by John Sanford
“It means the Coal & Iron Police and a man called Rockefeller.”
“I might’ve known you’d know,” she said. “It was a good store, and almost everybody in the district traded there—ranchers, farmers, railroaders—and my father had money in the bank and a name, and he’d still have both if he hadn’t gone soft in the head when the strike came along in 1913. One of the things that touched it off was a company-rule that the miners had to buy from the company-stores, a rig for keeping them in hock to the grave. My father stood to gain if they won, so when the men got hard up, and the union came to him for credit, he advanced it. He advanced himself right out of business, because the miners finally lost.” She paused and looked back at two sets of prints that seemed black in the snow.”
“I’m waiting for you to tell me he was a martyr.”
“Where was the elevation?” Dan said. “He stood to gain.”
The girl studied him for a moment, and then saying, “You’re honest enough to be pitiful, but I like you better all the time,” she linked her arm with his and walked him on. “Never rub me the right way. No matter what I say, don’t agree with me. You’ll hardly ever be wrong.”
“How does your father feel about Ludlow today? Would he do it all over again?”
“He loves being a night-watchman. It pays forty a month, and it keeps him out in the air. Mention unions to him, and he’ll shoot you to death.”
“Why doesn’t he take it out on Rockefeller?”
“Rockefeller? What did Rockefeller ever do to him?”
“Whatever his reason was, he lined up against a bad company-rule.”
“That was his own damn-fool choice, and he’d be the first to admit it.”
“And you’d be the second, and forcing the pace.”
“He can’t blame the company for what happened to him. He can only blame himself.”
“He isn’t as lucky as you,” Dan said. “You can always blame him for being a phone-operator.”
At a crossing, they entered a fork, and leaving the road-lamps behind them, they laid down lengthening shadows between twin rows of locusts. The houses facing each other across the narrow way were identical, all of them small, old, and out of true, and sagging into rags of lawn, their porches of broken jig-saw were like open mouths with missing teeth.
“Little old men,” Julia said. “Little old men with spots on their clothes. I live in this one.” She went toward the door, and Dan followed. The house was dark, but in a front room the remains of a coal-fire inflamed the eyes of a stove, and its glow made faint lanterns of their faces. “Do I still have to tell you what to say next?”
“I think I know this time,” Dan said.
“Then, God damn you, why don’t you say it?”
“I had the words in my mouth all week. Now I only have spit.”
“Make more words with it. You won’t need many if they rhyme.”
He went to the door, where he turned to say, “You’d’ve liked the ones you chased away, Julia,” and then he was outside and walking back over the way he had come. The return seemed longer, and by retracing his earlier trail, he sought to revive his earlier emotion, but more snow had fallen, and other feet had left their marks, and soon his own and Julia’s were not to be found.
* * *
At the edge of the rink in Monument Valley Park, a bonfire felled silhouettes from a circle of figures and made a giant wheel that lay partly on the ice and partly on the snow surrounding it. In the distance, against a navy sky strewn with ground-glass stars, were the cold shoulders of the mountains. Seated on one of the benches rimming the bank furthest from the fire, Dan absently reviewed skaters moving past singly, in tandem, and armlocked in pairs [ … and you thought of Julia—and when you breathed the minted air, it drilled you deep, and when you let it go, it was a part of yourself that was visible—and you thought of Julia.…].
“Whatever you’re thinking,” a voice said, “make it rhyme.”
Wearing a knee-length skating-skirt, Julia stood before him on the ice [a Julia so different from the one you had borne in mind that, as with Miss Forrest, you knew your thoughts of her had worn the wrong face—but this time, unlike the other, the blood-and-bone fact far outshone the fantasy]. “I’m thinking of you,” he said, “but there’s no rhyme for that.”
“If you gave me a chance,” she said, “I think I’d rhyme with you. That’s a favor I’m asking, Dan, and if I sound strange, it’s because I want it very much.”
“How would you sound if you got it?” he said.
