The Boy Grew Older

CHAPTER VII

When Peter reached the corner he found that it was only half-past twelve. It was much too early to get drunk. Daylight drinking had always seemed to him disgusting. As a matter of fact, he was contemplating the spree merely as a means to an end. In order to forget Maria he must think of someone else and it would suit his purpose that the other person should be someone rowdy and degraded. He would rub himself with mud to ease the numbness of his spirit. He knew that he could never do it without drinking. First many gates must be unlocked. Maria had been right when she said that Peter was afraid of sex. When he was quite a small boy somebody had told him about flowers and it meant nothing to him. It had seemed merely a fairy story rather more dull than usual. Much later a red-haired boy who lived five houses away had talked to Peter and frightened and disgusted him. After that he had run away when other boys tried to tell him anything about these mysteries. Of course his squeamishness had been marked and he became the butt of every youngster with any talent for smut. Finding that flight was useless Peter adopted a new system and fought fiercely with anyone who taunted him. He was bigger and stronger than most of the other boys and he soon piled up an imposing list of victims to his prowess. He fought so well that his ignorance remained almost unimpaired. Once when he was in the act of belaboring a companion who had tried to outline for him the plot of a book called "Only A Boy," a woman passing by had interrupted the fight. She wanted to know if Peter was not ashamed of himself. Defensively he answered that the other boy had been "talking dirty." Immediately the passerby deluged Peter with admiration. She took down his name and address and later he received by mail a Bible, leather bound, and on the flyleaf was the inscription "To a young Sir Galahad." Peter never took any particular pride in this gift.

He knew in his heart that his purity rested solidly on fear. He burned with curiosity. At times he actually invited lewd confidences though making every pretence of anger when they were imparted to him. Respite came to him for a year or two before he went to college because athletics became his god. He excelled all competitors in school and was generally rated the best right-handed pitcher in the metropolitan district. Baseball filled all his thoughts waking and sleeping, and in the autumn it was football, although in this branch of sport he was by no means as proficient. Indeed when he went to Harvard at the age of seventeen he was dropped from the varsity squad in the first cut and later from the freshmen.

At this particular time, when he was much more foot-loose than usual, the annual medical lecture to the Freshmen was delivered. It was known in unofficial circles as Smut One and attendance was compulsory. Very gravely and severely the old doctor unfolded his tale of horrors. The spirit was not unlike that of a traditional hell-fire sermon. Peter heard the man half through and then fainted, toppling over from his seat across an aisle. He was carried downstairs into the fresh air and did not come back. But he had heard enough to be convinced that this sex business was even worse than it had seemed in the crude and rowdy flashes which had come to him from his companions. And yet the fact that it was horrible by no means served to keep his thoughts clear of the subject. The doctor had talked entirely of the dangers and disgraces of immorality. Peter could not escape the only partially conscious surmise that unspeakable delights and wonders must lie within this circle of leaping flames. This impression was confirmed when he happened in the college library to come across a poem by Carew called "The Rapture." Sex seemed to him now by far the most romantic and adventurous thing in life. The fact that there were monsters and dragons to be dared made it all the more a piece with the unforgotten tales of childhood concerning giant killers and knights-errant.

Peter was no longer satisfied to be Galahad. He wanted to be Launcelot. And still he was afraid. He found out that Columbus Avenue in Boston was a street largely given over to women and night after night he used to slink about dark corners hoping and dreading that somebody would speak to him. Whenever a "Hello dearie" came to him out of the darkness Peter trembled. "No," he would say, "I'm sorry. I've got a very important engagement. I've got to go right along. I must go right along. Sure, I'll be here at this same time tomorrow night."

Often he would carry on some such dialogue a dozen times in an evening and then one night a woman, more stalwart and audacious than any he had yet encountered, seized him by the arm. "Sonny," she said, "I'm not going to let you waste my time. You're not going any place except with me. Now march along."

Peter marched. That was why he told Maria Algarez that he was not quite a good man himself.

For a time disillusion supplanted turmoil in the mind of Peter. He found that the romanticists were just as fraudulent as the moralists. Don Juan seemed to him as great a fake as Galahad. Besides in the spring the call for baseball candidates came along and Peter surprised the college world by being the only Freshman to win a place on the varsity nine. He pitched the second game against Yale and won by a score of 2 to 0. Life meant something after all. Bending a third strike across the knees of a man with a Y on his chest gave a dignity to existence which it had never before possessed. Peter was done with hot thoughts and cold ones. Unfortunately he was also done with thoughts about examinations. French was his most abject failure, but he did badly enough in everything else to be told that his college days were over.

