The Last Carousel

by Nelson Algren

  “What do I do with this?" I asked her.

  “Don’t give me no dead stiff’s sock,” she told me.

  “How do you know he’s dead?” I asked her, and up jumped Owner from the bar stool.

  “Call doctor!” he hollered. “Call doctor!”

  “Sit down,” Lottie told him, “I already called Croaker.”

  “The old man owed me a drink,” I told her, hanging the sock on the bar rail in case somebody wanted to shine it some day. “You can give it to me out of his estate.”

  “He didn’t have no estate,” Lottie decided.

  “Not in his right shoe,” I said. “Should I look in the left?”

  “Here’s Croaker,” Lottie answered, and sure enough, some wax-moustache sport carrying a doctor bag was tipping the rain off the brim of his little felt hat into a spittoon beside the juke.

  “Are you watering our roses,” I asked him, “or starting a reservoir?”

  “Only being neat,” he told me.

  “Buy me a drink,” I said, “and I’ll be on your side.”

  “I can’t afford having people on my side,” he told me, “Where’s the sick man?”

  “Nobody sick in here I know of, Doc,” I told him.

  “Look in the comer,” Lottie directed him.

  “Corner of where?” He thought she’d said on the comer.

  “I’ll take you there,” I told him, “I know this neighborhood like a book.”

  Then he saw Fielder giving somebody a rubdown on the pinball machine and walked over. He picked up the Ground Gripper I’d set on the GAME COMPLETED sign and studied it. The toe curved up like a ski.

  “Have this bronzed,” he said, and handed it to Fielder and came back to the bar. Fielder stopped massaging and came over, too.

  “Give this man a drink,” the Doc told Lottie.

  “I got no glass,” I let everyone know.

  “You don’t have anything to put in one neither,” Doc told me. Some Doc.

  “Let me introduce myself’—I thought he ought to know me better—“I’m the guy makes the people laugh. Watch this.” And I went into my song-and-tennis-shoe shuffle:

  Take me down to Haircut Shop

  But please don’t shave the neck

  Call me up by Picturephone

  But please don’t call collect.

  He wasn’t watching. Nobody was watching.

  Except him beside juke.

  “I make the words up myself,” I told Doc. He didn’t answer; so I went around to where he could hear me better.

  “You got a stet’oscope, Doc?” I asked him.

  “In the bag,” he told me.

  “I could help you test the deceased,” I offered, “maybe there’s a faint murmur. ”

  “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a stiff,” the Doc told Fielder; and took some sort of paper out of his pocket.

  I knew what it was. I went around the bar and whispered to Lottie,

  “Don’t put it down he died in here. Owner might want to sell someday.”

  Lottie whispered to Owner, and when the Doc handed over the certificate, Owner pushed a bottle at him.

  “Don’t put it down he died in here, Doc,” Owner told him. “Put it down he dropped on the walk outside.”

  The Doc crossed out a line and added one.

  Owner signed. “I might want to sell sometime,” he explained.

  “Do I get a drink now?” I asked Lottie.

  Lottie brought a bottle up.

  Owner took it down. “When we settle the estate,” he said.

  “When will that be?” I asked him.

  “When the dead come back from the grave,” Owner promised.

  I dropped my jaw, made my eyes to stare, and pulled in my cheeks. What I call Making My Deadface. I pushed the whole thing into Lottie’s face.

  “What the hell is this for?” she asked me.

  “It’s how you’re going to look one day,” I told her.

  “It’s how we’ll all look one day,” she told me.

  I went over to Owner and made The Deadface. I made it deader than a real dead face.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked me.

  “It’s how we’ll all look one day,” I told him, “give me a drink while you still got time.”

  “Who wastes whiskey on the dying?” he asked me.

  I went over to Fielder. He had the bottle in front of him and a shot poured. When he raised his elbow I put The Deadface up at him from under his arm. Fielder looked down at my Deadface looking up.

  “You’re looking better,” he told me. Then they all drank their shots down.

  I went back to Owner. “How many?”

