Somebody in Boots

by Nelson Algren

  The Tribute calls such killings: “A war to end war,” or “A war for democracy.” Its editors spew “patriotism,” “love,” “kindness,” “brotherhood of man,”—the white piously resigning themselves to the approach of another war whose sole purpose will be that of profits for just such men as the Tribute’s editors and owners. The Tribute prints false news, doctors its news, distorts its news, shouts “America First!” And the little lackeys of the copy-desk, the little bootlickers with pencils behind their ears, when told to doctor news from Russia or Red China—the little lackeys obey. The lackeys have homes in Rogers Park to pay for.)

  In front of Hauser’s Little Rialto Cass saw the paunchy person with the red shoe-button mouth; he was standing beneath a black derby, bawling through a blue megaphone.

  “She dawnces on a dime, gents,” Herman bawled at Cass as he passed. “Stella the little dawncin’ girrul—Don’t come in here boy—it ain’t decent.”

  And Cass recalled in passing that Norah had told him of this place, of how she had danced on its stage for a while. He wondered how long the money from the drugstore hoist had lasted, and whether she had sold the car. He hurried west toward the river. When he came to the hotel across the bridge on Clark he turned in.

  The dapper clerk behind the desk greeted him heartily.

  “Well, fer Chrise-sake, I thought they hung you last fall—” They shook hands over the counter. Cass tried to make his voice sound casual when he asked, “How’s mah girl, Regan? What’d she leave here fo’ me?” His casualness betrayed his concern. And Regan didn’t know where Norah Egan was, far less how she was. She had been in only once, and she had said nothing to him.

  “Alone?” Cass forced himself to ask.

  “No, it was a party up on the third floor; there was a whole gang here that night I never seen before.”

  So Cass exchanged cigarettes with the fellow, talked a while, boasted a while, laughed and had a drink on the house, and left.

  He walked west to Orleans Street, to the old frame house where his summer with Norah had been spent. A tall man stopped him on the steps.

  “You want a room?” he asked.

  Cass shook his head. No, he didn’t want a room. He was looking for his wife. He was just out of the hospital, and her name was Norah Egan, or Stella Howard.

  “No frail here by either name,” the tall man said. “I’m the landlord. Who are you?”

  Cass asked for Josie Hill, for Lon Costello and Tony Brown. Then for the little Jew named Stir-Nuts. They would know where Norah was now.

  “No, I don’t know them folks, kid. Old Lady Hill got bumped by a truck on Taylor and Halstead last March. Well, she was gettin’ perty old anyhow y’know. Too bad.”

  Cass came down the steps feeling troubled, for he didn’t know where he ought to go next. There was a Chinese restaurant on Westworth where Norah and he had sometimes eaten in that summer, and there perhaps he would find her now. She would be sitting alone in the rear where often, in happier times, they had sat together. He would ask the Chinese boys if she still came in if he didn’t hnd her already waiting.

  On the Wentworth Avenue car Cass watched the women boarding every time the car stopped. He felt that at any corner Norah might board.

  For three hours he sat in the little restaurant waiting for someone familiar to enter. Someone of the old mob, or perhaps some girl who’d lived in the house on South Wabash. But Cass didn’t want to go back to the house on South Wabash; and he could not understand when not even the owner of the restaurant remembered Norah clearly. He had thought that everyone remembered her. The longer he sat the harder it became to fight off the loneliness coming around his heart. When he felt unable to merely sit quietly here doing nothing, he rose as though knowing decisively where he was going next. He could not let himself feel that he didn’t know where to look.

  He returned to dim streets they had walked together, hoping, by some chance as dim as those streets, to meet someone he had once known. He walked both sides of Huron, from Clark to the lake and back again, looking up at lighted windows, peering in at names on door-bells. Then he tried Erie. Then he tried Ontario. When it became so late that the benches along the beach were deserted of lovers, he spread his slicker out on a bench and slept.

  In the morning he returned to the house on Orleans Street and rapped on every door from the fourth floor down. But the old mob was gone; no one in the whoie building had ever heard of Anthony Brown or Lon Costello or of an Assyrian throwout named “Ashes.” On the way downstairs Cass met the landlord coming up. He redescribed the little Jew Stir-Nuts. The landlord seemed annoyed.

