MANHATTAN, a high narrow kingdom as hopeful as any that ever was, burst upon him full force, a great and imperfect steel-tressed palace of a hundred million chambers, many-tiered gardens, pools, pa.s.sages, and ramparts above its rivers. Built upon an island from which bridges stretched to other islands and to the mainland, the palace of a thousand tall towers was undefended. It took in nearly all who wished to enter, being so much larger than anything else that it could not ever be conquered but only visited by force. Newcomers, invaders, and the inhabitants themselves were so confused by its multiplicity, variety, vanity, size, brutality, and grace, that they lost sight of what it was. It was, for sure, one simple structure, busily divided, lovely and pleasing, an extraordinary hive of the imagination, the greatest house ever built. Peter Lake knew this even as he stood on the Bowery in his homespun, sh.e.l.l crown, and feather necklace, at five o"clock in the evening, on a Friday in May.
He held the jug of purple clam beer in one hand, and the oily racc.o.o.n-skin bag of fish wafers in the other. He was dumbfounded, but learning fast. The first thing to happen was the theft of his canoe the minute he stepped out of it onto a pier at South Street. Hardly had he turned his back when shadowy forms emerged from the mossy pilings and sucked it in with them as if into h.e.l.l. Within five minutes he saw boys carrying its splintered pieces to be sold for firewood. By the time he reached the Bowery, the wood was burning underneath the crackling flesh of fowl, pigs, and cows roasting for sale to pa.s.sersby. As soon as the flames had died and yet another pig or lamb been positioned for a new burn, the sidewalk cooks had sold the ashes to gray-colored human wrecks who lugged huge bags of cinder and ash for sale to chemical companies and greenhouses. Peter Lake approached one of them and pointed at the enormous sack which almost hid its porter but for his tiny wizened head and two bloodshot popped eyes." That"s my canoe," he said.
"What"s your canoe?" inquired the bulky miserable.
"That," answered Peter Lake, still pointing to the sack.
"That"s your canoe, huh," said the ashman, regarding Peter Lake up and down from his sh.e.l.l crown to his muskrat booties.
"Well then you won"t mind if old Jake Salween uses it to sail to China, will you? Good day to you, m"boy! They"ll soon be taking you to Overweary"s."
"Overweary"s?"
"As if you didn"t know! Outta my way, you crazy midget."
It seemed to Peter Lake that the city, or as much as he had seen of it, was similar to the cloud wall. Its motion, the sounds erupting from all directions, the great vitality, struck him as a cloud wall laid flat, like a boiling carpet. But, whereas the wall was white, the city was a palette of upwelling colors. Its forms and geometry entranced hima"the orange blaze in clear upper windows; a gas lamp"s green and white bell-like glare; leaping tongues of fire; red-hot booming chambers in the charcoal; shoe-black horses trotting airily at the head of varnished carriages; peaked and triangular roofs; the ballet of the crowds as they took stairs, turned corners, and forged across streets; the guttural noises of machinery (he heard in the distance a deep sound like that of the cloud wall, but it was the sound of steam engines, flywheels, and presses); sails that filled the ends of streets with billows of white or sharp angular planes, and then collapsed into the bordering buildings or made of themselves a guillotine; the shouts of costumed sellers; buildings (he had never seen buildings) deep inside of which were rows of sparkling lamps (he had never seen lamps), small trees and tables, and acres of beautiful upright women who, unlike the Baywomen, wore clothes that made them look like silky-skinned jungle birds, though more bosomy and at times more aloof. He had never seen uniforms, trolleys, gla.s.s windows, trains, and crowds. The city exploded upon him, bursting through the ring of white sh.e.l.ls that crowned his head. He staggered bout the fire and tumult of Broadway and the Bowery, not understanding everything he saw. For instance, a man turned a handle on box, and music came out, while a small being, half-animal and half-man, danced about on the street and collected things in his hat. Peter Lake tried to talk to him. The man turning the handle said it be wise to give the creature money.
"What"s money?" asked Peter Lake.
"Money is what you give the monkey, or the monkey pee on you," replied the organ-grinder.
"Money is what you give the monkey... or the monkey pee on you,"" repeated Peter Lake, trying to understand. When he realized that the little man in the red suit was "the monkey," he realized as well that the monkey was peeing on him. He jumped back, determined (among other things) to get some money.
In an hour he was more tired than he had ever been; his feet ached and his muscles were tight; his head felt like a copper caldron that had been thrown down the stairs. The city was like wara"battles raged all around, and desperate men were on the street in crawling legions. He had heard the Baymen tell of war, but they had never said it could be harnessed, its head held down, and made to run in place. On several score thousand miles of streets were many cataclysmic armies interacting without formationa"ten thousand prost.i.tutes on Broadway alone; half a million abandoned children; half a million of the lame and blind; scores of thousands of active criminals locked in perpetual combat with as many police; and the vast number of good citizens, who in their normal lives were as fierce and rapacious as other cities" wild dogs. They did not buy and sell, they made killings and beat each other out. They did not walk on the streets, they forged ahead like pikemen, teeth clenched and hearts pounding. The divisions between all the different stripes of desperado and the regular run-of-the-mill inhabitants were so fine and subtle that it was nearly impossible to identify a decent man. A judge who pa.s.sed sentence on a criminal might deserve ten times more severe a condemnation, and might someday receive it from a colleague four times again as corrupt. The entire city was a far more complicated wheel of fortune than had ever been devised. It was a close model of the absolute processes of fate, as the innocent and the guilty alike were tumbled in its vast overstuffed drum, pushed along through trap-laden mazes, caught dying in airless cellars, or elevated to platforms of royal view.
