29

THE MAN IN THE NIGHT

He asked: “May I have a moment of your time?”

I replied: “That's all you can get out of me, stranger. Nothing but time. And right now, I got little of that. So mosey along, will you?”

He stood back a little from me, and I thought he was taking his distance to make a swipe at me, so I said: “Partner, lemme give you some free advice that is a lot better than anything that you'll ever find in a guidebook…which is…leave me be and don't start no rough stuff, or this little dog of mine, that has started purring, will just naturally chaw your windpipe right in two.”

“Ah?” said the gent in the darkness. “You keep a guard with you, youngster, I see?”

“Sure,” I said, “that is just what I do. But look here, if you're down on your luck, here's a quarter. It's all I got. It'll get you the shady side of a meal in this town. Or it'll get you one drink. Which is more your speed, I suppose.”

He didn't say anything for a minute. Then: “Thank you.”

I was already pretty near forgetting him, resting against that tree. I said: “For what?”

“For the money,” he answered.

“All right,” I said. “Now run along and leave me be. The dog is enough company for me.”

“And yet,” he said, “I think that you could spare me something else.”

It riled me a little, I got to admit. It ain't everywhere that you find a growed-up man that will bum off a kid like I was. So I said to this man in the night: “You ain't born to starve for the lack of asking, I see. Now, what might your line be?”

“Why,” said the gent, “you seem to have guessed it quite accurately. I am only a beggar, my friend.”

You could see that he was one of them that get along with a soft voice and plenty of use of it.

“Well,” I said, “I am a beggar, too.”

“Do you call it that?” he asked. “But it seemed to me that you were working very hard and honestly for what you got, and that you deserved it.”

“I don't remember any face in there to fit up with your voice,” I said. “Where might you have been standing?”

“I was outside of the window.”

“Outside!” I exclaimed. “Why, you poor boob, that was a free show. If it had been an honest show, it wouldn't have been free. But you could have been in there for nothing. What's more, lemme tell you that the singing and particularly the dancing warms them up a good deal, and you could have bummed a good many quarters off of them at the wind-up of a song or of a dance. It makes them feel free-handed.”

He answered: “No, they wouldn't have given anything to me…not willingly.”

“They know you, do they?”

“Yes,” he said, “they know me.” He let out a sigh, stood there a moment, saying nothing.

All at once, I feels sort of pulled to him and sorry for him.

“Look here,” I said to him. “I have been talking sort of rough. But if you're down on your luck…I could raise some money for you, pretty quick. Are all the boys in Crossman down on you?”

“All, or nearly all,” he said.

“Then why do you stay here?” I couldn't help asking.

“There is no place for me to go. I may as well make my effort here as in any other place. I may as well go to work here, you know. If I can't succeed in this rough little town, I'll never succeed anywhere.”

That made me loosen up and give him some good advice. I said: “You look here. This town looks simple. But it ain't so simple as it looks. These gents with the hard hands, their skulls ain't so hard and thick. And mostly they got no use for a gent that won't work. I dunno what your line may be. Maybe you're a pretty talented blind man…or maybe you're no slouch of a cripple…or maybe you got a spiel about a lung disease and a family back home waiting for you…I dunno what your line may be, but just because you fail to work Crossman, ain't a sign that you can't work other places. Why, back in the little town where I come from, it was dead easy for a bum to get along. You couldn't batter three doors before you would get a regular sit-down meal with a napkin and everything. Why don't you try some of the dressed-up towns? They're really very much better.”

He didn't say nothing to this, either, but I could see that he was thinking it over. It struck me kind of sad, him being a growed-up man, to be standing there like that with his hands hanging at his side, getting advice from a kid like me.

He said at last in that soft voice of his: “Yes, it is worth a try. I might knock at the kitchen doors…I might do that.”

That let in a light on me.

“Oh, you been trying the front doors, have you? Well, unless you're an a-number-one man, you ain't gonna be able to do that and get by.”

“Yes,” he said, very sad, “you are right. I am not talented enough to go to the front doors and beg there…that is why they will give me nothing.”

I got sort of confidential with him. I never hardly felt so sorry for anything as I was for him—next to being so sorry for Smiler, because he missed Lefty so bad. But I thought I could help this gent along, so I said: “I'll tell you something. You got a good voice, which it is a great help. You got a good, soft voice, and you can work it pretty smooth. Your line had ought to be the women. You keep away from the rough men and you try the ladies.”

