Snipe Hunting
I
IT was four o’clock in the morning and pitch-dark when I awoke. I had dreamt that I slept — for once undressed — in an enormous bed stocked to capacity with comforters, eider-down pillows, satin sheets, and such fairyland trappings. In reality I was quivering from cold and I had lost all sense of feeling in the back part of my head (I had used my shoes as a pillow); but I still managed to hold on for a few unbelievably precious moments to the slender threads, spun by a poor man’s Morpheus, that had kept my hapless body suspended above the icy rubber sheet which covered the rusty springs of the bunk.
The general spirit and atmosphere pervading a flophouse just before daybreak always make short work of twilight extravagancies. I began dressing — a rite which included taking off coat and vest; searching for and finally discovering, in a maze of pull-overs, undershirts, and scarves, the network of strings that were wound around my chest; untying, with torpid fingers, colonies of nondescript knots; shedding two San Francisco Examiners (Hearst on my belly and Brisbane on the small of my back) which had done futile duty as hot-water bottles; putting on coat and vest again; removing a paper bag from each foot and putting on shoes over my stockingless feet; and, as a fitting conclusion, unconsciously reaching for my hat, which, after some speculation, I remembered having traded two days previously to a colored man for six inches of salami and a piece of blueberry tart. The chambermaiding took less time. I simply left the bedclothes (the rubber sheet) on the bunk, to be used anew in the evening.
I occupied a ‘penthouse’ (an upper bunk) and consequently had to descend carefully. Sometimes when the freights reached South San Francisco late in the afternoon, Eastern side-door tourists, after having hiked nine miles in to the City proper vainly looking for ‘palm trees teased with velvety rays of a semitropical moon’ underneath which they had expected to spend the rest of their days dodging coconuts, besieged the flophouse. They were blue in the face from the contact with ‘soft trade winds lazily caressing poppy-clad slopes from where Padres and Conquistadores had gazed, their fiery Castilian eyes dimmed with wonder and awe.’ After much red tape instead of the sweeping gestures of true Western hospitality, they were permitted to park themselves on the floor between the bunks. Gory accidents had happened when men had taken off in the dark from the penthouses and had landed, without benefit of parachutes, on what until that moment had been somebody’s intact face.
Jenkins, my mate in the lower bunk, snored peacefully. He was an old man, well along in the seventies; a know-it-all of the inventive type, and known chiefly as the only inmate of the shelter who slept undressed. To be able to do so without catching pneumonia, he had constructed a sleeping bag of slats covered with condemned army pup tents, with a piece of chicken wire inserted for periscopic and ventilation purposes. It was folded and carried like a rucksack when not in use. It could be entered only from the back porch, so to speak.
The sight of Jenkins going to bed, — he slept in the raw, — crawling on hands and knees, always drew a gaping capacity crowd. First-nighters might snicker uneasily, but were instantly hushed by the fans, to whom the spectacle was something more than a somewhat ghastly acrobatic feat — it was their bedtime story, evening prayer, and nightcap rolled into one. Inside the lair, Jenkins had let his inventive genius run amuck. He had, of course, installed electric light (an extension cord, baited with colored light bulbs rescued from an abandoned Christmas tree, took care of this primary detail); he had also a shelf for his library consisting of Sell Yourself and Your Line Will Sell Itself, Short Cuts to Success, Warts and Moles, and Mitchell’s Guide to the Game of Chess; an air-conditioning system made of a tobacco humidor, rubber tubes, and litmus papers; and a runway and Ferris wheel for Gene, a trained albino rat that chewed tobacco.
Jenkins and I used to meet in a vacant lot during the daytime and play chess behind a billboard among thistles, rusty tin cans, and stray cats — the cats keeping ferocious weather eyes on Gene and visibly suffering all the pangs of a feline Gehenna. Their greediness, whetted by the undeniable fact that Gene was a rodent, clashed violently with their native daintiness, which recoiled from the sight of Gene’s bulging, lopsided jowls smeared with tobacco juice.
