Cass had not really known that men actually got money by robbery: he had heard so often of robbery, yet it had always seemed unreal and not quite to be believed. And now it waf real. Now he knew that it was truly so. He’d come because he’d been afraid not to come. He’d found it all. It was his.
Sweat from his forehead stung the corners of his eyes, and he had to keep blinking it out; it coursed down both sides of his nose until he felt it on his tongue. With one hand he clutched the jimmy, unaware that he still held it, and with his free hand he grabbed, reached, and stuffed. He picked out pennies, crammed in bills, dropped to all fours to retrieve a dime; his eyes were almost closed, but they glinted a little with avarice. Only a flush on his cheek bones betrayed his excitement now.
And strangely now Cass remembered a bill that a man in a park once had shown him; he thought that every one he took now was a twenty. And when he had gotten every one, he clawed under the counter and found two nickels. Then crouching through the dark, fouling himself against the counter’s projecting points with every step, he stumbled toward the rear. Behind the partition he tripped over the same sawdust pile which had floored him once before, and then he rapped with the jimmy on the window with such force that the pane cracked down to the sill. He was panting like a switch-engine and trembling like a leaf; he had sawdust down his neck and his hair was in his eyes. When he was halfway out the window, one leg in and one leg out, the jimmy slipped from his hand and clanged to the concrete. Clearly it rang out, in a narrow canyon between stone walls, then bounded away down the stone slope of the alleyway like a toy fire-engine clanging away. As always when violently excited, Cass heard no sound; he saw, and understood, and heard nothing at all. He gasped, “Nub! Nub! Ah gotten it all—a hundred dimes an’ a hundred dollers an’ a hundred—Jesus, Nub, run!” But he himself seemed unable to move until Nubby moved, and Nubby was standing terribly still holding Cass’s sleeve, watching a jimmy-bar dance on gray concrete. Steel clanged against brick a foot over their heads, and Cass thought, “Some ’un jest threw a brick at me.” Then someone big was right in front and little sparks were coming from between Nubby’s fingers; and whatever had been big in front wasn’t there any more.
Cass ran zig-zaggedly.
As he turned into 154th Street he slowed to a walk with the frightening realization that, a second or an hour before he had heard two shots and one in reply. Three shots, clearly. That was all Cass remembered hearing—the thought sent his mind black and blank with fear. And when that blackness lifted he was sitting in the rear of a northbound bus, his eyes fixed on a slowly-lightening street, his body itching with a slow-drying sweat. Morning was breaking, it was raining again, and a street-sign said Sixty-Third and Cottage-Grove.
He transferred west to State and stood on a corner among half a dozen Italian laborers, trying to screw up enough courage to hail a taxi. He felt he was attracting the attention of the Italians by keeping his hands stuffed in his pockets; so he tried holding them carelessly at his side instead. But that made him nervous lest a pick-pocket be among the laborers, who looked much like Mexicans to him. So he stood, in the chill Chicago morning and the dim Chicago light, a thinly-clad hulchy-shouldered hick with his fists going in and out of his pockets every fifteen seconds, with a lurking look in either eye. Once on the streetcar the problem of what to do with his hands was half-resolved for him. The car was crowded, and with one hand he had to hang onto a strap. He hung on all the way to Chicago Avenue, being afraid to leave the car south of Madison because of the big white police court on Eleventh Sreet.
Daytime! Morning! He’d gotten away!
Pride like a mounting tide was in Cass then, his blood began singing a boastful song.
“Tough,” he told himself, “tough and smart. That’s Cassy McKay now ah reck’n all right. Ol’ Olin Jones, he was tough some too; oney Olin wasn’t so smart. Ol’ Olin had to get along on chicken-dribble.” Cass stopped as though arrested by a sudden thought; “Crimps! The Jesus-God!—Ah got to git me a gun fo’ this day is over, so’s if that one-arm squinch show his puss around callin’ me ‘son’ an’ all, ah kin blow him clean to Jesus. Ah’ll dust him off, he come askin’ fo’ slice o’ mah cash. Smokin’ gun-muzzle, that boy’s likely to wake up in the morgue, he comes messin’ ’round mah country.”
Then the thought occurred to him that perhaps Nubby O’Neill was already on a slab in the morgue; and he sobered just a little.
