A Walk On The Wild Side

by Nelson Algren

  They looked like bulldogs, they looked like coyotes, they looked like real hard cases. The human dishrag with hair and brows so colorless he seemed more like something hung out to dry than anything actually living. His faithful timberwolf beside him, holding a spoon in event the rag should want it washed, shined or dipped in gravy. Wayback without a tooth in his head, standing beside Out-Front who had enough teeth for two. Wren, holding Dundee’s lunch bucket to keep Feathers from laying an egg in it, and Chicken Spanker himself, looking as though he’d like to peck somebody. And Gonzales, without his shovel. But who was ready to go all the same.

  Even Murphy was dismayed. ‘Just look at the material they’re sending me. Who can do anything with material like that? Sec Fiend!’

  Raincoat was late, he hadn’t known court was convening. He hurried in apologizing for the way he was dressed. Only Cross-Country Kline was missing and Dove was grateful for that.

  ‘Sec Fiend!’ Murphy demanded. ‘Who’s the judge of this here court?’

  Several gave dull unseeing glances about: at walls, at bars, at windows, at doors, at faces in the winding air, for they didn’t know which sec fiend was meant.

  ‘Raincoat Sec Fiend!’ Judge Murphy made it plain as possible, ‘the court asked you a question!’

  ‘What was the question, Hon’r?’

  His Honor had forgotten the question himself.

  ‘It don’t matter,’ he improvised cleverly, ‘Just tell the court who was it said he could whup you if he wanted and you admitted he could if he wanted.’

  ‘You could whup me any old time your Honor you wanted to whup me, your Honor.’ Timberwolf always wanted to be first.

  ‘You whup me too!’ They all got the idea at once, with envy, some even pretending that Murphy actually had so favored them.

  ‘You whup me somethin’ terrible,’ the Dishrag lied.

  ‘You whup me even worse,’ the Wolf just wouldn’t be outdone.

  ‘Whup even worse,’ the Bug began his echoing.

  ‘Get that one out of here,’ Judge Murphy decided.

  ‘One out of here,’ Bug had just time to agree before he was rushed back to his cell and told to stay there, they’d tell him the verdict later.

  ‘Tell you the verdict later,’ he agreed, being the most agreeable of bugs.

  ‘What I whup you with, mighty fellows?’ Murphy asked.

  ‘Big fistes!’ Sec Fiend shouted as though only now beginning to feel pain.

  ‘Big fistes is right,’ Murphy agreed and poked his fist right under Dove’s nose – ‘What it look like?’ he demanded to know, ‘Is it look like a man’s fist or don’t it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if that aint but what it is,’ Dove shrugged indifferently.

  Murphy stepped back, pulled a crumpled sheet of notepaper from his pocket and read while all listened reverently:

  ‘These are the rules of the Kangaroo Court. Any man found guilty of breaking into this jail without consent of the inmates will be fined two dollars or else spend forty days on the floor at rate of five cents per deem. Or else he could carry his Honor three times around the run-around piggyback if the jury recommended mercy.

  ‘Every man entering this tank must keep cleaned and properly dressed. Each day of the week is wash day except Sunday. Every man must wash his face and hands before handling food even his own. Any man found guilty of spitting in ash tub or through window will voluntarily duck his head in slop bucket, else have it ducked. Each and every man using toilet must flush with bucket immediately afters. Man found guilty by jury of his peers gets head ducked in bucket else he wants to or not.

  ‘Throw all paper in the coal tub. Don’t draw dirty pictures on wall, somebody’s sister might come visiting. When using dishrag keep it clean. Any man caught stealing off another criminal will have William Makepeace Murphy to reckon with.

  ‘Every man upon entering this tank with ven’ral disease, lice, buboes, crabs or yellow glanders will report same immediately. Any man found violating any of these rules will be punished according to the justice of the court and the jury of his peers and William Makepeace Murphy. Also Tank Treasurer.’

  William Makepeace Murphy batted his eye at Dove, proud as a frog eating fire. ‘Every time you open your mouth from here on out it will be used against you. No mercy is this court’s motto.’

  ‘Then I won’t talk.’

  ‘Prisoner in contemp’!’ Dishrag chortled – ‘Boy, did you walk into that.’

  ‘He’s right,’ the judge backed up the peer. ‘You’re now in contemp’ somethin’ awful.’