Jenkins played a dashing game of chess and even had worked out a gambit of his own which, although daring and theoretically unsound, proved too much for a player of my calibre. It was named ‘Prosperity Opening Declined.’ As Jenkins modestly put it, it was ‘a tactful hint to future generations of the often forgotten fact that difficult times and environments are more stimulating than retarding to creative minds.’ It kept me in bondage for months at a time, for the loser had to keep the winner in tobacco. It was also the reason for my early rising. ‘The early bum shoots the biggest snipes’ may be but an inferior travesty to some people. In 1932 it was a cruel, ironclad fact so far as I was concerned. I could starve, — and starve I often did, — but I could n’t starve without tobacco in my pipe.
II
Stumbling over bundles and suitcases, over outstretched, dangling, lifeless arms and legs, I made my way through what seemed like acres of double-decked bunks to the row of sinks which took the place of washbasins. On the wet cement floor, among toilet bowls, sinks, and leaking drainpipes, the usual coterie of night owls, early risers, rheumy old-timers, and miniature racketeers held convention. A layman might see only an ill-favored, scratching mob and hear only coughing, cursing, and scheming; whereas I, an able old hand at poverty, knew that every social stratum was represented there (remnants and sediments, of course); that a patient listener might rescue snatches from Vaihinger’s ‘Philosophy of As If’ out of the blare of cracks from the current Smoke House Monthly and horrors from yesterday’s tabloids; that almost every vice and disease could be found there, clinging stubbornly to men drawn from almost every race, speaking among them almost every dialect, from Tennessee hillbilly to Urdu; and that this down-at-the-heel crosscut of America had as many social restrictions and as many topnotchers and pariahs as the block from which it was hewed.
The ‘bullionaires’ (tinfoil collectors) and the ‘lactus weeds’ (milk-bottle snatchers) were the only ones listed in the Social Register and they had established a Waldorf-Astoria in a secluded corner; the ‘kennel cheaters’ (beggars of dog or cat meat to be used in mulligan stews and peddled to less up-and-coming fellows) and the ‘coffee an’ apostles’ (professional chest-beaters and testifiers at religious assemblies for a handout) were busy in Zenith; ‘lobbies’ (plain ‘moochers’) squabbled in Washington, D. C.; and the detested ‘single-jacks’ (one-legged, one-armed, or one-eyed men who tried to provoke sympathy by stressing their infirmities) and the ‘gas hounds’ (canned-heat distillers and sole customers of their own output) were relegated to a Bowery within a Bowery. The ordinary unemployed was totally ignored unless he had some perverse talent or attraction. Yesterday was taboo; to-day had to be lived through somehow; but to-morrow we would make an obstinate world sit up on its hind legs and take notice.
After having doused my head under a faucet, I wiped myself on the lining of my coat (the roller towel had the appearance of an escalator on a muddy day) and quickly made my way out into the alley. The fresh night air tasted like nectar and ambrosia. I leaned against a lamp post and filled my lungs. According to the omissions in my meal schedule, I ought to have been very hungry by then; yet I did n’t feel any particular longing for food. My body seemed light and as swaying as a feather floating a few inches above the ground; when I inhaled I could n’t feel the muscles contracting in my stomach. Suddenly something hit me square in the guts; grabbing hold of the lamp post instinctively, I folded up. It could have been appendicitis or stomach ulcers teaming up with a sailmaker’s awl boring deeper and deeper in a relentless manner; but it was n’t. I had it coming and I knew the diagnosis, prescription, and treatment by rote.
It was the Great Hunger, better known in the circles I frequented as the ‘early-morning cramps.’ The obvious remedy, food, was out of the question. That famous palliative, nicotine and water, depression’s signal contribution to medicine, could be depended upon to pinch-hit.
Luckily I had enough tobacco left to fill my pipe. I crawled to a near-by water spigot and drank to repletion; lighted the pipe, and inhaled the yellow, acrid smoke. The water kept its place like a little man, the intestines growled fearfully, the nicotine dulled and soothed, my doubled frame straightened out jerkily, and in less than five minutes I was wound up for three hours or better.
