Somebody in Boots

by Nelson Algren

  Cass recalled vaguely as he sat that a day or a week before he had eaten meat in some place where there had been fog on the streets. Or he had not eaten meat. He couldn’t remember; and he couldn’t remember the name of that place, though his mind sought it sleepily and long. Somehow, much seemed to depend upon the remembering: Chicago, Springfield, St. Louis. Memory was a jumble of steel rails, city sounds, sunlight on boxcars and fog on a half-forgotten street. So he dropped the magazine in the gutterflow, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and poked Matches.

  Apparently the encounter in the park had taken the last bit out of the Negro, for he walked beside Cass now as though he were half-helpless. When Cass turned, he turned; when Cass paused for traffic, he paused; when Cass hurried forward, Matches hurried forward beside him. Only once as they went did the Negro speak coherently.

  “Bummin’ takes everythin’ out of a feller, don’t it?” he asked as they turned a corner into Mesa Avenue.

  Cass agreed readily that it did. “Yeah, sho’ do. Bummin’s knocked all the tallow clean out o’ mah pole.” To himself he thought, “Ah better shake this shine.”

  When they reached the next Keep-Our-City-Clean box Matches wanted to remove his shoe again; but his fingers slipped around his ankle like a little child’s fingers. So Cass took it off for him, kneeling as the other sat. He pulled a wad of newspaper out of the box and padded it into the shoe’s torn places. Beside him a bare-footed Mexican boy, holding a small brown girl by the hand, stood and watched with a cynic’s air. A woman with furred shoulders went by on high heels, her head in the air and her nose sniffing elegantly, as though about to spew green phlegm sunward. As he struggled to get the shoe back on Matches’ foot someone behind him spat toward the gutter over his shoulder; he saw the gob, like a speckled bug, being borne away on the current. People were gathering behind him; it was time to be getting on.

  They had not gone half a block farther when Matches stopped and complained, half-accusingly, to Cass. “It hurts. You just made it worse you did. Now it hurts worst. You ought to get slapped clean to Jesus.” They could not stop, there was no place here to stop, and Matches continued to complain with a rising irascibility.

  “If oney I had a sock. A white sock, mind you. Have you got that kind?”

  That was the last thing he said to show that he knew that Cass was still with him; after that he seemed slowly to lose awareness, he became like a man mildly drunk or doped. Cass had not known what havoc the simple fact of overtiredness could work. Only a few short hours before he had almost feared this boy; now there plodded beside him only a sick pickaninny who depended on him, Cass, to lead him about and to put on his shoes. Cass felt something of a mild responsibility.

  Matches stopped dead still and planted himself directly in front of a bespectacled youth with books in both hands. The boy looked frightened at Matches’ glance; and when Cass looked at Matches he too became a little afraid; Matches’ eyes were fever-bright and burning hollowly. Cass took his arm, but he wouldn’t budge an inch.

  “You. Gimme that sock.” He took Specs by the lapel, and the boy dropped a book. When he straightened up, after retrieving it, his voice quavered shrilly as a frightened school girl’s.

  “Saaaay—I’ll call a cop on you, nigger.” And he raised his voice in a long wailing plea, “Ohhhhh, officer!”

  This time two silver badges, two rows of brass buttons, two pair of pointed boots shining in the sun.

  “Here, niggers—at it again? All right, Smitty, take ’em both along.”

  Cass cocked his head, half-unable to believe what he had just heard. Slowly then he understood: a white man who walked with a “nigger” was a “nigger” too. He recognized the park bull as the other bull took his arm, and he said, “Ah’m not no nigger,” but the bull made no reply.

  Cass wasn’t afraid, somehow. He was a little too tired to be afraid. Going to jail was all a part of this life; no one escaped it for very long and he’d been pretty lucky for a long time now. What he didn’t like, what got him by the short hairs, was that crack about being a nigger. He saw the big park bull start reaching for Matches when Matches was still five feet away, and Specs stood in between. The boy ducked wildly when the cop’s paw came over his shoulder—to seize Matches’ shirt and pull him free of the sidewalk with a yank which ripped the sleazy cloth down to the navel. Matches came so straight forward that his head would have rammed the cop’s Sam Browne belt, had not the cop stiff-armed him with his open palm.

