Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

Somewhere in the court below someone began playing a piano softly, as though fearing to waken her. Sitting on the side of the bed, hearing the music now near now far, he remembered the first time she had made words out of letters for him—

When he turned down the lamp and lay beside her, she half turned on her side away from him.

He must have fallen asleep almost at once, because it seemed only a few seconds to him when he wakened and saw that the lamp was burning.

He stared into it a moment, dully wondering if he had forgotten to turn it off. The air outside was all mixed up and noises on the street went stamping.

Along the dresser he saw her lipstick, compact and comb. It wasn’t till that moment he realized he was alone in the bed.

She was neither in the bathroom nor down the hall. He dressed, feeling sure, for no reason except that he could think of no other, that she had gone back to Mama’s.

The last Dove saw of the little room above Royal Street was a broken comb lying in a pool of light.

He left in a ceaseless rain, the saddest that ever fell. He went by streets both steep and narrow and the rain fell all the way.

In that hour when tugboats call and call, like lovers who have lost their way.

OLIVER FINNERTY, DISGUST high in his throat, went into Dockery’s hoping to drown it. Chicken farm promises, Mama’s warnings, Reba’s entrails, mouse-in-a-powder box, broads haughty broads humble, broads sober broads drunk, amputees tossing dollars to broads on all fours – fever and fantasy, hot dreams and cold cash lumped like dead meat at the back of his throat too far back to bring up and too high to swallow.

‘There’s one sick pimp in Storyville tonight,’ he reported himself in without pity. Then tossed down two shots of Canadian rye so fast they hit together, yet served only to bring the dead meat higher.

The little man leaned his head on his small pale hands and peered straight into the dark of his brain: a low motionless pall, like coalsmoke or smog, hung there over the roofs of a curious street – two short rows of bungalows long unpainted, like company houses down some company street; with one porch light left burning.

Yet it wasn’t smoke nor lack of paint nor even how, below the porch, a rain puddle burned like living fire that troubled the dreaming pander so.

For though in their narrow closets the women’s clothes still hung and their stoves still faintly gave off heat, the beer buckets stood half empty and the whiskey stood half drunk. One had steadied a dresser mirror by jabbing her slipper between it and the wood. Outside a dog kept trotting and sniffing between the deserted cribs. And an air of rage and terrible haste that could only mean the worst was yet to come walked the empty rooms.

It came by car splashing mud to the fenders, men and wild boys leaped out – he heard the first glass smash and saw the first flame reach.

Bringing the ponce a pleasured sorrow, a kind of release from everything.

The same sick pleasure at the same dead dream. Though he could not place the curious name of that place nor its women’s names either dark or fair.

He had never seen those wild boys. Nor how a rain puddle made fever fire below a last porch light left burning.

Whether as a child he had seen such a raid from the window of a moving train or whether it was all nothing more than a wish to rid his mind of all women for good and all, poor pimp Finnerty had no way of knowing.

‘Oliver, you’re looking poorly.’

The pimp raised his face that had lost all life, like that of an embryo more clever than most but stillborn all the same. And thought it must be part of his illness that he should now see his old Texas studbum standing right beside him.

His own good old studbum, the one and only studbum. Waiting for a live one with his tongue out a yard.

Someone had put a black-and-white-checked cap only a size too large on his head and someone had stuffed him into a blue serge suit only one size too small. Someone had given him a hair cut, someone had polished his boots. Someone had pinned on his lapel a little tin clown of red and blue – but it was still the same old studbum. Like dust before the hope of the world the pander’s sickened soul was swept. A sense of well-being filled him as a cup. He felt grateful for joys both small and great, he wished it were mealtime so he could say grace. His own old stew-faced studbum. The same big stinking crawling creeping loudmouth just as useless as before.

‘Big Stingaree!’ he greeted Dove, and stepped back shading his eyes as though unable to believe that the biggest wonder on the character side of town had come back for a bit of a visit. ‘You know for a second there I actually didn’t recognize you in that disguise?’

‘You looked like maybe you was mad at me, Oliver.’

‘ Mad? Me mad at you? ’ He slipped the knot of Dove’s tightly tied tie with one deft jerk and retied it, with elaborate care, into a looser, more fashionable knot. ‘ Mad? When was there ever a prouder sight? Mad? Man, I made you what you are and I’m not ashamed of my work. Now what’s this? ’ He slipped a small book out of Dove’s side pocket and his smile thinned – ‘On that little-kiddy con again? What are you sellin’ them? I know you got a hot angle by the shift of your clothes and I’m deeply interested in that. When I had a hot thing I counted you in, so I scarcely doubt you’ll count me in on yours.’

‘I can read ’n write now, that’s what, Oliver,’ – a touch of bravado returned to Dove’s voice as he returned the book to his pocket.

‘Why! I’ll just take your word for that! I’ll stand for drinks on it in fact!’ Finnerty seemed somehow relieved. ‘For aint I been the one been telling them all – “Don’t worry about Mr Bigass! A certain party is giving him lessons! She’s too -terin’ him!” Tex, they laughed till they howled – they thought I’d said “ tattooin ’ him”! “The bum’ll show all of you a trick or two yet” is what I been sayin’’ – and dropped his voice to imply the moment had come to trust one another. ‘I bet that fine high yellow ’n you been shackin’ up a regular storm.’

‘I don’t know where that girl is, Oliver, that’s the truth. I wish to God I did.’

‘She was just in here, lookin’ for you.’

‘Why, that scarce could be—’ Dove reflected dully.

‘Of course it scarce could,’ Finnerty admitted as fast as he’d learned all he needed to know. ‘Why should she come lookin’ for you when she knows right where to find you? Dockery! Two shots here!’

‘I don’t drink so heavy as I used, Oliver.’

‘Make them doubles!’

A sawed-off crutch pried the big door wide, letting the street light glint on the wheels. In he swung and darkness like night closed in behind him and like night came rolling soundlessly. Schmidt muted his wheels when he didn’t feel like balling.

Finnerty put out a foot. ‘Big Dad! A small celebration in your very honor! This here is an old-time fan of yours, seen you on the silver screen! Join us!’

‘We’ve met,’ the cripple excused himself, ‘I’m not drinking with fans tonight.’ He put his hands to his wheels, then paused to look Dove up then down. Finnerty read the hesitation right. ‘One drink, Big Dad,’ the pander pleaded.