Chapter 11

Another month passed and it was now March. The evenings in New York were still cold. Downtown the lights of the shop windows caused a glow in the faces of the pedestrians on the sidewalks.

On the corner of 34th Street and Seventh Avenue a woman in a red hat pulled the collar of her coat closed to cover her throat. The women were now wearing tight-fitting hats, the front part of the brims turned up. The men wore fedoras and bowlers, the hats sometimes tilted at a jaunty angle to give a bit of dash to the appearance.

Never mind the dash: During the first week of March it rained cats and dogs in Washington while Herbert Hoover was sworn in as President of the United States. Was it a portent?

In the evening in New York, a man named Jack Bishop turned from 34th Street into Seventh Avenue, a gray peaked cap tilted forward on his head, his body warmed by a black overcoat, his hands in his coat pockets. He walked slowly, stopped, walked again, stopped at a shop window, turned to gaze at the displayed merchandise, mens overcoats, ulsterettes, popular patch pockets, double breasted belted, form fitting, $29.95, $39.95, $49.95, four mannikins in the window, the second from the left with his left hand raised, a gloved hand holding a second glove, the other hand behind his back, his forefinger touching his thumb as if to point or pull at an imaginary thread, his teeth exposed in a smile or a grimace, the white collar, the carefully knotted dark blue tie, TESTED MERCHANDISE IS DEPENDABLE MERCHANDISE...

Jack thought: the one on the right 50 bucks, makes you look like a successful business chap, a man going places, all wool with a satin lining no doubt. But he didn't need an overcoat, he already had two coats, how many coats could a guy wear at one time? Take off one, put on the other one. He wouldn't mind being rich, but why does he need three overcoats? Yes this one on the right would be fine, that happy smile on his face, the way they do it in wood then paint it over, the glowing skin, the healthy teeth, this one on the right goes home at night to a pretty little thing from Coney Island, a girl who wears one of those tight wool bathing suits in summer, a bathing beauty way back in 1919, the wool suit showing everything, her breasts, the swell of her hips, her thighs, her calves only half covered by those bathing stockings they wore, her arms outstretched as she poses for the camera la di da here I am Charlie take my picture...

At the end of the block, Jack climbed into a taxi and gave the driver an address in the Fifties. Now he was thinking of last summer on the Sound, Harry Gorham's boat in Glen Cove, the two girls from Stamford, blonde hair, blue eyes, YOU REMIND ME OF MY MOTHER, the hell she did, he couldn't say what his mother looked like, not one of those ladies playing Mah Jongg, the blonde with fine hair, much finer than Gorham's blonde, not honey-colored, more sandy than honey-colored, an absence of blood in the face, I don't like the sun, she said, then why come out in a bloody boat? an attempt to be vivacious, the pink tongue wagging as she cocked her head to one side, wiggling her arms and hips like some stuffed doll in a puppet show, but he didn't like blondes anyway did he? not that kind, rather have a platinum girl if she's to be a blonde at all, platinum girl dressed in silver with an insolent mouth, her eyes laughing at him...

His name was Jack Bishop, born in the year 1895 in Hell's Kitchen. Unknown mother. Unknown father. Raised in St.Columba's Orphanage on Houston Street. Pissed in the East River for the first time at the age of eight. God help the East River.

He left the taxi in front of O'Malley's Eatery on 53rd Street. More speako than eato. A knock on the door, an eye at the hole, then a blast of noise as he walked through the entrance into the large room. The smoke hovered under the ceiling like a cloud of poison gas. The table at the left was occupied by two men and two girls, the girls in cloche hats, thin bare arms, one of the men drinking, the other with an arm around the shoulders of his girl. The men had slick dark hair, dark and slick, shining. The checkered tablecloth covered their knees, soiled at the edges, at least that edge, a brown stain, maybe gravy from the last stew on the table. Jack looked at the bare arms of the girls, the smooth flesh. The girl on the left now looked at Jack as he stood there with his head turning, his eyes roaming, his head turning again. What was he looking for? The girl's eyebrows shifted up and down. The boyo on her left now leaned in closer to breathe in her scent, breathe out his whiskey breath, the man with a drink at his mouth, his nose in the glass, his moustache rubbing against it. This one had red cheeks. The red lipstick of the girl across the table, the one still looking at Jack, her lips puckering, pursing, opening and closing. Where's her drink? She wants her drink now. She raised the glass to her lips, held it there with a limp wrist, her sharp elbow on the edge of the table, her head still turned to look at Jack, now turning again, saying something, the words lost in the noise, in the uproar...

Hububadub, Jack thought, his eyes on the girl on the left again, the arm around her shoulders, her sugar daddy no doubt, the flush in the jocko's face, his eyes on her neck, his hand now clutching her shoulder, breathing in, breathing out, the girl sipping her drink as she ignored him, ignored his breathing, the whiskey smell of him, the sweat on his pink forehead...

