A Walk On The Wild Side

by Nelson Algren

  Some of broken hearts when Wallace Reid had died. Some had gone on the nod waiting for Dempsey to fight Harry Wills. Others had grown weary after Starr Faithful had passed. One by one they had nodded off, taking their good luck and taking their bad.

  (Raggedy Ann’s, of course, had been worse than the others, that was plain enough by her patches. And perhaps was the reason she had the place of honor right in the middle.)

  ‘There’s no price on them,’ Dockery warned everyone, ‘They’re not for sale and neither am I. Respect gets you in here and disrespect gets you out. Respect, respect is the key.’ No one was allowed to dicker for his dolls, no hand but his own could touch them.

  Respect for the dead of a dead decade – that was the key.

  The old man preferred the kind of drinker who asked that his glass be washed after every drink. As some men wish to be always drunken, as some women wish to be always in love, Doc Dockery wished to be always clean. To be clean and cleaning.

  People, of course, could not be made clean. What kind of filth the old man had waded in neck-deep, of which he still fought to free himself in his lonely white-haired age, or what deep disease was concealed by this passion for hygiene was not clear. Yet it was plain that it had at last turned all his women to dolls.

  Respect, that was the key. Respect for his women, and for his music too. His music that was Stardust, Stormy Weather, Bye Bye Blackbird, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, My Bill, Paper Doll, Red Sails in the Sunset and Tie Me To Your Apron Strings Again.

  To this lopsided shambles owned by this unlicensed ghost, this speakeasy spook who had been alive once but had died in the crash and was now only haunting the thirties, came trudging, some uphill and some down, all those who could not admit that the money was spent, the dream was over; the magic done. They still wore the clothes they wore before 1929 and no one knew when they might buy clothes again.

  By and large they were theater people who had lost their theater: ingénues, leading men, stagehands, ticket brokers, managers of road shows, starlets and prima donnas. Albeit that, just for the time being of course, they were ‘hostesses,’ con artists, sneak thieves, con-men, procurers, cardsharps, pennymatchers; and a few honest just plain bums.

  The first thing Dove saw when he entered the cave was the lion-headed amputee they had left at the brothel. By what alley-route he had beat them here only someone who lived on ball-bearings could know.

  Finnerty drank with his back to the half-man, indicating to Dove that was the wisest way. So Dove felt somehow relieved when he heard the skated platform wheel down the floor, out the door and onto the open street.

  Then, ready to let the murmuring hours spin, he put a nickel in the juke to help them begin.

  I’m forever blowing bubbles

  the machine began

  Pretty bubbles in the air

  ‘Now I’ll come to the point,’ Finnerty informed Dove when the bubbles all were blown, ‘I need the help of a healthy boy. I take it your health is as good as it appears.’

  ‘A might better, mister,’ Dove made a conservative guess, ‘and I’m always ready to make an honest dollar.’

  ‘You can call me Oliver, for that’s my name.’

  ‘You can call me Tex. For that’s where I’m from.’

  ‘My line of work, as you may have guessed, Tex, is women. Do you know anything about them?’

  ‘I know that if God made anything better I aint come across it yet, but that’s as far as my knowledge goes.’

  ‘In that case it don’t go far,’ Oliver decided, ‘but the question is whether you’re interested in going to bed with a young woman who has never been to bed with a man before.’

  ‘Mister, I’m a Southern boy and wouldn’t disadvantage no young girl that way.’

  ‘Southern don’t enter into this, Tex,’ Finnerty assured him, ‘The young woman is bound and determined to hustle. It’s all settled but the bother and inconvenience of breaking her in.’

  ‘Your field being women,’ Dove pointed out, ‘I reckon that’s your job, mister.’

  ‘Why, that’s precisely the reason I can’t, don’t you see?’ Finnerty tried patience. ‘If I did it she could come back a year from now and law me on the white slave act, for I’ve a record in that line I don’t mind admitting. I’ve already been busted on that charge once, and I don’t cherish being busted again. But someone like yourself that she’ll never see again – Oh, don’t be afraid of having to use force, for you shant. You won’t even have to undress this child.’

  ‘That don’t sound like no virgin girl to me,’ Dove told the pander.

