The Last Carousel

by Nelson Algren

  “You certainly did, Girl-Baby,” he come through ever so nice.

  Now you see how he is? God help me if ever his eye lit on a pawn ticket for a red silk bathrobe—but when he got a really legit beef on me, like costing us everything we own for the sake of one sassy smalltown remark, he just laughs the whole deal off.

  “Stay out of sight,” I hurried him then, “here comes our transportation.”

  I’d thumb down a driver and get one foot in the car, then I’d say Wait For My Brother Mister and up would jump Daddy out of the bushes and come just a-trotting. I guess for a short spell there he was the up-jumpinest, very trottinest little Daddy on Route 66. Once he up-jumped and come a-trottin’ so fast a lady driver wheeled off with a strip of my skirt in her door handle.

  “Daddy,” I scolded him, “don’t up-jump so fast, else you’ll be swinging a one-legged whore.”

  Comical things like that are what I say every now and then. Not very often. Just from time to time. If I do it oftener Daddy says, “I’ll make the jokes in this family.”

  * * *

  Neither of us were making jokes when we stepped down off that Odgen Avenue trolley. Four cross-country days of Wait-For-My-Brother-Mister, four cross-country nights on watery dolaphine. I felt like something that had been on a raft three weeks at sea.

  The sidewalks so glarey, so hard. The sky all so bare. The people when they pass looking straight ahead—I wouldn’t touch one for fear he’d scream. And how that ass-high Chicago wind comes right at you, so mad, it feels like it wants to cut you a new petoochi right then and there.

  We went into a grocery and bought a box of graham crackers just to get out of that wind. A sign said SLEEPING ROOMS. That was for us. I just leaned, I was that done in. Christian kept one arm around me. He was trying for something, I couldn’t make out just what, with that old doll behind the counter. When his arm went for my wrist I knew what he was trying for. Daddy’s been trying for my Longine for some time now.

  He could of got maybe twelve dollars for it off the old woman—if he could of got it off me. But he had to settle for six dollars on his own hour-piece. That I’d paid forty dollars for.

  And then handed the six right back across the counter for a week’s rent sight unseen. How could she afford to make a trade like that? She won’t be in business long.

  But she threw in the crackers and took us upstairs with her keys in one hand and a quart of milk in the other. The stairs were so dark we would of got lost on the way up but for that bottle. My throat was so parched I could near taste it. If she’d set it down when she opened the door I would of picked it up for her and then let my tongue just hang. But she only needed one hand to open the door.

  For that door you didn’t even need one hand—it hung so far ajar we could of squeezed in between it and the jamb one by one. Inside the room she looked right into my face and set the bottle down on the dresser.

  Then she looked into Daddy’s and picked it up again. Daddy got too much pride to ask for things and I was too sick to. She went downstairs taking it with her.

  “She needs it to light the way down,” I told Daddy.

  He pulled up the shade and I seen a square of red brick wall dripping wet though it wasn’t raining. I seen a brassy old high-ended bed. I seen a soggy mattress made of great big lumps and tiny bums. I seen four green-paper walls. I seen a holy calendar from what year I couldn’t tell but I’d judge it was B.C. This one made the San Pedro trap look sharp.

  “I’ll see you at the Greyhound Station,” I told my Daddy.

  “You can’t come sick in the open street, Beth-Mary,” he told me; and he got to the door before me and locked it so tight all you could see through it was two inches of the hall.

  “I’m sick already,” I told him though it killed me to admit it. Daddy don’t let hisself come sick in his mind, heart and bowels like me. He puts his own sickness down for the sake of mine. That way I get to be sick for both of us.

  He put newspapers under me. He made me a little pillow out of his hole-in-heel socks and a hand towel with a red border. He took my shoes and stocking off so’s I wouldn’t get runs when I started to kick. He put my chubby over me. He called me his Girl-Baby.

  That’s what he calls me when he loves me the most.

  Watch out for Daddy when he loves you the most. You have to come next to deathbed before he lets himself act tender.

  “Let me take your Longine, sweetheart,” he told me, “else you’ll crack the crystal when you start in to swing.”

  “I’d as soon keep it on,” I told Daddy.

