A Walk On The Wild Side

by Nelson Algren

  ‘Sweetie, I seen your picture in the paper but why don’t you just go home?’ Reba asked. The next morning the actor had his picture in the paper again, having been picked up for drunk and disorderly down the street. ‘I had too much to drink’ he had repeated his explanation to reporters once more. Reba’s patience gave out.

  ‘“I had too much to drink.” “I had too much to drink.” What did I tell him when he was here? “Sweetie, you’ve had too much to drink” is just what I told him. Honest to God, when a man knows he’s had too much and goes on drinking more all the same, that’s just too much. I refuse to adjust to peasants of a environment like this, that’s all.’

  The excuse of the dunce who drowned his infant daughter because his wife had run off with another man didn’t get him off the hook with Reba. ‘Something snapped in my head’ he had told the police, ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’

  ‘“I had too much to drink,”’ she mocked all erring mankind. ‘“Something snapped in my head,” “I didn’t know what I was doing” – of all the bum excuses. Give me animals, at least they know what they’re doing.’

  Especially elephants. Elephants always knew what they were doing.

  ‘Do you know about elephants, how they come on?’ she asked anxiously of some sport adjusting a black wool tie in a cracked mirror while she was preoccupied with the ritual of the douche, shaking the bottle madly to make it foam.

  ‘If you’d stop sizzling maybe I could hear what you’re saying,’ the wool-tie sport suggested.

  ‘Well,’ the girl explained, ‘I read about how the old man elephant whips up a big pit in the ground with his trunk ’n then whips the old lady into it. Otherwise they could never make it and there wouldn’t be no elephants.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Well, it just goes to show you, animals do know what they’re doing.’

  ‘I’m in theatrical work,’ the girl called Frenchy explained to a date. ‘See—’ she stretched her pale hands before his eyes – ‘I’m double-jointed too. Double-jointed hips, but I lost my partner.’

  ‘Can’t you find another?’ the date asked.

  ‘You don’t understand. I probably couldn’t find another partner in the entire country. Not everyone’s double-jointed you know.’ She was a high-cheekboned girl with consumptive coloring. ‘We’d swing down the coast and come back west – Philly, Cleveland, Cincinatti, Chattanooga – that’s where my folks are, they spent thousands on my education.’

  Out on the walk, up and down in the rain, the man with a cap that shaded his eyes carried a sign that said BEWARE THE WRATH TO COME.

  If the pale lost blonde wasn’t down the stairs by the time that street lamps came on, somebody went up and fetched her down. Should lamps be lit or no lamp burn, all was one to the pale lost blonde.

  Nobody had counted, for nobody cared, how many lamps had come up and gone down since the night she had stood where Loew’s marquee lights flickered in an uncertain rain, when a cabbie had held a door wide for her and she’d told him, as though she were awake and not in deep dream, ‘Lake Pontchartrain.’

  Nobody was home at Lake Pontchartrain. She had spoken a name overheard, nothing more, and offered him a pressed flower out of her purse for her fare. He preferred coming into the back seat with her to collect instead. Then had turned her over to Finnerty to satisfy the meter.

  ‘I’d rather not be whupped,’ she’d told Oliver – ‘if I got my rathers.’

  ‘I’d rather not whup you,’ Finnerty reasoned with her, ‘all I’m asking is that you let me take care of you in the big things so that you can take care of me in the little ones. Or am I asking too much?’

  ‘Little ones, big ones,’ the girl repeated, offering him a smile itself a pressed flower.

  ‘Do you remember your name, little baby?’ he asked her.

  ‘Floralee’ – and that was all she remembered.

  First he had made her his pleasure, then he had made her his trade. But the ease with which he’d accomplished this troubled him. He had Mama spy on her. Mama reported back.

  ‘Haven’t you any pride at all?’ he asked Floralee in his injured tone, ‘coming on with a trick like it was love, love, love? Do you realize you spent the better part of an hour with that bum for a lousy four dollars?’

  ‘Daddy, I lost track of the time,’ the demented girl replied.

  ‘I’m here to take care of your needs,’ he reminded her. ‘Try to remember that.’

