Somebody in Boots

by Nelson Algren

  From one of the cells came laughter, tow. Cass could only summon a sickly grin and hope that the man wouldn’t go any farther in his assault upon another man’s honor. So he said nothing, and the other stretched out on the lower bunk, and snorted in contempt.

  ‘Hmmmph—Norah. How many times you scored already?”

  To Cass, the whole cell-block seemed waiting for his reply.

  “Ten or ’leven or twelve mebbe, ah reck’n,” he said.

  “Hmmmph—ten or ’leven or twelve sounds just like more lyin’ to me. What you say they called you, fella? Lyin’ Sam the Bullcrap Man—is that what you just told me they call you down South?”

  Cass saw that there would be no end to his persecution until he defended himself. He would have to prove to the whole tier that there was a man in here with this hunky. He rolled off the bunk and came to his feet in the center of the cell as though about to commit red slaughter. He stood above the other, a dim figure in the dim cell light, tugging at his belt and looking tough. He didn’t feel very tough, tugging that way, but he closed one eye, as Nubby would have done, and he spoke out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Jest in case you ain’t heered,” he drawled, “mah name ain’t Lyin’ Sam. Ah’m Texas McKay, case you ain’t heered.”

  Their eyes held for a moment, and then Cass’s shifted; and when he spoke again his voice betrayed his fear as nothing else could have betrayed him. “‘The Texas Cracker’ is what some folks call me too,” he said, yanking now almost desperately, “On account ah’m from Texas jest like ah said.”

  “Don’t apologize,” the Pole answered, “Texas Cracker, eh? Well, I been to Oklahoma, an’! know all about you cowboy crackers. Lots o’ brotherly love down in that country—if your pants is pressed. It’s ‘Hello, brother!’ if you got a buck or two, but ‘On your way, louser!’ when you’re broke. Oklahoma stinks. Nevada stinks. So I guess Texas must stink too. Everythin’ down there bites, stings, or got a thorn on it.”

  “Y’all cain’t talk bout mah home state thataway.”

  The other rolled over on his side as though preparing for rest. “An’ you stink too, fella.”

  Cass climbed quietly back onto his bunk. Maybe the fellow was going to sleep now. But he had scarcely settled comfortably on his blanket when the Pole began again.

  “You cowboy crackers think ’cause you got a different smell than a nigger that you’re better some way. You Texas loomps got nothin’ else to brag on so you brag ’cause you got a different o-der. Me, I got nothin’ at all against niggers. They ain’t never bothered me none. An’ lots of ’em I’ve knew had twice as much brains an’ guts as any Oklahoma cowboy I ever seen. Lots more than you. I know niggers got six times as much brains as you got. Fact is I kind o’ like niggers. We all come out of a hole, didn’ we?”

  “But ah thought y’all said yo’ didn’t like ’em,” Cass protested.

  “I’ve changed my mind since hearin’ you talk.”

  Cass tried to think clearly. There was something wrong here, and he didn’t know what it was. He would be glad when this fellow was well on his way to Joliet.

  “Ah guess if we was down South now,” he finally said, “Y’all’d find out somethin’ ’bout guts an’ whose got ’em. Y’all wouldn’t talk so high an’ mighty ’bout niggers down there. Not where ah come from, no sir yo’ wouldn’t. We’d whip somethin’ out o’ yo’ fo’ talkin’ thataway in mah home town.”

  “Sure you would—you an’ a hundred other cowboys. An’ that’s the only way you could do it, too. An’ they call you tough guys ‘Texas crackers,’ eh? Well fella, you know what I’m gonna call you?”

  Cass made no answer. He was not especially eager to learn more.

  “Well, I’m callin’ you the Texas Crapper an’ you’re callin’ me ‘Mister.’ Mister Joseph Novak. Get it, Jizz-Lips up there? Mister Novak.”

  He waited, while laughter surged, then persisted quietly. “I asked you do you get it or don’t you get it?”

  Cass got it. He got it when he heard Novak’s feet hit the floor, and saw the Pole’s broad back coming out of the bunk below. Cass spoke quickly then. “Ah got it,” he said. The back withdrew.

  “You can start sayin’ ‘Yes-Sir’ right now then. ‘Yes-Sir, Mister Novak’—like that. Say it.”

