Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

‘Luke,’ Fort rose to tell him, ‘if we were standin’ around wonderin’ which one of us to eat first you still wouldn’t call times hard.’ Then he left to look for something to eat.

Luke skipped to his coat and brought forth a stack of green-margined certificates ‘entitling bearer to one free finger wave and shampoo at the Madam Dewberry Beauty Shop’ – he rattled off the larger print. ‘Now tell me, what woman in N’awlins don’t want a marcel wave and shampoo for free?’

Dove couldn’t name a single one.

‘Tell you what it amounts to, Tex – you’re handing that lucky gal the equivalent of a five-dollar bill.’

‘I am?’

‘You’re workin’ with me on this, aren’t you?’

‘Would it be alright with Madam Dewberry?’

‘That’s my responsibility.’

‘Mighty obliged, Luke.’

‘All you have to do is watch out for telephone wires.’

‘Aint no plumb good at climbin’, Luke.’

‘Who said there was climbin’?’

Somebody’s step sounded on the stair and Luke ducked the certificates hastily into his coat. ‘Got a hundred more stashed under the steps,’ he lowered his voice and touched a finger to his lips – ‘Mum’s the word.’

Rapping with Luke was a lark. Instead of a heavy sample case all Dove had to carry now was a bundle of certificates, and didn’t have to climb a telephone pole after all.

‘I’ll have to wait to see what my husband says,’ his first prospect told him.

‘Reckon you’ll just miss your free wave ’n shampoo then, m’am. We aint comin’ by this way again. Fact is we’re almost out of certificates already. Only puttin’ out a hundred in the whole dern town.’

The woman studied the certificates with a married daughter beside her. ‘Seems just too good to be true,’ both frankly doubted him.

‘M’am, why don’t you just telephone Madam Dewberry and veer fy what I’m sayin’?’

Inasmuch as there was seldom more than one telephone to a block in New Orleans in ’31, the bluff was safe. She took one for herself and one for the daughter.

His second prospect had a harder head. ‘You wait here, young man – I am going to phone.’

‘Yes’m.’ Dove obeyed her.

But when she disappeared to primp for her trip to the corner grocer’s phone, Dove scurried to warn Luke off the block.

Luke took a swig from a half pint off his hip and didn’t feel the need to hurry anywhere. ‘Take your time, Tex.’

‘Here she comes now.’ Luke intercepted the hardheaded number.

‘Good morning, m’am. I’m the manager of the Madam Dewberry Beauty Parlor. My young assistant here reports you want to confirm this invitation. We like that. You’re the type of customer we’re looking for. If we can satisfy you , we can satisfy anybody. Don’t waste your nickel – I stand back of every word on this certificate.’ Luke drew one out of his pocket. ‘I’m not going to charge you even a quarter for this one, m’am.’

He put it in her hand.

‘I didn’t mean I wanted it for nothing ,’ Hardhead protested.

‘If you want to pay the young man the courtesy fee of twenty-five cents, that’s purely optional.’

The woman handed Dove a quarter and returned to the house reading the smaller print.

The rest of the morning went easier. By noon twenty-five quarters jingled in Dove’s jeans and he still had twenty-five certificates for the evening.

But by evening Luke had invested his own quarters in a bottle of gin, so that before they had rapped many doors they were in no shape to rap at all. Toward midnight Dove heard horns and bells. They were helping one another down Tchoupitoulas and the whole dark city rang.

On their old stairs’ steep sad height Dove held Luke back.

‘I wonder did old Fort eat today?’

‘Let the sonofabitch starve,’ Luke pushed into the room. On the bed Fort lay with his face to the wall.

‘Shhhh,’ Dove cautioned Luke, ‘don’t wake him up.’

‘The sonofabitch been awake for hours,’ Luke decided, and shook Fort by the shoulders. ‘Hey! Good old buddy! Srimps! Fresh srimps!’

Fort turned about. Hunger kept glassing his eyes. He didn’t see shrimps. He didn’t smell shrimps.

‘Because there aint no srimps because we et ’em all, goodbuddy,’ Luke laughed with real glee and did a little taunting song and dance—

Dove remembered his own pockets and withdrew six cold shrimps wrapped in a paper napkin.

‘Here, Fort,’ and held them out over the sleeper’s face to show it wasn’t a joke after all. ‘As good-tasted a srimp as ever you et—’ Fort swung a hand and sent shrimps and napkin flying.

One ricocheted off the wall onto the bed. Dove picked it up and nibbled drunkenly at it, looking down at six and a half feet of self-pity huddled under a dirty patch quilt.

Hours later he was wakened by someone padding about. Luke was snoring in the chair. Dove saw a match’s flare. Then a kind of chewing-sucking sound. ‘I hope he finds them all,’ Dove thought and returned to sleep.

In the morning Fort had left.

‘I think he’s a mite fitified with us,’ Dove felt. ‘We hurt his feelings last night.’

‘His type feelings is hurt till they smell cookin’,’ Luke was certain. ‘Then they come runnin’.’

‘I wouldn’t fault him,’ Dove excused Fort. ‘He’s just a poor hippoed critter.’

‘Hippoed?’

‘He’s liver-growed. His liver has growed to one side, that’s plain to be seen. If he’d been held upside down when he was a young ’n ’n shook good, it could have been shuk loose. Too late now. Be there ary egg about?’

‘How do you want it? Up or over?’

‘I’m not dauncy,’ Dove answered, ‘I like an egg everwhat way.’

When both eggs were everwhatted, Luke set them down thoughtfully, though not commonly a thoughtful man.

They left the pan and the dishes for Fort to clean and made their morning run with twenty-five certificates each from Luke’s secret cache.

Upon their evening return dishes littered the table, flies fed in all the pans and an odor of meat burnt or burning hung like a promise of better times. Fort was stretched more than the length of the high brass bed, smoking a cigar looking as long as himself; like a man who had never missed a meal. It was an unsettling sight.

‘Spared half a steak for you boys,’ he recalled, blowing mosquitoes off in a T-bone shaped cloud – ‘but you didn’t show up so I said to myself, “You better knock that steak off before the flies get it.” Had to force myself, but I did. Sure would have admired to share it but it’s no use kicking myself for not waiting now.’

Sure enough. A steak’s remains had been fried right there on their own stove, and Fort didn’t spend that night in search of shrimps. Instead, he laughed at them both in sleep.

He never laughed except in sleep but Dove and Luke took their laughter waking. In the days that followed they stayed drunk, off and on, most of the summer day and often well into the summer night. They had no reason for not being drunk.

The days of peeking timidly into a backyard to check on telephone wires were past. A businessman like himself, Dove had come to feel, hadn’t time to bother with that sort of thing. He rapped fast and hard at front doors these days, and once when a housewife answered he challenged her before she had a chance to ask what he wanted – ‘Go ahead ’n call up! See who cares!’ – and with a tip of his straw floater was gone in an evening mystery, down a gently weaving street.