  But a few days later he heard a great thump and crash overhead while she was entertaining.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked her half an hour after.

  ‘Why, daddy, we fell off the bed and kept right on going, that was all,’ she told him so innocently he hardly had the heart to give her the beating she now so richly deserved. But it had to be done to protect the fool from herself. He hung his coat over the back of a chair.

  ‘If you’d just as soon,’ she had seen what was coming, ‘I’d as soon not be whupped – if I got my sooners.’

  ‘I’d sooner not,’ Oliver told her, but put on his mittens, lifted her ponytail off the back of her head to get at the nape where bruises don’t show: A few rabbit-punches, enough to make her head spin, and that satisfied him.

  ‘But next time when you chippy with a date daddy won’t put his mittens on,’ he promised her.

  She never committed the sin of chippying again.

  Although Oliver’s other two faithfuls, Reba and Frenchy, were at needle’s points day and night, somehow neither was jealous of the wandering blonde. ‘Nobody home at Lake Pontchartrain is right,’ was all Frenchy had to remark. For Floralee’s life was too remote for envy. She lived enwrapped in some private cloud through which the light of the outer world filtered sometimes dimly and sometimes bright; but never like the light of the world in which the other women lived and bargained.

  The girl had days when she seemed so sensible no one could have guessed there was anything amiss. But before night she would be ecstatic, singing upstairs or down—

  The beasts of the wild

  Will be led by a child

  And I’ll be changed from the thing I am

  And the next morning would be utterly cast down. Once Oliver went to fetch her and found her lying naked on her side, eyes shut tight, knees drawn to her chin and the sheet over her head. There was no sound in the hot little room save the incessant hum of an electric fan.

  ‘There are little people a-prayin’ and a-singin’ in there,’ she told him and he understood she was hearing the voices of her people at their old spirituals in the hypnotic hum of the fan. He shut it off, returned with a small radio and tuned in a Sunday morning choir—

  The son of God goes forth to war,

  A kingly crown to gain

  His blood-red banner streams afar,

  Who follows in His train?

  Floralee opened her eyes to see her little daddy standing on a chair, pretending to lead a congregation—

  Who best can drink his cup of woe triumphant over pain? ‘—it takes your little daddy to get them real good programs,’ he told her, and jumped down. She listened closer, growing proud of the way her little daddy made them real good programs come in. By noon she was downstairs singing with faith restored—

  His blood-red banner streams afar—

  ‘That just won’t get it, honey,’ Mama finally had to put a stop to it – ‘I’m a church-going woman bound to die blessed, but there’s a time and a place for everything and that song just isn’t right for a place like this. If you just have to sing when men are around, try something like “Mademoiselle from Armentieres” – something to put them in the mood, not take them out of it.’

  ‘I won’t sing brashy tunes with vulgary words,’ Floralee suddenly grew stubborn. ‘I sung one once ’n that same night God said He couldn’t bear me.’

  ‘God wouldn’t say a thing like that, sweetheart,’ Mama promised.

  ‘He said it all the same. He was standing right outside my door, I
heard him plain as day. He said, “I’ve took all I can off that girl. I can’t bear the sight of her.”’

  ‘What makes you think God would talk like that, sweetheart?’

  Floralee’s face clouded as she struggled to remember, then her eyes cleared. ‘Because, whoever He was talking to, He kept saying “No. By no means. No. No. No.” That must have been God. If it had been the Devil he would have been saying “Yes, oh, yes, by all means, by all means and don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”’ And in her anxiety that God bear her, applied to Him right there and then despite Mama’s instruction—

  What must I do to win a diadem?

  When I reach that shining strand?

  The only solution was to play the juke with the volume turned up.

  ‘To hear that looney holler,’ Reba shuddered after things had quieted down a bit, ‘you’d think all they did in them hills was bury their dead.’

  ‘Let us not begrudge the child,’ Mama reproved Reba, ‘she got the innocence God protects.’

  While God protected her innocence, Finnerty figured her finances. He supplied her clothes, her meals, her amusements and what in all seriousness he called her education. The grift on joint-togs, such as parade panties, ran to a hundred percent and higher.

