Norwood

by Charles Portis

  And the land and the sea

  When our army and navy

  Overtake the enemee . . .

  A dog started barking upstairs, a little scrappy one, and some woman took it up and started yelling down. The stairwell echoed with female Spanish abuse. The door opened a foot or so and Norwood gave his guitar a little trick spin and dropped into a boxing stance. “Whuddaya say, tush hog,” he said. But it wasn’t Joe William at all. It was a short, bushy-headed young man in a green sweater. He was eating a sandwich. He said, “What is all this?”

  Norwood said, “Oh. I thought Joe William Reese lived here.”

  “Well, he did, but he’s gone now. You just missed him.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Back home. Some place in Arkansas. He left a couple of days ago. You a friend of his?”

  “We was in the service together. How Company, Third Batt, Fifth Marines. He owes me some money.”

  “I take it you’re from Arkansas too.”

  “Naw, I’m from Ralph, Texas. We used to live in Arkansas but when I was in the seventh grade we moved over to Ralph. It’s just the other side of Texarkana. Bowie County.”

  “I see. Well, how is everything in Bowie County?”

  “Just fine. What did he go back home for?”

  “Well, as I get it, he was following this girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “Some girl from his home town. I forget her name. She was up at Columbia more or less killing time and she wanted to go to Paris or Italy or someplace but her father said she’d have to put in some time at home first. Reese is trying to marry her. It was all very complicated. I can’t remember the details. I gather her family has some money.”

  “Yeah, I know about her. He’s been sweet on her for a long time.”

  “So. That’s the story. He left.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “Working at the post office.”

  “He could of done that at home.”

  “That’s true enough. But then the girl was up here. Look, you want some coffee or something? You look pretty beat. I was just having lunch.”

  “I don’t care if I do.”

  “Come on in.”

  “I wouldn’t mind having a sandwich either.”

  “Sure thing. I’m afraid all I have is potted meat.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “It’ll have to be on hamburger buns too, I’m out of bread.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “This stuff is cheap but it’s very nutritious.” He picked up the can and read from it. “Listen to this: ‘beef tripe, beef hearts, beef, pork, salt, vinegar, flavoring, sugar and sodium nitrite.’ Do you know what tripe is?”

  “It’s the gut part.”

  “That’s what I thought. I suspected it was something like that.”

  “It’s all meat. Meat is meat. Have you ever eat any squirrel brains?”

  “No, how are they?”

  “About like calf brains. They’re not bad if you don’t think about it. The bad part is cracking them little skulls open. One thing I won’t eat is hog’s head cheese. My sister Vernell, you can turn her loose with a spoon and she’ll eat a pound of it before she gets up. Some people call it souse.”

  “Why do they call it that?”

  “I don’t know. You got to have a name for everything.”

  “Yes, I hadn’t thought of that. Well, they’re both good names. Tripe. Souse.”

  It was a railroad apartment with peeling pink walls and a bathtub in the kitchen. There were two open suitcases on the living room couch and a big pasteboard Tide carton in the center of the room which was overflowing with books and wads of newspaper. A middling big roach was trying to climb out of the bathtub on the lower slope. He seemed addled and he kept slipping back. Norwood sat at the kitchen table and cleared away ashtrays and magazines to make an eating space on the tablecloth. He picked up an aerosol insect bomb and gave a couple of test sprays from it.

  “This was where Joe William lived?”

  “Yes.”

  “I figured he’d have a nicer place than this.”

  The bushy-headed young man was putting a pan of water on the stove. “It’s not much, is it?” he said. “But it’s not as nasty as the one just overhead, if you can believe that. That was mine. I moved down here yesterday afternoon. The rent’s the same. This one is a little more convenient too.”

  “How much is the rent?”

  “Sixty a month.”

  “Damn. You could make payments on a right nice house for that. Everything is high in New York, ain’t it?” He made himself a sandwich and started in on it.

  “Yes, I suppose it is. By the way, my name is Dave Heineman.”

