Part 17 (1/2)

A middleaged man-at least he looked middleaged to my youthful eye-regarded me speculatively over the head of the drunk. ”Pretty well cleaned yuh out, huh, boy?”

I nodded-and then was sorry for the motion.

”Reward of virtue. a.s.suming you was virtuous, which I a.s.sume. Come to the same end as me, stinking drunk. Only I still got my s.h.i.+rt. Couldn't hock it no matter how thirsty I got.”

I groaned.

”Where yuh from, boy? What rural-see, sober now-precincts miss you?”

”Wappinger Falls, near Poughkeepsie. My name's Hodge Backmaker.”

”Well now, that's friendly of you, Hodge. Me, I'm George Pondible. Periodic. Just tapering off.”

I hadn't an idea what Pondible was talking about. Trying to understand made my head worse.

”Took everything, I suppose? Haven't a nickel left to help a hangover?”

”My head,” I mumbled, quite superfluously.

He staggered to his feet. ”Best thing-souse it in the river. Take more to fix mine.”

”But... can I go through the streets like this?”

”Right,” he said. ”Quite right.”

He stooped down and put one hand beneath the drunk. With the other he removed the jacket, a maneuver betraying practice, for it elicited no protest from the victim. He then performed the still more delicate operation of depriving him of his s.h.i.+rt and shoes, tossing them all to me. They were a loathsome collection of rags not fit to clean a manure-spreader. The jacket was torn and greasy, the pockets hanging like the ears of a dog; the s.h.i.+rt was a filthy tatter, the shoes shapeless fragments of leather with great gapes in the soles.

”It's stealing,” I protested.

”Right. Put them on and let's get out of here.”

The short walk to the river was through streets lacking the glamour of those of the day before. The tenements were smokestreaked, marked with steps between the parting bricks where mortar had fallen out; great hunks of wall were kept in place only by the support of equally crazy ones ab.u.t.ting. The wretched rags I wore were better suited to this neighborhood than Pondible's though his would have marked him tramp and vagrant in Wappinger Falls.

The Hudson too was soiled, with an oily sc.u.m and debris, so that I hesitated even to dip the purloined s.h.i.+rt, much less my aching head. But urged on by Pondible I climbed down the slimy stones between two docks and pus.h.i.+ng the flotsam aside, ducked myself in the unappetizing water.

The sun was hot and the s.h.i.+rt dried on my back as we walked away from the river, the jacket over my arm. Yesterday I had entertained vague plans of presenting myself at Columbia College, begging to exchange work of any kind for tuition. In my present state this was manifestly impossible; for a moment I wished I had waded farther into the Hudson and drowned.

”Fixes your head,” said Pondible with more a.s.surance than accuracy. ”Now for mine.”

Now that my mind was clearer my despair grew by the minute. Admitting my plans had been impractical and tenuous, they were yet plans of a kind, something in which I could put-or force-my hopes. Now they were gone, literally knocked out of existence and I had nothing to look forward to, nothing on which to exert my energies and dreams. To go back to Wappinger Falls was out of the question, not simply to dodge the bitterness of admitting defeat so quickly, but because I knew myself to be completely useless to my parents. Yet I had nothing to expect in the city except starvation or a life of petty crime.

Pondible guided me into a saloon, a dark place, gaslit even this early, with a steam piano tinkling away the popular tune ”Mormon Girl”:

There's a girl in the State of Deseret Whom I love and I'm trying to for-get.

Forget her for tired feet's sake Don't wanna walk miles to Great Salt Lake.

They ever build that railroad toooo the ocean I'd return my darling Mormon girl's devotion.

But the tracks stop short in Ioway...

I couldn't remember the last line.

”Shot,” Pondible ordered the bartender, ”and b.u.t.termilk for my chum.”

The bartender kept on polis.h.i.+ng the wood in front of him with a wet, dirty rag. ”Got any jack?”

”Pay you tomorrow, friend.”

The bartender's uninterrupted industry said clearly, then drink tomorrow.

”Listen,” argued Pondible, ”I'm tapering off. You know me. I've spent plenty of money here.”

