Читать книгу The Complete Collection - William Wharton, Уильям Уортон - Страница 48

At nine-thirty we go downstairs and pay our garage bill. We get a receipt for the stud in Philadelphia. The car’s ready; those poor guys were working before we even got out of bed.

Dad’s more relaxed; all that rapping in the dark must’ve helped.

We begin rolling, gliding, through beautiful Pennsylvania countryside. Dad tells how when he was in high school his dream was going to Penn State, a university not far off the road here.

Our idea is to beat it clear into Philadelphia on this last leg. We’ll be staying with friends of my parents. Their name is Hill. The house is in a suburb, called Bala-Cynwyd.

Late afternoon we get there, that is, Philadelphia; but it’s seven o’clock before we finally find our way to the Hills’ place. And then nobody’s home. It’s getting dark and we’ve no place to go. These people were expecting us; we can’t be more than a day late, at most. And tomorrow we’ve got to deliver this boat to the mob.

Dad pulls out the Hills’ letter again. There are directions on what we’re supposed to do if they’re not home. It says there’s a key hidden on a two-by-four to the left of the inside back screen door.

We go around and look. There’s a screen door but it’s locked from the inside with one of those old-fashioned hook-and-eye locks. We peer in but can’t see far around enough to know if there’s a key.

Now this is a fancy house in a damned fancy part of town. All these houses are in the hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar class, at least. I’m expecting a cruiser to come along any minute; we’ll have a squad of mustachioed heroes charging with pistols and tear gas.

There are lightning bugs flying around; we don’t have any in L.A. or Paris. Every time one of those bugs lights up in the corner of my eye, I think it’s a searchlight and we’ve had it. Dad looks at me.

‘Billy, we’ll just have to break in. They’re expecting us; they only forgot and locked the screen door.’

You never know with Dad; now he’s leading us into five to twenty for breaking and entering. He finds a cellar window with a cracked pane of glass. We wiggle it around till the putty falls out. We lift the two pieces, reach in, open the window and lower ourselves into the cellar. We go upstairs to the screen door. The key’s there all right. Then Dad goes back down to the cellar and fits the pieces of glass in place. He’s too much. He doesn’t want the Hills to know they blew it and locked us out. I’ll never understand that generation.

On the dining table is a note. It says there’s beer and hoagies in the refrigerator. The Hills know Dad’s an absolute fiend for these Italian sandwiches stuffed with cheese, spiced meats, tomatoes, lettuce and who knows what else. At least it’s a step up from pizza. The note says they’re visiting friends and will be back later.

We demolish those sandwiches. Probably they’re the Philadelphia equivalent to tacos. We guzzle the beer. Then we go sit in the living room. Man, this is a beautiful home. Three of Dad’s paintings are on the walls. We’re sitting on low couches in a living room carpeted wall-to-wall with a ruby-red deep-pile rug. It’s like being inside a heart. Dad starts telling me about the Hills.

Pat is a physicist and Rita, his wife, is a mathematician; they have four kids, two about my age. One daughter’s at Harvard, the other at MIT. The young kids are geniuses, too.

Come to think of it, Dad has practically no artist friends. All his buddies are scientists; biochemists, physicists, astronomers; or they’re mathematicians, doctors, dentists. Maybe he’s in the wrong business. There’s for sure something of the scientist in him. He’s always full of weird semiscientific ideas and questions. He continually reads crazy books about black holes or genetic engineering. Or he’s trying to explain gravity or working up half-assed all-inclusive field theories for the universe.

But, in another way, he could never be a scientist. He’d never bugger himself with all the facts and memory part. He’s not one-eyed enough to make it; he’s always seeing too many sides, more sides than there are most times.

There’s a mob of pets around the house. First, a dog named Natasha trotted downstairs when we came up from the cellar. She doesn’t bark, just goes to Dad when he calls her name, and nuzzles him. She’s some kind of giant, grayish poodle. Two or three cats slither out of the woodwork, too. They brush against us, purring, then go their way. Upstairs, we find a medium-sized boa constrictor, some gerbils, a guinea pig, two parakeets, three fish tanks, six or seven lizards, what looks like a baby squirrel and a litter of hamsters. This place is a private zoo.

