The Last Carousel

by Nelson Algren

  The next morning I had to fetch Rusty to the projection room so he could see for himself what he’d done. And to give him a chance to defend himself against suspension.

  “Now, if you’ll just keep your mouth shut,” I warned the boy, “you won’t get more than five days. Tell them you realize your mistake and you’re sorry. Then promise that, in the future, you’re going to be more careful. Whatever they give you, don’t argue.”

  He nodded as though he understood.

  The stewards sat up in front of the screen. Rusty and I sat in the back. The film began with the horses in the gate and the flag up. Then they broke and Rusty, big as life on Number 6, cut diagonally across the field, block-and-tackling the whole pack, bumping the Number 5 into the flank of the Number 4 till he had the rail and then began pulling away. The film cut off.

  “You’re a dirty liar!” Rusty stands up shouting at the screen, “a dirty liar! I never done it!”

  “The boy hasn’t had much education,” I pleaded privately with the stewards. “Riding racehorses is the only way he has of making a living. Give the kid a break.”

  “Will you take thirty days?” the Chief Steward asks me, just as if I had a choice.

  “Yes, sir,” I thanked him. “Thank you, sir.” I was glad he hadn’t made it sixty.

  “I got you off with thirty days,” I reported to Rusty.

  “You sonofabitch,” he jumped right at me, “if you’d kept your big mouth shut they wouldn’t of give me a day!”

  “Rusty,” I made up my mind, “I can’t handle you. You’re too ignorant. Just pay me the twenty you borrowed off me last week and we’ll call it quits. No hard feelings.”

  “Pay you twenty bucks after you get me a thirty-day suspension?” —he stuck that little pug mug of his, more like that of a Pekinese than that of a man, so close to mine that it came right up to my shoulder—“that’s ut-rage-us!”

  “If you want to beat me out of twenty,” I told him, “just beat me. Don’t use your suspension as an excuse.”

  “Ut-rage-us!” he repeated.

  “Rusty,” I said, “if you were the size of a man I’d knock you onto your ignorant ass right here.”

  As soon as I’d said it I was sorry I had. I’m a full head higher and sixty pounds heavier than Rusty. Yet he didn’t back off an inch.

  "Here?” he asks me, “and get me anothern suspension when I’m on track parole? No, sir—but you just step behind that tote board with me, where we’ll be out of sight, and we’ll settle this man to man. We’ll see who’s ignorant.”

  I just turned and walked off. But he followed right at my elbow—“I knew you’d lose your nerve, I knew you’d show yellow!”

  So I swung right through the gate toward the tote board to pretend I really was going to take him on man to man. He came right behind me, shadowboxing and slamming his little fists together.

  “O, boyl” he begins hollering, “I can hardly wait!” And starts spitting on his fists.

  That was too much. I turned about and shot him a short jolt to the jaw just hard enough to set him down in the dust. He just sat there glinting up at me.

  “Alright,” he told me at last, “now you got me down, take my money. Take all my money.”

  “I don’t want all your money,” I told him, “I only want the money you owe me.”

  “It’s all out on bets,” he told me.

  “You lie from a sitting position.”

  He got up and dusted himself off. “When you call a de John a liar,” he let me know, “you call the whole de John family liars. Don’t blame me for what happens now. You brought it on yourself.”

  And he turned and walked off with my twenty still in his pocket.

  I didn’t see him for several days. I figured he’d gone back to New Iberia to wait out his suspension for thirty days. If he didn’t come back for thirty years that was fine with me.

  On Sunday morning I came around a corner of a shed-row and run right into him and two little helpers. Both approximately four foot eleven and looking more like Pekingese than people. They couldn’t be anything but a brother and a father. I judged Dad to weigh in at ninety-nine pounds; and Brother couldn’t have gone over ninety-six.

  “Don’t take fright,” Dad told me, “us-uns ain’t goin’ to jump you all three. Us-uns don’t fight thataway. But you’ll have to take us-uns on one at a time.”

  “Where?” I asked; not wanting to take that long walk out to the tote board.

