ALL DAY WE HAD BEEN sitting in the piano box waiting for the rain to stop. Below us, twenty feet away, the muddy Savannah River oozed past, carrying to the sea the dead pines and rotted mule collars of the uplands.
Overhead, the newly completed Fifth Street Bridge kept us dry. We had stacked piles of brickbats under the corners of the piano box to keep the floor of it dry, and the water that drained from the bridge and red-clay embankment passed under us on its way to the swollen river.
Every once in a while Dave got up on his hands and knees and turned the straw over. It was banana straw, and it was soggy and foul-smelling. There was just enough room for the two of us in the crate, and if the straw was not evenly strewn, it made lumps under our backs and sides that felt as hard as bricks.
Just behind us was a family of four living in a cluster of dry-goods boxes. The boxes had been joined together by means of holes cut in the sides, like those of doghouses, and the mass of packing cases provided four or five rooms. The woman had two Dominique hens. These she kept in the box with her all the time, day and night, stroking their feathers so they would be persuaded to lay eggs for her. There were a dozen or more other crates under the South Carolina side of the bridge; when old men and women, starved and yellow, died in one of them, their bodies were carried down to the river and lowered into the muddy water; when babies were born, people leaned over the railings above and listened to the screams of birth and threw peanut shells over the side.
At dark the rain stopped. The sky looked as if it would not clear before morning, and we knew it would drizzle all night. Dave was restless, and he could not stay in the box any longer.
“Come on, Mike,” he said. “Let’s get out of here and dig up something to eat somewhere.”
I followed him through the red mud up the side of the embankment to the pavement above. We walked through puddles of water, washing the sticky red clay from our feet as we went.
Dave had fifty cents in his pocket and I was determined not to let him buy me anything to eat. He had baled waste paper in a basement factory off and on for two weeks, and when he worked, he made fifty cents a day. He had worked the day before in the basement, and the money had been kept all that time.
When we crossed the river into Georgia, I turned sharply to the right and started running up the levee away from Dave. I had gone fifty yards when he caught me by the sweater and made me stop. Then he took the fist out of his pocket and showed me the fifty-cent piece.
“Don’t worry about me, Dave,” I told him, catching his wrist and forcing his hand back into his pocket. “I’ll get by till tomorrow. I’ve got the promise of a half-day job, and that ought to be good for a dollar — a half, anyway. Go on and buy yourself a good meal, Dave.”
“No,” Dave said, jerking the fist out of his pants. “We’ll split it.”
He pulled me along with him towards the city. We broke through the levee grass and went down the embankment to the pavement. There was a dull orange glow in the low sky ahead of us, and the traffic in the streets sounded like an angry mob fighting for their lives.
We walked along together, splashing through the shallow puddles of rainwater on the pavement, going towards the city. Suddenly Dave stopped squarely in the middle of a sheet of rainwater that had not drained off into the sewers.
“You’re young, Mike,” he said, catching my sweater and shaking it as a dog does a pillow. “I’m old, but you’re young. You can find out what to do, and come back and tell me, and we’ll do it.”
“What’s the matter, Dave?” I asked him. “What are you talking about?”
He waved his arm in an arc that took in most of the world.
“Somewhere there’s people who know what to do about being down and out. If you could find out from them, and come back, we could do it.”
“It’ll take more than two of us, Dave. We’ll have to get a lot more on our side first.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “As soon as the people know what to do, and how to do it, we can go up and run hell out of those fat bastards who won’t give us our jobs back.”
“Maybe it’s not time yet, Dave.”
“Not time yet! Haven’t I been out of my job two years now? How much time do you want? Now’s the time, before all of us starve to death and get carried feet first down into that mud-slough of a river.”
Before I could say anything, he had turned around and started up the street again. I ran and caught up with him. We splashed through the puddles, dodging the deepest-looking ones.
Dave had had a good job in a fertilizer plant in South Augusta two years before. But they turned him out one day, and they would not take him back. There were seventy men in the crowd that was laid off that time. Dave would never tell me what had happened to the rest of them, but I knew what had happened to Dave. After he had run behind in house rent for six or seven months, the landlord told him to move out. Dave would not do it. He said he was going to stay there until he got back his job in the fertilizer plant in South Augusta. Dave stayed.
