Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

He went down as if he’d been shot; the cow gun went clattering down those endless nylon aisles.

Half the crowd began shoving the other half aside for the distinction of being the first to sit on the gangster while others bound him with clotheslines and a couple cooler heads used the excitement to snatch such small items as happened to be lying loose and near at hand. In the haste of binding the punk old Gold became securely tied to him; the punk reared his head groggily to protest something or other and someone promptly banged him back to sleep with that same washboard. When the aces arrived old Gold was still trying to free himself.

In front of the store half the neighborhood waited to see who the cops would bring out this time. They came out carrying something that looked like a giant beehive with old Gold in tow. For all you could see of Sparrow in the yards of clothesline circling him from forehead to ankles was the point of his pale nose sticking out of the coils. The aces shoved old Gold into the wagon with him – if he wasn’t an accomplice what was he doing tied up with a gangster?

Some gangster. At the Saloon Street Station it took the officers ten minutes to unwind the punk and ten more to loosen old Gold. Sparrow sat up blinking, looking for his glasses, and Sergeant Kvorka immediately poured a bucket of ice water on the punk’s head so he could see more clearly.

The first person he’d recognized was Violet. He blinked up at her with his shortsighted eyes, waiting resignedly for her to explain this caper to him. ‘Well?’ the punk demanded.

‘Ask him what he thought he was trying to do,’ the bewildered aces urged her. They wanted to know too.

‘I went in there to try on a topcoat,’ he explained haughtily, without taking those accusing eyes off her, ‘because I wanted to look nice just for you . I took the gun off that old man ’cause he got a old grudge against me. I was gonna give it back to him right after I paid for the coat. But when I had it on, all of a sudden they wouldn’t give me a chance to pay for a thing, just like they been layin’ for me all along. You know as well as I do, honey, I’m not the kind goes around tryin’ to get somethin’ fer nothin’.’

The aces looked at Violet and Violet looked at the aces.

‘We’ll have to get another kind of lawyer now,’ she sighed. ‘Here goes the divorce again. It looks like the oney honeymoon you ’n me’ll ever have’ll be in the Bridewell.’

‘I’ll defend myself,’ Sparrow announced, ‘it was self-defense. That makes it false arrest.’ He just couldn’t get that false arrest notion out of his offbalanced skull.

‘If you don’t button up I’ll sue you for breach of promise even if I am married,’ she threatened him, getting angry with him at last. ‘You’re goin’ to cop a plea ’n get paroled to me – if I ain’t gonna be your wife I’ll just be your dirty guardian.’ Abruptly her anger turned to tears and he’d never seen her cry before. ‘Then I can arrest you myself when you get out of line – I’ll arrest you every night just to keep the aces from doin’ it.’

‘I’ll have to look up the law on that,’ he dismissed her. ‘I don’t think they got me yet.’

They hadn’t. The two analysts who questioned him at Central Police turned in reports at such variance that Zygmunt was able to put in the fix with almost no trouble at all.

Violet had to pay Zygmunt off in installments, out of Stash’s hoarded checks. Every time she’d get the Prospector paid off she’d have to start chiseling on Old Husband again. It made her pretty mad at Old Husband sometimes.

Just the way he kept hanging on, month after month, was enough to wear away any woman’s patience. ‘I wouldn’t mind his hangin’ on to me if it meant anythin’,’ she complained to Sophie, ‘but I don’t have to tell you it don’t mean a thing, the shape he’s in.’

Old Husband, it seemed, had added one more trick to the repertoire of his senility. When he brought home his bargains of late he locked them up in the broom closet for fear Vi might throw them in the garbage can as she had so often threatened. He was getting so he locked up everything. He had a lock put on the pantry, leaving what he judged was just enough food for one healthy woman on the kitchen table before he left for work. Vi was embarrassed, when she went to get the punk a slab of Polish sausage, to find herself literally locked out of her own home while remaining inside it. She took a hammer to the lock and tossed the punk the entire sausage, not even salvaging the butt end for Stash. For two nights thereafter Stash slept, bargains and all, in the broom closet.

Strangely, he hadn’t seemed to mind it there particularly. If it hadn’t been for the Jailer’s protest, because of the difficulty the situation gave him in getting to his mops and buckets, it might have developed into a permanent arrangement. As it was the Jailer drove the old man, in his long underwear and holding his pants in his hand, back to his proper home. ‘And keep door closed,’ was Jailer’s final word. It had become an obsession to Schwabatski: before a tenant could step through his own doorway Jailer was telling him to close the door behind him.

Violet reported to Sophie, with a certain hopelessness, ‘He liked livin’ in the broom closet wit’ the rest of the mops.’

Sometimes, watching unsmiling while Stash beat his gums around the evening pumpernickel, she would urge him to eat a bit faster; without adding that Sparrow waited for her in the bar below. The old man would pay no attention at all, his battle was with the dark and bitter bread as he sopped it about a beef stew that wasn’t any fresher. For the address where the latter delicacy was available was a secret locked, as he’d locked the pantry door upon her, deep within the darkest recesses of his day-old, half-price soul.

His secondhand, rabbitty, battered, bruised and terribly defenseless soul.

‘All bein’ married to Old Man means is lettin’ him tear the date off the calendar every night ’n lettin’ him read the thermometer every morning,’ Violet explained to Sophie, ‘he gets a kick out of little things like that – it’s like a thrill to him, sort of, to tell me what the temper’ture is outside. I got to pertend I didn’t have no idea it was that hot ’r that cold. I’ll tell you what, he leans out that window so far some mornings, just so’s he can surprise me, it scares me. Then I got to pertend I’m sleepin’ so’s he can wake me up ’n tell. He don’t mean a bit of harm, that good old man. Just trusts me all down the line like a baby. In a way it is like takin’ care of a baby.’ Cause he don’t come on wit’ no lies like that conniving punk.’ Violet sighed reminiscently. ‘ Such big wonderful lies.’

Up the stairwell they heard Blind Pig come tapping, tapping. Pausing only to touch the latch of the dealer’s narrow door as though accidentally and then pass on and up two flights: tapping, tapping. All the way up to a curtainless, lightless, windowless corner where he sat in the endless dark with his cane between his knees and said softly over and over: ‘I’ll take all I can get.’

‘He does that a-purpose to let us know he’s upstairs,’ Sophie told Violet of the light tap on the latch. ‘What the hell does he think Frankie’d want to see him about?’ she suddenly wondered aloud.

A cold wind followed the blind man up the stairs and Violet folded the blanket snugly about Sophie’s legs. ‘That crummy deadpicker left the downstairs door open again,’ she sympathized with Sophie as though the door had been left wide just to make Sophie shiver a bit. ‘Now I got to go see what’s goin’ on upstairs, what the people ’r up to.’