  Norwood shook his hand. “Glad to meet you, Dave. Mine is Norwood Pratt. What are you, an Italian?”

  “No, I’m a New York Jew.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know any Jews?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Well, there’s Mr. Haddad at Haddad’s store in Ralph. We Clothe the Entire Family. That’s what he has on his window.”

  “He sounds Syrian to me.”

  “He might be. I wouldn’t know the difference. I was in boot camp with a Jew from Chicago name Silver. I didn’t know he was one till somebody told me. Instead of saying ‘Turn out the light’ he would say ‘Lock the light.’ You couldn’t break him from it.”

  “Why did you think ‘Heineman’ was Italian?”

  “You just look kind of Italian.”

  “This Silver, was he a pretty good soldier?”

  “Well, he wasn’t a soldier, he was a Marine. Yeah, he was all right. Except for saying lock the light. What do you do, Dave, do you work at the post office too? Everybody I’ve met so far works there.”

  “No, I don’t really work anywhere. Here at home. I’m a freelance travel writer. Just from handouts though, I don’t travel anywhere, yet. Sunny and gracious old Lima, city of contrasts, where the old meets the new. Old guys making pots and plying similar ancient trades in the shadow of modern skyscrapers. That’s what I write.”

  “Is there any money in it?”

  “Not the way I do it. There is if you can grind it out. What I’m after is trips, freebies, some of that big time freeloading. Once you get on that circuit you’re in. My problem is I’m lazy. I’ve got a Provence piece due at the Trib this afternoon and I haven’t written a word. I’ve been sitting here all morning drinking coffee and smoking and reading match covers. Hunt’s fabulous tomato sauce recipes. Draw Me. Finish High School at Home. Did you finish high school, Tex?”

  “Naw.”

  “I didn’t think so. Here, take these, look into that course.”

  “Thanks. The water’s boiling.”

  Heineman made the instant coffee in two big red striped Woolworth mugs. “How was the trip up?” he said. “Maybe I can do a piece about it. ‘See America First.’”

  “It was all right,” said Norwood. “Some hobo got my boots on the train. He was one more slick customer. He took ’em right off my feet and I didn’t see him or hear him. Yeah, and I wisht I could get aholt of that sapsucker. He’d think boots. I wouldn’t care if it was the hobo king. It may of been the hobo king. He was plenty slick. Well, I’m not being serious there.”

  “About what, the king?”

  “They have got a king. That’s right, this is no lie, I read this. They have got them a king just like England and France and he rules over every tramp in America just like a . . . king.”

  “I noticed your shoes. Your Congress gaiters.”

  Norwood shifted gears from the hobo realm and looked at his shoes with a puzzled frown, as though he wasn’t sure how they got on his feet. “I just picked these things up,” he said. “A man give ’em to me. They’re not too much really.”

  “I don’t see anything wrong with them. What’s wrong with them?”

  Norwood twisted one around on his foot. “I do have to say this: They’re comfo
rtable dudes.”

  “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that comfort and not style is the most important feature of that shoe, is that it?”

  Norwood was spreading some more meat paste on a bun. He stopped and held the knife upright on the table in his fist and looked around. He looked like an overgrown nursery rhyme character with expectations of a pudding. “Where’s the mannaze?” he said.

  “There’s not any,” said Heineman. “You’ll have to use that mustard, what’s left of it.”

  “Mannaze is better with potted meat.” He scraped the mustard jar with his knife and got the stuff out in little dobs. “How about pickles?”

  “No, it seems I’m out of everything, Tex. I didn’t know you were coming or I would have laid in some things. Some pearl onions. A relish tray. Perhaps a salad.”

  “You know, I feel like a fool coming up here all this way and then Joe William is gone back home. I could of stopped off by his house on the way up. I come within just a few miles of it. I didn’t even think about that. His folks said he was up here.”

  “How much does he owe you? If that’s not too personal.”

  “Seventy dollars.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d call that a fool’s errand all right. Even if you had caught him here you probably wouldn’t have gotten the money. He’s a bigger sponge than I am. He fooled me with that country boy act and got out of here owing me twenty-five.”