III
A heavy fog was moving in across the bay. The ferryboats had been bleating anxiously for the last quarter of an hour, and the Alcatraz bassoon was warming up. Morning fog meant wet tobacco, which would have to be treated and dried out before it could be used. The fog lessened the competition, however, and, everything considered, was not a serious drawback. The elation, expectation, and nervous tension which possess every marauder, gambler, or prospector who sets out in quest of booty dear to his heart began to jack up my spirit. Anything could happen! I might find a whole package of cigarettes! Last week I had picked up a chocolate bar in a virgin wrapper; and, once or twice, an unsullied cigar for Jenkins.
Suddenly I decided to change tactics and to concentrate on bigger and better things: on cash money — any amount. Make the sky the limit — four bits, six bits, a dollar! Of course, I would n’t neglect the snipes; but I would borrow a couple of Jenkins’s maxims and make them fit the occasion: ‘Don’t play for a draw, play for a win,’ or, ‘Believe in your skill and make up to Lady Luck, but depend on your opponent’s mistakes.’ I would believe in my good eyesight and would turn my vest inside out, but I would depend upon somebody having holes in his trousers pockets.
I walked up Tenth Street without bothering about snipes as yet. The South of Market district was no good — a ‘roll your own and snuff neighborhood.’ As soon as I had reached Van Ness Avenue, which had a fair rating, I began stooping over frequently, using the deft, furtive, jackknife movement characteristic of all good snipers. The Avenue was deserted except for a few cruising taxicabs and now and then a sleepy cop who was wise enough to tend to his own knitting, which amounted roughly to dozing in a sheltered doorway. Nobody around to step on a fellow’s fingers — that was the beauty of the early-morning kill. ‘Two packages for a quarter’ brands of cigarettes and horribly mutilated nickel stogies were common, but suspiciously short. The territory had been gone over once. Before long I spotted a dim figure bobbing up and down in a ridiculous, amateurish manner. At McAllister Street, I turned to the right and raced around the block as fast as I could go. I was n’t very strong and I did n’t feel well, but I had to do it or else be satisfied with the leftovers. I did n’t worry about having a breakdown; my heart, my arches, my pride, and my suspender buttons — all had been broken years ago.
The fog had thickened into pea soup, and, as I reached Van Ness Avenue a few yards ahead of him, the chiseler did n’t seem to be aware of having been tricked. It was clear sailing from then on. Anything less than one inch in cigarettes and two inches in cigars I left for the fellow behind.
I prided myself on strictly upholding the ethics of my profession and conforming to all the laws of the road. Like all professional ethics, mine also had become rubberized and could be stretched far enough to include the somewhat shady around-the-corner trick I had just perpetrated under the vague but all-embracing heading, ‘Committed in time of great stress and for the good of the profession.’
At Post Street, I turned towards the apartment house and club district, where the big game abounded. Soon my inside coat pocket was bulging with Jenkins’s share of the loot, and the paper bag containing the cigarette butts weighed over a pound; still, so far, the morning had been a failure. Snipes, and snipes only, spelled defeat. I had to keep on, to aim higher (I meant lower), for something worth while must turn up.
The fog was as thick as ever; it was not yet daylight, but as it was close to six o’clock the dawn could n’t be far off. The English sparrows and the pigeons were noisy and flirtatious; morning papers, milk bottles, and cats rotated freely; and a Levantine coffee-shop proprietor could be seen through steamy windows, rubbing his hairy chest with one hand while he rejuvenated yesterday’s rice pudding with the other. Within a short time the hunting grounds would be defiled; and the modern Juggernaut, in the form of countless heels, would threaten even a champion’s nimble fingers. I pictured myself being forced to knock off; I pictured the long, inglorious retreat to the Skidroad and the thousand or more men who would be ahead of me in the bread line; I imagined that I felt the taste in my mouth of the cold, glutinous mush. . . .
I was n’t potted of clay that cracks easily, but the mere thought of food — even bread-line mush — took the little starch that I had stored up for emergencies completely out of my system. I gladly would have exchanged one of my wilting legs for a dish of that rice pudding which was being prodded so contemptuously next door. Then the absurdity of bartering a leg for a meal entered my mind, as I found myself sitting on the sidewalk facing the street. ‘There are too many legs and too little rice pudding in this world,’ I reflected. ‘Legs are continually coming and going but . . .‘
Right there I lost all interest in the enduring power of rice pudding: I had spotted something! — something too large to be a glistening bottle cap, too even and round to be a piece of tinfoil, and too thick to be a token or an identification tag. It was lying well out, almost in the middle of the street, but I could see it quite plainly. It was a silver dollar beyond any doubt — one of those stately old-timers minted in Denver or San Francisco in the eighteen-eighties that had been jingling sonorously in Western jeans ever since.