Some one shouted: "Horses, horses!"

A ripple of laughter...

Jack turned away, looked now at the table on the right, more smoke here, one of the men drinking, his eyes half closed as if he was about to drop off to sleep. The girl across the table from him wore a blue silk blouse and she was also drinking. The other girl was in the midst of a kiss, her right hand lifted to hold the man's chin, the man bending over as he stood beside her chair, his black hair catching the light, his black hair as slick as the others. The table here was crowded with dishes, crumbs between the dishes on the checkered tablecloth that hid the knees of the girl in front, the girl with her head back as she drank, her wrist bent. The other girl's red mouth pulled away from the face of the man bent over her, her white teeth gleaming as she smiled. The man on the right was drinking again, his mouth open. Now the other girl was getting kissed again, her white throat exposed as he bent over to kiss her mouth.

Jack turned away. Why was he here? He thought: I don't know why I come here. He looked at the girl again, the one with her arm raised as she drank, the blue silk blouse, her head tossed back, the line of her throat, her eyes closed as she poured the gin down her gullet, not like the other one, the other one was kissing, this one was drinking, and at the tables behind her the others were drinking, the men drinking, the women drinking, the booze flowing in and endless river out of the bottles into the glasses into the open mouths and then down the gullets and into the stomach and guts and into the kidneys and down the bladders to be pissed out again and returned to the lakes, the rivers, the sea...

Someone shouted at him: "Jack! Over here, Jack!"

Over there at the far right, a corner table under a mirror, three young men in business suits, one of them with an arm raised, his mouth open as once again he called out to Jack: "Over here, Jack!"

He walked toward them. Did he know them? The one with his arm raised looked familiar. Yes, it was Charlie Muth. Damn it, it's Charlie Muth, same face, filled out a little, clean, but sure it's Charlie Muth.

"Jack!" Charlie said.

Charlie rose up, put his arms around Jack, a laugh, Jack putting his arms around Charlie. "Hey, Charlie."

"How are you, Jack? Old Jack."

Jack sat down. In front of him, the edge of the wooden table was chipped. No checkered tablecloth here. He looked at the other three, Charlie and his two friends, all of them with red faces above their white collars.

Charlie said: "Jack and me were in the trenches together."

Jack drank with them. Irish whiskey. The others were already drunk, red-faced, eyes rolling, laughing. Charlie talked about the booze, this booze, other booze, rum-running. "I know a fellow in Detroit expects to make a million running booze across the water."

"Nah," one of the others said.

"Sure, why not?" the other one said.

Charlie slid an arm around Jack's shoulders. "Great to see you, Jack. You come here a lot? I don't get up this way too much."

Charlie talked about the war, France, the others talking. Jack just sat and watched them. Pals they were. Just pals talking about the war, except maybe Charlie and Jack were the only ones who'd been in it over there. The others here but not over there. The crappy uniforms that were too hot in summer. The girls. Then it was the French girls against the American girls. "Hey, the war wasn't too bad," Charlie said with a laugh.

Jack remembered France, the 7th Machine Gun Battalion, 3rd Division under General Joseph T. Dickman, the first American troops to meet the Germans, said encounter taking place at Chateau-Thierry on the Marne river.

"Rat-tat-tat," Charlie said.

The job they had was to hold the bridges. That was in May. In June they were next door to the blood and shit of Belleau Wood.

"Rat-tat-tat," Charlie said.

Jack closed his eyes. He never liked looking at dead bodies, all the dead bodies over there, dead bodies in a muddy hole, on the wire, one time just sitting against a tree, a Kraut with half his head blown away, you could see the brains inside.

Suppose you took the brains out of a man, what was left of him? He remembered the leaving, the train station, the straw hats the women were wearing, the long dresses, how they waved white handkerchiefs at the boys hanging out the train windows, the mothers, the sisters, the girlfriends, all those women on the platform waving at them while he had no one not even a girl because his girl had moved west with her folks, no one at the station to wave a white handkerchief at him, then the next thing he knows he's behind a machine gun at Chateau-Thierry, the sandbags all around them, him on the ground on his side with his head against a stone wall, his eyes on the sights, the other man Nunzio from Brooklyn, the blanket screen in front of them, the barrel of the gun through a hole in the blanket, Nunzio telling him some crazy story about a girl in Paris, and after Chateau-Thierry they were in Belleau Wood, on the ground between the dead trees, all the dead trees in Belleau Wood, he'd never seen so many dead trees before, the smoke hovering over them, the chatter of the machine guns almost casual now, casual chatter, one machine gun talking to another machine gun, and in his nose the stink of death, the smell of old shit and new shit, and then later on Nunzio on a stretcher in a trench, Nunzio dying, the bandage around his head useless because he was dying anyhow, the medic bending over Nunzio but you could see it was useless, a shell overhead, another shell, two rats running along the line of the wall as Nunzio finally lay dead with his mouth open...