The Camera Eye (1)
when you walk along the street you have to step carefully always on the cobbles so as not to step on the bright anxious grassblades     easier if you hold Motherâs hand and hang on it that way you can kick up your toes but walking fast you have to tread on too many grassblades the poor hurt green tongues shrink under your feet     maybe thats why those people are so angry and follow us shaking their fists     theyâre throwing stones grownup people throwing stones     Sheâs walking fast and weâre running her pointed toes sticking out sharp among the poor trodden grassblades under the shaking folds of the brown cloth dress     Englander     a pebble tinkles along the cobbles
Quick darling quick in the postcard shop its quiet the angry people are outside and cant come in     non nein nicht englander amerikanisch americain     Hoch Amerika Vive lâAmerique She laughs My dear they had me right frightened
war on the veldt Kruger Bloemfontein Ladysmith and Queen Victoria an old lady in a pointed lace cap sent chocolate to the soldiers at Christmas
under the counter itâs dark and the lady the nice Dutch lady who loves Americans and has relations in Trenton shows you postcards that shine in the dark pretty hotels and palaces     O que câest beau schon prittie prittie     and the moonlight ripple ripple under a bridge and the little reverbères are alight in the dark under the counter and the little windows of hotels around the harbor O que câest beau la lune
and the big moon
Mac
When the wind set from the silver factories across the river the air of the gray fourfamily frame house where Fainy McCreary was born was choking all day with the smell of whaleoil soap. Other days it smelt of cabbage and babies and Mrs. McCrearyâs washboilers. Fainy could never play at home because Pop, a lame cavechested man with a wispy blonde-gray mustache, was nightwatchman at the Chadwick Mills and slept all day. It was only round five oâclock that a curling whiff of tobacco smoke would seep through from the front room into the kitchen. That was a sign that Pop was up and in good spirits, and would soon be wanting his supper.
Then Fainy would be sent running out to one of two corners of the short muddy street of identical frame houses where they lived.
To the right it was half a block to Finleyâs where he would have to wait at the bar in a forest of mudsplattered trouserlegs until all the rank brawling mouths of grownups had been stopped with beers and whiskeys. Then he would walk home, making each step very carefully, with the handle of the pail of suds cutting into his hand.
To the left it was half a block to Maginnisâs Fancy Groceries, Home and Imported Products. Fainy liked the cardboard Cream of Wheat darkey in the window, the glass case with different kinds of salami in it, the barrels of potatoes and cabbages, the brown smell of sugar, sawdust, ginger, kippered herring, ham, vinegar, bread, pepper, lard.
âA loaf of bread, please, mister, a half pound of butter and a box of ginger snaps.â
Some evenings, when Mom felt poorly, Fainy had to go further; round the corner past Maginnisâs, down Riverside Avenue where the trolley ran, and across the red bridge over the little river that flowed black between icy undercut snowbanks in winter, yellow and spuming in the spring thaws, brown and oily in summer. Across the river all the way to the corner of Riverside and Main, where the drugstore was, lived Bohunks and Polaks. Their kids were always fighting with the kids of the Murphys and OâHaras and OâFlanagans who lived on Orchard Street.
Fainy would walk along with his knees quaking, the medicine bottle in its white paper tight in one mittened hand. At the corner of Quince was a group of boys heâd have to pass. Passing wasnât so bad; it was when he was about twenty yards from them that the first snowball would hum by his ear. There was no comeback. If he broke into a run, theyâd chase him. If he dropped the medicine bottle heâd be beaten up when he got home. A soft one would plunk on the back of his head and the snow began to trickle down his neck. When he was a half a block from the bridge heâd take a chance and run for it.
Â
âScared cat . . . Shanty Irish . . . Bowlegged Murphy . . . Running home to tell the copâ . . . would yell the Polak and Bohunk kids between snowballs. They made their snowballs hard by pouring water on them and leaving them to freeze overnight; if one of those hit him it drew blood.
