But his tone had altered. He spoke now in jerky phrases punctuated with the most blasphemous oaths and accompanied by grimaces which were frightening to behold. The demon in him seemed to be coming out. Or rather, the mutilated being who had been wounded and humiliated beyond all human endurance.
“Mister Roosevelt!” he said, his voice full of scorn and contempt. “I was just listening to him over the radio. Getting us in shape to fight England’s battles again, what? Conscription. Not this bird!” and he jerked his thumb backwards viciously. “Decorated three times on the field of battle.
The Argonne . . . Chateau Thierry . . . the Somme . . . concussion of the brain . . . fourteen months in the hospital outside Paris . . . ten months on this side of the water. Making murderers of us and then begging us to settle down quietly and go to work again. . . . Wait a minute, I want to read you a poem I wrote about our Fuehrer the other night.”
He fished among the papers lying about on the table. He got up to get himself another cup of coffee and as he stood with cup in hand, sipping it, he began to read aloud this vituperative, scabrous poem about the President. Surely now, I thought, somebody will take umbrage and start a fight.
I looked at Rattner who believes in Roosevelt, who had travelled 1200 miles to vote for him at the last election. Rattner was silent. He probably thought it useless to remonstrate with a man who had obviously been shell shocked.
Still, I couldn’t help thinking, the situation was a little unusual, to say the least. A phrase I had heard in Georgia came back to my head. It was from the lips of a woman who had just been to see “Lincoln in Illinois.” “What are they trying to do—make a he-ro of that man Lincoln?”
Yes, something distinctly pre-Civil War about the atmosphere. A president re-elected to office by a great popular vote and yet his name was anathema to millions. Another Woodrow Wilson perchance? Our friend wouldn’t even accord him that ranking.
He had sat down again and in a fairly moderate tone of voice he began making sport of the politicians, the members of the judiciary, the generals and admirals, the quartermaster generals, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Y. M. C. A. A withering play of mockery and cynicism, larded with personal experiences, grotesque encounters, buffoonish pranks which only a battle-scarred veteran would have the audacity to relate.
“And so,” he exploded, “they wanted to parade me like a monkey, with my uniform and medals. They had the brass band out and the mayor all set to give us a glorious welcome. The town is yours, boys, and all that hokum. Our heroes! God, it makes me vomit to think of it. I ripped the medals off my uniform and threw them away. I burned the damned uniform in the fireplace.
Then I got myself a quart of rye and I locked myself in my room. I drank and wept, all by myself. Outside the band was playing and people cheering hysterically. I was all black inside. Everything I had believed in was gone.
All my illusions were shattered. They broke my heart, that’s what they did. They didn’t leave me a goddamned crumb of solace. Except the booze, of course. Sure, they tried to take that away from me too, at first. They tried to shame me into giving it up.
Shame me, huh! Me who had killed hundreds of men with the bayonet, who lived like an animal and lost all sense of human decency. They can’t do anything to shame me, or frighten me, or fool me, or bribe me, or trick me. I know them inside out, the dirty bastards. They’ve starved me and beaten me and put me behind the bars.
That stuff doesn’t frighten me. I can put up with hunger, cold, thirst, lice, vermin, disease, blows, insults, degradation, fraud, theft, libel, slander, betrayal . . . I’ve been through the whole works . . . they’ve tried everything on me . . . and still they can’t crush me, can’t stop my mouth, can’t make me say it’s right. I don’t want anything to do with these honest, Godfearing people. They sicken me. I’d rather live with animals—or cannibals.”
He found a piece of sheet music among his papers and documents. “There’s a song I wrote three years ago. It’s sentimental but it won’t do anyone any harm. I can only write music when I’m drunk. The alcohol blots out the pain. I’ve still got a heart, a big one, too.
My world is a world of memories. Do you remember this one?” He began to hum a familiar melody. “You wrote that?” I said, taken by surprise. “Yes, I wrote that—and I wrote others too”—and he began to reel off the titles of his songs.
I was just beginning to wonder about the truth of all these statements—lawyer, doctor, legislator, scrivener, song writer—when he began to talk about his inventions. He had made three fortunes, it seems, before he fell into complete disgrace.
It was getting pretty thick even for me, and I’m a credulous individual, when presently a chance remark he made about a friend of his, a famous architect in the Middle West, drew a surprising response from Rattner.
“He was my buddy in the army,” said Rattner quietly. “Well,” said our friend, “he married my sister.” With this there began a lively exchange of reminiscences between the two of them, leaving not the slightest doubt in my mind that our friend was telling the truth, at least so far as the architect was concerned.
From the architect to the construction of a great house in the center of Texas somewhere was but a step. With the last fortune he made he had bought himself a ranch, married and built himself a fantastic chateau in the middle of nowhere.
The drinking was gradually tailing off. He was deeply in love with his wife and looking forward to raising a family. Well, to make a long story short, a friend of his persuaded him to go to Alaska with him on a mining speculation.
He left his wife behind because he feared the climate would be too rigorous for her. He was away about a year. When he returned—he had come back without warning, thinking to surprise her—he found her in bed with his best friend.
With a whip he drove the two of them out of the house in the dead of night, in a blinding snowstorm, not even giving them a chance to put their clothes on. Then he got the bottle out, of course, and after he had had a few shots he began to smash things up.
But the house was so damned big that he soon grew tired of that sport. There was only one way to make a good job of it and that was to put a match to the works, which he did. Then he got in his car and drove off, not bothering to even pack a valise. A few days later, in a distant State, he picked up the newspaper and learned that his friend had been found dead of exposure.
Nothing was said about the wife. In fact, he never learned what happened to her from that day since. Shortly after this incident he got in a brawl with a man at a bar and cracked his skull open with a broken bottle.
That meant a stretch at hard labor for eighteen months, during which time he made a study of prison conditions and proposed certain reforms to the Governor of the State which were accepted and put into practice.
“I was very popular,” he said. “I have a good voice and I can entertain a bit. I kept them in good spirits while I was there. Later I did another stretch. It doesn’t bother me at all. I can adjust myself to most any conditions.
Usually there’s a piano and a billiard table and books—and if you can’t get anything to drink you can always get yourself a little dope. I switch back and forth. What’s the difference? All a man wants is to forget the present. . . .”
“Yes, but can you ever really forget?” Rattner interjected.
“I can! You just give me a piano, a quart of rye and a sociable little joint and I can be just as happy as a man wants to be. You see, I don’t need all the paraphernalia you fellows require.
All I carry with me is a toothbrush. If I want a shave I buy one; if I want to change my linen I get new linen; when I’m hungry I eat; when I’m tired I sleep. It doesn’t make much difference to me whether I sleep in a bed or on the ground.
If I want to write a story I go to a newspaper office and borrow a machine. If I want to go to Boston all I have to do is show my pass. Any place is home sweet home so long as I can find a place to drink and meet a friendly fellow like myself. I don’t pay taxes and I don’t pay rent.
I have no boss, no responsibilities. I don’t vote and I don’t care who’s President or Vice-President. I don’t want to make money and I don’t look for fame