In the living room there’s a grand piano with a cello leaning in one corner, French horn beside the fireplace and piles of music on top of the piano. It’s a TV setup for ‘This Is Your Life, Albert Einstein.’

It’s hotter than hell. The humidity followed us all the way. We settle in a dining nook attached to the kitchen. There’s an electric fan there and we turn it on to push the air around some. There’s also a small television. We switch on and watch one of the local stations; it’s amazing how the Philadelphia accent comes through even on TV.

At about nine, a car pulls into the drive. The people fit the house. Pat is tall, thin and bald. If you can imagine a Midwestern Oppenheimer, you’ve got it: a quiet, deep-voiced, slow-spoken, deliberate man. Dad had told me about Pat’s strange childhood but I didn’t believe it. Pat was born to deaf parents on an isolated farm in South Dakota. He didn’t hear anybody speak till he was five years old. His home language is sign, and he has a slight finger accent in English. When he talks, it sounds like a simultaneous translation at the UN.

Later, I ask about all this. You never know what embroidery Dad’s working up. But it’s truth.

Pat feels he has an enormous advantage over other people because spoken language is something he can tune in or out as he wants.

Rita is small, smooth, quick-moving and good-looking. This is the first of my parents’ friends who turns me on. I don’t know what it is; her moves, her voice, her vitality; and she doesn’t seem old. She has laugh lines down the sides of her face and wrinkles at the eyes. After you’ve seen lines like that on a woman’s face, young-girl faces are empty maps, undeveloped country, waiting for something to happen. I spend a good part of the evening sneaking looks at Rita.

The two daughters aren’t there. They’re both off working summer jobs trying to help pay off those enormous tuition bills. One’s working on a horse farm; she wants to be a vet. The other is waitressing at the shore in Atlantic City. They call the beach the shore here. The younger ones, Sandy and Kim, are quiet, bright-eyed, listening to everything happening. We have a great time.

Rita lights mental fires and Pat blows gently, keeping them burning. We talk about everything. Halfway through the evening Dad begins telling about what’s been happening in California. For the first time, I get the unexpurgated version. If he’s telling the truth, then I don’t know how he stuck it out long as he did. I hope he doesn’t expect me to put up with anything like that for him.

That evening I give the university thing another think. What’s physics or mathematics got to do with whether a conversation is interesting or not? Nothing I can see. But these people are interesting no matter what they’re talking about. They have a way of approaching any subject with curiosity, originality, a personal viewpoint. They know how to think. They’ve read a lot, they know about music and painting; but that’s not it either.

It’s hard putting a finger on it; they’re in tune, have good antennae. They know the rhythms of listen and respond. It’s three in the morning before we stop.

Rita shows us the upstairs bedrooms, the older girls’ rooms. Everything on the walls is interesting. By letting your eyes wander around you’re constantly learning. There’s the periodic table pasted on the ceiling over each bed. There are star maps stuck on the walls. There are classification trees for animals, insects, plants, everything, all in color, beautiful. There are rock and shell collections on the window sills. Each desk has a professional-type microscope. Just lying in one of those beds, scanning the walls, you could almost educate yourself. These people are deep into knowledge. I’m not sure I could make it here.

I lie there under the periodic table. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe it was because I felt they were babying me. Maybe if I’d gone to a big university like UCLA or Berkeley I’d’ve made it.

Dad’s already out of bed and downstairs when I wake up. It’s raining like crazy. At least the rain makes the humidity bearable. This whole East Coast is one gigantic hothouse.

Dad and Rita are in the kitchen drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. They’re having a very heavy private conversation and hardly notice me come into the kitchen. Probably Dad’s unloading on her about California again.

I sit down and dig in. I’ve never seen doughnuts like these. There are some with holes, both glazed and sugared. There are solid ones with jelly filling, lots of jelly; and even fancy variations like maple-syrup fillings.

Rita asks how I want my eggs and pours orange juice. This is the best food we’ve eaten in weeks. Dad’s quiet; I have the creepy feeling I’ve interrupted something. But I’m not giving up on those doughnuts, no matter how much he needs that broad, firm, smooth shoulder.

I’m into my fourth, seconds on the sugar-coated, solid, jelly-filled ones, when Pat comes down. He’s dressed for the university. I can see him at a lectern all right, the perfect university professor: bald head gleaming in the light; trying to be gentle and clear but scaring the shit out of his students because he gives off an aura of accumulated knowledge and know-how tucked behind those eyes, under that bald head.