Dave stayed in the house for another four months, but long before the end of that time the window sashes and doors of the building had been taken out and carried off by the owner. When winter came, the rain soaked the house until it was as soggy as a log of punkwood. After that, the cold winds of January drove through the dwelling, whistling through the wide slits of the house like a madman breathing through clenched teeth. There was no wood or coal to burn in the fireplaces. There were only two quilts and a blanket for Dave and his wife and three children. Two of the children died before the end of January. In February his wife went. In March there was a special prayer service in one of the churches for Dave and his eleven-year-old daughter, but Dave said all he got out of it was a pair of khaki pants with two holes the size of dinner plates in the seat.
Dave did not know whether his remaining daughter had died, or whether she was being taken care of by charity, or whether she had been taken in to live at a whorehouse. The last time he had seen her was when a policeman came and took her away one morning, leaving Dave sitting in a corner of the windowless house wrapped in the two quilts and a blanket.
We had reached Seventh Street by that time. The Plaza was hidden in fog, and all around it the tall hotels and government buildings rose like century-old tombstones damp and gray.
“Go on and eat, Dave,” I told him again. “When you get through, I’ll meet you here, and we’ll walk back to the river and get in out of the cold.”
“I’m not going a step till you come with me.”
“But I’m not hungry, Dave. I wouldn’t lie to you. I’m not hungry.”
“I’m not going to eat, then,” he said again.
The night was getting colder and more raw all the time. Some drain water in the gutter at our feet lay in a long snakelike stream, and it looked as if it would freeze before much longer. The wind was coming up, blowing the fog down the river and stinging our backs. A moment later it had shifted its course and was stinging our faces.
“Hurry up, Dave,” I begged him. “There’s no sense in our standing here and freezing. I’ll meet you in half an hour,”
Dave caught my sweater and pulled me back. The roar of speeding automobiles and the crashing rumble of motor trucks made such a din in the street that we had to shout to make ourselves heard.
Just as I was about to try again to make him get something to eat for himself, I turned around and saw a black sedan coming around the corner behind us. It was coming fast, more than forty miles an hour, and it was on the inside, cutting the corner.
I pulled at Dave to get him out of the way, because his back was turned to the sedan and he could not see it.
He evidently thought I was trying to make him go to the restaurant alone, because he pulled away from me and stepped backward out of my reach. It was too late then to try to grab him and get him out of the way, and all I could do was to shout at him as loud as I could above the roar in the street. Dave must still have thought I was trying to make him go to the restaurant alone, because he stepped backward again. As he stepped backward the second time, the bumper and right front mudguard on the sedan struck him. He was knocked to the sidewalk like a duckpin.
The man who was driving the big sedan had cut the corner by at least three feet, because the wheels had jumped the curb.
There was a queer-looking expression on Dave’s face.
The driver stopped, and he walked back to where we were. By that time people had begun to gather from all directions, and we were surrounded on all sides.
“Are you hurt, Daver?” I asked him, getting down on the sidewalk with him.
The driver had pushed through the crowd, and when I looked up, he was standing at Dave’s feet looking down at us, scowling.
“Mike,” Dave said, turning his face towards me, “Mike, the half-dollar piece is in my right-hand pants pocket.”
His fingers were clutching my hand, and he held me tight, as though he were afraid he would fall.
“Forget the half, Dave,” I begged him. “Tell me if you’re hurt. If you are, I’ll get a doctor right away.”
Dave opened his eyes, looking straight up at me. His shoulders moved slightly, and he held me tighter.
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” the driver of the sedan said, pushing the crowd away from him with his elbows. “There’s nothing the matter with him. He’s faking.”
The man stood erect above us, looking down at Dave. His mouth was partly open, and his lips were rounded, appearing to be swollen. When he spoke, there was no motion on his lips; they looked like a bloodless growth on his mouth, curling outward.
“Mike,” Dave said, “I guess I’ll have to give up trying to get my job back. It’s too late now; I won’t have time enough.”
The man above us was talking to several persons in the crowd. His lips seemed to be too stiff to move when he spoke; they looked by that time like rolls of unbaked dough.
“He’s faking,” he said again. “He thinks he can get some money out of me, but I’m wise to the tricks of these bums. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s no more hurt than I am.”
I could hear people all around us talking. There was one fellow in the crowd behind me talking loud enough for everyone to hear. I could not see his face, but no one could have failed to hear every word he said.