  “How many what?” he asked me.

  “You said you’d buy me a shot if I brought back the dead,” I reminded him.

  “One shot is the limit,” he told me.

  “What I mean is,” I told him, “how many dead do I have to bring back to get one shot?”

  Owner looked over at the pinball machine. “One will do,” he decided.

  I went over to Haircut Man and whispered in his ear. “You got a royal flush, old man!”

  He didn’t even twitch. The old man was dead for sure.

  I heard the Pulmotor Patrol sirening down Western. A minute later two firemen came in, one carrying an inhalator strapped to his back. The other one unstrapped it and put the mask over Haircut Man’s face.

  “Stand back. Back everybody,’’ he began giving orders. “If you’re going to lean over, put out your cigarette,” he told me, “we’re trying to give the man air.”

  “Why should I give up smoking for you?” I asked him, “you don’t even come from this neighborhood.”

  “Everybody back,” Fielder said; and put everybody back with one hand.

  “If I can’t get up close to an accident,” I told Fielder, “I won’t look at all.”

  I hung around but not to look at the old man. Somebody had to watch those firemen because the old man had a gold ring on his right ring finger. Lottie came over to help me watch, and I decided to watch Lottie. I looked around and caught Owner watching me. There wasn’t anybody else left to watch the firemen except Fielder; and he was having a hard time because they were both watching him. I never saw so many suspicious people in one group in my life. When everybody got tired of watching each other, we all went back to the bar.

  I stood between the firemen. They must have liked what they were drinking because they didn’t ask me to try it out for them. And every time they drank they’d touch glasses. It made me wonder what they would do about congratulating each other if they ever brought anybody to.

  “That old man passed out in here seven times since Christmas,” I let them know, “and he came around by himself every time. Why would he stop at eight? If you fellows had kept your hands off him he’d be standing up here having a drink with us now. He was the best friend I ever had. He was like a father to me. I used to follow him to see he got home all right.”

  “It’s a good thing he didn’t go down an alley,” one fireman told the other.

  “Cops! We didn’t report this!” Owner hollered.

  “You want me to go for them?” I asked him, “I know where to find them.”

  “Then what are you waiting for? Get them.”

  “It’s raining,” I told Owner, “I need something to warm me up so’s I don’t catch my death.”

  Owner made up his mind. “We got one stiff on our hands, we might as well have two.”

  A Holy Father came in. One with a beard.

  “I phoned for him,” Lottie said.

  “You got the wrong kind,” I told her.

  The Holy Father made some signs over Haircut Man. I went over, but it was hard to make out what he was saying. I slipped a dime into the pinball machine, and just as the Father crossed himself, the machine lit up. I scored 850 before Owner came over and shut it off.

  “You said you were going for the cops,” he reminded me.

>   “What do I have to do to get a drink?” I asked.

  “Put a sheet over him,” the Holy Father told Owner.

  “How can I find cops with a sheet over me, Father?” I asked him.

  “He doesn’t mean you,” Fielder told me, “he’s talking about our dead pal.”

  “Put a sheet over our pal,” Owner told Lottie.

  “You don’t have to do everything the man tells you, Mother,” Fielder told Lottie.

  “She don’t have to do anything she don’t want to,” Owner told Fielder.

  Lottie touched Fielder with one finger to shut him up, and went into the back room. She came out with a wrinkled sheet.

  “You forgot your pillow, Mother,” Fielder told her.

  “If you need a package of Juicy Fruit, Father,” Lottie told the Holy Father, “look for my son in Cubs’ Park.”

  “In the bleachers,” Owner put in, “they don’t let him sell in the grandstand. ’’

  “If you’ll stop telling people I sell gum, Mother,” Fielder told Lottie, “I’ll stop telling them you’re my mother.”

  “I don’t hold that against her,” Owner said, “we all make mistakes.”

  Fielder put up his fist, big as Owner’s whole face, right under Owner’s nose. Owner didn’t even blink. He just put his hand on the bar towel and waited until Fielder’s knuckles touched his nose. Then swish—smack across Fielder’s face with the towel.

