Somebody in Boots

by Nelson Algren

  Nubby slouched all day on his blanket, his back to the wall, singing idle songs. He wore a pair of Spanish boots badly out at the heels, a gypsy’s bright bandanna, and a great gray stetson with three holes punched in its top. From the shoulders up he looked much like one of those fake cow-punchers first brought into popularity over a generation ago by William S. Hart astride a pinto pony. From the shoulders down, however, Nubby was clad only in a pair of the county’s overalls stuffed into the battered boots. His appearance was thus that of a man who had seen too many Western movies in adolescence.

  “Know what I’m in here for, son?” he asked Cass on one of their first days together. “Indecent exposure an’ malicious mischuf—that’s what I done. Drank too much cerveza in Juarez one night an’ leaked on the streetcar all the way comin’ back acrosst the bridge. The car was full of spiks an’ I just didn’t like it, that was all. I hates spiks pretty bad too, ya see. That was why I left South Chicago mostly, on account of niggers an’ spiks movin’ into Stony Island. Right in the aisle I leaked all over an’ some of ’em on the car only laughed. Even one of them cholo gals laughed a little—now what d’ya think o’ that, son? Only, when we acrosst the bridge on the Merikun side a cop grabbed me—a smart Mexican-lover. Say, ya think you’d have enough gut on yer little inside to do what I done that time?” Nubby stretched himself out on his blanket, clacked his bootheels over his head and asked, “You want to hear the song I made up about myself that time in Ciudad Juarez? I made it up right in here, settin’ right in here on top this ol’ tore blanket the mornin’ after they brang me in.”

  In a vile wail, raucous as a sick raven’s, he began to sing for Cass:

  Oh I’ve seen the lights o’ London

  I’ve seen the streets o’ France

  I’ve seen a man get ninety days

  Fer unbuttonin’ down his pants.

  “But that’s only the first stanza though,” he apologized, “I’m gonna make up lots more later on. Only I’m gonna get out perty soon so I s’pose I won’t finish the nasty thing anyway. But I still got eighty-four days to do anyhow, so I might as well finish it at that. Say, Red, we’ll get out t’gether about if you only got ninety days to do—what d’ya say we mope along t’gether a while? I’ll give up my good-time an’ wait fer you, Red.”

  It was the first time he had addressed Cass by any term other than “son” or “sonny” or “Kid”; Cass was duly grateful.

  “Only I might get twelve days good-time ’stead of only six; good-time fer behavin’ myself ya know—an’then o’ course I couldn’t give up all that to wait for you. So ya might have to travel all alone after all then. But if I get twelve—say—I don’t like to travel much alone on account I can’t lick everybody I meet with only one mitt. Sometimes I got to scrap some perty tough customers ya know, an’ then I’d need you on account yer so ugly. So, how about it, Red? What d’ya say? You look like a white man to me all right; an’ I’ll bet I could make a real white man out of you, too, if you’d stick with me a spell.”

  Before Cass could reply Nubby was off again as though his tongue were unhinged.

  “Only I might not wait eighty-four days to get out at all. Fact is I might get tired waitin’’most any day now an’ bust out of here like a whore out of heaven. Some night last part of nex’ week mebbe. Then o’ course ya’ll just have to travel along without me—unless you want to cop a mope with me. Say!—mebbe I’ll cop a mope on the very last night. That’d be a swift one all right, wouldn’t it, Red? Say I’d break out a hour before Joe come up to spring me—just fer the downright meanness of it ya know, that’s all. Say I’d go downstairs an’ make Joe’s fire fer him, an’ when he got up, why—there I’d be, makin’ his fire fer him. That’s just the way I am though, Red—here t’day an’ gone t’morrer. That’s Nub O’Neill, an’ I guess you’ll find it out.”

  Cass was flattered at Nubby’s proposal that they travel together after release; he felt that something was expected of him now.

  “How would y’all do that, Judge?” he asked. “Break out ah mean.”

  Judge O’Neill winked broadly.

  “That’d be tellin’. It’s fer me to know an’ fer you to find out. Say, Red, you want to hear a song I made up once? The name I call it is ‘The centypeed an’ the scorpyun havin’ a intercourse.’” Want to hear?’

  Cass expressed genuine eagerness. Nubby wetted his lips and sang. His voice was wholly execrable.

  Oh, the centypeed clumb on the scorpyun’s back

  An’ his eyes bugged out with glee.

