A Walk On The Wild Side

by Nelson Algren

  Hallie hooked her arm in his to let him know he really wasn’t as alone as all that, and he peered out slowly, warily. Feeling her support, he began coming out of it.

  Slowly, warily.

  ‘In Shicawgo I worked in a office for loryers,’ Reba hurried to keep the man from confusing her with certain common whores trying to crowd him – ‘I specialized in tort ’n see-zure—’ but Floralee elbowed her aside. Floralee was fond of gold braid too.

  ‘I can sing just ever so purty, mister,’ she offered in a voice strung on little silver bells ‘—only modesty songs of course, for I don’t know vulgary words—’ and did him as pretty a little curtsy as ever he’d seen.

  Warren G. tried to regain the spotlight, but Mama yanked the cap, that he had taken off the officer’s head, far down over the boy’s eyes, as if shutting off his vision might improve his manners. Somebody got the juke going just then and someone else called for gin. Someone said, ‘Make mine a double’ just as the juke began—

  All of me

  Why not take all of me

  ‘I can sing purtier far than that,’ Floralee insisted amid pleas, claims, threats and tiny squeals, for now all vied for Navy’s attention.

  ‘Why do people down here all talk so Southern?’ Chicago Kitty complained. ‘Why do they have to talk like the niggers? Why can’t they talk like their selves?’

  ‘We do talk like ourselves, honey,’ Hallie assured her, ‘the Negras learned to talk that way from us.’

  ‘May I recite now?’ Floralee begged.

  ‘As soon as the juke is through, sweetheart,’ Mama promised, and turning to the guest, ‘This girl is a regular angel.’

  ‘She’s a whore like everyone else,’ Kitty put in – ‘anyone can be a whore. I feel rotten about everyone but myself.’

  ‘Is that true?’ Navy asked Mama curiously. ‘Can any woman become a whore? Any woman at all?’

  ‘Anyone at all,’ Mama was optimistic. ‘Aren’t we all created free and equal?’

  ‘Tell me one thing, sailor boy,’ Chicago Kitty demanded. ‘Where do you keep your submarines?’

  ‘Why ask me a thing like that?’ The lieutenant looked embarrassed.

  ‘I have to know. I’m a spy on the side.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone calling our guest sailor boy,’ Mama scolded Kitty and everyone. ‘Look up to this man! He’s honoring us! Hear this! Commander! Report all insults directly to me! Warren Gameliel you little black fool, get that fool hat off your head and pledge allegiance in-stan-taneously!’

  ‘Mama!’ Hallie scolded in turn, ‘stop giving orders as though we were in battle formation! This man didn’t come here to have you pin a medal on him. Can’t you see you’re spoiling his fun?’ And brushing everyone aside, she framed his face in her palms to make him return the look she gave. ‘Navy, don’t mind Mama,’ she told him, ‘she’s just impressed by your uniform.’

  ‘Don’t dare call our Guest of Honor Navy like that!’ – Mama was getting worse by the minute – ‘This man represents the entire Atlantic fleet!’

  ‘I represented two loryers,’ Reba remembered wistfully.

  ‘I represent a tube of K-Y jelly ’n a leaky douche bag,’ Kitty commented bitterly.

  ‘I can sing like a damned bird,’ Floralee marveled aloud, ‘only how did I fly here?’

  Outside the drunks were coming out of the country’s last speak-easies and the street lamps began to move like the breasts of a young girl under the hands of a man who has bought too many. Warren Gameliel reached out blindly and secured a black strangehold on the officer’s neck.

  ‘If you don’t behave I’ll send you to the nigger school,’ Mama threatened him.

  And in an odd little silence a girl’s voice said, ‘I was drunk, the juke box was playing, I began to cry.’ And all the air felt troubled by cologne.

  ‘I think our guest wants to see me,’ Hallie guessed, and pulled Navy’s head right against her breast. He nodded strengthless assent.

  She helped him to rise, and he rose more like a sick man than one drunk.

  ‘Send two double gins to my room,’ Hallie ordered Mama, ‘the rest of you drink whatever you want.’

