Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

Some tattered walkathon tune of the early thirties went banging like a one-wheeled Good Humor cart of those same years through his head as the cards slipped mechanically about the board and his fingers went lightly dividing change in the middle, taking the house’s percentage without making the winner too sharply aware of the cut. It was one thing for a player to understand he was bucking a percentage and quite another to see it taken before his eyes. To the mark it always seemed, vaguely, that the dealer might have overlooked the cut, just this once, out of sportsmanship. For when the sucker held a hot hand five per cent didn’t trouble him – he’d be feeling too smug about having the case ace concealed while that chump across the board was pitching in his last desperate dollar in the hope of hooking that same ace. And when he wasn’t involved in the pot the sucker didn’t care if the dealer took ninety per cent. It wasn’t any skin off his hide then, the sucker figured.

‘I hope I break even tonight,’ was the sucker’s philosophy, ‘I need the money so bad.’

And always the same tune clanging like a driverless trolley down some darkened backstreet, past familiar yet nameless stops, through the besieged city of the dealer’s brain.

‘More, more, I keep cryin’ for more more more-’

A tune he’d heard some afternoon when he and Sophie were first engaged and he’d liked taking her down Division because she dressed so sharp and had that haughty, hard-to-get stride that had had everyone fooled but himself: he’d solved it before she’d had a chance to develop adult defenses.

A stride somewhere between a henwalk shuffle and a Cuban grind, one of the boys had once described it. A walk as provocative as a strip teaser zipping down one black glove on the runway just to give the boys an idea of how much there was to zip before taking it all away again. And those silk-sheathed legs as proud-looking as a fawn’s.

Once, when both were still in their teens, he’d ignored Sophie for a month just to show her he didn’t care one way or another. Until she’d asked him straight out if they were still sleeping together on Saturday nights or not.

He’d fished a nickel out of his pocket and slipped it into her palm. ‘Here’s a nickel, kid. Call me up when you’re eighteen. Right now I got to do some shoppin’ around.’

She’d gone off in such a high-wheeled huff he’d thought that that was surely the end of that. But two days later she’d slipped him a note in front of the corner apteka. ‘I have to talk to you.’

But in her own living room there really hadn’t been anything to talk about after all. She’d come down off that high horse onto her knees. He’d brought her down till she’d never have her full height again. He’d broken her pride for keeps that afternoon.

Now for ten years she had held him in the hope of recovering that lost pride; till it had grown too late to loosen her grip upon him. If she let go of him now she let go of everything.

The old days, the old days, Frankie thought nostalgically. When every other door was a tavern and you had as much on the next guy as he had on you. When the worst thing the neighborhood bucks got pinched for was strongarming and no one fooled with anything deadlier than whisky. When there weren’t any fixers strolling through the Safari with more dough tied up in a single brown drugstore bottle than in a case of the best bonded scotch behind the bar.

And the old days before the old days, when burlesque was still burlesque, Kenny Brenna was the funniest man in town and the streetcar men got salt out of the box down on Augusta Boulevard to melt the ice in the switches. Down on Augusta where they’d played the same games other children played in less crowded neighborhoods – but had played them with little vicious twists unknown to luckier stubs. They’d played Let Her Fly simply by wrapping up garbage from the nearest can and sneaking up on a privately selected opponent with it: one who never knew he was anyone’s opponent at all until the garbage hit him in the teeth. For the game’s single rule had been that the player at bat was anyone with garbage in his hand who had voice enough to call out, ‘Let her fly!’ before pitching it. The kid who didn’t duck fast enough lost right there.

Rules had been added and the game extended but you still had to be ready to duck every second. ‘Jacks check, the bullets say a buck,’ he intoned unemphatically, hearing his own voice going on and on like a voice belonging to somebody else. ‘King sees, a buck to you Jacks, Jacks bump a buck, Big Ace sees ’n here we go, down ’n dirty, when you get a hunch bet a bunch, nothin’ to it if you know how to do it – turn ’em over when you’re down – man with the hammer bumps a buck, Jacks call – one bucket of paint all red – a winner every hand, hooked it in the dark he says well well, slip me a half ’n make me laugh, thank you, the more you bet the more you get-’

‘More, more, I keep cryin’ for more more more-’

The old days, the old ways, before all the stoplights turned to red and there was still time between deals for a laugh or two over a nickel beer.

‘He ain’t even got his first papers ’n he got a City Hall job,’ somebody complained of somebody else and the night was long, so long, and all night long the derisive little diamonds mocked the fat and happy-looking hearts. And the sour spades, that had seen too much of everything and had been disappointed in it all for so long, stood aside with cynical indifference while the murderous black clubs ambushed the hopeful four flushes and the foolishly faithful four-card straights; while the little old gray deuces died, heartbroken, by the way. Till the green silk bag was filled and emptied, half secretly, half guiltily, as a thousand green silk bags had been filled and emptied secretly before. And were always brought back for more more-

‘I keep cryin’ for more more

Give me more more more-’

As this night followed a thousand nights and these men followed a thousand hopers who had sat here before them to go down to their graves holding a four-card straight in one hand and would never be remembered at all. Their mouths were stuffed with race-track dust; and no one to remember at all.

Their sons had taken their places, passing the time, while waiting for death to deal one from the bottom, by drawing to aces and eights. Their hell was a full house that never won and their last hope of heaven a royal flush.

‘He got a loaf of bread under his arm ’n he’s cryin’,’ somebody said of somebody else. While the biggest sucker of them all sat in the dealer’s slot till morning, getting relieved fifteen minutes every two hours, and thought and thought and thought. For every time he was relieved his newly recovered confidence slipped an inch. And the old regret, like the old wound fever, struggled in him to kindle fresh flames of guilt. Guilt that burned like so many small strange flowers putting out petals of fire in place of leaves. ‘I told her in the hospital I was gonna make it all up to her. I’m makin’ it up to her awright. Just one flight down. Through a different door.’

‘What’s it mean when a dealer’s hand gets shaky?’ Louie asked Schwiefka without looking at any dealer at all.

‘That’s the first sign of insanity,’ Schwiefka decided.

‘Hell, it’s the last sign,’ Frankie threw them both, out of sheer irritability. ‘I blew my stack a long time ago settin’ right here watchin’ tinhorn West Side gamblers tryin’ to make a pair of bullets out of one little acey.’

‘Don’t give me that old kapustka ,’ Louie ordered him. ‘You ain’t the guy to be rememberin’ anythin ’.’