“I dunno.... I used to set in Union Square most of the time, then I set in Madison Square. I been up in Hoboken an Joisey and Flatbush an now I’m a Bowery bum.”
“God I swear I’m goin to git outa here tomorrow. I git sceered here. Too many bulls an detectives in this town.”
“You could make a livin in handouts.... But take it from me kid you go back to the farm an the ole folks while the goin’s good.”
Bud jumped out of bed and yanked roughly at the man’s shoulder. “Come over here to the light, I want to show ye sumpen.” Bud’s own voice crinkled queerly in his ears. He strode along the snoring lane of cots. The bum, a shambling man with curly weatherbleached hair and beard and eyes as if hammered into his head, climbed fully dressed out from the blankets and followed him. Under the light Bud unbuttoned the front of his unionsuit and pulled it off his knottymuscled gaunt arms and shoulders. “Look at my back.”
“Christ Jesus,” whispered the man running a grimy hand with long yellow nails over the mass of white and red deep-gouged scars. “I aint never seen nothin like it.”
“That’s what the ole man done to me. For twelve years he licked me when he had a mind to. Used to strip me and take a piece of light chain to my back. They said he was my dad but I know he aint. I run away when I was thirteen. That was when he ketched me an began to lick me. I’m twentyfive now.”
They went back without speaking to their cots and lay down.
Bud lay staring at the ceiling with the blanket up to his eyes. When he looked down towards the door at the end of the room, he saw standing there a man in a derby hat with a cigar in his mouth. He crushed his lower lip between his teeth to keep from crying out. When he looked again the man was gone. “Say are you awake yet?” he whispered.
The bum grunted. “I was goin to tell yer. I mashed his head in with the grubbinhoe, mashed it in like when you kick a rotten punkin. I told him to lay offn me an he wouldn’t.... He was a hard godfearin man an he wanted you to be sceered of him. We was grubbin the sumach outa the old pasture to plant pertoters there.... I let him lay till night with his head mashed in like a rotten punkin. A bit of scrub along the fence hid him from the road. Then I buried him an went up to the house an made me a pot of coffee. He hadn’t never let me drink no coffee. Before light I got up an walked down the road. I was tellin myself in a big city it’d be like lookin for a needle in a haystack to find yer. I knowed where the ole man kep his money; he had a roll as big as your head but I was sceered to take more’en ten dollars.... You awake yet?”
The bum grunted. “When I was a kid I kep company with ole man Sackett’s girl. Her and me used to keep company in the ole icehouse down in Sackett’s woods an we used to talk about how we’d come to New York City an git rich and now I’m here I cant git work an I cant git over bein sceered. There’s detectives follow me all round, men in derbyhats with badges under their coats. Last night I wanted to go with a hooker an she saw it in my eyes an throwed me out.... She could see it in my eyes.” He was sitting on the edge of the cot, leaning over, talking into the other man’s face in a hissing whisper. The bum suddenly grabbed him by the wrists.