Pat takes a glass of orange juice and some coffee. He chooses one of the plain glazed ones with a hole. Rita gives me two fried eggs with some weird-tasting stuff called scrapple.

Dad gets out the papers on our car with the delivery address and Rita unfolds a map of Philadelphia. Neither Pat nor Rita will believe this car’s going to the address we have. We’re delivering to a swarming, seething, black slum, one of the most dangerous sections in Philly. They say they wouldn’t even drive a tank into that neighborhood. Dad and I look at each other; this is something we hadn’t counted on.

Rita also hands me a letter she forgot to give me yesterday. It’s from Debby; I dash upstairs to read it in private.

She’s coming to meet me in Paris on the point of the island the way we said. She’ll be there July 10th, wants to be with me in Paris to celebrate Bastille Day. She says in the letter ‘celebrate breaking out of my own personal prisons, too’. I read that letter over about ten times. Holy shit, all my dreams are coming true. We’re really going to do it. I realize Dad and I missed the Fourth of July in there somewhere without noticing; it could explain the heavy traffic after St Louis.

When we try starting the car, it looks as if we won’t deliver at all. We turn the motor over until the battery runs down. Pat has a charger, so we take the battery into the garage for a quick charge.

It’s got to be all the rain and humidity has fouled the electrical system. For some reason, Dad’s convinced it’s the carburetors. Pat stands on the porch and makes suggestions of things to check. I can almost hear the relays clicking in his brain. It’s still raining like hell and we’re soaking wet. The trouble is, if we don’t deliver today, the fifty-dollar bond is forfeited, even with the extra two days.

I take out the sparks and clean them. Dad’s blown all the jets on the carbs; he smells like a fire-eater. This car is not only gigantic, but all the parts are tucked in the most impossible places. With Pat’s help, I find the points and clean them. We put the battery back in and give it another try. Nothing. We turn it over till it’s obvious the sparks are flooded again.

Dad tries calling Scarlietti to tell him his car’s in Philadelphia, but can’t get anybody. Things are screwed up as usual.

Rita comes out on the porch with a blue-and-white striped umbrella. She looks under the hood with us. I’m wondering if it might be the timing. But how could the timing get off overnight? Rita says she read somewhere, when everything’s wet and humid so a car won’t start, you should take out the electrical parts and bake them dry in an oven at a slow heat.

We look at her as if she’s crazy. There’s something hard to handle about putting automobile parts in an oven where you bake cakes, or roast beef.

But it makes a kind of sense; besides, we’ve run out of things to do. We twist out all the sparks again, unhook the coil, the lines from the sparks to the distributor, the distributor, the condenser and the brushes for the generator. We take off the distributor cap and rotor. We spread all these parts on a piece of aluminium foil and stick the whole mess into her oven.

We bake them slowly for fifteen minutes; according to Rita, about the time it takes for a batch of cookies; then we take them out. They’re not only dry, they’re red hot. We have another cup of coffee while they cool. I’m enjoying myself. Pat’s stayed on. He says this is more interesting than anything going on at the lab.

Dad’s more relaxed than he’s been in months. This is his hometown and probably geography, geology, everything works on the body so you’re most comfortable where you’ve grown up. Maybe Grandpa’s Coriolis effect has something to do with it, too; the body’s a sort of hydraulic system, when you think about it. We should ask Pat.

Pat’s explaining some of the decisions they’re making about what to engrave in gold on the next satellite as a message to beings in outer space. It’s complicated but it makes me think of all the bottles with messages in them I’ve thrown into oceans since I was a kid.

After everything’s cooled off, we put the parts back in, take the charger off our battery and turn her over. She booms into life with the first try – as if nothing had ever been wrong. We all take turns dancing with Rita and congratulating her. Any excuse. She needs to go change because we get grease over the back of her dress. The rain’s stopped, the sun’s out and it’s hot, humid again.

Dad and I wash up, put on clean shirts and take off. Rita says she’ll throw our clothes in the washer and they’ll be clean when we get back.

