Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

He put his hands on his haunches and began a slow, obscene grind. The music stopped but nobody applauded at all.

‘Can that!’ someone protested, ‘there’s women here!’

‘Let him show what he got!’ Someone else saw things differently.

Then out of the whiskey-mist nearer and nearer Dockery’s eyes like those of a bee bent deep, too deep into his own.

‘Now you’re overdoing things, son. If you can’t behave, get out. I won’t tell you again.’

‘Who you?’

‘Dockery, that’s who.’ People began pushing this way then that, he had come to find someone but where was she at? Who? he kept asking, ‘ Who-who-who? ’ and pushed them all back – ‘Let me go. Who you?’ he asked them.

‘If we let you go you’ll fall on your head.’

‘Fall on my head – that’s what I want! I got a good header comin’ to me!’ And struggled madly to fall on his head.

But they wouldn’t let him, he couldn’t beg or buy them just to let him fall on his head. Bells began listening to their own fool tunes, trains to run right toward one another. Women were waiting in doorways for him. His glass was full again.

‘If you aint champ een ship mater’l,’ he announced, ‘might as well let the women get you now!’

‘He wants to let the women get him – let them get him then,’ all agreed.

‘Get him out of here,’ Dockery had had enough, and out the door in the middle of a mob of laughing panders, the feather of his hat bobbing higher than any, Dove stumbled still trying to get in his header. But every time was held up again.

By the time they got him next door to Mama’s his new suit-jacket was gone forever, one trouser was ripped from belt to knee, the shirt pocket hung by a single thread. Yet somehow he’d kept his hat, though its feather was broken.

‘Here comes Big Stingaree, ready to ball!’ one pimp called.

‘Come to let the girls get him!’ another explained.

‘We don’t want him,’ the girls seemed sure.

While in the doorway, faithful to himself, Oliver Finnerty stood and watched.

And felt his old nausea slowly subside.

When taxis wheel backward from the curbs and the darkness between the lights grows longer, when the whiskey in the glass before you is one whiskey you don’t want and the sky holds a sort of criminal glow full of longing and full of loss, then is that Come-here-and-tell-me-all-about-it, that Let-me-just-talk-to-you-mister-twenty-cents-will-see-me-through, that Hit-me-with-a-dime-and-I-sleep-under-blankets, that all-night pleaders’ hour. Then the pale lost ghosts of the girls in the night’s last doors – (how white their night-old hunger leaves them!) – see there’s no way left to keep the last of the lights from going out and even the pimps begin giving up.

The legless man smoked the first bitter cigarette of the coming day and watched the last of the two-leggers hurrying, hurrying; hurrying home to love and to rest. And a pang like a pang of utter defeat, like a wind off the flat ice plains of death passed over his heart and shivered it like a leaf.

So what if they had had a bit of a laugh on him? Worse things than that happened to people every day. A handicapped man had to learn to take the bitter with the sweet, it was part of the game and all of that. Everyone knew they were nothing but a pair of pimps of the cheaper sort while he himself had never yet taken a cent off a woman.

But dropped his eyes in a brooding dream to where his great thighs once had been.

And saw no way of getting his own life back, his own good life gone too far, too far.

One at the hip and one at the knee.

Why give them a chance?

What chance had anyone given him?

Whatever it was Floralee had done to make her think God could no longer bear her, it didn’t of necessity follow that He was the one who phoned for the Hurry-Up.

One moment the juke was beginning Please Tell Me How Many Times , the next the parlor was full of the boys in blue and someone smashed the glass of the juke – Now what was the need of that? But the song came on louder for lack of glass – I’d feel bad if you’d kissed too many but I’d feel worse if you hadn’t kissed any .

Where was Reba when the glass went out?

Praising the Chinese no doubt.

Where was Five when the box was smashed? Galloping from door to door in nothing more than her earrings and a bath-mat, hollering ‘Get them guys out!’ And rushing three tricks down the hall with their pants in their hands in as much of a hurry not to be witnesses as Five was anxious to prevent them. She shoved one out a window, another walked past a nabber with a bill in his hand, and the same nab said to another – ‘Uncle Charlie!’ And let him pass.

Where was Mama when the juke glass went? Studying a twenty-two-hundred-dollar receipt for down payment on a house and lot, six kennels and a pair of Doberman pinschers; and having her first misgivings.

Where was Finnerty when all this transpired? In a single-motor plane with two thousand two hundred in fives and tens, on his way to Miami to get his armpits tanned. And gnawing his nail with burning regret, asking over and over, ‘Oh, why didn’t I bury that crip?’

Where was Floralee all the while? Humbling herself in the sight of the Lord by supporting the length of a roaring drunk while other roarers encouraged him.

Where was Kitty Twist that lovable kid? Thinking of Finnerty and wishing she were dead. When she heard the crash she took a big swig of gin, tossed the bottle out the window and followed after it – right into the arms of two of them.

‘I just don’t have any luck, and that’s all there is to it,’ said tough Kitty Twist.

‘Your luck is as good as the next one’s I’d guess,’ the nab said, ‘Up you go, sis.’

And sure enough, up into the Hurry-Up went Kitty Twist. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked the paddy wagon gloom, ‘Who’s else takin’ this ride?’

‘It aint Herbert Hoover,’ Frenchy’s voice said.

‘Officer,’ Kitty Twist told the nab guarding the door, ‘What are you waiting for? We’re ready to roll.’

‘There may be others along in time,’ the officer said.

‘You only got one wagon for the good sake of God?’ Kitty scolded him.

‘We’re trying to make it in one trip, sis,’ he apologized, and a roar like a battle shout rocked the stars just then. The girls poked their sad fancy faces out and heard an iron clamor ring.

‘Sure sounds like someone don’t want to come along,’ Frenchy guessed.

Someone framed in a door-shaped light. Dove in an undershirt, nothing more, hollering ‘hands off me!’ Slamming right and left with the flat of a book, raging with whiskey and terrible fright. Kitty saw one nab catch it across the cheek – ‘Hands off I said!’ – another caught it smack in the eye. Then one of them clasped him by the nape of the neck, another caught his book hand. ‘Be a good boy like I was at your age,’ one said, and another yanked his legs right out from under. Then all three got a good firm hold – ‘One! Two! Three!—’ Kitty and Frenchy had just time to get out of the way as the bare-assed body came flying – Bawnk – and Watkins’ ex-representative lay on his stomach clutching an iron floor.

‘At least this time you came along,’ Kitty congratulated him. And gave him a tentative dig with her toe.

The body never stirred.

Kitty found then she didn’t care really whether he came along or not. She didn’t care for anything or anyone, least of all herself. Anything that happens has a right to happen, so what does it matter who it happens to? That was how Kitty felt.

‘I heard a sneeze in the closet,’ the nab informed the girls, ‘and when I open the door, there was this boy buck-naked but for hat and undershirt and a book under his arm.’