David Goodis - The Moon in the Gutter

The middleweight widened the grin. It became a grimace as he said to Catherine, “Why’d you run away?”

Catherine didn’t answer. The aged candy-store proprietor was standing behind the counter and scowling at the three young men and saying, “Well? Well?”

“Well what?” Scarface said.

“This is a store. Whatcha wanna buy?”

“We ain’t in no hurry,” the middleweight said. He turned to Catherine. “I like to take my time. It makes things more interesting.” He edged closer to her.

“Please go away,” Catherine said.

The proprietor was pointing to a sign on the wall behind the counter. “You read English?” he demanded of the three young men. “It says, ‘No Loafing.’ ”

“We’re not loafing,” the middleweight said mildly. “We’re here to keep a date, that’s all.”

Catherine started to get up from the stool. But she was crowded from all sides and they wouldn’t give her room. Kerrigan didn’t move. He told himself he would wait until one of them put a hand on her.

The proprietor took another deep breath. “This is a store,” he repeated. “If you’re not here to buy something, get out.”

“All right, Pop.” The middleweight reached into his pocket and took out a dollar bill. “Three root-beer floats.” He made a casual reach for the bottle in Catherine’s trembling hand. He took the bottle away from her and said to the proprietor, “Make it four.”

Catherine looked at the middleweight. She wasn’t trembling now. There was just the slightest trace of a smile on her lips. It was a kind smile, something pitying in it. She said very softly, “I’m sorry I ran away from you and your friends. But you were talking sort of rough, and then when you came toward me—”

“I wasn’t gonna hurt ya,” the middleweight said. He was frowning just a little; he seemed uncertain of what to say next. He aimed the frown at Scarface and Bucktooth, as though blaming them for something. Catherine went on smiling at the middleweight. Gradually his frown faded. “Damn, I shoulda known how it was from the way you walked. You didn’t swing it like them teasers do.”

Catherine grinned. She looked down at her skinny body. She gave a little shrug and said, “I got nothing to swing.”

The middleweight laughed, and the other two joined in. Kerrigan told himself to relax. It was all right now. He saw Bucktooth sitting down beside Scarface and the proprietor placing four root-beer floats on the counter and he heard the middleweight saying, “Hey, look, my name is Mickey. And that’s Pete. And that’s Wally.”

“I’m Catherine,” she said. She turned and beckoned to Kerrigan, and he came forward. “This is Bill,” she said. “My brother.”

“Hi,” the middleweight said. He told the proprietor to mix another root-beer float.

Kerrigan wasn’t thirsty now, but he decided to drink the float anyway. He thanked the middleweight and saw the pleased smile on Catherine’s face. She was happy because everyone was friendly.

He sipped the root-beer float and listened to the soft voice of Catherine as she chatted with the three young hoodlums. Her voice was like a soothing touch. He looked at the face of his sister and saw the gentle radiance in her eyes.

Then time shifted gears again and it was now, it was Mooney’s room again. He was sitting there on the mattress on the floor and staring up at the portrait on the wall.

“You look knocked out,” Mooney said. “Why don’t you roll over and go to sleep?”

He gazed dully at Mooney. “Gotta be up early. There’s no alarm clock.”

“That’s all right. I’ll wake you. Got a watch?”

Kerrigan was already prone on the mattress and his eyes were closed as he took out the pocket watch and handed it to Mooney. “Get me up at six-thirty,” he whispered, and while sleep closed in on his brain he wondered what Mooney would be doing awake at that time. But before he could put the question into words, he was asleep.

At ten in the morning the sun was like a big muzzle shooting liquid fire onto the river. Near the docks the big ships glimmered in the sticky heat. On the piers the stevedores were stripped bare to the waist, and some of them had rags tied around their foreheads to keep the perspiration from running into their eyes.

Alongside Pier 17 there was a freighter that had just come in from the West Indies with a cargo of pineapples, and the dock foremen were feverishly bawling orders, spurring the stevedores to work faster. There were some wholesale fruit merchants scurrying around, screaming that pineapples were rotting on the deck, melting away in the heat, while these goddamn loafers took their time and carried the crates as though they had lead in their pants.

Kerrigan and two other workers were struggling with a six-hundred-pound crate when a little man wearing a straw hat came up and shrieked, “Lift it! For God’s sake, lift it!”

They were trying to lift the crate onto a wheeled platform. But on this side of the pier there was a traffic problem. They were surrounded by a jam-up of crates and bales and huge boxes and they had insufficient space to get leverage.

Stooped over, with the crate leaning against their backs, the two stevedores were panting and grimacing while Kerrigan knelt on the planks, his hands under the edge of the crate, trying to coax it onto the platform.

“You morons!” the little man screeched. “That ain’t the way to do it.”

The edge of the crate came onto the platform. The wheels of the platform moved just a little and the crate slipped off. Kerrigan’s hands were under the crate and he pulled them away just in time.

“I told you,” the little man yelled. “You see?”

One of the stevedores looked at the little man. Then he looked at Kerrigan and said, “All right, Bill. Let’s try it again.”

The other stevedore was arching his back and rubbing his spine and saying, “We need more room here.”

The little man shouted, “You need more brains, that’s what you need.”

Kerrigan wiped sweat from his face. He took his position at the side of the crate, pushed a smaller box against the platform to keep it from rolling, and said to the stevedores, “Ready now?”

“All set.”

“Heave,” Kerrigan grunted, and the men braced their backs under the weight of the crate, while Kerrigan strained to work it onto the platform. Again he managed to lift it over the edge, but just then a sliver of rusty metal went stabbing into his fingernail and he lost his hold on the crate. “Goddamnit,” he muttered as the crate fell off the platform and slammed onto the planks of the pier. He stood up and put the injured finger in his mouth and sucked at the blood.

“Go in deep?” one of the stevedores said.

“It’s all right.” Kerrigan winced and took his finger out of his mouth and looked at the torn cuticle. He said, “I guess it’s all right.”

“It don’t look good, Bill. You better have it bandaged.”

“The hell with it,” Kerrigan said.

The little man was hopping up and down and shouting, “What are you standing around for? What about the pineapples? Look at the pineapples. They’re rotting away in the sun.” He beckoned to a dock foreman on the other side of the pier. “Hey, Ruttman. Come here, I want you to see this.”

The dock foreman made his way through a gap in the pile-up of pineapple crates. He was a very big man in his late thirties. His head was partially bald and he had a flattened nose and thick scarred lips and a lot of chin and jaw. His arms were tattooed from wrist to shoulder and the hair on his chest was like a screen of foliage in front of the large tattoo, the purple-brown-black head of an African water buffalo.