We drive through Fairmount Park, heading north. The farther north we go, the grimmer it gets. As soon as we pass Broad Street and tour past Temple University, it turns totally black. There are people standing around staring blank at this monster of an automobile going by. I know if we don’t keep up speed we’ll be jumped. Almost simultaneously, Dad and I push down the locks. Dad smiles; I wonder if he’s scared as I am. I’ll tell you if I were one of those people living out there, seeing this car driving down my street, I’d sure as hell be throwing things.

There’s an elevated train here over the street, just like the Paris Métro out by Bir-Hakeim and through Passy. Only this is nothing like that, this is desolation! It looks as if there’s been a war. It’s worse than just slummy and dirty. There are burnt cars in the streets. There’s garbage, old furniture, refrigerators and broken, rusted washing machines on the sidewalks. There’s trash over everything. The curbs are packed tight with debris so they’re rounded off between street and pavement.

The farther along we go, the fewer and fewer women we see, and the men begin looking meaner. They’ve started stepping off curbs toward us, and twice guys stoop down and pick up bits of junk to throw. I’m wishing we didn’t look quite so much like Captain Haddock and a bearded Tin Tin.

All the houses here are row houses. The windows are broken out and the railings on porches are splintered and hanging. The tiny bits of lawn in front of each house are only packed dirt, with holes dug into them and more garbage strewn around.

There are kids and women hanging out of windows, mostly broken-paned windows, but the houses look as if nobody lives in them. There are no curtains or drapes. Junk wrecks of cars are pulled up on lawns and in alleyways. Boy, I never knew what a real black slum looked like. There’s nothing like this in California or Paris.

I’ve been to Watts, but at least there it’s individual houses, not these walls of broken windows. There it looks temporary; here it’s as if it’s been this way forever and is going to stay that way.

People are stretched out on the streets and on pavements, like Paris clochards – only young people, some of them wearing jeans, T-shirts; and nobody’s paying any attention.

Now we’re starting to run red lights because every time we slow down or stop, the car’s covered with people. They jump on the hood, knock on the windows, thump on the sides of the car with fists or open palms. If we stop two minutes, goodbye car; goodbye hubcaps, aerial, anything that can be torn off. So we’re carefully running red lights and staying away from the sides of the car. I’m working over our map trying to zero in on the address. Dad’s hunched around the wheel as usual.

The wild thing is most everybody’s laughing. They think it’s the funniest thing in the world seeing these two whiteys in blue driving this wet dream of an automobile straight through their territory. I don’t think they actually believe it. Maybe they’re only trying to be friendly and aren’t being threatening at all, but it looks threatening and we’re both scared shitless. The car’s beginning to stink from our fear, even with the air conditioning.

There’s another thing that’s weird. Out there, everybody’s in undershirts or without shirts and the sun’s beating down after the rain. Pavements and streets are steaming, steam is coming out of manhole covers; it’s all filthy and disordered. But inside the car, we’re sitting on smooth leather seats. We’re surrounded by clean, canned car air; the radio’s playing stereo with soft background classical music. It’s hard putting it together. We’re astronauts, tearing through a hostile environment, only able to exist because of our support systems. If one thing goes wrong, if we make one mistake, we’re goners.

The kings of France must have had the same feeling. Poor old Henry IV, with some nut jumping into his carriage in the Place des Vosges and doing him in. No wonder Louis XIV built that château out in Versailles; he was probably one of the first people moving to the suburbs, escaping center-city madness.

Well, we finally come to the address on our papers. We’ve got the right street, the right number, everything tallies, but this can’t be the right place. This is 2007 Montgomery, but it’s the worst of all. This area is unbelievable. There are practically no houses which aren’t completely boarded up. The people in the street are virtually naked. There’s a broken fire hydrant across the street and kids are jumping around bare-ass in the water. This is pure jungle in the middle of Philadelphia.

We go around the block three times, not knowing what to do. By the second time around, they’re waiting for us. Kids run up as we go by with mouthsful of water, spurt at the windows and laugh. The house with the right number looks to be completely abandoned.

We’re finishing the third turn and we’re about to crash on out of there. We stop for one more close look to see if there’s any chance anybody could possibly live at that number. Two kids climb up over the hood and sit on top of the car with their bare wet feet hanging down across the windshield.