  “How did he go home, with that girl?”

  “I don’t know if he went bodily home with her or not. I think he flew.”

  “Flew? And here I am riding freight trains and he’s the one that owes me money.”

  “Well, it’s not enough to get upset about it, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean seventy dollars is not really worth all the trouble, is it? Traveling what? Two thousand miles? And losing your boots? Figure it out.”

  “I was coming up here anyway. He owes me the money. It’s not a gambling debt, it’s out of my pocket.”

  “Yeah, but it’s only seventy dollars. And what are your chances of getting it back with a guy like Reese? Didn’t you ever lose any money before? Hell, forget it. Go on back to—where do you work, Tex?”

  “I did work at the Nipper station in Ralph.”

  “Then forget it and go on back to the Nipper station in Ralph, I think you’ve got too much anxiety invested in that debt.”

  “I said I did work there. I don’t work there any more. I’m a Country and Western singer now.”

  “All right, the point is, the money’s gone.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “Okay, have it your way.”

  “Besides, I’d like to see him.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not just the money.”

  “Okay, all right. It’s none of my business anyway.”

  Heineman got up and went to the refrigerator and brought back a little carton of cottage cheese. “You want some of this?”

  Norwood said, “I don’t eat that stuff.”

  “Good. There’s not enough to split anyway.” He put salt and pepper on it and ate it from the carton.

  “Do you know any beatnik girls?” said Norwood.

  Heineman ate and thought about it for a minute. “I know some who look like beatniks. I guess it’s the same thing. There’s one on the third floor. Yes, Marie’s a beatnik by any definition. Would you like to meet her?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “She sings, you know. I think you’ll like Marie.” He stopped eating and sniffed. He made a face and went to the living room window and leaned out. “Okay, Raimundo, knock off the grabass,” he said. “I told you not to burn any more of those stink bombs out there.”

  Raimundo was the one with the big sunglasses. He and the others kicked up sparks. “It’s a campfire!” he said.

  “No, it’s not a campfire, it’s a mattress fire on East Eleventh Street and it stinks. Now put some water on it.”

  Raimundo went into another defiant spark dance. “We don’t want to.”

  “I said put it out.”

  “We’re having fun.”

  “That may be, but I don’t want you to have any fun. Fire Commissioner Cavanagh doesn’t want you to have any fun either. He was on the radio about this very thing. I think I’ll call him.”

  “You don’t have a phone.”

  “Come on now, don’t be a pest. It’s a neighborhood disgrace. The Post will be down here taking squalor pictures.”

  “I want my fifty cents,” said Raimundo.

  “Don’t start in on that again. You’ll get your money.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.” He pulled both windows down and came back to the kitchen and resumed work on the cottage cheese. “Little bastards. I hope they all get respiratory diseases this winter.”

  “If it was me,” said Norwood, “I would be ashamed of myself borrowing money from little boys.”

  “I don’t actually borrow it from them. They don’t have any to speak of. Raimundo runs a few errands for me.”

  “Say, is it okay if I shave here?”

  “Yeah, that’s it right there, the kitchen sink. The john itself is in the back. When you get through we’ll go up and see if Marie is in and take her over to Stanley’s. I don’t feel like doing that piece anyway.”

  Marie was agreeable in many ways, if a little odd. Through deafness or inattention she never heard anything the first time. “What?” she would say. “What’s that?” She took Norwood up to The Cloisters and twice for rides on the Staten Island Ferry, always wearing the same loose orange silky blouse. She didn’t work anywhere and she didn’t seem to have any friends. She didn’t do anything. Once on the boat Norwood put his arm around her waist and she removed it and said he took a lot for granted and that she would let him know when she was ready to be “pawed.” He tried it again the next day but she still wasn’t ready. They played guitar duets in her apartment, with Norwood plunking chords, and they sang folk songs from a book.

  “You don’t really like folk songs, do you?” she said.

  “They’re all right,” he said, “I like modern love numbers better.”

