Ironweed - William Kennedy [3]
“Work where?”
“The cemetery. Shovelin’ dirt.”
“The cemetery. Why not? I oughta get used to it. What’re they payin’?”
“Who the hell knows?”
“I mean they payin’ money, or they give you a free grave when you croak?”
“If it ain’t money, forget it,” Francis said. “I ain’t shovelin’ out my own grave.”
They walked from downtown Albany to the cemetery in Menands, six miles or more. Francis felt healthy and he liked it. It’s too bad he didn’t feel healthy when he drank. He felt good then but not healthy, especially not in the morning, or when he woke up in the middle of the night, say. Sometimes he felt dead. His head, his throat, his stomach: he needed to get them all straight with a drink, or maybe it’d take two, because if he didn’t, his brain would overheat trying to fix things and his eyes would blow out. Jeez it’s tough when you need that drink and your throat’s like an open sore and it’s four in the morning and the wine’s gone and no place open and you got no money or nobody to bum from, even if there was a place open. That’s tough, pal. Tough.
Rudy and Francis walked up Broadway and when they got to Colonie Street Francis felt a pull to turn up and take a look at the house where he was born, where his goddamned brothers and sisters still lived. He’d done that in. 1935 when it looked possible, when his mother finally died. And what did it get him? A kick in the ass is what it got him. Let the joint fall down and bury them all before I look at it again, was his thought. Let it rot. Let the bugs eat it.
In the cemetery, Kathryn Phelan, sensing the militance in her son’s mood, grew restless at the idea that death was about to change for her. With a furtive burst of energy she wove another cross from the shallow-rooted weeds above her and quickly swallowed it, but was disappointed by the taste. Weeds appealed to Kathryn Phelan in direct ratio to the length of their roots. The longer the weed, the more revulsive the cross.
Francis and Rudy kept walking north on Broadway, Francis’s right shoe flapping, its counter rubbing wickedly against his heel. He favored the foot until he found a length of twine on the sidewalk in front of Frankie Leikheim’s plumbing shop. Frankie Leikheim. A little kid when Francis was a big kid and now he’s got his own plumbing shop and what have you got, Francis? You got a piece of twine for a shoelace. You don’t need shoelaces for walking short distances, but on the bum without them you could ruin your feet for weeks. You figured you had all the calluses anybody’d ever need for the road, but then you come across a different pair of shoes and they start you out with a brand-new set of blisters. Then they make the blisters bleed and you have to stop walking almost till they scab over so’s you can get to work on another callus.
The twine didn’t fit into the eyelets of the shoe. Francis untwined it from itself and threaded half its thickness through enough of the eyelets to make it lace. He pulled up his sock, barely a sock anymore, holes in the heel, the toe, the sole, gotta get new ones. He cushioned his raw spot as best he could with the sock, then tightened the new lace, gently, so the shoe wouldn’t flop. And he walked on toward the cemetery.
“There’s seven deadly sins,” Rudy said.
“Deadly? What do you mean deadly?” Francis said.
“I mean daily,” Rudy said. “Every day.”
“There’s only one sin as far as I’m concerned,” Francis said.
“There’s prejudice.”
“Oh yeah. Prejudice. Yes.”
“There’s envy.”
“Envy. Yeah, yup. That’s one.”
“There’s lust.”
“Lust, right. Always liked that one.”
“Cowardice.”
“Who’s a coward?”
“Cowardice.”
“I don’t know what you mean. That word I don’t know.”
“Cowardice,” Rudy said.
“I don’t like the coward word. What’re you sayin’ about coward?”
“A coward. He’ll cower up. You know what a coward is? He’ll run.”
“No, that word I don’t know. Francis is no coward. He’ll fight anybody. Listen, you know what I like?”
“What do you like?”
“Honesty,” Francis said.
“That’s another one,” Rudy said.
At Shaker Road they walked up to North Pearl Street and headed north on Pearl. Where they live now. They