  “Yes-Sir. Mister Novak.”

  And for three days Cass said “Yes-Sir, Mister Novak” and “No-Sir, Mister Novak.” For three days the Pole gave him scarcely a moment’s peace. Cass did not speak unless he was spoken to, and he slept on the upper bunk. After Novak was gone he felt as free, for an hour after, as though he had been released. He hoped desperately that he would not be given such another cell-mate.

  With every passing day, it seemed to Cass, the stench of Costigan’s cell-mate grew stronger.

  Once Cass woke in the night half-strangling for breath. The odor of sweat in the cell-block lay like a blanket about his lungs. He sat bolt upright, head back-straining, clawing at his throat for breath. The odor lifted a little, like a slow gray curtain lifting, and he rolled his head in his hands in relief.

  “Phwat in God’s name makes ye sweat so, man?”

  Costigan was speaking to the man below. Cass heard Billy Moore waken and stir in his place. A listening silence seemed to fill the cells. All down the tier the cells were listening. Cass could tell by the indrawn silence there. Costigan spoke challengingly, as though to provoke reply.

  “Ye’ve kept me from slape five nights runnin’ now wid the terrible sick smell of ye. Will ye niver die an’ lave a man in pace?”

  The listening dark closed down. Someone on the other side of the bull-pen gripped the edge of his bunk and tossed about upon it until it groaned and rattled beneath him. Then he stopped, the sick man spoke; his words seemed to struggle among themselves as they were spoken.

  “Ah, but ye’re a crool hard man, Conlay Costigan, to spake so to a man railly dyin’—railly in truth a-dyin’.”

  It was the voice of one groping through fog, unseen and unseeing. Cass was aware of a hurrying shadow swimming aslant the wall of the long-lit corridor. Eager for any excitement, Cass went to his door. Perhaps the tier-guard would beat up Costigan.

  But the guard only spoke to the man below.

  “Leave off yer chatterin’ now, Billy Moore, an’ try to get you some rest. God knows ’tis rest you’re needin’.”

  Moore defended himself anxiously, in a kind of fevered desperation.

  “’Tis not I what’s doin’ the talkin’, Cleary—’tis the great scut of a black Dublin rat above me, him what woke me out of the first true slape I’ve had in long weeks now, him wid his unclane an’ mockin’ spache. Ah, Misther Cleary Sor—”

  The voice broke off, with anguish or disease; then resumed in a long nasal whine thick with self-pity.

  “. . . an’ me a dyin’ man.”

  Cass saw Costigan lurch half his body over the bunk’s edge, thrust down one great and hairy paw to clutch Moore with fierce sure fingers.

  “A scut it is I am, ye bitch’s bastard?”

  The long tier murmured, and was still. Costigan jerked Moore up tih their faces almost touched.

  Cleary spoke quietly.

  “Put the man down now, put him down fast. You’ve a sorry record enough, Con Costigan, without addin’ to it in here. Put him down, I said.”

  Costigan heard. Deliberately, he spat in Moore’s face, and dropped him. And to Cass it seemed then that Moore was sinking his teeth into his tongue, in impotent fury.

  “That was a perilous bold thing to do,” Cleary admonished. “Don’t you know that should the dyin’ man but spit upon you now in his turn, then surely he would bring you to the grave with hisself? Don’t you know this, you great foolish fellow?”

  Cass laughed. He had never heard the superstition before. He felt that Cleary must be speaking merely in order to impress Costigan.

  Costigan only guffawed, to show he was not quite so simple as Cleary thought him, and Cleary turned to go; but
even as he turned Moore cried out, and he had to stop. Cass had never heard a voice in deeper pain. It was the voice of something tortured in sleep and unable to waken. The voice of something lost in darkness.

  “Tis a true tale—a true tale—I’ll be dead in a week, cousin Con, yet I’ll spit in ye’re face e’er I go—an’ ye’ll thin be as dead as I.” He laughed wild laughter. “Ye’ll be as dead as I soon enough, cousin Con, ye huge black turd from a Dublin whore.”

  Cleary waved a hand at Costigan, then he spoke to Moore like a man to a tired child. Cass was surprised to hear Cleary’s voice, that it was not unkind.

  “We’ll get you into the hospital tomorrow, lad, and in a month you’ll be as well and fine as Costigan hisself is now.”

