IX
My poor father was no longer in position to qualify as an educator of youth. Every year he was gripped more tightly in the claws of his demon. He would disappear for days, and it would be my task to go and seek him in the barrooms that he frequented. I would find him, and there would be a moral battle. I would argue and plead and threaten; he would weep, or try to assert his authority—though I cannot recall that he ever even pretended to be angry with me. I would lead him up the street, and every corner saloon would be a new contest. “I must have just one more drink, son. I can’t go home without one more. If you only knew what I am suffering!” I would get him to bed and hide his trousers so that he could not escape, and mother would make cups of strong black coffee, or perhaps a drink of warm water and mustard.
Later on, things grew worse yet. My father was no longer to be found in his old haunts; he was ashamed to have his friends see him and would wander away. Then I had to seek him in the dives on the Bowery—the Highway of Lost Men, as I called it in Love’s Pilgrimage. I would walk for hours, peering into scores of places, and at last I would find him, sunk into a chair or sleeping with his arms on a beer-soaked table. Once I found him literally in the gutter—no uncommon sight in those days.
I would get a cab and take him—no longer home, for we could not handle him; he would be delirious, and there would be need of strong-armed attendants and leather straps and iron bars. I would take him to St. Vincent’s Hospital, and there, with crucified saviors looking down on us, I would pay twenty-five dollars to a silent, black-clad nun, and my father would be entered in the books and led away, quaking with terror, by a young Irish husky in white ducks. A week or two later he would emerge, weak and unsteady, pasty of complexion but full of moral fervor. He would join the church, sign pledges, vote for Sunday closing, weep on my shoulder and tell me how he loved me. For a week or a month or possibly several months he would struggle to build up his lost business and pay his debts.