Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

They knew they came from the wrong side of a town that had only two sides, the wrong and the wronger, so strangers with loose cash must be shown respect. And if the women in the cars with the Eastern licenses seemed more prideful than common, that was only agreed to in Spanish, that courteous tongue.

To this lost place the Depression arrived as a sort of modest boom, bringing a relief station and a case worker that caused a dozen wetbacks to wade back across the river. ‘More fried yams for the rest of us,’ old friends wished them indifferent luck.

Shambling down Main Street one bleak evening, Dove noticed the pharmacist idling in front of his shop wearing the face that said, ‘Keep moving, Useless. Business is Business.’

Useless kept moving, for business was business.

Useless always kept moving until he was told to stand to one side. Then he stood to one side until told to start moving. All weathers to Dove were a single season in which he moved or stood unwanted.

On the courthouse steps Fitz was playing the fool for the same gang of cactus-headed rundums for whom he always played the fool. Byron was leaning against the howitzer as though too exhausted tonight to mount it.

‘Preacher,’ asked a hungry-looking misfit, stooped as under a pack, ‘is it right for a man’s wife to bob her hair?’

‘Go to Deuteronomy,’ Fitz promised, ‘your answer is there.’

‘But I don’t feel it’s wrong,’ the wife’s voice defied Deuteronomy.

Fitz’s eyes sought her out. ‘Woman, did you ever get down on your knees and ask God if it was wrong?’

‘No I didn’t, Preacher.’

‘When you do He’ll let you know. If He wanted a woman to cut off her hair he’d have her to shave too, wouldn’t he?’

There didn’t seem to be any answer to that.

‘How fast do angels travel?’ was the next issue Fitz had to solve. That was easy.

‘Why, an angel can leave the New Jerusalem at six o’clock in the morning, travel all over the earth, and be back home at six in the evening where the lion doth lie down with the lamb. Heaven just at hand! Where neither moth nor rust do corrupt! Where thieves break not through nor steal. No sickness! No pain! And a thousand years is as a single day!’

‘What’s the fool rushin’ to get home by six o’clock then?’

Fitz ignored Byron.

‘There is balm in Gilead! No wreaths of sorrow on the doors – and the doors is all pure gold! Pure gold!’ The old man bethought himself – ‘Only don’t you count on that – nobody is going to be fool enough to mistake a bunch of chicken-thieves like you for angels. No, my pitiful friends, what’s in store for you aint no New Jerusalem.’

‘Good old Hellfire fer us, Preacher,’ a believer sounded like he could scarcely wait.

‘Hellfire too good for us!’ – someone else trying to get in good with the preacher for sake of his Kill-Devil.

‘We aint wuth Hellfire!’

They overdid everything. For they knew Fitz put The City of Pure Gold within their reach only for the pleasure of snatching it back.

And actually they didn’t give a hoot for any city of gold. Desolation here and now, that was their dish. Blazing brimstone, eternal torture and a backhanded crack from the hindquarters of bad luck was what they lusted for. Though they never really believed his promise of Heaven Just At Hand, nothing was surer to them than Hellfire. And it took Fitz to lead them straight to its screeching brink. The preacher knew where the real action was all right.

With the passion of one who has been there and back, Fitz brought them closer and closer to the unspeakable edge—

‘Un- utter -uble sorrows is in store for all,’ he gave his holy word – a Santa Claus with nothing save horrors in his sack, hollowing every syllable to make Hell so imminent they could scarcely await their turn on the spit. ‘Un- utter -uble sorrows! Un- dying Damnation! Ut- ray -jus visi-tay-shuns! Invasion by an army! A army of lepers! Two hundred million of flame-throwen cavalry! A river of blood and burnen flesh a hundred mile long! Seven month jest to bury the dead! A army comen! A leper army!’

‘Army-Gideon!’ one idiot was carried completely away. Oh, they loved those leper mounties so they scarcely knew which side to join first. It didn’t matter: no cause was too mad so long as the action was fast and the field bloody. Swept, they were swept by the enormous loneliness of their lives up to the very gates of the golden city, then swept clear back to the burning plains of Damnation. An action so fast it permitted no moment wherein to take breath and look within. To look within at their own hearts, so dark so empty just as hearts.

‘Mothers to eat the flesh of their new-born! A time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even unto that same time!

‘Hailstones big as blocks of ice! Tawr’nts of bloody fire! Fountings ’n rivers turnen to foaming blood! El Paso buried under red-hot lava! Now you poor sorry buggers you’re really going to catch it.’

‘How about New York?’ some people never wanted to go anywhere alone.

‘Buried in a rain of toads! Toads big as cats to Wall Street’s topmost tower!’

Wall Street had all the luck.

‘Every island shall flee away and the mountings will not be found! Fly or die! All who worship Jehovah will have to receive the mark of the beast or die! Walls of bricks and walls of steel staved in by hailstones weighing fifty-six pounds apiece!’

Not even Byron knew where he got his figures.

‘Papists rapists – the fiend’s agents already are amongst us, preparen to seize the White House. A real person the ex -press image of Satan! – the Pope of Wall Street!’

Several looked suspiciously at Byron. Fitz’s eyes followed – and the movement sent the whole crowd into a single trance-struck shout—

Byron couldn’t bear hymning and to him this was the most dreadful of all—

‘O God ,’ Byron answered all like a cry – ‘O God who scorns the shoeless – forget our daily bread but hasteth thy vengeance! Hasteth! Hasteth!’

‘Who the hell’s side is he on now? ’ somebody wondered.

But before anyone could make a guess, Byron had turned and was lost in the dark. Yet his father’s voice pursued him.

‘Friends, I reckoned when I told you, a minute ago, about the invasion of lepers ’n hailstones weighin’ fifty-six pounds ’n flame-throwen cavalry two-hundred million strong ’n a rain of toads big as cats ’n mothers eatin’ their new-born ’n wind stavin’ in walls of brick ’n steel ’n a river of burnen blood up to the horses’ bridles, that you were heading for a bit of trouble. Now I have to tell you your real troubles won’t begin till Antichrist get worken on your sinnin’ hides.

‘Already he is spreadin’ the Doc-treen of evolution, the universal fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Already the Wall Street labor unions are armin’ to help him, preparen for the day when no man will be able to earn his bread by the sweat of his face unless he has the mark of the beast – A-F-L – upon him. Neither will he be able to buy or sell. City unions teach you that Chinamens are your brothers! Ay rabs! Mexes!

‘ You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country. You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold .’ – He leaped straight up and came down barking like a gibbon—