  “Right heah!” Brother stepped up; so I knocked him down with the same hand I’d knocked down Rusty. He just sat there looking up at his pa.

  “Your turn, Dad,” he tells him. So I reached over and knocked the old man down.

  “Where’s your mother?” I asked Rusty; and knocked him down too.

  Then I waited till the whole family got to its feet. The old man gave me his hand. “The better man won,” he told me, and I took it. Then I shook Brother’s hand.

  “Now that we got that settled satisfactorily,” Rusty decided, “you can come back to work for me anytime.” And offers me his hand also.

  I didn’t take it. “Not till you pay me the thirty you owe me,” I told him.

  “Thirty?” —he starts getting hot all over again—“all I took off you was twenty!”

  “You owe me an extra ten for the embarrassment you’ve caused me in having to knock down your whole family,” I explained.

  Rusty grabbed his wallet and took out three tens. “Here, you cheap bastard,” he tells me, “but I’ll tell you this much—from now on you’re my swore enemy! I’ll never borrow another nickel off you as long as I live!”

  I took the money.

  Three nights later I was leaning on the grandstand rail, waiting for the horses to come out on the track, when I saw him coming. But he wasn’t coming like a Swore Enemy.

  He was wearing slacks, jacket, and half-boots zipped on the side, all very sharp and all of it right out of the store. I began marking my programs so he could take me by surprise.

  “Got anything good, old buddy?” he asks, leaning over my program.

  I took no note of his sharp frame. I just encircled Number 10. Popcorn Bummy.

  Rusty leaped straight up in the air waving his hands like he’s flagging down a train.

  “Sam! I won’t let you bet that lame dog! I won’t let you go to the window! I won’t let you throw your money away!”

  He was protecting me from myself.

  Actually I hadn’t made up my mind to bet Popcorn Bummy until that moment. When people try to tout me off a horse, I bet it just to show them.

  “Nobody, but nobody is going to talk me off Popcorn,” I filled the boy in; although I hadn’t even looked at the Form. And he saw I meant it because he quieted down.

  “If you’re going to throw your money away, Sam,” he strangely changed his tune.

  “I didn’t know you were running bets,” I told him.

  “Just till they lift my suspension.”

  “If you run a bet for a security man, your suspension will be for life.”

  “No danger, Sam,” he assured me. “I know every security man around this bullring.”

  “You can’t know them all,” I warned him, “they keep changing.

  They send them to other tracks where they aren’t known and the ones from other tracks come here.”

  “I don’t have to know the man’s face, for God’s sake,” he told me irritably. “Don’t you think I can tell a cop just by the way he looks?”

  “Don’t get overconfident,” I tried warning him once more.

  “Look, Sam,” he reproached me, “if you don’t want to give me your action it’s all right with me. But just tell me so to my face instead of beating around the bush. Or are you scared I’ll book the bet myself?”

  “I know the people you’re running bets for, Rusty,” I let him know, “and as ignorant as you are, I don’t think you’re that ignorant.”

  And I handed him a fifty.

  “On the
nose,” I told him.

  He looked at the fifty with some surprise, but he was no more surprised than I was. All I’d been considering, when he’d come up, was a six-dollar across-the-board bet. Let’s say I overreacted and let it go at that.

  Popcorn Bummy was off at 11 to 1. He broke in front of the field, held a three-length lead into the turn for home; and was so far in front at the wire that the other horses thought he’d run off and hid somewhere. He paid $24.60. Rusty owed me six hundred and fifteen dollars, American.

  His left eyebrow was doing a curious twitch when he came up and he kept pulling on a fresh cigar he’d forgotten to light. I’d never heard him stammer before but he was stammering now.

  “B-buddy. The f-f-first t-time you g-give me ac-action—”

  I took a guess that he’d booked the bet himself. I guessed right.

  “I’m tired of knocking you down myself,” I told him. “I’m going to let the people you’re running for take a turn.”

  Actually I wouldn’t have gotten the boy smashed up. Not even for six hundred and fifteen dollars. Besides, how would that get me the money? At the same time I didn’t want him to think he could run out on me that easy.

