Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

The second the women saw that Daddy was in the switches, they fought to be first to help. One would decide for the roadway and grab for the stick simply to have her own way. But one of more economical habits, wishing to say later she had saved him a whole set of tires, would scream right in his ear, ‘Idiot! On the grass! The grass! ’ At the very last possible second he would holler, ‘I can’t please everybody,’ fling out both fists and make earth in a shrieking, careening lurch like a chute-the-chutes hitting water. Road or grass, the women loved it. It was a kind of thrill not another pimp living could provide. Small wonder that to say ‘Finnerty swings her’ afforded a girl real distinction among the women of Perdido Street.

The mouse was one that had barely gotten away from Hallie’s lame brindle cat. The cat, that belonged to one woman who would have nothing to do with Finnerty, had been going on three legs so long that it no longer killed, it crippled. After she had crippled it, the mouse had dragged itself into a corner behind the juke. Finnerty had fished it out and given it a home in a little box with a cellophane window that had once held face powder. When he had to induct a new girl, or to straighten up an old one growing recalcitrant, he took her to watch the mouse. His own face would be expressionless as he and the girl saw it trying for freedom in spite of all pain. He said nothing while it hauled its wrecked hindquarters around and around. Just as it seemed the animal had made good its escape at last, he would plop it back in its box and say to the girl, ‘When you get as much sense as this mouse we’ll get along better, little baby,’ and close the box. It was a warning that she ought to try to do better by her little daddy, lest he had to put his mittens on.

‘Daddy dear,’ his Chicago blonde once complained, ‘take me to the hospital, I got to get a little something or other took out.’ And leaned her head on her hands.

‘I can’t afford to be carting you in and out of operating rooms twice a month,’ her pander told her, ‘every time you go you’re out of action for days. One more visit and by God you get everything took out. Make up your mind to that , Aching Choppers – I said everything . This piddling around with part of a gut at a time disgusts me.’

‘But Little Daddy, why get disgusted? ’ the girl wanted to know, ‘if you went to a doctor about a little prostate trouble, say, you wouldn’t want the man to cut off your balls, would you? A woman got things she don’t want to lose neither, Little Daddy.’

‘Don’t give me that,’ her little daddy closed the discussion, ‘you can get along without all that crazy stuff.’

‘That’s no way to talk to a girl, not even a pimp ought to be that hard,’ Mama scolded the pander in front of everyone. ‘The good book tells us “A woman is as a precious fruits in a garden shut up.”’

‘Shut up is correct,’ Finnerty commanded, ‘and anyone who says I ever hit any woman with anything bigger than a small housebrick is a coon-assed liar.’

He was as heavy in the shoulders and arms as a well-grown six-footer and the right arm bore a strange tattoo: A narrow cigarette whose smoke formed a burning boast: KING WEED-HEAD.

How much good this would do him in event of a pinch he never explained, and modestly disowned the implication of the tattoo. ‘It don’t really mean I’m the king of the weedheads, or course,’ he pointed out, ‘it just means that as a weedhead I’m a king.’ His distinctions were sometimes too fine to follow, and actually weren’t worth the bother of following anyhow. He’d been known to trade off a woman no older than thirty-five for a twenty dollar bill and a spring-blade knife, but explained he had reason to think she had been unfaithful to him. Faithful or not, if you threw in half a can of greenish tea with the twenty, he was ready to let loose of almost any one of his women. Except, of course, Reba, for to her Finnerty had been true: hadn’t he once been offered a cartload of green bananas plus a full can of potoguaya for her and turned the whole deal down?

But before letting that offer go he had taken a look at the tea, that had been of a light greenish cast. ‘If it had been the real boge ,’ he admitted later, ‘I couldn’t have answered for my actions.’

Meaning, by boge , the deep-purple plant that only grows on Mount Popocatepetl.

He went in for broad stripes and coats almost to his knees, sometimes draped out and sometimes semi-clad – a man a full ten years ahead of his time with eyes as pale as the whiskey in his glass.

‘Oh, how I wish I could get off this killing kick,’ he’d complain. ‘Why do I do it?’

‘You might throw away that thirty-eight,’ Lucille advised him again.

‘Why, then I’d be without help,’ Finnerty told her in mild surprise. She was his housekeeper and was half-fond of him.

Yet when asked by a stranger, half-amused at the outrageous little sport in cowboy boots and smelling of cologne, ‘How tall are you, Shorty?’ Finnerty had replied, ‘About ass-high to a tall Indian. You figure you’re higher?’

The stranger answered softly, ‘I figure we’re about the same height, mister.’

‘That aint good enough.’

‘Could be you’re a little higher.’

Yet if he really liked you he’d warm right up. ‘I’ve decided not to bury you,’ he’d congratulate you then, ‘I’ve made up my mind I’m on your side against everybody. I’m not even going to drop you. It’s time I got off this killing kick and I’m going to start with you.’

Once Oliver was on your side he’d stay right at your side. He knew you needed him. And who could deny so close a friend certain small favors, such as buying him drinks all afternoon? What would be left of a friendship that couldn’t stand up under a few whiskies?

Of women he asked no favor. They had no more side for a man to be on than so many fishes in a stream. Indeed, there were so many fishes. And the bait with which he hooked them hardly varied. It was the immemorial chicken farm story procurers have used since procuring began:

‘We don’t spend our money foolish like other couples, little baby,’ the story went. ‘They won’t catch us wasting it on strong drink and folly. After all, you and I both know you’re no more a whore at heart than I’m a pimp. We’re just a lover and his little sweetheart up against it for the moment. You listen to me, little baby, and everything will be perfect. So much in the bank every week come rain or come shine. I didn’t want to tell you this, sweetheart, I wanted to save it as a surprise, but I’ve had my eye on a little chicken farm upstate for you and me for some time now. We get that for ourselves, just you and me, little baby, and in five years we’re on Easy Street. The day we move in we stop by the justice of the peace, little sweetheart. Because if you take care of me in the little things I’m going to take care of you in the big ones.’

What kind of a little sweetheart would it be who wouldn’t take care of Lover in little things till he got on his feet again?

But the weeks stretched into three and the three into a month. The months to six and a year passed by, and she took care of Lover in the little things and he took care of her in the big: he kept her out of jail or visited her there when he couldn’t. He saw that she always had enough tricks and never let them come on too strong. He saved her from drunks, thieves, pederasts and fiends, and once or twice a year took her fishing with him.

But nothing was said about chicken farming any more. Once, long after it was too late for farming, he might catch her crying and pet her a bit. ‘What’s the matter, little baby? You got a fever? You want to take the night off?’ She might murmur something then about candling eggs, but he wouldn’t be able to understand what she meant. And after a while she cried on without knowing what she meant either, as a girl cries over a bad dream long after the dream is forgotten.