“Even stranger,” she said, “because I’d be grateful,” and then, without waiting for a response, she tiptoed to gain speed and skated away.
[It was almost as if the ice were in motion, you thought, and you watched it spin out from under a tread as nimble as a needle’s on a record, a glide barely less than levitation; it was a dance as a dance was done in a dream, without effort, without pattern, and without sound, but with all the grace of smoke.] The fire was down and most of the crowd gone before she wrote a last flourish with her runners and straightened into a long slow flow toward Dan’s bench. He rose to meet her, and she came up against him as gently as a word, and he said, “You walk on water,” and for a moment they stood there, hardly touching [and then all at once you were hardly apart, and you were trying to suck each other dry through the mouth—and when you kneeled to unlace her skates, you thought ahead to a cold dark house with broken filigree, and you heard the harsh whisper of a leaking faucet and the stutter of sagging stairs, and in a space of powder-flavored air, you heard silk sigh in falling, and the rustle of skin on skin, and the whispers of hands in hair, and then a voice said, “Dan! Dan! My God damn Dan … !”].
“Do you still think I’m pretty?”
“I’ll think so as long as I live.”
“Take me home, then, and talk all the way.”
* * *
[You lay there in the dark, trying to extract from the nineteen years of your life the fact, the choice, the accident, that explained your presence in a house with an unknown number on a street with an unknown name. Was it a chance word, you wondered, or was it the sound of a voice, or the look on a face, or a day in history that ended before your own began? Was it a person living or dead, was it the chemistry of your blood, was it some sight seen and forgotten (a rainfall, a parade, a setting sun), or was it a green throw away and a ball in a brain? but always, beyond any answer, some part of the query remained, and in the end you knew that while there had been many roads forward, you would find no road back—and realizing that these were only new words for Julia’s, you turned to her and said, “It’s where you are that counts” and then she turned too, and again you were her God damn Dan.…]
* * *
They were walking one night, and he said, “I call this the mile-high winter.”
She said, “How high is it when you hate me?”
“I never hate you. I only hate some of your ways.”
She said, “My ways are me, but I can’t make you believe that. You think I’m what you think, and I know what I am. Would you like me to tell you?”
“You’re pretty!” he said. “That’s what you are—you’re pretty!”
She said, “I’m a tramp. Do you know what a tramp is? If not, there’s one on your arm.”
He made her stop while he studied her face, her throat, her clothes, her hands, her feet, and again her face, and then he shook his head, saying, “I’m sorry, Julia, but I don’t understand.”
She said, “Do you think I waited all these years for Mr. New damn York? I got started early, and you’re a long way from being Number One.”
“At what number did you get to be a tramp?” he said [and now she made a study of you, and it came to an end in a smile that seemed to climb out of pity and disbelief like the survivor of a wreck, and she said, “Take me home, Mr. New simple York.…”].
* * *
Reaching Denver after dark, they paused for a moment before the bus-terminal and
then walked through a slanting snow toward an intermittent sign insisting ROOMS like a common scold. [The en-trance to the hotel, a stairway, lay between a barbershop and a lunch-counter, and the lobby was merely a first landing furnished with a key-rack, a cuspidor, and a rubber plant. The rooms—you were standing in one of them now (Whose cigar had scarred the window-sill, and when? Who had drunk from the chipped water-pitcher, and who had set a beer-bottle on the Gideon Bible? Who had last used these towels, this tub and toilet, and the frayed shoe-rag hanging behind the door? Who had lain face-up and who face-down on the dished-in bed—their names, their ages, and the number of times …?)—as soon as you saw the rooms, you knew you had made a mistake.]
“I wanted to celebrate my birthday,” he said, “but this isn’t much of a place for it.”
“How can you say that?” Julia said. “To a small-town whore like me, this is the last word.”
“I wish I could’ve taken you to the Brown Palace.”
“Why? What would happen there that isn’t going to happen here?”
