by Tom Powers
Red was sitting at the table where Millie had been sitting before, and I knew she must of just gone to the Ladies’, because there sat her seventh or eighth soda, half gone, and a beer for him. He never drank, Red didn’t, not a swallow, but he bought one every half hour when he would come in to sit with Millie.
I guess I didn’t tell about Red. He use to be Millie’s feller, steady, and then this other one with the black curly hair had come in and cut him out. But not for long he didn’t, see? Just till he got her that way, and then he didn’t seem to come around any more.
Red, he didn’t come around, not while Curly was around. Red’s got delicate feelings that way. But when Curly went off somewhere, the very next night, there was Red again, right back where he had always sat watching her sell the cigarettes, buying one beer every half hour so Butch wouldn’t get sore that he was hanging around, see?
Well, then, like I told you, Millie couldn’t be the cigarette girl no more, so I got the job. So then she could sit there and let Red buy all of those sodas for her while she waited every night to see if maybe Curly wouldn’t maybe drop in, just once. And that’s how it was. And they’d argue and argue if maybe they couldn’t go on, just like they use to; that’s what Red wanted, see? But Millie was very moral and she said she couldn’t go on like they use to go, steady, when she was carrying the child of another. It sounded funny, but she said it was poetry to say it that way.
And Red would say, “How the hell can you know it’s the child of another?”
“A girl knows,” she said.
Well, there sat Red and there was the café, just as if nothing had happened. Butch likes it that way. He wants to always run a respectable family place, he says, and whenever there’s a fight, he has taught Moe to switch off the lights. While it’s dark Butch cleans up whatever’s there. So then when the cops come, the lights are on again and everything is quiet.
There was Butch behind the bar, and there sat four of the toughies at their table with their heads all close together and not drunk no more. One of the toughies had a black eye, a real shiner, and the others looked mad. But the pimply one, he wasn’t nowhere to be seen. All this I saw, in my quick look through the door, and I saw other things, too, all in a flash.
There sat the broom in the corner, not where it stays in the closet, but out in the café. It was leaning up in the corner and on the floor was a little pile of broken glass and some damp, dirty sawdust to help sweep it, right there by the broom.
Your brains are a funny thing. I tried to remember, was it Moe or Butch that usually swept it? No, it wouldn’t be Butch, he’d be busy pulling the toughies off of each other, looking for anybody that couldn’t get up. Cops are funny; if nobody is lying on the floor, they look in and look around and maybe sneak a beer and stroll off.
So my brains knew that it had been Moe that had swept up the glass, and I was glad he hadn’t thrown it out in the can because I sure didn’t want to go out in that alley. Then, I thought, how could he sweep without thumbs? I imagined myself doing it without using my thumbs, and realized I could do it.
“Well, look who’s here,” Millie says, coming back from the Ladies’. She wasn’t walking too good, but as she passed me she says, “For Chrissake, where’d you get the evening coat?”
“Shut up,” I says, quietly. I took it off and Moe gave me the cigarette tray while I patted my hair. Then Butch saw me.
“Here’s your money box,” he says. “Where you been?”
“Doctor,” I says, “to sew my kneecaps back on. Them Mexican bottles cuts deep.” By this time the toughies quit talking in their huddle and listened.
“What happened to the small guy?” Butch says. “Did you take him to the doctor, too?”
“I never seen him,” I lied. Lying to Butch was easy, but to Pop I never could. “I thought they’d killed him,” I says, “and you’d throwed him in the alley, out back, like last time.” I knew that would get him, and it did.
“Shut up,” he says, “and sell your spuds.” And then soft as he polished glass, he says, “Pimples busted one of his guys in the snoot and then took something off of him and beat it, and I guess they’re electing a new pastor for their flock. Looks like trouble,” he says.
So I walked past their table, saying “Cigarettes, boys?” Nobody made a grab for me, so I knew Butch was right; there was trouble brewing.
When I got to Millie and Red, Millie wanted to know more about the coat, which she had already fingered, and might have tried on if she’d never met that Curly. But now she couldn’t have even gotten her hand into the sleeve.
