A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago Part 3

Tommy O'Connor looked out of the smeared window of the room in which he sat and stared at the snow. A drift of snow across the roofs. A scribble of snow over the pavement.

There were automobiles racing through the streets loaded with armed men.

There were crowds looking for a telltale face in their own midst. Guards, deputies, coppers were surrounding houses and peering into alleys, raiding saloons, ringing doorbells. The whole city was on his heels. The city was like a pack of dogs sniffing wildly for his trail. And when they found it they would come whooping toward him for a leap at his throat.

Well, here he was--waiting. It was snowing outside. There was no noise in the street. A man was pa.s.sing. One of the pack? No. Just a man. The man looked up. Tommy O'Connor took his face slowly away from the window. He had a gun in his pocket and his hand was holding it. But the man was walking away. Huh! If the guy knew that Lucky Tommy O'Connor was watching him from a window he'd walk a little faster. If the guy knew that Lucky O'Connor, who had busted his way out of jail and was being hunted by a million people with guns, was sitting up here behind the window, he'd throw a fit. But he didn't know. He was like the walls and the windows and the snow outside--quiet and peaceful.

"Nice boy," grinned Tommy O'Connor. Then he began to fidget. He ought to go out and buy a paper. See what was doing. See what became of Mac and the rest of the boys. Maybe they'd all been nabbed. But they couldn't do him harm. On account n.o.body knew where he was. No pal. No dame. n.o.body knew he was sitting here in the room looking at the snow and just thinking. The papers were probably full of c.o.c.k-and-bull stories about his racing across the country and hiding in haystacks and behind barns. Kid stuff. Maybe he should ought to of left town. But it felt better in town. Some rube was always sure to pick out a stranger beating it down a empty road. And there was no place to hide. Long, empty stretches, where anybody could see you for a mile.

Better in town. Lots of walls, alleys, roofs. Lots of things like that. No hare-and-hounds effect like in the country. But the papers were probably full of a lot of bunk. He'd take a walk later and buy a few. Better sit still now. There was nothing harder to find than a man sitting still.

Tommy O'Connor yawned. Not much sleep the night before. Well, he'd sleep tonight. Worrying wasn't going to help matters. What if they did come? Let them come. Fill up the street and begin their d.a.m.n shooting. They didn't think Lucky Tommy was sucker enough to let them march him up on a scaffold and break his neck on the end of a rope. Fat chance. Not him. That sort of stuff happened to other guys, not to Lucky Tommy.

Snowing outside. And quiet. Everybody at work. Funny about that. Tommy O'Connor was the only free man in the city. There was n.o.body felt like him right now--n.o.body. Where would he be exactly this time a week from now? If he could only look ahead and see himself at four o'clock next Monday afternoon. But he was free now. No breaking his neck on the end of a rope.

If worst came to worst--if worst came to worst--O'Connor's fingers took a grip on the gun in his pocket. They were hunting him. Up and down the streets everywhere. Racing around in taxis, with rifles sticking out of the windows. Well, why didn't they come into this street? All they had to do was figure out: Here's the street Tommy O'Connor is hiding in. And that looks like the house. And then somebody would yell out: "There he is!

Behind that window! That's him!" Why didn't this happen?

Christmas, maybe, he'd call on the folks. No. Rube stuff. A million coppers would be watching the house. But he might drop them a letter. Too bad he didn't have any paper, or he might write a lot of letters. To the chief of police and all the head hunters. Some more rube stuff, that. They could tell by the postmark what part of the city he was hiding in and they'd be on him with a whoop.

Funny how he had landed in this room. No plans, no place in particular to head for. That was the best way. Like he'd figured it out and it turned out perfect. Grab the first auto and ride like h.e.l.l and keep on changing autos and riding around and around in the streets and crawling deeper into the city until the trail was all twisted and he was buried. But he ought to shave his mustache off. h.e.l.l. What for? If they came whooping into the street they'd find him, mustache or no mustache. But what if he wanted to buy some papers?