Miraculously, my strength had returned; but nevertheless I did n’t rush out immediately into the street to grab the coin as any other hungry man would have done. The sybaritic streak in my make-up, lately rarely exercised, made me remain sitting on the sidewalk, feasting my eyes on the lovely still-life. The few ounces of stamped metal which, if they had been in my possession a moment ago, I would n’t have hesitated to swap for pounds and pounds of rice pudding had lost their vulgar, intrinsic value — had turned, in fact, into a symbol of faith, an answer to my innermost dreams, a confirmation of the soundness of Jenkins’s reasoning, a powerful hint (if not a downright proof) that from then on my fortune was made. The possibilities of cashing in seemed unlimited.
At last, charged to the saturation point with rosy prospects, I left the sidewalk to gather the windfall. When I reached for the dollar, a violent draft ruffled my hair; something screamed close to my left ear.
IV
The interne had just finished stitching my brow when I regained consciousness. ‘You are O.K., Slim. The windshield nicked you a bit. Duck next time or the coroner will get you. Say, Mac,’said he, turning to a policeman, ‘you are out of luck this morning.’ They both left the room. The cop had glared angrily at me, his face a bloated picture of dismay, when my resurrection was an established fact and he realized that his chance of relieving the Sunday morning monotony by calling the dead wagon for a nice ride downtown to the morgue with the stiff and a chat with the newspaper boys had blown up. The nurse, a talkative, middle-aged woman, kept my sore head buzzing with depressing details of the accident while she put a white patch on top of the stitches.
‘The ambulance driver who brought you here said it was a clear case of hitrunning. The fellow who hit you probably did n’t even slow down; and, anyway, there was nobody around to take his license number. Too bad, ain’t it? No chance for collecting compensation, I suppose. Guess you could use some,’ said she, looking at my much-slept-in clothes and turned vest. ‘But whatever have you got in that awful paper bag,’she prattled on, ‘and in your coat pocket, too? It smells to high heaven. I tried to pry your hands open, but you would n’t let go.‘
The dreadful past came slowly back to me. I had lost the silver dollar, but I had saved the snipes and — what seemed like very small potatoes — my life. My left hand was still clutching the paper bag with an iron hold; my right hand held on convulsively to the coat pocket in which were hoarded Jenkins’s ‘weeds.’ My knuckles were white and my fingers were almost paralyzed from the pressure and exertion. With some effort, I managed to relax; the paper bag fell to the spotless floor of the dressing room with a dull thud. The inquisitive nurse could control her curiosity no longer. She pounced eagerly on the bag and peered expectantly into its damp, multicolored (ivory, cork, gold, and lipstick), strongsmelling (domestic, Turkish, and blended) contents; and then she dropped it like a hot penny.
‘What is it?’ she exclaimed.
‘Snipes, lady; snipes,’ said I.
‘Snipes! But snipes are birds, are n’t they?’ said she.
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘they used to be until hard times made ’em take to paper panties and nicotine. I met ’em in the gutter.’
She turned her head away in an offended manner and did n’t answer. She probably had my number by that time and was thinking: ‘One of those smart bums, wise-cracking one sixteenth of an inch the safe side of potter’s field.’
I did n’t care. After having let a shining silver dollar slip through my fingers, the loss of a woman’s good opinion was of no importance. The nurse finished the dressing of my head in silence, helped me off the table, and handed me a ledger in which to sign my name, address, and occupation. When I put down 1261 Howard Street (a notorious flophouse in 1932) as my address and ‘unemployed’ for occupation, she nodded sagely.
I was faint and dizzy, my body felt as if it had been broken on the rack, but I could walk. I thanked the nurse for her trouble and reached for the bag of snipes, ready to leave.