Peter Lake had no more idea why he felt and sensed what he did than a patient in surgery has of what exactly is happening to him as he is sawed and cut. He was overcome by feeling. The city was a box of fire, and he was inside, burning and shaking, pierced continually by sights too sharp to catalog. He dragged himself about the maze of streets, lugging his purple beer and his fish wafers. There were no bays, no huts, no soft sandy places in which to lie down.
But there were anarindas. There were so many anarindas that he wondered if he were sane. They pa.s.sed everywhere, to the side, above below, deep within the gla.s.s-fronted boxes, like fish swimming enticingly in schools, gravity less and laughing. The supply was unending; it flowed like a river. Their voices were as fine as bells, crystal, birds, and song. He decided that he would do best if he picked an anarinda who would take him home with her. They could eat the fish wafers, drink the clam beer, shed their clothes, and roll about in whatever soft places these anarindas slept. He would choose the best one he could find. What anarinda, after all, could resist him in his sh.e.l.ls, feathers, and furs, with an entire jug of clam beer at his side? Many anarindas pa.s.sed, all fine. But the one he chose was special indeed. She was almost twice as tall as he was. Her broad face was so perfectly beautiful above a high gray collar (upon which was pinned an emerald) that she seemed like a G.o.ddess. She carried a sable wrap, and she had other jewels besides the emerald. It was wonderful, especially since she was about to step into a shiny black box pulled by two muscular horses.
Peter Lake approached her, indicated by a snap of the wrist first the bag of fish wafers and then the jug, and then held his chin up and stamped his feet in the insolent mating gesture of the Baymen. The sh.e.l.l crown jiggled and his feathers flew. At first, he thought that he had succeeded, because her eyes were wide with amazement. But then he saw an expression of fear move across her lovely features like a cloud across the moon. The door slammed in his face, and the box moved away.
He repeated this seduction a number of times, but even the lost ragged of anarindas disdained him. Exhausted as he was, and dejected, he wandered still, searching for a place to stay, for night had already fallen. Although he did not know where he was going, the streets were so tangled and numerous that he was never in the same place twice, and everywhere he went he found arresting scenes (a dog turning somersaults, a man wrapped in a white sheet cursing the crowd, the crash of two hea.r.s.es). After three hours (it was only eight o"clock) the Bayonne Marsh seemed as faint and distant as another world, and he knew that he was now lost in a long and magnificent dream. Scenes and colors mounted, driven like the waves of a storm, until he reeled with confusion.
Then he came to a small park, a square surrounded by stone buildings. It was quiet, dark green, and as peaceful and promising as the emerald on its field of gray angora. There were trees, soft gra.s.s, and dark s.p.a.ces. In the center was a fountain. All around the perimeter, gas lamps shone through the trees as they moved in the wind, casting patterns of light and dark. And an anarinda was dancing there with another anarinda. One was small and had red hair and a green shirt. The other was much larger and far more sensual (even though she was not much more than Peter Lake"s age) and she had flying blond hair, red cheeks, and a hot cream-colored shirt. They were dancing around the fountain, arm in arm, in an old Dutch dance, their cheeks touching, their hands entwined. They had no music; they hummed. And there was no reason for them to be dancing that Peter Lake could see, except that it was an exceptionally beautiful night.
THEY wore loose-fitting brown shoes which clapped the macadam with a hollow jolly sound, and they dipped and turned with such fun that Peter Lake wanted to join in. So he did, resting jug, bag, and sword in a pile before he jumped out into the open s.p.a.ce to dance. He danced somewhat like the Indians, from whom the Baymen had long before learned clam dances and strange roundelays in imitation of wind-blown reeds. Because the two girls were so happy, Peter Lake did a moon dance. He jumped and tucked, and played games from one fur-wrapped foot to another. They twirled about him as soon as his clinking sh.e.l.ls came to their attention. The picture they made together was pleasing to pa.s.sersby, who threw pieces of silver on the ground at their feet. This stuff, Peter Lake knew, was money. But though he had come to know what it was, he did not understand it for a long time after that, being puzzled by several of its mysterious rules. The first was that it was almost impossible to get. The second, that, once you had it, it was almost impossible to keep. The third, that these laws applied only to each individual but not to anyone else. In other words, though money was impossible to get and impossible to keep, for everyone else it flowed in by the bucketful and stayed forever. The fourth rule was that money liked to live in clean, shiny, colorful places of fine texture and alluring shadows. A lot of it seemed to reside at the edge of the park in tall houses of deep reddish-brown stone. On the other side of these houses" clear windows, warm lights were shining and wide clear panels of maroon, red, green, and white appeared, as did the sparkle of silver and the glow of flame. He could see this even while dancing. And he could feel that he was excluded from such places, even though the people who lived there threw coins at him for doing the moon dance. That was a further mystery. They threw coins at him for doing something he loved, something that was easy, something that he would have done anyway. When Peter Lake danced by the night fountain in the dark green square, and was given coins for his dancing, he became a thief. Though it would take a long time for him to understand the principle, it was that to be paid for one"s joy is to steal. Having learned this lesson even if he did not understand it, he felt a bond with thieves, which was good, for the two girls were spielers.