Sitting on a bench facing the curve of the lake at Oak Street, Cass passed a pleasant hour sacking his mind for suitable nicknames for himself. He felt he deserved some mighty tough nick-name now—all first-raters had tough names.
Cassy McKay, roughest, meanest, smartest mav’rick since Billy the Kid, sat slouched on a bench at the Oak Street beach fingering his pockets and thinking of names.
“‘Texas Kid’—that ain’t so bad. Oney Nubby got that one already, an’ it ain’t hardly mean ’nuffo’ me anyhow.”
“Bad-Hat” was the best he could come to, and he decided to have this tattooed in red across his chest sometime. “So it’ll look like the very drippin’ blood of hell an’ Jesus,” he assured himself
Passersby observed a gawky country kid with his knees hunkered up to his cheeks and his eyes almost closed, his hair catching fire-glint in sun, and his mouth hanging open. October beach-Hies encircled that hair as though seeking some warmth of its blaze. Flies droned lazily, and Bad-Hat snored. Terror had exhausted the Texas Terror.
A low wave-lapping lulled him in sleep. Once he woke with a start and stared with unseeing eyes at the lake, muttering half-aloud, “Ah gotten clean away, that’s jest what ah done. Ah didn’t get caught—no sir. Ol’ Nub got his arse plugged mebbe—mebbe Nub plugged the bull. Ah jest don’t know an’ ah don’t give a whoop. Hopes they both get plugged, that’s what. Serve ’em both right that would. Smokin’ gun-muzzle! Ah gotten clean away!” He fell to sleep once more, and he dreamed he was riding with Nubby O’Neill in a boxcar. The floor of the car was covered with straw, and he was showering Nubby with bills. All twenties. The straw became darkened and littered with them, the car was full of falling bills. Nubby was grinning crookedly and clutching everywhere. And suddenly Cass heard himself saying, “Oney ah’m not gonna give you-all none, you done them boys in the jailhouse wrong,” and with one movement he scooped it all up and jumped out of the box into a rushing darkness.
When he awoke, the lake that had been so smooth when he had closed his eyes was rising in sleek-barrelled swells, gray, foamless, and growing; clouds had came across the sun. A little black girl was trying to launch a cigar-box onto the waves; and October felt aged and gray.
The shouts of the black girl had wakened him. Each time she launched the box it would be picked up on an incoming billow and hurled far up the beach; then she would run, screaming with joy, to retrieve her craft and try once more.
“Skinny black bitch—but wait’ll ah get me mah big blow. First thing ah do is gonna be to get me a coupie o’ them nigger cops out in Englewood, with both guns a-blazin’ like Wild Bill Hickok’s.”
He rose and walked, swaggering oddly from the hips, into Lincoln Park. He wanted some nook or corner now where he could count his money. He’d count it all carefully, and wad it up tightly, and put some of it where no one else could find it. Then he’d get a shave and a haircut, eat a big meal, and perhaps get tattooed. He would get tattooed all over, chest and arms and back, just like a sailor. And then he’d go up to Clark and Center, and he’d dance all night with Signe. He dismissed the thought of Nubby with mental bluster: “Jest a little side-windin’ shtunk, that’s all he ever was. Jest ’cause he yinged them boys in the jailhouse he thought he could ying Texas McKay. Well, he never got mah meat, an’ ah reck’n he’s learned some different now.”
He could find no corner which he felt was sufficiently safe for the counting of money. His dimes and quarters were accessible, it was the uncounted bills which irked him.
He had his shoes shined on the street
, and he tipped the boy a dime. In a second-hand haberdashery he espied an oversized straw hat from the previous season; it flaunted a green band, so he bought it. He weighed himself three times in the course of one block; he bought peanuts and a pack of gum; at a streetstand he ate two hot tamales and three hot dogs. As he was buying an icecream bar from a vendor at the corner of State and Ontario he caught sight of himself full-length in a plate-glass window.
“Whew! Jest looka me!”
It was the reflection of a rather huge cave-chested fellow, licking a chocolate ice-cream bar under a dazzling lid. For the first time he noticed that his nose didn’t occupy quite as much of his face as it should, because it turned up and was flat. He gazed at it enraptured, till the bar began to run down his fingers; and when he continued on his way he was full of a self-satisfaction as greasy as the bar. He began licking and lapping with renewed vigor.
