Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (i am reading a book TXT) 📕

you’d be an idiot to let something like this ruin even another day of your life.” He left, and closed the door behind him.

Franklin’s death confronted July in many ways. It seemed factually final on one hand; yet there was also an unresolved character to it as if it were still happening—as though something was expected from him. At the same time it tried to make him infer certain larger things he didn’t want to. It’s a cold, hard world, it dictated to him, it’s a terrible place where something like this can happen. It’s a hateful place that would cause him to do that. But July didn’t want to think that. It could just as easily be, he would try to argue, that the world is what you make it and there are those who will make theirs wrongly.

Life is worth nothing if Franklin could so easily reject it in favor of whatever else might come.

No, he argued, there are some who choose foolishly; mistakes are made every day.

No one could make a mistake of such magnitude.

Someone has.

The police killed Franklin. Society’s laws killed him.

No, he did it himself.

He was forced into it. Things get so bad, then you break. You can’t be responsible for what you do. Finally you snap out.

Then it’s weakness.

We’re all weak. Accept it. Sooner or later—

It doesn’t have to be so.

Pain and time are the same. You’ll never escape from them. Madness is here too. Go ahead, pretend you’re sane. All is vanity.

Obscure things don’t impress me or frighten me.

God as a loving being doesn’t exist. It’s only chaos.

Then Franklin killing himself obviously has no meaning, so why should it concern me?

Everything he believed in was taken from him. Have pity!

He believed in nothing. That was his trouble. Pity I have, but at the same time I kind of resent his killing himself.

You heartless ingrate. It was your fault!

No it wasn’t. No it wasn’t.

Here he broke into tears and, sobbing shamefully, fell asleep. Six hours later he woke up, washed his hands and face in cold water from the sink and resolved never to cry again as long as he lived or feel any emotion whatsoever. He looked at himself through the mirror in a very determined manner and admired the strong, angular lines of his face. I simply didn’t care about him that much anyway, he told himself, and packing all of his belongings in a suitcase, and, walking with his cat, he went down the stairs and out the front door, never to return.

The doorbell rang and Rose Carroll answered it, letting the door swing back until the heavy chain held it fast.

“Hello,” said July.

“Hello,” she said. “What do you want?”

“Well, I came to see about something that was sort of worked out between Franklin and me.”

Butch had stuck his paw through the opening of the door at the bottom, and reached around.

“Here, now,” shouted Mrs. Carroll. “Get back there. Go on, get back.” And she shook the door back and forth, being careful though not to catch his paw in a pinch. “What’s this about?”

“Well, for quite a while now he’d been putting twenty dollars a week away for me—because I wanted to save it. I mean . . . and so I was wondering—”

“No. I don’t know anything about it, if that’s what you mean.”

“I thought he might have said something at one time or another about—”

“No, he never mentioned it. Sorry.”

“Then I was wondering if maybe in his will, if he—”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.” She saw July’s face fall. “Look,” she said. “Look, what did you expect? You think someone who’d do something like that cares about anyone else? You think before he did it he thought, ‘Now, that boy, I promised that boy—’? If he was that kind of man, you think he’d do something like that? He gave this house to his brother, whom he hasn’t seen for fifteen years, and the store to a neighbor who moved to Miami, a Jew.”

“That’s a pretty hard attitude,” said July.

“Well, you think about it, sonny. Now, about how much did you add up that he owed you?”

“Eighteen hundred dollars.”

“Well, you just think about that, and how all these years he didn’t get around to making sure you’d get what was coming to you, and believe me, there’s a hundred five-minute ways he could’ve chosen, if only he would have thought, once, ‘Say, I better make sure nothing happens to the money July’s got coming—that I’m saving for him.’ You just think about that. Hey, get back there!” She shook the door again and nudged Butch’s two paws out with her foot. “Now, go away with your cat, I’ve got to take a shower now.”

July and his angry cat walked toward downtown and caught a train to 30th Street Station with Butch in the suitcase. From there they walked all the way to City Hall and were very tired.

Things had changed since he’d last been there. Now instead of token booths on just the first and second landings, there was one on all three. The drivers didn’t collect money anywhere at 14th Street. This presented a problem, but none too serious. It would simply cost him fifteen cents to get down to his room.He bought a token, went through a turnstile, seized the right moment and slipped down.

But as soon as he was in his old room, he knew that this one night would be all he’d want to spend there. It seemed like such a dismal little hole in the ground, damp and smelly with fumes and grease from the trolleys. And for the first several hours, every time one would rattle by he’d wake up.

At eight thirty he crawled stiffly out of the pallet, surprised that the alarm clock still worked, and lit the kerosene lamp. Again he marveled at how dismal and small the room seemed. How miserable I