The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [105]
whisky face was red as a winter apple and a crazy saliva patch shone on his chin. He yelled, "Next time I'll shoot the shit out of you!" So we ran, and he threw rocks past us. I wished that I could lay for him till he came off duty and tear his windpipe out. However, we were legging it over the rails on the lookout for anything swift that might come down on us out of the steel coldly laid out in the dark and the shrivels of steam and cyclops headlamps, a looserolling car. Also the coal rumbled in the hoppers and bounded grim to the ground. We ran, and I didn't feel angry any more. A highway marker told us we were twenty miles from Detroit. As we stood there the fellow came up who had ridden out of Cleveland under the gondola with us, the wolf-looking one. Though it was dark, t spotted him coming in the road. He didn't seem to have anything special in mind, only to hang around. I said to this stocky boy Stoney, "I have a buck to take me back to Chicago, so let's get some chow." "Hang on to it, we'll mooch something," he said. He tried a few stores along the highway and by and by turned up some stale jelly bismarcks. A truck carrying sheet-metal took all three of us into town. We lay under the tarpaulin, for it was cold now. The truck dragged up the hills in low gear, and it took hours, with all the stops. Stoney slept. Looking capable of harm, Wolfy didn't seem to mean us any; he had only tied in with us to be carried along as we were. As we started again in the late night for the city he began to tell me what a rough town it was, that he had heard the cops were mean and everything rugged; he said he had never been here before himself. While we penetrated more, by a series of funnels of light, into the city, he made me feel dejected, describing it as he did. Then the truck stopped and the driver let us off. I couldn't see where; it was empty and silent, past midnight. There was a small restaurant; all else was closed doors. So we went into this joint to ask where we were. It was narrow as a corridor, laid out with oilcloth. The short-order guy told us we were off the center of town, about a mile, if we followed the car line from the next intersection. When we came out, there was a squad car waiting with open doors and a cop blocking the way who said, "Get in." Two plainclothesmen were inside, and I had to hold Wolfy on my lap while Stoney lay on the floor. This Stoney was only a young boy. Nothing was said. They brought us into the stationconcrete, and small openings everywhere, the bars beginning at the end of a short flight of stairs not far from the sergeant's desk. The cops kept us to one side, for there was another matter being heard, and four or five faces of peculiar night-wildness by the electric globe of the desk, and the sergeant with his large flesh and white fatty face presiding. There was a woman, and it was hard to take in the fact that she had been in the middle of a brawl, she was so modest-looking and dressmakerish, with a green trout knot to her hat. Alongside her there were two men, one with a bloody beehive of bandages, totterheaded, and the other shut up with defiance and meanwhile his hands pressing all his concern to his chest. He was supposed to be the offender. 1 say supposed because it was the cop who did the explaining, the three principals being deaf-mutes. This guy attacked the other with a hammer, was what he said; he said that the woman was a lousy bitch and didn't care for whom she spread, and the bastard was the biggest cause of trouble in the deaf-mute community even if she did look like a schoolteacher. I report what the cop told the sergeant. "What's my idea," he said, "is that this poor jerk thought he was engaged to her and then he caught her with this other joker." "What doin'?" "I wouldn't know. It depends on how much of a sorehead he is. But with the pants off, I wouldn't be surprised." "I wonder what makes 'em so randy. They fight more about love than the dagoes," said the sergeant. His face had a one-eye emphasis, and his cheek was so much rough wall. The arm he had up his sleeve