"What are spielers?" he asked them as they splashed their reddened sweaty faces with cold water from the fountain.
"Where are you from, " said the big one, "that you don"t know what are spielers?"
"I"m from the marsh."
They didn"t know what he was talking about. As they distributed the money they told him about spieling."We dance, like in a crowd, and we get their attention. They throw money..."
"Money is what you give the monkey, or the monkey pee on you, " said Peter Lake. The two girls looked at one another.
"They throw money, and Little Liza Jane picks their pockets. That"s spieling."
"Why were you dancing now, after they stopped throwing money?"
"Dunno, " said the big one."Why not?"
The big one was Little Liza Jane, and the little one was Dolly.
There had been a third, a dark girl named Bosca, but she had died not long before.
"What did she die of?" asked Peter Lake.
"The washtub," answered Little Liza Jane, without explaining further.
They took him in as a replacement for Bosca. He would dance with Dolly while Little Liza Jane picked pockets. He asked them if they had a soft place to sleep, and they said they did. It took them three hours to get there. They crossed several small rivers and five streams. They wound down a hundred crooked alleys that looked like opera sets. They pa.s.sed over great bridges, through commercial squares where men ate fire and meat was roasted on swords, and by half a dozen wide doors that led far into smoky factories that pounded like hearts. As they walked, Peter Lake sang the sounds that he heard coming from within the iron workplacesa""Boom, atcha atcha rap-umbella, boom, bok, atcha atcha, zeeeeeee-ah! bahlaka bahlaka bahlaka, ooooh-tak! chik chik chik chik! beema! um baba um baba, dilla dilla dilla, mash! um baba um baba, dilla dilla dilla okk!" He noticed that in the city people walked not only like chargers but in strange rhythmic dancesa"their bodies moving up and down, their arms going in and out, their hips tattooing in womanly zeal (if they were women, and, sometimes, even if not). He asked the two spielers if there were a war, or if something terrible had happened, because he could not understand the leaping fires, the homeless armies, the rubble, the commotion. They looked around, and said that nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. He was ready to faint from exhaustion.
They reached a street of symmetrical tenements. The spielers lived not in the tenements themselves but within the hidden square they formed. They went through a dark whitewashed tunnel and discovered a vast concealed court surrounded by perhaps a hundred buildings. In the center was a broken garden not yet revived by spring, except for a dense growth of weeds. At its edge, dwarfed by the tenements, was a little shack. The spielers lived not in the shack but in its bas.e.m.e.nt. They descended through a cellar door and found a small dark room with a tiny window near the ceiling. Some leftover coals glowed in the belly of an oil-drum stove. Dried vegetables hung on the wall, as did a pot and a few utensils. The one piece of furniture an enormous bed with uneven legs that gave it a list, and upon was half a dozen tired pillows, sheets, and blankets. Surprisingly, it were not too dirty. This was the soft place in which the spielers slept.
"Little Liza Jane lit a tallow lamp, and Dolly threw some wood the stove," said Dolly after it was done. She often spoke of herself in the third person." It will take an hour for the water to boil and the vegetables to cook." Peter Lake showed them the fish wafers and explained how to make a stew by shredding them and tying them in knots before tossing them in the boiling water, to improve the flavor. They thought they would rest before they ate, but instead they drank most of the clam beer. Little Liza Jane pulled off her shirt in the crossing of her arms, and Dolly followed. Then they took off their skirts. Peter Lake was already in quite a float because of the clam beer, and this appealed to him rather strongly. Little Liza Jane was sixteen, and fully developed. Dolly was still p.u.b.escent, but what she lacked in volume she made up for in freshness, and, anyway, Little Liza Jane had volume enough for two. Her dancing bosom filled Peter Lake"s eyes. He thought that what was now bound to occur would be the same as it had been with Anarinda, but with two anarindas. Moaning with pleasure, he removed his own clothes. This was as difficult as pulling a sidesaddle through a lobster trap. When finally he was free, he opened his eyes to feast upon the many b.r.e.a.s.t.s and legs in the bed. But they were all tangled up in one another already, and the two girls were breathing in slow lascivious hisses. He heard a small trickle of sucking. What was going on here? He checked to see if both were, as he had thought, anarindas. Both were anarindasa"there was no doubt about that. This was something new, but since everything about the city was new, he was not surprised. He took note. They were not interested in him, although they let him enter and satisfy himself several times, after which he was not interested in them. Then, hours later, no one was interested in anyone anymore but only in the stew. They ate in silence, and went to sleep just before the sun came up.
As if they were smokers of opium, the three of them half heard the voice of Little Liza Jane. She said," Tomorrow we"ll go to Madison Square. There are a lot of suckers in Madison Square." And the gray smoke of sleep filled their little chamber and pressed them down pleasantly upon their soft, tilted bed.
THE next morning, Peter Lake saw the city through different eyes as he would from then on whenever he awoke. It was never the same from one day to the next. Dark, close, smoky afternoons; oceans of rain; autumn days clearer than crystal paperweights; sunshine and shadowa"no one city existed.