  Small wonder He had forgotten entirely about the escapee from O-Daddyland.

  The escapee came down Perdido Street with a sample case in his hand. He wasn’t offering coffee pots nor finger waves any more. Now He was the Watkins Man.

  Of course being a Watkins Man in 1931 wasn’t what it had been before the wilderness had been pushed back. Then it had been something more than a matter of taking orders for lotions and salves. The Watkins Man had once been the bringer of news of the world outside to the Louisiana back-brush; and he’d been more than a news bearer. He could tell the farmer what ailed his horse and could cure the brute as well. More than a horse doctor, he had cured people too. He could preach the Word, act as midwife, and recite Evangeline.

  In Dove Linkhorn, unhappily, these arts had declined. Indeed, they had vanished altogether. And by his clothes one had to wonder whether this particular Watkins Man might not even have the notion that his true trade was lovemaking rather than salesmanship.

  Dove had spent every last cent of his O-Daddy gold on a suit of O-Daddy clothes. It was tropical white, over a shirt with narrow pink stripes. His hat had a yellow feather that matched his shoes of yellow suede. He had come a long way, that was plain to be seen, from the boy who had come to town barefoot in blue jeans.

  As he came down the street for whom nobody prays, in the evening hour.

  It was that slander-colored evening hour before the true traffic begins, when once again sheets have been changed, again Lifebuoy and permanganate have been rationed; and once again for blocks about, pouting or powdering or dusting their navels, each girl wonders idly what manner of man – mutt, mouse, or moose – the oncoming night will bring her.

  Perdido Street, in the steaming heat, felt like a basement valet shop with both irons working. The girls in the crib doors plucked at their blouses to peel them off their breasts. In the round of their armpits sweat crept in the down. Sweat molded their pajamas to their thighs. The whole street felt molded, pit to thigh. It was even too hot to solicit. For normal men don’t so much as glance at the girls in heat like that lest the watery navels stick.

  Yet the very heat that enervates men infects women with restlessness and the city was full of lonesome monsters. Side-street solitaries who couldn’t get drunk, seeking to lose their loneliness without sacrificing their solitude. Dull boys whose whole joy expired in one piggish grunt. Anything could happen to a woman available to anyone. Boredom of their beds and terror of their street divided each.

  They had died of uselessness one by one, yet lived on behind veritable prairie fires of wishes, hoping for something to happen that had never happened before: the siren screaming toward the crossing smashup, the gasp of the man with the knife in his side, the suicide leap for no reason at all. Yet behind such fires sat working cross words while prying salt-water taffy from between their teeth: passion and boredom divided each.

  In Spider-Boy Court the blinds, drawn low, left the room in a dappled gloom where dimly fell the shadows, darker yet, of bars. For little windows lined the side that paralleled Perdido Street. And a ceiling fan, cutting the restless light, caused shadows to tremble along wall and floor.

  In this moted dusk a juke played on and so long as it played the women sat content. But the moment the music stopped, a creaking, regular and slow, began right overhead and they began shifting uneasily from divan to doorway and back to the divans, opening another coke or lighting a fresh cigarette at each new post – they never finished anything.

  Dissatisfaction was a disease with them. Reba was sure the fan was giving her a chill, Floralee needed something to warm her up, Frenchy wanted someone to tell her why she couldn’t spike a coke with gin and Kitty said she was simply suffocating.

  Wherever they powdered, wherever they paced, envy and ennui divided each.

  ‘A light drizzle would be good for trade,’ Mama took a guess, ‘but a heavy fall would ruin it.’ At that moment a cab honked from the curb.

  Though someone was always watching the street, no one had seen it drive up. A cab that appeared out of nowhere, like a cab in a misting dream. Mama simply scuttled to the curb and the girls crowded forward in their watery gloom, shading their eyes against the street.

  And saw step forth in the greenish light a naval lieutenant in full regalia, a sea-going executive in rimless glasses, a hero of sea fights yet unfought. Bearing like a rainbow across his sky-blue breast all the ribboned honors a peacetime navy could pin. From the gold-braided cap to the gold-braid sleeves, there were not many such sights above deck in 1931. Mama had never captured a sight so glorious just to behold.

