Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

‘Now I go by worrrk,’ Stash announced, hugging himself to keep warm while Violet, relenting at last, buttoned his fly. When the whisky ebbed she’d be half sorry for him.

‘Now you go by station howz ’n get good lawyer,’ the officer corrected Stash. ‘Maybe you’ll talk better English after you’ve slept a spell.’

At mention of sleep Stash looked homesick for bed. Anybody’s bed. Was there such a place left in the world where no one woke you up at a quarter to four, plastered you with mustard and ran you onto a fire escape in your underwear for neighbors to make bad scandals?

‘We got a nice dry cell for you – or don’t you think it’s time for your fam’ly to get a little rest? You ought to be ashamed , a man of your age,’ n holdin’ out on your kids on top of it.’ Apparently he’d concluded that Sparrow and Violet were brother and sister.

Old Husband hung his unhappy old head. He just hadn’t known you could be arrested for holding out a pay check on your wife. Down the stairwell and by the ace’s firm hand on the back of his belt, all the way down, he realized now it was a real bad thing he had done.

‘Could sleep by station howz?’ He wriggled a bit with hope.

‘Yeh.’ N coffee ’n a sausage sandrich for you too.’

Stash slid his dim eyes sidewise like a condemned rooster’s. ‘Please – no sandrich.’

Violet and Sparrow, standing with arms hooked about each other’s waists as the first light began carpeting the ironwork of the fire escape and started down the hall, watched from the alley window while the law helped Stash into a squad car. They saw the little red taillight wink up at them once. To warn them to be good children so they’d never have to go to jail.

‘That old man is certainly a lot of trouble to me,’ Violet sighed as the car pulled east out of the alley and wheeled south toward the station.

‘I hope they take him to Racine Street better’n by Saloon Street – by Racine they got mattresses,’ Sparrow hoped wanly in the wan city dawn. While the light of Chicago’s vast West Side, like the light of nowhere else in the world, crept softly, with its special Chicago softness, up a hundred thousand seamed city walls. ‘What makes that old man so mean in the first place?’ Sparrow wondered. ‘Don’t you treat him nice?’

The light filtered down from a hundred thousand roofs and across the floor just as it had filtered across the Humboldt Park lagoon on their first mornings together, when the lagoon was the thrill of a clandestine honeymoon month, before the whole world started acting clandestinely.

Violet shrugged. ‘They all get that way when they get old,’ she advised him like a grandmother.

‘I’m not so hungry no more,’ Sparrow decided, ‘one more sandrich is all I could eat.’

‘Just the same, it was mighty sweet of you to pick up the sandrich when he slugged me wit’ it – did you see him hit me?’ For one moment he felt she was going to get mad all over again. Then she added: ‘The poor old man,’ and Sparrow knew she was almost sober.

‘Don’t worry about your perm’nent,’ he flattered her, ‘spendin’ on hair like yours is just tarnishin’ the lily. With hair like yours you could be a model ’n pose.’

‘Yeh,’ she laughed off his praise, ‘under the arms maybe.’ She raised her arms elegantly, like a real lady in a deodorant ad, high over her head. ‘Anyhow it ain’t red, it’s just awe-burn. Would you like me wit’ red hair all over?’

‘I like redheads of any color – oney first fix the sandrich ’n get some clean sheets on the bed. Old men ’r kind of moldy, you know.’ N leave the dirty mustard off. Off the sandrich, I mean. It got on the sheet awready, somehow. You know what I mean?’

‘I know what you mean,’ she replied, and went to the bedroom to change the sheets and stash Stash’s upper plate in the drawer on top of the.38, wondering casually how in the world that poor old man was ever going to eat without his plate. There was a daub of blood on her slip and she was examining it when the punk shambled in and said, ‘Let’s see.’

‘No,’ she told him firmly, ‘there’s blood on it. I don’t think a man should look at blood on a woman. I don’t like the sort of man that would.’

So Sparrow ignored the slip, he was accustomed to her superstitions. ‘I hope Old Man gets a good lawyer,’ he hoped.

‘Yeh,’ Violet repented, ‘I’d hate to see him lose that job. But maybe this’ll teach him to quit dictatin’ everybody. Honey, that string is ticklin ’ me.’

Sparrow generously switched the string to the other corner.

It was better than no love at all.

He hadn’t stopped by Molly Novotny’s door for three nights and three days. But for the second time in the week he had had his last, final and never-again fix. This time he was through and meant it. So he wanted to tell Molly how she had helped him to beat the stuff just in time.

He came down the stairs with Rumdum plowing on a leash before him and his mind went down the stairs one bound ahead of the hound. Frankie had dark-haired Molly on his mind as well as the needle and he couldn’t get either off. His eyes had a curtained look; to hide the need of both from himself. But Rumdum’s were hotly eager for everything.

For Rumdum had good beer and Girlie on his mind and he and Frankie were going calling together.

Within Frankie heard the phonograph’s sleepy murmur, but he did not knock. Some aversion to knocking at this door still held him, it must always be somehow accidental and nobody’s responsibility; he kicked Rumdum in an oblique hope that the dog might protest loudly enough to get Molly’s attention. But the hound only slid one cold eye sidewise. When the murmuring paused Frankie stepped, gently but firmly, on the dog’s tail. Rumdum put it between his legs and sat down heavily upon it, looking as wronged as a hound could look: he didn’t want to take responsibility either.

Frankie stood looking down at the ravenous-looking freak at his feet and saw a shiver, as of returning life, run through that mangy and bloated form: the beer-clogged nostrils had picked up, faintly, Girlie’s special scent. A scent, for Rumdum, like that of no other bitch the whole endless length of Division Street. He bristled and forgot himself long enough to give forth with a low, menacing, masculine growl, reserved strictly for occasions when no opponent was in sight. Molly heard that boastful rumble and opened the door just a crack.

‘He stopped dead here ’n I couldn’t get him a step farther,’ Frankie explained casually. ‘I think he got a crush on Girlie.’

‘He sounds mad at somebody.’

‘He’s just puttin’ that on. All he is is thirsty again ’n he knows the place he gets took care of. Say, I’m sort of dry myself. How about a little Christmas cheer? You dry?’ And fetched Rumdum a sharp kick to make him leave off growling long enough so a person could make himself heard. ‘I guess he’s likely to go on like that till he gets some beer in him.’

She opened the door just wide enough so that he could brush past, if he pleased to, or stay where he was. Yet gave him the benefit of both breasts against his arm as he passed.

He sat down in the big red upholstered chair in the corner, looking shabbier than ever in his stained field jacket. While Rumdum swished about his legs, suddenly coy after all his growling threats about what was going to happen to her if he ever got within paws’ reach of her lovely flanks.

Girlie, snarling defensively down at the oversized mongrel from her sanctuary in Molly’s arms, seemed to share some of those reservations about Rumdum which Molly held for Frankie. Whose big dog had he been lately?