By now I ached with tiredness; the insignificant bundle of shirt and books had become a burden. I was pressed by the question of where to sleep, but I didn’t connect the glass transparencies behind which gaslight shone through the unpainted letters of BEDS, ROOMS, or HOTEL with my need, for I was looking for the urban version of the inn at Wappinger Falls or the Poughkeepsie Commercial House. I became more and more confused as fatigue blurred impressions of still newer marvels, so that I am not entirely sure whether it was merely one or a succession of enchanting girls who offered delights for a quarter. I know I was solicited by crimps for the Confederate Legion who operated openly in defiance of the laws of the United States and that an incredible number of beggars accosted me.
At last I thought of asking directions from one of the multitude on the wooden or granite sidewalks. But without realizing it I had wandered from thronged, brightly lit avenues into an unpeopled, darkened area where buildings were low and frowning, where the flicker of a candle or the yellow of a kerosene lamp in windows far apart were unrivalled by any streetlights.
My ears had been deafened all day by the clop of hooves, the rattling of iron tires or the puffing of minibiles; now the empty street seemed unnaturally still. The suddenly looming figure of another walker was the luckiest of chances.
“Excuse me, friend,” I said. “Can you tell me where’s the nearest inn, or anywhere I can get a bed for the night cheap?”
I felt him peering at me. “Rube, huh? Much money you got?”
“Th—Not very much. That’s why I want to find cheap lodging.”
“OK, Reuben—come along.”
“Oh, don’t trouble to show me. Just give me an idea how to get there.”
He grunted. “No trouble, Reuben. No trouble at all.”
Taking my arm just above the elbow in a firm grip he steered me along. For the first time I began to feel alarm. However, before I could even attempt to shrug free, he had shoved me into the mouth of an alley discernible only because its absolute blackness contrasted with the relative darkness of the street.
“Wait—” I began.
“In here, Reuben. Soundest night’s sleep you’ve had in a long time. And cheap—it’s free.”
I started to break loose and was surprised to find he no longer held me. Before I could even begin to think, however, a terrific blow fell on the right side of my head and I traded the blackness of the alley for the blackness of insensibility.
I WAS RECALLED to consciousness by a smell. More accurately a cacophony of smells. I opened my eyes and shut them against the unbearable pain of light; I groaned at the equally unbearable pain in my skull bones. Feverishly and against my will I tried to identify the walloping odors around me.
The stink of death and rottenness was thick. I knew there was an outhouse—many outhouses—nearby. The ground I lay upon was damp with the water of endless dishwashings and launderings. The noisomeness of offal suggested that the garbage of many families had never been buried, but left to rot in the alley or near it. In addition there was the smell of death—not the sweetish effluvium of blood, such as any country boy who has helped butcher a bull-calf or hog knows—but the unmistakable stench of corrupt, maggotty flesh. Besides all this there was the spoor of humanity.
A new discomfort at last forced my eyes open for the second time. A hard surface was pressing painful knobs into my exposed skin. I looked and felt around me.
The knobs were the cobbles of a fetid alley; not a foot away was the cadaver of a dog, thoroughly putrescent; beyond him a drunk retched and groaned. A trickle of liquid swill wound its way delicately between the stones. My coat, shirt, and shoes were gone; so was the bundle with my books. There was no use searching my pocket for the three dollars—I knew I was lucky the robber left me my pants and my life.
A middleaged man—at least he looked middleaged to my youthful eye—regarded me speculatively over the head of the drunk. “Pretty well cleaned yuh out, huh, boy?”
I nodded—and then was sorry for the motion.
“Reward of virtue. Assuming you was virtuous, which I assume. Come to the same end as me, stinking drunk. Only I still got my shirt. Couldn’t hock it no matter how thirsty I got.”
I groaned.
“Where yuh from, boy? What rural—see, sober now—precincts miss you?”
“Wappinger Falls, near Poughkeepsie. My name’s Hodge Backmaker.”
“Well now, that’s friendly of you, Hodge. Me, I’m George Pondible. Periodic. Just tapering off.”
I hadn’t an idea what Pondible was talking about. Trying to understand made my head worse.
“Took everything, I suppose? Haven’t a nickel left to help a hangover?”
“My head,” I mumbled, quite superfluously.
He staggered to his feet. “Best thing—souse it in the river. Take more to fix mine.”
“But… can I go through the streets like this?”
“Right,” he said. “Quite right.”
He stooped down and put one hand beneath the drunk. With the other he removed the jacket, a maneuver betraying practice, for it elicited no protest from the victim. He then performed the still more delicate operation of depriving him of his shirt and shoes, tossing them all to me. They were a loathsome collection of rags not fit to clean a manure-spreader. The jacket was torn and greasy, the pockets hanging like the ears of a dog; the shirt was a filthy tatter, the shoes shapeless fragments of leather with great gapes in the soles.
“It’s stealing,” I protested.
“Right. Put them on and let’s get out of here.”
The short walk to the river was through streets lacking the glamour of those of the day before. The tenements were smokestreaked, marked with steps between the parting bricks where mortar had fallen out; great hunks of wall were kept in place only by the support of equally crazy ones abutting. The wretched rags I wore were better suited to this neighborhood than Pondible’s though his would have marked him tramp and vagrant in Wappinger Falls.
The Hudson too was soiled, with an oily scum and debris, so that I hesitated even to dip the purloined shirt, much less my aching head. But urged on by Pondible I climbed down the slimy stones between two docks and pushing the flotsam aside, ducked myself in the unappetizing water.
The sun was hot and the shirt dried on my back as we walked away from the river, the jacket over my arm. Yesterday I had entertained vague plans of presenting myself at Columbia College, begging to exchange work of any kind for tuition. In my present state this was manifestly impossible; for a moment I wished I had waded farther into the Hudson and drowned.
“Fixes your head,” said Pondible with more assurance than accuracy. “Now for mine.”
Now that my mind was clearer my despair grew by the minute. Admitting my plans had been impractical and tenuous, they were yet plans of a kind, something in which I could put—or force—my hopes. Now they were gone, literally knocked out of existence and I had nothing to look forward to, nothing on which to exert my energies and dreams. To go back to Wappinger Falls was out of the question, not simply to dodge the bitterness of admitting defeat so quickly, but because I knew myself to be completely useless to my parents. Yet I had nothing to expect in the city except starvation or a life of petty crime.
Pondible guided me into a saloon, a dark place, gaslit even this early, with a steam piano tinkling away the popular tune “Mormon Girl”: