He saw the certain knowledge of regulations in Hindu’s mocking eyes. His own brows were lifted, his classic narrow-eyed, showdown look was on his face, and never before would he have let a man sneer at him like that without taking up the challenge, but now, strange as it was to him, he felt only contempt for Hindu, who had it in him to hit the beam much harder than the smaller Baldu could and was refusing. It was a long, long time since he had known the feeling of being let down by anyone; as long as it was since he had expected anything of anyone. He turned away from Hindu and beckoned to Baldu, and in the moment it took for Baldu to come to him, Tony felt sharply the queerness of his pushing on with this job, which, as Hindu’s attitude proved, was fit for suckers and, besides, was most probably impossible to accomplish with the wind cooling the steel as fast as it was heated. He bent over and picked up the slender torch.
“You ever work a torch?”
“Well, not exactly, but . . .”
Tony turned to Hindu, his hand extended. “Gimme the sparker.” From his jacket pocket Hindu took a spring-driven sparker and handed it to Tony, who took it and, noting the minute grin on Hindu’s mouth, said, “Fuck you.”
“In spades,” Hindu said.
Tony squeezed the sparker as he opened the two valves on the torch. The flame appeared and popped out in the wind. He shielded it with his body and sparked again, and the flame held steady. He took Baldu’s hand and put the torch into it. “Now follow me and I show you what to do.”
Eagerly Baldu nodded, his big black eyes feverish with service. “Right, okay.”
Unnerved by Baldu’s alacrity, Tony said, “Do everything slow. Don’t move unless you look.” And he went to the bent rail and slid the sledge out carefully before him, slowly stretched prone on the rail and inched out over the water. He came to the two runners, from which the tarpaulin hung snapping in the wind, then drew up his legs and sat, and beckoned to Baldu to follow him out.
Baldu, with the torch in his left hand, the wind-bent flame pointed down, laid himself out on the rail and inched toward Tony. But with each thrust forward the torch flame swung up close to his face. “Let the torch hang, Baldu, take slack,” Tony called.
Baldu halted, drew in a foot of tubing, and let the torch dangle below him. Now he inched ahead again, and as he neared, Tony held out a hand and pressed it against Baldu’s head. “Stop.”
Baldu stopped.
“Get the torch in your hand.”
Baldu drew up the torch and held it. Tony pointed his finger at the bend. “Point the fire here.” Baldu turned the torch, whose flame broke apart against the steel. Tony moved Baldu’s hand away from the steel an inch or two and now trained it in a circular motion, then let go, and Baldu continued moving the flame. “That’s good.”
It must be half-past eleven, maybe later. Tony watched the steel. The paint was blackening, little blisters coming up. Not bad. He raised the tarpaulin to shield the flame better. A light-yellow glow was starting to show on the steel. Not bad. Gusts were nudging his shoulders. He saw the tears dropping out of Baldu’s eyes, and the flame was moving off the rail. He slipped off a glove, reached over, and pressed Baldu’s eyelids, clearing the tears out, and the flame returned to its right position. He saw that the watch was pacing up and down again across the deck behind Hindu, who was standing with the flashlight, grinning.
The yellow glow was deepening. Not bad. An orange hue was beginning to show in the steel. He took Baldu’s hand and moved it in wider circles to expand the heated area. He slipped his glove off again and pressed the tears out of Baldu’s eyes, then the other glove, and held his hands near the flame to warm them.
The steel was reddening. Stuffing the gloves into his slit pockets, he drew up one foot and set it on the rail, leaned over to the wooden bridge he had built and brought the other foot under him and slowly stood erect. He bent slowly and took the sledge off the rail and came erect again. He spread his legs, one foot resting on the wood runners, the other on the rail, and, shifting in quarter-inch movements, positioned himself to strike. He raised the hammer and swung, not too hard, to see what it did to his stability, and the rail shuddered but his foot remained steady on it. He brought up the sledge, higher this time, and slammed it down and under against the steel, one eye on the bridge, which might jar loose and send him into the water, but it was still wedged between the rails, resting on the flange of the L. Baldu was wrapping his free arm around the rail, and now he had his ankles locked around it too.
