The Last Carousel

by Nelson Algren

  He counted eight horses, one by one. He looked for their numbers; but they wore none. He heard no sound of hooves; though he listened.

  The lead rider broke into a canter straight into the soybean field. Behind him the others spurred their mounts to a canter and followed. Then the dim shrouding light went out. Darkness surged back across the moon.

  The lights of the bam area, he saw, were the lights of a far-off country.

  One he would never see again.

  MOON OF THE ARFY DARFY

  THE 9th race prices flash once and out: first SHOW; then PLACE; then WIN. the red OFFICIAL blinks once and goes dark. Winners and losers alike have left. Tipsheet-shouters and shoeboard watchers, touts and sellers, railbirds as well as the clubhouse cocktail set: all will be back at window and shoeboard, lounge and paddock, rail and boxes, when odds for the first race light up tomorrow.

  Only the sweepers high in the seats remain in the vaulted, echoing stands.

  Then along the rail, one eye cocked for security men, one man moves alone through the windy glooms.

  He comes in a curious shuffle-and-pause through a litter of crushed lily cups. Comes kicking dead tickets, bad guesses and such, through the ruin of the day’s million-dollar defeat: seeking a five-dollar victory to last him through the night.

  ‘‘Hey you!’’

  He doesn’t turn to see who’s summoning him. Instead he scoops up a handful of tickets and hurries through the gate.

  Where he leans one moment against the iron to take a whittled toothpick out of his shoe. Then moves on, without shuffle or kick, to wherever toothpick-shod men go.

  The day’s last stooper has finished his day. Whether he’s made it or whether he hasn’t, they’ll run again tomorrow.

  And a moon of the backstretch, still and white, peers around a corner of the stables; like a moon with a ruled-off rider’s eyes.

  A moon of the arfy-darfy.

  Never to return.

  I slipped the quarter into the box before the conductor could say “Hey! You!” How was it that, the time I beat Shoemaker, nobody said “Hey! You!”?

  It wasn’t Hey-You when I brought in Jealous Widow at 44-1. It was roses for The Widow and roses for me too. It was “Mr. Cannon’s having a little party tonight, he’d like you to come.” It was “Meet Mr. Cannon. Mr. Cannon, meet Hollis Floweree.” It was “Why couldn’t you win on The Widow at Waterford but you bring her in in Evangeline Park, Mr. Floweree?”

  “Because of the longer straightaway, sir,” I answered Mr. Cannon.

  I sat in the back of the bus running through a last handful of dead tickets. Bettors overlook winners. Nobody had missed a good thing in the handful I was holding. Yet I didn’t throw one of them away.

  It’s a big comedown, from parading in front of the clubhouse in your pretty-day silks, to stooping for tickets people throw away by mistake. But I never stooped until the stands were empty. And nobody I used to know—at Waterford and Evangeline and Ozark Downs—had any idea that Sportsman’s was my playground now.

  Sometimes I’d spot somebody I used to know—but I’d keep on moving past and wait to see whether I looked familiar to him. The way I was dressed, and wearing shades, he’d need a closer look to be certain. Much closer.

  And why should anyone want to look twice? I’d had my picture in The Form once—but who remembers that? I didn’t really care any more, one way or another. When you come to the end it’s the end, that’s all.

  And there were greater comedowns than my own. Like coming down from mounting favorites to wheeling yourself about in a hospital chair. If Vaes could afford a chair. On fifty bucks a month from the jockey’s fund you don’t get a name as a wild spender even in Mexico. It was time Vaes cut down on the whiskey and women anyhow.

  How a Mexican jock was making it was the least of my troubles now. Had he fallen because I’d cut into him, or blocked him, it might have troubled me—I don’t know. But trying to climb over me as he had, when I’d had that horse out front by a good length and a half, he’d brought his own fall on himself. Had he let me go under that wire I’d still be riding and so would he.

