“I got to cutting expenses tonight, Red,” he said without a trace of anger in his voice. He raised the trumpet to his mouth, and he barked out into the street:
“Hottest woman-show on South State! See ’em shake that thing! See ’em squirm! Hear ’em sing!”
Cass didn’t move until Herman paced away. Then he followed one step behind.
“Y’all mean yo’ don’t want me to bark no more t’night, Mist’ Hauser?”
Herman took the horn from his mouth.
“You come back next winter, Red. You can build the fire for me like you done last winter. Remember?”
“But ah could jest sell mags an’ gum still though, huh?”
Herman shook his head and went on barking. Cass followed, up and down, one step behind, back and forth in front of the ticket-cage.
“Could ah sell if ah came back t’morrer night?”
Herman shook his head. He went to the cage, spoke low to the faded blonde within, and draped a five-dollar bill over Cass’s left wrist.
That was how Cass understood that his show-job was through. He knew Herman wouldn’t do that unless it were through. So he folded the fin neatly, without a word, and hitched up his belt with one hand. Herman said, “Leave the hat, Red. Good luck.”
“Ah couldn’t keep Blondie right on six a week anyhow,” Cass consoled himself. “Now ah’ll get me a good job.” He shoved his fists down his pockets to show Herman he didn’t care. “S’long, Dutchy,” he said. “Here’s yore tinny tin hat,”; he flipped the hat carelessly toward its owner.
Norah wasn’t in the back row, and she wasn’t up front. But backstage the black girls were in a tumult the minute they saw him. “How come you chasin’ white gals through here all the time?” they asked in chorus, and the mulatto in the corner threw a slipper at his head. “How come you bust in here when y’ought to be barkin’?” the little one called Queenie asked, and then they all laughed together. Dill Doak pointed to the alley-exit. “She walked out that way, Red,” he said, “an’ she didn’t even stop to say she knew me once.”
Cass started north up the alley, and then he turned south. At the end of the alley he looked both ways down Harrison, but there was no woman in sight. He fumbled for his cigarettes, and wished that he’d gone the other way.
“Ah reck’n ah’ll take out o’ this pesthole direc’ly,” he told himself, strolling slow and smoking, swaggering a little from the hips. “Ah been here too long a’ready. Ah had some good ol’ times here, an’ ah didn’t leave much undone. But ah can’t even get high in these parts no more without takin’ some awful chances. Ah miss mah sotol pretty bad too ah guess. Ah guess ah got too much life in me to hang around one place so long. Ah guess ah ought to be movin’ on.”
He rested one moment against a billboard advertising some product too indistinct to be clearly discerned now. He flicked his cigarette butt into the street, and he blinked at the street lamps burning all in a row. He looked in each direction down Harrison Street, and he looked both ways down State.
“Ah guess ah shouldn’t of said that to sister that time,” he said half-aloud.
And he whimpered against the billboard.
All that late November afternoon low clouds hung over the World’s Fair city. All that November afternoon the air was still; till the day was like a calm gray evening.
A Polish policeman surveyed the sky from one front window of a southbound Clark Street car. “Too warm yet for snow,” he said to the motorman, “looks more like rain to me.”
The motorman was old, he did not reply; he just thought to himself: “Rain or snow or mist or sleet—all’s one, once they touch the street. What’s that? Who spoke? Wife has been dead now for twenty years and here am I still waiting. And it’s going to snow. Or rain. Well . . .”
Half a mile to the east, under a green-gray cloud, the lake lay a dark blue curtain stretched smooth and tight to dry. So smoothly, so untroubled did it lie that the fog above it seemed to be flattening out every small wrinkle, ripple, and crease in the dark-blue smooth-tight curtain.
“How warm it is for November,” thought men on the streets hurrying home to warm suppers, and some of them said it aloud. “How dark it is for the daytime,” they said. “Who can tell, perhaps it will snow tonight?”
Within the houses women looked out of windows the while they cooked under small yellow lights. “How warm it is for November!” they said. “How dark it is for the daytime!” Then they put forks and knives on the cloth, while water ran in the sink. “Perhaps it will rain tonight,” someone said over the telephone, “It may perhaps even snow. Who can tell?”
The low-hanging clouds seemed ready to open, all that day. They looked like fat gray cows trailing single-file: it seemed that the snow they withheld might be warm milk in white udders.
And just as the small streetlights came on, the first flakes began to fall. First three, then four, then many fell.
Beside what had been a World’s Fair grounds Cass and Nubby O’Neill came to lounge as the November night came down. Save for the glow of their cigarettes one might not have noticed two men standing in shadow.
“Don’t call me ‘son’ no more, Nub,” Cass asked, “Ah’ll jest call you ‘judge’ like before, an’ you’ll jest call me ‘Two-Gun.’”
Nubby spun his cigarette in an arc toward the gutter.
