The Long Take Page 11

  The guy knocked him down, and out,

  then bent over

  and hit him again: a savage one-two to the face.

  The way his girl looked at him then.

  Like she’d let him do anything.

  *

  The fighting over in Korea, and our boys were coming home;

  just as he was finishing all this

  in San Francisco and going back to what felt like war.

  He went down to Fisherman’s Wharf for a last meal,

  past the steaming kettles of the crab-stands,

  all the restaurants, Alioto’s, DiMaggio’s, Sabella and La Torre,

  but just wasn’t hungry, and kept walking,

  stopping at Speedy’s up on Union and Montgomery

  for a sandwich and a bottle

  and went back, and sat at the window.

  *

  I was walking in the high country, among the cave-systems, when I found it: that bone knife laid down in the sixth century and picked up again in this.

  American cities have no past, no history. Sometimes I think the only American history is on film.

  August, 53

  *

  The echo of running feet still loud on the waterfront,

  down the Montgomery Steps, and all through Chinatown.

  Rita Hayworth is still driving up Sacramento

  past the Brocklebank; the sniper

  still crying in that upstairs room on Filbert Street;

  Agnes Moorehead still falling

  from her window at the Tamalpais, and Bogart

  – always running – still scrabbling down its fire-escape.

  Joan Crawford leaves by the door of that building,

  still chased in one sequence

  from Greenwich and Hyde in San Francisco

  to Cinnabar Street, three blocks from the Sunshine – flickering

  from Russian Hill to Bunker Hill in twenty-four frames.

  Jack Palance, trying to drive into her

  down 2nd to Olive by the Mission Apartments,

  only seeing in the last moment

  it’s really Gloria Grahame, his lover –

  crashing, and killing her, and himself,

  at the dead-end parapet above the 2nd Street Tunnel.

  The street he’ll be walking, in under a week.

  *

  He dreamt a plane carrying troops crash-landed

  onto the cemetery outside Caen, and the long-dead

  were churned up with the newly-dead

  and he had to walk through it all.

  Looking for himself.

  *

  The view from the window is black,

  with a hundred moving lights – red, green and white –

  the way he always dreamed the flight-deck of a plane.

  Another sunset bloods the bay

  back into slaughter, back to

  bodies on the barbed-wire

  – the larder of the butcher-bird –

  back to taking that house in Villons,

  grappling with the German.

  Feeling the panic

  triggering at the other’s neck, the pump

  of the rounds going into him,

  underneath you – the jolts – and he was reaching

  in between you for your Browning

  and you could smell his skin burning on it,

  they get so hot, the barrels.

  Till you emptied the magazine;

  pulled away wet, and spent.

  That dream of the mess hall, cavernous in shadow,

  full of all the fallen,

  line after line of the regiment’s dead, who raise their eyes to you,

  the living betrayer, then lower their heads.

  1953

  Looking down through the night on the way to Los Angeles

  he heard this noise over his tinnitus,

  over the plane’s engines: a screaming.

  The stewardess was standing over him – frightened,

  it looked like.

  Someone in his seat was screaming.

  Seen from above,

  the city was a network of hot, red wires

  like a grill;

  a geometry of grid and parallel lines

  all the way to a vanishing point.

  The headlights on the freeway

  a lava thread through the Hollywood hills.

  ‘She’s a real beauty, ain’t she?’ The guy across from him had said,

  nodding at the view. They’d passed over downtown –

  City Hall, like a white crucifix

  up-ended in the ground –

  but there was a giant tangle of freeway

  knotted up north of there, lit up like Christmas,

  and that’s what he meant. ‘The Four Level Interchange.

  Makes you proud to be an American.’

  ‘You live downtown?’

  ‘Hell, no. Me and my family, we got a nice place in Orange County:

  Yorba Linda, home of Richard Nixon. Decent white town.’

  *

  It was like watching a ciné-film from the future:

  things familiar but wrong.

  He noticed the yellow smog, thin and bitter; desert grit in the air.

  Going up the 3rd Street steps the palms were even blacker

  from the traffic going through the tunnel,

  the paintwork on the windows of the Belmont

  more cracked than ever.

  The Sunshine a little shabbier: older, just like him,

  but pretty much the same.

  The desk-clerk didn’t recognize him at first,

  then grinned: ‘You want your old room back? It’s just come free.

  Pretty much most of them are free, now I think of it.’

  He took a walk up the Hill, dropped some shoes off at Varney’s

  to get re-heeled, some shirts next door at Mr Yee’s.

  Got a haircut at the barbers next to the pharmacy.

  ‘Shave, mister?’

  ‘Yeah, why not.’

  ‘You got it!’

  Bing Crosby on the radio.