  Can the front office suspend a rider who doesn’t show up to get suspended? I suppose they can. They can do whatever they want. But there hadn’t been any mention in the papers about it. Wouldn’t they have to publish it in The Form? Maybe they had. If they had, Catfish would know.

  The day I’d go looking up Catfish would be the same day I’d show up in front of the stewards. What for? I wasn’t going to ride anymore—and that was a mortal deadlock for certain. I went up the aisle dropping tickets on empty seats one by one. I got off where Ogden crosses Fifth Avenue.

  Six streets go six different ways at that intersection; with a bar every other door. One route, it looked like, had nothing but bar doors. The very route I was needing.

  I saw the bums and I saw the nabs. I saw the hustlers and old-time scuffs. I saw people light as feathers. I saw people heavy as lead. I saw some made of water and some held by wires. One walked with a pocket full of fishhooks. Another had never had pockets at all. I saw those struggling to reach the top of some hill—and those trying to keep from reaching the bottom of a hill they’d come over too fast. Fireships, finks and coneroos; and an old-time hooker with her own ghost following. I saw round-the-block cruisers and hide-by-day-fly-by-nighties. It must be a full moon on the rise, I thought, the way the bings are coming out.

  Two blind cane-bummies were taking up the middle of the walk in an argument. One jerked off his shades so he could see better who he was arguing with. “You’ve led five runs running,” he accused the other bummy. “Yes—and I’ll lead the next five, too!” the other told him who was the boss of the outfit—and the other went right for him with his cane. The boss-bummy slapped the cane flying and the other ran into the street to pick it up before it got run over; then put his shades back on. It looked like a Japanese movie.

  “O hell,” he came back complaining, “you lead all the time.”

  Who got to lead for the next five runs I didn’t tarry to learn. Everyone in Chicago wants to be the front man. I walked on.

  An oversized bison in a red turtleneck sweater, and his cap shading his eyes, rattled a collection box and tried to pin a paper heart on me— “Have a heart for little kiddies, buddy,” he told me. What little kiddie did you slug to get that box, I wondered. Then he forgot the paper heart and played it straight:

  “The price of one beer may save a life,” he blocked my way to let me know; in a voice like a rowboat being dragged across pebbles.

  “It’ll take the price of six whiskies to save mine,” I filled him in; and he saw my condition was worse than his own. He let me by.

  When I glanced back he was looking after me. All I had to do was turn around and put out my hand and he would have put two bits into it. I walked on hoping he wasn’t following.

  “Hey soldier!”—I looked around to see who was calling on the military. It was a wino-broad in a doorway, and she was signaling me. “Hey soldier” was such an improvement over “Hey-you” that I threw back my shoulders and walked up to her.

  “Drag my old man out of here,” she gave me the orders of the day.

  “Can’t you do it yourself?”

  “Ram declared me out of bounds.”

  “Who’s Ram?”

  She pointed one finger, sticking out of a tom glove, at a hand-lettered sign swinging between flowerpots, just overhead. Something that looked like it had once been a palm frond was stuck in one of the pots. Between the pots it said:

  SOUTHSEA ISLE

  R. Enright. Prop.

  “I’ll do what I can, Sis,” I told her as an excuse to go inside.

  Inside I saw that what Sis meant, when she’d said her old man was inside but she was out of bounds, was that he hadn’t escaped. It was the people inside who were out of bounds. It looked like the place people come to when they want to go somewhere they never have to leave. I’d seen some caves in my day. But no cav
e like this.

  The front bar was just one long narrow aisle that would have passed as the side-door to hell if it had ever been swept. The front bar was so dark all you could see was the bar mirror—and the back bar was darker than that.

  Someone began banging a piano even farther back, accompanying himself. I felt my way, taking care not to brush against anyone on the stools —a light push against any one of them would roll him onto the floor on his head. And there he’d lay, just lay. I made it all the way to a bead-string portiere and then I stepped through the beads.

  Everyone in that room looked at me as if I’d been sent for. Especially the piano-man.

