Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

‘What’s the matter, friend?’

‘Run,’ the girl told him, struggling to her feet. Dove put an arm around her shoulders.

‘Where you think you’re going?’ He pulled her back down.

‘Run.’

‘Mebbe you better just cry,’ he suggested.

She found that so easy that she kept it up too long, like a child.

‘What you chokin’ yourself up for?’ Dove finally asked.

‘Lost my jacket,’ she remembered.

‘If you’d been wearin’ the jacket—’

‘I know’ – she assured him that she knew where she’d be if she’d been wearing something he could not have gripped.

Her breath began drawing slower, soot and sleep sealed her eyes.

Her face in sleep looked furtive yet innocent, like one already punished for a crime she hasn’t grown up to commit. When she was old enough to commit it she’d find it.

Her hand on his own pressed his in sleep. He let his hand fall between her knees then moved it up till it cupped her and rested there.

She stirred and he took it away.

‘Keep it right there,’ she told him, ‘I owe you that much.’

Lanterns and flashlights passed and repassed down the rails, building shadows on the box car doors. Railroad crews didn’t care how many climbed aboard once the engineer had given his warning toot; but it made them look bad to have the strays lounging the cars like tourists when a train wasn’t moving.

‘The name is Kitty Twist,’ the girl told Dove, ‘—not my real handle of course. It’s just what they took to callin’ me in The Home. I’m seventeen almost eighteen ’n I’ve run from five homes. I’ll keep on runnin’ till I’m eighteen. Then I’ll marry a good pickpocket and settle down.’

‘I better look this man over,’ Dove told her uneasily, and wandered down the track, inspecting the cars from grab-iron to stirrup-ladder. When he was satisfied he whistled for her, helped her into the car he had picked, and shut the door. One beam shone, dancing slenderly whenever the long car trembled after shunting.

‘Red,’ she told him in the dark when the car began at last to roll, ‘put your hands under me before these boards pinch my little hump clean off.’

With both hands cushioning her pine-knot bottom, Kitty Twist wriggled comfortably until she grew warm. She didn’t mind that Dove’s own narrow behind was freezing.

‘I love you, baby,’ he told her because having saved her life he supposed he ought to. ‘I’ll buy you play-pretties and posey flowers. I’ll learn me a trade ’n take care of you.’

He felt her cold little lips and her small cold mouth, her little cold hands that felt so greedy.

‘Daddy, you’ll never have to work,’ Kitty Twist told Dove. ‘I’ll work hard ’n give you all my money.’

He couldn’t see her smiling too knowingly in the dark.

‘The poorer people are the more likely they are to help you,’ Kitty told him the next morning after they had once again left engine and cars in charge of the crew. ‘Pick the first unpainted shack you see.’

She followed Dove into a littered yard and waited while he rapped the door of a knocked-together-by-hand house the color of soot. A soot-colored wife came to answer.

‘My brother took hisself a small fall, M’am,’ Dove pleaded, ‘Would you allow him to worsh up at yer pump?’

‘Whut he sayin’?’ the woman looked to Kitty for help.

‘He wants to know can I wash up in your house.’

‘Come in, child,’ the woman invited Kitty, holding wide the door.

Dove waited in the yard humming softly—

Until Kitty came out scrubbed and shining, a band-aid on her cheek and a half a bar of Ivory soap in her hand.

‘Oldfolks wasn’t fooled for a minute,’ Kitty reported. ‘Called me “Sis”’n set me down in the tub ’n scrubbed my back ’n made me wash between my toes – Look’ – she revealed white anklets – ‘And would you believe it? She sung to me the whole time.’

‘What she sing?’

‘Don’t Bite The Hand That’s Feeding You.’

‘They aint like you and me,’ Dove explained, ‘they’re simple people. But I could stand a worsh-off myself.’

‘You’ll get one uptown,’ Kitty promised – ‘Look – I throw like a damned man,’ and she hurled the Ivory clear across the tracks.

‘Mighty fine whip for a girl,’ Dove had to concede.

‘For a girl hell. Walter Johnson never throwed better. I’m a big-league kid from a big-league town.’

‘I never did see a real big town,’ Dove admitted, ‘full of store-bought marvels. They got them in Houston?’

‘They got ’em, but you’ll have to go shopping yourself. I go down the main stem and I’m on my way back to The Home by morning. I got a W on me, Jack.’

‘I’ll see law-folks don’t snatch you, Kitty,’ Dove promised.

‘I’ll see you get shoes and a shirt too, Red,’ she returned the favor – ‘I’ll dress you up in the finest.’

‘I’ll get you a red silk dress with a tasselly-sash ’n goldy year-rangs too.’

‘Red, what I’m trying to say is I’ll hustle for you if want me to.’

‘I’ll hustle for you too,’ he promised.

‘My God ,’ the girl thought, ‘he thinks I mean I’m going to be a shoe-clerk for him. I’m going to have to straighten him out till there’s nothing left but kinks.’

Although Kitty Twist had never hustled, she knew the trade from older hands with whom she’d been institutionalized, and had run off upon the prospect of going into business for herself.

Down a side-street a sign invited them – PRISONERS’ VOLUNTEER AID SOCIETY.

‘The usual fee here is two bits,’ the ex-con at the desk confided, ‘but if you boys are short I’ll accommodate you both for that. Got two bits between you?’

‘What’s the accommodation?’ Kitty was curious.

‘One meal, one flop, one shower apiece.’

The ex-con pocketed her quarter and they followed him into the kitchen. He put two bowls of withered cole slaw before them and two cups of cold chicory coffee.

‘That’s the meal,’ he explained. ‘You still got a shower and a flop comin’.’

‘Go get your wash-off right away, Red,’ Kitty urged him as soon as she’d tasted the coffee – ‘They’re running out of well-water hereabouts.’

An old man stood under the stream letting the water trickle in and out of his navel while keeping a worried eye on a lean and vulturous creature crouched above his clothes. The vulture had just finished examining the old man’s rags and was cupping his palms to the light; then kicked the bundle off to one side without taking his eyes off his palms. He had caught something all right.

‘Extry ordinary! ’ the old man seemed to know what it was. ‘Extryordinary!’

The louse-runner ground his palms together under the water.

‘Them that don’t git crushed gits drowned,’ he announced with barbarous glee.

Then hovered over Dove as Dove undressed in turn.

The shower was cold but there was strong brown soap. The touch of it burned the bruise on his lip, but he scrubbed himself till his fingers went numb. The water kept getting colder and colder.

The louse-runner returned Dove’s clothes with a disappointed air. Dove asked him for a cap, and after some rummaging was presented with a battered and sunburned floater of straw. It would keep the coal out of his hair and the sun out of his eyes. He lacked the courage to ask for shoes.

Then down some wide and quiet street the pair trudged past windows curtained and shaded. Although it was only midafternoon everyone seemed asleep. They came to a playground where no children played.