Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

This was also the place where Cupid’s Arrows came warm off the forge and Ticklish Tessies lounged about. The craze in Laughing Maggies had almost died but Ding-Dong Darlings had a promising future. Happy Hannahs roomed here; Barney Googles were having their noses pinched by clothespins on a wire line. Here Gross moved Love’s Fancies by the gross; and a reddish dust lay over everything. For the O-Daddy was not the only creation of the hand and heart and brain of this dishonored genius. It was only his masterpiece.

Yet through the air made thick by gum, by paint, by turpentine, Dove smelled something better than any of these – something was doing inside that oven for sure. When Velma peered in he caught a glimpse of a chicken roasting on a bed of yams.

‘Don’t mind Gross,’ she reassured him, ‘all it means when he hollers is he’s scared. I’m sure I don’t know what he’s scared of because there’s nobody here but me. The creature is ill of bad conscience and don’t have long to go.’

‘I didn’t pay him particular heed,’ Dove told her, ‘but your ribbon bow strikes me as mighty purty, m’am.’

‘Thank you, son.’ She seemed genuinely flattered. ‘Now let me show you how to turn out a condom you can trust.’

Painting a skin with a film of liquid gum, she nodded her head to indicate that Gross was listening at the kitchen door and deliberately spoke loudly enough for the old man to overhear. ‘He’ll give it out that his only trouble is that Broomface wants a word with him, but that aint his real worry. He’s a man with a double-W on his forehead and Broomface is the least of it. Those other parties who would like a word with him won’t bother to give warning.’

Gross’s big head came through the door: ‘Old-time shoplifter stealing all her life!’ he announced like a station caller. ‘Wanted by everyone but the church! One hand over her heart and the other in your pocket!’ He slammed the door before she could insult him in turn.

Velma the Vulcanized Woman, Dove saw, retained a faint copperish tint to her ash-blond hair and her face bore traces of Saxon beauty. She was humanized as well as vulcanized, he perceived.

‘Every bare window in this town reminds me of Arkansas,’ she admitted to Dove. ‘I might as well be in jails as the way I am.’

Sitting at the window she looked out upon a world of rogues with innocence and wonder, and both her cheekbones smashed. Her ash-blond bangs, streaked broadly now with gray, belied the fact that there wasn’t much on the books Velma hadn’t tried and a few deals she’d thought up by herself.

Goin’ to town Mama, what’ll I bring you back? she invited herself, and answered—

Just a great big bag of candy and a J. C. Stetson hat

She came of a long line of country thieves that had grown shrewd in the mountains. Velma had grown yet shrewder in town. And at last, too shrewd to trust on the common highway, had become the shrewdest inmate at the Women’s Reformatory at Aldington. Not yet twenty when she’d been first sent up, she had immediately distinguished herself by saying to a colored matron – ‘Hold this for me’ – and had shoved a tableknife with a friction-taped handle into the woman’s abdomen.

‘Will you spread a clean cloth for dinner?’ she asked Dove, ‘You’ll find one in that bureau.’

Velma spread the clean cloth with Southern variety – okra, clobber, cornbread, yams, rice, chicken, onion gravy and sweet potato pie.

But Dove had never seen anyone eat like Gross. Velma didn’t even bother to lay a knife, fork and spoon for him. He went at everything with forefinger and thumb, being particularly careful, every time he dropped a fried egg, to get every bit of it on his pants.

‘Mighty fine chicken, m’am,’ Dove congratulated her. The chicken was fine, the yams were dandy, the gravy was great and the clobber was super. Unluckily the small reddish dust had gotten into the food as into everything, so it all came to a single dish: rubber. Gross liked the taste of rubber. When you work with rubber you not only eat rubber, but your very dreams arrive in rubberized folds. Within twenty-four hours Dove looked and smelled like Velma the Vulcanized Woman herself. Those weren’t dead ants between his toes but only particles fallen from the Flap-Happy mold that had worked their way down his socks.

They poured the rubber and heated the glue, forged the forms and painted the skins, glued the feathers and hung the O-Daddies and sorted the seconds and burned the culls and filled the orders; and never went dancing down below.

Velma taught Dove never to put a Cupid’s Arrow on a King Tut rack nor to let an O-Daddy wander among the Happy Hannahs. When the sun beat steadily they risked hanging a line to dry against an outside wall; when it rained or was overcast the big room was full of skins hanging in rainbowed rows above the dark gas range’s flame.

In the evening the three outcasts sat in the dark of their old strange house, hearing human voices rise and fall. There was an amusement park at the end of the wide-palmed street, letting laughter come to them from a place where human life was lived out on rollercoasters; while they endured the rubberish dark of O-Daddyland like three ghosts yet to be born.

‘Son,’ Gross always began his nightly lecture with the same phrase, ‘Son, not all the O-Daddies are hanging on a line. There’s one sitting right here in this rocker. Would you mind either turning the lamp down a bit or else not look directly at me? I have a little aversion to being examined. Thank you.’ Dove turned a bit to one side.

‘Son, you look to me like a man of two great weaknesses, either one of which may ruin you. Women and whiskey, in that order. Take my advice, if you don’t want to wind up being one more Barney Google like me. First thing you ought to do is throw away that shirt. Never wear light colors. They catch the sun. Blue is best – mailman blue. The whole secret of not ending up an O-Daddy on a line is to look as much like a mailman as possible – who knows what the mailman looks like? Who’d recognize him if he changed suits? Get a cap with a peak that shadows the eyes. Wear glasses that throw back the light. Grow a mustache but don’t go into bars. If you must drink, lock the door and drink by yourself. Conviviality leads to fist-fighting, fist-fighting leads to rage. Look out for rage, son. People never forget a man they’ve seen in a rage.

‘My own appearance was always such that I didn’t have to lose my temper to catch attention. I always fitted into the by-stander’s memory, so that five minutes after a rumble, my description, complete to hat-size, would be at headquarters.

‘Watch out for the inclination to trust, particularly toward women. It leads to giving . Look out for that one, it’s the worst of a bad lot.

‘Watch out for flowers, watch out for trust, watch out for women, watch out for giving. In short, don’t give flowers to a woman you trust.’

‘He’ll come to the point in time. Just have patience,’ Velma assured Dove.

‘No woman since the world began,’ the old man kept trying to say what he meant, ‘ever accepted a flower as no more than a token of affection. Does she seem pleased at a gift so humble? “What, a daisy for me? ” Why shouldn’t she be pleased? it’s a down payment on your hand, your heart and your brain and she knows that even though you don’t. If you owe her a daisy you owe a box of candy, and how long do you think you’re going to get by just on candy and flowers? Where’s the perfume? Progress, that’s what women want in a man. What is more natural than the step from perfume to wristwatch – now let’s see how long you can keep from mentioning engagement rings. Your very silence betrays that you’re considering marriage and are only trying to get up the courage to ask. Son, you’re good as done. You’re in hock to a house, a car, children, maid – you give up your freedom and there still hasn’t been a word said about what does she owe you?