He arose early. The two girls were caught up in the blankets. Peter Lake dressed and was quickly outside, the first to see the sun light the highest chimney top of the surrounding tenements. Standing in the garden, waist-deep in weeds, he wondered what the insides of these structures were like. He had never been in a building. For all he knew, when he opened the door he would see a new city within, as vast and entertaining as the one he had just discovered. On that late spring morning, almost summer, he went to the nearest tenement door and swung it open, expecting to see as if from a high hill a great city in winter laid out before him in a cold dawn. Someday, perhaps, he would. But now there was only darkness and a sickening smell. He cautiously negotiated a flight of stairs (having been raised on the marsh, he knew nothing of height) and came to a landing. Cord and twine had been tied all about the banisters. Children playing, he thought. He saw in the blackness that the dark walls were scratched and gouged. This was a horrible place, far from water, sky, or sand. He would have left and forgotten it had he not for some reason been impelled to go up one more flight of stairs. He was in the heart of the building now, as far away from the light as if he had been deep in the grave. He was just about to turn around when suddenly he became motionless with the graceful and quick self-restraint of a hunter who has stumbled upon his prey. A child stood before him, not an ordinary child, or so he hoped. It could not have been more than three or four, and was dressed in a filthy black smock. Its head was enormous, shaven, distorted. The brows and crown protruded as if to burst. In back, it was the same. Peter Lake winced. This creature, standing in the rubble, had its hand in its mouth, and was leaning against the wall, staring blankly ahead. Its jaws trembled, and the hideous swollen skull rocked back and forth in convulsive movements. Peter Lake"s instincts told him that there was not much life left for it to live. He wanted to help, but he had no experience or memory to guide him. He could neither leave nor stay. He watched it shake and bob in the near-darkness until, somehow, he fell reeling back into the light.
Such a thing as the child left alone to die in the hallway was unknown on the marsh. But here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emergea" dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with him. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be. He went back to the spielers.
"Leave your sword," the girls had said," or the leatherheads will take after you."
A Bayman never parted from his sword except to swim or roll." I wouldn"t leave my sword here," Peter Lake said, thinking that he had come up with a wonderful new phrase," for a lot of money."
"That"s a good one," said Dolly." I hope you spiel better than that."
Madison Square was just as far as the park where he had met them. After a ferry, two bridges, a train, and half a dozen tunnels, they had to weave for several hours through a labyrinth of streets, pa.s.sages, alleys, and arcades, all exploding with life. Peter Lake was exhausted even before he got to work. But then, in the middle of the wonderful park surrounded by high buildings interconnected by a web of aerial bridges, he began a series of moon dances, clam dances, and reed sways. Dolly danced around him, while Little Liza Jane walked to and fro in the crowd, picking pockets.
Little Liza Jane (a beauty, really) had a perfect venal sense, and when she saw a fat man in a plaid suit waltz out of the Bank of Turkey, she went for him like a bee. She discovered in his over-crowded wallet exactly $30, 000. Trembling, she made Peter Lake stop a wild clam dance and accompany her and Dolly to a corner of the park. There they divided up equally, with Peter Lake"s share of the morning"s take amounting to $10, 004. 28. Little Liza Jane said that the police would be after them if the fat man complained, so it would be wise to break up and meet again that night." Right here," she said." Meanwhile, put the money in a bank."
"What"s that?" asked Peter Lake. She taught him to read the word "bank" and told him that if he put money in the building where the word was written, the money would be safe. Peter Lake readily accepted this advice, and they parted. He found a bank, walked inside, tucked his pile of new bills neatly against a wall, and left, a.s.sured that he now had money, so that no monkeys would pee on him. With that out of the way, he wandered into the gla.s.s palace at Madison Square, intending to pa.s.s some time until work resumed in the evening.
MACHINES. Everywhere there were machines, and more machines. At first, Peter Lake thought they were animals that had learned how to dance in one place. For him, the metallic underworld, or overworld, was immediately glorious and irresistibly hypnotic. Never before had he seen such stuff. Light flooded in the windows and cut through high squadrons of palms. A suspended orchestra played swaybacked music attuned to the strange mechanical dances. From the center of an overfattened block of steel shapes, a green piston struggled to rise, gasping. Wheels of all colors everywhere trembled and reversed, and then set to rolling as if chased by a dog. b.a.l.l.s on rods rose and fell; gears ticked and tocked; slammer blocks crashed together repet.i.tiously like angered elk. Little plumes of steam riffled through the palms, and surprise squirts of water and oil were spat out sideways from monstrous prestidigitating engines as large as a city square. Peter Lake loved these things. And there were two thousand of them on the floor, each and every one laboring and puffing. For the first time, he was glad to have been turned away from the marsh. In the movement of the machines, he saw beyond everything he had yet known. Like waves, wind, and water, they moved. They were, in themselves, power and elation.
Wandering among the machinesa"two thousand machines!a" he grew dizzy and ecstatic. He didn"t know what a single one of them was for, so he decided to ask. Standing next to each sputtering behemoth was a guardian of sorts, actually a salesman. Peter Lake had never met a salesman, and it is strange to imagine that a man with a fifty-ton $200, 000 machine to hawk would spend any time at all with a twelve-year-old boy dressed in muskrat booties, skins, feathers, and sh.e.l.ls. But all Peter Lake had to do was walk up to one of the giant engines and say to its guardian," This, what is this?"
