“Well, well, another county heard from,” the cop said. “Why don’t you all go home and mind your own business?”
The Negro did not wish to go home to mind his own business, because he had been one of those protesting folk singers many months back, and he considered civil rights his one and only proper business, and besides he did not like fuzz of any kind or shape. He also did not particularly like white men, although he was shacking up with a redheaded white girl on Delancey Street, but of course that was not a white man. The smoky-eyed girls and the dungaree-clad boys did not wish to go home to mind their own business because they had no business to mind except protecting the artist in a free society, and so they pressed closer to the Negro in support since he was an artist and colored to boot. One of them said, “Why don’t you go play in traffic, officer?” and the rest chimed in with other clever taunts like “Come arrest my mother, she’s a pusher,” and “What’s the matter? Graft a little slow today?” while the cop’s sour, pained expression began to change to a patiently suffering martyred look. He had a sudden vision of a riot starting on his beat, which would not be his beat very much longer if a riot started on it, especially a riot led by a nigger. Staten Island took on very large and very real dimensions in his mind.
The colored folk singer, encouraged by his supporters, began playing and singing “Freedom,” which sounded very Communistic to the cop, and which he needed like a hole in the head, a Communist nigger-led riot on his beat! The two aged chess players were maneuvering around the edges of the crowd as though trying to determine which was the most vulnerable spot on the board and then, apparently having discovered it, ran off in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, some of the Saturday students had managed to get hold of a huge piece of cardboard and were lettering a crude sign reading STOP POLICE BRUTALITY! A few Bowery winos who were really vagrants, and who had really come here to ogle the tweedy sneakered college girls, were beginning to sing “Peg o’ My Heart,” and some curious college instructors had come out of the school to stand on the front steps or drift toward the crowd, puffing their pipes and smiling, and thinking how nice it was to be young in New York in April.
The cop took off his hat and wiped the sweatband, which was an old New York fuzz trick of stalling, and which the Negro folk singer recognized at once. He began singing louder, trying to drown out the winos. The cop had never known the words to “Freedom,” and he had forgotten the words to “Peg o’ My Heart,” so he put his hat back on his head and wondered how all this had started. He had the strangest feeling all at once that things like this always seemed to start on his beat, and he wondered if he should transfer to the Fire Department. While he was wondering this, a pickpocket began plying his trade on the edge of the crowd, and one of the winos goosed a pretty virginal college girl who had taken on half of Fordham’s football team the season before but who now shrieked in outraged surprise nonetheless. The cop was too busy to notice these petty infringements of the law because in his mind he had already mushroomed this minor demonstration into a forced march on City Hall. “Freedom” segued into “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Peg o’ My Heart” into “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover.” The Saturday students raised a second crudely lettered sign, BAN THE BOMB! and tried to march in tempo to both songs simultaneously. The two aged chess players had run around the park enlisting an army of octogenarians from the other benches, and they descended on the crowd now like a frail wedge of pawns aimed straight at the king’s heart.
The cop said, “Now, look, let’s talk this over peaceably,” but one of the smoky-eyed girls was beginning to take off her blouse in misguided protest while the winos sang “We Shall Overcome” and the Negro folk singer modulated into “Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?” The goosed college girl slapped the man standing behind her, and apologized when she recognized him as her seventh-hour Anthropology instructor. “J’adoube, j’adoube!” one of the chess players was shouting, and the cop was shouting, “Now, calm down, everybody!” and the marching Saturday students were shouting “Viva Bertrand Russell!” and just then one of the winos, a secret wood-alcohol drinker, dropped dead in the middle of the crowd while the smoky-eyed girl twirled her brassière triumphantly in the air.
By that time, Buddwing was deep in Greenwich Village, six blocks away.
11
The thing that amazed him, of course, was that they had all come to his rescue without even knowing who or what he was. He could have been Edward Voegler or he could have been Sam Buddwing or he could have been Adolf Hitler, for that matter, and none of them would have cared. Standing there arguing with the cop, he had possessed no more identity than he had awakened with this morning, and yet they had rallied to his cause and taken up his banner. So what the hell did it really matter? Whether he was anybody or nobody, who really gave a
“Just a second, young man,” the voice on his left and slightly to his rear said, and he stopped dead in his tracks with a heart-lurching suddenness, and only then realized how frightening his brush with the law had been. He turned swiftly in reflex, expecting to find the chief of police or perhaps the district attorney and finding instead a man of about sixty who was puffing on a pipe and smiling.
“Yes?” Buddwing said.
“Mind if I talk to you?” the man asked.
“Yes, I do,” Buddwing said. He was beginning to get tired of talking to strangers. He wanted to see a face he knew; he wanted to shake a familiar hand.
“Well, that’s all right,” the man said, and he fell into step beside Buddwing.
“Maybe you didn’t understand me,” Buddwing started. “I said—”
“Oh yes, I understood you.”
“Well, if you don’t mind—”
“I saw what happened back there,” the man said.
“Are you a detective?”
“No, no,” the man said, chuckling. “No, what ever gave you that idea?”
“Well, what do you want?”
“I thought the entire thing was very interesting,” the man said. “I was sitting opposite you when you first came into the park. Did you happen to notice me?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Mmm, well, yes, I was.” The old man struck a match and held it to the pipe. “I was there when you jumped to your feet and shouted ‘Grace,’ and I was also there” — he puffed at the pipe, trying to rekindle it — “when you... puff, puff... when you... puff, puff... mmm, there it is.”
“When I what?”
“When you said you were Edward Voegler,” the old man said, and smiled.
He paused.
He kept smiling, silently.
Then he said, “Are you Edward Voegler?”
“Why?” Buddwing said.
“I’m curious.”
“Everybody’s all at once so damn curious about me, aren’t they?”
“Madmen always attract curiosity,” the man said calmly, puffing on his pipe.
“No, I’m not Edward Voegler,” Buddwing said quickly.
“Then why did you say you were?”
“Is there a reward? Is that it?”
“No, not that I’m aware of. The newspapers didn’t say anything about a reward.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“Because you said you were Edward Voegler, which is a rather dangerous thing to say in a public place if you aren’t him.” He paused. “I believe you are.”
“Why should you believe that?”