  The door shut behind them and a lamp lit a room that might have served a whore of old Babylon: a narrow bed in hope of bread, a basin in hope of purity. A beaded portiere to keep mosquitoes out and let a little music in. A scent of punk from an incense stick to burn off odors of whiskey or tobacco, a calendar from the year before and an image above it of something or other in hope of forgiveness for this or that. A whole world to millions since the first girl sold and a world to millions yet.

  The lamp’s brown glow on her amber gown made of Hallie a golden woman. For her eyes were gray, her skin was olive and about her throat she wore a yellow band.

  Her gown, unfastened at one shoulder, was kept from falling only by the rise of her unbound breast. Still she said, ‘No matter how often I trick, as soon as I’m with a man I get shaky.’

  ‘You don’t have to bother to get shaky with me,’ the seagoing executive assured her, ‘don’t even bother taking off your clothes.’

  So he had found some fault in her. ‘What’s the matter, don’t you like dark girls?’

  ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ he reassured her, ‘I’m of no use, that’s all. But I’ll gladly pay you for your time.’

  ‘I don’t need charity.’ Hallie was hurt nonetheless.

  ‘It isn’t charity. You’ve already helped me in a way that can’t be bought.’

  ‘Then I’ll take the money all the same,’ Hallie recovered herself and sat beside him on her dishonored bed, letting the gown drape loosely over her breast in event he should prove not so useless as he thought.

  ‘I’m from Virginia, of course,’ he announced as though that were more important than a woman’s flesh.

  ‘I’m from Louisiana myself,’ Hallie went along. ‘Of course.’

  ‘What I mean is’ – he felt it time to be kind – ‘I’m a gentleman.’

  ‘I’m certain you are,’ Hallie told him he really was. ‘When you’re a lady yourself that’s something you can tell about a man right off.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say,’ he tried afresh, ‘I’m a Virginia gentleman.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be sarcastic, mister,’ Hallie promised him, ‘but so what?’

  ‘Why,’ he had never thought that being a Virginia gentleman might not be self-sufficing, ‘well, it means I can teach at Washington and Lee!’

  ‘It’s nice to have two jobs,’ Hallie was sure, ‘and in times like these amounts to a real curiosity.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what is a yet mightier curiosity,’ he got down to business at last, ‘and that’s the way old black mammies stick out in back—’ his voice took on a secret excitement – ‘the way she come by with a broom ’n most knocks you down – “Boy! – stay outa mah way when ah’m cleanin’, Boy” –’ n here she comes by again with bucket ’n mop – “Boy, when you gonna learn to behave? Didn’t ah tell you stay outa mah way? Boy!” –’ n you just about turn around ’n here comes Mammy back again – “Boy! You got nawthin’ to do all day but stand in mah path? You fixin’ to get y’se’f soaked?”’ He composed himself only with an effort.

  ‘Mister,’ Hallie asked gently, ‘how long you been in this condition?’

  ‘Since the day I broke the churn of course. Black Mammy’s been dead nineteen years – otherwise why would I feel this way? Hand and foot she waited on us and when that day come when all she could do was just to set in her old cane chair, there wasn’t a soul but myself to fetch her a glass of water.

  ‘“Mammy,” I told her, “you waited on me, I’m goin’ to wait on you. I’m takin’ care of my old black mammy.”

  ‘I slept by her chair, for she couldn’t lie down. When I woke at night I could reach out and touch the back of her skinny black hand and know if she was asleep or awake just by the touch. Mostly she’d be awake. You know what I’d ask her then?’

&n
bsp; Hallie felt his hand on her own. ‘What you ask her then?’

  ‘I’d ask her, “You want anything, Black Mammy?” That’s just what I’d ask her.’

  ‘She must have been grateful for your care.’

  He looked at Hallie so evenly. ‘More than I knew. For the very day she died she raised her weary old arm and give me a back-handed slap.’

  ‘You broke another churn on her?’

  ‘It was her way of letting me know that she had understood all along what her first back-handed slap, when I was ten years old, had done.’

  ‘She forgive you at last for breakin’ the churn?’ Hallie kept trying.

  ‘We were too grateful to one another for forgiving,’ he explained – ‘Don’t you think I know it was Black Mammy’s hand made a mammy-freak out of me? That I might have had a wife and family now if it hadn’t been for her hand? Yet I’m grateful to her still. Who else ever thought I was worth human care? I’m glad the porch was slippery.’

  Hallie was lost.