"What is this? What is this! This! my dear sir, is the Barking-ton-Payson Semi-Automatic Level-Seeking Underwater Caisson Drill and Dynamite s.p.a.cer! You will not find, in all this exhibition or in all the world, another SALSUCDADS that even compares with it. Let"s start with the design. Come over here to the finely crafted pum-ble shoe fabricated in Dusseldorf. Notice the solid turkey piece, the gleaming yodelagnia, and the pure steel bellows spring. Now, the turkey piece is directly linked to a superbly calibrated meltonian rod, at the base of which you will find an unusual feature common only to top-of-the-line SALSUCDADSa"a blue oscar chuck! This is the best quality you can get. I use it myself. I don"t normally tell people this, but I"ll tell you. I wouldn"t go near any other SALSUCDADS. I swear, I"d trade my wife for it. Look at those intake blades. Have you ever seen such intake blades? The crust drill alone is worth the entire price of the machine. Pure salinium! A doubly protected fen wheel! Shielded from the pacer by a rock-solid tandy piece! Open it and feel the smooth calabrian underglide. Now, let"s get to the point. You have half a million dollars of undercracking to budge across. Do you use a cheap piece of cat c.r.a.p? Of course not, not someone like you. I know an expert when I look him in the eye. You can"t fool me. You, my friend, are one of G.o.d"s own mechanics! A craftsman like you wants to budge across with something solid and fine, something dependable and well constructed, the Barkington-Payson. Come over here and inspect the whistle pip. Pure volpinium! Now, let me let you in on a little secret about the price...."
Peter Lake listened to him for two and a half hours. The boy"s mouth hung open as he strained to understand every word. He thought that this, along with picking pockets and red-robed monkeys, was one of the cornerstones of the civilization into which he tumbled. But he was interrupted by two police officers and a priest, who seized him, tied his hands behind his back, took him from the sparkling exhibition hall, put him in a prison wagon full of children, and drove him off to Reverend Overweary"s Home for Lunatic Boys.
All over the city, children without parents could be found huddled together like rabbits, sleeping in the warmth of daylight, in barrels and cellars and wherever there was a little quiet and stillness. At night, the cold set them in motion and flung them into the arms of adventures and depredations for which children have never been suited and never will be. There were more than half a million of them, and they succ.u.mbed as fast or faster than did their elders to diseases and to violence, so that as often as not the coffins in potter"s field were of diminutive and touching proportions: gravediggers could sometimes handle two or three at a time. No one knew the children"s names (in some cases they had not even had names), and no one ever would. Sometimes people of good conscience would ask," What happens to these children?" meaning all the children on the streets, summer and winter. The answer was that some grew up to work or steal; some pa.s.sed from inst.i.tution to inst.i.tution, or cellar to cellar; and the rest were burieda"out in the fields beyond the city, where it was quiet and flat and full of scrub.
Children sometimes lost their senses and wandered about, insane. And so there was the Overweary Home, set up to provide shelter and training for boys of the street who had gone mad. In one of their sweeps, Reverend Overweary"s a.s.sociates had noticed Peter Lake because of his costume.
He discovered rather quickly that the home was ruled by three men. Reverend Overweary himself was a tragic figure, always incapacitated by his deeply felt compa.s.sion for the boys. He was frequently in tears, and suffered greatly because of the sufferings of others. Because of this, he had neither the time nor the energy to supervise properly his second in command, Deacon Bacon, and Deacon Bacon was sure to find in each new batch a few boys who responded with vigor to his direct and enthusiastic attentions during the first delousing. The moment of truth came when Deacon Bacon joined the happy boys in the steaming baths, ready to apply the patubic acid. Peter Lake refused to have the patubic acid applied by the deacon, insisting upon doing it himself. Some of the new internees simply did not know. Some were eager for the approach of the kindly looking six-footer with horn-rimmed gla.s.ses and a nose like the beak of a bird. Things soon sorted themselves out (as they always Ho) and Reverend Overweary looked the other way as Deacon Bacon retired with his entourage for days at a time to a cottage which was furnished and decorated like a sultan"s front parlor on an isle in the Sea of Marmara.
But who was Reverend Overweary to chastise his deacon? His house stood like a palace, dwarfing even the cell blocks of gray stone in which more than two thousand boys lived at any one time. Reverend Overweary threw extravagant b.a.l.l.s to which he invited the rich, the intelligentsia, and visiting royalty. They came because the food was good and because they thought that he was a man of means who had channeled a personal fortune of millions into sheltering his charges. Quite the opposite. The boys supported him, for in the guise of training and education he leased them out in gangs to anyone who needed them. The going rate for unskilled labor was four to six dollars a day, twelve hours, no nonsense. Overweary had his boys out every day at five dollars a head. He spent a dollar on their upkeep, and thus realized a profit of about $8, 000 a day; less, actually, for the totals were constantly eroded by sickness, death, and escape (the three of which often combined in a unified process). The compa.s.sionate reverend got the boys off the street, taught them how to work, saved them from potter"s field, and took in several million dollars a year. When the boys left, they left without a cent.