The backyard was the only place you could really feel safe to play in. There were brokendown fences, dented garbage cans, old pots and pans too nearly sieves to mend, a vacant chickencoop that still had feathers and droppings on the floor, hogweed in summer, mud in winter; but the glory of the McCrearysâ backyard was Tony Harrimanâs rabbit hutch, where he kept Belgian hares. Tony Harriman was a consumptive and lived with his mother on the ground floor left. He wanted to raise all sorts of other small animals too, raccoons, otter, even silver fox, heâd get rich that way. The day he died nobody could find the key to the big padlock on the door of the rabbit hutch. Fainy fed the hares for several days by pushing in cabbage and lettuce leaves through the double thickness of chickenwire. Then came a week of sleet and rain when he didnât go out in the yard. The first fine day, when he went to look, one of the hares was dead. Fainy turned white; he tried to tell himself the hare was asleep, but it lay gawkily stiff, not asleep. The other hares were huddled in a corner looking about with twitching noses, their big ears flopping helpless over their backs. Poor hares; Fainy wanted to cry. He ran upstairs to his motherâs kitchen, ducked under the ironing board and got the hammer out of the drawer in the kitchen table. The first time he tried he mashed his finger, but the second time he managed to jump the padlock. Inside the cage there was a funny, sour smell. Fainy picked the dead hare up by its ears. Its soft white belly was beginning to puff up, one dead eye was scaringly open. Something suddenly got hold of Fainy and made him drop the hare in the nearest garbage can and run upstairs. Still cold and trembling, he tiptoed out onto the back porch and looked down. Breathlessly he watched the other hares. By cautious hops they were getting near the door of the hutch into the yard. One of them was out. It sat up on its hind legs, limp ears suddenly stiff. Mom called him to bring her a flatiron from the stove. When he got back to the porch the hares were all gone.
That winter there was a strike in the Chadwick Mills and Pop lost his job. He would sit all day in the front room smoking and cursing:
âAblebodied man by Jesus, if I couldnât lick any one of those damn Polaks with my crutch tied behind my back . . . I says so to Mr. Barry; I ainât goinâ to join no strike. Mr. Barry, a sensible quiet man, a bit of an invalid, with a wife anâ kiddies to think for. Eight years Iâve been watchman, anâ now you give me the sack to take on a bunch of thugs from a detective agency. The dirty pugnosed son of a bitch.â
âIf those damn lousy furreners hadnât a walked out,â somebody would answer soothingly.
The strike was not popular on Orchard Street. It meant that Mom had to work harder and harder, doing bigger and bigger boilersful of wash, and that Fainy and his older sister Milly had to help when they came home from school. And then one day Mom got sick and had to go back to bed instead of starting in on the ironing, and lay with her round white creased face whiter than the pillow and her watercreased hands in a knot under her chin. The doctor came and the district nurse, and all three rooms of the flat smelt of doctors and nurses and drugs, and the only place Fainy and Milly could find to sit was on the stairs. There they sat and cried quietly together. Then Momâs face on the pillow shrank into a little creased white thing like a rumpled up handkerchief and they said that she was dead and took her away.
The funeral was from the undertaking parlors on Riverside Avenue on the next block. Fainy felt very proud and important because everybody kissed him and patted his head and said he was behaving like a little man. He had a new black suit on, too, like a grownup suit with pockets and everything, except that it had short pants. There were all sorts of people at the undertaking parlors he had never been close to before, Mr. Russell, the butcher and Father OâDonnell and Uncle Tim OâHara whoâd come on from Chicago, and it smelt of whisky and beer like at Finleyâs. Uncle Tim was a skinny man with a knobbed red face and blurry blue eyes. He wore a loose black silk tie that worried Fainy, and kept leaning down suddenly, bending from the waist as if he was going to close up like a jackknife, and whispering in a thick voice in Fainyâs ear.