Still he was bereft of romance for no more than a month. He caught on with the sporting department of the Bulletin early in August and made an almost instantaneous hit. Here again he found satisfaction in the gait and color of life. Women were not rigorously excluded from the scheme of things, but they were not important. He saw them in the dance halls where he went after hours and talked to them and drank with them, but they served merely as minor characters. The talk which animated this existence for Peter was all of the shop. A reporter from San Francisco, named Rusk, suddenly discovered to his amazement and delight that here was a man eager to hear his tales of newspaper work along the waterfront in the days when the coast towns were still unregenerate. Everybody else on the Bulletin was in the habit of groaning loudly whenever Rusk began, "In the old days on the waterfront – ," but Peter listened with the most intense sort of interest to Rusk's entire stock of anecdotes. By and by Rusk had to make them up. He gave himself a boyhood as a jockey and also enlisted fictionally in the Spanish American war. Peter believed everything and liked everything. Four months later Rusk left the Bulletin in order to try his hand at free lancing for the magazines. His failure in that field surprised him. He had come to confuse Peter Neale and the general public.

…

Peter began his spree by going to the Newspaper Club. He found no one in the big room except two old men playing chess. One of them did weather and the other fish on the New York Press. They were not communicative and neither seemed disposed to be drawn into conversation. And so for a time Peter watched the game. He found it impossible to work up any enthusiasm about the issue and departed to practice pool on a table at the other end of the room. Caring nothing about performance, Peter was surprised to discover that the most difficult shots all came off. Nothing was too hard. Even the most fantastically complicated combinations plopped the required ball into a pocket.

Far from being pleased at this Peter grew angry. He felt that Fate was ironically evening up things for him by burdening him with luck and prowess in something which made no difference and withholding its favor in all the important aspects of life. Testing out his theory he picked up a straggler, a man he knew but slightly, who happened to wander into the club at that moment.

"I'll roll you Indian dice," challenged Peter. "A dollar a throw."

Good luck continued to plague him although he knew that its attentions were not honorable! At the end of three quarters of an hour Peter was $85 ahead.

"That's enough," he said with irritation.

"You're not going to quit now that you've got me in the hole," protested his opponent. "Aren't you going to give me a chance to get back?"

"You wouldn't have any chance. If we keep up I'm sure to win hundreds of dollars from you. Nobody can beat me just now. Look here if you don't believe me I'll give you a chance. I'll bet you a hundred dollars to ten on one roll."

"What's the matter with you, Neale?" asked the loser. "Are you soused?"

"Not yet," said Peter. "You're not taking any advantage of me. I tell you I know. I can't lose. Go ahead and roll."

"All right, if you want to throw money away it's not my fault."

He took the leather cup and rolled a pair of sixes. Peter slammed the dice down and four aces and a five danced out.

"No more," said Peter. "It's no use. That's $95 you owe me."

"Would you mind if I held you up on that till next week? I'm sort of busted just now."

"No hurry, anytime'll do."

"Ninety-five, that's right, isn't it? Lend me $5 that'll make it an even hundred. Easier to remember."

Peter gave him the five. He knew that even in his gambling triumphs there would be some catch. Wandering over to the bar alone he had two Martinis and then a Bronx but nothing seemed to happen. Looking at his watch he found that it was still only a little after three and he went up town to Fourteenth Street to a burlesque house. The show was called "Dave Shean's Joy Girls." When Peter came in Shean as a German comedian with a false stomach and a red wig had just volunteered to take the place of the bullfighter played by the straight man.

"Do you think you can kill the bull?" asked the straight man.

"I don't know dot I kills him," said Shean, "but I can throw him."

It annoyed Peter that everybody else in the theatre laughed so loudly.

"Yesterday," continued the real toreador, "I killed four bulls in the arena."

"I had him for breakfast."

"What are you talking about? What did you have for breakfast?"

"Farina."

Peter thought he would go but he waited in the hope that it might get better. Presently Shean and the tall man got into an argument. The serious one of the pair contended that Otto Schmaltz, the character played by Shean, did not have a whole shirt on his back.

"I bet you! I bet you!" shouted Schmaltz dancing about and patting the other man on the cheek. They came close to the footlights and placed huge piles of stage money side by side.

"Now," said the big man, "the bet is you haven't got a whole shirt on your back."

"Ches," replied Schmaltz.

