A Walk On The Wild Side

by Nelson Algren

  But a languid ease arose in her, bringing an irrational contentment that there was plenty of time for everything.

  When they left the boat, wearied out with the long day, Dove heard a tiny tinkling and saw a little ice cart at the curb. The night was hot, and ice was what he wanted.

  ‘What flavor you want, Hallie?’ he asked her.

  ‘Orange.’

  With the orange in his hand and three cents in debt to the vendor, he stood trying to decide between raspberry and pineapple, when a voice behind him said ‘chocolate,’ and a long shadow fell across curb and cart.

  Dove didn’t wait to decide, he would do without ice tonight.

  ‘Someone you know?’ Hallie wondered.

  ‘Used to.’

  ‘Why you afraid? He after you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  At the corner he dared one glance back. Fort was bent so far over, to make sure the vendor didn’t slip one over by giving him maple instead of chocolate, that Dove realized how hard it must be to tell colors at night behind dark glasses.

  In the days that followed Hallie wearied a bit of hearing ‘I kissed thee are I killed thee: no way but this, Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.’

  ‘If I only thought you knew what you were talking about I’d feel better about it,’ she told him.

  She could never be certain that he didn’t know what he was talking about. One evening she heard him read aloud—

  As far as to the sepulchre of Christ

  Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross

  We are impressed and engaged to fight,

  Forthwith a power of English shall we levy,

  Whose arms were moulded in their mother’s womb

  To chase these pagans in those holy fields

  Over whose acres walked those blessed feet

  Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed

  For our advantage on the bitter cross—

  and when she asked him what he thought it all meant he replied as if he had known all his life, ‘Oh, somethin’ ’bout old-timey kings ’n other folks there too. There’s goin’ to be a war ’n it looks like our side might get whipped. You want me to go down and bring some srimps?’

  Later, when the shrimp question had been settled and the shrimps eaten, she read—

  When that I was and a little tiny boy

  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;

  A foolish thing was but a toy,

  For the rain it raineth every day.

  But when I came to man’s estate,

  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain

  ’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gates,

  For the rain it raineth every day—

  ‘Why, that’s as good as anything,’ he assured her. And never suspected how, across behind the words she spoke, a tyrant torso wheeled and reeled.

  The Southern nights grew cooler. The rain came every day.

  Long after Hallie had gone to bed one night Dove sat alone on their balcony. Every time a breeze from the river passed, another of the lights below went out, till it seemed the breeze was blowing them out. When the windows both sides of the streets were darkened he turned up the lamp in the small room where she slept.

  Across her face a shadow lay, leaving her mouth defenseless to the light. She slept on not knowing how the river breeze had just blown out the last of the lights. Nor how the rainwind was making their room cooler than before.

  Nor yet how softly now the night traffic moved two stories down. And how all the anguish he had felt for his ignorance was gone for the first time in his life. And nothing mattered, it seemed in that moment, but that this woman should sleep on, and never know that the wind was blowing out the lights.

  Somewhere in the court below someone began playing a piano softly, as though fearing to waken her. Sitting on the side of the bed, hearing the music now near now far, he remembered the first time she had made words out of letters for him—

  Water now is turned to stone

  Nurse and I can walk upon

  Still we find the flowing brooks

  In the picture-story books

  We may see how all things are,

  Seas and cities, near and far

  And the flying fairies’ looks

  In the picture-story books

  When he turned down the lamp and lay beside her, she half turned on her side away from him.

  How am I to sing your praise

  Happy chimney-corner days

  Sitting safe in nursery nooks

  Reading picture-story books?

  He must have fallen asleep almost at once, because it seemed only a few seconds to him when he wakened and saw that the lamp was burning.

  He stared into it a moment, dully wondering if he had forgotten to turn it off. The air outside was all mixed up and noises on the street went stamping.

  Along the dresser he saw her lipstick, compact and comb. It wasn’t till that moment he realized he was alone in the bed.

  She was neither in the bathroom nor down the hall. He dressed, feeling sure, for no reason except that he could think of no other, that she had gone back to Mama’s.

