Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

The raggedy line shuffled one raggedy inch.

‘You’re so smart it’s a pure pity,’ Dove decided – ‘Just tell me this much – they got liverpuddin’ in that kitchen ahead or not?’

‘They not only got liverpuddin’ friend. They got candied yams, Virginia ham ’n possum pie.’

‘Yankee vittles is a mite rich for my blood,’ Dove was forced to decline. Brother glanced up to see who was being kidded now.

But Dove’s jaw hung so long, so mournfully from cheeks so cavernous, the hair bothering his eyes had been so long uncut and the eyes themselves so darkly shadowed, it was hard to believe anyone could kid in that condition.

‘You should of stayed in the hospital till they cut your hair,’ she advised him.

‘I bet if you taken off that hat you could stand a trim your own self.’ Dove answered. He felt a friendly hand on his shoulder.

‘Ah’ll bet y’all from the Big Bend Country, haint yo’?’ Dove tossed the hair back out of his eyes to see if it were someone he knew, forgetting for the moment that he didn’t know anybody. A Marine sergeant was studying him smilingly.

‘Me? No sir ,’ Dove corrected him with pride, ‘I’m from Rio Grande country.’

‘Taylor ’n Halsted, pleased to meet you both,’ the terrier introduced herself so assertively that the uniform had to talk over the fedora in order to recruit Dove.

‘How’d you like three square meals a day, Red? A chance to see the tropics, chase Sandino, defend your country, get two pairs of shoes and a pension shortly after?’ He gave Dove a wink so broad that Dove winked back just as broadly – ‘and how those South American girls go for that uniform.’

‘It sounds like a right good position, mister’ – Dove decided. ‘I especially like that part about defendin’ my country. But first I got to git me a small bait of vittles.’

‘I think you’ll make a fine soldier, son,’ the sergeant was confident – ‘You got no physical dee fect have you?’

‘Take another look at that squint, Colonel,’ the disguised girl recommended.

‘A squint aint no dee fect,’ the sergeant explained authoritatively, ‘—it’s more what we term a “impedimunt.” We’ll get Red specs to correct his. Spanish women like soldiers with glasses.’

‘Look at them choppers.’

Without being asked, Dove opened his mouth and the sergeant put a big dirty thumb flat down on his tongue.

‘In six months the clown won’t have a tooth in his head,’ the girl seemed certain. ‘Jungle-rot will get him.’

‘Well, we don’t want him to bite Sandino,’ the sergeant already excused Dove from one detail.

‘I have one loose awready anyhow,’ Dove managed to tell simply by removing the thumb temporarily, between two of his own fingers – ‘it waggles’ – and replaced the thumb hoping the sergeant would waggle it a bit for him.

‘Let the army dentist do that.’ The sergeant took his fist out of Dove’s face. ‘You’re going to make one hell of a Marine. Wouldn’t be surprised if you caught Sandino yourself. You can close your mouth now.’

He took out a small notebook and a pencil. ‘Tell me, you got any other dee fects, son?’

Dove reddened. That was when you couldn’t read or write. ‘I reckon that in time that might be corrected too,’ he answered evasively because of those standing about.

‘Nothing serious, is it?’ He gave Dove a nudge – ‘Nothin’ you picked up from town girls?’

The sarge had girls on his mind alright.

‘The second spell he took after supper last night he foamed a bit – Would that be anything serious?’ Dove’s friend asked blandly.

‘He takes fits? ’ The Marine grew anxious. He didn’t want to lose a rookie but he didn’t want to hook a lemon.

‘I never throwed a fit in my whole derned life,’ Dove defended himself stoutly. ‘Pay no heed whatsoever to my brother here, captain – jest jealous cause I out-growed him. I aint even inclined toward spells.’

‘ Good lad,’ the sergeant congratulated him, ‘Tex, you’re a real stand-up kid. Tell me this – routine question – nothing personal – if an enemy capable of rape had you trapped with your sister and mother and one of you had to be left behind, which one of you would you choose it to be?’

‘ How about them señoritas? ’ Brother gave Dove a nudge that almost knocked him down.

‘ Will you stay out of this?’ the sergeant turned on the girl.

‘I got neither mother nor sister, captain,’ Dove found the safest answer.

‘Suppose you had.’

‘Sister would have to go,’ he heard a terrier-whisper.

‘Sister would have to go,’ Dove repeated hopefully.

‘I told you stay out of this ,’ the sergeant menaced the fedora and turned back to Dove – ‘Put it this way. Your outfit of one hundred men is surrounded by bloodthirsty Nicaraguan bandits but you can save them all by sacrificing your own life. Which would come first with you? The lives of the ninety-nine others or your own?’

Dove needed no help on that.

‘My own, naturally.’ He beamed.

Dove was a little sorry to see the sergeant shake his head and move off.

‘Wasn’t that the right answer?’ Dove wanted to know.

‘It was the right answer alright,’ she reassured him. ‘How do you feel, Red?’

‘Fairly fainty,’ Dove confessed. The odor of hot soup was swinging his stomach like a bell.

‘Now what did I tell you just before, Red?’

‘I ferget, friend.’

‘I told you don’t do nothin’ you don’t see me doing. Did you see me asking Uncle Whiskers for a new suit? Did you see me showing him my choppers? Did you see me standing still to get measured for a rifle?’

‘Nobody asked you,’ Dove recalled.

‘You could still call him back – and spend the rest of your life doin’ close-order drill down in the banana country instead of riding passenger trains and sleeping in the shade. I won’t stop you.’

Somebody handed Dove something steaming in a bowl just then and all notion of soldiering fled upward with the steam.

When he had finished the bowl he looked up to see his friend’s hardly touched. The girl pushed it to him.

‘Thanks, sis.’ She gave him a look. ‘I mean brother,’ he corrected himself.

‘You’ll thank me for keeping you out of barracks one day too.’

A haunted-looking cracker in a grease-stained apron put a tab of paper between them already so thumb-smirched Dove thought he wanted their prints.

‘Give me a couple phonies, boys,’ he advised them.

‘We didn’t have it in mind to give you good ones,’ the girl told him.

‘We got to keep track of how many feeds we put out,’ the hant apologized. ‘Citizens got a right to know how their money is being spent.’

‘My ignorant brother here went back three times for seconds – What will the citizens say about that ?’

‘Directly y’all finish eatin’,’ the cracker invited them both, ‘you might step outside and lend me a hand with a spot of kindling – takes kindlin’ to cook y’all cawnbread y’know.’

‘He has it in mind for us to chop down a tree,’ she explained to Dove.

‘A mighty mannerable feller, and I don’t mind work,’ Dove added, anxious lest he miss a chance to do some.

‘I don’t mind a spot of light labor myself,’ she admitted.

A circle of half a dozen vagrants sitting cross-legged about a sack of charity beans looked like a spot sufficiently light. With a pan and a bucket between them, Dove and the little ’bo trickled beans through their fingers. Bugs, stones, old crockery, weeds and beer-corks were for the bucket and beans were for the pan. Since it was their own supper they were preparing, they trickled with some care. Dove found a chipped agate and pocketed it like a blue treasure.