“Sure, he’s a bum. That’s why they don’t take him to the hospital. What in hell do they care about a bum? They wouldn’t give him a ride to the hospital, because it might cost them something. They might get the Goddam sedan bloody. They don’t want bum’s blood on the Goddam pretty upholstery.”
I unbuttoned Dave’s sweater and put my hand under his shirt, trying to find out if there were any bones broken in his shoulder. Dave had closed his eyes again, but his fingers were still gripped tightly around my wrist.
“He’s faking,” the driver said. “These bums try all kinds of tricks to get money. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s not hurt. He’s faking.”
The fellow behind us in the crowd was talking again.
“Why don’t you take him to the hospital in your sedan, Dough-Face?”
The man looked the crowd over, but he made no reply.
I drew my hand out from under Dave’s shirt and saw blood on my fingers. It had not come from his shoulder. It came from the left side of his chest where he had struck the pavement when the sedan knocked him down and rolled over him. I put my hand inside again, feeling for broken bones. Dave’s body on that side was soft and wet, and I had felt his heart beating as though I had held it in the palm of my hand.
“How about taking him to the hospital?” I said to the driver looking down at us. “He’s been hurt.”
“That’s the way these bums fake,” the driver said, looking from face to face in the crowd. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s not hurt. If he was hurt, he’d yell about it. You don’t hear him yelling and groaning, do you? He’s just lying there waiting for me to throw him a ten or a twenty. If I did that and drove off, he’d jump up and beat it around the block before I could get out of sight. I know these bums; all they want is money. That one down there is faking just like all the rest of them do. He’s no more hurt than I am.”
I tried to get up and lift Dave in my arms. We could carry him to the hospital, even if the driver wouldn’t take him in the sedan.
The driver was facing the crowd again, trying to convince the people that Dave was attempting to hold him up for some money.
“He’s faking!” he said, shouting between his dead lips. “These bums think they can get money by jumping in front of an automobile and then yelping that they’re hurt. It’s a good lesson for them; maybe they’ll stop it now. I’m wise to them; I know when they’re faking.”
Dave opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Wait a minute, Mike,” he said. “Put me down. I want to tell you something.”
I laid him on the sidewalk as carefully as I could. He lay there looking up at me, his hand gripping my wrist.
“I just want to make sure you know where the half is, Mike,” he said. “The half is in my right-hand pants pocket.”
I was about to tell him again that it was all right about the fifty cents, and to forget it, when suddenly his grip on my wrist loosened and his eyes clouded.
During all the time I knelt there holding him in my arms I was trying to think of something to say to Dave before it was too late.
Before I could think of anything to tell him, the driver of the sedan elbowed closer and looked down at us.
“He’s faking,” he said. “The dirty bum’s faking.”
He elbowed his way out of the crowd and went toward his sedan. When he reached it, he shouted back over the heads of the people.
“There’s nothing wrong with him! He can’t put nothing over on me! I’m wise to these dirty bums. All they want is some money, and then they get well quick enough. The dirty bum’s faking!”
“Sure, he’s a bum,” the fellow behind me said, his voice ringing as clear as a bell. “He might get some bum’s blood on your Goddam pretty upholstery.”
Just then a policeman came running up, attracted by the crowd. He pushed the people away and poked me with his nightstick and asked what the trouble was. Before I could tell him, he struck me on the back with the billy.
“What the hell you guys blocking the street for?”
I told him Dave was dead.
He bent down and saw Dave for the first time.
“That’s different,” he said.
He turned around and walked half a block to a call box and rang up the city hospital for an ambulance. By the time he had come back, the man who was driving the sedan had left.
“Why didn’t you take him to the hospital in the car that knocked him down?” the policeman asked, whirling his nightstick and looking down the street at a woman in front of a show window.
“Hell, can’t you see he’s a bum?” the fellow behind me said. “We didn’t want to get bum’s blood all over the Goddam pretty upholstery.”
The policeman stopped and looked at the fellow and me. He took a step forward.
“On your way, bums,” he said, prodding us with his billy. “Clear out of here before I run you both in.”
I ran back beside Dave and stood over him, a foot on each side of his body. The policeman jumped at me, swinging his billy and cursing.
All at once the street lights went black, and when I could see again, the fellow who had stayed with me was dragging me down the street towards the freightyards. As we passed under the last street light, I looked up into his face gratefully. Neither of us said anything.
(First published in the New Masses)