Crackpot, p.40
Crackpot, page 40
On the way back with the drinks one day she happened to run into Gordie the Fortz. Eagerly, she spread herself across the path in front of him, though it was obvious from the way he kept glancing around so uneasily that he was not happy to be detained thus publicly by Hoda. Hoda didn’t want to make him uncomfortable; she had nothing against him. She had heard from Ralphie months ago all about Gordie’s good luck in finding himself a sweet and loving little girl he was crazy about, who was not only pretty, but blessed as well with a chronic catarrhal condition which had also affected her hearing somewhat, so that neither hearing nor smelling his effluvia, she could the more unconditionally adore him. Hoda certainly did not want to disturb a romance so clearly arranged in heaven, but so much time had passed, by then, since she had seen or heard of her David, or of Ralphie for that matter, that she couldn’t help detaining the good natured Gordie to ask hopefully after the rest of the gang.
Gordie was in the grip of that tender euphoria in which even the most apparently earthly clod apprehends, perhaps for the first and last time in his life, that he is fit for a far more rarefied sphere than that which he normally inhabits. He was like a coarse, vigorous flower at precisely that moment in the morning before it has been called on to weather the rigours it was created for, of wilting sun and blazing light, and hiss of rains that will nevertheless never manage to wash away the heavy dust which will have tattooed itself irremoveably deep into its petals by late afternoon. There it stands, sun-drawn petals uplifted, deceptively delicate in the morning light, that bloom which will spend all the week of its life asserting grimily, ‘I am I,’ still instinct now with another intuition, *I am not only I.’ Love had awakened in Gordie a hitherto dormant, now vibrant respect for all womanhood, and his present embarrassment with Hoda was at least partly due to the fact that even she, though she represented only the very crudest aspect of the function of the female divine, even she shared some of the glow. He’d given up whores, as far as he knew, forever. And now he was reluctant to discuss, even with her, in any detail, the affairs of his friends who were still involved in such crudities.
Hoda was not unused to the prudery of young boys in love, having been more than once suddenly forbidden to utter, from her profaning lips, even the name of a newly beloved one, though it had hitherto been bandied about quite casually. But once Gordie, not realizing that what was already past history to him was shocking news to her, had spoken of Ralphie’s trouble and David’s flight, she would not allow him to pass, but stood there, not much taller than he was, but towering, somehow, blocking the path, leaning toward him imploringly, wheedling in her resonant, husky voice, “What do you mean he pissed off? When did he piss off? Where did he go? How come I never heard? What kind of trouble?”
Perhaps Gordie recognized, through the haze of his own preoccupation, that a species of love was operative here too. Certainly he realized that he would not get by until she was satisfied. So he told her how it all began when Ralphie went and blew that exam. Ralphie the genius committed the one unforgivable error, and brought sin and evil into his daddy’s world. He embarrassed his old man by not bringing home all the prizes in the pot for once in his whole life, and all of a sudden his father knew there was a sinful, evil influence at work somewhere, somebody BAD, and somehow, before long, he knew his name was David.
“David? Sinful? What do you mean, sinful? What do you mean, evil?” roared Hoda so suddenly and stridently that she startled even herself, and so alarmed Gordie that he made a nervous movement toward her, ducking his head as though he were going to try to sneak through under her armpit and run away. All he needed was his Fanny should come running. But Hoda grabbed him by the arm as he tried to shrug his way past her. “What about David, I mean?” she asked in gentler tones, wheedlingly. “What did he do? Why did he have to run away? What’s all this sinful evil crap? Come on. I just hate to see a nice kid like that get into trouble. They’re always picking on orphans.”
“He scrammed, that’s all. Nobody knows why, exactly. He just took off. The funny thing is, he never actually had much to do with the operation. You know how he was kind of a snob about that kind of thing. I don’t blame him now so much, though he used to get on a guy’s nerves sometimes. He just liked to hunt by himself, like, sweep them away on his charger; it was easy for him, with that big lance he’s got. You ought to know.”
