Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

A little black boy in a shirt that reached no farther than his navel studied each client in turn. Some smiled, some looked the other way. He would look till he had his fill of each, then move onto the next. If offered a penny he would pocket it yet never crack a smile.

A feminine scent, as of incense mixed with cologne, stirred the portieres. Dove gripped the book tighter.

This would be Hallie.

But it was only the fan overhead that had stirred the curtain. Now the metal spiders hung more still, now the barber shop boredom grew yet heavier. Across the street a man in a black stetson was offering a bag of something to a girl in the corner door. Dove saw her look both ways down Rampart and look both ways down Perdido. Then reached swiftly into the bag and dodged as swiftly back. A moment later she reopened the door just long enough to spit a peanut shell into the street. Any transaction, even for peanuts, made with one party still on the walk could mean a pinch for the girl.

But the risk she’d taken paid off, for the stetson girded up his loins and entered clutching his bag big enough to provide a peanut for every girl in the place and still leave two for himself.

The first street lamp came on, looked both ways down Rampart then both ways down old Perdido; then steadied itself for the long night ahead. When God alone knew what peanutless monster, what penniless stray, might come there seeking rest.

A moon-faced blonde with her hair in a bun sauntered in, her face dead-white and her brows pitch-black. Dove gave a start, then relaxed: no, this one never could be Hallie.

‘Reba, these boys got marcel waves to give away,’ Mama told her.

‘You got in surance?’ Reba demanded.

‘We got insurance to keep your hair from getting nappy,’ Luke stepped right in. Reba held out her baby hand and he clapped a certificate right in it.

‘That’ll be a quarter, miss.’

‘You said it was free.’

‘The quarter is just by way of a courtesy,’ Luke told her.

‘Keep it. I aint courteous,’ and gave him back his gift.

‘She’s from Chicago,’ Mama explained.

But a girl with a face made up to look like a death mask of Joan Crawford, a real plastic mask of a face, began to plead for one.

‘Mama sweet, give the man a quarter for one for me.’

‘For God’s sake, she don’t even know what the guy is sellin’ ’n she’s buyin’,’ Chicago shook her head in disbelief at the ways of Southern hustlers.

‘Meet Frenchy,’ Mama introduced the mask, ‘and this is my grandson, Warren Gameliel. Pledge allegiance, Warren G.’

The little black boy wasn’t pledging a thing. He wasn’t even saying hello. ‘I do it back ,’ he warned everyone. No one knew what he meant by that.

‘—and this is our Fort Worth girl,’ Mama introduced a blonde twice the size of the first, with breasts that could better have hung on a cow. No, this never could be Hallie.

Mama handed Luke a quarter for Frenchy, the girl received her paper, gave it one bored glance and handed it to Fort Worth – ‘You use it, honey, I never go downtown.’

She had bought like a child, for the sake of the transaction, and like a child had made a gift of it to the nearest friend. Dove saw that there was nothing easier than selling to hustling women. Reba was the only one who wouldn’t buy just for the sake of buying.

Warren Gameliel seemed less a child than the women. Clutching a penny of his own, he watched each transfer of ownership so intently that Mama declared, ‘I swear I believe that child can add and subtract.’ And added, perhaps to put the salesmen into a mood that would get the girls their quarters back, ‘We get lots of married men down here. I’ve been married four times myself. Shod the horse all around as it were. Once to a businessman and three times to thieves, and the businessman was the only one I was unhappy with.’

‘Is Looney up yet?’ someone asked.

‘Which looney?’ Fort Worth wanted to know.

‘There’s no one in this house name of “Looney” that I know of,’ Mama defended the missing chick. ‘If you’re referring to Floralee, she’s putting on her clothes. I forbade her ever to come down again without them. You know what she told me? “I don’t see the use of all this onnin’-’n-offin’,” – that’s just what the poor thing told me.’

‘What’s so looney about that?’ Fort Worth wanted to know.

‘After last night I don’t see how that broad can get downstairs with or without clothes,’ Frenchy marveled from behind Joan Crawford’s eyebrows, ‘I don’t even see how she can rise.’

‘She’ll rise and she’ll get down here and eat grits and ham enough for six, too, you’ll see if she don’t,’ Fort Worth promised. ‘She don’t even know she got a stomach, that one.’

‘Any broad that’ll make love back to her tricks,’ Reba reflected sadly, ‘—no wonder she got a appetite.’

‘Don’t begrudge the child her food,’ Mama reproved them all, ‘she got her ways and you got yours.’

‘If that pimp of hers had a saltspoon of sense in his head,’ Frenchy decided, ‘he’d wise her up. What’s a pimp for?’

‘You tell me,’ Fort Worth put Frenchy down fast, ‘you work for one.’

The door was swung wide and a legless giant, buckled onto a sort of street-going raft built over roller skates, wheeled in like one who came here every day, making a hollow thunder across the planking as he came. Dove watched him unbuckle his straps and leap, in a single bound, onto a low divan.

The little black boy came up to this enormous torso without fear, to study him comparatively. The great cripple gave him a coin, but the boy remained unsmiling before him. Suddenly he asked, ‘What they done to you? ’

‘Such a serious child,’ Mama marveled. ‘Will you boys stay to party?’

‘We got a little work to finish,’ Luke decided to save them both money, ‘We’ll be back later.’

As they left, the man no higher than five feet in cowboy boots opened the door for them.

‘ Come back by yourself ,’ Dove was almost sure he heard the little man whisper; yet it had been said so low that they were a full block away before the whisper began to draw him back.

‘Sure would of admired to tarry there,’ he sighed heavily, ‘a little ying-yang never hurt a man.’

‘Terrible waste of hard-earned money, son,’ Luke counseled him like a father.

‘Just speaking for yourself, I deem,’ Dove corrected him like a friend.

‘Too much of that thing and they’ll be carrying you away, boy.’

‘Nothin’ wrong with that,’ Dove reflected, ‘inasmuch as it was that thing that brought me here. I’ll tell you just what, Luke,’ he stopped right where he stood: ‘I’m just urnin ’ for ying-yang.’

‘See you back home, boy,’ Luke dismissed him. ‘Just don’t bring anything home with you.’

Dove hurried back up the street, afraid the little man might have left. It didn’t seem to him that he could regain entrance without being authorized by a friend.

‘My name is Finnerty,’ he told Dove, ‘follow me.’

And led Dove downhill toward the docks. Halfway downhill he turned into a tiled doorway that still held rusted hinges of a time when the place had had swinging doors. A one-story building built on its incline toward the river.

Although Prohibition was good as done, habits it had formed in those who had had their living off it for years could not be changed overnight. Every self-respecting speak-easy devised its own secret knock, peep-hole and password. Buyers wanted more than to walk through an open door, they wished to be admitted to a mystery. More, they wished to belong to a mystery.