The Fires of Spring by James A. Michener
“Get some clothes on!” David commanded with sudden fury.
“What goes on?”
“I just left Cyril Hargreaves.”
Mona thew her hands over her face. “Don’t! Don’t!” she wailed.
“Get up, damn you!” David shouted. He ripped the bedclothes from her, and she stood defiantly by the bed.
“I can’t go up there!” she protested. “I saw him once in that awful room. He understands, Dave.”
Mona!” David shouted. “He won’t live through the night. Get your clothes on.”
“No!” she screamed, and when he grabbed her, she became hysterical. Mom and Claude hurried upstairs.
“What goes on here?” Mom demanded. Mona continued to scream.
“Tell her to get dressed!” David commanded.
“No! No!” Mona cried. She fled to Mom’s strong arms, and the big woman protected her from David.
“What is it, Dave?” Mom asked.
“An old man is dying. She lived with him until his money was gone.”
“You better leave her alone,” Mom said quietly.
“By God, I won’t!” David swore. “I held that old man in my arms while he shaved, hoping that she’d come see him today …” His voice broke and in despair he lunged at Mona, but with a big, firm hand Mom pushed him away.
“Beat it, Dave,” she counseled. Stubbornly he tried to reach Mona, but the landlady would not permit him to do so. “Some things,” she said firmly, “you can’t make a person do.”
“But that lousy tramp …”
“Dave!” Mom pleaded. “Doin’ some things ain’t of much significance. I guess I’ve seen more’n three hundred people die, more or less, and it never made a bit of difference who was there or what fine things anybody said, because when a person dies … Wheeeewt!” She made a horrible, low, whistling sound, as if a stubborn lamp had been extinguished.
That night the doctor said, “The old fellow’s very weak.”
“Any change in the medicine?” Jensen asked.
“No. I’ll drop by tomorrow,” the doctor replied. He paused as if about to say something more. Then he left.
Cyril was fully rational and seemed glad that David and Jensen both were to stay with him. “And in the seventh hour,” he said, “men of the village came to sit with him.” He laughed weakly at David and cackled, “Don’t ask me who said it. I said it.”
David inquired which of his many roles he had most enjoyed. He thought for a minute, accentuating his fallen cheeks by sucking in their remnants. “It would have to be Polonius,” he admitted. “An actor can do a great deal with Polonius.”
“You played him in John Barrymore’s company, didn’t you?” David asked.
And Jensen sighed loudly and said, “John Barrymore! There was a man who could act!”
The worn old trouper turned onto his right elbow and with difficulty stared at Jensen. “Did you say John … Barrymore? Really, Mr. Jensen! I should have thought a summer in stock would have taught you some discrimination.” He fell back on his pillow and stared sadly at the greasy wallpaper. “But I suppose,” he mused, “that the movies have corrupted you.” Then he snorted. “Simply because a man has a profile! Let me tell you, Mr. Jensen …”
He fell asleep, and the watchers kept each other awake by various means, so that his medicine would not be missed. At midnight they awakened him. He was extremely weak, and Jensen supported him so that he could swallow. The Wild Man was exquisitely tender and kidded Cyril along as if he were a child, “Now Goddamnit, Sir Cyril, open your mouth and let this good li’l ol’ stuff trickle down!” He laid the frail old man back on the pillow and adjusted the blankets so that the frayed ends would not tickle.
“I hoped that you might find Miss Meigs,” Cyril said. “If you ever do, see that she has a place to stay until she gets a part. She’s a superb actress. We’ll all be proud of her one day.” He looked about the room as if he might find her where the others had failed. Seeing only shadows, he drifted back to sleep.
The watchers slumped forward in their chairs. They were now in the lonely hours when the darkest night gasped bitterly to hold back the dawn. The noises of the wakening city had not yet begun, and there were no birds.
In spite of their intentions, the two young men fell asleep, and toward four Cyril awoke in delirium and started to whisper hoarsely, “Watch that broken pole! Mr. Harper! I beg you! Watch that pole!” He mumbled for some minutes and failed to waken either of his friends. Then his mind slowly cleared. He saw them slumped forward in their chairs. His old mouth moved in uncontrolled starts. “Let them sleep,” he said, and died.
David would surely have brooded upon Cyril’s death had not the great MacDougal brawl intervened. Fights were common in the cosmopolitan Village, where fiery Italians assaulted one another and white men beat up Negro men for dating white women. Gay blades from uptown often took a few drinks and discovered themselves to be witty, irresistible Lotharios, whereupon someone bashed them in the face and taught them otherwise.
But a brawl on MacDougal Street had a special quality. It was louder and rougher than the others because Mom Beckett was usually involved. And across from Mom’s lived an immense fat lady with a voice like a klaxon. Since she was too heavy to move about, she sat on a soap box in a second-story window and spied upon the restaurant. Whenever a good fight seemed imminent she whipped open her window and shouted in piercing screams. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Then all of MacDougal Street poured out to watch the ruckus.
