The Devil's Stocking

by Nelson Algren

  The Supreme Court of New Jersey, by a vote of 7-0, threw Calhoun’s first trial out of court.

  This decision was based upon the rules of discovery: that the prosecution had had in its possession tape recordings which it had concealed.

  This was the tape made, involuntarily, by Nick Iello, while being interrogated by Lieutenant De Vivani, and which had been brought to the light only by the vigilance of Barney Kerrigan. The tape revealed that an offer of immunity from prosecution had been offered the witness in return for his identification of Ruby Calhoun as the man with the gun.

  Thousands of black youths milled about the streets outside the courtroom in Jersey City when Calhoun was released. Ruby Calhoun had become the symbol of the black man victimized by white society.

  Black Muslims protected Calhoun from the crowd when he came out of the courtroom. He was escorted to a fleet of five Cadillacs chauffeured by Black Muslims. The heavyweight champion of the world served as one of Calhoun’s guards.

  7

  The

  Devil’s

  Stocking

  The first taste of freedom had a strong, sweet taste to Ruby Calhoun.

  Judge Gregory Oritano had been Red Haloways’s counsel in 1966, and it had been Oritano who had advised Red against taking a second polygraph test. But because of this association Oritano was now disqualified as judge of Calhoun’s second trial. Then Epstein was advised that, unless Oritano were so appointed, there would be a delay of several months.

  Epstein feared delay. The prosecution was already putting pressure on his witnesses, and Calhoun was not to be kept in hand. Epstein agreed to have Oritano preside so long as they could go to trial immediately.

  “Take care, Ruby,” Epstein tried warning Calhoun, but the warning went unheard. Every Friday afternoon Calhoun took off for New York City “to consult his lawyers,” he assured Jennifer, and returned, the following Monday, looking as if he’d been playing poker with them and had lost midtown Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens.

  Everyone in the world, it seemed to Calhoun, had been having a ball for ten years. Now that he wanted a ball for himself, for just a weekend or two, people began talking to him as though he were still locked. He’d fought too long for his freedom, Calhoun assured himself, not to use it now.

  On Christmas Eve Ruby Calhoun walked down Fifth Avenue like a man who had never before seen Christmas.

  Shish kebab stands were steaming on either side of the avenue. Their smoke kept rising between the faces of the December twilight. There were nearly as many horse-drawn carriages on the street as there were automobiles.

  “Ho! Ho! Ho!” a Santa Clause shouted at him and he felt that the Santa meant that particular Ho! Ho! Ho! just for himself.

  Later a cold Christmas rain began around the peep shows down Eight Avenue, pelting the male burlesques and the bars.

  It wasn’t until he saw Adeline, sitting at the bar of the hotel cocktail lounge waiting for him, that he felt he was free at last. When he’d kissed her, and ordered a drink, she asked him, “Why so stern?”

  She knew, all the same, that his deadpan expression concealed a feeling of deepest happiness. He had always gone at life deadpan, in the ring as well as out: the less you showed an opponent the less were his chances of getting to you. The more joyous you felt, the more careful you had to be to cover it, lest it be snatched away.

  “Bad news,” she filled him in, “our best witness has taken it on the lam. Rabbit Baxter has disappeared himself.”

  “Who needs him?” Calhoun asked. “It isn’t up to me to prove my innocence. It’s up to the state to prove my guilt. How are they going to do that now? They don’t have a single witness. In fact I think they’ll drop it now. It’s going to cost the country two million bucks to retry me. The ball is in our court, honey.”

  “It’s not that simple, Ruby. For one thing, the press will say an innocent man was framed. That opens the possibility of a lawsuit of a million dollars a year for every year the innocent man served.”

  “I don’t want a nickel. Just my freedom, that’s all.”

  “But if the prosecutor’s office drops it, it’s going to leave the Jersey City police hot as possible against the prosecutor’s office.”

  “Tell ’em to get their best hold. We won’t even miss that rabbity witness. We got Dovie-Jean Dawkins. Remember Dovie-Jean?”