  For I felt the big fear coming on. It was coming a-slipping, it was coming a-crawl, it was slipping and crawling down that slippery red wall.

  “Don’t leave me, Christian,” I asked him then.

  “I’ve seen you from Shawneetown. I saw you through L.A. I’m here to see you the rest of the way.”

  “The rest of the way is by the stars,” I told him.

  “By starlight or no light,” he told me, and his voice started going far away then; yet I knew it was telling me I wasn’t to have Stuff any more ever. Something got a grip on that red brick wall and wouldn’t let go.

  “Pull down the shade,” I told him, “they’ve changed their plans.”

  He pulled down the shade. I could tell by the shadow that fell as it fell. I had a little secret to tell. “Where are you?” I asked him.

  “Right beside you, Beth-Mary.”

  “They’re waiting in the hall,” I told him my secret: “They’ve stole the master key.”

  He put a chair under the doorknob and stuffed the keyhole to humor me. “Daddy is here right beside you.”

  There was somebody in that hall all the same. And somebody on the rooftop too.

  The Federal man was beside the bed pressing my left hand for prints; but I hid the right under the covers because that was the one that really counted. I kept turning the wrong hand like Daddy turning the wrong pocket because it was me wearing that big stop-warrant W and not Daddy at all. That was what I’d been suspecting for some time now. “Beth-Mary,” the Fed began to sound like my Daddy, “try to rest till dark.”

  “Never heard the name till now,” I told him, “but the first hustling broad I meet who answers to it, I’ll tell her she’s suppose to come down-town.”

  “It’s only me, your little Daddy,” that Fed tried his best. “Look at me, Beth-Mary.”

  “I have seen you somewheres before,” I told him. “You’re the nigger bellboy tried to pimp me off my little Daddy on San P. Street—remind me to have him cripple you back of the parking lot. It won’t take as long this time as before.”

  Not till that moment did Daddy know I knew about that deal.

  “Beth-Mary Kindred,” he asked me—“Look at me. Are you putting it on?”

  “Come closer,” I told him. For I was much more sly than he ever had supposed.

  He came up close. He was all misty-white. “Get out! Get out!” I screamed right out—I wanted to cry, I wanted to laugh, I was freezing cold, I was sweating-wet. I couldn’t get up still I couldn’t lie still. I wanted to feel of someone’s hand. Yet I couldn’t bear human touch.

  I can hear a country mile off, sick or well. Daddy don’t hear a thing till it’s next to his ear.

  I heard steps in the hall. I said what I heard. Was it really steps or not? He didn’t know whether to duck or go blind.

  “Hold my hand and be still, you talk too much,” I told him—“say something to me—Hush! What train is that?” It troubled me to hear a passenger train making time and not being able to tell was it going west or coming to run me over.

  “That’s the New York Central, sweetheart.” He thought he could tell me just anything.

  “Christian Kindred—finky liar—you good and well know that ain’t no New York Central.”

  “Maybe it’s the Illinois Central then. Maybe it’s the Nickel Plate. For all I know, Baby, it could be the Rock Island.”

  “You lie in your te
eth. You know as well as I it’s the Southern Pacific.”

  “That’s right, sweetheart,” he agreed too soon, “it’s the Southern Pacific for sure.”

  “Wait in the hall!” I hollered right at him—“Do as you’re told!”

  He closed the door quiet to make off like he done as he was told. He didn’t dare leave me. Yet feared to come near me. “Little Baby,” I heard him ask, “don’t battle me so. You’re grinding your teeth.”

  It’s the kind of sickness you do well not to grind your teeth. But I wasn’t battling him. I was battling it. Though it’s a sickness it’s the purest of follies to battle. Yet you have to battle it all the same. Battle and grind till your strength is spent in hope of one blessed moment of rest.

  That moment comes yet it’s never blessed. Your nose runs. Your eyes water. Your mouth drools like a possum’s in love. “Daddy,” I told him, “I don’t want you to see me looking this way.”

  Then it’s some sort of fever-doze where you’re dreaming by the moment. Yet know right where you are all the while. It’s something real wild that can’t be endured. You endure it all the same.

