stomach can get used to it—”
She stopped and looked at him curiously. “You know?” she asked.
“Yes, I know. I wasn’t always top of the bill.”
Hearing this she suddenly smiled a sunny smile at him, admitting him thus to co-membership in the fraternity of hunger.
During the meat course she stopped savouring the food for a moment to enquire with a forthrightness that was characteristic of her, “When you spoke to me, did you want a girl tonight?”
“Yes,” replied Williams. But it was simply an answer to her question, and he pursued the subject no further. He asked her about herself and she told him a little of the struggle to find and keep a job. He confided that he did the music halls only over the winter. In the summer he was with the circus. His engagement on that particular bill was terminating that night. He bought her a slab of apple tart and two cups of coffee, and then paid the bill. He said to Rose, “You got no place to go tonight, have you?”
“No.”
“Would you like to come home with me?”
“Home?” She was not questioning the nature of his invitation but expressing surprise at his use of the word, whose implications always had such a forceful and saddening effect upon her. How would a variety performer and circus clown playing a week’s stand in a mill town have a home there?
He said, with a kind of half smile, “Supposing we go and have a look at it and then you can decide?”
He collected his overcoat and bird and she followed him out of the door, her curiosity fully aroused and her confidence established. He walked around the corner of the cafe to the parking lot where over to one side, illuminated by the lights from the filling station, stood a van. From its roof extruded a funny crooked chimney, and windows had been cut into its sides. Painted upon it was the face of the clown, the one she had seen on the posters, and in golden strangely shaped letters the words JACKDAW WILLIAMS .
Williams opened the rear door of the van, pulled down a short ladder, climbed up inside, and snapped on an electric light.
Rose looked within. There was an unmade bunk with dirty, crumpled blankets and a home-made sink with dirty dishes in it. Cigarette butts and ashes were about and remnants of food. None of these things shocked or appalled her, for she was used to them. But it was compact, tight, and cosy. The man had called it home.
Williams made no apology for its condition. He did not even bother to straighten out his bunk. On the opposite side was a long locker which he opened, and she saw costumes and gear inside. From it he withdrew another blanket and a soiled pillow which he threw onto the locker, and said, “You can sleep here, if you want to.” He reached down for the suitcase. Rose handed it to him and followed. He pulled the ladder up after her and closed the door, turning the handle from inside, locking it. He was home.
Some time during the night Rose awoke. She heard the man in the bunk opposite stir.
Williams said, “Rose? Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“I’m cold. Come over here into my bed.”
“Must I?”
“No, you mustn’t. Suit yourself.”
Rose said, “Earlier on when you spoke to me you said you wanted a girl. I told you I wasn’t selling it.”
In the darkness Williams laughed. “I’ll get along,” he said. “I didn’t ask you in for that.” Then he added, “It’s just that I was cold—and lonely.”
The word “lonely” twanged like an arrow and quivered in Rose’s heart. Funny kind of man who lived alone in a wagon with a bird and who understood about hunger and hardship. “I’m cold too,” said Rose.
“Then come over here to me. I’ll warm you.”
“All right,” said Rose. She went over and got into his bed. At first he only held her close, warming her. Later he made use of her. It didn’t seem to matter.
In the morning he made them breakfast out of a dirty coffee pot and greasy frying pan, and they ate it together.
He said,
William K. Klingaman, Nicholas P. Klingaman
John McEnroe;James Kaplan