"Why, you poor pusillanimous, transcendental, ossified little shrimp, you," said the big man. "Of course you haven't got a whole shirt on your back. Half of it is on the front."

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" he continued sneeringly and kicked the little man resoundingly while the crowd screamed.

Later Schmaltz bet with somebody else taking the other side of the contention, but again he lost because when it came time for the tag line he grew confused and shouted. "Why, you poor pussaliniment, tramps-on-a-dimple, oysterfied little shrimp, you, half of de back is on the front." And again the fortune of Schmaltz was swept away and again he was kicked.

Possibly the three cocktails had begun to have some effect after all or it may have been something else, but at any rate Peter was no longer merely bored by all these happenings. His sensation was just as unpleasant, but it was acute. Somehow or other the story of Schmaltz and the shirt had made him sad.

"Schmaltz is on me," he thought. "Schmaltz is everybody. Getting fooled and getting kicked." His musing became more vague. "Half of the back is on the front," seemed to take form as a tragic complaint against life. He and Schmaltz they couldn't have it whole because "half of the back is on the front."

More disturbing moralizing was yet to come from the book of "Dave Shean's Joy Girls." The next entertainers were the Mulligan Brothers, female impersonators. One played the part of Clara and the other was Margie.

"The sailors on that ship was awful," began Clara. "The sailors on that ship was just awful. The poor girl was sinking there in the water and they wouldn't let her into the lifeboat. Every time she came up, Margie, one of the sailors hit her over the head with an oar."

Margie began to laugh stridently.

"What are you laughing for, Margie? Did you hear what I was telling you? I said every time the poor girl came up a sailor hit her over the head with an oar."

"Wasn't she the fool to come up," said Margie.

Peter knew that was not a joke. Here was his case against life summed up in a sentence. Idiots about him were laughing. Couldn't they see the bitterness of it. "Wasn't she the fool to come up!" That was his folly. He was going on taking the buffeting of the oars and for no reason. And yet he knew perfectly well that he would continue to come up no matter what blows fell about his head and shoulders. There was no use making any resolve to quit it all. Peter had no facility for suicide. He did not dare and he tried to justify himself in this unwillingness.

"After all," he thought, "it would be a pretty rotten trick to play on Kate. I promised her she could have Sunday off."

One piece of positive action he could and did take. He did not wait to gather any further pessimistic contributions to cosmic philosophy from "Dave Shean's Joy Girls," but walked out in the middle of Shean's drunken act. The comedian was pretending that the edge of the stage was the brass rail along a bar. Now he was swaying far over the orchestra pit and seemed about to fall into it. A woman in front of Peter screamed. Shean slowly straightened himself up and shook a reproving finger at the laughing audience. "My wife's bes' lil' woman in worl'," he said and did a hiccough. Still he seemed sober enough when Peter sitting on the aisle in the second row got up and started out of the theatre.

"Don't you like our show?" he called after him.

Peter flushed and made no answer.

"I guess I'm too natural," said Shean. "He can't stand it. You know how it is. He's a married man himself."

"Hey, Percy," he shouted after the retreating figure of Peter in a high falsetto, "you'll find a saloon right around the corner. Tell the bartender to let you have one on Otto Schmaltz."

Peter conscientiously walked past the saloon mentioned by the impertinent Shean and went into the next one three blocks farther on. He began to drink doggedly and consequently with slight effect. He was like a sleepless person. No blur came over the acuteness of his consciousness. He might just as well have tried counting sheep jumping over a fence. "Wasn't she the fool to come up!" recurred in his ears as if it had been a clock ticking late at night in a big silent house. Straight whiskey tasted abominably and returned no reward for his efforts. In the back room somebody was singing "Mother Machree" and cheating on the high notes. An idea for a newspaper paragraph came to Peter. Somebody had been conducting an agitation in the Bulletin against the use of "The Star Spangled Banner" as a national anthem on the ground that the air was originally that of a drinking song. "We ought to point out," thought Peter, "that it takes a few drinks to make anybody think he can get up to 'the rockets' red glare.'"

He wished his mind would stop pelting him with ideas. Thinking ought not to keep up when he hated it so. Leaving the bar, Peter took his drink over into the corner and sat down at a table. On the wall to his left hung a large colored picture labelled "Through the Keyhole." Peter looked at it and then moved his chair around so that he couldn't see it. He realized that he must get much drunker.