  Wanted man in California

  he was singing. Then he nodded at me like he wondered why I’d kept him waiting so long. I looked down to see if I were standing on somebody who’d just been killed. I’d never seen the cat in my life before.

  Outside the circle of blue-green light around the piano-man, was nothing but a sinking gloom. Where little white faces rose real slow then sank back into the gloom.

  All I could smell was a pit where tigers lived without room to pace. All I could hear, beneath the piano’s beat, was a breathing—breathing.

  Like every breath was the last.

  I began to distinguish figures. Cats who couldn’t stay on the front-bar stools any longer had been assigned to lean on walls back here—

  Wanted man in old Cheyenne—

  he stopped playing yet the voice went on—

  Wherever you might look tonight

  You might see The Wanted Man—

  A record-mimic no less. I’d been listening to Johnny Cash. This time when he nodded I went over: he couldn’t be anyone I’d ever met.

  “It’s all too easy now,” he told me like he knew all about me. He read me right. For I knew the feeling he had in mind.

  I know how it feels, when things have come so hard, to have them come so easy for those who come later. We mucked out stalls, hauled water, walked hots and cooled horses and calmed horses until we smelled of horse ourselves. It was three years before I got to gallop one. I knew how that felt, that first gallop. I’d earned it. Now it’s a couple months and they give a kid a contract. He sits on top and thinks he’s race-riding and don’t even rate the horse. Rides him like his contract is for one race, so he got to be first out of the gate. I’ve even seen them whip a horse coming out of the gate. All he knows is to make his horse run faster than the others so they’ll put a wreath around the horse and maybe one around him too. It is all too easy now.

  Don’t breathe it to nobody

  ‘Cause you know I’m on the lam—

  The lam-the lam-the lam-the lam—

  the needle had hit a crack yet he kept grimacing with the crack. Then he took off his shades, bent down and switched the record off.

  “That’s my trade, friend,” he told me. “What’s yours?”

  “I see what you mean,” I told him.

  Suddenly squatting, eyes shut tight, he began a rocking on his toes in that misty green light, clasping his knees, making some sort of old-time singsong deep in his throat in time with his rocking.He leaped up. “Now I got to get to work!”

  Just like that. Crooks a finger at me, tells me what it used to be like, makes like Johnny Cash, gives an impersonation of a Chinaman kicking cold turkey; then blows me off. I stood around to see what he meant by going to work. But he didn’t start the record-mimic routine again.

  He had a tambourine on that box and just pounded away on things like Blue Moon and Cocktails for Two and Chinatown. Until a woman came walking like she was held together by Band-Aids, dropped a dime in the tambourine and went back to where she’d been hiding before the Band-Aids had come loose.

  “If I put down a dime for that kind of banging,” I let him know between productions, “I’d never be able to face my friends again.”

  Then I walked away.

  “How are they?” he called after me.

  I turned around and asked, “How are who?”

  “Your friends,” he told me and began singing in his own frog-croak.

  Somebody had just fallen off a stool at the front bar. He was lying on the floor. I stepped over him and sat down.

  Two of the bartenders’ aprons were dirty. Neither stopped rushing whiskey and beer. The third fellow’s apron was stainless. He stood to one side and counted the house. If somebody who was lying on the floor didn’t get up inside half an hour, he pointed the body out to the bartenders; who then got it to its feet and out the back door. When somebody got thrown out the back door three times in one night, he was barred from coming in the front door for a week.

  The fellow with the clean apron, it was easy to see, was the one who decided “Out you go” or “Have one on the house.” There was no trouble spotting R. Enright, Proprietor.

  I didn’t bang the bar for service. I just sat and waited. Finally Enright strolled over, took off my shades and handed them back to me. I didn’t put them back on. I didn’t ask for an explanation.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he told me, “but I don’t quite make you.”

  “I’ve seen you before too,” I told him, “and I’d rather not make you.”

  He put a bottle of Cutty on the bar in front of me, washed a glass with his own hands, iced it and put it down beside the bottle.