  “I’ll tell you what you do, sonny,” he counseled. “You go over to the five-hundred block on Clark, an’ there’s a little kind of kike or sheeny that looks as batty to me as you say the guy you want is. Maybe he’s your man. But anyhow, even if he ain’t, don’t come lookin’ back here no more. Your man ain’t here an’ your wife ain’t here, an’ folks don’t like to have you bangin’ their doors at all hours. It scares some of ’em perty bad.”

  Cass wished that older men would quit calling him “son.”

  “The Jew sells the Examiner over there, sonny, an’ most everyone on the street knows him.”

  Cass walked back to Clark and found a hunchback sitting at the newsstand at the corner.

  “You the paper guy?” Cass asked, and the fellow nodded swiftly.

  “I’m the Examiner guy,” he said, “but the paper-truck is late.” Cass’s heart went sick. There was only the place on the South Wabash to return to, and it was hard to return there. It held too many keen memories of his earliest days with Norah, as well as holding the fear that she might be near there again—that he actually might find her there.

  When he got off the streetcar three blocks from the World’s Fair gates he stopped in a restaurant for coflee. He piddled his spoon about a cup for a while, and the coffee grew cold, and he left. He walked south feeling ill, and came to the house. His fear, as he went up the steps, was as strong as his hope.

  The door was locked. He pushed the buzzer savagely, heard it ringing clearly within, and waited. A frowsy Negress opened. Cass removed his cap and entered. He took one look around, and he laughed a little. The place had been so thoroughly remodeled that he scarcely recognized it. It was a high-class brothel now, no longer a cheap rooming house. The hall and stairway had been varnished, and overstuffed easy chairs lined both sides of an entrance-room. Two high-school boys waited, smoking cigarettes held in long holders, lounging in easy-chairs.

  But no one here had ever heard of Norah Egan.

  “As a mattah o’ fac’,” the Negress informed him, “there ain’t no nachal blondes like you say workin’ here any more. All blondes we got now is dyed uns.”

  At the corner of Seventh and State Cass counted his money. Of five doltars given him by the county he had three dollars and twenty cents remaining. His desire now was to get dead drunk for a week, but he fought the desire down.

  “Ah reck’n ah’ll have to git out o’ town after this whenever ah want to git high,” he counseled himself. No, he couldn’t afford being arrested for drunkenness now. He saw the star-bordered sign of Hauser’s Little Rialto, and remembered again that Norah had danced there.

  “Won’t do no harm jest to ask,” he told himself, and he waited in front. He didn’t know quite what he was waiting for, whether to see a show, or to ask for a girl who once had worked here, or both.

  The house had not yet opened for the afternoon, and the ticket cage was empty. But a door was open and into it Cass peered inquiringly, to see what he could see . . . and up a dim aisle came two struggling forms, viciously tugging and pulling at each other.

  “Loud Mout’!” one bawled, and Cass stepped back in amazement, “Out from my showhouse, Loud Mout’!”

  Cass retreated to watch from a safer distance. Halfway in the door and half out the pair ceased to struggle. Instead they stood with noses touching, hurling obscene threats, waving arms, ea
ch shaking a fist in the other’s face. One held an empty basket in the hand that was not a fist; he wore a white jacket and cap. The other was short, with crimson jowls and fists like hams. He looked like the boss, and he talked like the boss; and every two seconds he grabbed for the basket.

  “You are a Loud-Mout’,” he announced, as though unaware that he was repeating himself. “You are a Loud-Mout’ schreihaus Dane”—and he tried again for the basket.

  The white-jacketed one tossed the basket a dozen yards up the aisle, followed it with the white cap and jacket, and strode off south on State. The little man with the voice went into the ticket-box and closed the door behind him. Cass came to the opening.

  Inside the cage Herman was replacing his derby above his ears.

  “Are you-all the boss?” Cass asked.

  “Well, if you just seen what I done to that fatass Dane I’d guess you’d know who’s boss.” Herman was still blowing from excitement. “The show ain’t started yet,” he added.

  “Ah’m lookin’ fo’ mah girl—”

  Herman stared, not understanding. Cass gulped.

  “Ah mean she used to work for y’all an’ her name was Stella. She’s mah wife. Ah cain’t find her. Ah jest come out of a hospital. She’s a blonde.”