  Cass glanced at the bull who was holding his wrist.

  “Ah’m not no nigger,” he repeated; but the cop didn’t seem to hear.

  With the eyes of the gathering crowd upon himself and Matches, Cass thought of his scar and turned his head away; as he turned, Matches screamed, like the black girl had screamed.

  “You got no right! You got no right!”

  It was shameful to see the Negro so, his shirt in tatters so that his navel showed through, screaming nonsense at a cop as though he had lost his mind. A man in the crowd laughed, harshly, and a girl fled titillating. “Oooooooo—what I saw.” The big bull started shaking Matches, to stifle that foolish screaming in the street. Matches’ arms flailed stiffly against the brass buttons. A ragged end of his sleeve caught the cop’s star and left it hanging lop-sidedly.

  “You got no right! You let me go!”

  Someone behind Cass said, Quit shakin’ him, officer, he’s only a kid.”

  “You got no right!”—the fingers clawed weakly upward, the club-on-a-cord whizzed in a gleaming circle a foot above his head, the fingers reached up for it, and the club came down. It came down slantwise across the temple, with the hissing sound of a large stone thrown through a thin paper wall—a brief sound, sharp and ripping and cold; Matches stood very still for one long moment. He had stopped screaming rather suddenly. A dark star appeared on his temple, and his head began sagging a little, like a wounded fighting-cock’s head. Hands caught him under the armpits as he fell; white hands held him tentatively, offering him out to the bull like a limp dishrag.

  Cass whimpered.

  “My, wasn’t that brave,” a woman mocked from the crowd.

  As the bull half-carried and half-dragged Matches toward the patroil a boy’s voice called him.

  “Oh, Officer.”

  This time the cop’s eyes were shifting uneasily. Without fixing his gaze on any one face he asked, “Well, who wants to see me?”

  No reply—till he turned. The woman’s voice came again:

  “No one, officer my dear. Who would? You smell most awful vile.”

  “Who said ’at to me?” he bluffed loudly. “Who said ’at, huh?” His face looked ready to burst with its bluff. Then he saw laughter starting and got inside the patrol with Matches to escape it. The other officer followed with Cass in front of a chorus of catcalls and jeerwails. Cass heard only one thing clearly: just as the door slammed someone shouted in, “Niggerlickers—that’s all cops is. That’s all they do—that’s all they can do. Big tough niggerlickers, and that’s all they do do.”

  Matches’ eyes opened, but he did not speak. On either side of him sat a bull. Cass, sitting opposite, watched the Negro revive and wondered whether he understood all that had happened. Although his own hands were free, Matches’ were thumbcuffed; Cass was torn between regret for having walked with the Negro, and with pity for seeing him beaten.

  The big bull guarding the door looked over to Cass and spoke warningly. He was still out of breath, and a bit bewildered, it seemed.

  “This’ll go mighty hard with you two boys. Mighty hard, I can say that now. Almost a riot call it was, an’ a riot call al’ays goes harder”—he gasped for breath. “Lots o’ trouble you boys made—trouble in the park first . . .”

  His rump-like face was streaked with sweat. As though to reassure himself of the penalty they were certain to have incurred, he spoke to the other bull.

  “A riot call ai’ays makes it twicet as bad, don’t it Arthur, huh?”
<
br />   Arthur nodded. He was thin, and freckled, and looked unhappy.

  “See what Arthur says? Ya almost instergated a riot, that’s jest what I’m sayin’—an’ ya’ll get ninety days each fer it sure, or elts”—he gasped again for breath—“or elts I’m not yer witness!”

  In spite of exhaustion, Cass went sick with fear then. He hadn’t reckoned on ninety days.

  “He jest wanted a sock on account his foot is so bad,” he said. “Honest, mister, that foot look ready to drop off ’n his laig.”

  The silver badge looked at Cass with a huge and expression-less, a moon-like wonder. The big thick brain behind the eyes began to move slowly, like a heavy door opening onto a room long closed. Then his face looked cunning-cruel, as understanding at last came into it. And he guffawed. Thwacking his thigh resoundingly he yawped his face so near to Cass’s that Cass smelled the foulness of his breath like the breath from a privy.