  “On the house,” he told me; and walked away.

  A country-type girl, wearing a green babushka, two bar stools away, observed Enright’s move and studied me in the bar mirror. She began beefing to Enright while looking at me.

  “These Chicago broads,” she told him, “you know what one of them Fireball fools tried to tell me—'I started the babushka fad around here’ she tried to tell me.”

  Enright looked like he’d heard all this before.

  “The very nerve! I was wearing a babushka two years ago in L.A. I was the one brought it around here and they think wearing a babushka gives them class. Honest to God, broads like that must drink out of their old man’s shaving cup.”

  Enright wasn’t listening. He’d tuned her out. But he was still tuned in on me. Seeing I wasn’t using his bottle, he came over and pushed it toward me. That was when I began to gather that he had something in mind; something into which I fitted.

  I could have knocked that bottle off without setting it down. I hadn’t been on a drunk since the night I’d left Ozark Downs. But I let it stand. I wasn’t going to drink the man’s whiskey until I knew what he had in mind. The one thing I learned from riding horses was control; and control is all I’ve kept.

  I caught Green Babushka’s eye. “Can I offer you a drink?” I asked her.

  “I buy my own drinks,” she told me. “Do you want to say hello?”

  I couldn’t remember ever having been brushed off faster. A hooker who knows her lines that well has a pretty solid pimp behind her.

  “That finky cop,” she began again on Enright—“you know that one directs Saturday morning traffic on Warren and California? I was carrying my old man’s pants to the cleaners ’n you know what that clown asked me?”

  Enright didn’t know and cared less.

  “He asked me ‘Baby, is them my size?’ Just like that.”

  “What’d you tell him?” Enright went along.

  “ ‘They’re too small for you,’ was all I could think to say. It was just the way he said it—like he knew me—that burned me.”

  “He does know you,” I filled her in, “he was giving you a pass.”

  “Go ride your horse,” she told me.

  I knew then Enright had made me. There was no other way of Green Babushka knowing I was a rider unless Enright had filled somebody in. I had the feeling I wanted to move on; but not to leave. So I moseyed on toward the back bar and stood next to a hooker about twice the age of the country-type at the front bar. That was why she was at the back bar. All I could make out of her face, in the dimness, was that it was squarish; and that her hair had been tinted gray to cover up that underneath it
was gray.

  “I’m Zaza,” she told me without being asked, “if you don’t want to say hello, it’s alright with me. If you don’t want to buy me a drink, that’s alright, too. But if you do want to buy me one I won’t stop you.”

  “What kind of accent is that?” I asked her—“Or are you putting it on?”

  “French-Canadian,” she told me, “or rather, Canadienne.’’

  The way sounds carry in Enright’s Southsea Isle is something I’ve yet to understand. Although the woman was talking in a whiskey-whisper, Enright was right there with the bottle I’d left on the front bar.

  “On the house, Rider,” he told me as if he thought I might have misunderstood him the first time.

  “I’ve never seen Ram chase a customer from bar to bar with a house bottle before,” Zaza told me—“What are you—a VIP or something?”

  “I think the man has me mixed with somebody else,” I told her, “I’ve never even been in this cave before. Well, drink up.” I poured her a double-shot and a single for myself.

  “Is he a horse degenerate?” I asked her.

  “Not hardly. He wouldn’t bet on a one-horse race, not Ram. But he books them.”

  The record-mimic in the back room started up again.

  “Well,” I decided, looking around, “I suppose now and then a loser does come in here by mistake.”

  She laughed in her throat.

  “These cats weren’t victims of circumstance, if that’s what you mean,” she told me, “bad luck is what they live for. They couldn’t bear being a winner.”

  “Include me out,” I straightened her out, “I’m a loser but not because I like it.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “I’ll tell you what difference it makes,” I told her, “it means that, the next time you see me, I’ll be a winner.”

  “Then you won’t come in here,” she told me, “you’ll look up other winners. If you come in here it’ll mean you can’t stand being a winner neither.”