“Nothing has to happen anywhere, Julia. I didn’t bring you to Denver for that.”
“You didn’t? Explain how we come to be in a room with a bed, then.”
“In a couple of hours, I’ll be starting my nineteenth year. I don’t know why any more, but yesterday the fact seemed important enough to honor in a special way.”
“Like getting laid in Denver instead of Colorado Springs?” she said. “Is that special enough—or is it the price of a place that makes it special?”
“I was trying for once to see with your eyes. You like better things than this, and tonight, for the first time, I’d’ve wanted you to have them.”
“Would I be any the less a bum if this dump had a bell-hop—and would you be any the less a horny-ike? Not at all. People do the same thing in a ten-dollar room that they do in a three-. I know, because I’ve done it, and right over there in the Brown Palace, and if you doubt it, I’ll furnish proof.”
“I never doubt anything you say. I don’t always understand what makes you say it, but I never doubt it. You’re honest, even at your meanest, and I take you at your word.”
“I’ll give you the man’s name, if you like,” she said. “Not the one on the register, of course—you know that as well as I do—but the real one, middle name and all, along with home address, occupation, age, and general physical condition. In fact, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know: how we met; whether we were liquored up or sober; what his hair smelled like, and his breath, and his armpits; whether I enjoyed him more or less than you; and what I thought about later while I was smoking a cigarette. Whatever you’re interested in, Dan.”
“You told me once that I wasn’t the first. What difference does it make how somebody else got to be a number?”
“Not only were you not the first,” she said, “but you’re not even going to be the last.”
“I’ve never thought otherwise, but that doesn’t make it easier to hear.”
“I don’t mean to worry you: you’ll be taken care of tonight.”
“That’s a good birthday-present, Julia. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Before I forget: congratulations. And when you feel the urge, just speak up. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“At the moment, I’d sooner hear about Mr. and Mrs. John Smith in their ten-dollar room.”
“What would you do if I walked straight the hell out of our three-dollar room?”
“I’d take off my coat (like this),” he said. “Are you watching, Julia? And then I’d sit down in this chair (I just sat), and I’d put my feet up on the radiator (that’s a radiator, that iron thing), and I’d stare at the wall, wondering when you’d come back.”
“Not soon,” Julia said. “Not if I was in the mood for a ten-dollar room. But would you really let me walk out, Dan?”
“What would I stop you for—my birthday-present?”
“Mr. Union Label! He’d drag a piece of tail seventy-five miles and then let it walk out on him—and on top of that, he’d hang around till it came back! Do you know what? I’ve got a good mind to prove you’re a liar!”
“First prove you’ve got a good mind,” he said. “Because to me, that thing in your head is only a hate-machine, and when it’s turned up high, like now, I can’t stand the sight of you. Do what you like, Julia, only turn down the machine.” He went to the window and stared out at the reflection of the room.
“All the same, I still don’t think you’d let me go. You wouldn’t use force (you’re not that stupid), and you wouldn’t make any rash promises (you’re not that bright), but you’d find a way to keep me here.”
“I can’t talk you out of these mean streaks, Julia. Nobody can.”
“You wouldn’t have to say much,” she said. “I’d stay, for instance, if you knelt down and proposed. I’ll go a step further: I’d even let you stand up.”
“How about John Smith?” he said. “How would he have to do it?”
“You’d be a fool to pass me up for some giggler with a cherry: I’m young, I’m pretty, I’m built, and so far, knock on wood, I’m healthy. What more would you want? Name it. I can cook when I put my mind to it, I can knit and sew, and I can skate and swim and dance. I’m also smart: I read and write, I add and subtract, and I even talk about important things. Have you ever heard me talk about important things? Listen, then: it’s a revelation! Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!’ Isn’t that a dandy? Here’s another. ‘Under the profit-system, something-or-other is exploited by something-or-so—oh, yes, labor is exploited by capital.’ Exploited, Miss Davis? Would you care to explain? ‘Delighted. Labor, taking raw materials and converting them to finished products in return for wages, creates a value greater than the sum of the values of the raw materials and the wages. This surplus, although brought into being by labor, is always appropriated by capital.’ That was simply perfect, Miss Davis, and now for a few words, if you please, on the fiddle-tatorship of the faddle-tariat.…”
He spoke to the transparent Julia in the transparent room. “You won’t get righter by getting meaner,” he said.