  ‘Mister,’ she shook her head sadly, ‘I just don’t take your meaning.’

  ‘The water from the churn made the porch all wet. When its handle snapped she saw what I’d done and aimed her hand. I slipped and fell so she paddled me face down. I lay hollering, pretending she was half killing me. Black Mammy had a good strong hand. That was the first time I was made to behave.’

  Hallie saw light faintly.

  ‘What happened exactly?’

  ‘Why, what happens when a man is having a girl, that’s what happened. And I’ve never been able to make it happen any other way since.’ He laughed in the watery light yet his face looked stricken.

  ‘I’m terribly tired, I don’t know why,’ he said and put his face in his hands.

  It came to Hallie then that this wasn’t at all some monster of the nastier sort, but only some sort of lonely suckling boy playing Commander with his nose still running.

  ‘Mister,’ she told him quietly, ‘you don’t need a girl. You need a doctor.’

  ‘There aren’t any doctors for black-mammy freaks,’ he explained dryly, as though he’d tried looking one up in the city directory.

  ‘Then just try to rest,’ Hallie told him.

  Fast as she could pin, Hallie was preparing Mama for the great impersonation.

  ‘You don’t think he stole his ship’s money, do you?’ Mama had to know. ‘He isn’t going to get us all in trouble, is he?’

  ‘You never made an easier dollar your whole enduring life,’ Hallie reassured her, ‘he’s just a green boy been kept on black titty too long. All you got to remember is this rapscallion keeps getting in your way. Just don’t hit him too hard – just hard enough to make it look good.’

  ‘You wont catch me hitting no member of our armed forces,’ and Mama stuck right there.

  ‘Getting whupped by his old black mammy is what he come here for – turn around so I can pin you.’ She began stuffing a small pillow into Mama’s bosom. ‘The more you stick out in front the more you stick out behind. I’ll have you sticking out so far you’ll look like Madame Queen.’

  ‘Girl, I was born in this country.’

  It was plain Mama hadn’t caught the play even yet.

  ‘Mama,’ Hallie pleaded, ‘forget the man’s uniform. I’m trying to tell you he isn’t like other men.’

  Mama stiffened like a retriever. ‘Honey, he aint one of them O-verts?’ – She was ready to rip off her handkerchief-head masquerade and run the whole O-vert navy out of town ‘I wont cater to them. Not for no amount.’

  ‘If he were he’d be better off,’ Hallie reassured her. ‘Now turn around,’ and pinned skirt over skirt till Mama, weighted down, sank heavily into a chair.

  ‘Honey, I’m starting to sweat,’ she complained.

  ‘Sweat till you shine,’ Hallie encouraged her, ‘but don’t show your face till I give you the sign.’ And stepped through the portiere.

  Beneath the ruin of the gold-braid hat the King of the Indoor Thieves had collapsed at last, his undershirt tangled about his throat as if someone had tried to improve his manners by finishing him off altogether. He snored till his toes were spread, he stretched till he creaked in dreams of some final assault for an earth about to be his for keeps.

  ‘All of you stop talking out of the corners of your mouth like you were Edgar G. Robinson and everybody was in the can,’ Hallie quieted the woman – ‘You’ve got a guest tonight that means gold from way back, so try to show manners.’

  For down the stair with an admiral’s tread came the hero of sea fights as good as won, looking like the dogs had had him under the house; with a gin glass latched to his hand.

  Hallie crooked one finger toward the portiere.

  Mama came forth with forehead shining, bandanna and broom, all sweat and Aunt Jemima, in the peppermint apron that hung like candy.

  The second he saw her Navy dropped his glass. ‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ he apologized immediately, and began trying to clean the floor with his sleeve, glass, splinters, and all, making a worse mess than before.

  (Long-ago Mammy who made me behave the day the big churn broke, who backhanded me to pretend she didn’t know something had broken forever. Who knew how it was going to be with me, and made me a little pie all my own. Who’s left to make me behave?)

  Mama seated herself across from him, in all her preposterous gear. Hallie put a warning finger to her lips. The girls exchanged looks part fear and part wonder.

  ‘I’m a Protestant by birth but a Catholic by descent,’ Mama felt it was time to explain the curious no-man’s land of her faith, ‘I’ve shod the horse all around.’ Meaning she had had four husbands. ‘So I’m not acceptable to the Church. But if I can’t die sanctified I hope to die blessed.’

