Never Love a Stranger (20 page)

“Top o’ the mornin’ me lad,” the cop said to me.

I lit a cigarette. “Good morning,” I replied, wondering if he could detect the tremor in my voice.

“A foine morning it ’tis,” he said, filling his lungs with air and looking around the park. “Ye’re up a bit early, aren’t ye?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” I answered honestly.

“’Tis very warm for May,” he answered, smiling. He had reddish hair and blue eyes—a real mick. “D’ye live around here?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said smiling back at him, “I’ve come to live with my grandmother. She’s down the street.” I gestured with my hand in the general direction of the house. “I’m from New York.”

“A foine place!” he said. “Me brother’s there. He’s on the force. Sergeant Flaherty is his name. D’ye know him?”

I shook my head. “It’s a big place.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is. I must be going on me rounds now.” He took a last look at me. “Good-bye.”

“So long,” I said, watching him saunter off, swinging his club. Cops! I thought. I leaned my head back against the rest at the top of the bench and let the sun play on it. It was good. I felt clean. I could feel it soaking into my skin, warm and penetrating. I drowsed

off.

I awoke with a start. A dog, running through the park barking. had startled me. I looked at my watch. It was a little after eight. I felt hungry. I got up and went out the other entrance of the park. I could see some stores a few blocks down. I walked towards them.

I went into a restaurant and had breakfast. About ten o’clock I returned to the house.

Mary let me in.

“You up already?” she asked. “Yes,” I said.

“Did y’all have breakfast?” she asked.

“At the restaurant down the block after next,” I answered. I went into the parlour. She had a rag tied around her head and had just finished cleaning up the place. The windows were open and a breeze blew through the room. I sat on the couch and began to read the paper I had bought. Through the open doors I could see anyone who came down the stairs. About an hour passed. I could smell bacon frying in the kitchen; so could the others—they began to come down.

Big Mary was the first. She looked in, saw me, and continued on to the kitchen. A few minutes later she came back to the door. “Can I come in?” she asked almost servilely.

“Yes,” I answered still reading the paper.

“You’re not sore about yesterday?” she asked whiningly, sitting down opposite me. “No,” I answered. “It was just a misunderstanding.” I turned the page.

“That’s what it was,” she said quickly, seizing upon the word, “a misunderstanding.” “Yes,” I said.

“I don’t want you to be sore. You know what I mean?” she said. I knew what she meant.

“If there’s anything you want—” she asked hesitantly, letting me have the chance. “No,” I said. “Forget about it. We won’t have any more trouble.”

She stood up. “Well, don’t forget—anytime.” She went to the kitchen for breakfast.

A few minutes later Mrs. Mander came down. She headed right for the liquor closet and poured herself a drink. Then she turned to me.

“Good morning, up early. Couldn’t you sleep?” “I always get up early,” I said.

“Eat?” she asked. “Yes.”

She went in for breakfast.

Jenny was down last. She was the only one dressed in clothes. The others had all worn dressing gowns or wraps, but she had a dress on. It was a grey print. A small gold cross gleamed against her throat.

She came right into the parlour. “Good morning,” she said. “Hello,” I answered.

“Have breakfast?” she asked. “Yes,” I answered.

She walked towards me coolly, her hips swaying just a little. “I feel good this morning,

I think I’ll go to Mass. Want to come?”

“No,” I answered shortly. How could anyone go to church from a place like this? “Why not?” she said. “It’ll do you good.”

I flared up. “Leave me alone! I don’t care whether you go to Mass or to hell, but get out of here!”

She laughed happily, turning and walking to the door. “I will go to hell,” she said, still smiling. “So will you. So will all of us. You’ll see.” She walked out.

“What were you talking about?” Mrs. Mander had come back into the room. I heard the front door slam.

“About going to hell, Grandma,” I answered.

“Oh!” she said, helping herself to another drink. “Jenny’s always talking about that. She’s one of these Catholics who believe in paying for their sins, both now and hereafter. You’re not Catholic, are you?” she asked.

“No,” I answered.

She lifted a glass to her lips and stopped as if struck by a sudden thought. “Say,” she said, “I thought I heard someone moaning last night.”