CHAPTER VIII

It was after ten when Peter came into Billy Gallivan's, the restaurant of the singing waiters. By now he could not see distinctly every sheep which jumped over the fence but he was still counting them. "I am drunk," he said to himself. "I am so drunk that nothing matters." But he knew that it was not so. Unfortunately the formula of Coué had not yet been given to the world and Peter lacked the prevision to say, "Drink by drink I am getting drunker and drunker and drunker."

And the singing waiters failed to inspire him with that reckless disregard for present, past and future which he desired. One of them, a fat man who had blonde hair and sang bass, eventually took Peter's order. He set the glass on the table and then moved away no more than a step to begin his song. "When I'm a-a-lone I'm lonely," he thundered in Peter's ear, "when I'm a-a-lone I'm bloo." Probably he was not as lonely as Peter. It made it worse because the song was so silly. "Every other girl and brother," the verse went on later, "has some pal just like a mother."

By this time the waiters were gathering from all over the long low room. Six of them stood shoulder to shoulder in front of Peter's table and sang together. "When I'm a-a-lone I'm lonely, when I'm a-a-lone I'm bloo." One of them went up high and quavered. Others went elsewhere. There was a voice for every level. It was part singing. And they swayed back and forth from one foot to another. The room swayed with them but it would not keep time. The rhythm of the room was much longer. Peter could feel it pound as if he had been a mile runner and the finish lay a hundred yards ahead of him. He still knew that he was a fool to come up.

After a long time the song stopped. The patrons of the place began to throw money out to the singers. With painstaking recklessness Peter fumbled in his pockets and found a silver dollar. It almost filled his hand as if it had been a baseball. He shook his head vehemently. What did he care if the count was two and three, he was not going to lay it over. The curve was the trick. The outside corner was the nervy spot to shoot for. Drawing back his arm he flung the dollar and it crashed against a table and bounded away. For a second the coin spun around and then it waddled in a long arc straight home to Peter's chair. He put his foot on it and picked it up. No, he was too sober not to know that a dollar was excessive.

These men were not very good waiters – any of them – but that did not make them artists. They were not very good singers either. Peter remembered that he had read in his little leather Bible, "You cannot serve God and mammon." That was the trouble. Art and utility should never meet. A fine tenor ought not to serve drinks and even indifferent singing seemed to spoil a man as a waiter. This theme had been in his mind before. A great dancer could not be a mother. Yes, that was the point where this speculation had begun. At last he found a quarter and threw that and he left a ten cent tip on the table.

"Hello, big boy," said a woman as he was going out. She was as blonde and as fat as the lonely waiter and much redder. Peter made no reply but went out and up the street to the Eldorado. Eldorado! That was a land of which the Spaniards had dreamed, a land of gold. They never found it. Perhaps that was just as well. Somebody in a tub had said, "Eldorado!" No, he didn't – that was "Eureka!"

At the Eldorado the waiters didn't sing at all. Special people did that. But mostly it was just dancing. The floor was filled with couples. A long flight of steps led down to the tables. At the foot of the steps a girl sat alone. She was a young girl and pretty but hard and brazen enough. And she didn't call him, "Dearie." She merely said, "Buy me a drink."

Peter sat down.

"My name's Elaine," she said. "But you don't have to call me that. I think it's sort of a cold name, don't you? I'm not cold. People that like me call me 'Red,' on account of my hair. Now you tell me your name."

"John Whittier," said Peter, reverting to the slumming name he had used in his Freshman year at Harvard. It was the name of the proctor in his entry.

"Maybe John Greenleaf Whittier," said Elaine.

"Perhaps you're a poet. Yes, I can see you're a poet."

Peter was annoyed. "John Whittier's not my real name," he said. "My name's Peter Neale."

That aroused no flash of recognition. Peter was surprised that this girl of the Eldorado should know John Greenleaf Whittier and never have heard of Peter Neale.

"I don't think it's very nice of you," she said, "not to give me your real name. I gave you mine. Are you ashamed of me?"

"No," replied Peter, "I'm ashamed of myself."

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to get drunk."

"We'll get drunk together. I'll help you."

Drinking with somebody did seem to help. At any rate after two rounds Peter achieved for the first time during the evening that detached feeling which he had been seeking. All the dancers now were dim and distant. The music was something which tinkled from down a long corridor. Even the obligation to drink seemed lighter. Peter merely sat and stared at Elaine. Gray-eyed, firm and flaming, it was a face which blotted out all other images. He found himself thinking only of this woman in front of him. And she was real. She was close. He could touch her.