  He said, “I’m gonna make you, you poison sonofabitch,

  Pervided you don’t make me.”

  Sliding easily then into prose, Nubby spoke low and confidentially.

  “Say, Red, ask one of the boys what happened the last time Joe Spokes put a nigger in this tank ’stead of upstairs in tank three where they belongs. Go on, Red, just ask one of ’em once.”

  Obediently, Cass questioned a boy seated on the Hoor of the opposite cell.

  “What happened the last time Joe Spokes put a nigger in this tank ’stead of upstairs where they belong?”

  The reply came swiftly; it was ready-made; as though the same cloth had been used several times before.

  “Ol’ Nubby like to’ve killed that young shoke.”

  “How’d y’all do it, Judge?’ Cass asked with but feeble curiosity.

  “Busted in his head with that—” Nubby pointed dramatically to the heel of his battered boot, and added, “Did it alone too, boys didn’t I, mostly?”

  Unanimous assent. Then:

  “Say, Judge, tell that boy in there ’bout what you found in the Mex ’legger’s shoe.”

  Nubby grinned proudly and explained briefly.

  “They brang a Mex ’legger in here one afternoon way last fall, an’ he said he was Hat broke. He give the court a half-dollar, Mex, an’ said that was all he had. Well, I wouldn’t believe no Spik nor Cholo if he was swearin’ on his mother’s grave—I went through him up and down, crosswise an’ bottom-side up. But I couldn’t even find a empty tin of terbacco to dent in. He moaned the whole time I was friskin’ him, so fin’lly we let him go with a couple good swift kicks in the arse. But after a while I begun noticin’ how he kept his shoes on when he went to bed. So I made him take ’em off, an’ he’d been in here three weeks already, an’ I slit open both soles, an’ in the left was a wad big enough to choke a Stony-Island flatfoot.”

  “How much?” Cass asked; the others replied in chorus:

  “Thirty-three dollars an’ twenty-nine cents—Amerikun.”

  Nubby swelled his chest. “Yeah. Every buck was Amerikun. So I took it all off him right away on account what right has a spik got anyhow with Amerikun dollars on him? Well, I’m not the tight kind, I guess you’ll find that out all right—I bought these boys three bucks worth o’ black-eyed peas an’ gave ’em four ready-made cigarettes apiece besides. Didn’t I, boys?”

  “Sure did, Judge.”

  Nubby glanced across at Cass. “I’m savin’ the rest, though. Joe Spokes don’t know nothin’ about it o’ course, so don’t go shootin’ off yer trap when his kid’s up here.”

  “Say, Judge, tell that boy in there about the time that Mex ’legger said, ‘Do your stump ever hurting you, Meester Nubbee’—an’ you knocken him cold with the heel of it then, so when he woke up you ast him, ‘Now who you reck’n my stump hurts most, Meester Ferdinando Speek?’ And he says, ‘Me, Seenyor, mostly.’”

  But Nubby refused to tell this tale at all. In a wholly unexpected outburst of modesty he roared, “Be still about me all the time in there, you lyin’ little sea-sucker makin’ up lies all the time in there—one more an’ you’ll get biffed colder’n the Mex did with my stump—only I’ll use my boot on you.”

  Utter silence, from all quarters, till Nubby’s feigned ire was appeased. Smiling then, one eye half-shut, he pointed his stump toward the boy who had spoken, half-seen across the bull-pen. The boy was bent over as thoug
h he were playing with something on the floor; Cass could not tell what.

  “See that boy acrosst the way? That’s Creepy Edelbaum. Just look good at him fer a minute now. He got only one nut an’ the brain of a child. He’s a half spik, half Jew, an’ three-quarters Creek Indyun. He’s feeble-minded a little bit too I guess—Ain’t you, Legs?”

  The boy looked over to Cass, and he was blushing between the bars. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “A little I guess.”

  “Creepy! (We all call him Creepy on account he’s my punk.) Hey! Creepy! Stand up!”

  The boy jerked violently to his feet, and his face was ablaze with guilt: shame had left two bright spots burning there, one on either cheek. His face was white as anemia, it was angelic and girlish and long; he was over six feet, lean as a rake, and he looked like an elongated milk-of-magnesia bottle. But he did not look feeble-minded.

  Nubby pointed commandingly to the thundermug at the end of the narrow corridor; the bowl stood in a pool of unmopped night-filth there. Creepy began scrubbing industriously around it, under Nubby’s capricious foremanship. The Judge explained genteelly to Cass.