  Fielder grabbed the towel. Owner let go of it. And there was Fielder wiping his face with the very towel that had just smacked him.

  Lottie kept tucking the sheet around Haircut Man so she wouldn’t have to take notice of the events across the bar. One comer of the sheet said HOTEL MARK TWAIN in green letters.

  “Know who that is?” I asked the Holy Father, pointing at the signed photograph of Jim Vaughn above the bar, “that’s Hippo Vaughn from the Chicago Cubs. Nobody had to say to Hippo, ‘Buy me a drink, Hippo.’ Hippo didn’t wait for that. He poured it for you, and put a fiver in your pocket whether you asked for it or not. Anything Hippo had you could have.”

  Holy Father wasn’t listening. Nobody was listening.

  Only him beside juke.

  Lottie put my cap on my head. ‘‘Take a run for the cops,” she told me; and the way she said it I decided I would.

  Look for the cops on a rainy night the same way you’d look for a cat—somewhere out of the wet and cold; next to a wall or under a shed. I went down the alley behind the Krakow Bakery, because that’s where it’s always warmest. They were parked with a cardboard box over the flash, listening to Pat Suzuki singing her heart belonged to an older man. Outside of that and being parked wrong, they were keeping crime at bay by smelling rye bread in the making. I rapped the window and one cop rolled it down. He looked like I was going to pinch him.

  He was Firebox, a fellow I went to school with. He’d gotten his start by running for the truant officer to break up crap games after he’d lost his lunch money. On the force twenty-two years and never made a pinch. You never know where talent will show up next.

  ‘‘Come and get a dead guy,” I told Firebox.

  “Who shot him?” he asked me.

  “Nobody shot him.”

  “Then how do you know he’s dead?”

  “Because somebody put a sheet over him and he didn’t pull it off.”

  The other cop woke up. “That ain’t our jurisdiction,” he told Firebox.

  I knew this one too. We call him Transistor because if he catches you with a stolen one he don’t turn you in. He just takes it off you and you can buy it back for what it cost in the store you stole it from. It’s better than getting busted.

  “What do you want us for?” Transistor wanted to know.

  “Go get a dead guy out of a place,” I told him.

  “Try the fireman’s carry,” he told me. “We’re crime-fighters; not litter-bearers.”

  “I think we ought to take a look,” Firebox decided, and I knew what he was thinking. “Where is this stiff?”

  “Carefree Comer. You know—Owner’s joint.”

  “Where Fielder hangs?” Transistor asked.

  “Fielder sent me.”

  “I caught Hippo Vaughn,” he told me, “get in.”

  I got in the back seat and away we go.

  “You don’t look like Bill Killefer to me,” I told Transistor.

  “I didn’t say I was on the Cubs,” he told me. He meant he caught Hippo for the Logan Squares, after Hippo’s big-league days were over.

  “Fielder was fast, them days,” he said.

  “He isn’t fast any more,” I told him.

  “I know,” Transistor said.

  There was a crowd in front of Owner’s. Firebox went inside and right up to the pinball machine, and pulled back the sheet and began running his hand across the old man’s skull.

  “What’s he doing?” Lottie asked me.

  “Looking for bullet holes,” I explained.

  “He wasn’t shot,” Lottie told Firebox. “He had a coronary.”

  Firebox began running his hand up along the old man’s spine.

  “He’s still looking for bullet holes,” I told Lottie.

  “The man had a heart attack,” Lottie told Firebox.

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Firebox said. Transistor began stuffing the old man’s shirt back down into his pants. You never can tell where a stiff is likely to wear a money belt.

  “What is the deceased’s name in full?” Firebox wanted to know.

  “Put down any name you want,” Owner told him, “just don’t say he died in here.”

  “We might want to sell sometime,” Lottie explained.

  “Where do you get that we?” Owner asked her.

  “Don’t worry, Mother,” Fielder told Lottie, “you still have your pillow.”