  ‘That’s her claim, so I take her at her word,’ Finnerty told Dove. ‘The point is that, if you did me this one small favor, she couldn’t make that claim in the future. Do you follow me?’

  ‘I follow you to a certain point,’ Dove decided, ‘after that it’s a mite unclear.’

  ‘Maybe this will clear things up.’

  Dove put his hands stiffly behind his back. ‘Mister, I can’t read my own name if it was writ on the side of a barn, but I know a hundred dollar bill when I see one. And I think you’d best put that one away.’

  Finnerty tucked it into Dove’s breast pocket.

  ‘Mister, I can’t take that,’ Dove told him firmly without making a move to give it back.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Finnerty promised, ‘You’re not taking it, country boy. You’re carrying it for me, that’s all. You’re carrying it across the street and up the stairs to a room where this young lady is waiting for you. When you come in the room you’ll hand it to her without a word – if I know her greedy little heart she’ll put it in her slipper and you take it from there.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘She’ll tell you that herself, country boy.’

  They were at the back entrance of the house which they’d entered by the front before Dove hesitated.

  ‘Just one thing I’d like to ask, mister.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Finnerty was too close behind him.

  ‘I’d rather you call me Tex ’stead of country boy.’

  ‘Right-o, Tex,’ Finnerty agreed, and shook Dove’s hand to seal the deal.

  Dove shook, and stepped through the door Oliver held wide.

  A girl with the pallor of one who lives indoors, one low of flesh but high of bone, in red shorts and red halter. Dove heard the door lock behind him.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.

  ‘Floralee,’ she told him, ‘and I sing like a damned bird. But how did I fly here?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, country girl,’ Dove told her, ‘but I’m to give you this.’

  He took his last ten dollar bill and handed it to her. Just as Finnerty had said, she had a greedy little heart, for she stuffed it down her slipper right away without even bothering to glance at it and snapped the button that held up her shorts.

  If Dove, in the minutes that followed, heard murmured laughter from behind a wall, he didn’t let that divert him from the sums he had now to do in his head.

  ‘It costes me ten dollars to make a hundred,’ he figured, ‘at that rate I don’t see how I can lose.’

  On a morning so damp the salt wouldn’t dust Dove wakened feeling like something chewed up and spat out. His seersucker, hung on a nail on the wall, looked like something fished out of the river. Everything his eyes fell upon looked fished-out or spat-out. He had a big bad head and held it hard, mourning ‘Oh, it drinked dandy but Lord the afterwards. The way the world is going I don’t think it’ll last.’

  But the Financial Counsellor was whistling cheerfully as he buttoned himself into a freshly pressed financial-looking suit.

  ‘Happened on a most curious certificate,’ he announced as soon as he saw Dove get one sick eye wide, and drew it forth like a document. ‘What do you reckon happen when one of them girls trots all the way downtown for a free marcel?’

  ‘Reckon she gets herself fixed up right pretty,’ Dove took a hazy guess.

&nb
sp; ‘Reckon she do if she got three-fifty. Which you know very well she don’t. Did you read this thing you’re selling?’

  For once Dove was glad he couldn’t.

  Fort touched a prong of his sunglasses to the fatal figures. ‘I warned you to stay clear of that Georgia hand,’ he reminded Dove, ‘now my advice is that you stay indoors. There must be a chance of husbands on the lookout for a country-lookin’ gin-head by now.’

  ‘I was only tryin’ to make an honest dollar in a crooked sort of way,’ Dove explained.

  For reply Fort fastened his face one moment to the mirror and must have been pleased by what he saw. For he left with a confident, executive stride, a man who’d be rich in six weeks if not in five.

  Dove went to the window. Street to sky, New Orleans looked shrouded. He saw its fearful loneliness. He felt its dreadful heat. ‘It’s a misling day,’ he thought, ‘I reckon I don’t deserve to rise, doin’ that innocent country girl the way I done. What’s to become of her now?’

  Fort was back in the doorway. ‘Was two blocks down afore I missed ’em,’ he explained, picking up his blue sunglasses.

  ‘Sun aint bright,’ Dove observed, ‘fact is it look like we might have a little weather.’

  Fort snapped his glasses on and left.