The bartender shrugged. ”Why don't you indent?”

Pondible looked shocked. ”At my age? What would a company pay for a wornout old carca.s.s? A hundred dollars maybe. Then a release in a couple of years with a med holdback so I'd have to report every week somewhere. No friend, I've come though this long a free man (in a manner of speaking) and I'll stick it out. Let's have that shot; you can see for yourself I'm tapering off. You'll get your jack tomorrow.”

I could see the bartender was weakening; each refusal was less surly and at last, to my astonishment, he set out a gla.s.s and bottle for Pondible and an earthenware mug of b.u.t.termilk for me. To my astonishment, I say, for credit was rarely extended on either large or small scale. The Inflation, though 60 years in the past, had left indelible impressions; people paid cash or did without. Debt was disgraceful; the notion things could be paid for while, or even after, they were being used was as unthinkable as was the idea of circulation of paper money instead of silver or gold.

I drank my b.u.t.termilk slowly, gratefully aware Pondible had ordered the most filling and sustaining liquid in the saloon. For all his unprepossessing appearance and peculiar moral notions, it was evident my new acquaintance had a rude wisdom as well as a rude kindliness.

He swallowed his whiskey in an instant and called upon the bartender for a quart pot of small beer which he now sipped, turning to me and drawing out, not unskillfully, the story not only of my life, but of my hopes, and the despondency I now knew at their shattering.

”Well,” he said at last, ”you can always take the advice our friend here offered me and indent. A young healthy lad like you could get yourself $1,000 or $1,200-”

”Yes. And be a slave the rest of my life.”

Pondible wiped specks of froth from his beard with the back of his hand. ”Oh, indenting ain't slavery-it's better. And worse. For one thing the company that buys you won't hold you after you aren't worth your keep. They cancel your indenture without a cent in payment. Of course they'll take a med holdback so as to get a dollar or two for your corpse, but that's a long time away for you.”

”Yes. A long time away. So I wouldn't be a slave for life; just 30 or 40 years. Till I wasn't any good to anyone, including myself.”

He seemed to be enjoying himself as he drank his beer. ”You're a gloomy gus, Hodge. Tain't as bad as that. Indenting's pretty strictly regulated. That's the idea, anyway. You can't be made to work over 60 hours a week-ten hours a day. With $1,000 or $1,200 you could get all the education you want in your spare time and then turn your learning to account by making enough money to buy yourself free.”

I tried to think about it dispa.s.sionately, though goodness knows I'd been over the ground often enough. It was true that the amount, a not inconceivable one for a boy willing to indenture himself, would see me comfortably through college. But Pondible's notion that I could turn my ”learning to account” I knew to be a fantasy despite its currency. Perhaps in the Confederate States or the German Union knowledge was rewarded with wealth, or at least a comfortable living, but any study I pursued-I knew my own ”impracticality” well enough by now-was bound to yield few material benefits in the poor, exploited, backward United States, which existed as a nation at all only on the sufferance and unresolved rivalries of the great powers. I would be lucky to struggle through school and eke out some kind of living as a freeman; I could never hope to earn enough to buy back my indenture on what was left of my time after subtracting 60 hours a week.

Pondible listened as I explained all this, nodding and sipping alternately. ”Well then,” he said, ”there's the gangs.”

I looked my horror.

He laughed. ”Forget your country rearing. If you leave the parsons' sermons out of it there's no difference joining the gangs than joining the army-if we had one-or the Confederate Legion. Most of the gangsters never even get shot at. They all live high, high as anybody in the 26 states, and every once in a while there's a dividend that's more than a workingman earns in a lifetime.”

I began to be sure my benefactor was a gangster. And yet... if this were so why had he wheedled credit from the barkeep? Was it simply an elaborate blind to recruit me? It seemed hardly worth it. ”A fat dividend maybe. Or a rope.”

”Most of the gangsters die of old age. Or compet.i.tion. Ain't one been hung I can think of in the last five years. But I can see you've no stomach for it. Tell me, Hodge-you a Whig or Populist?”