Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

‘Make him go, Frankie. Tell him we can’t give him no more.’

Frankie relayed the information. ‘We can’t give you no more.’

‘She’ll give it or get it,’ John answered, staying close to the open door.

‘Don’t hit him, Frankie,’ Molly cautioned, ‘don’t make him mad.’

It was true. Nobody could afford to make this amateur airline pilot angry. So Frankie just stood studying that debauched phiz with its out-thrust jaw and eyes as closely set as those of a baby alligator’s. All he could see there, for the life of him, was a little knock-kneed gin-mill fink held together by a kind of poolroom poise. ‘He’s good with a cue too,’ went through Frankie’s mind. ‘Case out, lush,’ he told John without touching him at all. ‘I’m the big dog in this kennel now.’

‘You caught the right word for it at that, junkie,’ John told him, taking sudden courage. But was half through the door before he reproached Molly: ‘I took two jolts in the workie when you’n me was together ’n you never took one. Not one. But your turn is comin’ up, sister. This McGantic man, he’s gonna fall a long way ’n you’re gonna fall right with him. I took two jolts ’n you didn’t take one. Not one.’ They heard him leave.

Frankie closed the door softly, hoping the housekeeper hadn’t heard the row. ‘ Now what?’ he asked Molly-O.

The door opened behind him and Drunkie John stuck his mug back in.

‘The bottle , buddy – the bottle .’

Frankie took a long slug out of it, tossed it to John and heard him go at last.

‘That one won’t lose much time,’ Molly-O told him as if he didn’t know.

‘I’ll make it myself now,’ he pretended, yet with real fear that she might let him try going it alone. When she came to him he felt her trembling. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t be comin’ back, you can stop shakin’,’ he assured her.

‘It ain’t why I’m shakin’,’ she told him. ‘It’s account of what you said, makin’ it yourself now. How about me ? What if I can’t make it my self?’

‘You’ll fall if you stick to me now,’ Frankie warned her.

‘I’d rather fall with you than make it without you, Frankie.’ He held her head on his shoulder and knew this was finally true too: it wasn’t just himself needing her any longer, it wasn’t just taking without any giving. It was nearer fifty-fifty now and that felt better than he’d ever known a thing like that could be. ‘I couldn’t make it a week by myself,’ he confessed, ‘’n you know it. I’d be back sleigh-ridin’ in two days without you, Molly-O. If I had to steal to get it.’

‘Then let’s not lose each other again,’ she decided for keeps. ‘I’ll get work in a South Side joint ’n we’ll take care of each other. Just us two.’

‘Workin’ in a South Side joint ain’t playin’ it safe at all, Molly,’ he had to remind her as she had so often reminded him. ‘They’ll be lookin’ for me through you. You can’t stay in the strip racket or the man with the manacles’ll come to take us both.’

‘Okay – so I’m a waitress – look!’ She pranced about bearing an imaginary tray. He caught her and brought her back to the business at hand. ‘You’ll be a waitress at Dwight if you don’t start gettin’ your things together. Let’s case.’

He stuffed his pockets with cigarettes, toothbrush, shaving cream, a razor and a couple blades. ‘Just like I’m takin’ my rations down to the Rue Pigalle,’ he laughed reminiscently while she put on her very best shoes – the little silver-heeled open-toed jobs – and filled a small brown five-and-dime overnight bag with underclothing, nylons and her one best dress. He caught her looking lonesomely toward the closet where other dresses hung. ‘No help for it, Molly-O. We got to travel light.’

‘It ain’t only that,’ she mourned. ‘I got six days’ pay comin’ from the club – how about that? ’

‘Forget it. I loaned a fiver off Antek this morning, it’ll get us a room for a day or two. Out the back way, Molly-O. The patch is hot.’

The patch was hot all right. The patch was burning. They were halfway down the narrow gangway to the alley when he heard the tires wheel into the alley. She’d played waitress ten seconds too long. ‘Back in the house,’ he told her.

But in a white fear she clung to him, her hand pressing him hard against the wall. He wheeled her about by her shoulders and shoved her hard. ‘Stall them.’

The little silver heels went tap-tap-tapping like a silver hammer on stone down the concrete and up the little flight of stairs, like tapping up the little flight of stairs into her dressing room, and the door slammed behind her. Good girl. She’d do as he’d told her.

Just like he’d told her, plus a year and a day, and what tapping the little silver heels would do after that wouldn’t amount to much. A bit on the backstreet pavements after dark perhaps and not much more. Then his own position broke upon him.

One squad in front and one in the back and the aces in the alley sitting there playing it safe.

‘That John must have said I was packin’ a rod to make hisself look good,’ Frankie guessed. Well, the boy with the golden arm had been lucky once, a long time ago, this must be the spot where the old luck started coming back – just when it couldn’t get worse. He got back down the gangway and down the half flight to the basement. To listen one moment at the basement door for the housekeeper’s heavy step, heard nothing but a rat’s light scuttling and ducked into the gaseous darkness, bending under the low-hung piping to the single ground-level window.

Overhead he heard the military clumping, from small room to small room all down the hall, the banging at doors and the calling up the stairs, the shoes and shouts and threats of the Lake Street aces. He swung the window open from the inside, latched it carefully onto a little rusty hook in the basement ceiling and got out onto the stone walk between the walls.

He had gained the distance of the building’s breadth, nothing more. He would be that much farther away from the aces when he hit the alley, their eyes would be just a second slower to spot him when he walked into view, if he hit the alley in the spot a next-door neighbor would hit it. He pulled his cap down low and shoved his hands in his pockets to give him that fraction of a second it would take for them to make certain he was their man.

‘If she can hold them two more minutes,’ he prayed, feeling the brick against his back.

A lanky Negro in a baseball cap paused, on the walk that fronted the house, to rest a bat on the toe of his left shoe and study Frankie as gravely as a scout out looking for pitching talent. ‘They get out for spring practice early around here,’ Frankie thought hurriedly, crossing himself for the first time since he’d left County. He was going to need somebody’s help, that was for sure. And came out into the alley standing up thirty feet behind the squadrol.

Shambling along like any early afternoon bottle boy, he counted four El girders before he heard the aces rumble. ‘Man out the basement!’ someone called and ten yards ahead, with two girders still to pass, the iron steps of the El waited in the checkered sunlight.

‘You down there!’

Now he was for it and yet shambled listlessly on – a deaf, dumb, half-blind drunk of almost any color at all going nowhere in no particular hurry – he’d be good for one warning shot and the ace gave it to him: it whined high overhead into the ties, the next shot would be for promotion and he went low, assault-course fashion, zigzagging with the girders sheltering his back, thinking, ‘I done this three times awready – it’s all in the Service Record,’ and up the iron steps three at a time, the promotion shot whammed into the iron inches below and a brief, cold, painless flame, like the needle’s familiar touch, brushed his heel. He went past the ticket taker head down, heard her call once and then yank the cord. Bong! ‘Mister!’ and the bong was lost in the oncoming thunder of the Loopbound El pulling up, pausing and pulling away.