“Yeh yeh,” said Hoda. “So what happened? Why should he take off before school’s over? He did all right in school.”
“Oh sure, lucky stiff, I could never get exempted from my finals.”
“Exempted?” crowed Hoda. “I never knew he was exempted. So what they got against him? They don’t like it when an orphan kid turns out to be smarter than them, eh?”
“I told you, Ralphie flunked an exam, see?”
“Sure, now I get it, the Director’s son. And that don’t look so good, so what do you do about it? You kick the poor orphan in the arse, that’s what you do you capitalist bastards!” Hoda was yelling now. She had Gordie by the sleeve and she was shaking him to and fro. “That’s what happened, eh? And all you guys just stand around and let them do it. That’s what always happens. The workers just stand around and let each other get beat up.”
“Naw Hoda, hey come on, let go! Hey come on lay off! Listen, you want me to tell you or don’t you?” With difficulty, Gordie struggled free of her grip. “Nobody got beat up. I wasn’t even there. What’s eating you, Hoda? I told you, Ralphie flunked an exam, see? No scholarships for Ralphie for the first time since they invented scholarships. So his old man wants to know why? And he takes a good close look at Ralphie’s marks and he sees that Ralphie may have flunked only one, but he’s been slipping all the way down the line. So his daddy wants to know WHY? So Ralphie tries to double lip him that it’s all his extra curricular activities. He’s a Big Time Operator on campus. They can hardly carry on the college without him. You know how Ralphie talks. It’s just he’s too kind and good and responsible when they need him, so he works side by side with the Chancellor and the Senate, and the result is he neglects his studies and ends up in this terrible horrible disgrace. For the first time in his life he has flunked a subject. A thousand thousand apologies. Henceforth Ralphie will work, Ralphie will sweat, Ralphie will raise himself up again to be Number One Genius on campus.”
“Yeh yeh,” Hoda interrupted impatiently. “I know Ralphie. So what happened to David?”
“It’s all tied up,” complained Gordie. What was she pumping him for, and yelling at him, and making him keep his Fanny waiting, if she didn’t even want to listen? “For the first time in his life Ralphie didn’t manage to con his old man. Don’t ask me how come. Maybe he lost his nerve. Ralphie isn’t used to flunking exams. Me, if I didn’t think my pa was going to like my report card, I used to sign it myself. He’s got enough troubles. But Ralphie never flunked before. The old man started digging, and he found out that Ralphie and a couple of the other guys had set themselves up a little apartment downtown, with a built-in housekeeper. Well, you know the guys. And they’re sharing everything co-op. They’re a syndicate, see? And any other guys who want to use what’s handy have to pay cash on the line. The way it worked out, it cost the syndicate practically nothing; they got theirs for free, and when the operation really got going, they even started to show a profit.
“Pretty soon they’re running parties and charging a house fee. I wouldn’t bring my woman to that kind of party, but you know these college types. And Ralphie’s the chief cashier. So that’s where he’s been all those late nights his dad thought he was studying with his friends.”
“David,” said Hoda sternly. “What about David?” And she shifted her weight and seemed to distribute herself more solidly across his path.
“Yah, well, the thing about David was that Ralphie talked him into lending the syndicate money a couple of times, like in the summer when he was working on the trains and had some ready cash, he loaned Ralphie some dough to help tide over the girl’s rent till the operation got back into kick again. When old man Popoff started digging around, and he found out King David helped finance the operation, and then you know, he heard about his reputation, like how the guys called him Super-Crotch for a joke, and he realized how all this terrible horrible dirty stuff had been going on right under his snoot all this time, right away he decided that must be who was leading his boy astray. All the guys knew it was a lot of crap, but old man Popoff, he got some kind of whole posse worked up, and they were meeting and yelling how to save our fucking kids. Then, when the Prince peed off like he was saying ‘I am the guilty one,’ the old guys could relax and lean off, because now the evil influence was gone, see?”
Hoda saw.