On a warm day in December the fat lady was watching the empty street when she saw Mom Beckett throw the little fire inspector out of the restaurant. Then Mom shouted, “So you’ll report me, will you? I’ll break your goddamned neck!” The inspector made some brave reply, and Mom grabbed him by the coat lapels.
“Fight! Fight!” screamed the fat woman. From every door along the street men and women and children catapulted onto the sidewalks, and among them David appeared to see what Mom was doing. As he arrived, the neat, marcelled woman pushed the little inspector in the face.
“You little stinker!” she cried. David tried to rescue the inspector, for he knew that if Mom actually struck him she would be arrested; but when the big Arizona woman saw David attempting to break up the brawl she said, “Dave! You stand clear.”
“He’s the law!” David protested.
“He’s a pismire!” Mom replied, and in the excitement she hauled her right arm back and socked the frightened little man. On her fifth wallop a flash bulb went off, and it was this picture that made the fight famous. It was printed in all the papers under the heading “Arizona Amazon,” and it showed a meticulously dressed woman, her hair unruffled, swinging a terrific haymaker at a quaking little man. What made the picture truly hilarious was that Mom was biting her lower lip as if eager to muster all her power into the blow.
The case of the Arizona Amazon was a six-day wonder. One New York paper dubbed her the “MacDougal Mauler” and said, “She makes Gene Tunney look like a bum.” The judge, of course, took a more serious view. He said that the appointed servants of the people could not be put in danger of their lives—here the courtroom began to heave with chuckles—simply because someone did not like the decisions of the appointed servants of the people. Mom Beckett had been clearly heard to say in the presence of witnesses that “she would break that little bastard’s neck,” and judging from the photograph entered as evidence—here the judge coughed—she had come pretty close to doing so. “Thirty days!”
So they carted Mom off to jail, and then an unforeseen thing took place. Claude became ill. He actually became sick because of his worry over Mom. For years people had seen him hanging around the restaurant and had taken for granted that he was Mom’s whilom lover, but now the full quality of his passion for the big woman from Arizona manifested itself. He lay in bed and cried. He experienced deep pain at the degradation Mom had suffered, and he could not eat.
David ran the restaurant, which did a tremendou
For two weeks Claude would not get up. Friends who had visited Mom in prison reported on her good health. They said she and the police got along fine, since they had so many common acquaintances. Finally one consistent old drunk said, “Mom’d like to see you, Claude.”
This intelligence put the poet into a nervous state and a conclave was held. A collection was taken and David purchased a large bunch of flowers. The men combed and dressed Claude, but it was apparent that he could not negotiate the trip by subway, so they plopped him and David into a cab and sent them off to jail.
The police were very considerate. They took Claude right in and produced Mom. She looked better than ever and seemed to have been dining well. When she saw the flowers she winced and said, “I’m a prisoner, not a corpse.” Then Claude began to weep, and he looked across the barren table at her as if his heart had been stricken. She comforted him as best she could and said the flowers were wonderful. Just what she needed. But when Claude left, sniffling and weak-kneed, she held onto David’s sleeve.
“He must be nuts!” she whispered. “I need flowers like an ox needs a tail full of cement. Psst! Kid! How about sneakin’ me in a pint of gin? That’s what I really need.”
So David sent Claude home in a taxi and then scrounged about the Village till he found a pint of gin. To his surprise the jailer laughed and said, “For Mom Beckett it’s OK, but don’t let the blue-noses hear about this.” He let David go right back to Mom’s cell, where the big handsome woman knocked the top off the bottle and took a lusty swig.
“Jesus!” she cried. “That’s even worse than I used to sell. But it’s good!”
Then David felt that he must explain. “I’m running the restaurant, Mom. And if you don’t mind, I’m sleeping in your room.”
Mom put down the bottle. “You mean that the scrawny actress is upstairs? And you’re down?”
“Yes. After the old man’s death I never want to see her again.”
Mom took a deep swig of gin and shook her head. “Honest to God, Dave, you must have mush in your brains.” She was going to add further comments but decided against it. “Look after Claude, will you?” she asked. “Tell him not to worry. All this jail means to me is a chance to get some regular sleep.” When David left, she was sitting on her hard bed, with the gin bottle in one hand and a comb in the other.
“She’s the best woman we ever had in this dump,” the jailer said proudly. “Big-hearted sorta, like my wife.”
The snow began about eight in the morning. Dreamily it fell upon the great city, and by mid-afternoon Washington Square was a place of formless beauty. The statue of Garibaldi, that chaotic adventurer, stood draped in a Roman toga, while upon the triumphal arch of Washington, a better organized adventurer, ruffles of white clung handsomely.
The sky was somber gray, and still the moist flakes fell. To the east the tall and ugly university buildings at last looked passably decent, as if their architect in shame had thrown a gossamer shroud about their hideousness. To the south slept the unimportant buildings that had housed the poets and the novelists and the painters. On these houses, where the creators had lived in their productive years, the snow fell with a kind of benison, as if it, senseless, knew that some painter, later than the rest, was watching it so that he might recall it for later use in some evocative canvas.