  *

  The Press the next morning, and it hadn’t changed: the clatter

  of Teletype and typewriters, the calls of ‘Copy!’

  He was due to see Overholt first thing, in his office.

  ‘I like what you’ve done, Walker. Interesting stuff.

  I want you to bring yourself up to date with how it is here,

  on the street, then we’ll run the whole story over a couple weeks.’

  He looked up from his sheaf of papers:

  ‘Oh, by the way, I promoted Pike.

  He’s joining you on the City Desk.’

  He caught up with Sherwood and Rennert in their bar on 2nd,

  and the end of one of Rennert’s speeches:

  ‘I mean . . . dinner, a bottle, a bed an’ a girl – that too much to ask?’

  blowing a long stream of smoke at the ceiling.

  ‘Ah, Mr Walker! Back from the boondocks! Welcome.’

  ‘Thanks. So, what’s the dope?’

  ‘Well, the bad news is that we’ve gotten real busy.

  There’re a lot more people in this city and a lot more getting killed.

  When you were here – ’50, ’51 – it was mostly strong-arm stuff,

  muscle jobs, knives occasionally. Right? Now it’s shooters.

  The Mob’s into everything, including the cops.’

  ‘And the good news?’

  ‘There ain’t any. Except Overholt’s still got all his buttons.’

  ‘And Pike?’

  ‘
He’s got his eyes open.’

  ‘For buttons?’

  ‘Lighten up, Walker. Have a smoke.’ Sherwood dug in his pocket,

  threw a pack of Kents across the table. ‘They’re new. Filtered.’

  ‘No thanks,’ he said, ‘I’ll stick to what I know.’

  *

  He went looking for Billy every evening, five nights straight;

  found him on the Friday, in Craby Joe’s of all places,

  the whole room getting a load on, heeling and toeing:

  fat guys cupping peanuts into their mouths, cheering home runs,

  pointing at the television with their bottles of Schlitz.

  He pushed through to him, and there was a woman

  hanging on his arm, swaying.

  Her ragged smile, like her slip was showing,

  made him look away.

  ‘Hey, Canada!’

  ‘Hello, Billy. How you doing?’

  ‘Good, good. This is Ruby.’

  ‘It’s Pearl,’ she said bluntly.

  ‘We gotta go, Pearl – sorry. Business.’

  They went out the back, down Center Place, the alley,

  now called Harlem Place, apparently, down 6th to Main,

  and he was juiced-up and jumpy, wanting to try everywhere.

  They checked in at the Gayety, where he knew the doorman –

  sat next to a weedy guy watching the burlesque girls: rapt,

  biting on a napkin for comfort

  – then left, after ten minutes, for some new Mexican bar.

  Walking between 5th and 3rd, the Muse had closed,

  the Follies and the Jade were still there, but the Regal was gone;

  just a gap in the street like a tooth had been pulled.

  ‘So, you see how it’s changing?’

  ‘I saw that freeway stack coming in on the plane. They finally did it.’

  ‘No one to stop them. That’s almost the end of public transport;

  now they’re killing public housing. You hear about that?’

  ‘Police Chief Parker?’

  ‘Yeah. Anything Senator McCarthy can do . . .

  So Parker fingers the Housing Authority as a bunch of Commies,

  public housing as “creeping socialism”, and now – wait for it –

  community development is shelved for corporate development.

  Much more important.

  And, courtesy of Mr Chandler’s Los Angeles Times,

  he’s got a Republican mayor on his side, Norris Poulson,

  and they’re going after Chavez Ravine.’

  ‘How do you mean? That’s allocated for housing, eh?’

  ‘At the moment. But they’ve cleared it – most of it –

  all those Mexican farmers, growing their own food on that land

  the last hundred years. Once it’s cleared, that’s it.

  The CRA can do anything.

  We’re only doing our jobs, they keep saying.

  Seems like lying’s just part of that job.’

  He stopped, and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘More drink, my friend. I’m getting thirsty!’

  They talked about San Francisco, about Skid Row, there and here,

  then from nowhere he said: ‘You had a girl back home,

  in Nova Scotia. You gonna see her again?’

  Walker took a long pull on his bottle,

  tapped out another cigarette, lit it,

  drew in deeply; blew. ‘I can’t, Billy.

  The island. My family. Annie. It’s all gone now.’

  He stared hard at the floor.

  ‘I can’t let her see me. What I’ve become.’

  *

  He’d stumbled out of there, blurred from drink

  like an accidental photograph,

  through the fog pinked by the neon lights,

  bumping his way

  against walls and doors up 3rd

  to Angels Flight, still open.

  He put a penny down, carefully, on the metal tray

  and the ticket-man looked at him:

  ‘Don’t you know, son? It’s a nickel now.’