  “I don’t knowin’ from nothin’,” Herman said. He had something more important to do than to hnd stray blondes for their State Street sheiks.

  “Her whole name was Norah Egan. She was a blonde. Mebbe you fired her fo’ talkin’ back?”

  Herman remembered then. “Ahhhhhh,’ he ahhhhhed. “Whyn’t you saying who you meant in the first place?” His face darkened with challenge. “Sure I fired Egan. You don’t like it maybe? You could stuff it, if you don’t like it you know.” He came out of the cage to thrust his pugnose into Cass’s face. “I fire all loud-mout’s from out my show. Didn’t you seeing what I just done to one loud-mout’? He will come back some day next week and ask can he have his old job back and I will be telling him what I told Egan. She come back and says she will work now for less and will not talking back to my face any more and—”

  “When’d she come back, mister?” Cass cocked his head to the side expectantly.

  “Well, I just told her I would not take her back again even for thirty-five cents a week, on account I have a better dancer now who will not talk so back to my face and—”

  “But when was that, mister? Jest last week?”

  “Two years ago was all this happening.” Herman had quite recovered his poise, and he spoke more quietly. “But how should I know where at you could find anybody? And do you know what I think Egan was doing the time she come back here already?”

  There was an eager gleam in Herman’s eye; then he seemed to check his tongue, for the gleam faded. “Did you say wife?” he asked as though suddenly appalled.

  Cass said, “No, ah didn’t say ‘wife’,” and turned away. He felt as sick as though he’d been hit below the belt. For half a block he walked, slowly slouching, thinking dimly; then he paused, and he turned back.

  Herman was inside dusting the seats. He dusted with his right hand and held in his left the basket which the vendor had tossed down the aisle. Cass waited in the doorway until Herman glanced up.

  “Kin y’all gimme a job, mister?” he asked, “ah don’t talk back, ’cause ah got no loud mouth.”

  Herman glanced up. “Whyn’t you say what you wanted in the first place? Or ain’t you the same guy?”

  “Ah wasn’t sure what ah wanted.”

  “Did you say ‘wife’?”

  “No, ah didn’t say ‘wife.’’

  Herman sized him up. The fellow didn’t look like he’d talk back, but he did look as though he might steal nickels on the side.

  Up and down, from the worn brown shoes to the torn brown cap and the slicker rolled up under his arm, Herman appraised him for what he was worth. No, this boy wasn’t so classy like the Dane.

  Ten months in County leaves a man with a pallor like a gray talcum sprinkled across his face. Herman needed a hard man. Out of a cautious nature now he said, “I got no job for you, sonny.” He saw the gray-faced man gulp, and he looked a little closer. Herman distrusted handsome men as unconditionally as he admired pretty women. Experience had taught him, and his logic was rude; a handsome Dane had made trouble among his dancing-girls, and this fellow was no Dane. And he looked too ugly to start woman-trouble. No, Stella wouldn’t flirt with this one. Being ill-favored and honest himself, Herman made the unconscious assumption that ugly men were more honest than handsome fellows. To Herman, honest men were fighting-men: Cass’s mouth bore a battle scar. Only fighting men bore such scars.

  “You could sell tonight for me, if you wanted,” Herman said, “I’ll buy you hot-dogs an’ beer next door. O.K.?” He handed Cass the basket, with the white jacket hanging across the basket-handle. That was all.

  Herman Hauser bought him hot-dogs and beer twice a day for a week and a half; every night he checked up on Cass’s receipts. At the end of two weeks Cass received six dollars, one full week’s pay; and he settled down to the routine of the first steady job he’d held in his life. But Herman never conceded openly that Cass had a job with him. Each pay-night he appeared mildly surprised to find Cass still with him.

  “You could stay on this next week,” he would say in handing Cass his six dollars, “but after this week I got to cutting expenses.”

  With this threat over his head from week to week, Cass worked for Herman Hauser for ten months. Through the fall and the early part of the winter he vended stale candies and peanuts along the dark aisle. On the stage girls danced, shrieked, undressed, and retreated with leering woggles. Men in the seats strained forward to see. If Cass blocked one’s view for a second he was cursed. Negroes barked at him, “Get out from front o’ mah eyes!” and he moved humbly on down the aisle. He watched a talentless comedian slogging about in oversize shoes until he wearied of watching. The piano made a tinny din, and a sixty-year-old scurve off the street sang a ballad of love in the country.

