Two travelling salesmen have struck up a chance acquaintance in the smoking-room, entering immediately the vast confraternity of their trade, and in a moment they are laying out the continent as familiarly as if it were their own backyard. They tell about running into So-and-So in St. Paul last July, and ——
“Who do you suppose I met coming out of Brown’s Hotel in Denver just a week ago?”
“You don’t mean it! I haven’t seen old Joe in years!”
“And Jim Withers — they’ve transferred him to the Atlanta office!”
“Going to New Orleans?”
“No, I’ll make it this trip. I was there in May.”
With such talk as this one grows instantly familiar. One enters naturally into the lives of all these people, caught here for just a night and hurtled down together across the continent at sixty miles an hour, and one becomes a member of the whole huge family of the earth.
Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America — that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, that is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.
At the far end of the car a man stood up and started back down the aisle towards the washroom. He walked with a slight limp and leaned upon a cane, and with his free hand he held on to the backs of the seats to brace himself against the lurching of the train. As he came abreast of George, who sat there gazing out the window, the man stopped abruptly. A strong, good-natured voice, warm, easy, bantering, unafraid, unchanged — exactly as it was when it was fourteen years of age — broke like a flood of living light upon his consciousness:
“Well I’ll be dogged! Hi, there, Monkus! Where you goin’?”
At the sound of the old jesting nickname George looked up quickly. It was Nebraska Crane. The square, freckled, sunburned visage had the same humorous friendliness it had always had, and the tar-black Cherokee eyes looked out with the same straight, deadly fearlessness. The big brown paw came out and they clasped each other firmly. And, instantly, it was like coming home to a strong and friendly place. In another moment they were seated together, talking with the familiarity of people whom no gulf of years and distance could alter or separate.
George had seen Nebraska Crane only once in all the years since he himself had first left Libya Hill and gone away to college. But he had not lost sight of him. Nobody had lost sight of Nebraska Crane. That wiry, fearless little figure of the Cherokee boy who used to comedown the hill on Locust Street with the bat slung over his shoulder and the well-oiled fielder’s mitt protruding from his hip-pocket had been prophetic of a greater destiny, for Nebraska had become a professional baseball player, he had crashed into the big leagues, and his name had been emblazoned in the papers every day.
The newspapers had had a lot to do with his seeing Nebraska that other time. It was in August 1925, just after George had returned to New York from his first trip abroad. That very night, in fact, a little before midnight, as he was seated in a Childs Restaurant with smoking wheatcakes, coffee, and an ink-fresh copy of next morning’s Herald–Tribune before him, the headline jumped out at him: “Crane Slams Another Homer”. He read the account of the game eagerly, and felt a strong desire to see Nebraska again and to get back in his blood once more the honest tang of America. Acting on a sudden impulse, he decided to call him up. Sure enough, his name was in the book, with an address way up in the Bronx. He gave the number and waited. A man’s voice answered the phone, but at first he didn’t recognise it.
“Hello! . . . Hello! . . . Is Mr. Crane there? . . . Is that you, Bras?”
“Hello.” Nebraska’s voice was hesitant, slow, a little hostile, touched with the caution and suspicion of mountain people when speaking to a stranger. “Who is that? . . . Who? . . . Is that you, Monk?”— suddenly and quickly, as he recognised who it was. “Well I’ll be dogged!” he cried. His tone was delighted, astounded, warm with friendly greeting now, and had the somewhat high and faintly howling quality that mountain people’s voices often have when they are talking to someone over the telephone: the tone was full, sonorous, countrified, and a little puzzled, as if he were yelling to someone on an adjoining mountain peak on a gusty day in autumn when the wind was thrashing through the trees. “Where’d you come from? How the hell are you, boy?” he yelled before George could answer. “Where you been all this time, anyway?”
“I’ve been in Europe. I just got back this morning.”
“Well I’ll be dogged!”— still astounded, delighted, full of howling friendliness. “When am I gonna see you? How about comin’ to the game tomorrow? I’ll fix you up. And say,” he went on rapidly, “if you can stick aroun’ after the game, I’ll take you home to meet the wife and kid. How about it?”
So it was agreed. George went to the game and saw Nebraska knock another home run, but he remembered best what happened afterwards. When the player had had his shower and had dressed, the two friends left the ball park, and as they went out a crowd of young boys who had been waiting at the gate rushed upon them. They were those dark-faced, dark-eyed, dark-haired little urchins who spring up like dragon seed from the grim pavements of New York, but in whose tough little faces and raucous voices there still remains, curiously, the innocence and faith of children everywhere.
“It’s Bras!” the children cried. “Hi, Bras! Hey, Bras!” In a moment they were pressing round him in a swarming horde, deafening the ears with their shrill cries, begging, shouting, tugging at his sleeves, doing everything they could to attract his attention, holding dirty little scraps of paper towards him, stubs of pencils, battered little note-books, asking him to sign his autograph.
He behaved with the spontaneous warmth and kindliness of his character. He scrawled his name out rapidly on a dozen grimy bits of paper, skilfully working his way along through the yelling, pushing, jumping group, and all the time keeping up a rapid fire of banter, badinage, and good-natured reproof:
“All right — give it here, then! . . . Why don’t you fellahs pick on somebody else once in a while? . . . Say, boy!” he said suddenly, turning to look down at one unfortunate child, and pointing an accusing finger at him —“What you doin’ aroun’ here again, today? I signed my name fer you at least a dozen times!”
“No sir, Misteh Crane!” the urchin earnestly replied. “Honest — not me!”
“Ain’t that right?” Nebraska said, appealing to the other children. “Don’t this boy keep comin’ back here every day?”
They grinned, delighted at the chagrin of their fellow petitioner. “Dat’s right, Misteh Crane! Dat guy’s got a whole book wit’ nuttin’ but yoeh name in it!”
“Ah-h!” the victim cried, and turned upon his betrayers bitterly. “What youse guys tryin’ to do — get wise or somep’n? Honest, Misteh Crane!”— he looked up earnestly again at Nebraska —“Don’t believe ’em! I jest want yoeh ottygraph! Please, Misteh Crane, it’ll only take a minute!”
For a moment more Nebraska stood looking down at the child with an expression of mock sternness; at last he took the outstretched note-book, rapidly scratched his name across a page, and handed it back. And as he did so, he put his big paw on the urchin’s head and gave it a clumsy pat; then, gently and playfully, he shoved it from him, and walked off down the street.
The apartment where Nebraska lived was like a hundred thousand others in the Bronx. The ugly yellow brick building had a false front, with meaningless little turrets at the corners of the roof, and a general air of spurious luxury about it.