  Yet the sight seemed reluctant of capture. He held Mama in some earnest discussion speaking low to keep his driver from hearing.

  ‘Mammy-freak,’ Mama thought she heard him say, ‘stick out so fah behind she hahdly got time make a child behave.’

  Mama stepped closer. ‘I don’t quite catch what you’re saying, officer.’ He leaned toward her cupping his lips – ‘Made a lemon pie. Me a little pie. What do you know? A little lemon pie all my own.’

  Mama took one step back. ‘Lemon? All your own?’

  ‘The very day after I broke the churn.’

  ‘Then I have just the girl for you,’ Mama decided. For whatever the rascal had in mind she couldn’t afford to lose any prospect so prosperous. ‘Every man likes a little change now and then. I know exactly how you feel.’

  He drew himself up. ‘Nobody knows how a mammy-freak feels,’ he informed her point blank. ‘How could anyone but another mammy-freak know how a mammy-freak feels?’

  If it was an organization he was the president. Mama simply turned to go but he held her back with a wheedling touch. ‘You know yourself,’ he cajoled her, ‘how they stick out in back.’

  ‘Who stick out in back?’

  ‘Why, all of them, when they get in a hurry. Now admit it.’

  Mama shook off his hand. ‘Who stick out? Who get in a hurry? Admit what?’ Mama was getting angry but she didn’t know at what.

  ‘Why, old black mammies of course,’ he told her as though everyone knew old black mammies were the coming thing.

  ‘Maybe you ought to come inside before it rains,’ Mama invited him, feeling they’d both be safer in the parlor.

  ‘It isn’t going to rain,’ Navy sounded certain as God, and began unfolding a little apron from under his coat. He bowed to tie it about her waist. It was striped green and white like peppermint and as he tied it Mama wondered how she had become the prospect. Her fingers plucked without strength at the apron’s price tag. He picked the tag off himself and the cab dusted off in disgust.

  ‘A good many black mammy-freaks visit you I presume?’ he presumed confidently.

  ‘It’s been
several days since one called,’ Mama played it straight, ‘and he didn’t leave his name. Would you care to offer yours?’

  ‘My men call me Commander,’ he informed her stiffly.

  ‘That,’ Mama thought, ‘isn’t what my chicks will call you.’ And led him inside like leading him home.

  Just as the first drops began.

  Inside the parlor the five-year-old boy with the mind of a forty-year-old pimp, the one his grandmother called Warren Gameliel and the women called the King of the Indoor Thieves, stood on a divan ready for anything.

  In a shirt that never reached past his navel and a tight little hide not exactly high-yellow, Warren Gameliel was actually closer to being high-brown. He was even closer to dark-brown. As a matter of fact he was black as a kettle in hell. He was so black you’d have had to put a milk bottle on his head to find him in the dark. He looked a cross between a black Angus calf and something fished out of the Mississippi on a moonless night. One tint darker and he would have disappeared altogether.

  Turning his head proudly upon his iron-colored throat, he fluttered his beautiful lashes modestly at the women’s flattery.

  ‘Meet my grandson,’ Mama always introduced her menfolks first – ‘Aint he fine?’

  ‘Five year old ’n weighs sixty-nine pound ’n she asks is he fine,’ the woman called Hallie Dear mocked Mama fondly as the big overdressed man saluted the small naked one.

  ‘Pledge allegiance, boy baby,’ Mama encouraged Warren G. to his single legitimate accomplishment. But Warren G. just planted his black toes the wider, as if to say he’d have to know more about this gold-braid deal before he’d pledge so much as a teething ring.

  Reba honked with hollow glee: the boy was growing up so fast.

  ‘Aint you shamed?’ Mama reproved him in a voice that simply donged with pride.

  Warren Gameliel felt no shame. That belonged, Hallie Dear saw in a single shocked glance, to the hero beside her. For the ghost of a smile that strayed down his lips belonged to a beggar-ghost, a penniless pleader hunting a handout – then it was gone. Leaving him cowering within himself in some cave of no knowing save his own.