Mrs. Mander looked at me closely. I guess I looked surprised.

Chapter Five
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I
T
was Thursday night before I came to any decision about what I was going to do. The few days just passed had been comparatively quiet. I had been accepted by the others in the house, I had my place, they had theirs. We respected each other’s privacy more or less. I had been restless, somehow unsatisfied with myself, as if I had slipped too naturally into this sort of work. In the back of my mind was the question that this was just another form of pimping. I honestly didn’t know whether I liked it. I guess I was a little mixed up as to what I wanted.

Thursday afternoon I sat in the parlour reading the paper, smoking a cigarette. It was raining outside, a glum, miserable rain. Mrs. Mander had gone to the movies with one of the girls. I had gone yesterday. I saw Seventh Heaven. I remembered the song the pianist played through the more tender passages of the picture. I left the theatre rather depressed and crossed the street for a coke. I passed a Navy recruiting station and stood at the window looking in. The tall, sunburned officer there was pointing out some of the posters to a tentative recruit. I could see his gestures even if I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I followed his arm as it pointed from one poster to another, and imagined myself in those far-off places depicted therein. For a moment I felt like going in and inquiring, but I slowly walked away from the window.

I put the paper down. I had the blues that day for sure. Mary came in and sat down at the piano and began to play. That didn’t help either. There was an undercurrent of melancholy in her playing that didn’t do me any good. I began to think about home and the folks. I wondered what had happened since I left.

The blue piano got on my nerves.

“For heaven’s sake,” I said, “shut that thing up.”

She didn’t answer, just closed the piano and left the room.

“What’s the matter, Frank?” asked Jenny, who had just passed through the hall She was dressed in her working clothes: black satin dress with nothing underneath, small gold cross lying on her throat. It was a deceptive cross, lying there with a false promise of innocence. Her skin was very white. She came into the room.

“Nothing!” I snapped.

She sat on the arm of my chair, bending over my shoulder and looking at the paper I was reading.

I closed the paper and put it down. “Why don’t you go away?” I asked her.

She looked at me quietly a moment. I felt funny—sick-like, nauseated. It was a distasteful feeling, a cold sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. It was as if I were two people, one sick at the stomach over the wanting of the other. From the stomach up I was one person, from the stomach down, another.

“Why don’t you?” she asked. There was a half smile on her face as if she were reading my mind.

I didn’t answer. There wasn’t any answer.

“Why don’t you go away?” she repeated. “You’re a good kid. Do you want to sink as

low as we are? Do you want to be damned too?”

I walked to the door and went out on the stoop and stood in the doorway watching the rain fall. I lit a cigarette. A minute later she was standing next to me in the doorway.

“You can’t go away,” she snarled. “You’re afraid!”

Suddenly I felt better. It was out in the open now, the thing that had been in the back of my mind. I smiled.

Her eyes opened wide, she half lifted her hands as if to protect herself from being hit. For a second she stood there looking at me. “You’re mad,” she whispered—“crazy mad!” She turned and fled through the doorway back into the house.

I laughed out loud into the rain. I took another puff at the cigarette and threw it far into the gutter.

The rest of the day seemed to fly by. I kept thinking to myself, repeating over and over: “I was afraid.” That’s what it was. And with each saying of it I felt better. Somehow the saying or the thinking of it would help me feel better. I began to understand why I had taken the job. I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was; the old lady foxed me. First she had scared the devil out of me with her talk about the cops. Then she gave me the job, knowing that, if I bit at what she offered, she had me by the short hairs, and I bit. I laughed to myself. Well, I wasn’t going to be afraid any more.

I stood at the door that night in a different frame of mind I began to see the cheapness and shoddiness of the place: the furtive, secretly filthy manner of the customers; the shabby air of aphrodisiac exuded by the girls; the dirty-minded creak of the stairs as the customers went up and down; the lazy triumphant look of the girls as they discharged their customers.

About midnight a sailor came in. He seemed to have been there before. He went upstairs with Jenny and about a half hour later came down. He laughed as he went out. Then he looked closer at me. “You’re kinda young to be creep for this joint.”

“I won’t be for long,” I said. “I’m gettin’ out.”

