The head, as we have said, is gone completely; a few fragments of the skull are scattered round—but of the face, the features, forehead—nothing! They have all been blown out, as by some inner explosion. Nothing is left but the back of the skull, which curiously remains, completely hollowed out and vacant, and curved over, like the rounded handle of a walking-stick.
The body, five feet eight or nine of it, of middling weight, is lying—we were going to say “face downwards”; had we not better say “stomach downwards”?—on the sidewalk. It is well-dressed, too, in cheap, neatly pressed, machine-made clothes: tan shoes and socks with a clocked pattern, suit of a light texture, brownish-red in hue, a neat canary-coloured shirt with attached collar—obviously C. Green had a nice feeling for proprieties! As for the body itself, save for a certain indefinable and curiously “disjected” quality, one could scarcely tell that every bone in it is broken. The hands are still spread out, half-folded and half-clenched, with a still-warm and startling eloquence of recent life. (It happened just four minutes ago!)
Well, where’s the blood, then, Drake? You’re used to blood; you’d like to know. Well, you’ve heard of casting bread upon the waters, Drake, and having it return—but never yet, I’ll vow, of casting blood upon the streets—and having it run away—and then come back to you! But here it comes now, down the street—down Apple Street, round the corner into Hay, across the street now towards C. Green, the lamp-post, and the crowd!—a young Italian youth, blunt-featured, low-browed, and bewildered, his black eyes blank with horror, tongue mumbling thickly, arm held firmly by a policeman, suit and shirt all drenched with blood, and face be-spattered with it! A stir of sudden interest in the crowd, sharp nudges, low-toned voices whispering:
“Here he is! Th’ guy that ‘got it’!...Sure, that’s him—you know him, that Italian kid that works inside in the news-stand—he was standin’ deh beside the post! Sure, that’s the guy!—talkin’ to another guy—he got it all! That’s the reason you didn’t see more blood—_this_ guy got it The guy just missed him by six inches I’m tellin’ you I saw it, ain’t I? I looked up an’ saw him in the air! He’d a hit this guy, but when he saw that he was goin’ to hit the lamp-post, he put out his hands an’ tried to keep away! That’s the reason that he didn’t hit this guy!...But this guy heard him when he hit, an’ turned round—and zowie!—he got all of it right in his face!”
And another, whispering and nudging, nodding towards the horror-blank, thick-mumbling Italian boy: “Jesus! Look at th’ guy, will yuh!...He don’t know what he’s doing!...He don’t know yet what happened to him He got it all. I tell yuh! He was standin’ deh beside the post, wit a package undehneath one ahm—an’ when it happened—when he got it—he just stahted runnin’...He don’t know yet what’s happened!...That’s what I’m tellin’ yuh—th’ guy just stahted runnin’ when he got it.”
And one policeman (to another): “...Sure, I yelled to Pat to stop him. He caught up with him at Borough Hall…He just kept on runnin’—he don’t know yet what happened to him.”
And the Italian youth, thick-mumbling: “...Jeez! W’at happened?...Jeez!...I was standin’ talkin’ to a guy—I heard it hit…Jeez!...W’at happened, anyway?...I got it all oveh me!...Jeez!...I just stahted runnin’...Jeez! I’m sick!”
Voices: “Here, take ‘im into the drugstore!...Wash ‘im off!...That guy needs a shot of liquor Take him into the drug-stoeh deh!...They’ll fix him up!”
The plump, young, rather effeminate, but very intelligent young Jew who runs the news-stand in the corridor, talking to everyone round him, excitedly and indignantly: “...Did I see it? Listen! I saw everything! I was coming across the street, looked up, and saw him in the air!...See it?...Listen! If someone had taken a big ripe water-melon and dropped it on the street from the twelfth floor you’d have some idea what it was like!...See it! I’ll tell the world I saw it! I don’t want to see anything like that again!” Then excitedly, with a kind of hysterical indignation: “Shows no consideration for other people, that’s all I’ve got to say! If a man is going to do a thing like that, why does he pick a place like this—one of the busiest corners in Brooklyn?...How did he know he wouldn’t hit someone? Why, if that boy had been standing six inches nearer to the post, he’d have killed him, as sure as you live!...And here he does it right in front of all these people who have to look at it! It shows he had no consideration for other people! A man who’d do a thing like that…”