Peter Lake stayed until he was almost fully grown. Though he was a slave, he was in paradise, this because of the third force in the equilibrium of the Overweary Homea"Reverend Mootfowl.
THE day that Peter Lake was seized in the machinery hall, Reverend Mootfowl had been in charge of the sweep. To the irritation of the police who accompanied him, he had insisted upon visiting the exhibition because he was unable to resist any display of technology, engineering, or machinery. He had been among the very first to staff the home, when things had not been so well organized, and prior to his "ordination" Overweary had sent him through a bunch of technical colleges. Mootfowl seemed to have no emotions, desires, or concerns, except those of metal working, smithing, machine building, pump design, beam raising, cable spinning, and structural engineering. He was forever at the forge or workbench, crafting, cutting, designing. He lived steel, iron, and timber. He could fabricate anything. He was a mad craftsman, a genius of tools.
Peter Lake soon became one of the elite half-hundred that worked day and night in the glare of the forge. Brought to the subject early and hard, they became master mechanics, and they and Mootfowl were the right people in the right time, for the city had just begun to mechanize. Engines had come alive, and lighted every corner, crowning themselves in plumes of smoke and steam. Once they had been started, slowly, surely, there would never be an end to their rhythmic splendor. They added to the body of the city not just muscle and speed, but a new life for the tireless ride to the future. A staggering number of disparate things had to be strung together. Electricity was being introduced throughouta"a savage, speedy, sparkling gleam. Steam in a honeycomb of tunnels, great engines to drive the dynamos, trains underneath the streets, and buildings built higher and higher, were a new world of and for mechanics. As the machines began their ascension, when the city itself became a machine, millions worked day and night in a fury to attend the birth, to make sure that the right things were done, to provide the steel and stone and hard tools with which the pulsing heart would be sustained.
Builders and machinists came from everywhere to layer the city in new steel. They were able to use materials as fast as the materials could be produced. Pennsylvania, an entire wilderness, became their smoking hearth. They stripped the forests just for frames to help the ironwork. They mined, logged, and blasted, and brought everything to the city to be put in order. Not surprisingly, they had a never-ending need for skillfully crafted small pieces. These were the things of steel that Peter Lake learned to mill and forgea"gaskets, bolts, rocker arms, seals, platens, spokesa"parts that had to be drawn from seething fires or machined straight and true. He had to learn as well how to tend the engines that powered the machines, to master the construction of the turbines that kept his fires white-hot, the intricate cam action of the automatic stokers, electrical systems, gears and transmissions, gasoline engines, pressure boilers, metallurgy, stress engineeringa"in short, the vast traditional physics of those who called themselves mechanics.
They worked in a huge shed that roared and glowed with dozens of fires and was littered with oily blackened tools of heavy steel. As the machines and flames sang together, they sounded like a percussion orchestra gone wild. The boys wore black leather ap.r.o.ns and heavy gloves. They had their own society among the fires and anvils, and they stayed on the job sixteen hours a day. Mootfowl himself worked twenty hours or more. The income from their skilled industry was substantial, but they cared only for the work. They traveled about the city on jobs and were known by their black ap.r.o.ns, their uncanny skills, and their insane devotion to their craftsa"at which they became better and better, fulfilling the demands of the age.
He, Mootfowl, wore a Chinese hat to protect his hair from being singed by the forge when he knelt down on the oily floor to inspect the readiness of an excited piece of steel. The way he handled hot metal was a marvel of tenderness and dispatch. He could strike the precise and necessary blow needed to create a strong thing from a seething moltenness. Mootfowl was quite tall. Even when Peter Lake was fully grown, he felt half Mootfowl"s size. And Mootfowl had a rugged face of many handsome planes, sooty and shining, in which rested two sparkling owl"s eyes. Each time he saw those eyes, Peter Lake was reminded of his days with the Baymen, when he would sometimes have for breakfast a hot roasted owl, b.u.t.tered and sizzling. But those days were long over. Under Mootfowl"s tutelage, he learned to read and write, to use mathematics, to bargain skillfully in the matter of jobs and commissions, and to know the city well enough to find his way about. Since half the boys were Irish, Peter Lake learned to speak in a flexible and true Irish dialect. He liked it well enougha"it was like riding the wavesa"and he found after a few years that he could speak in no other way, except to recall slowly articulated phrases from lays in Bay. Still, he was often saddened by the loss of his original self, whatever that had been. He was not really a Bayman, not really Irish, and only partly one of Mootfowl"s boys, since, unlike the gamy five-year-olds who were to be seen in a corner of the shed, learning to work with miniature tools, he had been apprenticed relatively late. He was not sure to what he had to be loyal. But he a.s.sumed that this uncertainty, like the other torments suffered by his fellow "lunatics," would someday vanish.