In a drug store he bought a roll of adhesive tape, intending to tape the bills to his body in the first convenient lavatory. He passed a place with curtained windows, walked past twice before feeling certain that it was a speakeasy, and then pushed in without giving his timidity a chance to chasten his boldness. He waved to the bartender, because he knew that was how Nubby would have done, and he walked to the lavatory in the rear. On a toilet seat, closeted, he counted out five fives, two tens, and nine singles. He added these several times, each time with a slightly different result, and each time with an increased pleasure. A warm glow filled him. He tested the texture of each bill, and he regretted a little now the tip he had given the shoe-shine boy. He wanted to get even more money than this. Oh much, much more than this.
He wadded the two tens, and four of the fives, and five of the singles into one tight, tiny knot. He wetted the money at the faucet to make the knot tighter, tinier. Then he opened his shirt and inserted the pellet into his navel. Nubby had shown him how to do many things. He bound it up and across and back, and patted it twice to make sure it was tight, and observed the light growth of down on his chest. Perhaps, if he shaved that fuzz there once or twice, it would begin to grow long and hairy and black. The tape made his belly appear to be bandaged, and even policemen and thieves hesitated before ripping a fresh bandage off a boy’s belly. He put the remaining fin in his vest pocket and the singles in his shirt and pushed out of the closet. He’d have a drink now, and then he’d find little Signe, buy her everything her heart desired, and dance all night.
But he wouldn’t spend all his money at once; he’d spend it just a mite at a time. Like Nubby. That way he’d make it last a long while, until he could get a lot more. He wouldn’t give people dime tips any more, either; and sometimes he might even walk off without paying at all.
At the counter he stopped for a glass of beer, for the fellow behind the counter looked friendly. It was good beer all right, it slid down smooth as okra. He looked around, and he saw it was a nice joint all right. There was music coming from somewhere, soft-like kind of, and a couple other young fellows were having a drink. They looked like good fellows all right. They were from Iowa, one of them told him; so he set them up to a stein apiece because he was from out West too. When the drink was down he said, “Texas McKay, that’s hombre”—and he spat clean over the cuspidor. They were swell fellows; it was a gold cuspidor. There was a couple sitting all alone, without anything to drink in the corner, so he waved them to the counter to have a shot on him. They sure made a nice couple all right. It was a nice place. That guy behind the counter was a swell guy.
After four straight shots, a sour and a solid stein, Cass decided he ought to lean against something. Against something close, right away. After he had leaned against something close for quite some time he became aware, with a slow and blinking awareness, that he was leaning against something close inside an L station. Somehow, this did not seem quite fair; somehow it seemed just a trifle improper. He’d tried to remember leaving the speak, and he could not remember. He tried to find out why he had to go over to Clark and Center, and he couldn’t find out.
Directly in front of him a monkey-faced woman was sitting behind a wire cage taking dimes, and somewhere far, far up above her a tiny bell kept tinkling, tinkling. It tinkled whenever somebody passed. Someone would pause in front of the cage, the old woman would yank a blurry white cord, and then—the far-up small tinkling. This did not seem quite fair to Cass. And it seemed just a trifle improper, too.
He shook his head slowly. This helped a little, so he shook it faster. It helped make the white cord a little less blurry. His nose picked up odors, but his brain could not distinguish . . . it occurred to him that this place smelled like the monkey house in Lincoln Park on a Sunday afternoon in August . . . The old woman herself looked sad as the mandrill. He commenced wishing ardently, albeit still dimly, to give the woman a fare through the bars of her cage . . . She would take it as the mandrill took peanuts that day. So he grabbed the thing against which he leaned and shook it, quite slowly, three times to the left; then he shook it, very fast, to the right. It made a pleasant noise, and it wobbled. But it would not come loose, no matter how fast he shook it.
