Tallymen, switchmen, brakemen or clerks, it never took the Irish long to get acquainted with each other in the freight yards. A new arrival, American-born or imported, was right away switched onto track No. 1—to use a yard expression. In my case the switching was done by a tallyman with a flat nose and a tin ear who had stayed ten rounds with Battling Nelson when the lightweight champ was doing one-night-stand stuff in the west and middle west. His name was Eddie Mahoney when I knew him. He had been obliged to change it a few times, he said, on account of women. It seemed he had got married before he was divorced from his first wife, and the second was still married to someone else. On the docks he was known as Buffalo Bill, or just plain Buffalo. He was very quiet spoken and minded his own business. A blow on the Adam's apple had affected his vocal cords, so that his voice sounded like a hoarse whisper. We got to be good friends, and a few times I went with him to a gymnasium off Grand Avenue around four in the afternoon before going to the yards. After warming up with the rope and bag we would box a couple of rounds, and he taught me plenty. No matter how fast I threw them at him the part of him they were meant for was never there when they landed. He took lefts to the jaw turning his head just enough to break their force. He slipped inside swings, or took them on the back of his glove. He boxed wide open, weaving slightly, head forward, guard low. I never saw a boxer operate with less apparent effort....
He was helping me up after I had stopped a right hook with my ear.
"This night messenger job don't get you nowhere," he was saying. "The last guy held it down had a long beard on him by the time they pensioned him off."
After a minute's sparring, the same blow put me on the floor again.
"Take your time," he said when I tried to get up. "Step inside them hooks... What you want to do, is get out in the yards, checking freight....No, stay where you are. Shake your head a couple times. Take a deep breath... The yards is where the dough is now—with freight heavy and all the overtime....Okay, get up now."
I caught him with a left hook to the liver, but the right he snapped over took me off balance and I went down for the third time.
"You get G.B. to switch you over to the freighthouse B. on one of them night clerk shifts. B's where they pick most of the checkers from and the boss is a Harp. A coupla months in B. and you'll be a cinch for checking."
Without getting up I started untying my gloves with my teeth. He pulled them off and I began to unbandage my hands. I said I would sound out G.B. But I was thinking of the nightly trips to the Red Building and the girl at number 7. B. was way over on the other side of the yards.
This night the boat was in dock ahead of time. By twelve-thirty I was on the steps of number 7. Though I had known the girl going on two weeks I could not have told you her name. But I was thinking about her all the time. I had fallen for her the first moment I set eyes on her.
She was answering my question:
"Daisy."
"Daisy...Daisy what?"
"Daisy. What more do you want?" she said, and pulled my hair.
I let it go at that. She began to laugh.
"You're not a bit curious, are you?" she said.
"If I am, I'm not letting on," I said.
"You're a wise boy at that," she said, laughing.
Then I thought I had better get what I had on my mind off it, and said:
"I'll have to get back to the office pretty soon, and there's something I want to tell you first. You're liable to be in bed by the time I come back with the waybills from the two-thirty boat."
She turned and looked at me with her lips parted a little, and it seemed to me she understood what I was going to say.
"It's pretty hard to explain in a hurry like this, but what can I do?" I began, watching her closely.
Her eyes were fixed on the ground and she did not raise them and did not speak.
"I'm not making much now," I said. "But I've a pal who's pulling down around nineteen per with overtime, and that's a lot of dough—he's a tallyman....In a couple of months I'll be checking freight myself."
"And then...?" she said.
For a while I could not say it, and before I did I had her in my arms and was kissing her lips. And then I said it:
"We'll get married."
And when I had said it I felt her body stiffen and her fingers gripping my arms....And then she let go of me and pulled away. She took one of my hands and held it and I felt something hot fall on my wrist and I looked up at her and she was crying. And she said:
"I could love you...terribly. But it's too late now."
And I took hold of her again.
"Too late?" I said. "What do you mean too late? It's never too late."
But she pushed me back and said, looking away from me:
"We don't even know each other....No, no. You wouldn't be getting a break. It wouldn't be fair to yourself or to me."
She got up suddenly and backed into the hallway. I followed her and took hold of her again.
"Listen to me," I said.
She tried to put her hand over my mouth.
"You're going to marry me," I said.
"No—no—don't talk like that!" she said.