“And then, when old Popoff discovered some stuff missing from his office too, that only David could have taken because it had to do with him, you couldn’t convince him his runaway wasn’t rotten through and through, and good riddance to bad rubbish, and that’s what keeps him from running a perfect orphanage, orphans.”
When it came to concrete details about the disappearance of the boy, Gordie had few. David has just taken off, that’s all, disappeared, beat it, flit, scrammed, amscrayed. When Hoda raged about his interrupted schooling Gordie, who was not particularly interested in schooling himself, simply shrugged. But what of his plans to go to college? Gordie had never heard David talk of going to the university. As far as he knew the Prince had always planned to pull out of here one day. He had been hoping to get onto the transcontinentals as a newsie this summer. Davy’d always had his sights beyond the skyline.
Knowing Ralph, Hoda summoned patience and waited, but though he eventually did turn up and talked a good deal about his own misadventures, swearing ardently that no matter what happened, he would not ever make the mistake of flunking an exam again, he was, if anything, somewhat evasive when she questioned him about David, and when pressed, claimed that the kid had been planning to make tracks for a long time. Anyway, he’d probably turn up again someday when the heat was off.
Why don’t I hate him? Hoda wondered, as she submitted numbly to this cocky little fellow who had so casually used and now dismissed his friend. Because it would be a relief to hate him, instead, she answered herself coldly. And anyway, what would be the point in driving Ralphie away, who might be her one thread of contact in the future, in case her son should return? But she knew, even though for a long time she left the chocolate box with its hopeful message and little cache of bills almost superstitiously alone, she knew with a great weariness of spirit, as she had known from that moment when she stood, hot and sweaty in the midsummer sunlight, facing Gordie the Fortz unbelievingly on the cinder walk of the park, and heard him blurt out that her David had run away, and felt the chill from the two pop bottles that she held in her hand snake suddenly up her arm and into her heart, that she had lost him forever.
David had no such grim feelings about his departure or the events which had brought it about. Oh he was sore all right, because it was all wrong. One minute he was everybody’s best buddy, and then all of a sudden he was the wrongie of all the ages. But he was not, deep down, profoundly surprised. He had been quick to sense the point at which old Popoff’s rage and offended pride were beginning to crystallize around him. Once it began to happen it went on happening, and it was no use just standing around and wondering over and over again, why me for crying out loud? Somehow, he didn’t know exactly how, and he didn’t want to think too much about it, Popoff had found out all kinds of things about him, though what they had to do with the fact that Ralphie had flunked his exam he wasn’t even going to try to figure out. There was the old guy gone berserk, knocking on all the doors in the district, yelling for all the parents of all the girls to lock up their daughters against the wicked schoolboy seducer in their midst. Worse than that even, he was leading the innocent sons of Orphanage Directors astray. And somehow Ralphie wasn’t managing to make things clearer to his dad. It was while he was trying to figure out how he was supposed to act till it all blew over that the little envelopes, emptied so long ago that he had almost forgotten about them, had come to David’s mind. Rooting about as he was doing now, old Popoff would not fail to uncover his one area of genuine guilt. He was a thief; well, a burglar anyway. Who knew what the old man would make of that discovery? One thing was sure, he was not going to wait around to find out.
What if they sent out an alarm? What if they pursued him? Capture the evil schoolboy! Bring him back in chains! Lock him up! Bring him out on public display twice a day and let the world examine his fabulous genitals. The rise and fall of Super-Crotch. Hanging on underneath, while the train roared along, holding tight for his life for mile after mile of grit-eyed cinder mouthful, while the noisy stinky metal worm to whose belly he clung zoomed him along an endless, rushing tunnel of wood corrugated steel gutline, there was plenty of time, if not to think, for random thoughts to chug their endless train through his head. Worm within worm within worm, worming along. In the long hours and days he was to spend hugging the boxcars above and below, or huddling within, he let his thoughts, undirected, exhaust their interest in the life he had escaped. Afterwards, reborn again, the first of many times, into the world, he carried with him only one faint regret, that he hadn’t said goodbye to Tizey or to Mr. Limprig. He wished he’d thought of leaving Tizey a note at least. He did not, after all, want her, too, to think of him as an ungrateful lout. He promised himself to write them both just as soon as the heat was off and he had some good news for them.