  ‘Weak eyes,’ Dove concluded as the first drums of the rain began. Began, and paused, and began again to a slow and funerary beat.

  Soon one mornin’, death come creepin’ in the room

  Well, soon, one mornin’, death come creepin’ in the room

  ‘I would most likely be married and well-fixed by now, keepin’ my clothes in a sweetwood chest and taking the paper in the baseball season if I could but make words out of letters,’ Dove dressed himself in his daydream now wearing terribly thin, ‘with a girl who could read ’n write too.’ N little kids – I’d learn them how to do it my own self.’ Anything could happen to a man who could make words from letters.

  The smells of coffee-and-banana dock, warehouse and orange-wharfed shore were borne into the room on the wash of a rain that had no shore at all. Beneath it banana boats were moving out to sea. Trailer and truck were bringing peanuts and grapefruit to town below it. Endless freights moved east, moved west, by plane, by boat, by passenger train. By highways dry and highways wet everyone but himself was getting to be a captain of something or other.

  Everyone but one forgotten Linkhorn bogged down in a room where the blues came on and the old rain rapped this door then, like somebody’s grandmother seeking forever her long lost first born.

  And it seemed to Dove that the sun had gone down the same morning that Terasina’s arms had last locked in love behind his neck, that her good thighs in love had last drawn him down and her good mouth had last loved his.

  ‘You were my onliest,’ he admitted at last, ‘but we only got to B. These days when I don’t get to see you are plumb squandered like the rest of all them letters. My whole enduren life you were the only human to try to see could I live up to the alphabet. Then I would of had a chance to rise like others.’

  Luke came in on a skip and a grin and stood in the middle of the room drenched, drunk, hatless, the laces out of his shoes, the shirt out of his pants, the pants half-buttoned; the picture of a contented man.

  ‘Take off your jacket, Luke,’ Dove invited him, for the jacket was clinging to the skin.

  Luke slapped his thigh and did his little joy-jig. ‘It’s all in people’s minds, boy – business is better than ever if you only let yourself think it is.’ And shook himself like a duck.

  ‘You’re soaking,’ Dove pointed out.

  Luke turned stern. ‘What the hell is the matter with you, son? Opportunity is knocking the door down and you’re beefing about a little rain.’

  ‘You looked kind of damp is all I meant.’

  ‘Son, you been alone too much, brooding here by yourself. Smile, damn you, smile. Let a smile be your umbrella, boy.’

  ‘Reckon I am a mite fevery at that,’ Dove conceded. ‘Havin’ no breakfastes ’n thinkin’ of bygones give me the morning-wearies.’

  Luke brought the flat of his palm down on the table so hard he almost lost his balance. ‘Why didn’t you say so, son?’ He began turning dirty plates over looking for something. ‘Where’s my check? I have a small check somewhere around here.’

  ‘Must be so small it’s not to be seen with the naked eye. Fact is, the landlady came up but she didn’t bring no check. She come up for to tell she wants three-thirty a week for the set of us.’

  Luke stared at Dove unseeing while his brain, like a pinball machine, toted an unexpected score. His face lit triumphantly. ‘Chargin’ us for a place where the roof leaks so bad a man gets his bedclothes soaked in his sleep!’ He leaped on Fort’s bed, stabbed the ceiling with a jackknife and down he jumped again. Dove rushed the dishpan to the bed in time to catch the first raindrop.

  The second drop preened its muscles a moment in preparation for the death-defying dive, then dropped dead center with a tiny pingg.

  ‘Man would be a fool to pay rent for a room where he’s like to catch his death by dew and damp,’ Luke sounded ready to sue. ‘Borrow me a half buck till Monday, Red?’

  ‘Ef ’n I had money I’d buy flour ’n shortenin’ for us to have a pan of poor-do gravy,’ Dove told him.

  ‘You like poor-do gravy, son?’

  ‘Mister, I like any kind gravy: red-eye gravy, pink-eye gravy, black-eye gravy, speckledly gravy and streakedy gravy, piedy gravy, calico gravy, brindle gravy, spotted gravy, white gravy ’n grease gravy,’ n skewball gravy. I can eat lavin’s ’n lashin’s of gravy. Ef ’n we had us flour ’n shortenin’ now I’d pour a little coffee in the pan too. Yes sir, I do like gravy.’

