A Walk On The Wild Side

by Nelson Algren

  Sitting safe in nursery nooks

  Reading picture-story books?

  And when he had finished the last round sound, would flatten his lips in a grin so contented she would protest, ‘You look like a cat eating hot mush on a frosty morning,’ and would snatch back the book. ‘You haven’t done anything a six-year-old couldn’t to look that pleased,’ she reminded him to make the fat cat-grin go. ‘Here’ – and gave him a passage wherein he immediately mired himself in such tongue-thudding woe that she took pity and began it from the start—

  We shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed

  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump:

  For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed

  For this incorruptible must put on incorruption.

  And this mortal must put on immortality—

  ‘Now what do you think of that?’

  ‘I don’t think purely nothin’ of that,’ Dove decided – ‘it remind me too near of my poor crazy pappy. Teacher dear, read me that one where somebody’s pappy got entirely drownded.’

  Full fathom five Thy father lies

  ‘That’s the good part,’ he assured her.

  Of his bones are coral made;

  Those are pearls that were his eyes:

  Nothing of him that doth fade

  But doth suffer a sea-change

  Into something rich and strange.

  ‘Didn’t take much changin’ to make Pappy strange,’ he reflected. ‘He were a little on the odd side, from the life he led.’

  ‘We’re all a little on the odd side,’ Hallie guessed, ‘from the life we’ve led. The life we’ve all led.’ And taking his hand led him to the bed.

  ‘I don’t mean for you to love me,’ she had to tell him a minute after, ‘just hold me. Hold.’

  Dove held her, sensing only dimly that in holding her he was saving her.

  For around the margins of her mind, as about a slowly tilting floor, a tyrant torso wheeled and reeled.

  Hominy-man is on his way!

  someone shouted up from the street below—

  To sell his good hominy!

  The last metallic cries of day rang in the tootle and low moan of the earliest evening ferry. Then in the big blue dusk she told him of battles lost at sea and cities half as old as time. Together they read:

  The ashes in many places were already knee-deep; and the boiling showers which came from the steaming breath of the volcano forced their way into the houses, bearing with them a strong and suffocating vapor. In some places, immense fragments of rock, hurled upon the house roofs, bore down along the streets masses of confused ruin, which yet more and more, with every hour, obstructed the way; and as the day advanced, the motion of the earth was more sensibly felt – the footing seemed to slide and creep – nor could chariot or litter be kept steady, even on the most level ground.

  Sometimes the huger stones, striking against each other as they fell, broke into countless fragments, emitting sparks of fire, which caught whatever was combustible within their reach; and along the plains beyond the city the darkness was now terribly relieved; for several houses, and even vineyards, had been set on flames; and at various intervals, the fires rose sullenly and fiercely against the solid gloom. To add to this partial relief of the darkness, the citizens had, here and there, in the more public places, such as the porticos of temples and the entrances to the forum, endeavored to place rows of torches; but these rarely continued long; the showers and the winds extinguished them, and the sudden darkness into which their fitful light was converted had something in it doubly terrible and doubly impressive on the impotence of human hopes, the lesson of despair.

  ‘Fishee! Fishee!’ yet another peddler called – ‘Mullet! Mullet! Flounder! Blackfish! Shark steaks for dem what likes ’em! Swordfish for dem what fights ’em! Fishee! Fishee!’

  Toward midnight they went, by backstreets, to the ferry. As the lights of the eastern shore swung toward them he suddenly made up his mind – ‘Pack of fools! To keep right on livin’ smack at the foot of the mountain ’n that volcano gettin’ ready to pop any minute! Didn’t they care if they lived or died?’

  ‘Why did you keep on living in a place where nobody cared whether you lived or died?’

  ‘I got out, didn’t I?’

  ‘And you’re going back, aren’t you?’

  ‘Reckon so,’ he admitted, ‘some day. It’s home.’

  ‘Well, the foot of the mountain was home to the people of Pompeii. Fact of the matter is they’d been there lots longer than your people been in Arroyo.’