  “My bowuls again. They’re about to move again, I guess.”

  Creepy scrubbed hard, both inside and out, for Judge O’Neill demanded absolute cleanliness of others. The boy worked bending over at an angle of ninety degrees, so that his hip-bones jutted out of his frayed corduroys like the hip-bones of a starving cow. Without straightening his back or turning his head, he spoke to Nubby.

  “I hung yer spoon facin’ the wall ’stead of ’way from it after I dried it this mornin’, Judge. Is it all right that way?”

  O’Neill deliberated. Gravely he observed the spoon in the iron holder above his head, hanging toward the wall; it was the first time he had noticed the spoon hanging in precisely that position. Although he was disturbed by the fact, he decided to concede the point and append its moral to his underling. At first he spoke patiently, like an elder brother. “First thing I know, son, you’ll be hangin’ it upside down. Don’t ya know there’s always the right way to do a thing, son—an’ then there’s the wrong way? Well now, this time you done the wrong way. Henceforards an’ after this, do the right way. Hang it like other people does.” His voice quickened, and lashed out. “An’ now quit yer everlastin’ babblin’ an’ get that seat dry—I can’t hold in till they spring me, can I? See, yer wipin’ the wrong way with the brush, nobody does that way. Say, I got half a idee to make you wipe me just fer that.”

  The boy’s livid pallor deadened to a muddy gray, but he said nothing, only scrubbed the harder. Nubby winked at Cass.

  “Yus, my boy, that’s exac’ly what yer gonna do after this. Creepy, you are now Official Wiper of Tank Ten, El Paso Country Jail—on account of I’m the judge an’ I appoint you.”

  The cell-block roared with laughter, and one cell stuttered out, “W-when C-Creepy gits really g-good at wipin’, we’ll all wipe C-Creepy with our b-belt buckles. H-how’d you like a nice b-belt-buckle wipin’, Creepy?”

  The steel rang with laughter.

  “Spokes’ll raise hell with you boys if you don’t quiet down a bit,” the trusty in the run-around warned, leaning on his broom.

  Creepy didn’t know whether Nubby meant the appointment in good earnest or not; he daubed ineffectually at his eyes with the back of his unclean hand, and the laughter about him redoubled.

  “Why, Creepy,” Nubby said solicitously, “I’m simply ’stonished at you startin’ in to cry just ’cause yer ’lected to be Chief Shtunk. I’ll bet there ain’t a man in this tank but wouldn’t give up half his cornbread in the mornin’ to be Chief Shtunk in here. Why, it’s a honor—don’t you know? Say, fellers—ain’t it a honor to be big shtunk in here?”

  Cass lay face-down on his blanket shivering with cold. He was sick with pity for the bending boy; he was cringing with fear of the laughter around him. Yet he laughed, loud as any. He was afraid not to laugh.

  Above the thundermug some wag of another day had inscribed in black crayon a simple observation: A flush here is better than a full house.

  And an arrow pointed downward so that none should miss the jest.

  There was nothing to do, nothing to do; each day they were cold, every day they were hungry. In the mornings, water stood frozen on the floor. In the afternoons Spokes let one man into the run-around to sweep. But all the rest had nothing to do, afl the rest watched the one man sweeping, each one wished that it were himself who had something important to do like that.

  Every night Creepy tittered quietly to himself, tossing and distressed. One night Mr Bastard went into the cell where Creepy lay giggling; the giggling ceased, and Creepy called out:

  “Judge! Nubby! Make him quit it now, Nub.”

  Mr Bastard skipped softly back to his own blanket, laughing low, and a ripple of low laughter rode from cell to cell. Nubby shouted from across the bull-pen:

  “Hush up in there, One-Nut, or I’ll come into you myself.’

  And this was no vain threat. During the first two weeks that Cass slept in the jail, Nubby went into Creepy’s cell four times.

  On such nights Cass sweated in terror, remembering the man in the park in Chicago, fearing Nubby as he had feared that man. As it turned out, however, Nubby never molested Cass; although Cass came to know him well, came to be his friend, there was never this between them. Among Nubby, Creepy, and Mr Bastard, however, there developed, within Cass’s first weeks in the jail, an intense rivalry. And on the Saturday morning of Cass’s third week in the place this rivalry culminated in open battle.