  It’s all misty-white, it’s like under water. Yet of a sudden the whole room will come clear and everything in it stands out to the wallpaper’s tiniest crack.

  It’s the sickness that turns you against yourself. You’re like two people, a weak cat and a strong, with no use for each other but they can’t pull apart. “I don’t deserve to be punished like this,” you hear the weak cat grieve.

  “If you deserved it, it wouldn’t be punishment,” the tougher party tells.

  “Then let me get it all and be done. Let me come to the end of suffering then.”

  The stronger cat just scorns all that.

  It goes and it comes, it creeps or it runs, there is no end and it’s never done.

  “Then why just dole it? Let me have it all at once,” the weak cat begs.

  “If you could see an end it wouldn’t be punishment.”

  It’s all so useless. It’s nothing like sleep.

  Once my eyes cleared and I saw Daddy plain: he was watching the light beyond the shade, waiting for the dark to come down. “Here I am,” I could guess what he was thinking, “without a penny, without a friend. And a W on my forehead. If I get picked up it’ll be a long deal before us two fools sleep side by side again. Who would fix a poor broad in a rented bed then?”

  “Daddy,” I whispered to him, “I got too many worries to go through with this.”

  He tried to give me something by mouth but my lips felt pebbly. I spit it all out. Daddy ought to have known better than that. Your mouth doesn’t want it, it’s your vein crying out. You can’t ease a vein habit by mouth. Not even with graham crackers.

  I felt him unstrapping my Longine. “You’re getting it all spittly,” he told me. I tried to swing my arm but I was too weak.

  I must have dozed, because I heard Daddy’s voice near at hand; yet he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking on the phone.

  “What time can my wife and I catch a bus to Shawneetown, sir? We can’t go directly? Nearest stop is Morganfield? But are you certain it won’t be overcrowded, sir? I don’t mind for myself, but I’m traveling with my wife and little girl. I want them to be rested when we get home.

  Yes sir—that’s the reason we prefer travelling by Greyhound, sir. O no sir, not by far, I should say this isn’t our first trip by Greyhound. ‘We know we’ll travel in comfort when we take Greyhound’ is how the little woman puts it. Our little girl prefers Greyhound too. ‘And leave the driving to them, Daddy’ is how our little girl puts it.”

  I opened one eye.

  It seemed a peculiar time to be putting me on.

  But there he was, making all arrangements.

  I was too tired to follow. He just went on and on. I didn’t hear him hang up when I came around again he seemed to have cancelled with Greyhound.

  ‘‘Bluebird Lines? What time is a bus available to Shawneetown, sir? Shawneetown, Illinois, yes sir. No, we don’t want to charter it, there are only the three of us—my wife, little girl and myself. I don’t mind standing up myself—I’d stand up all the way, it wouldn’t bother me in the least. But I have to think of my wife and little girl. You’re sure it won’t be overcrowded? Plenty of seats for everybody? I see. Yes, one next to the window—for the little girl, of course.” He hung up.

  Grey is for Greyhound. Blue is for Bluebird. But what color is a pimp who thinks it’s funny to make comical phone calls over a dead telephone when his old lady is preparing to die for lack of a fix?

  He came over to the bed. He touched my hair and said “Lay back, Beth-Mary.” So I knew he’d give up trying to amuse me. “Just rest. Your Little Daddy’s with you.”

  My Little Daddy’s with me alright. The Jesus God, what can be said of a man who can even make a failure of pimping? There we were with movie directors putting hundred-dollar-bills in my hair, so faggy they didn’t even mind Daddy coming along, having the both of us out on a yacht in The Bay; him in clothes so classy he called himself a “technical advisor” whatever that may mean. And me so cute they used to brag about me all over the boat.

  Then he has to get on Stuff and I have to get on because he’s on. How do you like that for a man who once had good sense? Honest to God, when I think of the silk shirts, the lounging pajamas, the watches I wore and the French-heel shoes, the black lace undies and smoking jackets, the dresses I looked like an actress in—all down the drain like the sixteen-gauge hype you’d fixed with.

  All gone. All down.

  “You’re still my one true tiger, Beth-Mary,” he told me with his hand still on my hair.

