Ironweed - William Kennedy [35]
Francis stepped into this castoff world and walked toward a wooden shack, small and tilted, with a swayback horse hitched to a four-wheeled wooden wagon in front of it. Beyond the wagon a small mountain of wagon wheels rose alongside a sprawling scatter of pans, cans, irons, pots, and kettles, and a sea of metal fragments that no longer had names.
Francis saw probably Rosskam, framed in the shack’s only window, watching him approach. Francis pushed open the door and confronted the man, who was short, filthy, and sixtyish, a figure of visible sinew, moon-faced, bald, and broad-chested, with fingers like the roots of an oak tree.
“Howdy,” Francis said.
“Yeah,” said Rosskam.
“Preacher said you was lookin’ for a strong back.”
“It could be. You got one, maybe?”
“Stronger than some.”
“You can pick up an anvil?”
“You collectin’ anvils, are you?”
“Collect everything.”
“Show me the anvil.”
“Ain’t got one.”
“Then I’d play hell pickin’ it up.”
“How about the barrel. You can pick that up?”
He pointed to an oil drum, half full of wood scraps and junk metal. Francis wrapped his arms around it and lifted it, with difficulty.
“Where’d you like it put?”
“Right where you got it off.”
“You pick up stuff like this yourself?” Francis asked.
Rosskam stood and lifted the drum without noticeable strain, then held it aloft.
“You got to be in mighty fair shape, heftin’ that,” said Francis. “That’s one heavy item.”
“You call this heavy?” Rosskam said, and he heaved the drum upward and set its bottom edge on his right shoulder. Then he let it slide to chest level, hugged it, and set it down.
“I do a lifetime of lifting,” he said.
“I see that clear. You own this whole shebang here?”
“All. You still want to work?”
“What are you payin’?”
“Seven dollar. And work till dark.”
“Seven. That ain’t much for back work.”
“Some might even bite at it.”
“It’s worth eight or nine.”
“You got better, take it. People feed families all week on seven dollar.”
“Seven-fifty.”
“Seven.”
“All right, what the hell’s the difference?”
“Get up the wagon.”
Two minutes in the moving wagon told Francis his tailbone would be grieving by day’s end, if it lasted that long. The wagon bounced over the granite blocks and the trolley tracks, and the men rode side by side in silence through the bright streets of morning. Francis was glad for the sunshine, and felt rich seeing the people of his old city rising for work, opening stores and markets, moving out into a day of substance and profit. Clearheadedness always brought optimism to Francis; a long ride on a freight when there was nothing to drink made way for new visions of survival, and sometimes he even went out and looked for work. But even as he felt rich, he felt dead. He had not found Helen and he had to find her. Helen was lost again. The woman makes a goddamn career out of being lost. Probably went to mass someplace. But why didn’t she come back to the mission for coffee, and for Francis? Why the hell should Helen always make Francis feel dead?
Then he remembered the story about Billy in the paper and he brightened. Pee Wee read it first and gave it to him. It was a story about Francis’s son Billy, written by Martin Daugherty, the newspaperman, who long ago lived next door to the Phelans on Colonie Street. It was the story of Billy getting mixed up in the kidnapping of the nephew of Patsy McCall, the boss of Albany’s political machine. They got the nephew back safely, but Billy was in the middle because he wouldn’t inform on a suspected kidnapper. And there was Martin’s column defending Billy, calling Patsy McCall a very smelly bag of very small potatoes for being rotten to Billy.
“So how do you like it?” Rosskam said.
“Like what?” said Francis.
“Sex business,” Rosskam said. “Women stuff.”
“I don’t think much about it anymore.”
“You bums, you do a lot of dirty stuff up the heinie, am I right?”
“Some like it that way. Not me.”
“How do you like it?”
“I don