Cass spun his cigarette in an arc toward the gutter.
“Nope,” Nubby answered, “I can’t do that quite yet. I can’t trust you enough now to be givin’ out fancy tough names. You got to show me you’re a real white man before I start callin’ you anythin’.”
“Ah didn’t know no better before, Nub. Ah was jest a dumb kid then.”
“Well, I’m tellin’ you now then, son, an’ for the last time: no real white man ever runs off from another to join up with some nigger. You got somethin’ to live down with me, son, before I can let you hold a gun of mine again. An’ I’d never trust you with a dime again any farther than I could thrun a battleship.”
“Ah’m not so afraid-like ah was before, Nub. Ah jest got scared that time. Ah ain’t told yo’ half what ah done since that butcher shop hoist. Yo’ wouldn’t believe it all, all ah done since. But if ah told you some things ah done ah’ bet you’d call me Two-Gun then all right.”
“Maybe I would an’ maybe I wouldn’t. An’ maybe my heels is gettin’ run down again an’ I still got too much pride to mooch.” He glanced inquiringly at Cass, and Cass cocked his head a bit wistfully to the side.
“Sometime, Judge, if we come back here together next spring, sometime mebbe when we got a little extry cash on hand—ah—ah—”
“What’s eatin’ on you son? Spit it out!” Nubby spoke impatiently.
“Well, ah’d like to get me tattooed sometime in that place you said on Van Buren.”
Nubby nodded ready assurance.
“O.K. That’s the first thing we’ll do when we get back next spring. Maybe by that time I’ll be callin’ you ‘Hell-Blazer’—how’d that be, son, eh?” He nudged Cass in the ribs, and Cass blushed faintly.
“That’d be swell if you oney could, Judge,” he said. “Ah could even get it tattooed on mah chest then.”
He blinked at a street lamp, with flakes falling slantwise past its light. Stoplights down the boulevard flashed from red to green. It was time to be getting on.
Afterword
by Nelson Algren
ANYHOW, THERE WAS a little piece, a little advertisement, and I forget where I saw it. It must have been in some neighborhood newspaper. Maybe it was in the Saturday Review of Literature. Maybe some small magazine. Anyhow it said that the Writers’ Circle, 3600 Douglas Boulevard, is interested in manuscripts. So when I got back to Chicago I went over to 3600 Douglas Boulevard, which was the Jewish People’s Institute, and I went to this little group and the guy named Murray Gitlin—he was the club director there—had a lot of young people in trying to write. He wanted to write himself and he was very friendly. He was a very frie
ndly guy. I didn’t have a typewriter at the time and my brother-in-law wouldn’t let me use his, but Murray gave me his in his office. We were up in Albany Park then, up on Lawrence Avenue, so in order to use the typewriter, I’d ride the Kedzie Avenue car to Douglas Boulevard and transfer over. It was about an hour’s trolley ride. I don’t know what he used while I was using it, but he gave me the corner. And either I wrote the letter to him or at any rate this letter I wrote about my hassle in this gasoline station got into his hands and he said, “This is a story; make it a story.” So I did and called it “So Help Me” and I sent it to Story magazine, which I hadn’t heard about, but Murray Gitlin knew about Story, and they took it and published it in 1933. Because they took it, I got a form letter from Vanguard Press. I was twenty-four and I got this letter from Vanguard Press: “Are you working on a novel? We are interested in a novel on the basis of this piece in Story magazine.” I had nothing else to do so instead of answering the letter, I rode to New York. I was so used to hitch-hiking by that time, I was so used to walking out the door and getting on Route 66—it was just as easy as getting into a car, and although I never knew exactly what route I was going to take, I never had any trouble. By that time I was a professional transient so I knew all the places to go by then. So I rode to New York. Some kids—two guys with a lot of bedding in the car—picked me up and they were going to New York by way of Niagara Falls. I said, “All right, I’ve never seen Niagara Falls.” So I came down. We saw the Falls and it seems to me I helped them somewhere along the line. I think I helped to buy food or something. I think I helped buy gas once or twice. Anyhow we came down the Palisades. That was the first time I saw New York. And I went right up to Vanguard Press and met James Henle. And he said, “What’ll you need? What would you do? How would you write a novel?” I said, “I’d go back to the Southwest.” He said, “What would you need to do that?” I said, “I need thirty dollars a month.” I mean I knew it would cost that much. You get room and board for twenty dollars a month and that leaves ten dollars for tobacco and so forth. And so we made a deal. He gave me ten dollars to get out of town and a promise of thirty dollars a month for three months, a total of one hundred dollars. I wrote in Somebody in Boots on that. I didn’t finish it in three months, but I delivered it. It was delivered in 1935. That was the only work I did between graduation and 1936 when the W.P.A. opened up. I got married in 1936 and the book wasn’t a success at all, so I didn’t try writing another novel until 1940 . . .
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