  Empty words. There was no room in the hospital for Moore. He was going to die for want of a cot to lie on; and none knew it better than Cleary.

  For two nights thereafter Costigan held his peace, fearing a quarrel that might deprive him of his “good-time”—the days deducted each month from sentence during good behavior.

  On the third night Cass could scarcely sleep again for the smell of sweat in the narrow place. Finally he ripped a square of material off the pocket of his prison shirt and placed it over his mouth. The device helped; he felt himself sinking slowly toward rest. Dark waves seemed closing over his head and the tattered rag-bag of his fatigue seemed turning quietly to soft dark down—when Moore coughed. Moore coughed the long rack-splitting cough that rives the bones of the body and brings bright blood boiling into the throat. Cass woke, and heard Costigan in a shouting rage.

  “Ah, ye offal—ye foul thin offal! Ye filthy slum-begotten Ulster pickpurse—”

  Silence, fearing Cleary. Cass tiptoed to his door, peered over into Costigan’s cell, and waited. He heard Moore settle to rest again, heard the strained breathing become regular and easy, knew that Moore slept once more.

  He was about to turn back to his blanket when he discerned Costigan’s dim figure moving, slyly, over the edge of the upper bunk. He saw Costigan bend his great head over until his mouth was six inches from Moore’s ear. And he coughed like a sick steer. Moore woke with a suddenness that started him coughing anew, and Costigan threw himself back on his bunk, chuckling to himself. His chuckle, cunning-cruel and sly, reminded Cass of a hare-lip, and of Olin Jones’ faint laughter. So he laughed a little with Costigan.

  The Irishman had found a new pastime. He never wearied of his jest. Repetition never diminished the pleasure it afforded him. Indeed, he found it sport well worth staying awake for. Whenever he heard Moore breathe easily, he leaned over, chuckling in anticipation of his joke, and coughed down Billy Moore’s right ear. The sick man would waken, fuming, and Costigan would throw back his great dark head until the whole tier was loud with his laughter.

  Cass was wakened every night. He could sense Moore’s hatred, like a thin living current across the corridor, every time the man tried to curse—and coughed before he could find his voice. All through the long nights the two lay caged together in darkness. Hate became as a fog about the mind of each, until both groped in perpetual night. Hate gnawed at the heart of each, until both lived in perpetual flame. Hate consumed the very spirit of each; till the blood cried out for blood.

  Then Moore began to sink, and the mocking cough of Costigan sometimes failed to stir him as he slept. He slept for longer and longer intervals with every passing day, till consciousness came only as a passing thing to him. When his jest was thus rendered ineffective, the harassed Costigan was driven to the brink of insanity.

  On a Tuesday forenoon in July, on the day that Cass’s term was up, the doctor came. “I guess them pills didn’t work again,” he said, looking down at Moore.

  Cass peered through his door. He could see the doctor on one knee beside Moore’s bunk, but of Moore he could see nothing more than a pair of unlaced county shoes.

  “This man’s ready for the hospital all right,” Cass heard. “But we’ll prob’ly have to bring him back next week. We can’t spare space over there to those that space can’t help.”

  An hour later an intern came down the tier, pushing a low stretcher. When he reached Costigan’s cell Cleary hurried up, bawling at Costigan hulked in a corner. “Lift that man out here—and do it quick.”

  Costigan came out of his corner like a colossal gray-breasted spider. Scowling, his mouth twisting with sullen resentment, he placed one shoulder beneath the dying man. Before Costigan reached the door Moore slid to his feet.

  It was the first time Cass had glimpsed the man’s face. It was a long, womanly face, dark, and woefully emaciated. He stood in the center of the cell, facing Costigan unsupported, and Costigan stood grinning across at Cleary. The intern put a hand on Moore’s shoulder, but Moore shrugged it off. He was swaying a little, and Cass heard his breath coming harder.

  “Well, your health seems to be returning, Billy Moore,” Cleary said, and he laughed uneasily.

  And then to Cass Billy Moore’s face seemed suddenly liquid and aflame, as a face seen behind a fire. Moore’s eyes stormed with the last vestige of his passion. In a last writhing of his hate his lips clenched, and could not speak. He spat full in Costigan’s face, whirled completely about, and lunged face-forward across his bunk.