Tony raised the sledge and slammed down. The steel rang, and he heard Baldu grunt with the shock coming into his body. He raised the sledge and put his weight into it, and the steel rang and Baldu coughed as though hit in the chest. Tony felt the wind reaching down his back under his collar and icing his sweat. Pneumonia, son of a bitch. He slammed down and across at the rail and let the sledge rest next to his foot. The bend had straightened a little, maybe half an inch or an inch. His arms were pounding with blood, his thighs ached in the awkward, frightened position. He glanced back at Hindu on the deck.
“Not me, baby.”
He felt all alone. Baldu didn’t count, being some kind of a screwball, stupid anyway, he went around believing something about everything and meanwhile everybody was laughing at him, a clown who didn’t even know it, you couldn’t count on Baldu for anything, except he was all right, lying out there and scared as he was.
He was catching his breath, coughing up the residue of tobacco in the top of his chest. He glanced down and a little behind his shoe at the steel. It was deeply red. He pounded the steel rail, all alone—and rested again. It had straightened maybe another half inch. His breath was coming harder, and his back had tightened against the impossible perch, the tension of distributing his weight partly behind the hammer and partly down into his feet, which he dared not move. He was all alone over the water, the beam of the flashlight dying in the black air around him.
He rested a third time, spitting out his phlegm. The son of a bitch was going to straighten out. If he could keep up the hammering, it would. He dared not let Baldu hammer. Baldu would surely end in the water—him with his two left feet, couldn’t do nuttn right. Except he wasn’t bad with the torch, and the steel against his clothes must be passing the cold into his body. He glanced down at Baldu and saw again the fear in his face with the water looking up at him from below.
He raised the hammer again. Weakness was spreading along his upper arms. He was having to suck in consciously and hold his breath with each blow. Charley Mudd seemed a million miles away. He could barely recall what Dora looked like. If he did decide to go through with the date, he would only fall asleep in her room. It didn’t matter. He let the sledge rest next to his foot. Now it was becoming a question of being able to lift it at all. Hindu, to whom he had given a dozen phone numbers, was far away.
Tony licked his lips, and his tongue seemed to touch iron. His hand on the sledge handle seemed carved forever in a circular grip. The wind in his nose shot numbness into his head and throat. He lifted the sledge and felt a jerky buckling in his right knee and stiffened it quickly. This fuckin’ iron, this stubborn, idiot iron, lay there bent, refusing his demand. Go back on deck, he thought, and lay down flat for a minute. But with the steel hot now, he would only have to heat it all up again, since he could not pass Baldu, who would also have to back onto the deck; and once having stopped, his muscles would stiffen and make it harder to start again. He swung the hammer, furiously now, throwing his full weight behind it and to hell with his feet—if he fell off, the rope would hold him, and they had plenty of guys to fish him out.
The rail was straightening, although it would still have a little crook in it; but as long as he could spread it far enough from the other one to let the cans pass through and into the sea, some fuckin’ German was going to get it from this rail, bammo, and he could see the plates of the sub opening to the sea and the captain watching the water for a sign of
oil coming up. He rested the sledge again. He felt he was about to weep, to cry like a baby against his weakness, but he was a son of a bitch if he would call it off and creep back onto the deck and have Hindu looking down at him, both of them knowing that the whole thing had been useless.
He felt all alone; what was Hindu to him? Another guy to trade girls with and buddy with in the bars, knowing all the time that when the time came he’d give you the shaft if it was good for him, like every man Tony had ever known in his life, and every woman, even Mama, the way she told on him to Grampa, which if she hadn’t he would never have had to marry Margaret in the first place. He smashed the sledge down against the steel, recklessly, letting his trunk turn freely and to hell with falling in.
“That looks good enough!”
For a moment, the sledge raised halfway to his shoulder, he could not make out where the voice was coming from, like in a dream, a voice from the air.