  “How do you figure she’ll do on the stand, Ruby?”

  Ruby reflected a long moment.

  “She won’t be ill at ease, I can tell you that much,” he decided. “She’s never ill at ease. Still, she’s simple. No put-on. When she talks, the jury will know she isn’t lying.”

  He talks, Adeline thought to herself, as if this little country whore had class.

  “The jury,” he added, “will have to believe her.”

  “I’ve never met her,” Adeline reminded him; he looked to be lost in thought.

  “Why don’t we go upstairs and finish our conversation there?” he asked.

  The legal light faded in Adeline’s eyes and a slow-burning gleam, at once dark and golden, began shining forth.

  Upstairs, he switched on the radio and she came to him, swaying to the rhythm of some band playing on the Jersey Shore. She parted her lips at his kiss and he stretched his tongue deep into her mouth. She closed her lips upon his tongue and drew upon it.

  His big hands slid down until they clasped her buttocks; beneath the silk of her gown he felt her pressing them tightly together. He led her to a chair and handed her a glass of champagne; her hand trembled when she took it and a few drops spilled.

  She had had many men in her teens. And had felt not the faintest passion for any of them. When she had gained control over her own life, she had diverted her sexual energies into a drive for power. She’d stopped drinking and had become celibate. She had had enough sex for a lifetime, she had felt.

  For twenty years now, she had lived a harsh, austere and driving existence. Her needs, so long submerged, began to overwhelm her now like a wave which hits before it is seen.

  “Just the dress,” he instructed her, standing before her with a clothes hanger in his hand.

  She raised her gown over her head and handed it to him. He hung it neatly but unsmiling onto a hanger and put it into the clothes closet. He was pleased that she wasn’t wearing pantyhose. Brief black underpants, black bra and black hose pleased all his midnight penitentiary fantasies.

  “Haven’t you ever seen a woman before, champ? The way you look.”

  “Not till now,” he answered seriously, still unsmiling. And finished his drink without taking his eyes off her. Then he put the glass down and lifted her onto his lap.

  She had felt his strength before in a handshake. Now, with both his arms around her, they felt to her like the world’s strongest arms. He found her mouth at the same moment that his fingers found the hook of her brassiere. In order to bring her breasts closer to her mouth, she stretched out.

  He caressed her left breast firmly yet gently, his palm pressing its small hard nipple. She had never been pregnant and her breasts had remained those of a schoolgirl. Now she felt her nipple stiffening as his tongue began teasing it. She felt him close his lips over her breast and tug slowly upon it.

  She raised herself, with eyes closed, high enough to let him get her underpants off. “Hurry,’’ she whispered hoarsely, “hurry.”

  He would not hurry. He refilled his glass, drank, then stood looking down at her while undressing himself without haste. When she opened her eyes he was standing before her. He was already erect.

  She raised his cock to her cheek and began breathing softly upon it, up and down. Although it began trembling, he himself still looked cool. She fitted her lips onto it, closed her eyes and began a slow, soft sucking. For twenty years she had not done this and she had never done it well. Now, for the first time, she enjoyed doing it and was doing it well. Looking down, he saw her eyes, beneath her lashes, were misting. Then she stopped, looking proud of hers
elf. The cock was huge and throbbing.

  There was only one satisfactory position in sex for Adeline, and now she maneuvered until she was astride him. She pressed her sex slowly down upon him, her hands upon her knees to lend leverage. His hands pressed her down on her hips.

  One position she had always detested, and that was kneeling on all fours while a lover entered her cunt from behind and held her, about her waist, helplessly.

  Only one trick had ever gotten away with this. The next one who’d tried it had lost. She’d reached between his legs and given his testicles a terrible twisting. He’d yelped and gone limp. No man had tried it since. Adeline Kelsey was not to be dominated.

  Astride Calhoun, she felt a fiery pang when his breathing came harder and his eyes began looking empty. Who was the athlete now?