It was getting darker now. The snow was letting up. Just dribbling. Better if it would snow a lot. Then he could sit and have something to watch--snow falling on the street and turning things white. That was on account of his headache he was thinking that way. Eats might help, but he wasn't hungry. Scared? No. Just waiting. Hunters winding in and out like the snow that was falling. People were funny. They got a big thrill out of hunting a live man who was free in the streets.

He'd be walking some day. Strolling around the streets free as any of them. Maybe not in town. Some other town. Take a walk down State Street.

Drop in at a movie. Kid stuff. Walk over to Mac's saloon and kind of casually say "h.e.l.lo, fellows." And walk out again. G.o.d, they'd never hang him. If the worst came to the worst--if the worst came to the worst--but they'd never hang him.

Dark now. But the guys hunting him weren't going to sleep. Lights were going on in the windows. Better light up the room. People might notice a dark window. But a lighted one would look all right. It was not snowing any more. Just cold.

Well, he'd go out in a while. Stretch his legs and buy the papers and give them a reading. And then take a walk. Just walk around and take in the streets and see if there was anybody he knew. No. Rube stuff, that. Better stick where he was.

Lucky Tommy walked around in the room. The drawn window blind held his eye. Wagons were pa.s.sing. What for? Yes, and there was a noise. Like people coming. Turn out the light, then. He'd take a look.

Tommy O'Connor peeled back the blind carefully. Dark. Lights in windows.

Some guys on the corner. Hunting him? Sure. And they were coming his way.

Straight down the street. They were looking up. What for? A gun crept out of Tommy O'Connor's pocket. He pressed himself carefully against the wall.

He waited. The minutes grew long. But this was the hunt closing in. They were coming. Black figures of men floating casually down the street. All right--let them come.

Lucky Tommy O'Connor's eyes stared rigidly out of the smeared window at a vague flurry of figures that seemed to be coming, coming his way.

MR. WINKELBERG

There was never a man as irritating as Winkelberg. He was an encyclopedia of misfortune. Everything which can happen to a man had happened to him.

He had lost his family, his money and his health. He was, in short, a man completely broken--tall, thin, with a cadaverous face, out of which shone two huge, l.u.s.terless eyes. He walked with an angular crawl that reminded one of the emaciated flies one sees at the beginning of winter dragging themselves perversely along as if struggling across an illimitable expanse of flypaper.

It was one of Winkelberg's worst habits to appear at unexpected moments.

But perhaps any appearances poor Winkelberg might have made would have had this irritating quality of unexpectedness. One was never looking forward to Winkelberg, and thus the sight of his wan, determined smile, his l.u.s.terless eyes and his tenacious crawl was invariably an uncomfortable surprise.

I will be frank. It was Winkelberg's misfortune which first attracted me.

I listened to his story avidly. He talked in slow words and there was intelligence in the man. He was able to perceive himself not only as a pain-racked, starving human, but he glimpsed with his large, tired eyes his relation to things outside himself. I remember he said, and without emotion: "There is n.o.body to blame. Not even myself. And if I cannot blame myself how can I blame the world? The city is like that. I am no good. I am done. Something worn out and useless. People try to take care of the useless ones and they would like to. There are inst.i.tutions. I was kicked out of two of them. They said I was a faker. Somehow I don't appeal to charitably inclined people."

Later I understood why. It was because of the man's smile--a feeble, tenacious grimace that seemed to be offering a sardonic reproof. It could never have been mistaken for a courageous smile. The secret of its aggravating quality was this: In it Winkelberg accused himself of his uselessness, his feebleness, his poverty. It was as if he were regarding himself continually through the annoyed eyes of others and addressing himself with the words of others: "You, Winkelberg, get out of here.

You're a nuisance. You make me uncomfortable because you're poor and diseased and full of gloom. Get out. I don't want you around. Why the devil don't you die?"

And the aggravating thing was that people looked at Winkelberg's smile as into a mirror. They saw in it a reflection of their own att.i.tude toward the man. They felt that Winkelberg understood what they thought of him.