“I’m sure that’s good enough, fella!”
Carefully turning his upper body, he looked toward the deck. The captain and two other men and the watch were facing him.
“I think you’ve done it. Come back, huh?”
He tried to speak, but his throat caught. Baldu, prone, looked up at him, and Tony nodded, and Baldu closed the valves and the flame popped out. Baldu inched backward along the rail. A sailor reached out from the edge of the deck and grabbed the back of his jacket, holding on to him until he slid safely onto the deck and then helping him to stand.
Out on the rail, the sledge hanging from his hand unfelt, Tony stood motionless, trying to educate his knees to bend so that he could get down on the rail and inch back onto the deck. His head was on crooked, nothing in his body was working right. Slowly now, he realized that he must not lie down anyway, or he would have to slide his body over the part of the rail that was probably still hot enough to scorch him. Experimentally he forced one foot half an inch along the rail but swayed, the forgotten weight of the sledge unbalancing him toward his right side. He looked down at his grasping hand and ordered it to open. The sledge slipped straight down and splashed, disappearing under the black water. The captain and the crewmen and Baldu stood helplessly in a tight group, watching the small man perched with slightly spread arms on the outthrust spine of steel, the rope looping from around his chest to the framework on the deck where it was lashed. Tony looked down at his feet and sidled, inch after inch, toward the deck. Joyfully he felt the grip of a hand on his arm now and let his tension flow out as he stepped off the rail and onto the deck. His knee buckled as he came down on it, and he was caught and stood straight. The captain was turning away. Two sailors held him under the arms and walked him for a few steps like a drunk, but the motion eased him and he freed himself. A few yards ahead, the captain slowed and, glancing back, made a small inviting gesture toward the midships section, and pushed by the wind went through a doorway.
He and Baldu and Hindu drank the coffee and ate the buns. Tony saw the serious smiles of respect in the sailors’ faces, and he saw the easy charm with which Hindu traded jokes with them, and he saw the captain, uncapped now, the blond hair and the way he looked at him with love in his eyes, saying hardly anything but personally filling Tony’s cup and standing by and listening to Hindu with no attention but merely politeness. Then Tony stood up, his lips warm again and the ice gone out of his sweat, and they all said good night. As Tony went through the door onto the deck, the captain touched him on the shoulder with his hand.
When Hindu and Baldu had loaded the gas tanks onto the truck with the sledges, Tony indicated for Baldu to get into the cab, and the helper climbed in beside the sailor, who was racing the engine. Tony got in and pulled the door shut and through the corners of his eyes saw Hindu standing out there, unsmiling, his brows raised, insulted. “It’s only midnight, baby,” Tony said, hardly glancing at Hindu. “We got four more hours. Git on the back.”
Hindu stood there for twenty seconds, long enough to register his narrow-eyed affront, then climbed onto the open back of the truck.
Outside the pier the sailor braked for a moment, glancing right and left for traffic, and as he turned downtown Tony at the side window saw sailors coming down the gangplank of the destroyer. They were already casting off. The truck sped through the cold and empty streets toward Chambers and Brooklyn Bridge, leaving it all behind. In half an hour the destroyer would be back in its position alongside the cargo ships lined up in the river. The captain would be where he belonged. Stillwater. Captain Stillwater. He knew him. Right now it felt like the captain was the only man in the world he knew.
In the Yard, Tony made the driver take them up to the drydock where the cruiser lay on which they had been working. He went aboard with Baldu, without waiting for Hindu to get off the back, and found Charley Mudd and woke him up, cursing the job he had given him and refusing to listen to Charley’s thanks and explanations, and without waiting for permission made his way through the ship to the engine room. Overhead somebody was still welding with the arc too far from the steel, and he raised his collar against the sparks and climbed up to the dark catwalk and found the cable passage and crawled in, spreading himself out on the steel deck. His body felt knotted, rheumatic. His smell was powerful. He went over the solutions he had found for the job and felt good about having thought of taking the runners off the loading tray. That was a damn good idea. And Baldu was all right. He visualized the kink that remained in the rail and regretted it, wishing it had been possible to make it perfectly straight, but it would work. Now the face of the captain emerged behind his closed eyes, the face uncapped as it had been when they were standing around having coffee, the blond hair lit, the collar still raised, and the look in his eyes when he had poured Tony’s coffee, his closeness and his fine inability to speak. That lit face hung alone in an endless darkness.