  They walked through Gretna to Algiers, to a tiny bar where they could drink red wine or white and a Negro piano-man played and sang—

  Every time the sun comes down

  My love comes down for you—

  yet by docklight or ferry, by white wine or red, the lessons went on hand in hand.

  ‘I wouldn’t of marched on Moscow,’ he leaned earnestly toward her, having examined the issue from every angle.

  ‘Listen to the music, Dove.’

  Every time the rain comes down

  My love comes down for you—

  ‘—I would of waited till the ice bust up, so’s the horses would of had spring grass.’

  ‘Drink your wine, Dove.’

  ‘For you see, I’d be willing to eat horse-meat a few weeks to be the king of a whole darn city.’

  Every time the sun comes up

  My love comes up for you.

  By boatbell, by bed lamp, by love song or star, the lessons went on hand in hand, back through the narrow European streets of home and up two flights till they were safe above their firefly street again.

  ‘If we had such good good generals and all of that, how come we got whupped, Hallie?’

  ‘North had more guns. Go to sleep, Dove.’

  But in the big blue middle of the night she felt a nudge.

  ‘Why, in that case it weren’t a question or right makin’ might after all. It was more a matter of might makin’ right.’

  ‘Might makes might,’ she murmured sleepily.

  ‘Yes, but how I look at it,’ he made one more ageless decision, ‘the reason the North got most guns was because they had the right to start. What I fail to understand is how come it taken them four years to whup a bunch with such a sorry cause as ourn.’

  He knew how to wake her up all right. Hallie was unreconstructed with a vengeance. She came awake as though he’d fired on Sumter.

  ‘To your people, hiding out in the Cookson Hills, any cause but that of making corn likker was sorry.’

  ‘It was for your people to drink.’

  ‘My people? My people. What do you mean by that? – My people?’

  ‘You know darn well what I mean alright,’ for he was touched to the quick himself, ‘just because you have nappy hair—’

  ‘I’m French and Spanish and one-sixteenth Indian.’

  He had her going now and wanted to keep her going. ‘Now about that one-sixteenth—’

  ‘I’ve had enough.’ She was out of bed, the light was lit, she was pulling clothes out of closet and drawer.

  ‘Where you goin’, Hallie?’ Dove was frightened.

  For reply she upended a handbag, one she had not carried for weeks, and the contents rolled on the bed – all the tools of her ancient trade.

  He scattered them to the floor with a kick and pulled her to him, and found her mouth with the red wine still on it. She yielded wearily, a woman who had had enough of love to last a lifetime of red wine.

  Later in sleep she accused someone unseen – ‘If you had accepted the child he wouldn’t have died.’

  She wore a hat of white straw that day at the zoo when the season of sun met the season of rain. That day when they were happy enough together to make it all one, rain or sun. Dove, in a blue serge suit out of a second-hand store, let her pin a little green feather into his black-and-white checked cap an
d felt more the sporty-O than ever. And as she pinned it, love lightened his looks a little. Love, and pride that he could read the Times-Picayune or the Item, either one.

  Love, and pride. And the sense of a certain C-note yet unspent.

  Merry-go-round music drew them – around and around great stallions raced, some white as snow, some black as night, but all with manes that furled and curled as the music beat, and he wanted to ride, but was ashamed to speak. Beside him Hallie smiled to herself, it wasn’t hard to tell what he wanted to do. She drew him away from temptation.

  When they came to the monkey house he stopped dead. In one cage a hairy little character was banging his knuckles on his girlfriend’s skull to make her climb a tree for some special purpose all his own.

  ‘Why! There’s Oliver and Reba!’ Dove called to Hallie in real glee, and pitched popcorn at Finnerty. Then of a sudden it didn’t seem so funny after all, and they moved on.

  A single iron-colored owl waited in the shadows of noon like a dream waiting only for nightfall to be dreamt. And a scent of decay blew off him, as though he were rotting under his feathers.