  “Give me till tomorrow to get it up, old buddy,” he pleaded.

  “I’ll be waiting for you right here at post time,” I warned him as sternly as I was able, “and that don’t mean a down payment. I want it all.” And I walked away.

  I saw him later, at the bar across the highway, with a pair of his new buddies. I didn’t go near them; I stay away from those groups. But, by the way they were buying, one on either side of him, it hadn’t yet entered their minds that he might be double-crossing them. Rusty was so confident that he was smarter than anybody, while all the time he was dumber than anybody, it made me feel just a little sorry for him.

  I didn’t stay even a little sorry long. When he met me at the rail the following evening he really began getting to me.

  “If you don’t have the bread don’t give me a story,” I told him the moment he came up.

  “Sam, it’s not a story. It’s the truth, so help me.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “It don’t have anything to do with Popcorn,” he promised, “it’s about hot stuff.”

  “Is that a horse?” I made the mistake of asking.

  “No, it’s plaid stamps—a thousernd dollars worth! The man is lettin’ me have ’em for only two-hunderd-fifty! ’n’ I got a buyer ready to buy fer six-hunderd-fifty!”

  “You can’t lose money that way,” I perceived. Then we just stood looking at one another. He seemed to be expecting something from me.

  “Sam!” he finally lost patience with me—“Don’t you see? I clear four hunderd! ’n’ turn it right over to you! Then you ’n’ me are buddies again!”

  “Count me out,” I cut him short.

  “Count you out?”—those Pekingese eyes stared up at me in utter amazement—“count you out? Man, you’re in. I already told the man you were letting me have the cash. You can’t let me down now!”

  “Out,” I repeated. “Out. That’s spelled O-U-T. It means not In. That’s spelled I-N.”

  Rusty just didn’t seem able to take it in. He shook his head incredulously.

  “I’ll never understand you, Sam. Try as I may. And Lord knows I hev tried. Here I am doin’ everything in my power to pay off an honorable debt and what do you do?” He stuck a finger in my chest. He dug it in. “What do you do?” He jumped back and began that arm-waving routine. “I’ll tell you what you do!”

  “I appreciate your trying to pay me off, Rusty,” I told him quietly to calm him down. “Pay me off when you get lucky. I’ll wait.”

  “All right,” he suddenly resigned himself to my view, “and I really appreciate your going along with me. Now just let me have a few bucks so I can get started again.”

  Even while I was reaching for my wallet everything in me was telling me to stop. Everything in me kept saying don’t and yet I didn’t know how to stop. All I had the strength for was to leave the twenty inside, take out a fiver and four singles, and then to palm the five.

  Rusty just stood looking at the four singles: he couldn’t believe it.

  “Is that all?” he asked incredulously.

  I unpalmed the five and said weakly, “Yes, that’s all.”

  “Sam,” he told me in a voice too sorrowful to believe, and making no move to take the bills, “Sam, I always knew you were cheap. But when other people said so I always defended you. I never dreamed, until this minute, that everything everybody ever said about you was true. You really are cheap, Sam. It hurts me to say it. But when a man shortchanges his best friend, what else is there to say?’ ’

  Then he took the bills, stuffed them in his pocket; and walked slowly away.

  There was no use telling myself he’d conned me out of being his creditor into being his debtor. I realized that. But I felt awful all the same.

  So awful that I stayed away from the grandstand rail so he couldn’t find me. I just couldn’t go through another one of his mindless deals.

  How he knew where I was I’ll never know. But he spent a dollar-fifty to get into the clubhouse so he must have been sure. Between the 5th and 6th races I was in the Clubhouse Bar; and that was where he found me. And sat down beside me with the kind of look only a dog whose master has given him a bone and then snatched it out of his mouth can give.

  “Have a drink, Rusty?” I asked him resignedly.

  “You think I’d have a drink with my Swore Enemy?” he put it to me. “Don’t you think I have any pride at all?"

  “If you have any pride at all, Rusty,” I filled him in, “you’ll pay me off the bet you booked.”

