The Last Carousel

by Nelson Algren

  “Daddy,” I told him with what strength I had, “you’ll be more sorry than you now know if you do me this way. For your own heart’s sake, don’t do me this way.”

  “Baby,” he told me, “a fact is a fact. And today’s fact is, are you going to work sick or well?”

  There wasn’t any question of not going to work at all. I’d already missed one day’s car-hopping. When you missed two they automatically de-hopped you.

  “Fair is only fair, Beth-Mary,” he told me,” so hold out your pretty arm.”

  Fair is fair. And a fact is a fact. Yet I didn’t hold out my arm. I just let him have it, he took it so gentle. He hadn’t been gentle in so long. He began stroking the down, up and down. Watch out for Christian Kindred when he starts being gentle.

  “Don’t jerk, Little Baby,” he told me so soft—and no sooner had he said it than my arm jerked of itself and jerked the whole outfit clean out of his hand and left the needle shivering in my hide. I hadn’t got Drop the First.

  “Blowing a whole sixteenth! Fool! After what I distinctly told you”—Daddy went into a simply terrible huff—“you realize you just cost us two-seventy-five?” How that child did huff and puff about my spendthrift ways.

  In that room so close so burning.

  We couldn’t afford to blow another two-seventy-five, that was plain. So I looked the other way for the sake of thrift. And felt a gentle whoof, like someone had touched my heart. And felt the gentlest tingle; like someone saying “Darling.”

  That was all. But Daddy felt much better.

  “Was that the real thing, Daddy?” I asked. For somehow I’d expected something far greater.

  “It’s the real thing alright, Little Baby.”

  Us two fools. We didn’t either us know what the real thing was. “Lucky for you we had a sixteenth-grain left in the paper,” Daddy told me, “lucky for you that needle didn’t snap when you blew the shot. God must have his arms around you, girl, that’s the only way I can figure it.”

  Somebody got his arms around me alright but I’d hate to think it’s the party he claims. The minute I got my blouse off that night he banged me again. “That one is history, Baby”—like that he said it. As if he’d been lying in wait all day just to bang me.

  “That one is history”—I didn’t know what he meant till it brought me up deathly sick over the wash basin.

  “Why, it wasn’t no bigger shot than the first,” he pretended he couldn’t for the life of him figure that one out—“it was only a sixteenth-grain, Little Baby.”

  “It may have been only a sixteenth, Little Daddy, but it was into the vein and the first was just into the skin.” I let him know I was on. “A fact is a fact,” I reminded him.

  “What makes you sick will cure you,” he reminded me. And grinned. Just grinned.

  The way that boy makes history on my hide since, he ought to be a professor in a school. What if that vein collapses? Will History collapse, too? O, I forgive him for the money he threw away like it was afire! the clothes he hocked to get more money that were my clothes. I can forgive him for making me do time for him.

  After all, if he made a whore out of me, I made a pimp out of him. If I did time for him, he done time for me. If he hocked my clothes to support his habit, I’ve hocked his to support mine.

  For Little Daddy, much as he likes to dig, never digs too deep. He never fools with that one spot in my heart where I’ll never forgive him ever. For all his brags he has never yet said to me, “Baby, who took you from your baby?”

  Little Daddy, the day you say that to me will be the day I’ll take my turn on you. And I won’t stop with banging you. I’ll bone you like a fish.

  Little Daddy wants someone to give him credit for something so bad, but I don’t give him Credit the First. Why make things easy for him? Since when did he ever make things easy for me?

  “You were a hare on the mountain,” he’ll brag right to my face, “when I fired your way you were done for.”

  “I was done for before ever you took aim, Little Daddy,” I have to remind him, “every sport in town was firing my way two years before you came calling, bringing me caramel candy like I’d never seen the back room of a bar. Little Daddy, I felt sorry for you with your haircut out of Boys’ Industrial and the town sports laughing because you thought nothing had changed since you’d gone. You made it so plain, Little Daddy.

  “But I weren’t no hare on the mountain. I’d been pigmeat two whole years.”