  The last Dove saw of the little room above Royal Street was a broken comb lying in a pool of light.

  He left in a ceaseless rain, the saddest that ever fell. He went by streets both steep and narrow and the rain fell all the way.

  In that hour when tugboats call and call, like lovers who have lost their way.

  THREE

  OLIVER FINNERTY, DISGUST high in his throat, went into Dockery’s hoping to drown it. Chicken farm promises, Mama’s warnings, Reba’s entrails, mouse-in-a-powder box, broads haughty broads humble, broads sober broads drunk, amputees tossing dollars to broads on all fours – fever and fantasy, hot dreams and cold cash lumped like dead meat at the back of his throat too far back to bring up and too high to swallow.

  ‘There’s one sick pimp in Storyville tonight,’ he reported himself in without pity. Then tossed down two shots of Canadian rye so fast they hit together, yet served only to bring the dead meat higher.

  The little man leaned his head on his small pale hands and peered straight into the dark of his brain: a low motionless pall, like coalsmoke or smog, hung there over the roofs of a curious street – two short rows of bungalows long unpainted, like company houses down some company street; with one porch light left burning.

  Yet it wasn’t smoke nor lack of paint nor even how, below the porch, a rain puddle burned like living fire that troubled the dreaming pander so.

  For though in their narrow closets the women’s clothes still hung and their stoves still faintly gave off heat, the beer buckets stood half empty and the whiskey stood half drunk. One had steadied a dresser mirror by jabbing her slipper between it and the wood. Outside a dog kept trotting and sniffing between the deserted cribs. And an air of rage and terrible haste that could only mean the worst was yet to come walked the empty rooms.

  It came by car splashing mud to the fenders, men and wild boys leaped out – he heard the first glass smash and saw the first flame reach.

  Bringing the ponce a pleasured sorrow, a kind of release from everything.

  The same sick pleasure at the same dead dream. Though he could not place the curious name of that place nor its women’s names either dark or fair.

  He had never seen those wild boys. Nor how a rain puddle made fever fire below a last porch light left burning.

  Whether as a child he had seen such a raid from the window of a moving train or whether it was all nothing more than a wish to rid his mind of all women for good and all, poor pimp Finnerty had no way of knowing.

  ‘Oliver, you’re looking poorly.’

  The pimp raised his face that had lost all life, like that of an embryo more clever than most but stillborn all the same. And thought it must be part of his illness that he should now see his old Texas studbum standing right beside him.

  His own good old studbum, the one and only studbum. Waiti
ng for a live one with his tongue out a yard.

  Someone had put a black-and-white-checked cap only a size too large on his head and someone had stuffed him into a blue serge suit only one size too small. Someone had given him a hair cut, someone had polished his boots. Someone had pinned on his lapel a little tin clown of red and blue – but it was still the same old studbum. Like dust before the hope of the world the pander’s sickened soul was swept. A sense of well-being filled him as a cup. He felt grateful for joys both small and great, he wished it were mealtime so he could say grace. His own old stew-faced studbum. The same big stinking crawling creeping loudmouth just as useless as before.

  ‘Big Stingaree!’ he greeted Dove, and stepped back shading his eyes as though unable to believe that the biggest wonder on the character side of town had come back for a bit of a visit. ‘You know for a second there I actually didn’t recognize you in that disguise?’

  ‘You looked like maybe you was mad at me, Oliver.’

  ‘Mad? Me mad at you?’ He slipped the knot of Dove’s tightly tied tie with one deft jerk and retied it, with elaborate care, into a looser, more fashionable knot. ‘Mad? When was there ever a prouder sight? Mad? Man, I made you what you are and I’m not ashamed of my work. Now what’s this?’ He slipped a small book out of Dove’s side pocket and his smile thinned – ‘On that little-kiddy con again? What are you sellin’ them? I know you got a hot angle by the shift of your clothes and I’m deeply interested in that. When I had a hot thing I counted you in, so I scarcely doubt you’ll count me in on yours.’