  Then those big hands lifted her off him, thrust her onto all fours and entered her, the hands holding her firmly, from behind. He began taking long strokes, bringing her pleasure to the point of pain, then easing off instinctively: this was a joy so sharp she could not endure it and yet she endured it. “Again!” she demanded in a hoarse whisper. “Again! Again!”

  Calhoun prolonged her orgasm with the same cool passion he sometimes worked in the ring, when he had an opponent weakening. He never hurried then and he didn’t hurry now. She began beating the pillow with her fists and tossing her head wildly. At last he drew her up to him and released her. She fainted in his arms and rolled onto her back. When she opened her eyes she did not, for a moment, recognize him. Then she put a finger against her lips, recognizing him at last. When he smiled down at her, she smiled back.

  “You are the champ,” she assured him.

  She put his head down upon her breast and he fell asleep, her nipple indenting his cheek, like a child.

  A tide of love rose within her, like the love of a mother for her child, like the love of a woman for her lover, like the love of a woman for all humankind, in a wave she had never felt in her life before. She had not known herself capable of such warmth toward another human being.

  Yet here was an outlaw who had been redeemed and brought back into the fold, and it was herself who had redeemed him and had brought him back. Here was a boy who had been deprived, by the white world, of any opportunity except what he could win by violence, and had then condemned him for that violence. Had it not been for Adeline Kelsey, he would still be in a cell serving life.

  It hadn’t been the NAACP who’d gotten him free. It had not been Martin Luther King Jr.’s people who’d sprung him. It had been Adeline Kelsey, and no other.

  She stroked his arm lightly and said softly, “My baby. My baby.”

  Calhoun was deep in a troubled dream. He was in a ring with a billygoat wearing blood-red trunks. The goat charged, horns lowered and she heard him cry out without waking, “Salazar!”

  When he wakened, hours later, the bed lamp was still burning and Adeline was snoring lightly beside him. It was after eleven P.M.

  Something he was supposed to have done, someone he was supposed to have talked to—he got up, splashed cold water into his face and took a drink to steady his voice. Then he phoned Jennifer.

  Her voice sounded distant and dry, yet he sensed a trembling under it. Her voice was neither cold nor welcoming, like the voice of someone known long ago now forgotten.

  “I’m in New York, sweetheart.” He tried to feign great warmth, “this is the first chance I’ve had to phone. We had to wheel right over here to sign for my release.”

  “I thought that was cleared up this morning in New Jersey.”

  “Oh yes, that was cleared up, but the lawyers had details to be attended to. You know how these great legal minds …”

  There was a silence then, on both ends of the line. He was waiting to be believed. She was waiting to hear whether he had more childish lies to tell.

  “Are you coming home, Ruby?” she asked at last.

  “If I’m wanted there, yes. If not, no.”

  He was taking a stronger line now.

  “Nobody is going to beg you.”

  And she hung up. He was left with the receiver in his hand, looking at his snoring mistress. Finally he crawled in beside her and took her.

  Then slept upon her breast, dreamlessly.

  He wakened to see Adeline in a kimono with a Chinese pattern in black and green, under last night’s amber lamp. She came to the bed, sat on its edge and kissed him.

  “How you feel, champ?”

  “I was never the champ,” he reminded her, smiling.

  “You’re the champ all the same,” she assured him, “What do you want to do today?”

  “I’ve never seen a horse race.”

  “First race is at twelve-thirty. It’s eleven now. Get on your horse.”

  A hot gray sky hung low over Aqueduct. At the rail, she showed him the correlation between the numbers on his program and those on the toteboard.

  In the clubhouse it was cool. She took his program and returned it with two fifties enclosed. He put twenty and twenty on something called King Hoss.

  The horse broke out in front and held it until the final few yards, then tired and placed second. Six dollars even to place. He returned to their table triumphantly: he’d gotten sixty dollars back for his investment of forty!

  They sat out a couple of maiden races, sipping Tom Collinses, until the fourth race. He put ten dollars, across the board, on Sir Norfolk. It won going away and he picked up eighty-one dollars for thirty. The next race he made the same bet on Teddy’s Courage. Three horses came in bunched under the wire. Up goes Teddy’s number and he came back to her showing a hundred and ten dollars for thirty.