  Ten cents was the price here both night and day, and you could stay just as long as your flesh could bear it. You could smoke on the main door, you could hiss from all corners. If you felt in the mood, you could hiss yourself hoarse here. There were no ushers to hush you, and the girls on the stage would merely bend a bit toward you over the single footlight, and without trace of bitterness hiss in return. You could drink out your whiskey in the very front row and smash the bottle agreeably on the concrete of the aisle—if you felt in that mood. For ten cents, one dime, the tenth part of a dollar, you could as a patron of the Little Rialto do all but three things: you could not urinate behind the piano; neither could you clamber nervously over the footlight and there attempt rape while the girls were dancing, you had to wait till they finished and earn a kind of consent; lastly, and this most emphatically, you could not come into the Little Rialto to sleep. Before you dozed for three minutes you would be roused if you tried it. Herman Hauser himself would do the rousing.

  He would come tapping your shoulder gently. You would not persist then if you were wise, for Herman enforced this ordinance with a severity against which there was no defense. Had he not, the Little Rialto would have been transformed overnight from a theater to a day-flop, for out on the street strolled transient thousands, each man of whom loved deep sleep like warm food. Since buying the Little Rialto Herman had fought off hordes of wandering men; sleep-hungry legions had he repelled. Since the price of the flop-houses round about was uniformly twenty-five cents, and Herman’s seats were well-nigh flealess, the attraction was practically irresistible. Only, poor as it was, Herman preferred show-business. Poor as it was.

  Herman stood out front and barked, and as he barked he peeled his eye. All those fellows who approached his cage with an aspect both soiled and slumbrous Herman followed within. Once inside, if the customer spread out his coat and slumped suspiciously far down thereon, Herman would come tapping gently, pointing to a sign none bu
t he could see, and whispering a low warning, “No slipping please.”

  This was the time the customer might very well start staying awake, for Herman warned only once. A second offense was to him sheer defiance: he would yank some poor fellow out of sleep by the collar, haul him into the aisle by the front of his shirt, and rush him bodily onto the street by the seat of his trousers. The only hard ones for Herman to handle were those whose brains were inflamed by dope. If a man had nothing but whiskey or beer inside him Herman could handle almost any man’s weight. But on one occasion a six-foot-four-inch Negro came in walking on his toes and slumped quietly into a seat behind a beam in the very last row. Herman assumed that he was merely sodden from cheap rye or Shipping Port, so he tapped the Negro’s shoulder—and business began to pick up. The fellow rose out of the seat like the black djinn from the bottle, and had it not been for the immediate assistance of Cass McKay, Herman Hauser might well have been strangled to death under his own roof. After that Cass told him how to distinguish between red marijuana and colorless whiskey; where whiskey loosens a man in muscle and brain, marijuana tightens until something snaps. And men with whiskey in them do not walk on their toes, airily.

  All in all, Herman’s Little Rialto was a boisterous little temple enough, a dim-lit, ill-smelling, tinsel bordello, one moment like a tottering pier as the footlight rocked in its socket under laughter like waves that came crashing—and the next second silent with a silence receding, till Cass could hear the recoiling of breath in throats all about him.

  It soon became Cass’s duty to whisper, “No sleepun here.” But the actual rousting remained Herman’s work.

  To Cass it seemed that the colored company here had the more verve, that their humor had a sounder ring, that much which they did was both fresh and spontaneous. In the black troupe was a veritable dynamo of a man named Dill Doak. He was a muscular, bullet-headed man of Cass’s age, as black as the ace of spades and with a bass voice which flickered the gas flames behind the exit signs when he sang Asleep in the Deep. By his limitless energy he electrified others; his energy was such that it amounted to an intelligence in itself. By his spontaneity and drive he made the black show more popular, even among white patrons, than was the white troupe’s performance. And this Dill Doak had a mind as keen as his body was strong. Although on the stage he was a light-footed, dance-loving, song-loving, rubber-limbed mappet, full of a rich, black belly-laughter, yet offstage he spoke and acted in a way in which Cass had never seen or heard a Negro speak or act before.