‘No, you don’t!’ she cried. And before I could intervene she had picked up the bag, thrown it into a refuse can, and slammed the lid shut.
‘Now you stay here a moment,’ said she, as she left the room.
Suspecting she had gone after help to relieve me of Jenkins’s cut-down Havanas which still rested safely in my inner pocket, I made for the corridor and freedom. The nurse came out from behind a door just as I reached the exit.
Everything seemed to go wrong and my manners followed suit. ‘What is it this time?’ I snarled.
‘Listen,’ said she; ‘don’t be that way. You don’t know how I hated to take those “birdies,” or whatever you call them, away from you. Come back after a week or so and we’ll remove the stitches. Here is an appointment slip. So long.’ She put an envelope in my hand, opened the door, and pushed me (not unkindly) out on to the sidewalk.
It was full daylight then. A gentle wind from the Mount Tamalpais direction had torn the fog into woolly patches, through which the slanting winter sun was trying to break. The grounds outside the neat, well-kept Emergency Hospital had been washed down recently; they exuded a spick-and-span odor that heightened unmercifully the contrast between the wholesome, orderly surroundings and the scarecrow in the rumpled suit and bloodstained shirt. That virginal Sunday morning and I refused to mix. I felt as out of place as a homesick Bacillus leprae, just in from Molokai, might be expected to feel in a land of perpetual cleanliness and health.
My exhausted condition, the morning’s catastrophe, and the extreme ups and downs I had gone through in the past three hours added to my discomfort and broke my never overly strong mental backbone. I began floating slowly like the patches of fog above my head; only I was n’t so clean and fluffy. I put my hand on my midriff and found it gone.
This was the first call of the second division of the early-morning cramps. ‘All right,’ I mumbled, ‘let ’em come. Let ’em tear me apart. That cop shall have his ride downtown.’ I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists nervously while I waited for the great leveler. I felt something hard in the envelope that I was still clutching; I opened it listlessly. There, folded neatly in the appointment slip, lay three quarters. ‘Good God!’ I cried. ‘I can’t die of starvation with six bits in my hand! ’ Realizing the immense potentialities ahead of me and the stunning fact that I had been sitting pretty on the economic shelves of my time for the past five minutes, I headed, stumbling perilously, towards the Skidroad and its cheap eating joints.
V
In the afternoon of the same day Jenkins and I met as usual in the vacant lot for a game of chess. I was dead-broke again, but no regrets were gnawing at my conscience; I had spent the kindhearted nurse’s donation wisely. Thirty cents had purchased three orders of flapjacks and coffee (twelve flapjacks, six cups of coffee, one pint of near syrup, and six squares of margarine); a nickel had paid for a bag of cigar clippings for my pipe; Jenkins had a ten-cent CoronaCorona in his mouth; and Gene held a nickel’s worth of Horse Shoe Cut Plug in his excited, trembling front paws. The remaining twenty-five cents were deposited in the New Harbor House, where I was going to spend the night between clean — well, practically clean — sheets. The novel sensation of having the gastric juices working full shift had bucked me up to such a degree that a hastily contrived ‘Prosperity Opening Accepted’ had slashed Jenkins’s game to pieces.
It was cozy behind the billboard. The balmy air, spiced by the aroma from the cigar clippings, tended to put me in a mellow philosophical mood.
‘There must be something in that concentration business, after all,’ I remarked.
‘If you go about it in the right way, there is,’ answered Jenkins.
‘I did n’t fail altogether,’ I continued.
‘If your conception of non-failure is six stitches in the head and seventy-five cents, minus a pound of snipes, in place of a silver dollar, you did n’t,’ said Jenkins. ‘However, a fellow who turns his vest inside out instead of simply buttoning it in the back can’t expect much more. I hate to think of what’ll happen if you find a ten-dollar bill next time. Then, I suppose, in order to get the lousy six bits on the dollar of what rightfully belongs to you, you will have to rub your low brow against an automobile going at full speed as a down payment for sixty stitches, and later toss in ten pounds of snipes into the bargain. That’s more than the traffic will bear,’ concluded Jenkins, looking doubtfully at my head, ‘especially considering the tool you are working with.’