He threw up his hands and he give a sort of groan and said: “Ah, I've tried the thing before, and I know that you're right, boy. I know that you're right, but I don't want to work with the women. I'm tired of it. I'm sick of it. And that's why I've come up here into the wilderness. I want to work with men…real men…and I don't care who they are, so long as they are men, men, men!” He meant every word of that.

I said that I was sorry, and that he had better come back with me and let me get him a stake from Red McTay. I knew that Red was awful generous.

He said: “It's not the money that I want, my son. It's not the money.”

That put me against it, and I said: “Well, you're too many for me. What do you want?”

“Oh, I only want the scraps of the lives of men…the time that they throw away…the odd minutes. I would give all my soul if I could persuade one real man to open his heart to me. So that in the end I could give.”

I couldn't help laughing.

He asked: “Why do you laugh at me, child?”

“I don't mean to hurt your feelings,” I said, “but it sort of stepped on my funny bone when I hear about you wanting to give things to people. May I ask, maybe, what you got that you can give?”

“That is it!” he said. “What have I that can be given away? What have I that is worthy to be picked up and saved by another man? I don't know…I don't know!”

“I see,” I said, “you've been pretty rich, I suppose?”

“I thought that I was very rich. I thought that I was almost one of the richest of men.”

“And then you went bust?”

“Yes.”

“All in a day?”

“All in a moment!”

“Somebody double-crossed you, then?” I asked, because it is always sort of sad to see a rich gent that is down and out.

“No one deceived me,” he said. “It was all my own self-deception. I was a fool! A fool! My gold was nothing…lighter than feathers!”

I could see that he was sick with himself, so I didn't say anything back to him to let him settle down, if he would. Then he said: “But you are right. I must not try the front doors. I must be humbler still. And I must go to the kitchen doors and beg there.”

“Not that you would get much coin…,” I had to put in.

“Money? Money? No, that is not what I want. But only the time, which is more precious than money.”

“I never seen time,” I said, “that couldn't be bought.”

“Ah, but there is in nearly every man's life. He does not know it until it is too late. When he lies dying, then he knows that there is time that cannot be bought and paid for. When that moment comes, then men will listen to me, but it is too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“Too late to make an exchange of what they have here on this earth for the great peace, child.”

“Look here, bo,” I said, “this is sort of big talk. What do you know about great peace, and all that sort of tripe?”

“Little or nothing, perhaps,” he said, and began beating his hands together, “but something, I trust, has been revealed to me. I think there has been granted to me some power to help men to a knowledge of that which follows after death.”

That hit me where I lived, of course. All at once it busted out of me and I said: “Now, you put it to me straight, if you got any dope on that, what chance has a poor bum…a regular poor old tramp…got of getting to heaven?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I would have to see the man. Was there honesty in him?”

“No,” I said, “he was a cheat.”

“Was he at least true and faithful to those who loved him?”

“No,” I said. “He left the finest woman in the world.”

“The judgment will fall hard upon him, then,” says the man in the darkness.

I was afraid to go on for a minute, because there was a sort of a thing in the voice of this here man that gave me a chill—as if he really did know. I changed the subject and said: “Well, this is queer, you and me talking like this, but from what I can make out, you ain't got no bundle. You ain't no bundle stiff. You're a regular tramp royal.”

He said nothing; his head had fallen; he was thinking hard. It brought back the thought of him I was missing so terrible bad.

All at once I hollered out: “Partner, surely there is one chance for him! There is a ghost of a chance for him!”

“Did he at least,” said the man in the dark, “give the labor of strong hands to help his fellow men?”

“No, he was just a hobo,” I had to admit.

“Then he is lost,” said the man in the night.

I shouted out at him: “You lie! You lie! He's gonna go to heaven. If he ain't in heaven, I don't want to go there. I wouldn't go there. I would slam right out of the door of heaven. And you…you don't know anything about it anyhow!”

He said: “Ah, son, you are right, and your friend is saved…if he has done enough on this earth to win the love of even one person, even of a child. Yes, and love would take the dog at your feet and carry it into heaven. But for those who have not found love or made it, they will eat bitter bread alone on this earth and when they die….”

Here his voice busted off a little, and he stopped. And then it seemed to me that I would have gone on listening to him forever. I was about to ask him a lot more of questions, because what he had said was so wonderful, but, all at once, he seemed to forget me. He walked right back from me until the light from the nearest window hit him.

And what d'you think I saw? Why, I saw a gray head—it was nearly white—and the black and white collar put on backwards of a minister! It gave me a terrible chill.