âDonât you mind âem, old sport, theyâre a bunch oâ bums and hypocrytes, stewed to the ears most of âem already. Look at Father OâDonnell the fat swine already figurinâ up the burial fees. But donât you mind âem remember youâre an OâHara on your motherâs side. I donât mind âem, old sport, and she was my own sister by birth and blood.â
When they got home he was terribly sleepy and his feet were cold and wet. Nobody paid any attention to him. He sat whimpering on the edge of the bed in the dark. In the front room there were voices and a sound of knives and forks, but he didnât dare go in there. He curled up against the wall and went to sleep. Light in his eyes woke him up. Uncle Tim and Pop were standing over him talking loud. They looked funny and didnât seem to be standing very steady. Uncle Tim held the lamp.
âWell, Fainy, old sport,â said Uncle Tim giving the lamp a perilous wave over Fainyâs head. âFenian OâHara McCreary, sit up and take notice and tell us what you think of our proposed removal to the great and growing city of Chicago. Middletownâs a terrible bitch of a dump if you ask me . . . Meaninâ no offense, John . . . But Chicago . . . Jesus God, man, when you get there youâll think youâve been dead and nailed up in a coffin all these years.â
Fainy was scared. He drew his knees up to his chin and looked tremblingly at the two big swaying figures of men lit by the swaying lamp. He tried to speak but the words dried up on his lips.
âThe kidâs asleep, Tim, for all your speechifyinâ. . . Take your clothes off, Fainy, and get into bed and get a good nightâs sleep. Weâre leavinâ in the morninâ.â
And late on a rainy morning, without any breakfast, with a big old swelltop trunk tied up with rope joggling perilously on the roof of the cab that Fainy had been sent to order from Hodgesonâs Livery Stable, they set out. Milly was crying. Pop didnât say a word but sucked on an unlit pipe. Uncle Tim handled everything, making little jokes all the time that nobody laughed at, pulling a roll of bills out of his pocket at every juncture, or taking great gurgling sips out of the flask he had in his pocket. Milly cried and cried. Fainy looked out with big dry eyes at the familiar streets, all suddenly odd and lopsided, that rolled past the cab; the red bridge, the scabshingled houses where the Polaks lived, Smithâs and Smithâs corner drugstore . . . there was Billy Hogan just coming out with a package of chewing gum in his hand. Playing hookey again. Fainy had an impulse to yell at him, but something froze it . . . Main with its elms and street cars, blocks of stores round the corner of Church, and then the fire department. Fainy looked for the last time into the dark cave where shone entrancingly the brass and copper curves of the engine, then past the cardboard fronts of the First Congregational Church, The Carmel Baptist Church, St. Andrewâs Episcopal Church built of brick and set catercornered on its lot instead of straight with a stern face to the street like the other churches, then the three castiron stags on the lawn in front of the Commercial House, and the residences, each with its lawn, each with its scrollsaw porch, each with its hydrangea bush. Then the houses got smaller, and the lawns disappeared; the cab trundled round past Simpsonâs Grain and Feed Warehouse, along a row of barbershops, saloons and lunchrooms, and they were all getting out at the station.
At the station lunchcounter Uncle Tim set everybody up to breakfast. He dried Millyâs tears and blew Fainyâs nose in a big new pockethandkerchief that still had the tag on the corner and set them to work on bacon and eggs and coffee. Fainy hadnât had coffee before, so the idea of sitting up like a man and drinking coffee made him feel pretty good. Milly didnât like hers, said it was bitter. They were left all alone in the lunchroom for some time with the empty plates and empty coffee cups under the beady eyes of a woman with the long neck and pointed face of a hen who looked at them disapprovingly from behind the counter. Then with an enormous, shattering rumble, sludgepuff sludge . . . puff, the train came into the station. They were scooped up and dragged across the platform and through a pipesmoky car and before they knew it the train was moving and the wintry russet Connecticut landscape was clattering by.