  ‘I can read ’n write now, that’s what, Oliver,’ – a touch of bravado returned to Dove’s voice as he returned the book to his pocket.

  ‘Why! I’ll just take your word for that! I’ll stand for drinks on it in fact!’ Finnerty seemed somehow relieved. ‘For aint I been the one been telling them all – “Don’t worry about Mr Bigass! A certain party is giving him lessons! She’s too-terin’ him!” Tex, they laughed till they howled – they thought I’d said “tattooin’ him”! “The bum’ll show all of you a trick or two yet” is what I been sayin’’ – and dropped his voice to imply the moment had come to trust one another. ‘I bet that fine high yellow ’n you been shackin’ up a regular storm.’

  ‘I don’t know where that girl is, Oliver, that’s the truth. I wish to God I did.’

  ‘She was just in here, lookin’ for you.’

  ‘Why, that scarce could be—’ Dove reflected dully.

  ‘Of course it scarce could,’ Finnerty admitted as fast as he’d learned all he needed to know. ‘Why should she come lookin’ for you when she knows right where to find you? Dockery! Two shots here!’

  ‘I don’t drink so heavy as I used, Oliver.’

  ‘Make them doubles!’

  A sawed-off crutch pried the big door wide, letting the street light glint on the wheels. In he swung and darkness like night closed in behind him and like night came rolling soundlessly. Schmidt muted his wheels when he didn’t feel like balling.

  Finnerty put out a foot. ‘Big Dad! A small celebration in your very honor! This here is an old-time fan of yours, seen you on the silver screen! Join us!’

  ‘We’ve met,’ the cripple excused himself, ‘I’m not drinking with fans tonight.’ He put his hands to his wheels, then paused to look Dove up then down. Finnerty read the hesitation right. ‘One drink, Big Dad,’ the pander pleaded.

  ‘Bum,’ Schmidt told Dove directly, ‘you look like you’ve come into a roll. If you got gold on you, I’ll get my share.’

  ‘And if you got none,’ little grinner Finnerty promised Dove, ‘he’ll see you get some. We all got to live,’ he approved of both bullies at once, ‘Stoodint here was just asking was you actually on the road with the Strangler.’ And handed Schmidt his whiskey down.

  ‘Why, there was nothing to that,’ Schmidt found a minute after all. ‘The Strangler’d get his lock on me ’n I’d let him keep it till I’d scaled the house, for I was workin’ on percentage them days. Then I’d bust it and let him pin one shoulder and I’d flippety-flop for the yokels – they thought he surely had me. I’d let him try till I felt him tire. Then I’d get my scissors—’ he crossed two fingers to indicate two locking thighs – ‘I’d work him off me ’n clamp my lock on him—’ his crossed wrists trapped the Strangler’s head – ‘You understand if I’d turned the pressure on I’d of been out of work. But he never did bust mine.’ And handed up his empty glass. ‘No, he never did bust mine.’

  ‘Drink up,’ Finnerty ordered without a flicker of expression. ‘He never did bust his.’

  ‘I wrassled a Mexican kid once back home,’ Dove volunteered, ‘but he throwed me so durn hard I never did try that again.’

  Suddenly the cripple denied Dove and everyone – ‘No! He never did bust mine!’ And brought both big fists down upon his stumps as if to deny himself as well – ‘Zybysko couldn’t bust mine! Zybysko never did bust mine!’

  ‘Easy now, Dad, easy,’ Finnerty calmed him to lead him on, ‘I venture the girlies put more than one head lock on you that you never even tried to bust – How about that, Big Dad? Referring,’ he added hurriedly, ‘to your screen career of course.’

  ‘Screen? Career?’ Schmidt leaped to the bait like a starving bass, ‘Why yes, I did have a small part with Beery, but I didn’t know I’d made mention of that.’

  ‘You’ve talked of little else the past twenty years,’ Finnerty thought, and added aloud, ‘It came to me through mutual friends of the silver screen. I understand it was a wrestling scene you done. May we hear more about it, first-hand as it were? Big Dad?’