Amazingly, a door opens in the house and a white woman comes running down toward us. She’s wearing a yellow dress with no sleeves; she has dark, almost blue hair. She runs to the side of the car and presses papers against the window. It’s a copy of the delivery papers with Dad’s picture stapled to the top. I unlock the door, she pulls it open and slides in beside me. She smells of whiskey and perfume. Opening the door is like opening the door to an oven. It’s the first time we’ve had a door or window open since we left Bala-Cynwyd.

‘Are you Mr Tremont?’

Dad reaches over and takes his papers out of the glove compartment.

‘It says here I’m supposed to deliver this car to a Mr Scarlietti.’

He shows her the papers with that name.

‘I’m taking delivery for him; Mr Scarlietti is out of town right now. I’ll sign for it and give you the fifty dollars. That’s right, isn’t it?’

Dad looks at me and I shrug. What the hell else are we going to do, sit in this car forever? At least the kids have all scrambled off and are sitting or standing along the curb across the street. Dad pulls out the repair bills; they come to over three hundred bucks. She looks at them, then at us suspiciously. Dad tells her he called from Los Angeles and Mr Scarlietti gave permission to have the voltage regulator replaced; the universal joint was done right here in Pennsylvania on the turnpike, but we couldn’t get to him for permission.

‘If you don’t believe me, just call the garage, the phone number’s there on the bill; it’s in a place called New Stanton.’

He points to the number and she stares some more at the bills, then smiles.

‘Looks as if this is some car. I don’t have that kind of money on me; one of you’ll have to come inside and get it. Four hundred would cover everything, right?’

Dad nods. I’m having a hard time putting together that kind of money and this car with this neighborhood, if you could call it a neighborhood. Dad says he’ll stay in the car while I go in.

I’m more than a little bit nervous. This woman is good-looking, too good-looking, maybe thirty-five, flashing eyes, smooth arms, good legs in high heels with platforms.

She runs up the cracked cement walk between the worn-down lawns and up some broken steps onto an unpainted porch. Outside the car, I catch not only the full push of heat but the smells. It’s a mixture of a burning dump and rotten oranges.

When I follow her through the door, I can’t believe my eyes, or skin, or anything. First of all, the place is air-conditioned, but that’s the least of it. I’ve stepped into a gigantic room. They’ve knocked down the walls to about ten of those row houses and put them together. The walls are covered with red brocade and there are mirrors everywhere with soft pinkish-orange lights. The rugs are dark, burgundy-wine red. It’s like those last thirty-nine pages in Steppenwolf! It makes Caesar’s Palace look like Savon drugstore. I’m standing there with my mouth open and the lady’s disappeared.

I’m expecting to be hit over the head with a velvet-covered black-jack. This is some kind of big-deal gambling joint or whorehouse, maybe both.

I’m thinking I’d better just run and tell Dad to drive like hell. We can drop this car in some white neighborhood with square curbs. We’ll phone from there, tell them where the car is and jump on a plane. We’re way over our heads. I’m actually beginning to feel cold under my jean jacket. Maybe I’m going into shock, my circulation isn’t pushing the blood fast enough.

I look around. There are staircases up for each of the different houses they’ve put together, so I can look down the line and see one staircase after the other. With all the mirrors and the dim lights, it’s hard to tell exactly what you’re actually seeing anyway. There are small wooden bars built in under each of those stairs, and leather or red plush couches all around the walls. It’s got to be a whorehouse all right. I’ve never been in one, but this is the way I’d’ve imagined one up.

Finally, just as I’m ready to scoot, the lady comes back. She isn’t hurrying so much now, and in these dim pink lights the yellow dress is turned orange. She gives me a soft smile and counts out four one-hundred-dollar bills, snapping them with her fingers as she hands them to me, the way they do in a bank. I’m convinced they’re most likely counterfeit, they’re brand-new-looking, but how much use do hundred-dollar bills get anyway?

I’m not saying anything; I just want to get the hell out of there. I’m so confused I put out my hand to shake, French-style. She takes my hand and gives me a good shake back. I don’t think anything could surprise this lady. She goes over to the door and before she can open it, I come a bit to my senses.

‘Do you want us to bring the keys in here or leave them in the car?’

She smiles.

‘You’d better lock it up and bring the keys in; we still have to sign the delivery papers.’