  They skipped a race and then, running a finger down the entries for the seventh, he stopped at Funny Peculiar. Adeline consulted the form.

  “No way,” she assured him, “the horse breaks out in front every race, then tires and winds up sixth, seventh or trailing the field. Last time he ran ninth in a field of ten after leading at the far turn. Early speed but tires is his story.”

  “This is the day Funny Peculiar forgets to stop,” Calhoun decided stubbornly; and returned from the window with twenty to win and twenty to place on Funny Peculiar, off at 9–1.

  The horse broke beautifully, three lengths in front of the field as they passed the stands for the first time. At the far turn he was still holding his lead by a length and a half but appeared to be tiring.

  At the turn for home, just when it looked like he was about to be overtaken, he began making up ground like a cyclone and swept under the wire five full lengths in front of the field.

  Calhoun returned from the window counting a handful of bills and handed Adeline the two fifties she’d put on him earlier. She pushed the bills back toward him, then saw the expression on his face and accepted them.

  “There are fights at Madison Square tonight,” he told her, “we’re going to sit ringside.”

  Ringside at Madison Square was like old times. Calhoun shook hands with Joey Gardello, who’d put on thirty pounds and had a light-heavy going in the prelims. Roddy Nims had retained his weight and had built himself a reputation as a trainer. Sammy David Jr. came up smiling with hand extended, and Calhoun turned his back deliberately. He’d once written the man asking his support, and the letter had been returned unopened. Nobody had ever had to warn David about taking risks. He took none.

  Gardello’s light-heavy, a Jewish youth from the Bronx, kept taking rights and lefts directly into his face for three rounds as though Gardello had failed to inform him that it was not illegal to block a blow with your glove. Then somebody must have filled him in because he came out for the fourth swinging and caught his opponent, a Puerto Rican, with a paralyzing right. The Puerto Rican didn’t go down but merely stood, arms dangling helplessly. The Jewish kid stepped back and observed him politely, giving him time to recover. Then, when he had recovered, he stepped in with a left hand to the jaw and the Puerto Rican boy went down on his face. He wasn’t going to get up.


  Across the street, having dinner at Shor’s with half a dozen old-time friends, Adeline began feeling like she was an intruder: an intruder who was going to pick up the tab. Ruby became talkative and gay, among many old friends, accepting their congratulations and goodwill wishes on all sides. Everybody knew who he was. Nobody knew who she was.

  And what was he, after all? An ex-prize fighter who’d done prison time, nothing more.

  Nothing more than this: a man who, but for herself, would be in prison tonight. A man on whom she had spent a small fortune. The man for whom she had bullied newspaper editors and TV producers and radio commentators. The man for whom she had raised such a political clamor that the Supreme Court of New Jersey had been forced, by public pressure, to review his case. She had gotten him out of prison when the best lawyers had been unable to spring him. His innocence she had presumed. She could just as well, she thought now, have presumed guilt. She had never, until this moment, considered that he was the man most likely to have committed those murders.

  Whether Ruby Calhoun had killed three people, or twenty-three, or thirty-three or a hundred and three, made no difference to Adeline Kelsey whatsoever. Had he been miles away from the scene of the murders at that time, made no difference at all.

  The man was guilty. Guilty as hell. Guilty through and through. He had swung her, naked, onto all fours, held her immovable by one powerful arm around her waist, then held her head back to watch her emotion while she cried out, in an agony of pleasure, “Again! Again! Again!”

  When, back in the hotel room, he stretched out, in his pajamas, ready for sleep, she kept his hand from switching off the lamp. He studied her without a trace of expression.

  “Just in case you don’t know me,” she told him, “I’m a friend of yours. Name of Adeline Kelsey.”

  Not a flicker of recognition.

  “We’ll talk in the morning,” she assured him, and switched off the lamp. In a matter of moments he was snoring.