A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [85]
She saw staid family vehicles drawn by dependable-looking teams. These coaches did not impress Francie very much because every undertaker in Williamsburg had a string of them.
Francie liked the hansom cabs best. How magic they were with only two wheels and that funny door that closed by itself when a passenger sat back in the seat! (Francie thought in her innocence that the doors were meant to protect the passenger from flying horse manure.) If I were a man, thought Francie, that’s the job I’d like to have, driving one of them. Oh, to sit high up in the back with a brave whip in a socket close to hand. Oh, to wear such a great coat with large buttons and a velvet collar and a squashed-down high hat with a ribbon cockade in the band! Oh, to have such an expensive-looking blanket folded over her knees! Francie imitated the drivers’ cry under her breath.
“Kerridge, sir? Kerridge?”
“Anybody,” said Johnny, carried away by his personal dream of Democracy, “can ride in one of those hansom cabs, provided,” he qualified, “they got the money. So you can see what a free country we got here.”
“What’s free about it if you have to pay?” asked Francie.
“It’s free in this way: If you have the money you’re allowed to ride in them no matter who you are. In the old countries, certain people aren’t free to ride in them, even if they have the money.”
“Wouldn’t it be more of a free country,” persisted Francie, “if we could ride in them free?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because that would be Socialism,” concluded Johnny triumphantly, “and we don’t want that over here.”
“Why?”
“Because we got Democracy and that’s the best thing there is,” clinched Johnny.
There were rumors that New York City’s next Mayor would come from Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn. The idea stirred Johnny. “Look up and down this block, Francie, and show me where our future Mayor lives.”
Francie looked, then had to hang her head and say, “I don’t know, Papa.”
“There!” announced Johnny as though he were blowing a trumpet fanfare. “Someday that house over there will have two lamp posts at the bottom of the stoop. And no matter where you roam in this great city,” he orated, “and you come across a house with two lamp posts, you’ll know that the Mayor of the greatest City in the world lives there.”
“What will he need two lamp posts for?” Francie wanted to know.
“Because this is America and in a country where such things are,” concluded Johnny vaguely but very patriotically, “you know that the government is by the people, for the people, of the people and shall not perish from the face of the earth the way it does in the old countries.” He began to sing under his breath. Soon he was carried away by his feeling and started to sing louder. Francie joined in. Johnny sang:
You’re a grand old flag,
You’re a high-flying flag,
And forever in peace may you wave…*
People stared at Johnny curiously and one kind lady threw him a penny.
Francie had another memory about Bushwick Avenue. It was tied up with the scent of roses. There were roses…roses…Bushwick Avenue. Streets emptied of traffic. Crowds on the sidewalk, the police holding them back. Always the scent of roses. Then came the cavalcade: mounted policemen and a large open motorcar in which was seated a genial, kindly-looking man with a wreath of roses around his neck. Some people were weeping with joy as they looked at him. Francie clung to Papa’s hand. She heard people around her talking:
“Just think! He was a Brooklyn boy, too.”
“Was? You dope, he still lives in Brooklyn.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And he lives right here on Bushwick Avenue.”
“Look at him! Look at him!” a woman cried out. “He did such a great thing and he’s still an ordinary man like my husband only better looking.”
“It musta been cold up there,” said a man. “It wonders me he didn’t freeze his whatzis off,” said a bawdy boy.
A cadaverous-looking man tapped Johnny on the shoulder. “Mac,” he inquired,