  His head struck iron with a dull-ringing sound; his left leg scraped against the stone of the door. The white-coated intern kneeled slowly then, as though his legs ached. He rolled Moore over, and held Moore’s wrist, and bowed his head deeply against Moore’s breast. Then he rose and took Moore’s ankles. Costigan stooped to take the head. Cass saw Conlay Costigan bending down.

  As he straightened up Cass heard him cough.

  And late that afternoon Cass was released.

  “She’s left word with Regan,” he told himself.

  15

  HE CAME OUT of the Twenty-sixth Street exit of the county jail at three p.m., wearing the same yellow slicker in which he had been arrested. Ten months in county had aged his eyes: they held now that chastened half-shuttered look which only long pain can teach any man’s eyes. The corners of his mouth had come down till the lips looked almost stern.

  Strange sunlight struck his eyelids, new street-sounds struck his ears. He yanked his cap far down over his forehead to shut out the sun, and he walked a bit faster to get past the sounds. He caught a northbound car on Kedzie and stared at strangers like a child riding on a car for the first time.

  He did not know of the World’s Fair opening until he came down South State. On either side hawkers sold patent medicines, World’s Fair flags and World’s Fair flowers, World’s Fair souvenirs and World’s Fair balloons, patent cork screws, patent razor blades, patent cameras, patent ties, patent hose, beach balls, pocket-knives, patent salves of diverse cures;—and on every corner World’s Fair pimps watched for World’s Fair cops with one eye, and for World’s Fair prospects with the other. Radios extolled the glories of a World’s Fair two blocks east, and thin children begged from store to store.

  Children, like hawkers and whores, peddlers and pimps, had to watch for cops with one eye and for prospects with the other. Sometimes a cop caught a hawker selling contraceptives along with his razor blades; sometimes a cop caught a twelve-year-old begging too openly.

  Cass had forgotten something of the suffering in this city, and what he had forgotten came back to him with redoubled force now. Almost it was like seeing South State for the first time; his eyes were opened by unfamiliarity: a street of misery unspeakable.

  He had known long of hungering thousands here, of Chicago’s maze of graft and rackets, of its gangster politicians and its crooked mayors. But never before had Cass seen its hunger-ridden streets decorated with flags, nor its whores selling tin souvenirs. He had known long that the price of common bread here, was, for thousands, degradation. That here, just in order to eat, thousands lived in fear, furtively, with lust, shamefully.

  And now the city itself seemed a whore, selling a tin souvenir.

  Now
the city had been made to wear a painted grin and a World’s Fair smile, in order that business (which had been ailing somewhat) be made whole once more. “Boost and buy!” the papers bawled, and radios along South State reechoed the frantic plea: “Boost our city! Buy! Buy! Buy!” The papers pleaded and threatened, mocked and cursed; then they cajoled: “Oh buy! Only buy!” The radios sobbed. The Tribute demanded: “Buy! Give! Buy! Give!” (Small boys who beg grow up into thieves, small girls into dollar-whores.) ‘But say, ain’t the Enchanted Islund perty, dearie?’ “Boost the fair! Boost the mayor! We want dollars, we don’t care—Just Buy! Buy! Buy!”

  But it seemed that some people no longer had money, because they had spent it all like water, or had been altogether too thrifty, or had invested unwisely.

  (Just as in the final stages of syphilis a dying prostitute is given an urethral smear, so did a World’s Fair now seek to conceal the decadence of a city sick to death. This city was trying with noise and flags to hide the corruption that private ownership had brought it. The Tribute was its smear. The Tribute gave glamor to its World’s Fair reportage, but said nothing of homeless thousands living in shelters, not a word about women being forced into prostitution under its very nose. The Tribute printed pictures of Buckingham fountain, of merry-go-rounds and royal weddings, but had no space for warning its readers of an epidemic begun at the Fair. Publication of such a warning would have saved many lives, but it might also have hurt World’s Fair receipts. The Tribute was the World’s Fair’s pimp. Its concern was for the money-bags of Lake Shore Drive, of Winnetka and Wilmette; it had no concern for truth. Systematically it fought, as always, any change in an order of society so beautifully calculated to permit the plundering of the millions by the few, so ideally suited to enhance private interest at the cost of the masses: the system which requires of each generation that millions be slain in wars for world-markets.