He turned and pointed to the mural. “I git mine from her.” His eyes dimmed in affection as he stared at the naked lady. Then he smiled again at Martin. “I can spell too, mate,” he added proudly.
“Spell CAT,” said Martin.
“K-R-Double T,” said the old seaman, an ecstatic glow on his face.
“That’s right,” observed Martin, in a tone of approbation. “Can you spell DOG?”
“Sure I can!” Old Crackin answered promptly, looking as if he could scarcely contain himself for joy. “G-R-Double D,” he recited, and held out his hand once more.
Martin saw the running sores between the old sailor’s fingers. He smiled at him, called the bartender, asked for a beer and paid for it.
“Drink up,” he said and left.
The little man looked at his beer and drank it slowly, bitterness and necessity in his expression.
The nearest Relief restaurant was at the far end of the Bowery. Martin walked along, sticking to the edge of the sidewalk, glad that his dungarees were clean. The horizons of the sea outlined the figures of the people about him. They moved down the street, slack-mouthed, too tired to be desperate. Martin saw them as an old river, full of eddies and currents—muddy, yet retaining the purity of utter despondency.
In a doorway, out of the late afternoon sun, a man lay sleeping as though drugged. And at one corner three men were drinking openly from a bottle while a policeman passed them without interest. A long-haired, wild-eyed fanatic, his shirtfront covered with dark stains, addressed an amused group of loafers on their sins, vividly painting the atrocious hells that awaited them, and turning only to spit at the passing cars. Whenever there was a momentary lull of traffic he would spit on his own thin coat-tails in his excess of hatred. This brought the most hilarious laughter from the crowd. A thick-set drunken woman with one stocking dragging the pavement brought the preacher’s fury to such a height that he rushed at her, his mouth wide open. She swung at him sluggishly, missing his chin by a narrow margin; whereupon he ran around her in ever-widening circles as she continued her forward movement in dignified arabesques.