  “He jest wanted a sock! He jest wanted a sock! Hey, Arthur, do ya get it, Art? He jest wanted a sock, an’ ain’t that what I given him?” He went off into whole gales of laughter, his body shaking to its very fingertips. “Say, Art—d’ye get it?—He jest wanted a sock!” Arthur smiled a bit wanly, a bit indulgently, and said nothing at all.

  “Ho! Ho! Ho! He wanted a sock, a clean sock—an’ ain’t that jest what I given him? Ho! Ho! Ho!”

  Outside the late afternoon sun was waking trembling checkered patterns on low stone buildings rushing past. They were going to have a place to lie down.

  They were going to jail; they were going to eat. They were going to have a place to lie down.

  Cass said, “Ah’m not no nigger,” and looked over to Matches accusingly.

  Matches only smiled. Then, “You’re ridin’ jest the same, ain’t you?” he asked.

  But the little bull named Arthur only sighed.

  9

  I had no money to pay my fine

  Not a friend to go my bail

  So I got stuck for ninety days

  In El Paso County Jail

  Oh such a lot of devils

  The like I never saw

  Robbers, thieves, and highwaymen

  And breakers of the law

  They sang a song the whole night long

  Their curses fell like hail

  I’ll bless the day they take me ’way

  From El Paso County Jail.

  “GODDAMNED IF I don’t think you deserved ninety days, hookin’ up with some young shoke that way. Me, I hates them sons of bitches. You wouldn’t catch me ridin’ a reefer, or walkin’ down a street, or doin’ nothin’ with no nigger, North or South. Say, kid, I wouldn’t let a jig smell the hole where I crapped in a year ago easter-tide. I hates them black sons of bitches so bad as soon as I smell ’em my left nut gets tight. And say, kid, don’t you even know what comes of nigger-lovin’?”

  Nubby O’Neill crossed his booted toes under him and rolled a cigarette deftly with one hand; the only hand he possessed. A highly-feigned hatred of everything not white and American was the high-point of Nubby’s honor. Cass sat hunched on a blanket wishing he’d been put in with somebody else.

  “Don’t you even know what the rules is, sonny? Well then, lemme wise ya. Five hundred licks on the fanny is the fine here fer nigger-lovin’, jest one hundred more than fer Mexican-lovin’, which is twicet as bad. Ain’t you never been in a real jail before, son? Five hundred swangs—an’ it sure looks to me like you’re a great nigger-lover just by the way yer sittin’ there with yer head hangin’ over an’ yer fanny gettin’ cold. Say, son, don’t ya know what comes of nigger-lovin’ in Texas?”

  “Ah couldn’t tell there was nigger in that reefer till ah jumped down in, mister,” Cass lied desperately, “an’ when we got into the yards the law pulled us both, an’ I told ’em, hell, that nigger ain’t no friend o’ mine.”

  “Hey, Mr Bastard!” O’Neill shouted, “The Breathin’ Jesus-God—Did you hear that?”

  The next cell said that he had heard that. O’Neill spoke more quietly to that cell.

  “Well then, tell this old boy in here what I would of done if I’d found some ugly black sonabitch in the same reefer where I wanted to ride in, North or South.”

  As though it were being read from a book, the next cell made answer.

  “Reck’n the judge would just have made that ugly black sonabitch hit the grit.”

  “See,” O’Neill accused, “an’ that’s what you should of done. Only ya didn’t, so o’ course you got to take yer five hundred swangs.” He jumped to his feet and announced, “Court’s in session, gennelmen.”

  The five other prisoners of tank ten piled out of their cells and into Cass’s; no cell-doors here were locked within the cell-block. They held their belts in their hands, and Cass went so cold with fear that he felt his heart swinging slow, like a heavy pendulum in his breast. Then all the blood of his body seemed pouring through his throat in one thick dark stream; he tried to plead, to cry out or weep, but his throat closed with his fear. Nubby yanked him by the collar to his feet.

  “Sheriff,’ O’Neill ordered, “bring in the prisoner of this court.”

  Somebody whirled Cass three times around, then shoved him out of the cell and into the narrow bull-pen.

  “An’ now yer arrested,” the sheriff informed him, “an’ yer standin’ in court, an’ yer guilty as hell—an’ if the judge says to hang you we just got to do it.”