  “Who made a whoor out of you? Who turned you out?”

  O, it goes right through me when he says whoor like that. And well he knows it. “Little Daddy,” I tell him sweet as sugar candy, “don’t trouble your poor heart so. I did it to send money back for the baby’s care, nothing more. All you done was tell me what a fair price was for the product I was marketing. For that I’m still grateful to you.”

  “You were against working with a sponge when your time came around,” he keeps trying, “but I made you work with one all the same. Who ever treated his old lady harder than that?”

  “If I hadn’t worked through how would I have made enough money to keep my Little Daddy knocked out?” I ask him. And pat his little cheek.

  He slaps down my hand, peevey boy—“Baby, who made a dope fiend out of you?”

  He’ll get that needle under my hide in more senses than one.

  “I don’t consider myself a fiend about dope or anything else,” I’m forced to point out to him. “I’ve taken a little liking to the stuff and don’t know how to quit, that’s all.”

  “Then you’re not actually against it, Baby?” And grins. Just grins.

  “I’m against it in my heart, Little Daddy. Right there’s the difference between me and you.”

  “That’s what I like so much about you, Beth-Mary,” he tells me, “your mind is so weak.”

  “I know I can’t ever be so strong as you, Little Daddy,” I have to admit to him, “for I’m not so weak to begin.”

  “Then take your own chances and suffer the consequences,” he says.

  I’m suffering the consequences every hour since that day on South San P. Street.

  That day so still so burning.

  2. Watch Out for Daddy

  “Stuff is making a regular little go-getter out of you, Baby,” my Daddy begun getting proud of me the hour we got off San P. Street, “now all you need to get is a little know-how.”

  “Daddy, I already know how,” I told him.

  “You know how all right but you don’t know with who. Your smalltown ways don’t fit out here. Don’t ever tell a trick you’re married and have a baby daughter. You don’t ask him to buy you a drink. You don’t drink with him at all. You ask him does he want to play house or not? Buy your own drink, Baby. Don’t you want to be real great? Don’t you want to keep your Daddy knocked out?”

  We got so great, shortly thereafter, that we were both kept knocked out. Every time we walked into a joint someone was sure to holler, “Look who’s here!” Usually the bartender. Everybody with class was hollering hello. I got over being bashful and advanced clear to the Anxious-to-Please stage. “Are you satisfied, Mister? You’re not disappointed?”

  And Daddy got even more anxious than me. “Are you alright, Baby?” He’d sneak me a fast whisper from behind a potted palm in the lobby where he had no right whatsoever to be—“You want to go home and rest now? You tired, Baby?”

  You call that a pimp?

  “Baby, did that cat act married-like? Does he want to see you again? How did he come on, Baby? Fairly great or so?”

  “Not too bad,” I answered offhanded one time—“as a matter of fact, not bad at all.”

  “Why don’t you marry the man for God’s sake then?” he turned on me—“I won’t stand in your way! Imagine it—a hustler falling in love with one of her own tricks! And you can call yourself a whore? Why, I think you like this trade.”

  He’d never said a thing that hard to me before.

  “I’ll g
o back to car-hopping tomorrow,” I told him. “I think I make as sorry a whore as you make a macker.”

  That hurt his feelings.

  “No wife of mine is going to be seen hustling hamburgers,” he got real stem to make himself out the real thing in mackers.

  And I never answered him so offhand again. “Daddy, that fellow was just no good whatsoever,” I’d report, “if he got an old lady I’m sorry for her.”

  After a spell Daddy just stopped asking. And I just minded my own peace and didn’t use so much platinum nail polish.

  L.A. people like a young country-looking couple. There were gifts almost every day. Ankle-bracelets and earrings and perfume for me and nylon shorts for my Daddy. Right up to the end, everyone tried to help. Even the old clerk at the desk tried to warn us the night Daddy came into the lobby with an envelope in his topcoat pocket.

  “A message for you,” he told Daddy—and scribbled nabs on a phone slip. Daddy folded the slip without looking at it. It was still in his hand when I opened for him and they followed in like I’d opened for them.