  ‘All past and done,’ Schmidt told him, ‘I met a woman who also had a bit part in the picture. We got engaged just before I went on the coast-to-coast tour with the Strangler. But the show broke up in the East and my coach ticket run out in Needles. I was in just such a hurry to get back to that girl that I didn’t want to lose an hour. Instead of wiring her for money I spent my last buck on a bottle ’n climbed an empty instead. One minute of midnight, December thirty-first, nineteen hundred and thirteen.

  ‘Next time I seen her was after the operation. Nursed me back to life with her own two hands. Begged me to go through with the marriage just as if nothing had happened – that’s a woman for you. How was I to take advantage of unselfishness such as that? Her with her whole career before her? Ruin two careers because one had smashed on the rocks? I sent her away and been taking care of myself ever since, better than most with better luck than my own has been.’

  ‘But,’ Finnerty inquired coolly, ‘Didn’t it take some time to get used to being smaller than other people after you’d been the biggest thing in sight for so long?’

  Was it the question or the pander’s tone? That Schmidt didn’t care for either was plain. ‘I don’t see nobody around here bigger than me,’ he looked right up at Finnerty as Dockery put three whiskies down and didn’t pick up his own. ‘If there’s anything you can do I can’t, now is your chance to tell me.’

  ‘Don’t be salty with me, Big Dad,’ Finnerty’s tone was serene. ‘I don’t pretend to compete with you. But Stoodint here now is something else – he’ll out-stud any man alive, Big Dad.’

  Schmidt turned on Dove with a swerve of his wheels. ‘Can you do anything I can’t do better, bum?’

  ‘I can’t do lots of things even able-bodied men can do, mister,’ Dove hurried to say; and even to his own ears that didn’t sound quite right.

  ‘For example,’ Finnerty helped him, ‘he could never get work as THE LIVING HALF.’

  So that was the bit. Out at last.

  ‘I wish you both joy of your trade,’ Schmidt told both, and wheeled off as noiselessly as he’d come.

  Yet Finnerty called after, openly jeering, ‘If you aint champeenship material, might as well let the women get you now!’

  Then pressing his finger hard into Dove’s chest – ‘You know who he meant by that “joy-of-your-trade” crack? You, that’s who. You don’t have to ta
ke it, Tex. I’m back of you.’

  Dove emptied his own glass and Schmidt’s too.

  ‘I’m back of you, too, Oliver.’ And wished one of the glasses were full again.

  ‘And when I back a man I back him all the way. For as you know, Finnerty don’t fight. He just kills and drags out.’

  Sometimes one of his glasses was full, sometimes both. In the bar mirror faces of people watched him too steadily. Along the bar faces of dolls watched the people. Faces of people and faces of dolls and his glass was full again. He had come to find somebody whose name was right on the tip of his tongue but just at that moment the juke began playing something about saints marching in. The people began marching behind the saints and the dolls behind the people as Dove began marching too. Where bells were ringing, trains kept switching, saints were marching, time was passing and his glass was full again.

  Till a voice came down through the whiskey-mist saying no Linkhorn could read.

  ‘Who can’t read?’ he heard somebody asking ready to fight, ‘who sayz I can’t?’

  ‘Nobody said you couldn’t, son. Now be quiet or get out.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that to me, Ol-i-ver,’ he warned Finnerty.

  ‘This isn’t Oliver.’

  ‘Who you?’

  ‘Dockery, that’s who.’

  ‘And this is Big Stingaree, that’s who – Who!’

  The floor tilted a little but he got hold of something and held, just held. Till the lights came up and there, with a small halo all around its edge, stood his own little whiskey glass filled again. For sheer love of whiskey, he began to cry. As dolls came marching, saints came marching, people were laughing. Through a Kewpie-doll jungle that had no end.

  ‘He’ll be alright, Doc,’ somebody who was the best friend anyone ever had told someone who wasn’t. He pulled at Finnerty’s sleeve to make him listen – ‘The people want me to make ’em laugh again, Ol-i-ver.’

  ‘Read ’em a kiddy-story out of your book.’