Nelson Algren - A Walk on the Wild Side

The only one whose memory of himself seemed fresh was the very one by whom he wished to be unremembered, with her side-of-the-mouth wise grin. Kitty came up to him but before she could either beg for a drink or offer him one, he shook his head, No. He was having no part of her.

It was a quiet afternoon. Dockery looked out once or twice to see that nobody was sneaking his own bottle. Of course the slobs were littering his floor once more – but a kind of tittering delight took him when his slobs did that, for it promised him the later joy of making all spick and span again. It was one of the few joys the old man had left.

He noticed Legless Schmidt’s platform leaning against a wall and Schmidt himself at a table, stumps sticking straight out before him, across from Tough Kitty. The old man approved of that: she wouldn’t be with him if he weren’t spending. He even thought of bringing them a couple shots, compliments of the house, to get them started, but then thought better of it. And took to dusting his dolls, giving Raggedy Ann special attention.

He never heard the first threat. There was only a sort of half-muted babble that rose for a moment above the fans’ steady thudding, then curiously subsided. When he looked out the redhaired bully with the hospital pallor had his back planted against the wall and Schmidt was standing before him, stumps spread wide, the flat of his palm on the floor to brace himself.

‘I got nothin’ against you, mister,’ Doc heard the bully say.

‘You deny you left with her? You deny living with her?’

‘I left with her and we lived together too. I don’t deny that , mister. But if I knew where she was I’d tell you. But I been away myself.’

‘Don’t give me that camouflage. You know where she is, for she sent you here to find out what I’m doing. You came by God because she sent you.’ He seemed oddly sure of himself. Kitty Twist stood just behind him. ‘You’ll say where she is, and you’ll take me there. Or by God you’ll take the consequences.’

‘Give the men room, boys,’ the outlaws and derelicts vied now like men of public spirit working for the welfare of all.

‘If it’s what they both want, let them have it out,’ Dockery took his stand, ‘’n no interferin’ – a square shake all around.’

‘Make ’em shake hands, Doc, that shows they’re both good fellas.’

‘Then let’s see which is best,’ Kitty Twist put her two cents in.

The panders pushed the women back, and as fast as they pushed them the women struggled up front again.

Then all felt the big hush come down.

‘Back up,’ Dove waved an iron spittoon, ‘I don’t want trouble,’ and took one step toward Schmidt.

Schmidt didn’t back but merely stood, figuring his man. Then turned, the women and men making room as he knee-walked to his platform and carefully buckled himself in.

‘Going home early, Big Dad?’ somebody asked, but the cripple didn’t answer that. His platform was his weapon as well as his armor, and they all knew that.

Dove began moving slowly along the wall toward where the late alley-light shown through a half-open door. If he got within one jump he’d make a run for that. And never come back.

But as he moved slowly Schmidt moved slowly, a ballbearinged monster with his hands on the bearings, ready to swivel, charge or reverse. Without closing in, the platform kept pace. Behind him, pale with pleasured terror, faces of men and faces of women followed and paused and followed again. With no sound in the place but the thud of the fans and the quickening breath, like a caught rabbit’s breathing, of one who was almost caught.

Dockery saw Schmidt’s lips moving silently, like a man trying a combination mentally before executing it. He feinted Dove to left, to right, and each time Dove switched the spittoon, left to right. ‘I don’t know where your wife’ – at ‘wife’ Schmidt gave his wheels one hard swift twist and thundered in, his forearm protecting his eyes.

Dove swung the heavy spittoon like a discus under the protecting arm. Schmidt rocked like a loosened stump in a storm but the platform kept coming in. Dove swung again.

The force of that second blow swiveled Schmidt’s wheels, he banged blindly in the wall and rebounded, wheels going this way then that.

‘ Get him,’ Dove heard the whisper from every side, ‘ Now. Now. Now. Brain him while he’s blind .’ For Schmidt’s head was so low that his bald-spot looked at Dove.

‘ Now. Now. Now .’

Yet Dove stood with his weapon, gaping at that helpless head; and couldn’t lift the hand.

The cripple’s face, when he uncovered at last, was smeared by blood down the whole left side where the spittoon’s edge had ripped above and below the eye. Dove held out his own bandanna, for no one else offered Schmidt help. And watched while the half-giant daubed the blood off his face till he could see again. Then he touched the bandanna’s ends together as if to apologize for soiling it, and returned it to Dove. ‘Thank you son,’ he said.

Perhaps it was his tone that made Dove think that was it. For he pushed his way into the crowd. ‘The fight’s done,’ he said.

The crowd closed ranks.

‘The fight’s only begun,’ he heard Schmidt behind him say. ‘Get your best hold, son.’

And reached.

Dove leaped onto the small table at the bar’s far end and crouched upon it, trembling in the legs like a panicking puppy up there. Schmidt hurled the table with a single twist, sending Dove sprawling comic-strip fashion, all arms and legs, while the spittoon went clanging like a clock gone insane. The cripple held Dove face down to the floor, steadying him as he floundered. Then lifting him between his great hands, gave his hands that twist of a coiling spring. Dove hit the floor on his side, one arm outflung and the other across his eyes. Schmidt straddled the outflung arm by riding the platform over it and lifted the other off Dove’s eyes. When he let it go it fell loosely, as something unattached, an arm without a bone.

‘He’s had it,’ somebody said.

It was true: they crowded in to see. Whether stunned by his fall or fogged by fright, he lay like some animal whose final defense lies in complete helplessness, eyes bright and unseeing, open to anyone’s blows.

Schmidt looked down at the face suddenly like a child’s. Then he brought back his right arm till its knuckles touched the floor behind him. There were two men standing who could have put a foot upon it. But one stood looking down at the way the knuckles stretched the sunburnt skin. And the other said, ‘Cold as a frog,’ nothing more.

‘Faking,’ was Schmidt’s answer to that, and brought the arm high in a full-swinging arch – and down.

It broke with a soft and sogging sound, the very bones went oof .

‘I like to get up close to accidents,’ Kitty Twist pushed in, and put her ear down to Dove’s broken mouth, that was trying to speak though swallowing blood.

‘If you let me go,’ Kitty Twist heard him say, and repeated it for those not so lucky as to be as close as herself, ‘he says if you let him go—’

‘I’ll say a prayer for you—’

‘—he’ll say a prayer for you.’

‘Tell him to save his prayers,’ Schmidt told her, ‘I want to know where my wife is.’ He looked down at Dove. ‘Don’t think you can scare me with a little blood,’ he said.

Dove’s head wobbled weakly from side to side, still denying all.

And though, when Schmidt’s fist was raised again everyone thought ‘relent’ – panders and cripples and fallen girls, yet when it fell all felt a heartbroken joy. As though each fresh blow redeemed that blow that his life had been to him.