  To watch where the elephant, crowned with children, swayed as he walked to excite the children. He looked like a great fool of a child himself. Yet he bore the weak upon his back.

  Dove bought two boxes of crackerjack. Hallie’s prize was a tiny red and blue clown made of tin; she pinned it on Dove’s lapel. His own prize was a toy tin whistle that he blew at the candyland sun.

  Crackerjack whistles and children’s voices, pony rides and merry-go-rounds, everything Dove heard and saw that day at the zoo lived within a new city innocent and bright.

  Belonging just to himself and Hallie.

  In the snake house the bended serpent writhed. One attendant held its tail neck and tail, another pried its jaws apart to let a third man bottle-feed it.

  When the lion roared Dove backed up a step. ‘He must be hungry too,’ he told Hallie.

  ‘More likely homesick,’ was Hallie Dear’s guess.

  The great gray wolves of the snowplain wilderness lay stretched waiting for December. But in the cages beside them the small restless foxes raced and raced as though summer never could be done.

  Dove marveled at the way the changeful light followed rain across the littered grass: he had never noticed how light fell before. In his mind a hurdy-gurdy played autumnal tunes he had never heard before.

  In her hay-smelling dark the quick gazelle tiptoed about in the delicate gloom, practicing a ballet of which she would certainly be the queen.

  And like a sidewalk drunk careless of wet weather or dry, the great bear lay with his paws in the air while his brood toddled and wrestled about him. Slowly from out the primeval stone came forth the ancient mother of bears, all brown. A working mother wed to a useless hulk, sole support of himself and a growing family.

  Came forth bowlegged, honest paws inward; as she had come toward the earliest man. Dove tossed her a peanut and just this once she decided to settle for that.

  In mid-afternoon the rain came again, sprinkling walk and cavern and cage. They ducked, newspapers over their heads, into a latticed pavilion. A place for October lovers. They had just ordered soft drinks and two poor-boy sandwiches when an old woman in gray stockings came up to them with a wet newspaper in her hand.

  ‘Forty years a good life,’ she assured them, ‘forty years married to a good man. It is damp, so you may have it for only a penny,’ and offered them her paper.

  ‘It’s also yesterday’s,’ Hallie told her; and gave her a nickel. ‘Keep it.’

  ‘I cannot accept charity,’ the old woman replied with injured pride. And would have left. Dove made her stay.

  ‘I’ll buy your paper,’ he offered, ‘something happened yesterday I want to read about, so you can charge yesterday’s price.’ The woman understood. She handed over the paper. Dove handed her a dollar bill and waited for his change.

  ‘Must I give back money?’ she pleaded.

  There was no change.

  As they ate the sun came out though rain still fell. ‘The Devil is beating his daughter,’ Hallie explained such changeful weather.

  ‘Is that who it was just beat me out of a dollar?’ Dove asked a little bitterly.

  For some reason Hallie began telling him how she had become a prostitute. For a long time after her baby’s death and her husband’s desertion she had been unwell, and a friend of her husband had become her only white friend. She would waken and he would be standing at the foot of her bed, watching her sleep. When she grew better he brought her a pair of shoes, just the right size, with French heels. Then he took her to a beach.

  He had lain in the sun watching the small waves wash the heels as she walked up and down at the water’s edge. Then he had taken her home. That was how easy it had been.

  ‘But I’d still rather have a man sleeping beside me than standing at the foot of my bed without my knowing he’s there,’ she told Dove, ‘it makes me afraid of what goes on in the mind of a man like that.’

  Now the Devil’s daughter was back, begging for her damp newspaper as though she had never seen either Dove or Hallie before. ‘May I have your newspaper? I’ve had a good life, forty years of marriage, forty years a good life. Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you – perhaps I’ll come by another day and you’ll give me another paper.’

  It felt like a lucky day for everybody.

  Toward evening a small breeze came up and began blowing the minutes away until it was time to go.