  ‘Why?’ Dove asked.

  ‘Because I contemp’ you, that’s why, son.’ Murphy took a sympathetic tone, ‘I want to help you but you’re not helping me. If I were you I’d make a clean breast of all the dirty crimes you done and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. I think you’d feel better spiritually.’

  ‘But you said the court’s motto is no mercy.’

  ‘Using a legal loophold like that is even more contempt’ble. Now you’re deeper contempted than before.’

  ‘Ataboy, Judge!’ the Dishrag cheered, ‘walked right smack-dab into it again! Now he got to confess what he done!’

  ‘Why, I never did outrightly crime,’ Dove had to defend himself.

  ‘Of course not, because you’re a holy angel,’ Murphy congratulated him, ‘only where are your wings?’

  This flash of wit literally rocked the cell. ‘Where are your wings, Holy Angel?’ ‘That’ll learn him to crack wise.’

  Dove had to wait a minute before the court grew relatively quiet again.

  ‘I just meant I weren’t guilty of nothin’ you read in them rules,’ he explained.

  ‘Guilty of nothin’ you say? Why then it naturally follow you’re mighty innocent of somethin’. Let’s see you deny that one.’

  ‘Of course I’m innocent of nothin’,’ Dove began to get angry as he grew confused.

  ‘Then you’re guilty of everythin’, naturally.’

  ‘Guilty of everythin’!’ the Dishrag bleated, the Timberwolf beetled, Sec Fiend giggled and Feathers crowed, ‘Guilty! Everyone guilty of everythin’!’

  ‘Looks like you walked smack-dab into it again,’ Murphy mourned for him. ‘If you’d just own up the court might go lighter. What we call mightigating circumstance.’

  ‘I stand mute,’ Dove resolved suddenly.

  ‘Too late,’ Murphy still sympathized, ‘you’ve already confessed.’

  ‘Confessed nothin’,’ Dove protested. ‘I didn’t confess nothin’!’

  ‘You said you were innocent of nothin’, and if that aint confessin’—’

  ‘Innocent of nothin’! Guilty of everythin’!’

  ‘You’ve heard the verdict,’ Murphy informed him. ‘What are you standing there for? The slop bucket’s in the corner.’

  ‘I don’t duck my head in no slop bucket,’ Dove took a firm stand.

  Country Kline came to lean in the door. ‘I suggest you recommend mercy, gentlemen,’ he told no particular gentleman.

  ‘Six piggybacks! Call that mercy,’ Dishrag decided.

  His Honor waited to see whether the prisoner would accept commutation. Dove looked at Country. Country nodded.

  Dove stooped, hands on knees as though for leapfrog and His Honor clambered onto his back. Then it was up and down and around, Dove bowed nearly double with the lank youth’s weight, while the jury of his peers raced from cell to cell, keeping count at every turn.

  When the punishment was done and Murphy had dismounted he told Dove lightly, ‘It wouldn’t do no great harm to spend a little tobacco on the boys to show you don’t bear them no ill will.’

  Dove handed the court his Picayunes. His jealousy satisfied, Murphy lit one for Dove.

  Peace reigned in Tank Ten once again.

  And the bugs were back in their beds.

  Early next morning the turnkey came up long before the meat tins were due.

  ‘Kline! Get dressed! Sheriff ’s
waitin’ on you. That’s all I know.’

  But the tank knew more than that: the feds had come for Country at last. Yet Country took his own good time in getting ready, as though still unsure about what that judge might throw at him.

  ‘I need time to think this over,’ he told the waiting turnkey as though he had a choice in the matter.

  At last he shook hands all around, and last of all with Dove. ‘See you a hundred stretches hence,’ he promised and Dove was sorry to see him go.

  To go in a driving rain, when the Mardi Gras was done, but night bulbs still burned on.

  The night bulb that usually dimmed at six was allowed to burn that morning till the courthouse chimes rang at nine. A minute after the bulb began fading. Slowly, as though burning out. And the cells were left shadowed by the night that had passed.

  A dark and lost hour, the first Dove had spent in a cell all alone. When a faraway train called like a train going farther and farther from home and he thought, ‘That engineer sounds terrible lonesome.’