  One on each side, patting Daddy all over, and Daddy giving them the wrong pocket every time he turned. I set tight as a little gray mouse. You do yourself nothing but harm to ask, “Where’s your warrant?” They’ll tell you, “We don’t need one for a rooming house.” You can tell them, “This ain’t no rooming house this is a hotel” then if you want. But one will wait while the other fetches and they’ll make the warrant stick then if they have to plant something to do it. Well, you asked for it.

  “Everything us two kids own in this world is right in that there grip, mister,” Daddy told them and got rid of his coat on the bed.

  There wasn’t anything but old clothes in the grip, and that was right when Daddy got his real good chance. He had two C-notes in his fly and one of the nabs went into the bedroom. All daddy had to do then was pick that envelope out of the coat pocket, hand the nabber left alone with us one of the C’s and flush the tea down the toilet. Only the other came back just then and he was the one found the right pocket at last. He tried a seed on the very tip of his big cow-tongue—“What’s this?” he asked the other clown.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Daddy told him, “I never seen it before.”

  But he looked just so all in.

  All we could hope for was the stop-warrant from Kentucky wouldn’t show up in court.

  I remember His Honor putting his glasses on to see how come Daddy done two years so young. They were the rimless kind. “Two murderous fights in two years,” His Honor told himself, out loud.

  If he had just asked me what had happened, I would of told him. Then he wouldn’t have had to read all that paper.

  When my Daddy came out of Boys’ Industrial and began courting me, how he battled everyone he thought had courted me before! Even though all I was was the first sight he saw wearing a dress. Yet them evil town-boys had only to name some country boy like he’d had a roll-in-the-meadow with me and Daddy would whup that boy, no questions asked. But the kids he whupped were the ones who’d had no more fun with me than that of walking me home from vesper services. All I hoped was one of them boys wouldn’t be so mean as to bring up the name of the Morganfield boy.

  He was the one I started to lewdlin’ with and it got out of hand—yet I hadn’t set eye on him since Christian had begun courtin’ me. Fact is it wasn’t but a bare ten days between that last night with the Morganfield boy and my first all-night night with Christian. Seven months after, it wasn’t a certainty in my mind to which one of them boys I owed my condition. But of course I chose Daddy. I’ve always had good taste.

  When I seen Daddy waiting by the pinball machines I tried to get him out of the bar. But he lit up the machine and paid me no mind. No mind at all. When the Morganfield boy came in and seen Daddy, he knew who Daddy was waiting for, too.

  I asked the bartender to help me get Daddy out. Or the Morganfield boy either one. And the Morganfield boy would have been more than happy to leave; but for the way he’d look in the eyes of others. “Leave them have it out,” the bartender told me.

  “I recommend you to leave,” Daddy gave me orders. But I got no farther than to go through that bar door. Something held me outside. I knew what was going to happen in there.

  Daddy has his own ways. He didn’t so much as reproach that boy. He simply invited him to a game of pinball.

  They played several games, so I was later told, with the Morganfield boy playing to lose, until Daddy accused him of tilting. The Morganfield boy just shook his head knowing it was no use denying anything.

  “You ain’t by way of being much a man, are you?” Daddy then put it to him; and that the boy was forced to deny. I was standing outside the door when I heard the bartender turn the key in the lock.

  The Morganfield boy must have heard it turn, too. It was the last key he ever heard turn. He lingered a week after that beating then died in the night.

  A week after, I had my girl-baby. The very spitting image of Christian.

  Christian won a plea of self-defense in the same courtroom; the same week I gave the baby up for adoption.

  Ten days later we were riding a moving van into L.A.

  His Honor didn’t have to keep his specs on any longer. He’d read enough for a spell. “Young man, I think you’re a Menace to Society,” and by the way he snapped that glass case shut I knew that was what he’d really been wanting to say all along. He had his excuse.

  “I think society is a menace to my Daddy”—it was out before I could bite my tongue. Because that was what I’d been wanting to say all along.