Meanwhile, Mootfowl and his group were ever at work as the city"s structures took their places one upon the other, faster than reef-building corals. Each tower had a minute of free view, after which it would spend the rest of eternity contemplating the shins of its compet.i.tors. Not so the great bridges. They flowed out over the rivers, and would have airy views and be alone forever. Mootfowl worshiped bridges. He had worked on several, and when he heard that another was to be flung over a wide bend of the East River, toward Brooklyn, he was all feathers and wine for days, since he knew that a bridge of that length would require specially forged components and expert repairs. One of his more holy moments was when he told his boys about the time that he mended some broken ferris joints for Colonel Roebling after the four main cables of the Brooklyn Bridge had been spun across the river. Mootfowl had hung high above the water, as dizzy as a bird in a storm, with a forge hanging by his side. There he did the work, to the delight of thousands crossing below on the Fulton ferry.
"Jackson Mead," Mootfowl said with reverence and admiration," has come from beyond the Ohio with a hundred good men and tons of money and steel from G.o.d knows where, to start another bridge. They arrived after a storm. The white wall had imprisoned the countryside for days and days. Just as it was lifting, out charged their train, parting the mist on the Erie Lackawanna tracks. It was a great surprise to the farmers, who said that the train hit the bottom of the curtain. They say, boys, that the top of the train was sc.r.a.ped and torn, that it shone from contact with the underside of the wall.
"Be that as it may, Jackson Mead is here, and the bridge will be going up. We should say prayers for it."
"Why?" asked one of the forge boys, a small adenoidal fellow who was always very skeptical.
Mootfowl glared at him." A bridge," he proclaimed," is a very special thing. Haven"t you seen how delicate they are in relation to their size? They soar like birds; they extend and embody our finest efforts; and they utilize the curve of heaven. When a catenary of steel a mile long is hung in the clear over a river, believe me, G.o.d knows. Being a churchman, I would go as far as to say that the catenary, this marvelous graceful thing, this joy of physics, this perfect balance between rebellion and obedience, is G.o.d"s own signature on earth. I think it pleases Him to see them raised. I think that is why the city is so rich in events. The whole island, you see, is becoming a cathedral."
"Does that leave out the Bronx?" someone asked.
"Yes," Mootfowl replied.
They put down their tools and bent their heads, and with the fires singing behind them, they prayed for the new bridge. As soon as they finished, Mootfowl sprang up like a steel spring." Work," he commanded." Work through the night. Tomorrow we"ll apply for employment on the new bridge."
Not much was known about Jackson Mead except that he had placed many fine suspension bridges over the great rivers of the West, some of which had taken years to complete and had been built to span nearly bottomless canyons and gorges. He was quoted in the newspapers as having said that a city could be truly great only if it were a city of high bridges." The map image of London," he had lectured during a press conference in the offices of the bridge company," and of Paris, too, compared to that of San Francisco or New York, is boring. To be magnificent, a city cannot resemble a round cradled organ, a heart-or-kidney-shaped thing suffocated by a vast green body. It must project, extend, fling itself in all inviting directions over the water, in peninsulas, hills, soaring towers, and islands linked by bridges." The press had wondered why he included San Francisco in his examples, since there were no bridges there; and he had said, with a smile," My mistake." The papers, and the ladies, made much of his physical appearance. He was six feet and eight inches tall, but not skinny. He had snowy white hair and a mustache to match, and he wore white vested suits with a platinum chain to tether his watch, which was almost as big as a clock, but which, in his large hand, did not seem so. His excellent health and physique made it difficult to reckon his age.
People said that he was so tremendous and robust, and that his eyes were so blue, because he ate raw buffalo meat, bathed in mineral water, and drank eagle urine. When publicly confronted with this, he said," Yes, of course it"s true," and then burst out laughing.
There were those who loved him, and those who did not. Peter Lake was awed when he, Mootfowl, and the forty-nine others were trooped into a spa.r.s.ely furnished office, and there was Jackson Mead, like an oversized painting. Next to him, Mootfowl seemed like just a statuette. The image that came to Peter Lake was of Jackson Mead as bridegroom, and Mootfowl the representation of him soon to stand upon a cake. The young apprentice had to close his mouth, for he found it hanging open in wonder. And he made a conscious effort to narrow his eyes, which, as if to match his mouth, had become the size of half-dollars.
He couldn"t see how anyone could hate this man, or report that he was hard and cruel. After all, there he was in white, his hair and mustache as fluffy as down, a soothing, balanced countenance, a satisfied man, a study in calm. Precisely this, Peter Lake discovered, was why people hated him. He got things done, and there was no hesitation about him. Others, weighted by ambivalence and uncertainty, envied someone who knew what he was meant to do and whya"as if he had had a few centuries to solve the normal problems of existence and had then turned his attention to bridge building.
After Mootfowl explained their reason for being there, Jackson Mead said that it seemed like an attractive proposition, that he needed skilled smiths, mechanics, and machinists. But, he said, he was not convinced that these boys, eager as they were, were equal to the task." In antic.i.p.ation of that, sir," replied Mootfowl," I have designed a test. Choose, if you will, any of my boys, and a.s.sign them as difficult an operation as might be encountered. We are willing to be evaluated in such a manner." He stepped back, nervous and proud. Jackson Mead said that he would hire them all if the boy that he chose could forge a heptagonal ferris piece without appreciable distortion. When he stood up to survey the applicants, it was as if he had climbed into a tower. They, in turn, felt a collective adolescent chill that turned to ice when the snowy-haired bridge builder pointed directly at a little fat boy huddled in the back, and said, "Him. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and that looks to me like the weak link."