  Later, by standing at the run-around window, he saw they were at it again in the Animal Kingdom. But he had lost all desire to keep count. Someone was trying to get a spitting contest going for a sack of Bull Durham, but no one wanted to play. A green Lincoln wheeled around the yard, swaying a bit down the unpaved alley, its siren rising as it hit the open street with headlights fighting the fog.

  ‘There go the nabs!’ he announced to the tier, and everyone came crowding to see, but by then it was gone.

  Still its siren rang on the iron faintly and he felt dead sick for home.

  All that wintry afternoon the Southern rain never ceased. In the run-around the prisoners gathered together uneasily as dark came on, to read the rules of the Kangaroo Court like men reading Genesis on a raft at sea. Toward evening came a lull in the rain: in the lull they heard boots climbing stairs as though burdened.

  It always took the sheriff longer to open the Tank Ten door than the outer doors because it was opened by the brake locked in a box on the outer wall and the key to the box, smaller than his other keys, always eluded him for a minute.

  The men listened while he fumbled. ‘Somebody with him,’ everyone sensed.

  The sheriff and a deputy with a badge on his cap, and between them Country Kline bent double, and all three soaking wet. He looked somehow smaller and his toes kept scraping the floor as they half-dragged and half-carried him.

  Beneath the cocky red cap his face was so drained of blood it held no expression at all. Somebody bundled a blanket and stuffed it through the bars. Country sagged, mouth agape.

  When he was stretched out he clutched his cap against his stomach and drank the rain running off his hair. The fingers began searching feebly for the wound.

  ‘I knew I had him when I seen him vomick,’ the deputy explained. Country’s face was more gray than Dove had ever seen a living face and his eyes kept dilating with shock.

  ‘Shouldn’t have turned rabbit on us, dad,’ the sheriff reproved him while the doc swabbed the belly with cotton batting.

  ‘He jumped out of the car,’ the deputy seemed to feel he owed the men peering through the bars an explanation, ‘I hollered, but he just bent over and started zig-zagging. Not sure as I blame him. Ninety-nine years is a mighty long time.’

  Country’s throat was the same dead-gray as his fingers; the color of the concrete that had held him so long; the color of his only home; as well as the hue of that new and untried shore to which for so long he had half-wished to go.

  ‘We’ll have to op-rate, dad. Say “Okay,”’ the sheriff asked.

  Caught between the double disappointments of dying too soon or staying alive to no purpose whatsoever, his eyes looked inward to make a choice; unaware that the choice had been taken from him. Behind his eyes Dove saw the man racing like a fox in an ever-diminishing circle. It was so hard to go, it was so hard to stay, it was all so hard all the way. The fingers, wet with rain or sweat, twisted weakly on the cap, trying to keep hold; the eyes kept trying to understand.

  The sheriff put one ear to his lips to hear the whisper of legalized consent. If it had been himself with the gun he would have gotten the man at the knees, he felt.

  The fingers abandoned the cap and wandered about the wound’s gray edge, tracing the torn tissue to make sure it was at last his own.

  ‘Tell us we can op-rate, dad,’ he asked. ‘I ought to sew you now.’

  Outside the rain ceased a minute, as though it too listened for the whisper. The doctor looked up at the sheriff and the sheriff looked down at the doctor, his face a mask of impassivity. He’d been sued once; he wasn’t getting sued again. The odor of iodine began filling the tank.

  ‘Say yes,’ Dove urged him, ‘Say yes, Country.’

  The turnkey came up, trying to hurry and walk softly both at once. ‘They got some broad downstairs claims she used to be his old lady. Got papers to prove it, I didn’t look too close. No, I didn’t search her, I was afraid of what I’d find. Maybe she’ll say yes for him.’

  ‘“Used-to-be” don’t git it,’ the sheriff shook his head like a weary mastiff, ‘as I understand it, as long as he’s conscious he’s suppose to say it hisself. If he aint, it takes a legal relation, else I’m liable. First aid is as far as law give me the right to go.’

  Outside the rain began again, Dove heard the wind blowing between the wash of it, trying to say ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

  But no one heeded the brainless rain and nobody heard what the wind tried to tell. For the wind and the rain came every day and whispered like two unpaid lawyers together all night, fixing to say what, in the coming day, what everyone wished to hear said.

  ‘It’s awful when it’s like this,’ Dove thought, ‘and it’s like this now.’