Little Norah Egan saw him doing that through her compact mirror while powdering her nose in the Eighteenth Street station. He was fumbling over the peanut machine, and when she took his arm he grinned a knowing grin calculated to conceal the fact that he did not remember her very well. He felt that he must not let Whoever-This-Was think for a moment that he had not recognized her on sight. That would hurt Whoever-This-Was’s feelings; it wouldn’t be fair, because she knew him so well. The woman in the cage regarded Cass closely, and pulled the bell harder to express a growing doubt. Then, through a fog, Cass seemed to remember. He said, “Hel-lo, Shiggna littl’ girrul—let’s eat peanutsh ’n apple-wasshies!”
On Eighteenth and Indiana Officer Gerahty saw them approaching. Norah was keeping him on the inside within the shadows of the buildings; but he weaved a little with every third step, so she had to keep shunting him straight with her shoulder. Gerahty looked the other way until she got him across.
She hadn’t wanted to cross State at Eighteenth: she never liked Gerahty to see her have a customer. But Customer had insisted on crossing there, and he was too big a lout to argue with.
Gerahty looked the other way so long that a cabbie leaning against Thompkin’s restaurant window started laughing.
“Somebody’s payin’ Gerahty these days even if the city ain’t,” he called to someone half-seen across the street.
She heard men laughing, and she wanted to run. The drunk on her arm said, “Did ah get me tat-tooed? and she answered, “We’ll see up in the room, daddy.”
Laughter followed. On the staircase up to her room the drunk took a notion that she was going to thrash him; he kept telling her that he’d pay her this time, that he wouldn’t try to heel out. With every step he paused to assure her of this; that made it hard, he was such a big lout.
“Letsh dansh like we used,” he said, “Letsh take a walk too.”
Norah hoped that the Dago girl on the second floor wasn’t peeking through the crack in the door again. To see the trouble she was having with this one. Girls who picked up drunks were called hay-bags, and straight-hookers wouldn’t even talk to them. Pimps called a woman a hay-bag when to call her a whore would have been flattery. Landladies would house a straight-hooker willingly, but would tell a girl to get out if they learned she was a hay-bag. But Norah took a chance because it was such a good-paying trick; and everybody had to have some fast trick to get by these days.
“I’ll rook him fast if I once get him inside,” she told herself. “I’ll have to be fast because Gerahty saw.”
Once she’d told Gerahty to go to hell, and he’d hit her between the eyes. It had served her right for talking back, and the Dago girl on the second floor had laughed with Gerahty at night on the stairs. Gerahty’d take it out in trade with that dirty Dago, but never with herself. He said he didn’t like blondes was why.
He’d said his
wife was a blonde was why. On the night that they laughed, they’d laughed at her.
When she got the drunk inside he lurched uncertainly past the low dresser, twice put his hands like a shield in front of his face, plucked twice at a scar on his mouth’s left corner, and flopped across the bed on his belly into a snoring sleep with his arms outspread.
Norah searched his clothes methodically; they looked like a hick’s clothes, they smelled second-hand, and in his vest-pockets she found a five-dollar bill folded over upon itself many times and bound with a rubber band. No small change. No ring. No silver belt buckle. Only the fin.
She rolled him over to see what he had in his shirt; there was nothing but the fin.
And suddenly someone was there in the room right behind her, walking up slow-like right close behind her. Norah tried to slip the fin into her slipper; she knew it had to be Gerahty then.
Gerahty grinned. He held out his hand with a black kid glove on it.
“We’ll split it,” Norah said. “It’s all he’s got.”
Gerahty smiled. He just kept holding his hand out, smiling. Norah didn’t have any black tight gloves like that.
He got pretty close and Norah thought, “He’ll sock me quick-like, like that other time.” So when he stopped smiling just ever so little she put the fin down into his glove.
When Gerahty started going away she said, “Help me get him downstairs. He weighs a ton. He smells high.”
Gerahty grinned.
He said, “So do you.”
Gerahty always said funny things.
After he was gone she went to the drunk on the bed, took his jacket from his shoulders and picked his straw hat off the floor. She hung the hat on the bed-post, and she put on the jacket. She sat huddled in the jacket’s folds, in the rocking-chair by the window, and rocked slowly, like a child, back and forth. She heard a streetcar stop on State, stop and start up and clatter away. Once the woman in the flat below sang out in a long whiskey soprano, but a rushing of water across the hall drowned out the song.
Somebody in Boots Page 24