  I felt like his one Old Faithful. I didn’t feel like nobody’s tiger. I just felt bowed low.

  Poor pimp, he does his best.

  “Let me take your Longine now, Sweetheart,” he told me, “else you’ll crack the crystal when you start to swing.”

  “Put it where I can see it,” I asked him and he strapped it onto a handle of the bureau. I could see the shiny golden circle hanging even though I couldn’t see the time. At least I knew where time was to be had.

  “Baby,” he told me, “you got the worst part over.”

  Then the big sick hit me bigger and sicker than before.

  It comes on real quiet, like nabbers at work—the only thing that’s something deep inside you and something far outside, too. The only thing that feels so soft that hits so hard. The only thing that’s more like nabbers at work than nabbers at work.

  Nabs holding both your arms—then letting you pull loose just to see where you’ll hide. There’s a key in your door but it won’t turn. Nabbers coming down both sides trying all doors—Get your back flat against the wall. Maybe they won’t try this door at all. Maybe they’ll never find you.

  They’re trying it, they’re telling our name doorway to door—“Beth-Mary Kindred. Beth-Mary Kindred. Beth-Mary”—I saw my Daddy’s face, so dear, so sort of pulled with care—“Beth-Mary, I’m right here beside you.”

  Then I knew nabbers at work had been just sounds inside my fevery ears.

  Spook-docs and croakers, bug-docs and such, meatballs and matrons, nurses and all, there’s not one cares whether you live or you die. For not one knows what true suffering is. But Daddy who stayed on my side and beside me that sorriest day of any, you know. And you’re the onliest one who knows.

  People like to say a pimp is a crime and a shame. But who’s the one friend a hustling broad’s got? Who’s the one who cuts in, bold as can be, when Nab comes to take you? Who puts down that real soft rap only you can hear to let you know your time is up and is everything alright in there Baby? And when a trick says, “Where’s the twenty I had in my wallet?”—who’s the one he got to see? Who’s the one don’t let you get trapped with the monstering kind?

  When ten o’clock in the morning is dead of night, who still keeps watch over you?

  “What time is it, Daddy?” I asked him.

 
“Time to get off the wild side, Beth-Mary,” he told me like he’d found out for himself at last. Then just set on. So pale, so wan.

  I turned my head toward him so’s he’d know I was with him.

  “Is it getting a little darker, Christian?’’

  “It’s nigh to dark, Beth-Mary.”

  All I could do was touch his wan hand. My fingers were too weak to hold it. Yet he took it into mine and pressed my palm to let me know.

  “Baby,” he told me, “I’m sorry for what I done to you on South San Pedro Street.”

  And said it so low, poor just-as-if-macker, as though I were part of his very heart still. That I heard it clear as little bells.

  I must have slept then for a spell, because I dreamed I was buying seeds for some flower that blooms under water and when I woke it was raining. And someone kept humming from ever so far. When the rain stopped the little hum stopped. And all was wondrous still. When the rain began the hum began, from ever so far I could scarcely hear.

  “Is that you humming, Daddy?” I asked.

  Nobody answered. Nobody was near. The hum came closer—a little girl’s humming. How could such a tiny hum come from so terribly far?

  “You need sleep, Mother,” she said my name. Sick as I was, my heart sank yet farther.

  I lay on my pillow, how long I can’t tell. After a time I noticed my Longine was gone. But it was all one by then.

  I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that Christian was gone too. I didn’t care, one way nor another.

  I didn’t care for anything.

  I was the one the law had wanted all along.

  Then I heard his step.

  My Daddy’s step way down. Then the key turned in the lock and his voice came to me—

  “Are you going to sleep all day, Little Baby?”

  “Not if Little Daddy is going to make me well,” went through my mind; but I was too weak to say it. All I knew, by his voice, was that he had scored. I felt myself getting well before I could tell where he was at. Then I felt his arm holding me up and the slow press of the needle—he hardly teased me at all this time—though that’s Daddy’s pleasure and I don’t begrudge him—he hit me then in a way no doctor or nurse on earth ever could. It takes a junkie to fix a junkie. And nobody knows how to fix you like your own Little Daddy. Little orange fires began to glow deep inside me. I felt myself getting warm.