  Out of the corner of his eye he felt he was being watched, yet did not turn his head. Something moved in the corner – that cat! Hallie’s brindle again! She made a dash for it right across the floor and as she turned a corner invited him, by one whisk of her tail, to follow. He followed into a room where a virgin burned vaguely high above and, closer at hand, a woodstove cast a heartshaped flame the flowing hue of blood. A woman’s black lace slip and a man’s blue jeans were entangled on the floor and he could not tell where the cat had gone. A layer of dust had fallen, long ago, across the floor and the walls. The entangled slip and the jeans that had, but a moment before, been clothing, was a heap of dust. Panes, pictures, doorways, curtains; all were dust.

  He touched a speck to his tongue and it was not dust, but salt. As the light of the virgin too high on the wall began burning too bright and he wakened with the night bulb shining right in his eyes.

  And the taste of salt on his tongue.

  ‘What’s the word on Country?’ he asked.

  ‘Turned his face to the wall half an hour ago,’ the turnkey replied.

  And heard Gonzales grieving—

  ‘Toda le noche estoy, ay, nina

  Pensando en ti. Yo, do amores

  Me muero, desde que te vi

  Morena salada, desde que te vi’

  ‘I feel like I been everywhere God got land,’ Dove thought, ‘yet all I found was people with hard ways to go. All I found was troubles ’n degradation. All I found was that those with the hardest ways of all to go were quicker to help others than those with the easiest ways. All I found was two kinds of people. Them that would rather live on the loser’s side of the street with the other losers than to win off by theirselves; and them who want to be one of the winners even though the only way left for them to win was over them who have already been whipped.

  ‘All I found was men and women, and all the women were fallen. Sports of the world, poor bummies, poor tarts, all they were good for was to draw flies I was told. You could always treat one too good, it was said, but you never could treat one too bad. Yet I wouldn’t trade off the worst of the lot for the best of the other kind. I think they were the real salt of the earth.’

  And his heart remembered the harlot
s’ streets till it came to a rutted and unpaved road at the end of a little lost town. A town where time, going backward, had left great paving stones severed by wind and sand. And felt the wind still coming across the mesquite to where a single gas lamp at the end of town made a lonely fire. By midnight its faltering, flickering glow would lighten a legend across a dark pane:

  LA FE EN DIOS

  Bien venidas, todas ustedes

  ‘Terasina,’ the boy asked in a small awed wonder of the woman who once had pitied his ignorance there, ‘Are you there? Are you there in your bed at the end of the world while I’m here in my bed at mine?’

  On the morning that seven meal-tins came up instead of eight, an immediate clamor rose. A prisoner didn’t get breakfast the morning of his release. All were willing to go hungry for freedom’s sake. ‘Who’s makin’ it, Mr Foster?’ they had to know, ‘Who’s makin’ the big door?’

  Dove, on his haunches and his blanket over his shoulders, answered instead for Mister Foster.

  ‘All you crim’nals can quit worryin’. It’s Linkhorn makin’ it today.’ He had kept exact count of the days.

  The Rag, the Timberwolf, Sec Fiend, Natural Bug, Wayback and Out-Front, Chicken Spanker and the Honorable William Makepeace Murphy crowded about to wish him the worst.

  ‘You’ll be back tomorrow!’ Wayback promised.

  ‘Hell, he’ll be back tonight,’ Out-Front was sure.

  ‘Meanwhile, make this last you,’ Murphy said, and presented Dove with a sack of Bull Durham, neatly tied as a gift ought to be.

  Dove hesitated. Gathered crumb by crumb from seven sacks, it was nearly three-quarters full. ‘And the papers,’ Murphy added proudly, holding out the pitiful gift.

  Dove accepted. ‘I’ll see you guys,’ he told them, then shook hands on that understood lie, knowing he would never see a man of them all again.

  In the mixed-up April of ’32 the numbers of jobless rose to eight millions, two hundred thousand steelworkers took a fifteen percent wage cut and it took a cardinal to perceive that the country’s economic collapse was actually a wonderful piece of luck, for every day it brought thousands closer to the poverty of Christ, who had been nowhere near before. For thousands it was the chance of a lifetime to bring Jesus’ simplicity, the cardinal said, right into the home. All over the country men and women and even small children began taking advantage of this spiritual opportunity. All manner of little goodies like that were lying about in the mixed-up April of ’32.