I want Dad to see this place. He’d never believe it and I don’t blame him. I stick my head out the door and holler. He can’t hear me inside, so I motion him to come in. He opens the door and sticks his head up over the car.

‘Lock it up and bring the keys, Dad. Bring the papers, too.’

Those kids and all the neighbors are lined up across the street. Nobody’s moving. Dad locks his door, then sprints across and up the steps. I stand back to let him in.

He stops dead in his tracks like he’s been sandbagged. He looks at me and looks at the lady. His head turns slowly to take it in. He looks back at the door. The lady puts out her hand for the key. She’s enjoying this almost as much as I am.

‘Would you give me the key? I gave him the money.’

She points to me and I nod. Dad drops the keys in her hand. She tucks them in a little pocket at the hip of her dress. She reaches for the papers.

‘What’re we supposed to sign?’

Dad gives her the papers. His hands are shaking. The lady leads us to the nearest bar where there’s more light. Dad’s in front of me and she’s leading the way. I let off two minor-note farts; I fart when I’m nervous.

We do the signing. She keeps her pages and Dad pockets his. Dad tries to pay back the change, about fifty dollars, but she waves it off.

‘What are you two; brothers, or father and son, or what? It’s like seeing double.’

She couldn’t’ve said anything to make Dad happier; but personally I’m getting fed up with being seen as some kind of carbon copy thrown off by a biological time machine.

‘Yeah, this is my son Bill.

‘Wow, you sure have a beautiful place here; it’s the last thing you’d expect.’

‘You like it, huh?’

She smiles that same smile, more in the eyes than in the mouth.

‘It’s incredible.’

‘And you’re curious about it, huh?’

She isn’t being nasty, just leading him on.

‘Yeah, to be honest, I am. For instance, how are you going to use a car like that one out there? What do you do with a fancy place like this in a neighborhood like this one?’

‘This is just what you think it is, Mr Tremont, a fancy place.’

She smiles again.

That’s straight enough. She offers us both a drink, and when we nod yes, she pulls ice from an ice-maker, puts it in shot glasses and pours Ballantine Scotch over top. The whole thing’s so James Bond I can’t get myself around it. I’m still expecting a quiet hit over the head, either here or when we get outside. I’m tasting the drink for knockout drops.

‘If you two’d like to stay on and have a good time, there’s not much going now; it’d cost just one of those soldiers you have in your pocket there.’

Fucking A, the old man handles this as if he’s been propositioned by beautiful whores in the afternoon all his life. He smiles and says we have friends waiting for us; he asks if there’s a bus or streetcar back to Bala-Cynwyd.

‘Lord almighty, I don’t know anything about that. I never go outside. I don’t even live in Philadelphia; I live in Newark. Sorry, I can’t help you but I believe there’s a bar around the corner to the left. Maybe they can help.’

Since there’s no more business with us, she gently slips past, smiling, talking all the way, leading us to the door we came in. All the other doors have been blocked out and covered with mirrors or brocade. This door has heavy drapes over it so you’d hardly know it was there.

So suddenly we’re out in that blinding sunlight. There’s the heat, the humidity, the smells and all those black people standing on the other side of the street staring. The fire hydrant’s still spurting water. It’s ten times worse than coming out of a movie in mid-afternoon; my eyes start hurting as if I’d just eaten a pint of ice cream in three minutes. And there’s such a heavy feeling of hate, a chill would run up my spine if there were anything cool left in me. Now I’m dripping sweat inside my jean jacket.

We stroll, not run, down the street and around the corner. We find a place there you might call a bar. It has the word ‘BAR’ written on what’s left of a broken plate-glass window and there are black, mean-looking bucks hanging around in front of it. There’s also one guy spread in the gutter, bleeding from his nose and mouth. Nobody’s paying much attention to him. There’s another sleek, thin type, with blood dripping down the front of his T-shirt, leaning in the doorway of what’s supposed to be the bar.

Nobody’s shouting or even looking excited. My crazy old man walks past the cat in the door to a fat guy behind the bar; there’s broken glass all over everything. I stay outside. All those eyes follow Dad in as if he’s Cleopatra stepping from her boat on the Nile. I almost expect them to twist shoulders and take the frontal position. Other groovy cats have started drifting onto the scene. I never really thought of myself as the kind of asshole who’d die a violent death in North Philadelphia.