  Marie was a speech major from Northwestern and one night she read aloud from her favorite book, which was something called The Prophet, and Norwood listened and clipped his fingernails. She fed him and seemed to welcome his company but nothing ever got off the ground in the way of funny business. Every night he traipsed back downstairs and slept on Heineman’s couch. It was rough and nubbly and left red waffle marks on his face and hands. It was too short too. On the fourth day he got up and toppled on the floor. His legs were dead from the knees down. When circulation was restored he went upstairs and told Marie he was leaving. She said, “What?” and he said, “I said I got to go.”

  “Oh. You’re leaving.”

  “Yeah, I got to get on down the road.”

  “Oh. Well. You’ll have to write me a long letter about Shreveport.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have to do that.”

  “About the program and all.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well. All the best, Norwood.”

  “Yeah, you take it easy, I’ll see you sometime.”

  HE WALKED to Union Square in a light drizzle and stopped at the Automat for a dish of baked beans with a hot dog on top. It was the best thing he had found to eat in New York and by far the cheapest. The place was packed with damp bums who smelled like rancid towels and he had to wait for a seat. One fell vacant and he darted in and got it. Then he saw that he had forgotten his silverware. He left the dish of beans on top of an Argosy magazine to stake a table claim and went back to the cutlery stand. While he was gone the girl with the dirty dishes wagon picked up his beans and an Oriental gentleman across the table got the magazine. A man with a bowl of oatmeal got the seat. Norwood came back and thought at first he had the wrong table, then he recognized the Chinese gent. He grabbed the magazine from the foreigner’s clever
hands and turned to the oatmeal man. “You got my seat.” The man’s fast reply was “I don’t see your name on it.” Norwood stood there with his knife and fork and paper napkin.

  Just then a big man in a blue suit, not a bum but some sort of manager, appeared in the middle of the room and started clapping his hands. “It’s not raining out there now,” he said. “Everybody who’s not eating—outside!” He clapped and bellowed and there was a sullen, shuffling movement toward the door. He spotted an immobile Norwood. “That goes for you too!”

  Norwood said, “I had some beans here a minute ago. You can ask anybody at this table. Except this one. He got my seat.”

  “It’s not raining out there now. Let’s go!”

  “I ain’t studying that rain, man. I’m trying to tell you that somebody got my chow that I paid good money for.”

  “Don’t give me a hard time. Outside!”

  One of the bums who was being stampeded called back from the revolving door, “Hey, it is raining out here!”

  Norwood put his heavy duty silverware down on the table and left. Within two hours he had said goodbye to the hateful town and was speeding south in a big Trailways cruiser. He was thinking about purple hull peas sprinkled down with pepper sauce.

  There was nothing to see along the featureless turnpike to Washington except elbows in the passing cars below. He read his magazine. He dozed awhile. A famous athlete in the seat behind him, now reduced to traveling by motor coach, said, “Niggers have taken over all the sports except swimming. They don’t know how to swim.”

  In Washington there was a layover and a change of buses and a new driver. He was a cheerful fatso with his hat tipped back and although the signs said DO NOT TALK TO OPERATOR he started right in cracking jokes and carrying on with the passengers. Norwood wanted to get in on it and he went up front to scout for a seat but they were all taken. Maybe later. He had two seats to himself at the back. He took off his guitar and put his feet up in the seat, sitting crossways.

  Darkness fell and a low white moon was running along with the bus just behind the tops of the scraggly Virginia pines. Norwood had his head wedged in against the seat and the window, using his hat. He watched the moon and made it go up and down by closing one eye and then the other. Moonlight in the pines . . . and you were so fine . . . How did people write songs anyway? . . . Moonlight in the pines . . . and in this heart of mine . . . you were so fine . . . your lips were sweet as wine . . . moonlight on the road . . . moonlight on the bus . . . moonlight on the trail. . . . A Republic Picture. . . . Hey, Gabby, the widder was looking for you. Aw tarnation, Roy. Roy and Dale and the Sons of the Pioneers having a good laugh on Gabby. Roy’s real name was Leonard Slye. . . .