Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 75

"Yes, with the gang of you down there hanging on like the plague, I got a swell chance, nix."

"It's because we know you too well, Marj. Knew you when you had two black pigtails and used to carry a bucket into the family entrance of Harry's place, crying with madness every time your old man sent you.

Gad! I can see you yet, sweetness, with your big black eyes blacker than ever, and steering home your old man from off a jamboree."

"G.o.d! sometimes I wake up in the night just like him and ma was still alive and me and her was sitting there listening to him creak up the stairs on his bad nights. I wake up, I can tell you, in a sweat--right in a sweat."

"I knew you in them days, kiddo, just like you knew me. That's why you can't pull nothing over on a fellow, kiddo, that's had as many pulls on your all-day suckers as I have. You're a little quitter, you are, and sometimes I think you're out for bigger game."

"It don't mean because a girl was born in the mud she's got to stick there, does it?"

"No, but she can't pretend she don't know one of the old mud-turtles when she sees one."

"Mud-turtle is the right name."

"The crowd has got your number, all right, kiddo; they know you're out after bigger game. You're a little turncoat, that's what they say about you."

"Turncoat! Who wouldn't turn a coat they was ashamed of? I guess you all don't remember how I used to say, even back in those years when I was taking tickets down at Lute's old Fourteenth Street Amus.e.m.e.nt Parlors, how when my little minute came I was going to breeze away from the gang down there?"

"I remember, all righty."

"How I was going to get me a job up-town here, where I could get in with a decent crowd of girls, and not be known for the kind down there that you and all of 'em knew I--I wasn't."

"Sure we knew."

"Yes, but what good does that do me? Can a dirty little yellow-haired snip over in the Fancy Fruits give me the once-over and a turn-down?

She can. And why? Because I ain't certified. I come from a counterfeit crowd, and who's going to take the trouble to find my number and see if it's real?"

"Aw, now--"

"Didn't a broken-down old granny over in the Thirty-fourth Street house where I roomed give me notice last week, because Addie Lynch found me out one night and came to see me, lit up like a Christmas tree?"

"That's why I say, Marj, stick to the old ones who know you."

"Like May Pope used to say, a girl might as well have the game as the name."

"If I was a free man, Marj, I'd--"

"Where has the strait and narrow got me to, I'd like to know? Sometimes I think it's nothing but a blind alley pus.h.i.+ng me back."

"If I was a free man, Marj--"

"Let me meet a slick little up-stage fellow that doesn't have to look two ways before he walks the wrong beat in daylight; let me meet a fellow like that, and where does it get me?"

"I'm no saint, Marj, but there ain't a beat in town I'd have to look two ways on. Ask any cop--"

"Does the slick little up-stage fellow get my number? He does not. I'd like to see one of them ask that dirty little yellow-head over in the Fancy Fruits to go home with him. A little n.o.body-Home like her, just because she was raised in an amen corner of the Bronx and has a six-foot master-mechanic brother to call for her every time she works fifteen minutes later, she can wear her hands crossed on her chest and a lily stuck in 'em and get away with it, too."

"You're right, kiddo; you got more sand than ten of such put together."

"I'm as good as her and better. I'm not so sure by a long shot that any of those baby faces would say no if they was ever invited to say yes.

Watch out there, that cab, Blink. Gee! your nerves are as steady as gelatin."

They were veering through the crowds and out into the soft flurry of the storm. Flakes like pulled-out bits of cotton floated to their shoulders, resting there. Seventh Avenue, for the instant before the eye left the great Greek facade of the Pennsylvania Terminal, was like a dream of Athens seen through the dapple of white shadows. Immediately the eye veered, however, the great cosmopolis formed by street meeting avenue tore down the illusion. Another block and second-hand clothing shops nudged one another, their flapping wares for sale outside them like clothes-wash on a line, empty arms and legs gallivanting in the wind. A storm-car combed through the driven snow, scuttling it and clearing the tracks. Down another block the hot, spicy smell of a Mexican dish floated out between the swinging doors of an all-night bar. A man lurched out, laughing and crying.

Marjorie Clark's companion steered her past and turned toward her, his twitching features suddenly, and even through their looseness, softened.

"Poor kiddo!" he said. "Just send them to me for reference. I can do some tall vouching for you."

"The way I feel lately sometimes, honest, I think if I get to getting the indigoes much deeper, there's no telling where they'll land me. The game as well as the name ain't all poetry, let me tell you that."

Through the fall of mild snow he could see her face s.h.i.+ning out darkly, and his bare, eager fingers moved toward her arm, and except when the spasmodic twitch locked his features, his face, too, was thrust forward, keen and close to hers.

"I've been telling you that for five years, girl."

"Now don't go getting me wrong, Blink."

"If I was what the law calls a free man, Marj, you know what kind of a proposition I would have put up to you five years ago when I had my health and my looks and--"

"If you want to make me sore, just tune up on that old song. You ain't man enough to even get your own little kid out of the clutches of a mother that's pulling her down to Hades with her. Take it from me, if there wasn't something in me that's just sorry for you, I wouldn't walk these here blocks with you. Sometimes when I look at you right hard, Blink, honest, it looks to me like the c.o.ke's got you, Blink."

"Now, Marjie--"

"You wouldn't tell me if it had. But you got the twitches, all righty."

"It's me nerves, Marj; me nerves and you."

"Bah! you got about as much backbone as a jellyfish. Blaming things on a girl."

"You took the backbone out of me, I tell you."

"Oh no, I didn't; it's been missing since your first birthday."

"Eating out my heart and vitals for you and your confounded highfalutin amen notions."

"Before you ever clapped eyes on me you was more famous for your arm muscle than your backbone. I guess I don't remember how your own mother told me the very day before she died how she tried on her old knees to keep you out of a marriage with that woman. All that happened way back in the days when you had your muscles and was head rubber-down at Herschey's. You knew her kind when you did it, and now why ain't you man enough to blame yourself for what you are instead of blaming the girl?

Gee!"

"I didn't mean it, Marj. It slipped. S'help me, I didn't. Sometimes I just don't know what I'm saying, Marj; that's how my mind kinda gets sometimes. All fuzzed over like."

"What's the odds what you say, Blink? You're just not man-size, I guess."

She was a bleak little figure bowing into the wind, her tippet flapping back over one shoulder.

"I ain't, ain't I? I 'ain't gone through a living h.e.l.l sitting on the water-wagon for you, have I?"

"Try to keep from twitching that way, Blink. You give me the horrors."

"I 'ain't cut out playing stakes, have I? Gad! I can live from Sunday to Sunday on a pick-up from a little gamble here and a little gamble there.

But when you hollered, I didn't cut it and begin to work up muscle to get back on the job again, did I? I didn't, did I?"