He had chosen young Cecil Maturea"five foot one, two hundred pounds, a face packed with untenable fat, and two black smiling slits here his eyes were supposed to have been. He was a squash cook at he home, who had begged to be made a mechanic. He wore a crenellated beanie that fit in perfect roundness over his waxed crew cut. His arms were like sausages, and when he waddled around quickly in his black ap.r.o.n he looked like a cannonball come alive. He had arrived fairly recently at Overweary"s, his origins a mystery, though he claimed to have vague memories of life on an English herring boat. He was fourteen, and seemed not to know much of the world. When made to understand that he had been chosen for the test, he broke into a joyous smile and ran out to the forge. Everyone followed, wondering what would happen. They liked him, it was true, but in the way that you like an awkward dog that loses its footing and skis down the stairs. Mootfowl had yet to draw out the fine strands of Cecil Mature"s intelligence. The boy was eager, but seldom did things right. So, when he heated up a ferris piece and took it to the anvil, they winced. Each blow was more damaging than the one before. After five minutes, the ferris piece was badly mangled, but still capable of salvation. Cecil Mature put down his hammer and took a step backward. He adjusted his hat and peered through his slitlike eyes at the half-dead ferris piece. Then he stepped back to the anvil and really began to do it in. The ferris piece had been at one time a complicated jointure that looked like a cross between a carriage wheel and an arch. After being pounded for fifteen minutes by Cecil Mature, it was once again a rocky ore, something that looked, in fact, just like a newly fallen meteorite. When he was finished, Cecil Mature delicately stepped back into the group of boys and was quickly hidden among them. Jackson Mead thanked a whitened and speechless Mootfowl (who had not known that Cecil was along), and departed in his carriage to inspect a new shipment of steel braces.
Their single-file walk back to the workshop was taken by many to have been a funeral procession without a corpse. Mootfowl dismissed them, and they remained idle for a week. During this time, Mootfowl became deeply despondent, and lay all day, dejected, on top of his enormous tool trolley, staring at the skylight ablaze with the sun. Then he summoned Peter Lake.
Overjoyed, because he knew an active Mootfowl was indomitable, Peter Lake rushed to find his mentor furiously working on a framelike contraption which he had built in the middle of the workshop. Peter Lake thought that it was a new machine that they would show to Jackson Mead, and so redeem themselves.
He helped Mootfowl with some adjustments, but still did not understand what he was building, or why Mootfowl seemed crazed with excitement." That"s it," said Mootfowl," only one last thing left. When I give the word, hit this bar with a sledgehammer, as hard as you can. I have to make one last measurement, one last fastening, and it is a matter of precision." Mootfowl disappeared behind a wooden shield through which ran the steel rod, and said," With all your strength, Peter Lake, strike now!" Peter Lake struck an enormous blow, and waited for further instructions. He waited and waiteda"and when finally he looked behind the shield, he saw Moot-fowl, smiling alertly, unusually still, serene, pinned through his heart to an oaken log.
"Oh Lord," Peter Lake said, too shocked to feel any grief even for a man he had loved so much. He had stuck Mootfowl like a b.u.t.terfly.
You could not drive an iron stake through the heart of a man of the cloth, and expect to go unpunished. So Peter Lake went over the wall (there was no wall, actually), and those years were ended. He left his ap.r.o.n, but he took his sword.
COURSING the streets, swifting up and down the avenues, feeling the fire of his own strength, Peter Lake reflected upon his position. He was just short of twenty, and had recently affected a modest but thick blond mustache tinged with red and silver. His hair was beginning to thin over his forehead, which made him look older, and elevated his browa"a pleasant circ.u.mstance for a pleasant face. He was disarming, friendly, kind, and full of good humor. He looked a lot like every good man, and he saw sharply and in minute detail.
Had he been an aristocrat, he would have gone far. As it was, he had the world before him, and he moved confidently through the city, well aware that he was an excellent mechanic, a strong young man with a trade. True, the police would be after him. But, unenc.u.mbered as he was, that would be no problem.
That is, he thought he was unenc.u.mbered, until he turned around and saw Cecil Mature. Cecil broke into a face-filling smile, which he now and then twitched off to unslit his eyes so he could see." d.a.m.n it, Cecil, did I say you could come?"
"No, but I did."
"You have to go back. The police will be after me."
"I don"t care."
"I care. Go home!"
"I wanna come with you!"
"You can"t come with me. Now get out of here. Go home, Cecil."
"I can go anywhere I want."
"Do you realize that if you come after me they"ll find me in half a day? When I go into the business of towing wide loads, I"ll let you know."
"It"s a free country. I can go anywhere I want. That"s the law. A judge said that."
"I"ll cut off your head."
"No you won"t."
"I"ll just lose you, that"s all."
"No you won"t. I can move fast. Besides, I can help. I can get vegetables, like in the school. They taught me to be a squash cook. I can cook squash good."
"That"s exactly what I need, isn"t it, while I flee on a murder chargea"a squash cook." They were walking very fast through the Bowery. In fact, Cecil was trotting to keep up." Jessie James had a squash cook; everyone knows that. Butch Ca.s.sidy had a squash cook. It"s de rigueur."
I can cook other things, do laundry, stand guard at night. I"m a good smitha"not the besta"but good."