Ironweed (1984 Pulitzer Prize) - William Kennedy [80]
“When they throw dirt in my face, nobody can walk up and sell me short, that’s what I worry about,” Francis said. “I’ll suffer in hell, if they ever got such a place, but I still got muscles and blood and I’m gonna live it out. I never saw a bum yet said anything against Francis. They better not, goddamn ‘em. All them sufferin’ bastards, all them poor souls waitin’ for heaven, walkin’ around with the snow flyin’, stayin’ in empty houses, pants fallin’ off ‘em. When I leave this earth I wanna leave it with a blessing to everybody. Francis never hurt nobody.”
“The mockin’birds’ll sing when you die,” Old Shoes said.
“Let ‘em. Let ‘em sing. People tell me: Get off the bum. And I had a chance. I had a good mind but now it’s all flaked out, like a heavin’ line on a canal boat, back and forth, back and forth. You get whipped around so much, everything comes to a standstill, even a nail. You drive it so far and it comes to a stop. Keep hittin’ it and the head’ll break off.”
“That’s a true thing,” Moose said.
“On the Big Rock Candy Mountain,” Rudy sang, “the cops got wooden legs.” He stood up and waved his wine in a gesture imitative of Francis; then he rocked back and forth as he sang, strongly and on key: “The bulldogs all got rubber teeth, and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs. The boxcars all are empty and the sun shines every day. I wanna go where there ain’t no snow, where the sleet don’t fall and the wind don’t blow, on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
Old Shoes stood up and made ready to leave. “Nobody wants a ride?” he said.
“All right, goddamn it,” Francis said. “Whataya say, Rudy? Let’s get outa this pigswill. Get outa this stink and go where I can breathe. The weeds is better than this pigswill.”
“So long, friend,” Moose said. “Thanks for the wine.”
“You bet, pal, and God bless your knee. Tough as nails, that’s what Francis is.”
“I believe that,” Moose said.
“Where we goin’?” Rudy asked.
“Go up to the jungle and see a friend of mine. You wanna give us a lift to the jungle?” Francis asked Old Shoes. “Up in the North End. You know where that is?”
“No, but you do.”
“Gonna be cold,” Rudy said.
“They got a fire,” Francis said. “Cold’s better than this bughouse.”
“By the lemonade springs, where the bluebird sings,” Rudy sang.
“That’s the place,” Francis said.
o o o
As Old Shoes’ car moved north on Erie Boulevard, where the Erie Canal used to flow, Francis remembered Emmett Daugherty’s face: rugged and flushed beneath wavy gray hair, a strong, pointed nose truly giving him the look of the Divine Warrior, which is how Francis would always remember him, an Irishman who never drank more than enough, a serious and witty man of control and high purpose, and with an unkillable faith in God and the laboring man. Francis had sat with him on the slate step in front of Iron Joe’s Wheelbarrow and listened to his endless talk of the days when he and the country were young, when the riverboats brought the greenhorns up the Hudson from the Irish ships. When the cholera was in the air, the greenhorns would be taken off the steamboats at Albany and sent west on canal boats, for the city’s elders had charged the government with keeping the pestilential foreigners out of the city.
Emmett rode up from New York after he got off the death ship from Cork, and at the Albany basin he saw his brother Owen waving frantically to him. Owen followed the boat to the North Albany lock, ran along the towpath yelling advice to Emmett, giving him family news, telling him to get off the boat as soon as they’d let him, then to write saying where he was so Owen could send him money to come back to Albany by stagecoach. But it was days before Emmett got off that particular packet boat, got off in a place whose name he never learned, and the authorities there too kept the newcomers westering, under duress.
By the time Emmett reached Buffalo he had decided not to return to such an inhospitable city as Albany, and he moved on to Ohio, where he found work building streets, and