But in those first aimless years the definitive good news never quite arrived. Should he say, “I am sitting here in the park doing nothing; there is nothing to do?” Or should he say, “You will be happy to know that I sit every day in the public library and read until they send us away at closing time. It is warm in here.” Or should he write, “Spring. It’s time to move on. Maybe if I head West again…”
Later on, when he was overseas, it seemed foolish to write at such a time, though sometimes he longed to reach out to someone. But it would be like asking someone to worry about you, to let them know after all this time that you were a soldier, and fighting, and perhaps afraid. After all, what did he have to say to them, even now? Time and distance having put them into perspective, he could allow himself to doubt, without feeling much pain anymore, whether they had ever greatly cared. The fact that he himself cared, a little, had little to do with them. Someday, perhaps, when the war was over, he would return. He would satisfy their curiosity, however mild, to see him a grown man. And he would try to find his bearings, one last time, in a childhood which, concrete enough in its details, remained disturbingly unsubstantial in its essence. It was not that he had much hope of discovering who he was at this late stage; rather, that he had left without in some way affirming who he was. It seemed to him that even if he returned simply to say goodbye it would be an affirmation of his existence as a self-created person. Yes, some day he would return to say goodbye. If he lived so long.
THIRTEEN
Hoda kept the home fires burning. Business was good, but the fervour with which she threw open her vital commodity to the boys in khaki and the boys in blue transcended mere cupidity. Here at last was the larger struggle, the just cause in the interests of which a person was entitled, nay, required to cast self aside. Here was a use even for that great, hollow space inside of her that other people thought was packed so tight with guts and grease and mindless chuckle. Hoda became the regimental drum, and the lonely, frightened, cocky young fellows, with small amounts of money to spend, usually for the first time in their lives, found their way unerringly, when they were in need of particular comfort, from their dreary barracks to the welcome of the tumbledown hutch of Mamma Hoda, as she had come to be known. Good old Mamma Hoda. All night long they banged, and all night long she boomed, the large resonance of her response warming and reassuring them wonderfully, and reconciling her briefly to her own emptiness.
“Bundle for Britain,” she cheered her clients on. “Fornicate for freedom,” she invited one and all. “Let my end justify your means,” she counselled, though she felt a little guilty about using that last one; she had heard ends and means discussed so seriously and often by the comrades and Mr. Polonick, rest in peace. But there was a war on, and the boys had to get some fun out of life, didn’t they, before we sent them off “to feed the guns” as Mr. Polonick used to say? “It’s all in your point of view,” she advised. “Don’t think how I lower your morals; think how I raise your morale. An army travels on its stomach, all right,” she quipped indefatigably. “And here’s a stomach that can testify for the air force too,” she would affirm, slapping her great pot.
She had always enjoyed fooling around with sayings and slogans; you could camouflage enormous distances with words. In fact, if you fooled around with them long enough, you got so you couldn’t believe a thing they said. And actions, too, could fool you into thinking they had more meaning than they ever could have. In the enthusiasm, for instance, of the early months of her war effort, Hoda even nourished the peculiar notion that no one she had ever held in her arms was going to die of this war. No one, she was determined; everyone who had ever lain in her arms belonged in her circle of safety. And to keep its magic tight she would not except even the bastards who’d made fun of her afterwards. That was democracy. The sons of bitches got away every time. But what did it matter, as long as the ones who counted could benefit? Perhaps it would turn out that she had done her boy some good after all; perhaps she had unknowingly rendered him safe, wherever he was now. But her private wish circle did not retain its magic for long. The boys who were sent overseas began to die, and the news of their dying cut great gaps in her ring of hope. Not for the first time, she was forced to jettison a wishful expectation. It always surprised her anew afterwards that she could ever have been so dumb as to hope to impose her desires, no matter how strong, or how right, on a life that paid no attention.