The Camera Eye (2)
we hurry wallowing like in a boat in the musty stably-smelling herdic cab     He kept saying What would you do Lucy if I were to invite one of them to my table? Theyâre very lovely people Lucy the colored people and He had cloves in a little silver box and a rye whisky smell on his breath hurrying to catch the cars to New York
and She was saying Oh dolly I hope we wont be late and Scott was waiting with the tickets and we had to run up the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and all the little cannons kept falling out of the Olympia and everybody stooped to pick them up and the conductor Allaboard lady quick lady
they were little brass cannons and were bright in the sun on the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and Scott hoisted us all up and the train was moving and the engine bell was ringing and Scott put in your hand a little handful of brass tiny cannons just big enough to hold the smallest size red firecracker at the battle of Manila Bay and said Hereâs the artillery Jack
and He was holding forth in the parlor car Why Lucy if it were necessary for the cause of humanity I would walk out and be shot any day you would Jack wouldnât you? wouldnât you porter? who was bringing appolinaris and He had a flask in the brown grip where the silk initialed handkerchiefs always smelt of bay rum
and when we got to Havre de Grace He said Remember Lucy we used to have to ferry across the Susquehanna before the bridge was built
and across Gunpowder Creek too
Mac
Russet hills, patches of woods, farmhouses, cows, a red colt kicking up its heels in a pasture, rail fences, streaks of marsh.
âWell, Tim, I feel like a whipped cur . . . So long as Iâve lived, Tim, Iâve tried to do the right thing,â Pop kept repeating in a rattling voice. âAnd now what can they be asayinâ about me?â
âJesus God, man, there was nothinâ else you could do, was there? What the devil can you do if you havenât any money and havenât any job and a lot oâ doctors and undertakers and landlords come round with their bills and you with two children to support?â
âBut Iâve been a quiet and respectable man, steady and misfortunate ever since I married and settled down. And now whatâll they be thinkinâ of me sneakinâ out like a whipped cur?â
âJohn, take it from me that Iâd be the last one to want to bring disrespect on the dead that was my own sister by birth and blood . . . But it ainât your fault and it ainât my fault . . . itâs the fault of poverty, and povertyâs the fault of the system . . . Fenian, you listen to Tim OâHara for a minute and Milly you listen too, cause a girl ought to know these things just as well as a man and for once in his life Tim OâHaraâs tellinâ the truth . . . Itâs the fault of the system that donât give a man the fruit of his labor . . . The only man that gets anything out of capitalism is a crook, anâ he gets to be a millionaire in short order . . . But an honest workinâ man like John or myself we can work a hundred years and not leave enough to bury us decent with.â
Smoke rolled white in front of the window shaking out of its folds trees and telegraph poles and little square shingle-roofed houses and towns and trolleycars, and long rows of buggies with steaming horses standing in line.
âAnd who gets the fruit of our labor, the goddam business men, agents, middlemen who never did a productive piece of work in their life.â
Fainyâs eyes are following the telegraph wires that sag and soar.
âNow, Chicago ainât no paradise, I can promise you that, John, but itâs a better market for a workinâ manâs muscle and brains at present than the East is . . . And why, did you ask me why . . . ? Supply and demand, they need workers in Chicago.â
âTim, I tellyer I feel like a whipped cur.â
âItâs the system, John, itâs the goddam lousy system.â
A great bustle in the car woke Fainy up. It was dark. Milly was crying again. He didnât know where he was.
âWell, gentlemen,â Uncle Tim was saying, âweâre about to arrive in little old New York.â
In the station it was light; that surprised Fainy, who thought it was already night. He and Milly were left a long time sitting on a suitcase in the waitingroom. The waitingroom was huge, full of unfamiliarlooking people, scary like people in picture-books. Milly kept crying.
âHey, Milly, Iâll biff you one if you donât stop crying.â
âWhy?â whined Milly, crying all the more.
Fainy stood as far away from her as possible so that people wouldnât think they were together. When he was about ready to cry himself Pop and Uncle Tim came and took them and the suitcase into the restaurant. A strong smell of fresh whisky came from their breaths, and they seemed very bright around the eyes. They all sat at a table with a white cloth and a sympathetic colored man in a white coat handed them a large card full of printing.
âLetâs eat a good supper,â said Uncle Tim, âi...