Because of New Year’s I get the big room, eight-dollar room. But it seems smaller than before; and sitting by the window, looking out on the rain and town, I know the waiting eats at me again. I should never show up in these little river towns until my tug puts in – but I always come early, wait, watch people on the street. Out there vapor lamps flicker violet, bounce their light up from the pavement, twist everything’s color. A few people walk along in the drizzle, but they don’t stop to look into cheap-shop windows.
Aways past the streets I see the river in patches between buildings, and the black joints of river are frosted by this foggy rain. But on the river it’s always the same. Tomorrow starts another month on the river, then a month on land – only the tales we tell will change, wrap around other times and other names. But there will be the same crew on the Delmar, the same duty for eighteen hours a day, and pretty soon there won’t be tales. For now, I wait, watch the wind whip rain onto the panes and blur the glass.
I plug in the hot plate for coffee, look through the paper for something to do, but there is no wrestling or boxing for tonight, and even the bowling alley is closed for New Year’s. I could maybe go down to a bar on First Avenue, sort of tie one on, but not if I have to watch barge rats and walk the wet steel edges tomorrow. Better to buy a pint and whiskey myself into an early sack, better not to think about going out.
I down my coffee too soon, burn my mouth. Nothing ever goes just the way it should. I figure that is my bitch with New Year’s – it’s a start all right – only I think back on parties we had in the Navy, and how we pulled out the stops the year we got to be short-timers, and it leaves me feeling lousy to sit here thinking about parties and work and the baby year and the old wornout year. I want to haul my ass out of here – I have been inside too long.
I get my jacket and watch cap, then stand outside my door and light a cigarette. The hall and stairwell are all lit up to keep away the whores and stumblebums. The door across the hall opens and the drag queen peeks out, winks at me: ‘Happy New Year.’ He closes his door quietly, and I cut loose, kick the door, smudge the paint with my gum soles. I hear him in there laughing at me, laughing because I am alone. All the way down the stairs I can hear his laugh. He is right: I need a woman – not just a lousy chip – I need the laying quiet after that a chip never heard of. When I come to the lobby full of fat women and old men, I think how this is all the home I have. Maybe I have bought this room forever – I just might not need another flop after tonight.
I stand under the marquee, smoke, look back into the lobby at the old cruds. I think how all my fosters were old and most of them dead by now. Maybe it’s better they are dead or I might go back and visit them and cramp their style. There wouldn’t be any welfare check tied to me now, and I am too big to be whipped.
I toss my cigarette, watch it bob down the gutter-wash and through the grate. It will probably be in the Mississippi before the Delmar. Moping around these towns for nine months has made me screwy; walking barges and securing catheads in high water has finally got me down here with the rest of the cruds. Now my mouth hurts from the coffee burn, and I don’t even feel like getting soused. I walk down the street, watch people as they pass, and think how even the chippies in their long vinyl coats walk like they have someplace to be. I think I am getting pretty low if these old sows are starting to look good.
I walk until I see a stumblebum cut into a passage between two buildings. He has got his heat in him and he is squared away. I stop to watch this jake-legger try to spread out his papers for a bed, but the breeze through the passage keeps stirring his papers around. It’s funny to watch this scum chase papers, his old pins about ready to fold under him. The missions won’t let him in because he is full of heat, so this jake-legger has to chase his papers tonight. Pretty soon all that exercise will make him puke up his heat, and I stand and grin and wait for this to happen, but my grin slips when I see her standing in that doorway.
She is just a girl – fourteen, fifteen – but she stares at me like she knows what I’m thinking, what I’m waiting to see with this old bum, and she keeps looking at me like she is the Wrath of God or something. My eyes hurt to watch her from the side while I keep my face on the stumblebum, but I watch just the same. I can tell right off she is not a chippy. Her front is more like a kid who had a home once – jeans, a real raincoat, a plastic scarf on her head. And she is way too young for this town – the law won’t put up with fresh chicken in this place. I think she has probably run off, and that type is hard to figure out. I walk past her, pay no attention, then duck into a doughnut shop.
Prince Albert sits at the counter talking to himself, running rusty fingers through his hair and beard. His skin is yellowish because he cauterised his brain with a forty-volt system aboard the Cramer. I hear he was a good wireman, but now he is just a gov’t suck, and he is dirty and smells like any wino on the street.
I eat my sinker, sip coffee and look out the window. Traffic thickens, the parties are building up. That girl walks by, looks in the storefront at me like she knows exactly when I’m going to fall between two barges in a lurch. It gives me the creeps and I leave my coffee, go for some whiskey and a nap, but when I get outside, she is far down the street, going toward the shanty bars on First Avenue. The rain blows up a howl, whipping sheets of water along the sidewalks. I follow her until she gets into another doorway. My watch cap is soaked, and water starts running down my face and neck, but I go to her doorway, stand in the rain looking at her.
She says, ‘You want to buy me?’
I stand there for a long time trying to figure if it’s a coneroo. ‘You got a room?’ I say.
She shakes her head, looks across the street, then up and down it.
‘We’ll use mine, but I want some booze.’
‘All right, I know a place that sells it,’ she says.
‘I know a better place.’ I am wise to that trick. I am not about to let her pimp roll me. But it bugs me – I can’t figure what kind of pimp wouldn’t keep a room. If she is working alone she won’t last two days between the cops and the pimps.
We go on down the street to a state store. It is good to have somebody to go along with, but she looks so serious, like all she thinks about is the business end of this. I buy a pint of Jack Daniel’s, try to joke. ‘Jack and me go way back,’ I say, but she acts like she can’t hear me.