Well, Millie said the guy with the shiner had found something on the floor after the lights came up and pocketed it. Pimples had asked what was it and the other guy had said, “None of your goddamned business—finders keepers.” And the others said so, too. So Pimples knocked him right out, went over him and put it—whatever it was—in his pocket. So Pimples took it off of him and smacked one of the other guys, too, making his lip bleed and then Pimples says, “You punks can pay for my drinks,” and waddled out.
So I knew I wouldn’t have to look in the damp sawdust and the broken glass by the broom or out in the can in the alley.
“What was it he found?” I says.
“Tencents store jewelry,” Millie says. “I seen it, close, for a minute. It was a ring,” she says, “with a glass set in it as big as your eye—bigger,” she says. “Too big it was, this set, to be mistaken for anything cost anything. Anyway, what could it be but glass, being red?” she says.
“Them punks is nuts,” Red says. “They drink Mex liquor and they smoke marywanna,” he says, “and they fight over glass jewelry that wouldn’t fool a blind cat,” he says. Red’s a plumber and strictly labor union, see? Plays handball at the Y.M.C.A. twice a week and don’t approve of the customers at Butch’s Café but he seldom says anything because he ain’t there to fight—unless Curly should come in.
So I tried to sell a pack to a girl that Butch knows that brings a man in now and then for drinks and sometimes a game of cards in the back room. And this one bought a pack of Camels and beefed because they was a quarter.
Finally I got to where Moe was wiping off a table. He showed me right away a chain out of his pocket that he had swept up with the other stuff and I had to give him five bucks for it. He tried to get more but I thought five bucks was enough to buy back what may have been the gentleman’s mother’s neck chain or even his grandmother’s, who could tell? The links were flat oblongs with tiny foreign writing on ’em and gold.
“Don’t you tell, or I’ll kill you,” I said to Moe and he looked as if he thought I meant it but I wouldn’t kill anybody, he ought to know that.
Well, I went back to the toughie’s table, and “Gosh,” I says, “that stuff you was drinking is sure bad for the eyes,” I says. No answer.
“Where’s teacher?” I says.
“Whose teacher?” one of ’em says.
“Yours,” I says. “Seems like somebody didn’t raise their hand before speaking,” I says, “and had their chewing gum took away from ’em,” I says.
“Chewing gum,” says Black Eye, “that’s about what that jewelry came with,” he says. “That’s a hell of a cheap trinket to go busting your gang in the puss for,” he says. “He’s washed up as far as I’m concerned. That’s the last I take from that so-and-so.”
“I know how you mean,” I says. “The thing he took off of you wasn’t worth nothing,” I says, “but still it gets you sore to think of him having the satisfaction of feeling he made you give it up.”
They didn’t say a word, or hardly even looked at me.
“Wouldn’t it be funny,” I says, “if he was to lose it?” I says.
Still they took no interest. “I mean,” I says, “if he was tricked out of it to make him look a little small, not just to himself,” I says, “but in front of you four that took such pains to make look pretty small, right here, where people will likely hear about it.”
That got ’em all right.
“How do you mean?” one of ’em says.
“Well,” I says, “of course, I don’t know where he’s at now.”
Then they was all anxious as anything to tell me. “He’ll be at Harry Mulloy’s,” they says, all of ’em at once. “He’s got a room there in the hotel part. He’s been staying there for a week.”
And I says, “Suppose somebody, I won’t say who, went there and was to get to talking to him, a girl I mean, in the gambling part, I mean.”
“Yes,” they says, “go on.”
I went right on.
“And suppose she got him to thinking that this phony ring had kind of got under her skin, see? And that maybe if he wasn’t too crazy about that ring, see, that maybe she could forget about his pimples and his fat, do you see what I mean?”
Well, they saw all right, and it didn’t seem to occur to them to wonder why I would do all this for them. Punk hoodlums is like that—dumb.
But Pimples wasn’t no high-school bandit, not by no means he wasn’t, nor was he a police blotter, neither, and I felt that old flutter of wings in the pit of my stomach when I thought of me going to Harry Mulloy’s for any reason, especially this one.
