Part 2

The boss who discharged me hated to do it, and was as kind about it as he possibly could be. He assured me that it was not because I wasn’t doing my work well. Then, realizing that this was an unnecessary thing to say, he cleared his throat, embarrassed. They all knew there was no part of a printer’s work that I didn’t understand and couldn’t do. But the new management’s policy was for young men. My only fault was accumulated years.

“You’ve done your share of work, anyhow, Pop,” he said; “now it’s up to your two boys to take care of you. You worked hard for ’em, and fitted ’em with the best kind of training to make their own way.”

That’s the conventional balm always put on this kind of hurt. Guess I smiled a little ironically. My two boys were having a pretty hard struggle to take care of the responsibilities they already had. George had had a good deal of sickness in his family, and Walter was supporting his wife’s parents. I had been letting them both have money.

It wouldn’t have been quite so hard if they had waited until Saturday night to discharge me. But they didn’t. It was Tuesday morning. And they were going to give me a full week’s pay because of my long service. They meant to be kind, of course, in their way-trying to let me down easy. But the offer of the full week’s pay added to my humiliation and stirred in me a lot of bitterness. My head went hot for a minute and the blood drummed in my ears. But I managed to speak quietly, and smiled when I said,-

“I only want what’s owing me. I’ve always worked for all I got.”

In going over this scene so many times since, I know that I felt something deeper than just my own bitter resentment. I had a vague sort of feeling that it was up to me to stand for the justice due to other men of my years, in my same fix. These fraternal bonds are in our blood.

The boss tried to expostulate. I stood firm. And they finally made out my time. I took what was due me, and the boss and I shook hands. I could feel him watching me until I got out of the office. I knew the kind of look that was in his face, but I didn’t turn around to see.

Leaving the plant that day was the hardest thing I have ever done. My first impulse was to get my coat and hat and just slip away. But my pride would not let me do that. So I braced and went back to the room where I had been working. I told some of the fellows with whom I was the best acquainted that I had been fired; and shook hands with them in farewell.

There was a pretty tight feeling in my throat. But they helped me to try and carry the thing off as something of a joke. I could see the pity, though, in their eyes.

It was raining-a cold, drizzling, late-October rain. But I did not notice it. I took the same old route I had taken for years, to the Sixth Avenue Elevated station.

I did not remember, however, until I started up the station steps, that it was forenoon and not my usual time for going home. Then I halted and moved back again to the sidewalk, and stood there in the rain. I understood later why I had done this. I had been suddenly jerked out of a deep rut of habit, and was dazed at finding myself in new conditions. Then, too, I was weighted, groggy, with the aching depression that I was done for, out of the game-old.

I dreaded to go home and tell my wife. If I had been a drinking man, I should have gone off on a drunk.

People jostled by me on their way up the stairs to the Elevated. Dripping umbrellas swished against me. My overcoat was wet, and the rain trickled from my hat-brim. But I stood there lost, dead-like one just sent out of life.

Then my gaze was suddenly caught by an old chap who sold newspapers in this district. I often bought my evening paper from him. He was a little old fellow, with watery eyes, a stubby beard, and straight gray hair that grew a little long. He had one incongruous feature, though-good teeth that were kept clean. I had always noticed them. My vague interest in him had tabulated him a boozer. But to-day I watched him with a new and curious fascination.

He had halted in a doorway, and stood there, hunched up, with his newspapers under his arm. He still wore a summer’s stained and battered straw hat, and a dirty bandana handkerchief was tied about his neck. He was wet and pinched with the cold. He had turned up the collar of his old coat, and stood with one hand in his trousers pocket, as with the effort to coax a little warmth. For the minute, he had forgotten everything but his own discomfort. The hopeless misery of the man looked out of his watery eyes.

A dull sympathy of understanding stirred in me. The next instant I resented this feeling. I resented it because it put me in this old chap’s class. Then the man’s necessity to live pushed him on again to work. He started in my direction, calling out his papers in a cracked and wheezy voice.

I bought a paper from him and started across the street. I had the feeling of hurrying away from something that was clutching at me-as a man, using his last spurt of strength to swim for his own life, tries to keep away from the reach of another who is drowning. But I couldn’t get away from this old fellow. The picture of him filled my inner vision. The feeling of him pulsed through my blood. We truly were in the same class-both old, and both on the edge of life making our struggle.

It was noon. I went into a Child’s restaurant and bought a cup of coffee. That brought me back nearer to normal. I decided to look for another job. Having secured that, I could face my wife with more of encouragement.

All that afternoon I went from one printing-office to another. But they all turned me down. Of course, my rain-soaked appearance did not inspire much confidence. Had I waited, and gone the rounds looking a little less down-and-out, I might have met with success. But later experience has made me feel that it would have made small difference.

After each refusal I grew a few years older. I tried to make my sense of humor work a little. But it wouldn’t. That and every other part of my being was caught in the grip of a shrinking fear. By the time I turned into the doorway of my own Harlem apartment house I was a shuffling old man.

The halls of the house, as usual, were filled with the odors of Kosher cooking. I dragged up the one flight of stairs and fumbled the key into the lock of my own door. Downstairs the front door opened and closed. Someone had come in. A quick panic seized me that it might be Miss Marsh. I hurried into my own apartment to escape her. I was feeling now a new shrinking from Miss Marsh.

My wife was not at home. I remembered that she had said at breakfast that she was going over to Brooklyn to see the two grandchildren who had been sick. She might have been held up in the subway. But I was home more than an hour earlier than my usual time.

My first feeling was one of relief, not to find her there. It gave me the chance to change my wet clothing before she came. The rooms smelled of the newly generated steam hissing up in the pipes. The heat felt good. I took off my wet clothes and hung them on two chairs by the front-room radiator.

When I had finished dressing, my wife had not yet come. I filled the teakettle and put it on the gas-range in the kitchen. Then I turned on the light in the dining-room, and sat down by the table to read the want advertisements in the evening paper.

But my thoughts were not on the advertisements: they were seething with other things. Here, in the seclusion and comfort of my own home, they began to work more clearly. I finally threw the newspaper on the table, rose, dropped into the old rocker by the window, and let myself think. I have always been something of a philosopher; and I faced my situation now with more of that spirit.

I, Harvey Allen, was sound and well, with fair intelligence, and a thorough knowledge of my work, gained by long experience. I had never been a drinking man, but had worked steadily, and had always been reliable. Yet, because I was sixty years of age, I was being thrown on the dump-heap. My father had lived to be eighty-four. In all probability I should live to be as old. That would mean twenty-four years on the dump-heap. Twenty-four years!-over a fourth of my existence. It was not good social business. Something was wrong. We don’t allow that waste with a horse or cow.

I had worked steadily for wages ever since I was seventeen years old. Most folks would say that I ought to have laid up enough to take care of myself and wife during our old age. Perhaps I ought. But I hadn’t. My present bank-account was about a hundred dollars.

During the twenty years in which we had lived in this little dark New York apartment I had paid between ten and eleven thousand dollars in rent. Then there had been the expense of educating our two boys. It had been a big expense. For both my wife and I had wanted them to have the best. We had given them both technical educations at Cornell. Of course, they themselves had helped some. Then they had married young. Babies had come fast. I had had to help tide them over some financial rocks. And of late years my wages had been steadily decreasing.