Nelson Algren - The Man with the Golden Arm

‘I got to get a lib’ry card myself,’ Frankie determined.

That was only one of several matters he had to tend to right away. Another was the business of getting a job on the legit so that he could break clean with Zosh instead of running off like some sneaking punk. He was going to start on that the minute he finished his shot – he finished it. And was right on the verge of getting up to look up a certain name in the telephone directory five feet from where he sat – a name that had been told to him once, right in here, of a party who could put a man to work on the drums with or without a union card. But just at that moment he noticed that Antek’s glasses had been broken while he’d been gone. ‘What happened to the goggles, Owner?’ he asked urgently, needing to know the answer right away.

Antek made no reply. He felt he was being razzed and walked off with the string tied over one ear and knotted to the stump of the glasses’ frame. Antek suffered occasional defeats, and these humiliated him more deeply than blows.

His deaf-and-dumb cat had also, it seemed, come under fire. She came gimping across the floor on three legs and somebody’s hound, on a leash, made a run for her. Antek’s wife, holding the leash, let the hound go just far enough to make the old cat scramble for it on all threes.

‘The old cat’s no good,’ Mrs Owner explained herself righteously, ‘she’s the one what trampled her young ones to deat’ – somebody ought to give it to her good for that.’

A dull compassion for all old cats hit Frankie. ‘She did it to make room for her next litter,’ he told the woman. So just to show everyone how she felt she hollered, ‘Get her, Bummy!’ and let the leash go altogether. The old cat barely made it, half crawling and half slipping up the piled beer cases to safety.

And the old bums drooled and drooled.

Frankie turned away. It seemed that everything that ever happened to him had begun with some hound or other’s aimless yapping.

Outside the traffic warnings flashed from red to green and back again. In the bar mirror he saw the door open and Sparrow wander in pretending he wasn’t looking for anyone in particular. Then just happen to spot an old buddy who hadn’t been around for a while.

‘Hi, Dealer,’ he sounded Frankie out from the front of the bar, signaling to Antek for two shots. Frankie let his shot stand before him without even acknowledging that he’d seen anyone come in.

But out of the corner of his eye, turned toward the mirror, he studied the punk as never before. So this was the joker for whom he’d done nine months in County. ‘He left me holdin’ the bag for sure that time,’ Frankie reminded himself firmly; so that he’d never, never weaken.

Sparrow leaned over the bar to Antek, whispered confidentially, and a minute later Antek ambled down toward Frankie with a far too casual air.

‘He wants to talk to you,’ Antek reported, ‘somethin’ about gettin’ back on the door by Schwiefka. Says you got him awfully wrong about somethin’.’

‘If a guy wants a job by Schwiefka,’ Frankie said loudly enough for the punk to hear, ‘let him go by Schwiefka. I don’t run no joint, I’m just dealin’.’

Antek, duty done, reported back to Sparrow and the punk picked up his courage at last. Catching Frankie’s eye in the mirror, he asked, in a small peaked voice, ‘You still got them hard feelin’s, Dealer?’

‘I got no kind of feelin’s.’

‘It wasn’t no sense bot ’ of us gettin’ busted, Frankie.’

‘No sense at all,’ Frankie agreed readily. ‘Who’s arguin’?’ Frankie certainly wasn’t. It was all over and done so far as Dealer was concerned. He turned on the stool, leaving the shot the punk had bought him with his last two bits, and brushed past him to the door.

Sparrow plucked pleadingly at Frankie’s sleeve. ‘Let me talk to you, Frankie.’

Frankie looked down at him. The punk was looking shabby all right. And a bad time of year for dog stealing. ‘There’s lots of things I got wrong awright,’ he told the punk, ‘but you ain’t one of ’em. You’re the one thing I’m real right about.’

He turned up his jacket against the evening cold and left without looking back.

Each morning now the tide of his loneliness rose, to ebb only when he took his evening place in the slot. To rise a bit higher, by the following morning, than it had the morning before. If it hadn’t been for the punk, it somehow seemed, he’d be on the legit now somewhere with Molly instead of still hustling suckers all night long. His eyes, under the night-light, no longer reflected the light.

It’s all in the wrist, with a deck or a cue; yet the fingers had lost the touch. The feel of the deck wasn’t there any more. And it had all been better before.

He practiced squeezing a sponge ball one evening. ‘Tunney stren’thened his hands like this,’ he explained to Sophie. And fancied the fingers felt stronger.

He gave the sports a shaky deal three nights running. On the fourth he settled down. Till, toward morning, one sport sat with a low straight and three others drew to two pairs. The second player’s final card slipped face upward, matching the pair of sixes already showing on the board. Frankie reddened and gave the others theirs face upward too, with a mumbled ‘sorry’ to the one whose hand he had so clumsily betrayed, a youth known to him only as Bird Dog.

Four players turned up their cards with real relief; the dealer had saved them money from home. But Bird Dog shoved the pot toward Frankie.

‘You won this one, Dealer,’ Bird Dog assured him, slapping his corduroy hat against the flat of his hand to indicate he was casing out, and tossed two bits of his own into the pot. ‘You win that too.’

‘Take your money, Bird Dog,’ Frankie begged off, ‘it’s yours.’

‘No hard feelings,’ the boy assured him with a flat little laugh. Everyone watched him leave while Frankie boxed the deck, pretending it had all been the fault of the cards, and opened a fresh deck. The pot stayed in the middle for the next hand’s winner.

His palms were sweating and the deck, that had always slipped so lightly, seemed half glued to them. On the very first go-round with the fresh deck he dealt a card to the missing player’s empty seat and the cards had to be shifted all around the board. Schwiefka put his hand on Frankie’s arm with a meaningful touch.

‘Go down ’n get a drink, Dealer. You’re dealin’ like you got hairs in your teet’. I fired one guy awready who could deal that good.’

Frankie shoved back the chair, slapped on his cap, and all the way to the door fancied small laughter behind him.

And right in the downstairs doorway, just as though he didn’t know he’d ever been fired, the punk was waiting again. ‘How long you been waitin’ for nothin’?’ Frankie wanted to know. A cold wind came down the alley and the punk blew on his hands.

‘A long time, Frankie. Get me my job back. I’m broke.’

‘You always were,’ Frankie reminded him.

When he reached the Tug & Maul Sparrow hustled in right behind him and stood watching while Frankie ordered a double shot for himself. His right hand was shaking so that he had to lift the glass with his left. Anybody’s hand would shake, having a punk shadow him all night. The punk must be practicing to be a Pinkie again. He kept the hand in his pocket. He had two doubles before it stopped trembling.

‘You got a loose crowd up there tonight, Frankie?’ The punk sounded homesick all right. ‘You got to get back up there right away?’

‘I don’t got to go nowheres right away.’

When Frankie ordered a third double shot Sparrow sensed that something had gone wrong in the slot. Frankie stuck to coffee between shifts when things were going as they should.