I let go of her.
"If I don't mean anything to you," I said, "if you don't think you could love me—"
"Oh, but I do!" she said. "That's why I can't! You're so young you don't understand."
And she threw her arms around me and kissed me on the lips.
"Why do you want to marry me?" she whispered.
"What else can we do?" I said.
"I'm here, so are you. Isn't that enough?"
And she took my face in her hands and kept on talking, more to herself than to me: "A baby...my baby...and I love you."
"Then you'll marry me," I said. Promise me. Think what we could do on eighteen dollars a week! And then, I've a diploma from the International Correspondence Schools. I can write ads in my spare time, and we will get a little room near the docks and do our own cooking and—"
"Dear boy, you don't know how I want to say yes. You don't know how I've always longed for a man...one man, that I could call my own, that I could love...."
She paused and then went on:
"And help him make a home for me—for us both...while I'm still young."
She broke off again, pulling her sweater closer around her, leaning back against the doorpost.
"I 've always wanted—"
"Then what's wrong with—"
She held up her hand and came close to me again.
"You're such a boy. You understand so little about life... so little...about me....You must give me time to think."
She stepped back, but held onto one of my hands. Two men were coming toward us from across the street. Under the light of the lamp they paused a few seconds, then one of them walked away. I thought I recognized him. He wore a derby hat and had no shirt collar: the yardmaster at the freight terminal. But I was not sure. The other looked up at Daisy and she glanced at me as though she was waiting for me to say something, but I did not. Then she nodded and smiled to the man. As he came up the steps it seemed to me her eyes were asking me not to go...but I was late already.
"You can't stay?" she whispered, and kissed me.
I shook my head.
"Not now," I said.
She smiled at me and followed the man into the house.
When I passed number 7 at two-fortyfive there were no lights in the window.
Since I had left Daisy I had been tortured by fits of jealousy. More than once, as I copied the waybills furiously, I broke the lead in my pencil. I was muttering to myself all the time, forgetting I was not alone. Hogan, the chief clerk, would pause, snap up the garters on his shirt sleeves, push back his derby and look at me. Then he would shoot a jet of brown juice across the room at the cuspidor, and shift the wad of tobacco to the other side of his face.
"Talking in your sleep, eh?"
The next night, when I came by after the second boat had docked, Daisy was on the steps. I did not care whether I was late or not. I was sullen and sore at her and at myself, not clearly knowing why. I sat down beside her without greeting her. When she tried to take my hand I pulled it away. She made no attempt to take it again. At last I could stand it no longer and grabbed her by the wrists.
"Who was the man who came before I went back to the office last night?"
She shook her head. "He didn't tell me his name," she said.
I let go of her hands and pushed them aside. She took me by the shoulders, looking straight at me. Her eyes were wide open, truthful:
"Honest to God, he didn't tell me his name!"
When she said that, I knew she was speaking the truth, and at the same instant another truth came to me, making me feel sick. A truth I had already had subconscious flashes of, but had been blind to, willing to believe that what my senses did not want to perceive, did not exist: that she was no different from the girls on the other side of the street.
And then in the sudden look that came to her eyes I saw that she had seen in my own that I had never understood—might never have understood, if she had not said these words.
I got to my feet somehow and picked up the bundle of waybills. I did not dare look at her again.
She was holding one of my hands against her cheek...I pulled it away without turning my head....As I walked toward the Red Building the vision of her face was blurred. But, clear and distinct, I saw two men with derby hats, one without a shirt collar, standing under the streetlamp in front of No. 7....He didn't tell me his name...Daisy... Daisy....
In two nights I had passed number 7 eight times without turning my head. The third night I slowed up as I came to the door. Another girl was on the steps.
"Where's Daisy?" I said.
The girl looked at me with a funny expression. She was chewing gum. She did not answer at once.
"Where's Daisy?" I said again.
"Not here," she said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"What I said. Ain't that funny?"
"She left no word?" I said.
The girl shook her head.
"Beat it to Atlantic City with a drummer two days ago."
I stood there staring at her. She glanced back toward the hallway.
"But I'm here, bo...if there's any little thing I can do for you, just say the word."
She spit out the gum and started to get up.
"No," I said, "you can't do a goddamn thing," and started away.
"Balls to you," she said sticking another piece in her mouth.