half a day, and that alone would have deferred the moment of reckoning for some time. Even when my funds dipped perilously close to the bottom, something always seemed to turn up at the last minute: I would find money on the ground or some stranger would step forth and produce one of those miracles I have already discussed. I did not eat well, but I don’t think I ever went an entire day without getting at least a morsel or two into my stomach. It’s true that I was alarmingly thin by the end, just 112 pounds, but most of the weight loss occurred during the final days I spent in the park. That was because I came down with something—a flu, a virus, God knows what—and from then on I didn’t eat anything at all. I was too weak, and every time I managed to put something into my mouth, it came copy back up again. If my two friends hadn’t found me when they did, I don’t think there’s any question that I would have died. I had run out of reserves, and there was nothing left for me to fight with.
The weather had been with me from the start, so much sothat I had stopped thinking of it as a problem. Almost every day was a repetition of the day before: beautiful late-summer skies, hot suns parching the ground, and the air then drifting into the coolness of cricket-filled nights. During the first two weeks, it hardly rained at all, and when there was rain, it never amounted to more than a sprinkle. I began pushing my luck, sleeping more or less out in the open, by now conditioned to believe that I would be safe wherever I was. One night, as I lay dreaming on a patch of grass, utterly exposed to the heavens, I finally got caught in a downpour. It was one of those cataclysmic rains: the sky suddenly splitting in two, buckets of water descending, a prodigious fury of sound. I was drenched by the time I woke up, my whole body pummeled, the drops bouncing off me like buckshot. I started running through the darkness, frantically searching for a place to hide, but it took several minutes before I managed to find shelter under a ledge of granite rocks, and by then it hardly mattered where I was. I was as wet as someone who had swum across the ocean.
The rain continued until dawn, at times slackening to a drizzle, at times exploding with monumental bursts—screeching battalions of cats and dogs, pure wrath tumbling from the clouds. These eruptions were unpredictable, and I did not want to run the risk of getting caught in one. I clung to my tiny spot, dumbly standing there in my waterlogged boots, my clammy blue jeans, my glistening leather jacket. My knapsack had been subjected to the same soaking as everything else, and that left me with nothing dry to change into. I had no choice but to wait it out, shivering in the darkness like a stray mutt. For the first hour or two I did my best not to feel sorry for myself, but then I gave up the effort and let forth in a spree of shouting and cursing, putting all my energies into the most vile imprecations I could think of—putrid strings of invective, nasty and circuitous insults, bombastic exhortations against God and country. After a while, I had worked myself up to such a pitch that I was sobbing through my words, literallyranting and hiccuping at the same time, and yet through it all managing to summon up such artful and long-winded phrases that even a Turkish cutthroat would have been impressed. This continued for perhaps half an hour. Afterward, I was so spent that I fell asleep copy where I was, still standing up. I dozed for several minutes, then was roused by another onslaught of rain. I wanted to renew my attack, but I was too tired and hoarse to scream anymore. For the rest of the night I just stood there in a trance of self-pity, waiting for the morning to come.
At six o’clock I walked into a hash house on West Forty-eighth Street and ordered a bowl of soup. Vegetable soup, I think it was, with greasy chunks of celery and carrots bobbing in a yellowish broth. It warmed me
The weather had been with me from the start, so much sothat I had stopped thinking of it as a problem. Almost every day was a repetition of the day before: beautiful late-summer skies, hot suns parching the ground, and the air then drifting into the coolness of cricket-filled nights. During the first two weeks, it hardly rained at all, and when there was rain, it never amounted to more than a sprinkle. I began pushing my luck, sleeping more or less out in the open, by now conditioned to believe that I would be safe wherever I was. One night, as I lay dreaming on a patch of grass, utterly exposed to the heavens, I finally got caught in a downpour. It was one of those cataclysmic rains: the sky suddenly splitting in two, buckets of water descending, a prodigious fury of sound. I was drenched by the time I woke up, my whole body pummeled, the drops bouncing off me like buckshot. I started running through the darkness, frantically searching for a place to hide, but it took several minutes before I managed to find shelter under a ledge of granite rocks, and by then it hardly mattered where I was. I was as wet as someone who had swum across the ocean.
The rain continued until dawn, at times slackening to a drizzle, at times exploding with monumental bursts—screeching battalions of cats and dogs, pure wrath tumbling from the clouds. These eruptions were unpredictable, and I did not want to run the risk of getting caught in one. I clung to my tiny spot, dumbly standing there in my waterlogged boots, my clammy blue jeans, my glistening leather jacket. My knapsack had been subjected to the same soaking as everything else, and that left me with nothing dry to change into. I had no choice but to wait it out, shivering in the darkness like a stray mutt. For the first hour or two I did my best not to feel sorry for myself, but then I gave up the effort and let forth in a spree of shouting and cursing, putting all my energies into the most vile imprecations I could think of—putrid strings of invective, nasty and circuitous insults, bombastic exhortations against God and country. After a while, I had worked myself up to such a pitch that I was sobbing through my words, literallyranting and hiccuping at the same time, and yet through it all managing to summon up such artful and long-winded phrases that even a Turkish cutthroat would have been impressed. This continued for perhaps half an hour. Afterward, I was so spent that I fell asleep copy where I was, still standing up. I dozed for several minutes, then was roused by another onslaught of rain. I wanted to renew my attack, but I was too tired and hoarse to scream anymore. For the rest of the night I just stood there in a trance of self-pity, waiting for the morning to come.
At six o’clock I walked into a hash house on West Forty-eighth Street and ordered a bowl of soup. Vegetable soup, I think it was, with greasy chunks of celery and carrots bobbing in a yellowish broth. It warmed me
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