Actually, there was no watching painter, but in the middle of the Square, confused and reveling in the silent thunder of the snowstorm, stood David Harper in wet shoes, watching the whiteness fall upon the varied architecture he had grown to love. He turned around many times to see first the shrouded university buildings, then the painters’ homes, and then the handsome Georgian doors along the north. The stark and barren trees clutched for a moment at accumulating burdens and then sent them tumbling to earth in a flurry of flakes. The fountain was lost beneath a solemn mound such as might have marked the grave of the ancient Indians who had owned the Square. This was the old potter’s field of New York, and David thought, “My people are in potter’s field, too.” Mysteriously, the twisting curtain of snow segregated the Square and the Village from the rest of the city, so that David could feel that he was, for once, standing absolutely alone in the heart of New York.
But he was not quite alone, for on a bench near Washington’s arch, a venturesome couple, wrapped high in coats, huddled together in kisses. It was unbelievable! Even in the midst of this increasing storm, there were lovers in Washington Square, and David thought, “I’ve seen it in all kinds of weather, and there’s always been at least one couple kissing. Maybe that’s why it’s such a wonderful place.” He stamped his wet feet and from a distance saluted the kissing pair. “Hiya, champs!” he called into the storm. Then he became aware of his feet and muttered, “I’m getting cold!”
Yet, like winter wheat, David thrived in the snow. Its great beauty, in the heart of his city, reminded him of strange and towering things. He watched the buses struggling to breast the drifts. Taxis no longer scurried back and forth, and students leaving the university bowed their heads low to forge a path through the indifferent flakes.
Tumultuous ideas possessed him as he stamped back and forth across the drifted Square. He felt, strangely, as if God had touched him that day, and his mind was in a ferment of hugh cloudy symbols. Names and scenes flashed across his memory, summoned by nothing but the storm. Words of towering evocation sprang to his mind: field, clouds, and Hector lay face down upon the dust of Troy, this island of my soul, hunger, petticoat …
Up from the Hudson River, along the canyons, winds whistled into the Square and made a momentary blizzard, but then the echoing quietness of a city storm fell once more upon the burdened buildings, and David muttered, “Boy! My feet really are cold!”
Reluctantly, he plunged homeward to MacDougal Street. He was still determined not to go near Mona, but his sight of the lovers kissing in the snow had reminded him that the slim actress was at that very moment in his bed, alone. He recalled how entrancing Mona had seemed that morning when she came downstairs for some of Mom’s free food. Even the circles under her eyes had disappeared. Twice David had asked, “When are you leaving?” and she had replied, “You know I got nowhere to go.” She was there now, in his room.
He paused for one last look at the swirling snow and then went down the flight of steps into the steamy restaurant. As soon as he appeared, the loafers ran up to him in deputation and handed him a long envelope. It was from Fashion, and with cold fingers he ripped it open. Inside was a $300 check for his story, and miserable Claude, who had not received $300 for his whole output of poetry, became so excited that he served free drinks to the entire crowd.
There was much talk as to who could cash the check, but finally a man guzzling from a full bottle of rye said, “Lemme see that check.” He studied it for a moment and said, “That’s a real check. You sign it here and I’ll cash it.” He pulled from his hip a roll of bills so large that he had to tug upon it to tear it loose from his pocket. Peeling aside the thousand- and five-hundred-dollar bills, he came at last to the mere hundreds. “Here,” he grunted, handing David three of them. And that trivial incident was what launched the strange events of that day.
The man was a notorious, cheap gangster. When he handed David the three bills he was standing beside Claude, so that with one glance David could see both men, and the discrepancy between them was shocking. There stood the bearded poet, and he had no money. Across from him stood the petty thief, the gambler, the bootlegger, the dabbler in all the rackets of the night, and this man had to peel away the big bills before he could reach the hundreds.
There a
With his $300 David ran out of the restaurant and dashed through the swirling streets so that he left behind him a miniature blizzard. He ran to the jail, where the jovial keeper said, “Even Mom Beckett ain’t allowed to have $200 in this jail.”
“Could I see her anyway?” David asked.
“What for?”
“Let me give her the dough, and then you can keep it for her.”
“Look, buddy! Awready we got a hundred special rules for that dame. Now you want me to open a bank!” But nevertheless the jailer led David to the small visiting room into which Mom finally entered. She was trim, well rested, well corseted. Her big face grinned happily at David and she said, “I suppose you’re right well adjusted to my room by now. Well, haul ass outa there by Saturday night. They’re springin’ me!”
“Mom,” David said, “I got a break today, and I want to pay you back some of the dough I owe you.” Before she could protest he plopped $200 into her hand.
“Look, kid!” She laughed. “I never expect to get dough back. Especially not from writers. You need it. Look at your shoes!”
David pulled his hand away. “It’s yours.”
“But I don’t need it!”
David stared at her and asked, “Didn’t you ever get money that you didn’t want?”
The big Arizona woman laughed at her star boarder and said, “Not very often, but once or twice I did pick up a buck or two I was ashamed to own.” She yelled for the jailer and gave him the two hundred to be put with her things. Then she placed both hands on the table, palms down, and asked, “Since you gotta leave my room by Saturday, why don’t you and Miss Mona make up?”