  *

  As he lay in bed, he saw that

  trying to forget was the same as trying to remember.

  A lifetime’s work, and damn near impossible.

  He pulled out a smoke,

  swallowed what was left in the heel of a bottle.

  In Cape Breton there was just the past.

  Here in California, they’re only thinking about the future –

  the past is being torn down every day,

  so there’s no past here to remember.

  He stubbed out his cigarette, lay back down in the dark.

  *

  He wakes to the chatter of a bluejay,

  the squeaking cables of the rail-cars, sunlight

  levering in through the blinds.

  The crack in the wall becomes a lizard.

  The corpse in the chair resolves itself

  into a pile of clothes and a hat.

  The spider comes out of the cornice:

  turns the fly round and round,

  swathes and wraps it

  till it looks like a gray bottle,

  then drinks it down.

  In the bathroom he sees the corpse, now standing,

  puts his hand under the running faucet

  and recoils,

  not knowing if the burn is freeze or scald.

  *

  He followed the old folk down the steps to town, stopping

  as they stop: to catch their breath, pause and check their pockets,

  blow their noses, exchange a greeting; men elaborately

  raising their hats to the ladies, wishing them ‘Good day’.

  He stood with them on the corner, by the liquor store,

  unsure when to cross, then

  stepping off the curb just as the lights change, and the cars

  jump forward and stop with a lurch, horns going,

  and they all clamber back up, feeling for the lamppost,

  holding on to the stop-sign.

  He stands looking into the window of the Giant Penny store

  on Hill Street, the five-and-dimes, the army-navy stores,

  and all around him are pensioners shuffling past, drawn down

  by the heat of the sun out of their apartments up on the Hill.

  He walks on, south, thinking he might go to the square,

  or the library, or a café – Clifton’s or Schaber’s –

  that the air’s doing him good,

  just the moving about, getting the blood going somewhere.

  Pershing Square was a building site, stripped clean.

  ‘Hey, Pop – what gives? Where’re all the trees?’

  ‘Dug ’em all up to make way for underground parking.

  It’s the new thing. Seems pretty cock-eyed to me.

  Shipped all them palms and bamboos to Disneyland, they say,

  for the Jungle Cruise ride, whatever that is.

  No place to sit out now – read the papers, meet neighbors, talk.

  No place for us older folk. Just to take a walk down here,

  watch things going on . . . Just to sit, you know?’

  On the corner of 5th and Broad, there was a guy shouting,

  eyes white in his head, hands waving, spittle flying,

  something about trumpets, the house of the Lord:

  ‘. . . You have transgressed my covenant, trespassed against my law.

  You have set up kings, but not by me. From your silver and gold

  your workmen made idols, but this is not God.

  The
calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces.

  For you have sown the wind. You have SOWN THE WIND . . .’

  *

  I catch my reflection one night in a Packard’s front wing, under the spike of a streetlight. See a dead man; crosses for eyes.

  The tick tack of footsteps down a side-street, disappearing.

  November, 53

  *

  Pike, the pistol, never far away, and never still, as if

  he had to keep moving

  or the blood might not reach the end of those long extremities.

  He was there at the water-cooler, dropping names,

  talking over people, pushing into the frame,

  waiting for the moment to smile.

  In his state of self-enchantment, he’d had a button printed:

  I’M A REPORTER AT THE PRESS.

  There he was again,

  clicking his ballpoint pen down the corridors,

  checking himself in the glass of every door.

  He was stalking like a stray dog

  hungry through the city streets, restless, learning the short cuts,

  eating anything.

  One of us, now, but still rising, unsatisfied, insolent

  to all but the boss – for the time being at least:

  poor old Overholt, who thinks

  this is the son he never had,

  the smart young reporter he once was

  – all those years ago –

  thinks this is the future.

  Pike gazes at Overholt,

  attentively; examining

  the slowing pulse at the old man’s throat.

  Walker didn’t know why he started to follow Pike that day,

  but he did.

  *

  There was a chill in the fog

  that smoked round the lights of the downtown stores

  bright with their tinsel and trees,

  the signs in the market for TURKEYS 39¢,

  the day-old-bread counter busy with pensioners

  testing each loaf or inspecting their change.

  Pike pushed past them,

  clicking his fingers impatiently – snap, snap, snap –

  then lifting an apple from the top of a pile

  and striding off, biting four chunks from it

  then throwing it away.

  He watched him check the vending-machines and phone-slots

  for nickels or dimes, like that’s his job, that he’s in charge of that,

  squinting at Korean 10-hwan coins

  and dropping them noisily in the tips tray at the sandwich bar,

  palming two quarters in return –

  which he used to buy Playboy magazine, the first issue,