  On that morning Creepy Edelbaum was unable to clean the toilet seat for Nubby, to wash his trough after breakfast, or even to hang up Nubby’s spoon. He lay on his blanket, smiling crookedly up. When he tried to rise, he fell. No one knew what the matter was till Joe Spokes, turnkey and chief deputy, came up with the breakfasts. He opened Creepy’s trousers and glanced at the groin: the boy had ruptured himself in the night. Cass’s heart went sick at the sight, the boy looked so helpless lying there.

  The chief deputy, kneeling, spoke to the boys grouped around him, looking down over his shoulder. Cass saw him touching the boy’s scrotum.

  “Nothin’ seeryus, boys. Nothin’ contayjus. He won’t git no worse. Oney jest don’t bother him no more, you boys, he got to tay right still till it go back into place.” He rose to his feet with his hands on his hips and stood tooking down. “Yore a nasty little rat, ain’t you, son? Yore a Jew-boy too ah’ll bet—ain’t yo’? Who larned you all them nasty tricks—the rabbi?”

  Creepy shook his head, and Nubby spoke quietly, “Don’t lie, son—don’t lie at a time like this about what you are.”

  “I just meant I didn’t know who,” Creepy said, and the boys and the deputy laughed together.

  When others laughed at him Creepy summoned a foolish grin and kept it till such laughter died.

  But no one bothered Creepy any more, because of Joe Spokes’ order. Nubby released the boy from all of his former duties, and imposed those duties on Mr Bastard. Toward Creepy Nubby became almost motherly in his concern; when Creepy wished for water he had but to say so and Nubby would bring it. When cornbread and turnips were brought up at three o’clock, Nubby fed him like a child. Nubby forbade him even to stir. And no one save Nubby could tend him.

  After breakfast of the second day of Creepy’s illness, Nubby tossed two shirts to Bastard to wash, and Bastard refused point-blank. He was bigger than Nubby and built all in one piece like a brick backhouse. Sometimes when he tried to speak his lips moved and no sound came; then he would strain his throat far forward and redden with effort. But this impediment not even Nubby had dared to mock, till now.

  When he tossed the shirts to Mr Bastard, Nubby stuttered exaggerately.

  “W-wash th-th-them th-th-there sh-sh-sh-shirts f-f-f-for m-m-m-me.”

  Everyone in the tank laughed; for they had few chances in this place for laughter. With a single motion Bastard ripped one shirt from sle
eve to hem (the shirt was frail and his hands were strong), and he had his fingers on the collar of the second when Nubby got to him. Nubby’s eyes were very wide and his face was white as the toilet seat after Creepy had finished scrubbing, but Bastard’s eyes went to slit-like points, and his face was a bag ready to burst with blood.

  There is nothing quite so terrible to see as a fight in a blue-steel jailhouse. There is steel and stone all around, up, down, and across. You fight between steel hinges, iron spoonholders, projecting bolts, on a gray stone floor. There is no one to cry, “Stop!” no one to shout, “Foul!” no one to say, “I guess he’s had almost enough now.” There is only a trusty grinning through the bars offering to bet on the winner. “Boys, I’ll put up two sacks o’ Bull Durham on the boy with the boots.”

  By sheer weight alone Bastard forced Nubby to the floor. Nubby’s stump waved in the air as he fell. Bastard straddled him, seized him by the hair and cracked his head against the floor. Nubby’s hair was long and black. Five times Bastard slammed his head against stone. Then a blue foam came to Nubby’s lips and his eyes went wild with pain. Mr Bastard stopped to look up. He was puzzled, being afraid to get off and afraid to stay on, afraid to beat the judge wholly unconscious, yet afraid not to, . . . he brushed sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, grinned at the ease of his victory and raised himself up a little, as though about to ask the trusty what he ought to do next. In that second Nubby let him know what he ought to have done next, with the toe of his boot. He caught Bastard squarely at the base of the belly, and the boy caved in like a jack-knife snapping. His face bunched with agony, his teeth clenched; for one moment his whole body was paralyzed with pain. For one long moment he crouched over Nubby like a man of wood, his torso bent slightly forward and his fingers spreading wide. Then Nubby shoved him off and rolled him backward, yanked him by the hair to his feet and skarved his head against the nearest hinge, until Bastard screamed wildly, like a woman. Blood boiled out down the back of his neck, and Nubby paused for breath. Bastard crumpled, slowly. Nubby helped Raridon pick him up and assist him back to his blanket.