  “Prisoner remanded in lieu of bail. Cash bond set at five hundred dollars. Case continued till Thursday at nine.” He was really going to give it to my Daddy Thursday at nine.

  Forty-eight hours to raise half a grand. It could never be done by turning tricks even at the outrageous prices I charged.

  “If you tell me to go for the sodium amytal, I’ll go,” I told him, for I’d worked with knockout drops when we were hard pressed once before. It isn’t my line. But when it comes down to a matter of Daddy’s freedom I can do anything.

  Daddy forbade me. “Forget the rough stuff, Baby. If you slipped we’d both be busted. Just get what you can on your coat. Then what you can on your watch. You don’t actually need that Japanese kimono. If there ain’t half a grand hanging in your closet I miss my guess. Only don’t dump it all in one joint,” he warned me. “Spread it around so it don’t look like we’re thinking of blowing town or nothing like that.”

  My coat. My watch. My kimono. Not one word about his coat, his watch, his raw silk pajamas or his red silk foulard robe. That child is so jealous of his clothes he can scarcely bear to part with a button if it’s pearl.

  I spread the stuff around like he told me. Half a bill for his topcoat. Another for his watch and ring. I only got twenty for the foulard robe. I didn’t begin to spread my own things till his were gone. I got the half a grand up without losing either my Longine or my chubby. Daddy got to sign his bond just before midnight Wednesday.

  But O that long walk down the courthouse corridor, with an eyedropper hype in one cup of my bra and a bottle of dolaphine with a five-spot wrapped around it in the other before we made the open street.

  As soon as we made it he wants to grab a cab back to the hotel for his clothes. My own coat was hanging over my arm.

  “I got a sneak-hunch somebody’s waitin’ for us there,” I lied. Because I know how he respects my sneak-hunches.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But I won’t go back.”

  “I take your word only because I have to,” Daddy gave in with doubt.

  Then that big cold lonesome lights-out bus. Without a driver, without a rider. Waiting just for us.

  The aisle had just been swept and a little wind kept snooping under the seats to see was it clean there, too. We sat in the back seat, us two fools, and Daddy turned his collar up against me. He was still trying to figure
whether I’d hocked his clothes ahead of my own. The question was only technical, of course; but it was important for him to know all the same. I’d never gone against orders before, and he had no way of knowing if I had or not. I scarcely could blame him for feeling brought down.

  After the way he’d come hitchhiking a vegetable truck into L.A. and in two months rose to the top of the heap, from San P. Street to Beverly Hills; after all the class he took on in almost no time at all; after the argyles and the monogrammed shirts, the cordovans and the easy days, till he’d reached a point where people with class invited us both to spend an afternoon on a yacht in The Bay—to be leaving now with no more to show than tracks down both arms and heel-holes in both socks would have brought down an even yet greater Daddy than mine. Except of course there ain’t none greater. He may not be the best macker there is. But he is the meanest little old dog of a Daddy in town.

  After Vegas the trick would be to see how long we could keep from coming sick in a cornfield. I didn’t show him the dolaphine till it was breaking light and I was getting a weak streak through my own middle. Daddy had just rest-stop time enough to fix hisself. There wasn’t time for me there and it’s a long deal between stops. When I did fix at last I added just a drop of water to replace what I’d used; so Daddy wouldn’t fret at sight of the stuff going down too fast in the bottle. Or he might get sick sooner than need be.

  Just before Vegas I took a little closer look and seen it was fuller than I’d filled it. I didn’t say nothing. I just let him handle the refills and didn’t let him know I was on until we got on the highway with a half a bottle of dolaphine-water between us and Chicago. That was when I showed him the fiver.

  He laughed then, he was feeling real good. “Everything’s going to be perfect, Baby,” he told me. Then we both fixed and sure enough it looked like everything would be perfect.

  “Baby,” he told me, “you’re taking care of me in the little things.”

  “I’m taking care of you in the big ones as well,” I told him—“Didn’t I tell His Honor where to head in?” I got that in quick because it had to be settled while Daddy was still feeling well.