Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

The only one here who seemed to have no memories of torture, murder and grand larceny was Umbrella Man, who walked about the streets smiling gently, day after day, tinkling an old-fashioned school bell and bearing a battered umbrella strapped to his back. He could not look on violence without panic, so it was always told of him with surprise: ‘That fool with the umbrellas – you know who he is? He’s the brother by the smartest cop on the street. You know Cousin Kvorka, the captain’s man? He’s everybody’s cousin – for a double saw that is. He’s over there shakin’ down the greenhorns ’n the biggest greener on his beat is his own brother. The mutt is suppose to fix umbrellas but he ain’t gonna fix mine. He don’t act like he could heat water for a scab barber.’

Beside Umbrellas, the one called Meter Reader had once played sandlot baseball and now coached his employers’ team, the Endless Belt & Leather Invincibles, an aggregation that hadn’t won a game since Meter Reader had taken it over.

‘Next time you come up here after raidin’ the five-’n-ten I’m gonna turn you in to Record Head myself,’ Louie warned Sparrow just to start the evening rolling.

‘The day you turn him in I’ll have you deported,’ Frankie put in quietly. ‘The dealer has got hold of hisself real fine,’ Louie thought just as softly.

‘You can’t do that to him , Frankie,’ the punk objected, ‘he ain’t got a country.’

Yet no one had to be a Pinkerton to tell that Sparrow had been raiding the five-and-ten again. He was wearing half a dozen red-white-and-blue mechanical pencils, each containing a tiny battery and having a tiny bulb at the point commonly occupied by an eraser. He had seen the one Sophie toyed with and had decided he needed a handful of them himself.

‘What the hell good is a pencil with a flashlight on it?’ Louie wanted to know. As Frankie’s grip on himself tightened Louie felt increasingly restless.

‘They’re good for writin’ in blackouts, brother,’ the punk explained.

‘You hit him from this side, I’ll hit him from this,’ Louie exclaimed in disgust at Sparrow’s argument. ‘The war’s over -’ n don’t call me “brother.”’

‘Still, they’re good on dark nights to save ’lectricity,’ Sparrow persisted. ‘You could write all night ’n it’s easier on the eyes too.’

Louie rolled a quarter toward the punk, received one of the pencils and warned him, ‘You got to replace the battery when it burns out, for free.’

‘For a quarter? ’ Sparrow was indignant. ‘Don’t you figure I got labor costs? Replacements is free just wit’ the fifty-cent deal. You want another one ’n get free batt’ries the rest of yer life?’

‘When the battery wears out you’ll replace it – or eat the pencil,’ he advised Sparrow matter-of-factly.

‘How can I refill it if the five-’n-dime puts somethin’ else on the batt’ry counter?’ Sparrow pleaded.

‘Don’t ask me how to run your business. This thing is guaranteed for life so far as I’m concerned.’

‘Here’s yer two bits back,’ Sparrow offered to return the coin.

‘Keep your money, Solly,’ Frankie suggested, ‘if that battery lasts three days it’ll prob’ly outlive Louie.’ As though secretly convinced of Frankie’s prophecy, Louie reached anxiously for the coin as if for his very own life being held, just out of reach, in a stranger’s hand. Sparrow thrust it deep into is watch pocket. ‘I just realized how right Dealer could be,’ he told Louie, and saw the pallor of Louie’s flesh under the violet talc. ‘You look like if the batt’ry lasts the night it’s a lifetime guarantee in yer case.’

‘I’ll die like Machine deals,’ Louie conceded, abandoning the argument in a surge of weariness – ‘fast.’

‘It’s how you’ve lived,’ Schwiefka told him.

‘It’s how we’ve all lived,’ Drunkie John reminded them all, speaking as if it were over and done with for everyone. Everyone’s chickens would be coming home to roost soon enough, John felt.

Sparrow, studying Louie’s ravaged face in the greenish light, suddenly relented. ‘I’ll refill it any time it goes dead, even if I have to sneak in the warehouse to do it.’

‘You keep hangin’ around that warehouse after dark you’ll end up on a slab before he will,’ Frankie put in nervously. But Sparrow shook off the warning.

‘I’m a businessman,’ the punk explained with dignity. ‘I fulfill my obligations even if I have to rob a warehouse to do it. You think I want my credit to lapse? That’s the difference between a businessman like me ’n a cheap hustler like you – you hustlers got no credit.’

Frankie shuffled the deck slowly, stalling in the hope that the suckers might start knocking to get the night over and done and forgotten. ‘That’s the trouble with the whole country, all you businessmen cheatin’ the peoples so fast ’n hard there’s nothin’ left for an honest hustler to steal.’

‘I’ll tell you what I think for true,’ Sparrow offered seriously, ‘I don’t think there’s any difference: a businessman is a hustler with the dough to hustle on the legit ’n a hustler is a businessman who’s either gone broke or never had it. Back me up with five grand tonight ’n tomorrow mornin’ I get a invitation to join the Chamber of Commerce ’n no questions asked.’

‘Record Head’ll get you first,’ Louie repeated his warning to Sparrow.

‘Yeh,’ everyone agreed at once, their spirits improved by the punk’s prospects for a long-term jacket, ‘by the time he gets out Kvorka’s kid’ll be wearin’ the old man’s badge.’

‘It’s too cheap now,’ John renewed his ancient complaint, ‘when you done somethin’ in the old days you paid for it.’

‘The hell with the old days,’ Sparrow protested, looking resentfully at John. ‘I hope your batt’ry goes dead too.’

‘His battery’s been dead for twenty years,’ Frankie had to put in.

‘That’s all right,’ John pointed out, ‘the batt’ry may be dead but the brain is still workin’. What good is hot batt’ries when the radiator’s leakin’? Look at this punk – his tubes is boilin’ over but his connections is spillin’ like a secondhand Essex.’

‘I’m still on the legit,’ Sparrow answered without glancing at Louie, ‘compared to some people anyhow. There ain’t no joy-poppers waitin’ for me down by the Safari.’

It was the first time Frankie realized that the punk was on to Louie’s racket and he felt an unreasoning resentment of that knowledge. How much did the punk know? It must be just some word he’d overheard and was tossing around with no real knowledge of the accusation he was making, Frankie decided uneasily.

Sparrow had pressed the game too far. With the ace of clubs in his hand Louie asked, ‘You want to die in an alley?’ With all the jesting gone out of his voice.

Sparrow didn’t have the courage to defy Louie when Louie talked business – but he had an ace in the hole himself. He could throw out the knuckles of the index finger of his left hand, broken in some childhood antic, bending it into a series of unnatural ridges which he could point at an opponent silently, thus avenging himself without risking provocative language.

‘I’ll make the ju-ju sign on you,’ he threatened Louie softly, and Louie overheard. ‘You point that freakin’ finger at me ’n you’re one dead pointer.’

It was a challenge. Everyone had seen him challenged. So the moment Louie’s eyes returned to his cards Sparrow pointed, swiftly and damningly – Louie heard the knuckles crack. Somebody laughed and Frankie felt his innards tighten with this night’s first intimation that God’s medicine might not choose to hold him together till morning.