  Luke slapped him cheerfully on the back. ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, son. Smile, darn you, smile. Laugh and the world laughs with you, Boy. Look at this – in six weeks we’ll both be rich!’

  He was dangling some sort of purple-feathered rubber in front of Dove’s eyes. ‘Whatever is it, boy?’

  ‘Look like a little kid’s balloon but for the feather,’ Dove guessed and inspected the device more closely, ‘only it can’t be no balloon because it’s hollow and couldn’t hold no air. I’m sure I never saw nothin’ to compare, Luke.’

  Luke waved it like a purple flag. ‘It’s a contraceptive, son! Combines protection with pleasure,’ he flicked the foolish-looking feather on its obscene tip, gave it a joyous swing and twist and flung away the certificates in his other hand. ‘No more knockin’ ourselves out rappin’ doors for two bits. A buck apiece boy! One buck apiece!’

  Dove shook his head mournfully. ‘I wouldn’t have the common brass to knock on no lady’s door and show her one of them unnatural-lookin’ things, Luke.’ Dove told him, ‘I’d go plumb through the floor if she knew what it was – and if she didn’t know how could I sell it?’

  Luke grew serious. ‘Distribution is my department, Red. But there’s room for a good man in plain condom mechanics. Later you advance to fancy work.’

  ‘How much do plain condom mechanics make?’ Dove asked with only mild interest.

  ‘Twenty cents a dozen – that would be about four dollars a day if you just take your own time, Red. And Gross buys your meals besides.’

  ‘Who’s Gross?’

  ‘Gross’ – Luke would have taken off his hat in reverence had he owned a hat – ‘Gross is the father of the O-Daddy.’

  ‘Never heard tell of that either,’ Dove admitted, ‘but four dollar a day is mighty good pay.’

  Luke scribbled an address on a slip of paper, then recalled something and tore it up. ‘Ask a policeman,’ he suggested – ‘but never mention “Gross” to anything in uniform. Get it, boy?’

  ‘I get it, Luke. And I’m mightily grateful.’

  ‘Let a smile be your umbrella, Son. We’re finally around that corner. Business was never better. Weep and you weep alone.’

  And left Dove to weep or laugh as he chose. ‘A
lways downhill and always merry,’ Dove thought as the little gin-head’s demented skip-and-hop step was lost in the brainless titter of the rain. And felt as if he’d not be hearing that foolish step in any weather again.

  He never learned how the little man had come upon the address he handed Dove that day.

  The room began to fill with a gray-green river light, the very color of sleep. Raindrips pinged faster into the pan. Dove slept with his head in his hands.

  To dream of a room where buckets stood about to catch raindrops and men and women encircled a bed to watch a woman and a man. Above the girl’s head the gloom was smeared by light like a yellowing streak of shame and Dove saw she had one toenail painted green. And heard Fort’s voice toll and toll from some chapel below sleep – ‘Hasteth! Hasteth!’

  In a robe once red and now faded to rose Terasina came toward him wearing dark glasses and extending her arms to find her blind way.

  Then one raindrop pinged into a bucket, another and another. It saddened Dove to hear them fall because each time one dropped he lost a friend and he could not leave till the last of all fell. ‘Boy! Wheah’s mah pot?’ A big hand began shaking him.

  Under the light the real Fort stood looking down.

  ‘Who poked the holes in my ceiling, Son?’

  Dove looked at the dishpan. Its bottom was barely covered.

  ‘Luke thought if the rain leaked in we wouldn’t be held for the rent.’

  ‘A mighty weak thought,’ Fort decided.

  ‘I got a little inkle, Fort.’

  ‘You got a little what?’

  ‘I got a little inkle Luke is fixin’ to move on.’

  ‘I couldn’t be more unconcerned, son. Made my rent this afternoon. Picked up six dollar in the rain ’n could of made eight with a mite of help.’

  ‘What line of work you followin’ now, Fort?’

  Fort stood up and extended his right arm. Dove reached to shake it but Fort wouldn’t shake. ‘Can’t you see my sad condition?’ he asked softly.

  Dove studied him carefully. ‘Your eyes look shut sort of,’ he decided.