When we walk into the lobby of the hotel, two old men stop talking to look at us. I think how they must have the hots for her, envy me, and I am glad these cruds are paying attention. At my door, I take my time unlocking, and hope the queen peeks out, but he is off getting buggered. We go in, and I get us a towel to dry off, make coffee for the whiskey.
‘It’s nice here,’ she says.
‘Yeah. They spray regular.’
For the first time she smiles, and I think how she ought to be off playing jacks or something.
‘I’m not much good at this,’ she says. ‘The first guys hurt me pretty bad, so I’m always sort of scared.’
‘That’s because you ain’t cut out for it.’
‘No, it’s just I need a place. I got to stop moving around, you know?’
‘Yeah.’ In the window I see our ghosts against the black gloss of glass. She puts her arm around me, and I think how we maybe never left the business end.
‘Why’d you come to me?’ she says.
‘You looked at me funny – like you seen something awful was going to happen to me.’
She laughs. ‘Well, I didn’t. I was sizing you.’
‘Yeah. I’m just jittery tonight. I’m second mate on a tug. It’s kind of dangerous.’
‘What’s a second mate do?’
‘Everything the captain or first mate won’t do. It ain’t much of a life.’
‘Then why don’t you just quit?’
‘Some things are worse. Quits ain’t the answer.’
‘Maybe not.’
Her hand on my neck teases me into smiling about her, liking her. ‘Why don’t you quit trying to be a chippy? You ain’t got the stuff. You’re better than that.’
‘It’s nice you think so,’ she says.
I look at her, think what she could be if she had a break or two. But she won’t get them here. Nobody here gets a break. I could tell her about my fosters or the ladies in the welfare offices, and the way they looked at me when they put me on a bus for another town, but it wouldn’t make any sense to her. I turn off the light and we undress, get into bed.
The darkness is the best thing. There is no face, no talk, just warm skin, something close and kind, something to be lost in. But when I take her, I know what I’ve got – a little girl’s body that won’t move from wear or pleasure, a kid playing whore, and I feel ugly with her, because of her. I force myself on her like the rest. I know I am hurting her, but she will never get any breaks. She whimpers and my body arches in spasms, then after, she curls in a ball away from me, and I touch her. She is numb.
I say, ‘You could stay here this month. I mean if you wanted to, I could pay up the rent and you could get a real job and pay me back.’
She just lays there.
‘Maybe you could get work uptown at Sears or Penney’s.’
‘Why don’t you just shut-the-fuck-up.’ She climbs out of bed. ‘Just pay me off, okay?’
I get up, find my pants, peel off twenty and give it to her. She doesn’t look at the bill, but grabs her coat, runs out the door.
I sit on the bed, light a cigarette, and my skin crawls to think what could happen to that girl; then I tell myself it was just a waste of time and money. I think back to high school when I was courting Jane. Her parents left us alone in the living room, but her poodle kept screwing at my leg. I think I’d like to get a car and go back looking for that dog, but it is always like that – a waste of time and money.
I snipe my cigarette, lay back on the bed with the light on, and think about Prince Albert with sinker crumbs in his beard, coffee stains on his shirt. I think how there must be ten of his kind in every town down to the delta, and how the odds on ending up that way must be pretty low. Something goes screwy and they grab the wrong wire, make a stupid move on the locks. But if nothing goes wrong, then they are on for a month, off for a month, and if they are lucky they can live that way the rest of their days.
I dress and go out again. It is still raining and the cold pavement shines with new ice. Between the buildings the bums are sleeping in the trash they have piled up, and I think about some nut in California who cut wino’s throats, but I can’t see the percentage. The stumblebums are like Prince Albert, they ran out of luck, hit the skids.
I turn onto First Avenue, walk slowly by the row of crowded taverns, look in the windows at all the lucky people getting partied up for New Year’s. Then I see her sitting at a table near the back door. I go in, take a stool at the bar, order a whiskey, neat. The smoke cloud is heavy, but I see her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. From the way her mouth is hanging limp I see she is pretty drunk. I don’t guess she knows she can’t drink her way out of this.
I look around. All these people have come down from their flops because there are no parties for them to go to. They are strangers who play a little pool or pinball, drink a little booze. All year they grit their teeth – they pump gas and wait tables and screw chippies and bait queers, and they don’t like any of it, but they know they are lucky to get it.
I look for her in the mirror but she is gone. I would have seen her going out the front, so I head for the back door to look for her. She is sitting against a building in the rain, passed out cold. When I shake her, I see that she has cut both wrists down to the leaders, but the cold rain has clotted the blood so that only a little oozes out when I move her. I go back inside.
‘There’s some girl out back tried to kill herself.’
Four guys at the bar run out to her, carry her inside. The bartender grabs the phone. He says to me, ‘Do you know her?’
I say, ‘No. I just went for some air.’ I go on out the door.
The bartender yells, ‘Hey, buddy, the cops’ll want to see you; hey, buddy …’
I walk along the avenue thinking how shit always sinks, and how all these towns dump their shit for the river to push it down to the delta. Then I think about that girl sitting in the alley, sitting in her own slough, and I shake my head. I have not gotten that low.
I stop in front of the bus station, look in on the waiting people, and think about all the places they are going. But I know they can’t run away from it or drink their way out of it or die to get rid of it. It’s always there, you just look at somebody and they give you a look like the Wrath of God. I turn toward the docks, walk down to see if the Delmar maybe put in early.