“That’s good,” he said, and went out and started down the steps.

On an impulse I started after him. “Hey!” I hollered, running down the steps after him. He turned in the street and faced me. “Whadda ya want?” he asked belligerently.

“Is it true what they say about the Navy?” I asked. “What’s true?”

“Seeing the world—and getting educated—and——” I was excited. He interrupted me. “It shore is. You goin’ to jine up?”

“If they’ll have me,” I said.

He laughed shortly. “They’ll have you all right. You’ll find out.” “What do you mean?”

Again he laughed. “Go ahead, kid, jine up. You’ll never know till you do.” I missed the sarcasm in his voice. “I will,” I said, “tomorrow.”

“Do that!” he said. “You’ll see the world all right—from a porthole.” He started off. I grabbed his arm. “You’re kidding?” I asked.

He looked at me, then looked back up the steps at the house. Suddenly he smiled.

“That’s right, kid. I was only foolin’. Look at me, I been all over the world—Europe, China, South Seas. It’s a great life.” He looked up again at the house. “And it’s a hell of a lot better’n the one you got here.” He turned and walked away.

I watched him go down the street, then slowly climbed the steps to the house. My mind was made up.

As usual, Mrs. Mander closed up at three. When we counted out the money she asked me suddenly: “Wha’ were you gassin’ with that sailor about?”

For a second I thought she had overheard, then I realized she couldn’t—not from the parlour with the piano playing.

“Nothing,” I said. “He dropped his wallet and I returned it to him.”

She looked at me closely a moment, then she reached for her bottle of gin and poured herself a drink. “That’s what I like about you, Frank. You’re honest.” She swallowed her drink. “There’s nothing like petty thievery to give a good house a bad name.”

Chapter Six
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A
T
ten o’clock the next morning I was waiting in front of the Navy recruiting station in downtown Baltimore. It hadn’t opened as yet, so I had a cup of coffee next door while I waited. Through the window of the coffee shop I saw a Marine sergeant open the door. I finished the coffee quickly and went out into the street.

I walked casually through the door into the office. The sergeant had just sat down at a desk. “I want to join up,” I said to him.

“Marines or Navy?” he asked laconically. “Navy,” I replied.

He pointed to a chair over against the wall. “Sit down there,” he said, “Lieutenant Ford will be in shortly.”

While sitting there I looked around at the various posters. Then I picked up a booklet depicting various scenes of Navy life, at sea, ashore, different places. The officer came in.

The sergeant saluted him. “A recruit to see you, sir,” he said.

The lieutenant was a young man. He looked at me and asked me to step over to his desk. I took a seat near the desk. He opened up the desk drawer and took out several forms. Then he filled his pen at the inkwell on his desk and looked up at me.

He began to ask questions in a brisk tone of voice. I answered them as fast as he could ask them.

“Name?” “Frank Kane.”

“Any middle name?”

“Mander,” I said. I thought maybe you had to have a middle name to get in the Navy, and I spoke the first name that came into my mind.

“Address?”

I gave him my present address. “When were you born?”

“May 10, 1909.”

“That makes you eighteen now,” he said. “You’ll need your parents’ consent to join.” “My parents are dead.”

“Then your guardian?”

“My grandmother,” I said. “I live with her.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “We will mail her the consent papers.”

I hadn’t thought of that, but I had no doubt that I could intercept the papers and sign them before she could see them. I was always the first one up in the house. He continued his questions. At last he was finished. He stood up. I stood up too.

“When your grandmother signs these papers,” he said, “bring them down here. Also bring enough clothing to last you three days. You will receive your medical examination, and if you pass that, you will be sworn in and sent to a boot camp immediately.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He smiled and held out his hand. “Good luck,” he said.

I shook his hand and walked back to the house, my head in the clouds.

Monday morning the letter came. I saw it on the hall table where Mary had put it with other letters. It had “U.S. Navy, official business” on it, up in the left-hand corner of the envelope. I picked it up and took it up to my room and opened it. I saw where the recruiting officer had marked an “x” for her to sign. I signed it with a different type hand than I usually wrote. I put it in the pocket of my blue suit, the old one.