  “Sam”—he was using his confessional tone—“Sam, if you only knew the lengths you’ve forced me to in hitting that bet.”

  I waited.

  “Sam”—and suddenly he looked genuinely frightened—“Sam, I’m in trouble. I need your advice.” And he drew three C-notes out of his lapel pocket as though he were afraid of them.

  “Booked a big one, I see,” was all I could say.

  “A hundred across on the Number 4—and it’s off at 11 to 1, same as Popcorn. What do I do, Sam? Tell me, what do I do?”

  I glanced at the tote board. The number 4 had jumped to 14 to 1. The horses were out on the track.

  “Simple,” I told him, “you’ve got ten minutes to get to the hundred-dollar window and put the man’s bet down. Or you can play it straight and give it to your own man and let him worry.”

  “Either way I wind up with nothing,” he complained.

  “Rusty,” I tried to explain, “if the horse even gets up for show money, you’re through. You’ll be lucky to get back to New Iberia alive, for God’s sake. Don’t you see you’ve got more riding than money? You got your livelihood riding, man.”

  He saw it at last. He just sat there looking so young, yet so old, I realized I’d never seen anyone look that frightened.

  “Bet it for me, Sam,” he asked me like a child, “I can’t make it to the window.”

  “Have a drink while I’m gone,” I told him and took the bills. I was going through the door with the bills in my hand when the two security men came through; and then they weren’t in my hand at all. The one was blocking the door, and I heard Rusty cry out “Cheezit the cops!” and start racing blindly around the bar. The other security man didn’t even chase him. He just waited for him at the door.

  That was a long walk down to the Security Office. I was afraid that Rusty would make a run for it and I’d be part of his scene. The security man must have had a firm grip on him. But he didn’t let it show; and the one who’d taken me in charge didn’t put a hand on me. But it was all over before we got to the office. The bills were marked, of course. And they had been in my hand.

  Rusty, I was not surprised, tried to get out of it the same way that he’d tried to get out of a suspension: by jumping up and hollering at me, “You’r
e a dirty liar!”

  It didn’t do him any good. But it didn’t do me any good either. I didn’t even mention the bet he’d booked for me. What good would that have done either of us?

  Leave it to Rusty. He brought it up!

  What could I say? Even though I’d somehow been able to prove that I hadn’t booked that hundred-across-the-board bet, it remained that I had placed a fifty-dollar bet with an off-the-track bookie.

  “Tell me one thing, Rusty,” the Chief of Security wanted to know out of nothing but simple curiosity, “what made you holler ‘Cheezit the cops’?”

  “I never hollered ‘Cheezit the cops.’ ” Rusty flatly denied the charge. “What I said was, ‘Gentlemen, the law is present.’ ”

  Of all the ways there are to become a “Known Hoodlum”—just look at the route I took.

  THE MAD LAUNDRESS OF DINGDONG-DADDYLAND

  FOLDING a copy of Playboy in his left hand while holding his pants up with his right, the old man slipper-sloppered through the old flat dark and narrow—

  Don’t throw bouquets at me—he cajoled a world that had long dishonored him—

  Don’t laugh at my jokes too much—he asked a world that had never thought him a comic—

  People will think we’re in love—although he’d always found people detestable and people had found him a horror.

  Coughing, hawking, phlegming, one shoulder higher than the other from working with penitentiary rubber, he lurched lopsidedly with one suspender dragging. Through rooms appointed with fixtures of another day.

  There were many doors to pass in Dingdong-Daddyland before one reached the kitchen: a kitchen which served as a forge—or a forge that served as a kitchen. Where a pair of sexless wrecks—two long-ruined heroin-heads—were drying contraceptives on a shoe-rack hung above a gas stove.

  Odors of paint, paint-cleaner, turpentine and glue, mixed with that of gas flames burning too evenly. And a reddish dust lay over everything.

  Attended by two ancient junkified finks, this kitchen-forge was the capital of a curious kingdom which rose, a long decade past, four stories above the blaze and clang of West Congress Street. And endured, through one whole summer, fall, winter, and spring: then jackhammers began breaking stone a mile away.