[1966]
A Search for a Future
I read where Faulkner, just before he died, was having dinner in a restaurant and said, “It all tastes the same.” Maybe I am dying. But I feel good.
I was pasting on my beard. My mind was going back through the mirror to all the other beards, and I counted this as number nine in my life. I used to like beard parts when I was younger because they made me look mature and more sure of myself. But I don’t like them so much now that I’m older. No matter how I try I can’t help acting philosophical on stage with a beard, and in this part I’m a loud farmer.
That night I looked at my makeup jars, the sponge, the towel, the eye pencil, and I had a strong feeling all of a sudden: that it had always been the same jars, the same sponge, the same towel stained with pink pancake, exactly like this one is; that I had not gotten up from this dressing table for thirty-five years; and that I had spent my whole life motionless, twenty minutes before curtain. That everything tasted the same. Actually I feel I am optimistic. But for quite a lengthened-out minute there I felt that I had never done anything but make myself up for a part I never got to play. Part of it is, I suppose, that all dressing rooms are the same. The other part is that I have been waiting to hear that my father has died. I don’t mean that I think of him all the time, but quite often when I hear a phone go off I think, There it is, they are going to tell me the news.
The stage-door man came in. I thought he was going to announce ten minutes (ten minutes to curtain), but instead he said that somebody was asking to see me. I was surprised. People never visit before a show. I thought it might be somebody from the nursing home. I felt frightened. But I wanted to know immediately, and the stage-door man hurried out to get the visitor.
I never married, although I have been engaged several times—but always to a gentile girl, and I didn’t want to break my mother’s heart. I have since learned that I was too attached to her but I don’t feel sure about that. I love nothing more than children, family life. But at the last minute a certain idea would always come to me and stick in my brain. The idea that this marriage was not
absolutely necessary. It gave me a false heart, and I never went ahead with it. There are many times when I wish I had been born in Europe, in my father’s village, where they arranged marriages and you never even saw the bride’s face under the veil until after the ceremony. I would have been a faithful husband and a good father, I think. It’s a mystery. I miss a wife and children that I never had.
I was surprised to see a boy walk in, although he might have been twenty-two or -three. But he was short, with curly hair and a pink complexion that looked as though he never had to shave. Maybe, I thought, it is the son of the owner of the nursing home. He had a sweet expression, a twinkle in his eyes.
“I just wanted to remind you about midnight,” he said.
About midnight? What about midnight? I was completely lost. For a minute there I even thought, My father has died and I have forgotten about it, and there is some kind of procedure or a ceremony at midnight.
“The meeting,” he said.
Then I remembered. I had agreed to sit on the platform at a meeting, “Broadway for Peace.” I had agreed in Sardi’s because Donald Frost challenged me. My dresser’s nephew, a musician twenty-one years old, had just had his eyes shot out in Vietnam somewhere, and I was very, very sick about it. I still haven’t seen my dresser, Roy Delcampo. He doesn’t even call me up since it happened. I know he’ll show up one of these nights, but so far there is no sign of him. To tell the truth, I do not know who is right about this war, but I know that nobody is going to remember ten years from now what it was all for. Just as I so often sit here at my dressing table, where I am writing this, and it sometimes seems that I have never even gotten up to play, and I have had forty-three shows, forty-three openings, and who can even remember the casts, the exact kind of battles we had in production, let alone the reviews or even most of the titles? I know it all kept me alive, that’s about all. But it is even hard to remember the kind of actor I had wanted to be. It wasn’t this kind is all I know.
Presence: Stories Page 23