  O’Neill hemmed and hawed and rubbed his chin with his stump. “Gennelmen,” he pronounced solemnly, “I’ve just learned somethin’ downright disgraceful. The prisoner has just confessed it to me what he is. This here is a nigger-lover standin’ ’mong our midst. He is very strong on anythin’ black, just so long as it’s plenty stinky. He finds ’em in boxcars mostly, he says, down in reefer bottoms in where he has most his luck. When I asked him just now he said he is es-spesh-uffy great in nigger whores with soft shankers on their behin’s—” the judge paused for the sheer effect of the pause, pointed one hairy finger at Cass and barked, “You. You kiss niggers’ arses. I seen him doin’ it, gennelmen. I was there. So now we got to give him ten thousernd kisses on his tail. With the belts, gennelmen.”

  Ten thousand was the largest number that Judge O’Neill knew; Cass took him at his literal word and trembled visibly. Then he whimpered. He stood there whimpering with his hair in his eyes, and a gray prison light bathing his head from above.

  “Not really with belts, mister? Not really with a belt? Ah don’t love niggers, ah swear ah don’t, ah don’t kiss no niggers’ arses.” Cass had to catch a sob between his very teeth before he could continue his defense. “An’ ah don’t look for ’em anywhere—why,” he groped for words, “why, ah hates them ugly black sonsabitches.”

  By this assertion the court seemed somewhat mollified; into the judge’s face came a slow relaxation. These were good words his prisoner was speaking, this plea had an honest ring. He sucked his tongue for a minute, speculating on the possibilities for the prisoner receiving money or tobacco from some outside source in the future, and then announced the verdict.

  “O.K., son. You look like a white man all right. Only don’t get arrested with a nigger in Texas again, take my word. If the law don’t lick you for it, then someone elts will. You was just lucky in gettin’ a merciful-kind judge like me this time, that’s all.”

  O’Neill addressed his court.

  “The red-headed pris’ner is put by me on probation now, with a suspended sentence of ten thousernd swangs on his left butt an’ five thousernd swangs on his right. Sentence is suspended on account he is so young an’ all, an’ this is his first offense, an’ he is a white man. Court’s adjourned.”

  On Sunday morning the early flushing of the thundermug in tank ten would waken the deputy’s family, where they slept directly below, on that one morning of the week when they wished to sleep late. It was flushed by hand, with a bucket; it thundered like Niagara through conduits and sewerage. For an hour after Hushing, it made stran
ge seeping sounds. Therefore the prisoners had to wait, uneasily restraining themselves, till they heard someone stirring below them. The chief deputy rose at nine-thirty to build the fire on Sunday morning; not until that time could the men relieve themselves. Cass learned of this on his first Sunday morning in the tank. He rose in that January dawn, used the bowl, flushed it and returned to his blanket. The noise of the flushing wakened every man in the cell-block, but only O’Neill admonished him.

  “If I wasn’t so tired we’d have court on you right now fer doin’ that,” Nubby muttered from beneath his blanket, “but you just wait till Joe Spokes gets up here. You won’t be getting no breakfast this mornin’, son.”

  And Cass didn’t. At eleven o’clock Spokes’ son came up with four troughs of oatmeal and cornbread, and said simply, “Paw says some ’un done it agin. Y’all know who ’twas better’n paw er me, so here’s four troughs, an’ four is all y’ get.” So Cass watched the others eat, being hungry enough to clean the thundermug, inside and out, for one small nibble of cornbread. No one offered him a nibble; he did not expect anyone to do so. O’Neill sat cross-legged in his corner balancing his trough precariously between his right knee and his stump, digging in with his one good hand. Cass hoped desperately that the trough would spill, but it didn’t. The end of Nubby’s stump was callused with small red bumps hard as stone.

  Although Nubby O’Neill was from South Chicago, yet his right forearm bore the legend, tattooed in hair above the stump: “Texas Kid. His Best Arm.” He insisted that this stump was of greater service to him than was his good arm, and to prove his contention he bashed in the bottoms of tobacco tins with one short blow of the nub. “There!” he would chortle, exhibiting a dented tin to Cass, “How many men is there could do that with a whole arm? Could you?” Cass would wag his head sadly, to express grave doubt, and would make a half-hearted effort to dent in a tin with his fist.