  His elbow touched Floralee’s glass. It tottered, he reached as if to keep it from tipping and knocked it over, of course, instead. The girl pushed back her chair and he began mopping it up with a silk handkerchief, although all he was doing actually was swishing the handkerchief around in it. ‘Go on with your story,’ he told Mama, ‘I’m sorry to be so clumsy.’

  Mama had lost the thread. All she could remember was that she had four husbands.

  ‘Three of them were thieves and one was a legit man – I’d never marry another legit man. Did you know that a prize fighter is more gentle than other men, outside the ring? That’s because he knows what a man’s fists can do. Do you know that you’re safer living with a man who kills for hire than with a man who has never killed? That’s because one knows what killing is. The other don’t.’

  ‘Why,’ Navy remarked, ‘in that case ill-fame women ought to make better wives than legitimate girls.’

  Again that odd little silence fell. Nobody knew what to say to that.

  ‘Navy, I think that’s the nicest thing I’ve heard anyone say since I’ve been in the trade,’ Hallie said – and his elbow tipped Mama’s glass into her lap.

  ‘Now don’t tell me that “just happen,”’ Mama scolded in real earnest now – ‘Don’t tell me any man is that clumsy. Mister, my frank opinion is you done that a-purpose.’

  ‘Honest, I didn’t, Mammy,’ he lied patiently.

  ‘Don’t whup him, Mama,’ Floralee pleaded for him.

  ‘I’m sure he wont do it again,’ Hallie defended him too.

  ‘Give me one more chance, Mama,’ he whimpered.

  ‘Only out of respect for your uniform,’ Mama issued final warning, ‘and one more is all you gets.’ She turned to shake out her skirts, somebody tittered and somebody honked and she whirled just in time to catch him with two fingers to his nose. Now Mama scarcely knew what to feel.

  ‘Why, that isn’t the least bit nice, a man of your background to have such manners—’

  ‘He didn’t mean anything, Mama,’ Hallie was sure.

  ‘Don’t whup him,’ Floralee begged.

  ‘Cross my heart I didn’t mean anything,’ Navy swore in that same unbearable small-boy whine that in itself enti
tled him to a thrashing.

  ‘O he meant it all right,’ Kitty informed, ‘I saw him with my naked eye – and I have a very naked eye.’

  ‘I will try to do better, please mum,’ he promised so humbly, ‘I will try to behave and be a good boy—’ and standing to cross his promise, yanked tablecloth, bottle, glasses, trays, cokes, decanters and four bottles of beer crashing to the floor.

  ‘O you fool’s fool,’ now Mama roared right at him, black with rage as he turned white with fright, neither pretending in the least – right under the table the two-hundred pound hero ducked. And cowering there all could hear him plea – ‘Don’t whup me, Mama, please don’t whup me.’

  Unable to reach him with her fist, Mama seized his black silk ankles and hauled him forth floundering on his back, his eyes closed and covered by his arm to ward off anticipated blows.

  ‘I don’t like the looks of this,’ Mama told Hallie, ‘he aint got no right to be so loose without being drunk or sick, neither.’

  ‘He’s sick enough for twenty,’ Hallie informed her. ‘Somebody get some water.’

  ‘Wouldn’t beer do as well?’ Floralee inquired, and emptied a full pitcher right in his face. Then, looking into her pitcher, grew sad. ‘Why, it’s empty, fun’s all done.’ She looked ready to cry.

  ‘Use cokes,’ Hallie ordered.

  Now who but Hallie could have thought of that? Floralee leaped for the half-finished bottles standing like small sentries on ledge and divan, and in no time at all had her pitcher full again. This time she poured it down the front of his shirt.

  ‘That was fun,’ she told Hallie then.

  ‘The fun is done,’ Hallie told her.

  ‘Fun done,’ the girl accepted matters.

  But on the floor the fun had only begun. There he lay licking his big ox-tongue, a coke-licking Lazarus too languid to rise.

  ‘I’ve been everywhere God got land,’ Mama announced, ‘but this is the most disgusting sight yet seen.’

  ‘You can drop his legs now,’ Hallie pointed out, and Mama released the ankles, that dropped like a dead man’s legs.