ever I seen her, up at the Merry Gardens it was, and many’s the night since I’ve wished I’d not gone dancin that night. The very righteous way she’d carry on about gettin married and all, when all I wanted was peace and quiet and some little way of livin, of gettin along just from day to day without gettin my puss bust in of a Monday. But she cared for nothing, nothing at all; save the gossiping tongue of that Father Ryan.