“What’s the conference for?” says Butch, moving down to that end of the bar to get a clean towel. “You running for election as the chief gun moll for these guys?”
“Sure,” I says, “that’s it.” And then when he turned away, I told ’em quick and quiet what to do.
They said, yes, there was a switchboard at Mulloy’s and I said to fix the phone girl and when I took the pimply face’s phone off of the hook she was to give ’em the go-ahead and they was to come up quick. I thought I could handle it.
I don’t know what came over me that I even thought I could try it, but I patted my stomach through Butch’s satin and told the butterflies to keep still, but they didn’t. For in three quarters of an hour from that minute they went to town, like a flock of eagles having the hysterics. That’s when I did vomit, but by that time it didn’t matter hardly at all, except manners. I remember Pop saying to me at the Sunday school picnic back in Mattoon, Pop aid, “Remember, it ain’t never what you’d call really good manners.”
Well, I couldn’t ask Butch to let me go out again. The bar was near the door so I couldn’t get by him without him asking where I was going.
Millie was crying into her next soda and her head was down against Red’s shoulder. Moe was serving at a table, so I took the coat and went into the Ladies’ and hid the tray and the cash box away up on top of that square tank, up over the john. And I put on the coat and come out and sidled along the little hall to go out the alley door, but it was locked, so I got out the window and there I was in the alley.
CHAPTER FOUR
BLACK AS YOUR HAT IT WAS, all the way down to the next street. So I hurried toward that and I could see there was nothing between me and it. I couldn’t see a thing behind me where there wasn’t no light to see it against.
After I had passed the back of the Greek’s and heard dishes rattling—getting washed, but not too well washed—I came to the corner. Just as I turned, I took one more look back in that black alley and a cold chill run up me thinking how dark it was. Then I turned the corner, it seemed like I heard a car start back up in there, but I couldn’t be sure.
To get to Mulloy’s I had to go past Butch’s, but I crossed to the other side and hoped nobody would see me go by. Of course I could have gone around the block, but anybody that knows what’s around that block would sure understand why I just couldn’t do that, not ever.
As I passed the Greek’s—on the other side of the street—I saw Jeff in there having a cup of coffee and I was sure glad. If Jeff had known what I was getting ready to do now he would have cussed louder than Pop did the time I ran off to Champagne with a strange drummer in his Ford and had to fight him all the way there. And Pop, when he found out about it, thought what you couldn’t very well blame him for thinking, and me not saying a word. How could I?
Pop didn’t even know Willie was in jail up in Champagne. He thought like Ma did that Willie had gotten a job in Chicago after he had left Uncle Ulrich’s butcher shop. Willie had gone up to Champagne with the money he got out of Uncle Ulrich’s cash drawer, and got himself into some trouble with a girl that had advertised in the Mattoon paper for a job. Uncle Ulrich had answered the ad with a letter but Willie had opened the letter before it was mailed. After he read it he thought he could use the letter and the money as a kind of an introduction to the girl. And so that’s what Willie did. And that’s how he had gotten himself into jail.
So there he is, in the Champagne jail for what they call assault in the papers.
Well, it was awful. Willie called me up at the beauty parlor and so I was the only one knew he was in jail in Champagne. And I had to go see Uncle Ulrich at the shop, which I would have rather died than do at any time, especially having to ask a favor.
I had to try to get Uncle Ulrich to promise me that when it was time for the trial he’d go to Champagne and get Willie off, because Ma was beginning to show signs that scared me. So I just had to get Uncle Ulrich to promise.
I didn’t need no safety pin this time, for Uncle Ulrich was so mad he never even thought of anything like that and that was a relief, because by this time we were living with them and I had to watch my step and his, too.
