Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

Mama shook off his hand. ‘ Who stick out? Who get in a hurry? Admit what? ’ Mama was getting angry but she didn’t know at what.

‘Why, old black mammies of course,’ he told her as though everyone knew old black mammies were the coming thing.

‘Maybe you ought to come inside before it rains,’ Mama invited him, feeling they’d both be safer in the parlor.

‘It isn’t going to rain,’ Navy sounded certain as God, and began unfolding a little apron from under his coat. He bowed to tie it about her waist. It was striped green and white like peppermint and as he tied it Mama wondered how she had become the prospect. Her fingers plucked without strength at the apron’s price tag. He picked the tag off himself and the cab dusted off in disgust.

‘A good many black mammy-freaks visit you I presume?’ he presumed confidently.

‘It’s been several days since one called,’ Mama played it straight, ‘and he didn’t leave his name. Would you care to offer yours?’

‘My men call me Commander,’ he informed her stiffly.

‘That,’ Mama thought, ‘isn’t what my chicks will call you.’ And led him inside like leading him home.

Just as the first drops began.

Inside the parlor the five-year-old boy with the mind of a forty-year-old pimp, the one his grandmother called Warren Gameliel and the women called the King of the Indoor Thieves, stood on a divan ready for anything.

In a shirt that never reached past his navel and a tight little hide not exactly high-yellow, Warren Gameliel was actually closer to being high-brown. He was even closer to dark-brown. As a matter of fact he was black as a kettle in hell. He was so black you’d have had to put a milk bottle on his head to find him in the dark. He looked a cross between a black Angus calf and something fished out of the Mississippi on a moonless night. One tint darker and he would have disappeared altogether.

Turning his head proudly upon his iron-colored throat, he fluttered his beautiful lashes modestly at the women’s flattery.

‘Meet my grandson,’ Mama always introduced her menfolks first – ‘Aint he fine?’

‘Five year old ’n weighs sixty-nine pound ’n she asks is he fine,’ the woman called Hallie Dear mocked Mama fondly as the big overdressed man saluted the small naked one.

‘Pledge allegiance, boy baby,’ Mama encouraged Warren G. to his single legitimate accomplishment. But Warren G. just planted his black toes the wider, as if to say he’d have to know more about this gold-braid deal before he’d pledge so much as a teething ring.

Reba honked with hollow glee: the boy was growing up so fast.

‘Aint you shamed? ’ Mama reproved him in a voice that simply donged with pride.

Warren Gameliel felt no shame. That belonged, Hallie Dear saw in a single shocked glance, to the hero beside her. For the ghost of a smile that strayed down his lips belonged to a beggar-ghost, a penniless pleader hunting a handout – then it was gone. Leaving him cowering within himself in some cave of no knowing save his own.

Hallie hooked her arm in his to let him know he really wasn’t as alone as all that, and he peered out slowly, warily. Feeling her support, he began coming out of it.

Slowly, warily.

‘In Shicawgo I worked in a office for loryers,’ Reba hurried to keep the man from confusing her with certain common whores trying to crowd him – ‘I specialized in tort ’n see-zure—’ but Floralee elbowed her aside. Floralee was fond of gold braid too.

‘I can sing just ever so purty, mister,’ she offered in a voice strung on little silver bells ‘—only modesty songs of course, for I don’t know vulgary words—’ and did him as pretty a little curtsy as ever he’d seen.

Warren G. tried to regain the spotlight, but Mama yanked the cap, that he had taken off the officer’s head, far down over the boy’s eyes, as if shutting off his vision might improve his manners. Somebody got the juke going just then and someone else called for gin. Someone said, ‘Make mine a double’ just as the juke began—

‘I can sing purtier far than that ,’ Floralee insisted amid pleas, claims, threats and tiny squeals, for now all vied for Navy’s attention.

‘Why do people down here all talk so Southern? ’ Chicago Kitty complained. ‘Why do they have to talk like the niggers? Why can’t they talk like their selves?’

‘We do talk like ourselves, honey,’ Hallie assured her, ‘the Negras learned to talk that way from us.’

‘May I recite now?’ Floralee begged.

‘As soon as the juke is through, sweetheart,’ Mama promised, and turning to the guest, ‘This girl is a regular angel.’

‘She’s a whore like everyone else,’ Kitty put in – ‘ anyone can be a whore. I feel rotten about everyone but myself.’

‘Is that true?’ Navy asked Mama curiously. ‘Can any woman become a whore? Any woman at all?’

‘Anyone at all,’ Mama was optimistic. ‘Aren’t we all created free and equal?’

‘Tell me one thing, sailor boy,’ Chicago Kitty demanded. ‘Where do you keep your submarines?’

‘Why ask me a thing like that?’ The lieutenant looked embarrassed.

‘I have to know. I’m a spy on the side.’

‘I don’t want anyone calling our guest sailor boy,’ Mama scolded Kitty and everyone. ‘Look up to this man! He’s honoring us! Hear this! Commander! Report all insults directly to me! Warren Gameliel you little black fool, get that fool hat off your head and pledge allegiance in-stan- taneously! ’

‘Mama!’ Hallie scolded in turn, ‘stop giving orders as though we were in battle formation! This man didn’t come here to have you pin a medal on him. Can’t you see you’re spoiling his fun?’ And brushing everyone aside, she framed his face in her palms to make him return the look she gave. ‘Navy, don’t mind Mama,’ she told him, ‘she’s just impressed by your uniform.’

‘Don’t dare call our Guest of Honor Navy like that!’ – Mama was getting worse by the minute – ‘This man represents the entire Atlantic fleet!’

‘I represented two loryers,’ Reba remembered wistfully.

‘I represent a tube of K-Y jelly ’n a leaky douche bag,’ Kitty commented bitterly.

‘I can sing like a damned bird,’ Floralee marveled aloud, ‘only how did I fly here?’

Outside the drunks were coming out of the country’s last speak-easies and the street lamps began to move like the breasts of a young girl under the hands of a man who has bought too many. Warren Gameliel reached out blindly and secured a black strangehold on the officer’s neck.

‘If you don’t behave I’ll send you to the nigger school,’ Mama threatened him.

And in an odd little silence a girl’s voice said, ‘I was drunk, the juke box was playing, I began to cry.’ And all the air felt troubled by cologne.

‘I think our guest wants to see me,’ Hallie guessed, and pulled Navy’s head right against her breast. He nodded strengthless assent.

She helped him to rise, and he rose more like a sick man than one drunk.

‘Send two double gins to my room,’ Hallie ordered Mama, ‘the rest of you drink whatever you want.’

The door shut behind them and a lamp lit a room that might have served a whore of old Babylon: a narrow bed in hope of bread, a basin in hope of purity. A beaded portiere to keep mosquitoes out and let a little music in. A scent of punk from an incense stick to burn off odors of whiskey or tobacco, a calendar from the year before and an image above it of something or other in hope of forgiveness for this or that. A whole world to millions since the first girl sold and a world to millions yet.