  “A forty-year-old son,” Lottie told the Holy Father, “and he sells gum.”

  “What did you say the old man’s name was?” Firebox repeated.

  “He didn’t have no name,” I explained, “we just called him Haircut Man.”

  “What’s your name?” Firebox asked me.

  “I don’t have one neither,” I told him. “They just call me ‘You.’”

  “Then stay out of this, You.”

  “If you want the old man’s name,” Owner spoke up, “maybe it’s in his wallet.”

  “See what the name in the wallet is,” I told Fielder, “I’m not working for the Department myself. ’’

  “Mother was the old man’s best friend,” Fielder offered. “Maybe she knows his real name. Then nobody has to look in his wallet.”

  Cops are careful about reaching for a wallet on a drunk or a stiff. If the wallet is empty they get the blame.

  The kid, Lopez, was still there, with one newspaper left. Firebox lifted him up level with the old man. All he had to do was reach.

  “I can’t,” Lopez yelled, kicking with both feet, ‘‘if I reach, I’ll drop my paper.”

  I took hold of his paper but Lopez locked it under his arm. ‘‘If you want the paper, buy it,” he hollered.

  Firebox put a dime in his little paw, and Lopez let go of the paper and reached and got the wallet. He hung on to it while Firebox carried him to the bar. The wallet didn’t bulge, and when Lopez held it upside down, six plaid trading stamps fell out. He shook it. That was all.

  “Look inside,” Owner told him.

  Lopez opened the wallet wide, stuck his nose into it, sniffed into the comers; then took his nose out.

  “Gone on the arfy-darfy,” he announced, and Firebox set him down.

  I started my soft shoe bit.

  What do you want for the little you got

  For the little you got you don’t got a lot

  You kept your money in your big dirty shoes

  From the graveyard who collects?

  Nobody was paying me any attention. Nobody ever does.

  “Who would have thought the old man would die broke?” Lott
ie asked Owner, looking him right in the eye.

  “My own opinion,” Owner answered, “is that he didn’t.” And looked me right in the eye.

  “Ambulance!” Lopez hollered before any of the rest of us heard a siren.

  Firebox looked down at him. “Where’s my change?”

  “What change?” Lopez asked looking up.

  “I give you a dime for your dirty yesterday’s paper. I got three cents coming, Shorty.”

  Lopez don’t like being called Shorty.

  “I don’t carry change,” he told Firebox.

  “People pay you in seven-cent pieces?” Firebox asked him.

  “Why don’t you search him, Firebox?” I suggested.

  “He can frisk me but he can’t search me,” Lopez told the Department.

  A dozen people followed the stretcher-bearers in. Owner put two bottles on the bar and got ready to pour. It looked like a good night for Owner. But no one came near the bar. They all wanted to help the stretcher guys carry the stiff to the dead-wagon. The stretcher guys wouldn’t let them. All they could do was follow the stretcher out.

  I stood by the bar next to Holy Father. I was trying to remember whether Haircut Man was still wearing a ring the last time I looked. If he was, one stretcher-bearer was in a good position to get married. All he needed was a blind whore.

  “Were you a friend of the deceased?” Firebox asked Lottie.

  “Hardly knew the old man,” Lottie said fast.

  “I thought you knew him well, Mother,” Fielder put in, “I thought he said he always helped you out when you weren’t working.”

  “Why should I take money from strangers when my son works steady?” Lottie asked him straight.

  “All right,” Fielder said, “all right, Mother. I know you worked for me all my life. Now why don’t you go out and get a job for yourself?”

  He turned away from her and walked up to the calendar that hangs on the washroom door. He just stood there looking at it with his back turned to us. Then he took the mitt out of his hip pocket, put it on and swung at the calendar. The door shook. The calendar bounced.

  “I am Skoronski!” he hollered at it. Then he swung again. The calendar fell. Fielder looked down at it like trying to figure out what made it fall. But when he turned his face to us he was smiling. He came to the bar still wearing his glove.

  “Drinks for everybody,” he invited everyone. And put money down.