Well, when he said he wouldn’t go and that he’d let Willie get what was coming to him, I was pretty hopeless. So I tried my last bluff. I said I knew why Uncle Ulrich had wrote the letter. I didn’t know this but I said I did. And I didn’t really know why Nettie, his other cashier, had left Mattoon, either, but I said I did, and that if he didn’t go up there and do something for Willie, I would tell Aunt Helga and Pop all the things I knew about—things him and Willie had been up to, both separate and together. So when the time for the trial came, he went. But I didn’t trust him not to just pretend that he had tried to help and couldn’t. So I just had to get to Champagne and see for myself. Well, I got to Champagne and sat right in the front row and you bet Uncle Ulrich saw me sitting there, and he didn’t dare not do what he had promised me. And him being a prominent butcher from out of town with money and influence and a good lawyer, he got Willie off.
And that’s why I couldn’t explain to Pop why I rode with that soft-lipped drummer to Champagne. And that’s why Pop cussed and swore so, just like Jeff would have done about me now if he hadn’t been drinking coffee in the Greek’s and not seen me as I went by on the other side of the street.
“What’ll I do when I get to Mulloy’s?” I thought, and “What are you doing,” I thought, “going on this wild goose chase? That little gentleman is nothing to you, what if he has got eyes like Spot? That’s not enough to make you go to Mulloy’s where you’ve only ever been once and swore never to get into nothing like that again.”
Mulloy’s is a kind of a slumming place, see? It’s a hotel and what they call swell people come there late at night to gamble, and for all sorts of stuff, I’ll say. And these socialites, or whatever they are, sure spend money like pouring it down a rat hole.
I remembered that night when I first got to Chicago with a dollar sixty-five and no prospects and there, waiting for me to give me my first workout was Harry Mulloy. And if it hadn’t been for a miracle I might not be here now but somewhere I don’t like to even think of. For Mulloy sure made it all sound believable—how was I to know what extra work there was to being a hat-check girl at his place. But except for a miracle, which was practically the entire police force of Chicago that chose that minute to raid Mulloy’s place, I would have found out and no mistake. So I spent my first night in Chicago in jail, and I’ll bet no jail ever seemed sweeter or safer to any girl since the world began.
Well, I decided that night that the world was too big for me to run it and so I made up my mind that I’d do what I could to get out of the mess I was in, but I knew that whatever it was that saved me that night—w
hether the Hail Marys or the Lutheran prayers—I sure was taken care of then and always, I guess. And so, from then on, I didn’t worry about what’s in the future.
I was walking fast now to outrun a drunk that fell out of a dark doorway and took after me. Only he kept running into things so I was able to keep ahead of him. And just about then I began to feel like maybe I hadn’t only hurt my knees. There hadn’t seemed to be any glass in ’em when I had looked, but now I felt something up above my left knee. Then suddenly I knew what it was.
It was that wad of bills the Indian gentleman and I had been playing pitch and catch with. I had stuck it in my stocking in the taxi. So I got the bills out of my stocking and by that time I was nearly to Mulloy’s and I knew what I was going to do.
A big party of North Side people drove up in their cars as I got there, some of the men dressed up in boiled shirts and the women and girls in long dresses. They was calling back and forth to one another, all a little drunk and silly. And so I just fell in with them, so it didn’t look like I was coming in all alone.
“What a lark,” one old gal that ought to have been in bed kept croaking. “Isn’t it?” she said to me.
“I don’t know yet,” I says and there was Mulloy. I knew him but he didn’t know me. It was crowded at the place you got the chips, and he was helping the ladies.
“Reds,” the old dame says, and she fished two twenties out of her gold bag and gave ’em to Mulloy. When she got her reds she moved on and he looked at me.
“Blues,” I says, and crackled a new hundred dollar bill into his palm. He bowed and I could have laughed into his face. That Mulloy, I knew him all right, his smooth blue chin and his clothes like a movie actor, so neat, so quiet and so gentle. I can hardly believe it now, how little I really knew when I first came to Chicago, and how surprised I was a man could be so really downright bad.
Now I think of it, wasn’t it funny that I should see Mulloy the first night I was ever in Chicago, and now to have to come here and see him again, on the last night I was to be in Chicago for a long time, though of course I didn’t know that then. How could I? It was like fate or something. Like a word I learned once that I’ll never forget—the word was predestination. There was a man I met who kept telling me about it, and I’d never heard the word before nor since.