“I don’t want to be right,” she said. “I only want to make you put your hand on your heart.”
He turned, saying, “I did that a long time ago, Julia, but you missed it, and I think you’d keep on missing it if I left it there for life—and that’s an odd thing, because I haven’t made a particular secret of the way I feel about you. Strangers know it from watching me look at you, from hearing me speak to you, from passing us in the street, but you don’t know it, and I’ve been in your house, in your room, in your bed, and in you—and the reason is, you don’t think you’re good enough to be proposed to. In your mind, you’re really what you make believe you’re joking about, a tramp, and that’s why you bait me and bait me without ever realizing that I’ve been proposing all along.”
Do it once so I can hear it,” she said. “It might make all the difference.”
“Between a three-dollar room and a ten-dollar room?” he said. “And for how long—for the night?”
[The door slammed behind her, and you were alone, and again glimpsing your snow-shot reflection in the windowpane, you suddenly felt cold, as if it were now through you, not your image, that the flakes were falling. You shivered a little and looked away, only to be trapped by the pattern of the wallpaper, which led your eyes through six identical sequences before the bulk of the bureau broke the spell. You sat down in an armchair that wore doilies of hair-oil, and then for a passage of time (a second, a minute, an hour), you were a vacuum in a void.]
The door opened and closed, and Julia, standing with her back against it, was looking at him across the bed. “You don’t have to marry me,” she said. “All you have to do is ask.”
“You didn’t think I’d let you go,” he said, “and you didn’t think I’d wait for you to come back. You were wrong twice.”
[A church-bell struck t
welve times, and the nth of February was gone.…]
“Is it too late to give you your present, Dan?”
“The one Mr. Ten-Dollar Room didn’t want?”
“I didn’t call him: I’m still stuck for you.”
“You’re not stuck for anybody but Julia Davis.”
“You could break that up without half-trying.”
“You want me closer just to give me the knee.”
“The little man knows all about the world except that it’s full of people.”
“Full of people that get smaller while you watch.”
“Then, for Christ’s sake, stop watching! Stop standing around with your black book!”
“The marks in it are your own,” he said, “and they’re all of them true but one, and you won’t rest till you make that one true as well. You’re far and away the prettiest, and there’s a brain in back of the face, and what you have under your clothes is very fine, and no matter how many have seen it—one, ten, twenty, fifty—you’re still a long way from being a tramp. That’s the only false thing in the book, but it’s as if you’d taken an oath to make it good, and you mean to, come hell. But so far from honor, it’s spite that drives you—plain spitting scratching spite. You’re trying to get even with your father for going broke.”
“You put more than your finger on it, little man: that was your foot. When my father buggered up his own life, he buggered up mine too.”
“I don’t know how to get at you!” he said. “You’re screwed together wrong: I drop in a penny for gum, and out comes a frog! You’re not sore at the wall your father ran into: you’re sore at his head!”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she said. “The wall didn’t hit him: he hit the wall. It was right there for anybody to see, but he had to try and knock it over all by himself. They don’t give out medals for that: they put you away. But, little man, there’s one idea you ought to get rid of: I’m not winding up my life at the long-distance jacks, and neither am I heading for the cat-house back of the police-station. There’s better than that in this world for Julia Davis, but not with you, Mr. Union Label. You’re a sweet guy, I’ll spot you that, and in many ways you’re smarter than I’ll ever be, and you do a certain thing so it stays done for a while—but you’re a lot less honest than you look if you ever make more than forty bucks a week, and once I shake Colorado Springs, that won’t even keep me in douche-bags.”