  As they left they passed once again the prisons where the wolves lay sentenced, though now their fur had been damped by winter’s first rain. Where still the summer foxes paced made even more restless by the changeful weather.

  And still the obedient elephant went bearing children on its back, swinging its trunk like an orchestra leader conducting an old-fashioned waltz.

  Where the white-maned merry-go-round stallions raced, one a nose ahead, then the other, then coasted when the music-box stopped.

  The homesick lion roared for home. The iron-feathered owl waited only for night to wing soundlessly into people’s dreams and be back in his tree by morning.

  Finnerty’s girlfriend, trapped out on a limb too fragile for him to follow, whimpered between fear of falling and fear of Finnerty.

  In the haysmelling dark the quick gazelle tiptoed, rehearsing forever some animal’s ballet in which she was sure to be the leading lady.

  Deep in the primeval stone the ancient bear had curled, and this time would not be seduced outside for peanuts or people, Devil or daughter.

  So they turned back at last to those streets whereon the wildest beast of all roamed free.

  At the foot of Canal Street they saw a great white excursion steamer that had come down the river from Baton Rouge that day. With a brave invitation at the foot of the gangplank—

  TONIGHT:

  OTHELLO

  Hallie had not seen a play since her schoolroom days. Dove had never seen one. ‘It’s your day, and that’s all there is to it,’ she decided.

  She herself was too heavy with the long day’s sun to wish to do more now than sit on the lower deck and watch the big old river bearing broken box lunches to the sea.

  Every ten minutes he returned to her with news: the boat would pull out at eight-thirty and the play would begin at nine! He had been below and was sure the engines were ready to start. Now they were testing the lights in the ballroom. He had seen a tall young fellow and a young woman drinking beer at the bar and had been told they were O-Thello and Dessie-Mona.

  Just then they felt the ship tremble and the big wheel began its first slow sure turn – heading for the open sea! He turned and lumbered off to see whether the captain needed his help.

  As the lights of the eastern shore swung out, Hallie heard singing down below out of years she barely remembered—

  We’ll have a bunch of little by-gollies

  And we’ll put them in the Follies—

  a
nd felt an air of joy and a water-born courting, then a stirring within herself she had felt all day but to which she had paid no heed.

  She saw the fore and aft lights of a freight barge being towed downriver. And men and beds and odors, the whole monstrous nightmare of her years since the baby had died seemed to be towed downriver with the barge. And, in the place her heart had been, again felt the faint deep stirring.

  The boat rocked in the passing barge’s wake, she shut her eyes, for she felt a pleasant nausea. And in her mind saw, around and around, the white-maned merry-go-round horses race once again. ‘One-sixteenth,’ she thought for no reason she understood, and wanted to laugh but didn’t know at what, unless it was the redheaded boy coming toward her as though bearing news.

  She listened but hardly heard. It was only when he took her hand that she understood that a play was about to begin.

  In the middle of the first act the boat was caught in a wash and the whole stage tilted a bit. It was by this time obvious to the front rows that Othello, with a bad job of makeup, was tilting slightly on his own. But retained sufficient presence of mind, when he needed to lean against the air, to bear against the tilt of the stage rather than with it. By this instinctive device Othello held the front rows breathless, wondering which way he’d fall should he guess wrong.

  But the boat could have turned on its side and Dove wouldn’t have noticed. He had been captured by the roll and trump of lines so honored by old time they justified all mankind:

  I kissed thee are I killed thee: no way but this

  Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

  ‘One-sixteenth,’ Hallie’s mind insisted as the stage tilted back and heard herself making a curious prayer all her own: ‘Lord, make it a woman or make it a man, make it black as midnight but let it be mine. This time let it be mine.’ And her heart closed fast on the very thought that any white man might share this child. And in her mind began to toss her French and Spanish forebears like emptied box lunches over the rail.

  She wished, and realized she had wished it for some days now, to return to the mulatto village in which she had been born. And there put her hair in pigtails in her people’s ancestral way until the baby came. Things would have to be done quickly before this white man could guess.