One huge mother of a stud sidles up to me. He’s wearing a black, leather, brimmed hat and a thin, yellow silk, tailored shirt. Dad’s still in there talking with the fat bartender.

‘Hey, man, what you doin’ here?’

‘We just delivered a car from California to a house around the corner and we’re trying to find a bus out. That’s my dad in there.’

‘Shit, man, you are in the wrong place. You got maybe five minutes to live if you stay around here. You all jes’ come with me and right now. Get your old man and stick your ass tight to me.’

This guy must be over six feet six and he’s at least three feet across the shoulders. He looks like a muscular gone-to-pot basketball player or a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He talks in a reedy, high-pitched quiet voice.

Dad comes out and I tell him this fellow’s showing us where there’s a bus. I can tell from Dad’s face, things didn’t go so hot in the bar. I suspect nothing ever goes well in that bar. He falls in behind me and we tail this tall dude with the black leather hat and the yellow shirt. He could be leading us up some alley for a real mugging and we wouldn’t have a chance, even with the two of us, even if he were alone, which he wouldn’t be. But we don’t have that many choices. The giant keeps checking to see that we don’t fall too far behind. it takes two of our steps for every one of his, he’s loping along like a Kodiak bear. There’s a troop following in our wake, sharking along.

About three blocks later, he takes us into a place with the words ‘SETON HALL’ scrawled across the doorway. It’s another beat-up, run-down place from the outside, but on the inside it’s a miniature Salvation Army. There are blankets on tables, and clothes, old clothes, hanging on hangers. The big guy walks over to somebody sitting behind a table in front by the door. There are flies buzzing all around the room.

‘Look, Able, see these guys get on the bus away from here. Don’t let them go out in the street.’

He smiles, then walks through the door without looking back. Everybody working here is black, too. The one at the desk glances at us.

‘You stay right there. I’ll say when to get up. There’s a public service bus comes past.’

We sit and watch. In this heat they’re spotting, repairing and ironing clothes. I don’t know how they stand it. It’s some kind of Catholic charity. On the wall there’s one of those pictures of Jesus with his heart hanging out, brambles sticking into it and blood dripping.

Finally, this guy tells us to get ready. He goes out on the curb and flags down the bus. Shit, I wouldn’t even have recognized it; all the windows have wire grille over them. It looks like an armored truck, only long. He hustles us out and we jump in. The driver’s locked in a cage. We put fifty cents each through a small opening in the wiring; into a metal spinning counter meter. He pushes a button and we go through a turnstile into the bus. We’re the only pale faces; even though we’ve just come from California, we really look pale. Maybe we’re supposed to go to the back of the bus but the only empty seats are just inside the turnstile.

We have no idea where this bus is going. Dad says we’ll stay on so long as it heads south and we’ll get off when we see some faces that aren’t purplish brown, bluish brown or brownish black.

The bus goes into Central Philadelphia and leaves us off by the City Hall. Dad says he knows a train from here that’ll take us out to Bala-Cynwyd. He suggests we go get something to eat and celebrate.

It’s almost three o’clock. It’s taken more than four hours to deliver that car. It seems like three years on Devil’s Island. I know I’m feeling like an escaped criminal. For old time’s sake, we head toward the nearest pizza place. But this is a true Italian restaurant and these are genuine pizzas, not American dough with ketchup and American soap cheese melted over top; it tastes like Europe. When I close my eyes, I can almost taste France.

This whole day has definitely put the icing on the cake. I’m ready to go home. I’m ready for some old-world civilization; I’m not up to coping with the great American democratic experiment.

A commuter train leaves us off about three blocks from the Hills’. What a difference walking in these streets. There are large, spreading trees shading everything, touching each other over the streets like umbrellas. The roots are so huge they lift the pavements up into little hills. But these pavements aren’t cracked; they’re cemented in gentle curves over these hills. The houses are natural or cut stone, three stories with graceful porches. There’s the sound of power lawnmowers keeping grounds in order and the slamming of screen doors. Ladies, alone, in big station wagons, cruise around at about twenty miles an hour, out shopping.

It’s hard to believe we’re only five or six miles from the jungle. What’s going to happen when those people over there come charging into these places? I hate to think about it; I sure as hell don’t want to be here.