And they didn't like that. They didn't like to feel that Winkelberg was aware that deep inside their minds they were always asking: "Why doesn't this Winkelberg die and have it over with?" Because that made them out as cruel, heartless people, not much different in their att.i.tude toward their fellow men from predatory animals in their att.i.tude toward fellow predatory animals. And somehow, although they really felt that way toward Winkelberg, they preferred not to believe it. But Winkelberg's smile was a mirror which would not let them escape this truth. And eventually Winkelberg's smile became for them one of those curious mirrors which exaggerate images grotesquely. Charitably inclined people, as well as all other kinds of inclined people, prefer their Winkelbergs more egoistic.

They prefer that unfortunate ones be engrossed in their misfortunes and not go around wearing sardonic, philosophical smiles.

Winkelberg dragged along for a year. He was past fifty. Each time I saw him I was certain I would never see him again. I was certain he would die--drop dead while crawling across his flypaper. But he would appear. I would pretend to be vastly busy. He would sit and wait. He never asked alms. I would have been relieved if he had. Instead he sat and smiled, and his smile said: "You are afraid I am going to ask you for money. Don't worry. I won't ask you for money. I won't bother you at all. Yes, I agree with you, I ought to be dead. It would be better for everybody."

We would talk little. He would throw out a hint now and then that perhaps I could use some of his misfortunes for material. For instance, the time his two children had been burned to death. Or the time he had fallen off the street car while in a sick daze and injured his spine for life, and how he had settled with the street car company for $500 and how he had been robbed on the way to the bank with the money two weeks later.

I refused consistently this offer of "material." This offended Winkelberg.

He would shake his head and then he would nod his head understandingly and his smile would say:

"Yes, yes. I understand. You don't want to get involved with me. Because you don't want me to have any more claims on your sympathy than I've got.

I'm sorry."

Toward the end Winkelberg's visits grew more frequent. And he became suddenly garrulous. He wished to discuss things. The city. The various inst.i.tutions. Politics. Art. This phase of Winkelberg was the most unbearable. He was willing to admit himself a social outcast. He was reconciled to the fact that he would starve to death and that everybody who had ever seen him would feel it had been a good thing that he had finally died. But this final plea came from him. He wanted nothing except to talk and hear words in order to relieve the loneliness of his days. He would like abstract discussions that had nothing to do with Winkelberg and the Winkelberg misfortunes. His smile now said: "I am useless, worn out and better off dead. But never mind me. My mind is still alive. It still thinks. I wish it didn't. I wish it crawled around like my body. But seeing that it does, talk to me as if it were a mind belonging to somebody else and not to the insufferable Winkelberg."

I grew suspicious finally. I began to think there was something vitally spurious about this whole Winkelberg business. And I said to myself: "The man's a downright fake. If anybody were as pathetic and impossible and useless as this Winkelberg is he would shoot himself. Winkelberg doesn't shoot himself. So he becomes illogical. Unreal."

A woman I know belongs to the type that becomes charitable around Christmas time. She makes a glowing pretense of aiding the poor. As a matter of fact, she really does aid them, although she regards the poor as a sort of social and spiritual a.s.set. They afford her the double opportunity of appearing in the eyes of her neighbors as a magnanimous soul and of doing something which reflects great credit upon her character. But, anyway, she "does good," and we'll let it go at that.

I told this woman about Winkelberg. I became poignant and moving on the subject of Winkelberg's misfortunes, his trials, sufferings and, above all, his Spartan stoicism. It pleased me to do this. I felt that I was making some amends and that the thing reflected credit upon my character.

So she went to the room on the South Side where Winkelberg sleeps. And they told her there that Winkelberg was dead. He had died last week. She was upset when she told me about it. She had come too late. She might have saved him.

It was a curious thing--but when she told me that Winkelberg was dead I felt combatively that it was untrue. And now since I know certainly that Winkelberg is dead and buried I have developed a curious state of mind. I look up from my desk every once in a while expecting to see him. In the streets I sometimes find myself actually thinking: "I'll b.u.mp into him when I turn the corner."

I have managed to discover the secret of this feeling. It is Winkelberg's smile. Winkelberg's smile was the interpretation of the world's att.i.tude toward him, including my own. And thus whenever his name comes to mind his smile appears as if it were the thought in my head. And in Winkelberg's smile I hear myself saying: "He is better off dead."

A SELF-MADE MAN